I'm cleaning out my closet closet. I'm sorry Mom. That's because these recordings literally take place in my closet, right? Yeah, there's no glory. There's no like, oh, wow, you know Marcus is in Eddie's there in these Studios like it's no glamour. I'm staring at my wardrobe right now. Yeah. I had to I had to lock my dog out of the office. He's probably sitting right outside the door. Or like the huffing and puffing. He's the worst. Welcome to episode 3 of the canvas casters podcast. We are so excited to be back. We took a few weeks off. We had fall break, and then we had a little bit of time that we wanted to wait until our next guest was available. So Marcus, it's good to be back. Absolutely. I'm excited. So for those of you that didn't get a chance to listen to us for episode 1 just a brief introduction. I'm Eddie small. I'm the CTE Innovation coach to see T stands for Career and Technical education Innovation coach at Central. In career center and I've been using canvas for about six months in a Marcus painter. I'm the coordinator of digital learning at Twin Lake School Corporation in Monticello in Indiana, and I've been using canvas for almost seven years. He's the OG. Yeah. This is what we call. Oh gee, he's been using it kind of since day one. Yeah, and he has been around for a while and I and we've talked about this and we talked about it specifically with with Megan toland, you know, how how canvas has evolved and how Has gotten to this point it has been quite quite a development for sure speaking of fall break Eddie. You were telling me before we went on break. You were telling me about a training that you did canvas specific training their C9 and it was quite a to-do. I want to hear more it was well, here's the thing. We'll just we'll take it back a few years. I won't say how many years but my wife is a Harry Potter fanatic. Huge Harry Potter fan loves the books loves the movies has always been a big fan and I often also enjoy, you know the movies and the books as well kind of being in that age group where it's Harry Potter everything and we did a 30th birthday party and we had people dress up and I did like all of the snacks and things like that as well as some decorations and just anything Harry Potter that you can think of a Sorting Hat a broom a flying broom things like that. I had all these decorations and we've been using them for Halloween for the past couple of years. So I had these all on a tote already and I'd always had this idea. Is there any way that I can reuse these materials for professional development? And I knew at the beginning of the year. I wanted to do like a speed-dating tight PD. Have you ever been involved in one of those markets like the where they have different groups and you kind of go around and each person has a couple minutes just to show you their thing instead. We have you ever seen. I haven't even I have seen that a couple of times and I dig it now. I'm going to be honest like we're in the tree here. Everything that you just said about Harry Potter was completely over my head. I don't understand any. Yeah, so and I'm going to actually okay. There are probably listeners in the same boat. So if you're not a Harry Potter fan, you can just fast-forward this until we get to Kona but what I ended up doing was I wanted to do speed dating and then I was like, oh can we do speed dating through Hogwarts and then because of the canvas integration, could I then develop a PD based off of Of of speed dating through Hogwarts with canvas tools or canvas apps. So I basically picked a few of our we call them Panda Pilots. Our team of canvas early adopters say were the ones kind of tasked with developing things on specific subject, like canvas Studio canvas Gradebook all of those things that you normally would see or that might be basic that they could present over so I gave them those tasks and said hey show up. I asked them to dress up. None of them did that was okay. Nothing, like asking teachers to like hey, by the way, I really want you to do this thing, maybe two or three minutes per group will rotate around the room. And then also I'd like you to dress up like with you or which didn't happen to your your because everyone has that everyone has a section of their closet full of wizard Wizardry. I remembered in my closet this great Acoustics in here, by the way. So what what ended up happening was as I went into our LGI space or a large group instruction space put in five parts. Pods and then split everybody up into houses like they would in Hogwarts. So somebody would be in Gryffindor someone who would be in Slytherin. They got stickers they participated inside the group and they got house points and we had a house cup. So it was really really cool but I didn't anticipate our culinary class getting really excited and they made Harry Potter snacks. So we had like chocolate wands and butterbeer. So we had hey if we're going to do a professional development, we probably should feed you, you know, that's kind of the best thing to have when you do PDS or And they jumped right in with all these snacks or drinking butterbeer were eaten chocolate ones, which are just chocolate covered pretzels, but it was great. Like it was phenomenal and everybody seemed really engaged. They got a lot out of it. I'm not trying to brag or anything but I there were some teachers at walked away and said best PTA ever had so wait now pretty rajic and then write a little bit of magic in October and it really sent