Episode # 59
Interweaving Tech & Teaching with David Graham
October 15, 2024
About This Episode
On this week’s episode, we are joined by David Graham of Trotwood Madison Middle School to break down how he has worked newer gadgets into his Science classroom.
Guests
David Graham
David is a Science Teacher at Trotwood Madison Middle School. He has been an educator for 19 years – 17 years as a teacher and 2 years as a substitute with 1 year as a title 1 tutor. He has taught in Kentucky, North Carolina, and Ohio for private, charter, and public schools. He has been married to his wife for eleven years and they have two kids. This school year he will finish a Master’s degree that he started back in 2007.
Transcript
Kara 0:01
Hey, is this thing on? Are we recording? Can I get a tech person?
Caryn 0:09
Oh, for the love of Ed Tech.
Kara 0:14
Joining us today is David Graham, who is currently teaching science at Trotwood Madison Middle School, and we’re excited to hear his perspective, not only on technology and how how he’s using it, but he has recently switched from math to science. So that brings its own new bags of tricks, I think. So. Hey, David, thanks for talking to us today.
David 0:42
Thanks for having me.
Kara 0:43
Yeah, so can you just tell us a little bit about how you decided to become a teacher, what led you to where you are today?
David 0:57
It’s definitely a little bit different than I’ve heard on some of your podcast when I was in school, there was a lot of students that would ask questions in math class, particularly, and for some reason, I had a way to be able to explain it. But also, when I was in high school, when you’re trying to wade through what you want to do when you’re done, I wanted to go into ministry and possibly be a pastor, but when I asked my pastors about that, they recommended that I get a bachelor’s degree and what I would do if I wasn’t a pastor. And so I started going to the community college for business. But then when I saw the foreign language requirement, I wanted to reassess that. So in my reassessing, I looked at education, because one, it didn’t have a foreign language requirement. And then when I talked about it with my mom, she was like, Well, yeah, I always thought you would do that. So I pursued education, got my degree from Wright State, and then I went off to start pursuing my master’s degree in that pastorate world, and I was a substitute teacher in Louisville, Kentucky. I looked at attending a school there, but it just wasn’t working out for me, so I moved to North Carolina and started teaching at a school there, and I got into education through a lateral entry program, so I didn’t do any student teaching. I did some observing when I was at Wright State, but I never did student teaching, and they had a lateral entry process there, so I was able to be a teacher. And I think I did one class, and then I got my state license there, after about two, three years of teaching, and after teaching five years, and I started going to seminary. My best friend wanted to come up to Dayton to start a church here. And so he picked the only city that I would drop everything I was doing there, and I’d come up here. So I moved up here. I taught at Dayton Christian for one year, and private school is just not a good fit for me, so I stopped doing that. That’s when I met my wife and a widow with two kids. So I took the year off to invest in the kids when they were done with their schoolwork and doing other things, and then it was time to go back to work. So all I knew was teaching and nothing else was working out. I didn’t want to take the time to finish my seminary degree, because it would take a couple years, but I needed to get working. So I looked at the process of getting my Ohio teaching license, that professional knowledge test was a little bit of a bear for me, but after three times of taking it and having my wife help me, who has a background in education as well. I finally got it passed, but I was a substitute teacher for a part of a year, and then I started teaching in two different charter schools, and then ended up in troutwood, so still doing education, and after our kids graduated from high school, my wife said, how many classes do you need to take to finish your master’s? And I had six classes left, so of course, she told me to finish and I’ll finish a master’s degree that I started in 2007 this school year.
Kara 4:11
Wow. Yeah, I think that will call for a big celebration, for sure. Yeah,
David 4:19
I told my middle school students I’ve been working on masters longer than they’ve been alive.
Kara 4:26
Oh my gosh, yeah, that is true. That is true with their age.
So just your take, how has using technology impacted your teaching strategies and student engagement?
