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Our Students Are More Capable Than They Think · Gospel Tech with Nathan Sutherland

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Speaker 1: Purposely your life, God's Purpose Listen it purposely dot com.
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Speaker 2: Hello everyone, and welcome to the Gospel Tech Podcast. My
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Speaker 2: name is Nathan Sutherland and this podcast is dedicated to
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Speaker 2: helping families love God and use tech. Today we are
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Speaker 2: going to be discussing some lessons from the classroom. I
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Speaker 2: just finished teaching a six month stint as a long
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Speaker 2: term subbic is what you'd call this. In December. My
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Speaker 2: sixth grade son, Owen's teacher stepped out of the classroom
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Speaker 2: in January. Early January, I was brought in and then
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Speaker 2: I took over the classroom and as of this recording,
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Speaker 2: I finished yesterday. That has been a wild experience. It's
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Speaker 2: been seven years since I was in the classroom as
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Speaker 2: like a full time, everyday human, not just teaching a
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Speaker 2: lesson on technology or choices, and I loved it. In
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Speaker 2: Washington State we run a junior high model in public
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Speaker 2: schools and private and so that means sixth graders are
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Speaker 2: still elementary. So I had one set of kids as
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Speaker 2: my homeroom. I swapped with my team teacher for I
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Speaker 2: would teach math and then I would teach social studies
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Speaker 2: for both classes to give the students some feel of
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Speaker 2: what it's like to have a different teacher. And also
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Speaker 2: because I'm new here and please don't make me do
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Speaker 2: all the content like let you I already know this,
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Speaker 2: let me do it twice. So that was great, It
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Speaker 2: went really well, and I would say, in stepping out
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Speaker 2: while this is still fresh, I just wanted to share
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Speaker 2: a little bit of what I saw that we're doing
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Speaker 2: great and a little bit of what we can continue
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Speaker 2: to do to make this even better. So three things. First,
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Speaker 2: remember that students are more capable even than they think.
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Speaker 2: We'll talk about what that means. Second, our kids love
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Speaker 2: fun at the pace of real life. I know they're
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Speaker 2: going to try to tell us that what they need
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Speaker 2: is more technology in order to be able to have fun,
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Speaker 2: but do not believe them. They may not even remember
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Speaker 2: that real life is so fun to them, but I've
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Speaker 2: seen it firsthand and I'll share a little bit of
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Speaker 2: it with you. And then, third, that our kids need
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Speaker 2: healthy boundaries, that they crave them, and that they have
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Speaker 2: no idea how to set them themselves. And if we
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Speaker 2: just let them run with wherever their minds and bodies
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Speaker 2: take them, they will be unhappy with the results and
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Speaker 2: we will be responsible for that, so they're more capable
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Speaker 2: than they think. This is still my favorite part of teaching,
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Speaker 2: very much so. By the end of the school year,
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Speaker 2: I can tell you my favorite part of teaching is
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Speaker 2: seeing young people achieve more than they believe they are
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Speaker 2: capable of. And yes, this can happen just like on
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Speaker 2: the daily, but it is over time. It is watching
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Speaker 2: a young person get intimidated, or get overwhelmed or just
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Speaker 2: epic abject fail attempting to do something. I saw this
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Speaker 2: primarily in the three main struggle areas of reading, writing,
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Speaker 2: and mathematics. I would have a young person who just
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Speaker 2: simply believed he or she could not read, and the
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Speaker 2: some of these young people it was literally they just
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Speaker 2: don't have the skill set. That is something we had
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Speaker 2: to work on, and that we have an amazing person
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Speaker 2: at our school who works with these young people and
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Speaker 2: helps them gain the skills. How do we recognize words
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Speaker 2: and make these sounds? By the way, I would say
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Speaker 2: biologically paradoxical. We are not designed to read. We're designed
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Speaker 2: to talk. We are designed to hear. We are designed
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Speaker 2: to look at people and be relational. With that in mind,
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Speaker 2: the reading is unnatural. Reading does sometimes sometimes take just
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Speaker 2: the skills to figure out that. Well, there is no
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Speaker 2: part of a brain that actually is designed to read.