me in to break feeling really good about what we do and I know sometimes that doesn't always happen because we're constantly changing or iterating. Or failing and trying new stuff and going into break. I felt really good about it. So thanks for bringing it up. I'm glad I could share it was a really good time. And I'd be more than happy to share any of the materials. I use any of the formatting that we use to any listener out there. Just yeah, I reach out it will you talk through some of it with me and we talked about you know, what it might look like and I definitely remember you sending some pictures of how the place was set up and you know to me as a person who leads PD and my Corporation you had the the important ingredients That's right. You had the content that we had to cover but then you also have you've got to package the professional learning in a way that is creative and different. So you had that that if nothing else if nothing else, it just shows the level of investment that you have put into the work that you've created and then you top it off with food and like honestly like fart I usually We just throw like chocolate like chocolate mini candy bars and that that is in itself. Like hey, we liked you Marcus you gave us chocolate. So you had you had themed snacks. So it kind of had you tick all the boxes but also part of that is it was taking a lot of boxes, but we have talked about to the fact that I don't hate to like sound like I have this special place that no one else really gets to enjoy but I am blessed to have a culinary program that gets excited about things like that an administrative team that says, Okay, Eddie, you're getting a little crazy here, but we're going to let you do it. Anyway, he's there were a couple of that. I think they just didn't quite understand they were like, yeah. Okay. Well, if you want to do that, we'll see what it looks and then they come in they go I think you nailed this like it's just the right amount of decorations. It's just the right amount of atmosphere and it's the same thing we want to do with students which is let's create experiences. So I'm trying to model that for my teachers, like look at the experience. I'm creating for you in a short amount of time for a professional development do some of those things with your kids. See what kind of Engagement you get beyond your normal lesson when you you know, play Harry Potter music in the background and you've got decorations laid out on the table and you give them this experience. Even if it's just a short hour into our experience. It is something that's meaningful. So it's definitely worked now I'm thinking about like, how am I going to theme the next PD and how am I gonna so it's created more work, I think than it initially that initially wanted it to be for me, but I'm excited about it. And I'm really looking forward to the next PD we get to host very lucky about where I work. Because we are coming out of fall break you or talking about the approach to e-learning now, for those of you that aren't familiar with e-learning will let Marcus kind of tell you a little bit about it. But we do something in Indiana called e-learning for inclement weather days or to add some days back that we might get taken away due to weather. So Marcus tell us a little bit about how you guys approach to learning. Yeah. So like so be learning in Indiana. It is quite a Hot Topic and basically When we say e-learning we're talking about inclement weather days where school is cancelled, you know for a long long time that meant that you got a phone call or you check the news and then you rolled back over in bed. And that was it and so in the last, you know, eight to 10 years, of course we've developed into using Learning Management Systems to deliver content so that we can get some value some learning value out of that day and then therefore be able to On it towards our total number of instructional days at Twin Lakes. We have the arc sort of protocol is that attendance and grades are two separate things, right? And so we use canvas in our grades 6 through 12 and it came to me from the principal at the high school. They wanted to come up with a good system dealing with attendance so that it could take some burden off of teachers because you know your typical high A school teacher on an e-learning snow day or fog day believe it or not. We have fog days or just extreme cold. Those teachers are getting getting up in the morning and basically taking what they had originally planned to do and re designing on the Fly for a digital space and adjusting. So it's a lot of work and so we came up with a plan to cope with the attendance that took the attendance off the shoulders of the teachers and so at Twin Lakes. I am one of the It was administrators. And we basically I kind of just thought it through and I thought you know what here's some things I know and I know Google forms. So I proposed to the principal and assistant principal I said, how about if we make attendance up to the kids we're talking about high school kids at this point grades 9 through 12 and I said, there is no reason there's no reason why those kids can't log in and take their own attendance. If you will it brings up an interesting conversation that I've had with. Teachers all over the state because it's done differently everywhere My Philosophy is that students can come into a day a normal school day and do nothing, but they are physically present and so because they are physically