Yes! Needed Everywhere Are the New Tools for Each Teacher and New Tools for Each Student!
Here’s our Part 2 RE@L-Interview, the rest of our recent interview with health teacher Rebecca Main on RE@L’s “1Up On Vaping™.”
To see Part 1 of the first interview with Rebecca, click here.
Here’s Part 2: RE@LInterview
Don Rawitsch (RE@L Executive VP, Product Development):
“What we’re doing [with our 1Up On Vaping] is using technology to give the student a tool for what they would otherwise do with a pad of paper and a pencil…which may be helpful to many teachers.
But, we’re still not at the point where we can think of cost effective ways to actually assess the student online using tools and applications. I was just curious if that was an issue that was for teachers, or if using Google forms and questions and answers, that they may write up. Is that’s satisfactory?”
Teacher, Rebecca Main: “Right now, that’s where a lot of teachers are at because they’re trying to find a way to get the information back from the student without too much extra work. So teachers are trying to assess how much the student knows without them actually having to print and write out the answers. We find a lot of students don’t have anything to print at home anyway.
So, yeah, we’re kind of looking for the online factor if we can, and quicker tends to be best. If we can get the information in a form, something they can click on and they have the ability to go through because they have technology. Administrators tend to prefer that teachers make curriculum as accessible and as interactive as possible.”
Tom King (RE@L Blogmeister): “I have a question, Rebecca. I was lucky enough to have taught in an inner city school for quite a few years, and later in a district where kids really were much more interested in learning and had the tools to learn. This was long before we had the tools we have today.
I’d be interested in your thoughts on how would we make the best use of our product 1Up On Vaping, especially with kids that are less motivated, have less access to technology, have more disruptive homes where the learning might take place if it took at all. It’s an unfair question if the teacher hasn’t had that experience. Do you have any insights on that? This has troubled me my entire educational life. So, how do we have more kids learn more? It’s a real struggle for both student and teacher.
Rebecca: “I think that is the quintessential teacher passion right there: how to get more learning from the students and how do we get them to want to learn more? I think the first step in the right direction is having a game like 1Up On Vaping that has characters to choose with color and music to select. That was a personal response for each student. That alone is huge. They go to a totally new place to learn, a place where they wouldn’t likely go in school. They like to watch these new cartoons ; that’s something interactive that opens all of their senses and grabs on to them. So, 1Up is already on the right track with all those helpful pieces for better learning….”
“….But to your point, sometimes when a student is going through a lot, when they just don’t feel engaged, having a little bit of levity just to be silly and have fun is great. This is the type of game that works, because it’s not another case of ‘you’re showing me a video and talking at me and now I have to listen to you.’ It’s they who are making the choice, and going as fast as they want. I think you are already on the right track with all of that.”
Paul Gullickson (RE@L Co-Founder, President & CEO): “I would agree. I think that’s a part of our challenge: to make sure that we’re providing the materials and the resources as best we can to support students in whatever environment that they’re in. It’s interesting because we were talking about one of the big school districts in upstate New York. They’ve got four budget options. So they’re working through four different options about back to school, all online, all back to school, blended every other day, just like the kindergarten morning and afternoon.
And the same thing is true where you’ve got 30 students, specifically middle and high school. 15 of them come to school on Monday, the other fifteen on Tuesday. And the other students are at home. That’s another way to look at it. That’s exactly what you’re going through now. Your school does it because of who you are. You have answered a lot of those important questions because that’s how you make it work.”
Rebecca: “We have always stood by the fact that whatever we teach in person has to be available somewhere online, just in case that student is homebound or has special education. So we like having both options available, all the time. It’s a lot of work, but we’re used to it. New teachers are just coming into this. It’s hard! They feel overwhelmed.”
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Tacy Mangan, Interviewer
RE@L Says:
Thank you, Tacy and Rebecca and our RE@L Team for this very informative interview.
RE@LBlog is confident that this dialogue will be helpful to teachers, everywhere!
Thanks to those many, hard-working, and caring teachers, everywhere!
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