David 4:46
I have a different approach to technology because I am the middle of three boys, and both my brothers are way more technologically advanced. Me, My little brother has done a lot of writing programs. I think he writes programs in five or seven different programming languages, I don’t know exactly how many, and he’s been writing programs for the Air Force since he was like a junior in high school in college, and he’s not much younger than me, and he’s written for different health care providers and different apps and stuff like that. So he’s very smart and has a master’s degree. My older brother, he never finished college, but he’s definitely made a niche for himself in customer service and helping people understand technology. So having those two as my brothers. When people say I’m so tech savvy, I’m like, You don’t know my background. My brothers, I’m kind of the one that doesn’t know what they’re talking about. But using technology has drastically changed my classroom from 2004 when I first started substitute teaching or 2005 when I started teaching North Carolina, when we used to record our grades on a floppy disk and then turn it in, and nowadays it’s just done online, and I can work on my grades at home or at school or at a coffee shop. And so that’s drastically impacted just your mood as a teacher, being able to work on your grades wherever. But then other components that you use to gain interaction from your students have drastically changed too. I use the old sentios, which I think was smart boards, interactive device that you could give your students, they’d have their own code, put it in, and then you could get those quick responses, like a check for understanding. And so we use those and Dayton Christian, they use something similar to that to do surveys with students. And then now you just can sync a Chromebook up to a presentation. And so those pieces have drastically changed in trying to evolve as a teacher with education technology can be very daunting. I’ve been teaching for a while using my iPad and screen sharing to whatever board the school has given me to share it with so students can see automatically, online at home, the exact problems I solve with my work. In case, as a math teacher, they copied something wrong. They can go back and see my notes. But keeping up with technology as a teacher is more daunting, I think, than a lot of other practices, which is why some people that just have brothers that can, you know, speak technology language. It’s just kind of what I grew up around.
Kara 7:41
Yeah, things are constantly changing, and there’s always something like new, yeah, but it’s like finding the time to like, think about how it could be used in a way that’s meaningful, and taking the time to figure out how to do that and what that looks like with the students you have isn’t always just like an instantaneous thing. It’s not like you just open and go, you know.
David 8:19
The amount of different presentation technology pieces you can use is so different, like, Sure, you could create a Google slide presentation, also PowerPoint, but there’s so many more that people can use, and a district might bring one forward, give you a training or two on it, and then maybe two years later, they’re also talking about a different thing, instead of trying to perfect what’s already been presented to you. And if you change districts, those things can totally be different.
Kara 8:53
Yeah, that’s true too. Like, I didn’t think about the cohesiveness across the districts, like when you do change?
David 9:03
Yeah. Because within the last 10 years I was at Dayton Christian, they had an Epson bright link. There was only two of them in the building, and it was when the bright Link was very new, before it would respond to your finger when you had to have their special stylists. And so there was only one other person in the building that had it. I thought it was where they gave it to the new guy in the building, and I tried to figure that one out. And then when I ended up at City day, I had a projector. And then at Emerson, I had similar to the bright link, but it was just a short throw projector, and they had different technologies they used and and now at troutwood, they have projectors, smart boards, and they’re starting to get the ViewSonic view boards, and so every single one of those functions differently, and just within 10 years, that’s totally different technology, which is different than what might be a special education and learning how to service students that. Have different needs, you can easily build on those, but technology can be such a drastic change, the person can’t do the carryover.
Kara 10:11
Yeah, exactly like the user. It’s almost like, well, and I guess you mentioned this in your notes to me about that proprietary limitations, yes, you know, based on what they’re purchasing, there’s it’s going to be just enough different to throw you off from what you’re used to using.
Caryn 10:35
How do proprietary limitations affect the adoption and longevity of edtech tools in your district, and what strategies do you use to navigate these challenges?