present in the room, they are at their attendance record reflects that and so I felt like and I feel like connecting the work to be done and their attendance is is not a an appropriate thing to do. I think it's completely possible. Well that a kid can log into canvas on a snow day and check the attendance and check themselves in if you will and then it may choose not to do that work. That's the same type of choice that they would have in a normal day. So we decided to design this attendance policy. Basically, it's a simple Google form and as an administrator, we've made class of classes. So graduating class of 2020. Okay, 20 wall so forth. Yeah 20 so we made those. Has no populated with those kits and then what I do is I go in and I made a button I made a really obnoxious button in canva so that it was something very obvious for for students to see when they log into canvas shows up in their in their stream. They know that they are going to go to their class of class and there will be an announcement and it says e-learning attendance for then the day and the date and they click the button and it automatically opens up to the Google form where they basically put their first and last Let's name it collects our email and they Mark themselves present. That's been we've been doing we did that last year. And of course this took some practice we had I think three practice run days before we had an actual scheduled e-learning day and that was all in preparation for the eventual whether eLearning days and so through the course of those three practice days, we got to where we basically troubleshot if you will all the kids who had been sort of avoiding using canvas. All the kids who could not login and hadn't said anything to anybody but now there was an even more pressing need. So we're able to troubleshoot and now it's to the point where it's second nature and we had an e-learning day a week ago on Friday and sure enough within you know, a half hour of the posting of that attendance form, you know in our Corporation 600 or so kids boom attendance. Now what they did in terms of work, I don't know that's that's where the classroom teachers are. Are in control but in terms of attendance that attendance goes directly to the the attendance officer the the assistant principal principal and the attendant secretary and guidance. So all the necessary people get that list and they can then go ahead and deal with the attendance issues that may or may not arise from it. But maybe I'm really pleased that approach to attendance is pretty spot-on and we've had I mean we've had discussions this is the first time Central Line is a career center non-traditional K through 12. Obviously we have students coming from sending School something I've talked about before we were using a week of e-learning to basically offset those students that were on their fall breaks but not on campus with us because every school has a different fall break. So there were some schools that were at home while we were still in session because their home schools were technically off now they can come to us because we're in session if they'd like, but because their schedule doesn't really line up their home school schedules doesn't line up. Central nine, they're not required. They're not mandated to come. So because of that we were doing these e-learning days so that we can provide contents of those teachers don't have to reteach and what we taken away from it is there has been some feedback from teachers as there always is where they feel like no one did it during that week. How do they know? What kind of attendance do we have? What kind of analytics can I go into canvas and see who got on and who did what and when they did it because I think the feedback they're getting from from some of their students has or I'm going to do it until the deadline and the deadline has been pushed, you know closer to the end of the month. So we just have to modify and change and iterate and make that make that deadline better or those expectations a little bit more clear for our students because we were 15 16 year old kids. Once if you told me the deadline was the 20th. I'm going to do it on the 19th. So so I like your approach. I definitely am stealing it as I always do from you everything that everything that you do better because you're right longer. That's not a hit on I will say this though, and this was And little thing that I ended up stumbling upon along with that that attendance approach. So we talked a lot about I feel like the more simple I can make something in terms of Design Within the LMS the better and if that means an extra key stroke or two for me or the teacher, I feel like that's very much worth it in terms of creating the best possible environment for the for the student and this attendance thing is a great example because when I post those Announcements like the attendance post for that day one little thing that I learned was if I select my button in that announcement if I click on it and then I hit Ctrl K or command key on a Mac. It gives me a little pop up and it gives me the option to force that thing to open up in a new tab and that was a really big deal for me because I don't want kids to click on something within canvas and then immediately cover up their canvas page or they're First page and so by doing the attendance that way right when the when the student clicks it it opens up that Google form in a new tab and it leaves their canvas that leaves their