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Speaker 2: But more often than not, it's just pure reps. They
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Speaker 2: do not have the experience of joy and reading. So
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Speaker 2: the reps can come with reading out loud. We did that,
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Speaker 2: we would have class reading books, or I might just
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Speaker 2: pick up a book and read it out loud. And
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Speaker 2: sometimes these books are beyond their level, so we're reading
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Speaker 2: them in order to support that. And sometimes these books
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Speaker 2: are just super high interest and they're fun to read
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Speaker 2: out loud. This is the encouragement that young people sometimes
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Speaker 2: do not believe they are capable, so we need to
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Speaker 2: show them we can model it with them. I've mentioned
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Speaker 2: before Read Aloud Revival. Go ahead and get Sarah McKenzie's content.
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Speaker 2: There's a podcast, there's like an Instagram option, and then
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Speaker 2: there's also just her book. The other resource I love
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Speaker 2: for books that are age appropriate starting in the four
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Speaker 2: or five six that can be read alowed with your
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Speaker 2: family or read independently by your child is Honey for
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Speaker 2: a Child's Heart, and they're broken up kind of by
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Speaker 2: categories of interest and then by ages within that. Please
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Speaker 2: check out those two resources because many times, the young
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Speaker 2: people struggle, not because they're not capable, but because they
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Speaker 2: just haven't experience this, and everything feels hard the first time.
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Speaker 2: So I saw success in reading, and it was fun
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Speaker 2: to watch those young people achieve. And then in writing again,
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Speaker 2: some of these young people lacked the skills. They simply
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Speaker 2: didn't know how to put together a paragraph. So we
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Speaker 2: talk about what a topic sentence is supposed to do,
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Speaker 2: and what kind of supporting details we give for said topic,
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Speaker 2: and how we explain those supporting details and tie it
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Speaker 2: back in with what we're trying to talk about. When
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Speaker 2: we see a paragraph, we expect it to be all
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Speaker 2: about one particular idea. Usually the first sentence introduces that
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Speaker 2: idea and the last sentence sums it upper transitions to
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Speaker 2: the next idea. Young people need to know that, and
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Speaker 2: the easiest way for them to know that is to
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Speaker 2: read and to recognize these are paragraphs. When a paragraph changes,
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Speaker 2: the idea progresses. It doesn't necessarily change all the way,
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Speaker 2: but it's you know, chickens and where they live, and
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Speaker 2: chickens and what they eat, and chickens and what they do,
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Speaker 2: and chickens and what they're good for. And then we're
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Speaker 2: going to move on to a new subject, and that
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Speaker 2: would be like a different area entirely. They'll get this
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Speaker 2: if they read more. They will recognize it when you
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Speaker 2: explain it to them after they've read. And it is
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Speaker 2: really really hard to get a young person to write
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Speaker 2: who has never ever read that. It's just very difficult
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Speaker 2: because I'm now using words that you have no context for.
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Speaker 2: Context is important when teaching and speaking to what they're
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Speaker 2: familiar with. So please help your children read. Give them
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Speaker 2: opportunities to write. It'll be easier if they've read before.
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Speaker 2: But just five to ten minute free rights. Here's a
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Speaker 2: fun prompt. I can include a link with a lot
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Speaker 2: of very random prompts that they do. Kids love random prompts,
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Speaker 2: but giving them the opportunity to write it gets easier
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Speaker 2: than where they do it. Yes, some kids are literally
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Speaker 2: skilled efficient. Like I mentioned, they need to know what
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Speaker 2: a paragraph is and how to write a sentence. Most
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Speaker 2: of them just don't have reps. And it's intimidating to
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Speaker 2: start something new. And when you do it the first time,
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Speaker 2: it's terrible and you go, look, I'm terrible. Therefore I
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Speaker 2: just shouldn't do this thing. And nine times out of
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Speaker 2: ten that's not true. If you just do it poorly enough,
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Speaker 2: you actually will get better. And I know we love
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Speaker 2: to tell kids perfect practice makes perfect or permanent or
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Speaker 2: better or whatever words we use. I'm willing to give
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Speaker 2: you that, but hear me, that's like expecting our toddlers
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Speaker 2: to walk perfectly the first time they walk, and then
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Speaker 2: telling them no, no, you did that poorly. You're going
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Speaker 2: to become a bad walker because you're not walking correctly.
