♪ Hi and welcome to Carolina Classrooms.

I'm Laura Ybarra.

On this episode, we're learning about the education technology teachers use in the classroom online and offline.

We'll also share resources to help students and their caregivers navigate their digital landscape.

The Darlington County Virtual Academy was created as an online option for learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

They rely on parents and caregivers to act as learning coaches to support their students.

<Carla Jefferson> Our goal for the DCVA has always been to provide a mode of learning for students in a virtual format.

This year we were able to make adjustments and I know we've heard some of the horror stories of children not showing up to ZOOM, which is absolutely true.

Or just checking out and some of the emotional strain that this pandemic has caused on our students.

I think we're all still feeling the effects of that.

So, it was a very difficult year, I think for most.

Last year... our peak was at 3700 and now we're at about 300 students.

We created an application process.

We looked at grades and attendance from last year and teacher recommendations, and we talked to parents about.

If you are interested in DCVA, these are some of the expectations.

A learning coach someone who's going to be there to kind of help guide them in those offline activities.

...then it's a school, so, you have to come to class.

You have to actively participate and I think that's a huge adjustment because in face to face when you walk through the door, you sit down.

You're at school.

With virtual, they're on a good bit of the time, but they're also off and they have to come back.

So, for my middle schoolers and my high schoolers, they have six classes a day and they have to log into one ZOOM and then log off and log in... to the next one.

>> I started at 8:15 and I get off at 3:15.

We have ELA, Math, Social Studies, Science, Media, and Art.

>> On Tuesday and Thursday we do PE and Monday and Wednesday we do Art, >> My middle schooler has four main classes and then it's two electives.

So, he has six different ZOOMs.

My elementary, she has two teachers who teaches the core classes and then two electives.

So, she has four different ZOOM classes that she goes into and then in between the classes.

It's also like small classes to where the teacher can do more one on one or who needs the help, in which area?

She'll like pair them like that to where if you don't need help with, ...this one and that one does, that whole group will be in that area to get that help and this other group will be doing something completely different.

I do like it, but there's some like pros and cons about it.

The pros is we get to get off early sometimes if you finished your work.

And the cons is that I'm not social, but I want to be.

And - there's not much people.

Well, you can't see a lot of people face to face, so.

I kind of don't like that.

>> It's different, because face to face.

You actually can't...walk.

You can walk around the whole school and like.

You...

It's really loud.

And...virtual, ...it's not that loud and you can just like stay in one spot.

>> I love the schedule.

The classes they're... all manageable, even though they're on and off.

Once you know, you know.

So, at first, it's like well - Where you supposed to be?

Well, what's the ZOOM code?

Even with gym, I love it, because I actually see her doing the gym exercises that he's on ZOOM doing, and it's like - Okay, well, at least I know you're getting some movement.

(laughs) <Carla> I think it's important, it has always been important for us that the learning comes first.

The tech is a tool.

It's a resource, but it is how to allow students to infer using technology, how to allow students to apply their thinking using technology versus technology being the tool that rules everything, the content should always come first.

But just sitting there doesn't necessarily mean you're learning.

or you're listening, or you're receiving the content.

So, teachers work to create resources to make learning and thinking visible and active.

<Ashley Rogers> There's several different apps that we use just to try to enhance the learning.

We use Nearpod.

I use Quizziz and Quizlets.

There's a lot of different apps that we have that we try to use to engage the learning.

I like Flipgrid with my students and that's the one way they can record and they can respond to each other's recordings.

The Nearpod, I like, because I can embed videos, I can record myself reading the themes.

I can have them do Draw Its.

They can do matching.

They can do fill in the blank as they practice.

And - So, that's a big tool that I use for their independent work to give them a chance to practice, and then I can give them the right answers for them to check their work to make sure they are on the right track, and then also when I'm doing my small groups I can have the Nearpod pulled up where when the kids log on they each have their own slide that I can see all at the same time.

So, they can do the work and I can see it right then and I can know, Okay, these are ready to go to the next question, but I need to work with.

these other ones, because I can see their work as they're doing it.

<Carla> What we found is as we continue to look at our data, is that, what was important, a learning coach for our younger students to be there to help to support them.

It is an adjustment with them sitting, right there beside them.

I say that as a parent of a virtual student - I wasn't there, but my mother was.

So, Nana's right there beside her, she's watching.

- It's an adjustment for parents as to the type of responsibility that comes.

<Nichole> My son, he's very self-sufficient.

So, as long as he have Wi-Fi and food, I don't have any problems with him, but my last one, she's - If she can get away with it, she will.

If she can get away without doing the work.

So, I have to be on her.