page there their session there and so they can go over to that it opens up the new tab, they take their attendance for themselves and then they can go back to the canvas Tab and get to work and that one little thing that I'm able to do on the back end of setting that up is I think really really helpful for students. It's just one less distraction. So before we get into our interview with the Kona Jones Eye towards I'm like thrilled to have her on but before we get into the interview, we wanted to talk a little bit about the podcast. We've given some expectations. Our goal is about twice a month. We want to have two episodes a month for you to listen to and to put out there. We've kind of tried to accomplish that early and then give you some extra content here as we schedule guests and Marcus we keep looking at like we're not quite sure what we're doing, but we hope we're doing it right lots of lots of people. Listening. Lots of people are interacting. We're so excited about all of our new listeners and our new followers. So we wanted to put something in our podcast each week that basically gave a little shout out to those folks that are that are new to the podcaster that are new to our Twitter account. That's kind of I feel like that's where all the educators are right now either on Twitter as the social media platform, but we want to give shout outs to some of our most recent follows on Twitter. And so we've got one five five people today. Day Adam Koontz at Adam Koontz Miss Conrad at Miss Conrad edu, Steve Jackman at s Jeeves Matt. I'm going to aim at sorry Matt. I'm going to ruin your name Matt zilla's Nick at Zola's neck, and you can roast me on Twitter. If I butchered your name Matt is elastic and Cat Flippin at cat Flippin. So thank you so much for giving us a All the one Twitter we love that you guys are engaging and letting us into the community and we hope we don't let you down. We really hope we haven't let you down at this point and if we have a poor so sorry canvas hasn't pulled us off the air yet folks. We're really excited episode 3 Connor Jones D campus Jedi. She is coming up very shortly. A great pleasure to introduce the director of online learning and facilitator of the faculty Academy at Richland Community College. She is the developer of training and materials the provider of instructional. I'm support the canvas Jedi ladies and gentlemen Fresh Off The keynote for can innovate 19 Kona Jones in the background. Thank you. I am so excited to be here and talk with both of you gonna welcome to the show. Give us the Kona Jones story from Big from the beginning through to becoming the Kona is the canvas Jedi that we've been told by literally everyone we've talked to where'd you start? And how do you work your way to the point of basically everyone telling us that we had to talk to you. Wow. That's that's Kenny have 30 seconds ago. I was in grad school loved technology loved learning really love the intersection of the two of them. I was still in grad school working on the PHD saw an advertisement for a director of online learning job and thought you know, hey, it's just right up the road. I'll give it a try. So gave it a try. They hired me. Not sure what they were thinking. I was really green, but they did so thank you and jumped in and my first day they're like so we are switching Learning Management Systems in a month and we have nothing planned and I'm like, oh hey wow. Yeah, that was actually a switch from web CT. 82 angel that went really great because of Blackboard but Angel the semester before we actually opened it up. So that was a really great time. And so we basically started planning our exit strategy from Angel before we had fully integrated it the whole like, you know, like how it happened in the first place from web CT to Angel just kind of it wasn't a great transition. And so I'm like, you know, what whatever we're going to transition to from a Joel to the next thing it's going to be I'm going to you know fix everything. I did wrong. I'm gonna do it right this time. So we put together a group they picked canvas. This was back in with its canvas like to February March of 2012. So this was a while ago, you know, this was kind of back in the early days of canvas. It was kind of the new kid on the Block and so they picked canvas and said, okay. I really worked with people at canvas we had I mean Jordan Dayton, we had I've been cannon in my bag. I mean we had some people who were kind of been there towards the beginning really helping us get ready to roll this out. So rolled it out and it was amazing. It was wonderful. I started getting into the canvas Community which at that time was kind of this just this little bitty place that not a lot of people hung out and you know, I'm known to maybe ask pointed questions or two. You know say things that you know, it's truthful but maybe a little blunt usually and people were okay with that and they kind of embraced it and they answered my questions and they didn't, you know, kind of get upset by my questions. And if anything they said yes, let's ask more questions. Let's talk and so I kind of fell in love with the campus community and from there it just kind of kept going intended a bunch of instructure cons. Got to meet a bunch of people and for me, it's just it's the people it's the community and it's my Love of education. So it's kind of been a winding path. But that's all that's it. That's that's that's kind of the experience that we've had so far