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Speaker 2: And while that's true anatomically, this isn't the form you
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Speaker 2: want to use as an adult. They simply won't get
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Speaker 2: better unless they practice, and they must practice all lot
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Speaker 2: and fall a lot and bump into things a lot
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Speaker 2: and cry a lot, and it's just frustrated and angry
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Speaker 2: and anxiety and doucing for young people, and yet it's
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Speaker 2: really really important they do it. I say the walking
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Speaker 2: analogy because I've seen that, and this year has convinced
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Speaker 2: me that there are many many mini skills, especially skills
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Speaker 2: that involve developing your brain, that don't come naturally, that
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Speaker 2: aren't guided with a series of carrots and rewards, but
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Speaker 2: instead are just difficult, and the only way to get
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Speaker 2: through it is to do the hard stuff. Repeatedly. That
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Speaker 2: does fall more into the adage of whatever's worth doing
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Speaker 2: is worth doing poorly, and that while we do want
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Speaker 2: to at some point focus on doing it super well,
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Speaker 2: just do it like at the start. By doing it,
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Speaker 2: we'll figure out how to revise an edit later. But
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Speaker 2: like you don't know how to string sentences together. Not
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Speaker 2: only that, when we started in January, they did not
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Speaker 2: know how to sit and write for five minutes. Like,
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Speaker 2: put a prompt on the board, right, if you don't
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Speaker 2: know what to write, start writing. I don't know what
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Speaker 2: to write. Just get your hand in shape that you
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Speaker 2: can hold a pencil for that long, get your brain
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Speaker 2: in shape that you can remember the prompt for five
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Speaker 2: straight minutes. And then we extended to ten minutes and
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Speaker 2: ten minutes as long as we got for creative rights.
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Speaker 2: The reason I share all of that about language and
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Speaker 2: writing is these young people are capable, and they're more
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Speaker 2: capable than they think, and sometimes they just need to
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Speaker 2: make reps, and sometimes those reps don't need to be perfect. I,
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Speaker 2: for a long time as a teacher, believed that if
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Speaker 2: we're going to write an essay, we're going to write
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Speaker 2: it well. And I would throw everything at them all
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Speaker 2: at once. We're going to read this text. Now, we're
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Speaker 2: going to write on it. Now, we're going to revise it. Now,
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Speaker 2: I'm going to tell you how to improve, and we're
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Speaker 2: going to end up with a perfect paragraph or summary
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Speaker 2: or essay. Most of what they got out of that
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Speaker 2: was their frustration and writing and the fact that it
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Speaker 2: took an incredibly long time, and that Sutherland is very
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Speaker 2: passionate about this, and I don't think they gained what
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Speaker 2: they could have gained. What I have seen since then
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Speaker 2: is yes, there's a time to revise an edit. We
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Speaker 2: did that at the end of the school year. With
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Speaker 2: all that in mind, read, write, and finally mathematics. And
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Speaker 2: it comes back to again, be willing to fail, be
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Speaker 2: willing to ask good questions. And I can confirm that
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Speaker 2: the use of technology in this specific space can be
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Speaker 2: beneficial in specific, very specific instances. I emphasize that because
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Speaker 2: when I started teaching this year, con Academy was one
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Speaker 2: of the first things I implemented, just we need reps.
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Speaker 2: You are so stuck in math and you are so
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Speaker 2: frustrated with that. You have all convinced yourselves, even your students,
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Speaker 2: even you students who have shown year over year over
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Speaker 2: year that you're really good at math. You have convinced yourselves, well,
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Speaker 2: it's just not this math. I can't do rates and
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Speaker 2: ratios and percentages, and that wasn't true. We got them
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Speaker 2: on con Academy. They got tons of reps. They got
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Speaker 2: to see instantly where they did, understand where they didn't understand,
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Speaker 2: and watch a video on it and then practice again.