Much more than I do my son, and checking up behind her much more than I have to do my son.

Start - be over their shoulder non-stop with their work from start.

Because it's the teacher's job to teach them.

But it's our responsibility to make sure they're getting it at the end of the day.

So, the teachers do a great job, but it's still the parents we still have to do our part and...if I could reach the past, teachers that I had, I do apologize for not doing my part as a parent, just sending them thinking that was all I need to do.

That is so far from the truth.

<Carla> We have to teach everyone, not just children, because we say, "“Oh, children, are digital...natives and they are.

They know how to play games, They know how to find music.

They know how to watch Tik Tok videos.

They don't necessarily know how to learn.

So...if we don't tell children, "Oh you've been around pencils all your life.

Pick up that pencil and write your name.

We teach them that.

We don't say, "Oh, pick up a book.

Read it.

You've got books in your house, all your life or magazines.

We teach them those skills.

The same thing is true about the technology.

We have to teach them how to utilize traditional tools, as well as digital tools.

>>And in virtual, letting them and their parents know it's okay to make mistakes, that's what we're here - That we're going to make these mistakes and we're going to learn together - and because sometimes with the parents being there and my parents are amazingly supportive, but they want to give them the answer.

...it's like just... let them make a mistake and let me help them, and so that's a little bit of a challenge because as a parent You want to ...be like no...This is it.

So, they get the right answer.

<Carla> In the first few weeks of the Academy, even last year and a little bit this year, you know, like parents would interrupt.

You know, like they just unmute themselves and they start talking and so we talked to teachers about how do we help to facilitate that so that it's a little smoother.

So, they would mute them and they tell the students if you have a question, raise your hand So, a student will raise their hand and they say, Yes, Cameron.

No, no.

This Cameron Mama.

She needs to know - I need to know what page we're on... or as you're watching them in the ZOOM...

I have to ask questions and teachers do.

Okay.

Who's touching that device?

Is it you touching that device, Mom?

Or is it Cameron touching that device?

...how do we you know work through that?

So, I think some of the challenges are - parents actually visibly seeing their children struggle and they want to help, not understanding that it's a part of the struggle that gets them to the process of actually mastering the concept and the skill.

<Ashley> I have several years in 4th grade.

So, I know where they need to be - independent, more independent and you know being able to go through their schedule more on their own when they get to 4th and to fifth grade.

And so, knowing that that's coming.

...I've got to slowly kind of transition them to that throughout the year and give them the confidence that they can do that.

<Nichole> Compared to when they're face to face it's you send them to school.

They come home.

They have homework.

You make sure their homework is done.

And that's it, you know, until a teacher-parent conference.

If there's no issues, just keep it moving.

But now that.

I'm the one who's checking over the work because they're not in school to give it to the teacher.

I'm the one - so I see it from a different point of view, and it has opened my eyes drastically.

I have a complete new found respect for teachers.

I didn't realize the extent.

Of their job until this year with Virtual Academy.

Now, and I'm not trying to do their job, by all means, but it takes a parent to be completely involved for it to be a complete circle.

<Laura> Once it is safe, the Virtual Academy hopes to plan occasional meetups and in person science fairs for their online learners.

There are many resources available to help support your students' use of education technology.

<Furman Fortner> With the COVID 19 pandemic that happened in 2020, we were all thrusted into a very digital environment.

A lot of people went to work from home.

A lot of the schools went virtual and there was a big digital divide that became apparent because of the lack of digital literacy or know how on using technology.

And I think that affected parents, teachers and students.

Simple digital is our digital literacy program that we've started.

It is a series of guides and eventually videos that will teach teachers and students - Well, mostly teachers and parents on how to navigate a digital world and use technology a little bit easier.

This month, we have a cable guide that will show you where...certain cables go.

...if you have a bunch of cables on your desk trying to figure out what plugs into what, that'll help you out there.

We're doing a guide on file type... where you open a PDF file, where you open a Excel file and we're also working on guides about alternative navigation and just general technology skills that can be applied across the board.

...these will be available on knowitall.org.

>> The Education Oversight Committee, ETV, and the State Department of Education collaborated to create a grant and the whole focus is on parents and helping parents to become more technology literate and our role was to produce videos that will help families to grow their technical confidence and their skills.

...that work came from a needs analysis.

When we looked at remote learning last year.

We saw that there was a lack of resources for parents to access technology for students and so this is an attempt by us to better support parents support students with their remote and virtual learning.

This project is going to help us reach a group of parents who are not comfortable using technology and given the circumstances of the pandemic, a lot of parents who otherwise would not have considered a virtual option are being forced to consider that.