just with the interactions the few interactions we've had is just like everybody that is passionate about canvas is passionate about relationships with with the community and everybody wraps themselves. Sorry, Mark of everybody wraps themselves around you in the canvas Community. It's almost like you get this big bear hug. Yes. Not steal that steal term from the pandas. But like I got a big panda bear hug when we were like, you know what we're thinking about doing this thing and moving away from classroom and all these people just reached out immediately. And even when we started this podcast, it's like, oh my gosh, look at this cool thing that everyone needs to listen to her. Everyone needs to be a part of and you just feel the support that I don't think I don't think we get enough of when we have these systems available to us as Educators. So it's I mean, it's just so refreshing to hear somebody else say the same thing where it was like I'd started this thing. Thing and we were in the community and all of a sudden everybody was like, yeah, let's go. Let's talk more. Let's discuss more. Let's be a part of something bigger. So and very very cool. You're right. I mean that's the beauty of the campus community and it really it's not out there in other lmss. I've talked with a number of other schools who've recently made the switch to Canvas OR Mason just recently made the decision to switch to Canvas. And that's one thing I hear a lot. Is there like the community just there's nothing equal to it from any of the other little messes. I mean, the other LMS is might have similar. Functionality, they might do some similar things. But one thing that definitely sets canvas apart is the people the community the sharing. Yeah, just that that Spirit We Gather. Yeah, so I want to know more about your your current role. So your role as director of online learning at Richland Community College we Eddie and I were talking about this we've been spending a lot of time talking to higher education folks as it relates to Canvas and And so you know, what is your what is your day-to-day? Like in that role every day is different. It was kind of interesting you as my question because literally every single day is just something new and something different and something challenging. I think that's why I love it so much because it's not like you come in and you know, you're doing the same thing every day you come in and you might have some things you'd like to get done but, you know, hold on to the seat of your pants because who knows what email is going to pop in? Who knows what? Faculty members going to walk in your door. So everything every day is different. I think the biggest thing for me that I love though. Is that and working with the faculty. I do a lot of troubleshooting with faculty and do a lot of you know, what's the best way to do this in canvas a lot of kind of pedagogical design in terms of you know, I've been trying to do this but it's not working. What's a better way to do it or a different way to do it. And that can be even in classroom or out of classroom. So kind of I will say my role is transitioning from director of online learning and two more director of teaching and learning because I do help all of our faculty regardless of whether they teach online or not. My area also is over student technology use so we are the help desk for students. So students come in we provide troubleshooting. We work on their computers for free. So students can bring their personal devices in we work on a profile we provide. Professional development trainings accessibility stuff. We're starting to on the plagiarism area. So basically if it has anything to do with technology teaching learning helping students faculty any of that. It kind of comes Under My Umbrella. So a lot of I wear lots of hats and not only are you obviously they're at Richland Community College, but you are fresh off your keynote at can innovate 19 tell us about that experience that just happened, right? Yeah. Yeah, oh my gosh, like the vibe of the audience was just amazing. Like they are so high energy High excitement. I mean, it is an amazing audience. It's an amazing group the other sessions. Oh Mike. I mean they have got such high quality sessions. They the planning committee for that group is phenomenal because they just do a great job of pulling together some amazing people getting the audience revved up and then yeah, it's it was Just absolutely great experience. If you haven't attended virtually, I would strongly recommend it or even go check out their resources because they make sure all of their resources the recordings are all freely available. The hashtag can innovate 19 will probably lead them to some of those materials and resources. Yeah. I mean honestly just do a Google search for can innovate and you're going to get it. It's like the first thing that pops up CA n i nov AT&T you're going to get it. So what was it that urged you to become? Um such an advocate for online learning and and specifically that transition to Canvas or was it just a natural progression from where you were was there something that happened that you were like, I know this is my calling. I love online learning. This is the piece that I'm going to spend most of my days working towards. Oh, you know, actually it's kind of interesting. I had always kind of thought being an education. I always had people say, oh, are you going to be like your mom and be a teacher? Are you going to be like, you