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Speaker 2: And that just really really fast feedback, faster than I
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Speaker 2: could give each of them individually, was amazing. What wasn't
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Speaker 2: amazing was that these screens they're using have such bad
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Speaker 2: habits in with them that every single day there was
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Speaker 2: some kind of digital hand grenade thrown into our classroom
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Speaker 2: that exploded all of our attention and through little bits
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Speaker 2: of distraction on everybody. So parents, as we strive to
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Speaker 2: raise kids who love God and use tech, it's intimidating
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Speaker 2: to look at this next stage of life and think
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Speaker 2: about what academics may look like for them. When you're
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Speaker 2: thinking about college, considered George Fox University for your children
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Speaker 2: because of three things. First, it's going to give you
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Speaker 2: a more intimate known environment where they have a focus
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Speaker 2: on being known personally, academically and spiritually, your child will
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Speaker 2: grow in their faith. Ninety three percent of undergrad students
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Speaker 2: at George Fox last year through the twenty twenty five
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Speaker 2: academic year said that being at George Fox has helped
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Speaker 2: them grow in the relationship with Jesus. We also want
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Speaker 2: them to grow academically, which means being a part of
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Speaker 2: a university with rigorous academic standards and opportunities to be engaged.
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Speaker 2: They have a nationally recognized engineering, nursing, and education programs,
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Speaker 2: as well as chances to study abroad here within the
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Speaker 2: US and then internationally and finally personally, to be part
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Speaker 2: of a vibrant campus atmosphere where you can play intramural
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Speaker 2: sports or part of their NCAA Division three athletic programs
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Speaker 2: with twenty three sports available. The goal here is to
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Speaker 2: go to a place that's going to support your goals,
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Speaker 2: not try to make you support theirs. To have that
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Speaker 2: goal be to raise you up to be all God's
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Speaker 2: called you to be, and to truly equip your young
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Speaker 2: person with my in my case, my sons or my
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Speaker 2: daughter to love God and then from their love of
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Speaker 2: God to go wherever God has called them, and that
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Speaker 2: includes being equipped with a degree that'll help themdo that
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Speaker 2: to be missionally equipped to love and serve others, to
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Speaker 2: lead where God has planned the man to know the
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Speaker 2: gospel for themselves and be able to share it with others.
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Speaker 2: So George Fox University is an amazing resource for our kids,
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Speaker 2: for our community here in the Northwest, and for anyone
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Speaker 2: who's looking to raise up a young person who can
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Speaker 2: love God and from that love others. Schools, we need
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Speaker 2: to do better job of giving our young people devices
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Speaker 2: that support learning, not just engagement. Let the teachers support engagement,
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Speaker 2: Let the learning support engagement. We don't need the technology
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Speaker 2: to do that. If you put a kid who spends
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Speaker 2: any amount of time in free play online and then
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Speaker 2: hand them a device that is not properly supporting education,
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Speaker 2: that young person will go to those entertainment spaces. It's
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Speaker 2: not wild to think that they'll go to YouTube and
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Speaker 2: just start pulling up random sound clips, by the way,
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Speaker 2: not just videos, but just sounds that they think are funny,
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Speaker 2: and they will play them repeatedly and yeah, all the times,
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Speaker 2: and that distracts their peers, and their peers are now
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Speaker 2: at best using mental load in order to remain focused.
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Speaker 2: That's our best case scenario when one student pulls up
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Speaker 2: sound bites and makes some guy just going ah. Then
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Speaker 2: now all the students around them have to fight the
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Speaker 2: idea of one, I want to go look at my
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Speaker 2: own funny sounds, and two that reminds me of this
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Speaker 2: other thing I saw. I want to show my friends.
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Speaker 2: And sometimes they're great, like the American woodcock and how
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Speaker 2: adorable it is and the sounds that it makes, and
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Speaker 2: the random dance videos people have put to montages because
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Speaker 2: you've never seen an American woodcock. They when people are
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Speaker 2: watching them, they don't do it all the time, but
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Speaker 2: if they know they're being observed, they make this adorable
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Speaker 2: little like dancing bob thing where they tap their feet
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Speaker 2: and they move their heads and it's super slow and
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Speaker 2: it looks terrible for survival. I was told maybe it
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Speaker 2: has to do with hunting. Maybe it has to do
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Speaker 2: with like trying to let predators know. I know you're there.