David 10:47
So you see what happened with the iPhone. More recently, the iPhone, the 15, it changed over to USBC. It used to be lightning. They were the only ones that had lightning. So some people were struggling to stay with Apple because you had to have your USBC charger for everything else and your lightning for your phone, right? And so that that exists in education technology with so many different things. So you get into say, like the view board at my school, it has a specific type stylus that works very well with it. It doesn’t have to have the stylus. I could use my finger, I could use other stuff, but it works best with that stylus. And when that stylus gets missing, the only way you can get something that works exactly like that is to buy it again. And when you have pieces like that, and there’s a lot of other nuances similar to that. But when you have a piece that’s so specific to that provider, you have to go get it from them, and without having that large nest to people that could sell those the prices set it whatever they set it at right? So, like, I can’t find the remote from my view board at this time, and the only choice we have is order another one from view board. Now I can use just walk up and touch it, but if I want that remote response, I have to have their remote instead of, like a TV I could buy a universal remote. I could pull up my Apple TV remote on my phone or something like that. It’s just limits it to, I have to have their remote. I started using the Oculus. I think it was four years ago. Troutwood got some way, I don’t know how. And everybody I’ve asked says, I don’t know how it just stumbled across it, a program that allows for a virtual reality interaction in regards to math concepts, and the platforms expanded to include not just math, but it includes science. But the problem that I’ve had with my students is they have to be on the Oculus goggles to get that experience. And if they can’t get on the Oculus goggles, all we could do is screencast it, and then they just be seeing what somebody else sees, instead of getting the full experience themselves. And when I went down to the future of education technology conference, it’s a national wide conference this year, I think it’s in Orlando, and then they have one coming up in New Orleans. There was a different piece of technology that had a different virtual environment, but that was a specialized laptop, and the laptop had two cameras on the top that basically measured the width of your eyeballs. And so it took the measurement of your eyeballs the distance you were from the screen, and it was really weird that it popped up a virtual image, like it was floating from your screen. So imagine this image floating what looks to be right above your keyboard. And you could take their stylus through sensors they have attached to their laptop, and you can manipulate that so it’s similar to the Apple goggles. Okay, the vision Pro and how they can with your hand, you can manipulate like a jet engine. When I was demoing it at the Apple Store, you could take off pieces from the engine and turn it around. So in that laptop program that they have, you could do a similar thing, but you have to have their laptop, their stylist, those sensors, set up. And they said Most schools will buy, like a classroom set, or they’ll set it up in a lab. That’s great, but we all know, yeah, our laptops don’t last longer than five years, and so all of those pieces and their own specialized laptop probably doesn’t come at a premium price. Yeah, they can’t have some warehouse make them 1000s of them, maybe 1000s, but not millions. Yeah, and so getting those pieces while great and wonderful for students the. Longevity is going to struggle to be there, because, like my own personal budget is very different now that I’m in my 40s than when my parents were in their 40s. Because we all have cell phones. I have a cell phone, my wife, my kids, and they’re all on my plan, and that’s a couple $100 that wasn’t in our budgets. Years ago, the schools have the same thing. It used to just be, you know, overhead projector, those types of things. And if you just add in the technology pieces for the teacher, it’s not as big of a leap. But then you add in all those other pieces for the students and say, well, it’s just one lab, yes, but that full lab has to be replaced, probably in another five years. The Oculus that I started working on four years ago has already been replaced. Yeah, it was the Oculus two. Now they have the Oculus three. Three, yeah. And so it’s a very struggling financial thing, especially if you’re in a district with, you know, lower income families, to be able to keep up with that top technology so your students can stay relevant. So when you add in those proprietary technology pieces, it limits the longevity that you can use that. And then it also pigeonholes it towards Yes, it they have their own laptop. They’ve got a wonderful program, but that’s all that lab basically could be used for.
Kara 16:22
Yeah? It’s not a dual purpose, yeah? And then you have to ask yourself, too, is it like the whole bang for your buck, right? You know? And how many students are you gonna be able to reach with the usage and whatnot. So I’m curious what is your favorite thing to use with students?
David 16:46
Some of my students have liked the virtual reality experience and being able to you know when you’re learning slope, and they can put in that number and see how it changes, how steep the line is. That helps them understand y equals mx plus b a lot better when they change the M and see it go up and see it go down. And so that’s very helpful for those visual students, whereas other students like it when I used a chat bot response that pretended like it was their teacher, and they can ask it questions about a subject. The AI would answer them, and you just give it some parameters for it to work in. But for some of the students, that’s what works for them. Other students, it seems like they like using a program like Canva or Google Slides and creating a poster that summarizes the concept that they’re going over. It really changes for the student. I haven’t found one that’s like, good for everybody.