know, your grandpa all your great grand and I'm just like no you I'm not going to be a teacher and you know, and guess what? Hey, I'm teaching and I'm helping teachers teach and so you know, but so I kind of always fought it and I'm not exactly sure why but when I was getting my master's degree in cognitive psychology and quantitative psychology, I got to be a TA right because we want to get that college paid for so I was a TA and it was my first experience actually teaching and I fell in love with it. I absolutely thought why have I been fighting this I love this so I fell in love with teaching and I loved that Mighty. I so that the faculty member I was teeing under he integrated a lot of Technology know this was back, you know early days. We really didn't have a lot of online learning a lot of that but he really was doing a great job of integrating technology into that curriculum for a face-to-face class. And I was kind of seeing where it was helping students make better connections and understanding material better and from a kind of cognitive perspective and learning perspective. Just fascinated the heck out of me. I was just really kind of like wow, how can we use technology? Okay, and don't make fun of me because remember I'm old don't make fun of me but it was like that whole idea of wow. We can really use technology to improve learning like technology and learning could be harnessed together. So seriously don't make fun of me. This is back in the day. And so that fascinated me. And so when I got done with my Master's Degree, I want a decided you know, what for my PhD, I'm not going to stay in Psychology. I'm going to go to curriculum instruction. And do it as kind of an emphasis on technology and education and so went did you know all my coursework there got some really great like opportunities to I was also then an assistant in Cedar which was a completely online program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. And so I got to work with that group and it was an amazing group and I got to see online learning even though it was still kind of benefits. Infancy done, right? Like they were doing it. Right and I loved it. And so that's kind of that's how I got into online learning and then with canvas. It's just kind of goes back to what I've said before. I mean it was just the fact that when I called him on something they didn't like say try to you know, brush it under the rug they'd be like, yeah, you're right. We made a mistake and this is how we're going to fix it or yeah, you're right that does suck and we do need to be better. So I love the openness the transparency. owning up to when something wasn't quite right, but the fact that they were still there for you that connection just all of the things that make canvas amazing kind of sucked me in and kind of made me want to be better and do better for my faculty as well as help others and you mentioned in the bayou that you facilitated something called The Faculty Academy something that we I don't think we necessarily have heard of before so could you explain kind of what that is and some of the important Things you're doing with that. So our faculty Academy here is just kind of our professional development umbrella. So all of our different, you know workshops any faculty member who maybe wants to speak on a topic of what you know, their interest their research their conferences stuff is all kind of housed under what we call faculty Academy. So we just have different types of programming one of our programming that was recently really successful. We just got a whole new Active Learning Center. So we redid an our wing of our second floor all around Active Learning but what we found was that you can't just give faculty that space and not get them prepared to use it. And so we had a whole year worth of you know, kind of programmed activities sessions opportunities for faculty and parents Share Field Trip opportunities for faculty to go and see what other schools were doing all centered around. You know, what is active learning the fact that most of our faculty didn't realize Act of learning, you know, They already doing it. They just didn't realize they are doing it and so kind of better understanding what they were doing how to improve it what other faculty we're doing that was kind of one of our more successful ones that we've done but it's that kind of idea. It's it's to the point where I'm going to clip all of this audio and send it to my staff because we are in that Active Learning discussion right now as we're building a new space sort of a we're calling it. Well, we're beta testing the name Central we're but we're going to have a space dedicated to you know, teacher collaboration and professional development also a space they can bring their students. That's a little bit more flexible in that maybe enhances some of the stuff through steel case. So we're really excited about that partnership and being able to develop something like that for teachers. We may be in I may be in contact with you as I'm looking toward having them be actively engaged in the thought process for active learning and it's not Best this fancy space that we're giving them to model that it's amazing when you get them really talking about it. I mean, we had a history Professor who's like, oh what's this active learning stuff? And then we get her going we get her into the space and she's using Oregon Trail. We actually got Oregon Trail for her got it. I got it on the