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Speaker 2: I could get away anytime I want. I don't know.
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Speaker 2: But it's adorable. So those are great. There's nothing morally
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Speaker 2: wrong with it. But that is inappropriate to have an
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Speaker 2: American woodcock dance video going during math class. So here's
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Speaker 2: what we came up with We came up with very
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Speaker 2: specific times we're going to use it. It being can Academy,
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Speaker 2: very specific locations we keep our tablets. They're not in
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Speaker 2: your desk. They store every single day in a little
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Speaker 2: storage bin that we have where they're plugged in, and
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Speaker 2: you only get them when I tell you to. You
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Speaker 2: don't get to pull them because you want them. You
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Speaker 2: don't get to pull them because you feel like it
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Speaker 2: would be helpful. Like we're going to do this as
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Speaker 2: a class, we'll do independent time, and then I will,
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Speaker 2: as a teacher, release it. I think that applies to
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Speaker 2: the rest of our lives as well. Let's pick the
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Speaker 2: time our young people can use their tech. Let's make
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Speaker 2: sure they're using tech that is supported, supporting our learning,
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Speaker 2: and that has supportive boundaries. So, yes, the school has
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Speaker 2: like major safety precautions, they're not going to get to
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Speaker 2: something dangerous or illegal, but that's not the threshold for
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Speaker 2: what's beneficial for a classroom. So in the last eight weeks,
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Speaker 2: which is when the students had reached a very high
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Speaker 2: level of focus, they had a growing level of confidence
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Speaker 2: in me as a teacher and in their own abilities,
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Speaker 2: we just simply put the tablets away, they became a
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Speaker 2: net loss by that point. So yes, they can be
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Speaker 2: amazing in the right time, in the right place, but
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Speaker 2: our young people have such bad habits, and those bad
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Speaker 2: habits pass so so so quickly to the point where
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Speaker 2: like they were making power points of just silly memes
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Speaker 2: and then share them across the school network with each other,
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Speaker 2: which again fairly harmless. I went through and checked them
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Speaker 2: and made sure I saw the domains that were visiting whatever.
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Speaker 2: But my goodness, it was not a benefit to classroom
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Speaker 2: classroom learning, and it was generally the students who struggled
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Speaker 2: the most, who the first to get distracted, who were
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Speaker 2: the last to come back to focus again, because it
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Speaker 2: was such a powerful distraction to them and then cause
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Speaker 2: the most detriment to their ability to gain confidence in
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Speaker 2: this content area. So we're studying math, kid pulls up
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Speaker 2: a meme, shares that meme, and the students who have
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Speaker 2: the lowest understanding of the content typically were first to
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Speaker 2: be distracted, last to come back online, so it lasted
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Speaker 2: the longest and hurt their learning the most. That's what
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Speaker 2: frustrates me about technology in the classroom. I really want
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Speaker 2: it to be a net gain for all the students
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Speaker 2: to review. Students are more capable than they think in
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Speaker 2: reading and writing and in mathematics. I want to add
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Speaker 2: on to that that technology can be a boon. And
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Speaker 2: as I've said before, my perfect world would be something
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Speaker 2: like an iPad or a MacBook Neo. It's not as
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Speaker 2: cheap as a ninety dollars chromebook. But chromebooks don't only
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Speaker 2: come for a low cost financially. They come with a
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Speaker 2: high cost in distraction because they're not perfect in the
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Speaker 2: way they deliver the Internet. They are built around entertainment
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Speaker 2: and they're kind of what would you say, they're adapted.
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Speaker 2: They're manipulated into allowing some learning to happen. But using
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Speaker 2: Google Chrome is still a major function of a chromebook.
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Speaker 2: The idea is they're going to be on the Internet,
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Speaker 2: and so just try to keep the bad stuff out.
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Speaker 2: The real learning scenario is no block all of the
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Speaker 2: Internet and only allow them to use the things that
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Speaker 2: benefit your classroom. And my students did research. They used
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Speaker 2: Britannica the app, they use World fact Book, and they
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Speaker 2: used a third one. It wasn't pro Quest, but it
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Speaker 2: was a similar Oh culturegram. So they use those three.