Kara 17:45
yeah, which that makes sense, because all the kids are different. They all learn different, and they all have a way to express themselves that’s different. So that totally
David 17:55
But it does make it more difficult for that teacher that’s not super tech savvy to learn and pick up all those different pieces.
Kara 18:03
How do you think that districts or teachers or I don’t, whatever lens you want to look at it in? How do you think they could better be supported to feel successful or feel empowered to use some of the things, then
David 18:23
also some districts. It could be, you know, could you record certain sessions so people can revisit them in their own time?
Kara 18:33
Yeah,
David 18:33
Could someone summarize a couple things that I’ve seen some of my peers do is they have a Google slide presentation that walks through and does the pointing at different things you need to do to set up your grade book, because we only do it once a year. Oh, yeah, share out that Google slide presentation. So in case, in the meeting you didn’t get it all done or want to revisit it, you could just go through it at your own pace. So it helps out with that. And I know there’s AI components that’ll watch you do a task and will create something similar to that. But that’s some other ways in which I’ve seen our district try to go after that and help people. Is creating those Google slideshows that will point at different spots they need to click at to set up things like their their Gradebook, or other things that need to be set up one time, and then you’d forget about it, like, right? Yeah, on your phone.
Kara 19:27
Do you have any tips or tricks you like to share with teachers on how to stay organized or maybe be more efficient?
David 19:35
One thing that I’ve kind of done that some two things that I’ve done that have greatly helped out. You know, the paperwork and papers to your students and students accessing notes. Yes, if people are teaching with the iPad, they should look into different programs that would have cloud based access for you to pull the document, edit it. So I use PDF Expert on. My iPad when I was teaching math and I’d work out problems with my students. It has all kinds of different stylus and pens I can use, but it automatically saves it to the drive that I pulled it from. So at the beginning of the school year, I created a folder for last school year, 2324 and I had a folder that was students, and then I had a folder that was class notes, and I just pulled it in there and titled those Class Notes whatever the section was we were doing that day so they could have access. I could share that Google folder with parents, and so if we were working off of a sheet of notes that had a bunch of problems on it, I just let students pick for the day, then they have extra problems that a parent could go over with them when they got home, and so that was a big help for some of my parents that had the time to sit down with their children and do those things. And then the other thing, when we have to keep track of so many different notes throughout the day, it’s very easy to become the post it note person and have post its all over your screen, and you’re trying to keep also data regarding your students or different IEP goals or five oh fours, or evaluate students for Iet processes and everything else. You can lose track of where all your notes are. And this school year, I became union president, so keeping track of my notes for that can can be like, two separate worlds, yeah, and so instead of just being like, I forgot my notebook that has my notes for when I’m teacher or when I’m serving as president over here, I just do it all on my iPad. So I have a Notes app I use on there, and I just have a different digital folder I use so instead of walking around with a two of them, so I don’t forget them, like binder or whatever that might be, or notepad, I just have my one iPad. And my wife has limited how many books I can have at home, so I have digital books, and I can carry all of them in my backpack. I love that. I love that finding tools like that and how to work it out for the way you are can greatly reduce your load. So I don’t carry around hardly any books in my book bag anymore, because they’re all mostly digital that I’m working with for research. And then I don’t carry around a spiral notebook, because I never was able to accomplish one quarter with a spiral notebook in high school, it was always bent up, and so I used the iPad for all my notes, and they’re nice and neat, at least keeping the notes neat, maybe not my handwriting. So much.
Kara 22:34
Thanks for talking to us.
David 22:36
Thanks for having me.
Caryn 22:37
Thank you so much for listening to this episode. We hope you found our discussion interesting and insightful. Don’t forget to check out the show notes on our website, where you’ll find more information about today’s guest resources we mentioned and information on earning contact hours for listening.
Kara 22:52
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share it with your network and check us out @forthelovedtech.org This podcast is produced by SOITA, the Southwestern Ohio Instructional Technology Association in partnership with ThinkTV and CET, the local PBS stations in Dayton and Cincinnati. Until next time, keep exploring new ways to empower your students through tech, and we’ll catch you in the next episode you.