computers. And here she is, you know doing Oregon Trail with her students and so it's just it was students our faculty came up with just all sorts of really amazing ways that either they had been and just hadn't had been using Active Learning but just didn't realize it and sharing it or new things. They could be doing and the space. I mean ultimately I think a good teacher it doesn't matter what class room you put them in they're going to be amazing at the same time. You give them an amazing sight. I really love the pro teaching teachers how to sort of capitalize on the power of the space and capitalize on things that they're already doing. They just may not know the the term, you know, they may not know the terminology that Basically describes what they've been doing already. Well, I love that and I also really like the whole time you were talking about the the teachers collaborating and Eddie was talking about that similar idea to me that speaks to us as adults being able to put our ego aside, you know, a true collaboration if it's going to really happen the way that it's supposed to it really does require us to just you know be Able to say I don't have all the answers and I don't know all the things and those types of learning activities where I just think they are much more effective if we're able to put the ego aside. So I love the I love what both of you guys were saying about Active Learning and how how your teachers are really finding ways to grow within within their role speaking of you know, these, you know Active Learning, but then also we hear a lot about Out online instruction and online instruction with purpose and that's the big sort of buzzword. Can you touch on what that means specifically for you and your role and how that translates to the Educators that you work with? Absolutely and you know, I know it's like a big buzzword right now for online, but I just recently in fact just the beginning of this semester. I had an adjunct Retreat and we spent the afternoon. Talking about this and most of the teachers they're taught face-to-face. So I think it's important to note that this is not just an online thing. It is an education thing and for me how I really frame it and how I framed it in that session was just a really good chance to kind of almost I say go back to your roots. Go back to your main course outcomes. Go back to what's your big question? What do you really want students to remember a year from now? You know, so your students take your class. What do you really want them to know a year from now? What do you really want them to know three years five years. What's that big take away? What's kind of for me? What's your big purpose? And obviously, yes, you need to align them through your course outcomes and all of that type of stuff. But I mean, I teach statistics as an adjunct and you know, do I really expect students to be able to do a t-test in a year not really and five. Oh gosh now I know they're not going to be able to But is that what I really want them as their big takeaway know and all honesty. My main purpose of my class is more a statistical understanding of what is statistics. How can they be used to mislead you? How can you really look at something that you see out in the real world? Whether it's on the news and a journal article on a magazine whatever and to be able to look at that and figure out does that statistic even you know, could it be more accurate? What can I do to better? Understand, you know isn't misleading looking at charts and graphs and figures out in the real world for me. That's my main purpose and so as I'm designing my course and this is kind of what I work with faculty as to I mean having this conversation, I like great you want to hit all of your, you know, your main, you know course outcomes, but what's that big thing? What's the big passion? What's the big thing that you want students to actually remember and get from your course and let's make sure you're really hitting bad. Let's make sure your Assignments kind of come back to that. Let's make sure your discussions or whatever it is. You're doing let's make sure it kind of comes back to that main purpose. So like for me a lot of my discussions focus on you know, here's some different articles. I found you know, and every year our every semester I refresh them and here's some ways to evaluate that article and so having students actually evaluate articles and then share, you know, what they think and then kind of learning from each other and then I get to chime in and kind of bring some things to their attention, but for me, it's like learning that real-world thing and that's my big purpose. That's my big thing. My last remaining math class was a stat class and it was specifically designed for quote liberal arts majors. And I knew what that meant. I know I knew then and I know now and it was let's see how we can make all of the numbers into words and how can we But ultimately what you just described is exactly what I took from that. Worse. Yeah, so I feel I feel really good about it because I don't yeah, you know, I didn't I don't grasp numbers. Well at all. It's never been a strength, but exactly what you described where it's this sort of a sort of a life skill of being able to shoot holes in the data that you might see the statistics that might be presented to you and be able to look at it and say but yeah, but yeah, but yeah, but what about and think about all of the bubbles that play into that number and