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Speaker 2: Between those three resources locked by the way resources can't
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Speaker 2: get out of there. They were able to find all
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Speaker 2: the information they needed. That is what we want if
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Speaker 2: you're a young person. Now again we're talking junior seniors. Okay,
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Speaker 2: there's a time and a place, because we will end
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Speaker 2: up using Google. But even in my line of work,
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Speaker 2: I do not simply want to be Googling answers to
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Speaker 2: find research, or at least to find answers. Maybe it
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Speaker 2: gets me to, oh, you know what, jstore is a
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Speaker 2: great location, or PubMed is a great location. Now I
17:26
Speaker 2: can just go to those locations when I want to
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Speaker 2: find something about focus or technology or youth. Those are
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Speaker 2: trusted resources I can go to, and I can now
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Speaker 2: find these resources, and I can now interpret them and
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Speaker 2: learn from that. So it's not that Googling is bad.
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Speaker 2: It's Google as a source in itself, or Wikipedia or
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Speaker 2: whatever you use. I am concerned about our ability to
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Speaker 2: process information and to use our own brains to discern
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Speaker 2: whether this is accurate, whether the research was done fairly,
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Speaker 2: whether the question was biased, because there are ways to
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Speaker 2: simply ask a biased question to get the results we want.
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Speaker 2: Tech in the classroom has a time and a place.
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Speaker 2: There is a better way to do it than we're
18:07
Speaker 2: currently doing it, and releasing only educationally beneficial technology will
18:12
Speaker 2: benefit the entire learning environment because students who have bad
18:15
Speaker 2: habits won't be able to bring those bad habits to
18:17
Speaker 2: the classroom. And finally, there is a time and a
18:20
Speaker 2: place where technology is a bad fit. There were students.
18:22
Speaker 2: We had an online textbook this year for social studies,
18:25
Speaker 2: and it was a bit of a disaster because asking
18:28
Speaker 2: students to read for any meaningful amount of time thirty minutes,
18:32
Speaker 2: and then write a summary and then respond to questions
18:34
Speaker 2: and then have a class discussion was well beyond in January,
18:38
Speaker 2: well beyond their skill set. We eventually got to the
18:41
Speaker 2: spot where they had the mental stamina, but the technology
18:45
Speaker 2: was fighting them on it. They would get frustrated. The
18:47
Speaker 2: layout was nonsensical. So basically they would open a unit
18:52
Speaker 2: a module, excuse me, and there would be five lessons,
18:55
Speaker 2: and every lesson would have three, four or five sections,
18:58
Speaker 2: but each section would be standalone, so they would be
19:01
Speaker 2: say studying ancient India, and then they would go to
19:04
Speaker 2: the section on geography, so that's one standalone piece of
19:07
Speaker 2: lesson one, and then under geography you would finish this
19:10
Speaker 2: first little read piece and it would have these kind
19:12
Speaker 2: of click through slides with little reflection questions in the middle,
19:15
Speaker 2: but then you have to go back up to the
19:17
Speaker 2: little hamburger, click on the next part of module I
19:21
Speaker 2: think it was Module nine, lesson one, and now you
19:25
Speaker 2: clicked on the next section of lesson one about geography,
19:29
Speaker 2: and it's so disjointed and there's so many clicks in
19:31
Speaker 2: between that they were just losing infos. So I ended
19:33
Speaker 2: up having to physically print all of this paper, and
19:37
Speaker 2: my students were concerned, like, hey, this is bad for
19:39
Speaker 2: the environment, and I was forced to remind them, first
19:41
Speaker 2: of all, like the quality of paper I'm printing the
19:43
Speaker 2: song can be made very inexpensive, sorry, very low cost environmentally,
19:48
Speaker 2: because we can grow trees that grow incredibly fast, real
19:51
Speaker 2: cheap and local. It recycles incredibly well. And while that
19:54
Speaker 2: is an expensive process, there's no distractions. It's high focus,
19:59
Speaker 2: it's high definition. You never have to worry about screen
20:01
Speaker 2: resolution or by the way, screen brightness, something that some
20:04
Speaker 2: of these tablets really struggled with, or battery life. Like,
20:07
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, paper looks like an amazing way
20:09
Speaker 2: to learn, maybe not all the time. Again, I don't
20:12
Speaker 2: want to churn and burn math units for every single kid,
20:15
Speaker 2: because con Academy is doing that really well and efficiently.