...this is an attempt to equitably provide those resources to all students in South Carolina, not just the students who have parents who can easily support them in that digital environment.

- we think through these resources, parents will gain a comfort level and an experience with the tech tools to best support their students.

>> There are two ways to get to the videos.

The Virtual SC portal video portal is where they physically reside and so, you can browse to that portal and then go to family resources from the EOC, Education Oversight Committee and then - as we were working through this, not as part of the grant - we just discovered this really on our own that we thought the videos needed a little more context.

So, we've established a website called digitallearningsc.org.

There you'll find them categorized into 3 broad categories.

The first category is really helping with the nomenclature and understanding the terms and that sort of thing.

The second category is how do I support my child in the digital world?

Things like the learning management system or the parent portal, resources that parents need to be able to access so that they can support their child and then the third category is improving my technology skills.

So, kind of some self-help opportunities for families.

You know the opportunities that we offer children now, just vary so much, and I think it's important to understand the resources so that we can - when we look at that profile of a South Carolina graduate that we can help develop those critical thinking, creativity, those attributes that are so important to the overall student growth.

I think the depth at which children can explore topics - and learn the content can be enhanced through technology.

>> It's not the solution - You don't put a child on a device all day, everyday and expect them to grasp it.

It's still part of a big picture and it should, as I used to tell our folks all the time.

It's a tool.

It is not the focus.

It's a tool.

We just have to learn how to use it.

When I started teaching, I had to learn how to use a 16 millimeter film projector.

...So, it's just another tool that we need to creatively integrate into our classrooms.

>> Keeping kids safe while they work online is a priority for schools.

District IT staff can install firewalls and restrict access to certain websites.

Shawn Lopez Santiago has some tips to keep your family protected on your home computer, as well.

>> You can't necessarily block online cyber attacks.

You can try to prevent them.

You can take the best steps to prevent them as far as setting up strong passwords.

Firewalls - The number one thing you definitely want to do when you have a network setup is a firewall.

You want to make sure you have a strong firewall setup and you want to make sure that when you're creating passwords for different things that you create strong passwords.

Passwords that create that include upper and lower case letters, parentheses, exclamation marks, different sizes like that, and numbers.

You want to make sure that it's not your spouse's name, your children name, your pets name, something easy for a hacker or someone to figure out.

You definitely want to make sure again, that you have the number one thing is that you have that firewall setup and strong passwords.

...there's not necessarily a way to stop cyber attacks, but you can kind of prevent them, - to lower...the percentage of having one.

Yes.

Of course, through phishing is emails where they try to phish for different personal information, banking account, Social Security numbers.

Vishing is also with a V where they make phone calls.

You have scammers that like to try to make phone calls to pretend that they're other companies.

You have some - if you have credit cards, they may try to pretend like they're a credit card company calling to collect on a debt, or to say that you have a past due payment.

You have mortgage companies or scammers who pretend to be a mortgage company.

You have scammers that pretend to be your doctor's office.

So, that's why I say it's very important to be mindful of what you put online, Your personal information about yourself, especially dealing with social media activities.

I see where a lot of people post a lot of personal information about themselves, their children's names, their pets names, and they're not really mindful of it.

They think it's just something that's just innocent and it's okay, but you have hackers out there and people that are trying to scam you that look at that information.

They take in the information of your pets name.

They take in the information of your spouse's name, your children's name and sometimes if you have that set as passwords for things that you log into like your bank account, school account and so forth, they can use that to get into those things, use that against you, because you have a lot of your personal information published online.

Even though it may seem like I said, it may seem like something just simple as, you know, just your spouse's name or anything like that, but that can easily be taken and used to steal your information online.

>> In March 2020, to slow the spread of COVID-19, school buildings closed their doors and student learning moved online, exposing ever present inequalities in Internet access.

<Jim Stritzinger> When COVID hit, it really showcased the disparities that exist around the state and we had...particularly students in the rural areas.

They have weak infrastructure to begin with, and now we sent them home.

So, a lot of challenges and but it's not just the rural areas, it's everywhere.

We found weaknesses.

So we had to attack the problem with a lot of different creative solutions.

So, one of the things we had to do...since it takes a long time to actually install Internet - one of the ways we addressed the problem right off the bat was with mobile hotspots for students.

As we went across the state, we realized there's lots of issues.

If you send a student home with a device that has the wrong carrier, then they're not going to have very good experience doing their homework.

So, a lot of challenges like that.

Plus...it's not lost on South Carolina residents who have been here for a long time that our cellular service, particularly in the rural areas is not great to begin with.

So, we were trying to use stuff that wasn't really ready for massive production all overnight.

When we look at Internet access, there's really two ways you can get Internet access.