how it's presented to us, you know in Media or on the news Etc. So that that spoke to me sorry, but that means you know what you just completely confirmed that like thank you because that is why if Rick if they had tried to push numbers down in like you got to know how to you know, that that main focus was on doing a t-test or knowing. What is that P value? And what does it mean and you know versus that bigger thing? And you know, you might be looking back and saying oh, I don't even understand and I never got anything from that versus you're saying no, I still feel like I mean so man kudos to your teacher and the designer in my course because for me that's that big purpose and it doesn't matter whether we're teaching statistics whether it is, you know, a liberal arts specific course, you know, whatever it is. What is your big purpose like what is and so I kind of love that question, but I just want to make sure faculty just you know, this is not just an online. Question that I think we need to be re-examining even in our face-to-face classes, you know, are we just lecturing straight from the book or we really hitting what that big thing? You want to get to know get from students and get them to remember and that mindset so refreshing to me because as I'm doing some classroom visits and and being a little bit more involved in the process of coaching teachers in the classroom and not just the online learning environment, but using canvas is kind of that. You know that LMS piece but Hang them in the classroom getting out of the mindset. I think the mindset I saw a tweet that talked about, you know, your objectives on the board, but is that really what you're teaching is? Are you putting it on the board? Because that's what you're being evaluated over whether that objective is on the board or not. And this idea of gathering teachers back together and discussing. The big question is super important. Like I wrote it down on the paper right in front of me because as we get to do these interviews, we meet really cool people like you that we just steal ideas from From so I'm like big question and like all caps like what am I going to teach my teachers next which is like think about the big question. Think about what you want them to walk away with so I'm really great guided worksheet because what I did for the session which it just worked great, they got up. They've got two pairs. I did like a kind of a think-pair-share thing where they did, you know, here's some great prompts some you know questions on this worksheet that they kind of thought through on their own then they paired up and kind of shared and then they got into even a bigger. Group at their table and shared what they were doing and it turned into because we had people from all across the different curriculum now in different areas and it turned into amazing conversate. I mean like I was like, okay guys like we're actually supposed to be done. But okay, you're still talking so well, okay, we'll just keep going but you could leave you know, and it just it was it's one of those things that just hit them really well, but it worked really well as I think kind of pair share where you really haven't think about it on their own but then Hang up and sharing and then really having bigger conversations with other Educators. And then I even did I mean like a think should pair share share share because it was then even a bigger. It just worked so great to really get to hear what other people were doing and it yeah, it was a wonderful experience for them. They loved it. So this is a bit of a cliffhanger. Kona was gracious enough to give us so much content and really her willingness to share her knowledge extended beyond our normal parameters of what a single episode looks like for us right now. So we've made the executive decision. We have split this episode into two parts and part 2 will be out next week with more Kona Jones. We hope you can join us for that episode. Thanks again for listening guys and again part 2 Kona Jones coming up next week.
Welcome to the Canvascasters Podcast. In this episode Marcus and Eddie discuss what they've been up to the last few weeks. Eddie gives specifics on his "Speed-dating through Hogwarts w/ Canvas" PD, and Marcus throws down some knowledge on eLearning attendance. Also in this episode THE CANVAS JEDI - Kona Jones (@konajones) who is the current Director of Online Learning and coordinates Faculty Academy at Richland Community College. She is responsible for the development of faculty and student technology training materials, provides instructional design support to faculty, oversees the assessment of online courses, and facilitates faculty professional development​. Kona loves teaching and is an adjunct instructor of statistics and developmental psychology. Her passion is student success and in 2019 she was awarded Adjunct Faculty of the Year. Kona is also a Canvas Coach and Canvassador, contributing extensively in the online Canvas Community and elsewhere. We had such an engaging conversation we've decided to split this episode into TWO PARTS so you get "twice the Kona". In this episode we discuss:   Kona's background in education. What led her to a career in online and blended instruction. Her passion for active learning. #Caninnovate19  A special thanks to all our listeners and recent followers of the podcast. Adam Kuntz @adam_kuntz Ms. Conrad @MsConradEDU Steve Jackman @sjeeves Matt Zalaznick @zalaznick And Cat Flippen @catflippen 