One is with your cell phone.

So, I think a lot of people are familiar that they can pull up a website or access a website What we're really talking about is residential service, you know, service inside your house, That is what's called fixed service versus mobile service.

So, when we look at households, there's roughly 170,000 homes in the state of South Carolina that do not have good quality Internet service.

That's really what I was referring to.

When I mentioned the number of 170,000 homes, those are what are - its two things.

It's underserved homes, and then it's unserved homes.

There's two separate things.

There are some homes that don't have speed that reaches that threshold.

Those are called underserved homes and then the unserved ones.

Believe it or not, there's quite a few homes in South Carolina that can't get Internet regardless of price.

The infrastructure physically does not exist, so, we've been looking for that quite a bit and it's a very complicated dynamic, because you have situations where there's no infrastructure and then you also have the affordability side of things.

So, we call the infrastructure - We call that access.

The affordability - We call that adoption.

And there's a lot of moms and dads that can't afford Internet in their homes right now, so, we're trying to attack it on both sides.

The state of South Carolina got into the business of broadband during the pandemic on June 24th, 2020, and the General Assembly allocated $50 million to the Office of Regulatory Staff, where we are, to do three things.

One is to use 20 million to deploy the Mi-Fi hotspots we talked about.

The second thing was roughly $30 million dollars.

29.7 to go for actually installing Internet into family homes, and the third thing was to do mapping.

One of the things that's really challenging is... if I were to hand you $10 million, where are you going to spend it?

You have to know precisely where to spend it and what we're trying to do here is be super accurate and almost have accuracy down to a street block, a city block, or a neighborhood that needs Internet to have that level of precision, because then we can very precisely deploy resources and get the job done.

Eligible applicants for our grant programs.

are the Internet service providers.

...we have an amazing partnership with the ISPs we call them to do the work.

So, what we do is we do a grant offering and typically it's a dollar for dollar match program.

So, $1 of state money is combined with $1 of the Internet service providers money and that's how the projects are funded.

- then what we do at the agency is we will award the money and then we'll inspect the project over time to make sure it gets installed properly.

We require the Internet service providers actually test the circuit once it's installed and operational to make sure that it's up to speed.

Then, we don't pay the bill.

We don't pay their bill.

The state money doesn't flow into the equation until the service is set up and fully functioning as a real validation for the citizens of South Carolina.

Couple of things, so, on the Internet service provider, once the grant is awarded and stuff goes into production.

The ISP takes over ownership and maintenance and control and deployment, Customers will actually call the ISP and say, "Hey, I'd like service."

Then on the hotspot side we were in the equation early on and then we've transitioned that to the South Carolina Department of Education.

So, in January of 2021 they took over that and have managed that very successfully.

because as everybody knows the schools have gone from a hybrid situation to totally virtual, to back to in-person and that juggling back and forth.

The Department of Ed is in best position to manage the hot spots longer term.

>> The Office of Regulatory Staff worked with multiple partners to expand broadband access in Allendale.

They're continuing to work on ways to meet the needs of households across the state.

As a direct response to the COVID-19 pandemic, South Carolina Educational Television, in partnership with the South Carolina Department of Education and Spectra Rep developed a datacasting solution to address the needs of students who have little or no Internet access.

<narrator> Datacasting is not intended to take the place of broadband Internet.

It is, however, intended to provide an equitable interim solution using existing technology in this time of great need where Internet access is not a viable option.

Datacasting simulates the browsing experience by connecting the students device to a small antenna and receiver provided by SCETV, set up in their home.

This receiver creates a secure private network only accessible by the student.

The content received is completely controlled by the instructor To meet the students' needs.

Using a datacasting interface, such as SCETV's Edu cast platform, teachers can send instructional resources such as videos, images, PDF's, documents and written instructions to students negating the need for creating and distributing instruction packets and allowing for delivery of video and audio instructions, as well.

<Laura> Check out these links to learn more about datacasting.

♪ upbeat music ♪ Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics together make up the education term, STEAM.

On our next episode we'll feature arts education programs and explore arts related careers both on and off stage.

>> I have the kind of personality - I don't want to be in the front.

I don't want to be on the stage, but I can make a lot of things happen and I think that's important too.

You don't have to be the star to be a part of the arts or to make the arts happen and you need the people who aren't in front of the camera or on the stage to make arts happen.

So, I like being the guy behind the scenes.

Join us November 18th for Carolina Classrooms: The A is for the arts.

You can find more education stories from around the state on our website.

Carolinaclassrooms.org.

Like our Facebook page and let us know what you'd like to see on Carolina Classrooms.

Thanks for joining us.