20:18
Speaker 2: And I think there's a time and a place for
20:19
Speaker 2: a screen in a classroom, and it's less than we
20:23
Speaker 2: think it is. Like that time and place is less
20:26
Speaker 2: often than we currently believe. Let's get some paper back
20:29
Speaker 2: in there. I finished one of my a students' Top
20:32
Speaker 2: Tier Learners finished day one of this. We were studying South
20:35
Speaker 2: America at this point. By the time I realized, oh,
20:37
Speaker 2: this is terrible and I'll come back to why it's
20:39
Speaker 2: terrible Day one, he just goes, I remember so much more,
20:45
Speaker 2: and I just told him, Hey, we're not using a
20:47
Speaker 2: computer as the distraction. It's way too high. Like you
20:49
Speaker 2: guys are You're not handling the opportunity. Well, physical paper.
20:52
Speaker 2: Here's your unit. And we learned how to annotate on
20:57
Speaker 2: paper instead of using all the sidebar notes stuff. We
21:01
Speaker 2: learned how to write our assessment pieces by hand. And
21:04
Speaker 2: then at the end of day one was like, I
21:06
Speaker 2: remember so much more. Because it's sequential, it's linear. There
21:10
Speaker 2: is no go back to the tab, you just turn
21:12
Speaker 2: the page. The information flows physically like it flows mentally.
21:17
Speaker 2: Top to bottom, left to right. You turn a page,
21:19
Speaker 2: your five pages in. They happen in the order that
21:21
Speaker 2: they happened in. So if you have a question, you
21:24
Speaker 2: don't go back to a tab and click just on
21:26
Speaker 2: a button that takes you to information. You flip three
21:28
Speaker 2: pages back and you then review that's right. This was
21:32
Speaker 2: the piece about the early ole NEC people. So physical paper.
21:37
Speaker 2: There is a time and a place to just make
21:39
Speaker 2: the copies. Toner is very inexpensive comparatively again compared to
21:44
Speaker 2: what technology will really does cost us. Even if it
21:48
Speaker 2: only costs ninety dollars to the chromebook, there's a cost
21:51
Speaker 2: to your learning environment. But in closing, our kids are
21:54
Speaker 2: more capable they think in reading and writing and in mathematics,
21:57
Speaker 2: that giving them reps and letting them do the hard
22:01
Speaker 2: work poorly just to see them get reps as important.
22:04
Speaker 2: This is where the summer slip piece comes in in
22:06
Speaker 2: the bingo card that we've talked about before, where you
22:08
Speaker 2: can download this pdf. You can use it with your family.
22:12
Speaker 2: The idea being they're going to spend fifteen minutes a
22:14
Speaker 2: day on math and reading. They're gonna get credit once
22:16
Speaker 2: a day they check off one box that's like their
22:20
Speaker 2: unique challenge. So you're gonna do reading, you're gonna do math,
22:22
Speaker 2: but you're gonna do a unique challenge for one of
22:24
Speaker 2: the two, and that gets you credit for one day.
22:26
Speaker 2: If you get a Bingo you get a price. We
22:28
Speaker 2: buy our kids a mini blizzard, a dairy queen, you
22:30
Speaker 2: can choose whatever you want. If they fill in the
22:33
Speaker 2: entire Bingo card, we give them fifteen dollars. Our kids
22:36
Speaker 2: are really into Lego miniatures from Sasquatch Bricks here in town,
22:40
Speaker 2: and so we go down to Sasquatch Bricks and get
22:43
Speaker 2: them Lego minifigures. It's about fifteen bucks because they get
22:46
Speaker 2: unique little Gandalfs or whatever. Fifteen dollars for minifigures, that's
22:50
Speaker 2: a lot of money. Don't justify that as like an
22:53
Speaker 2: economic decision. Think of it as cheap tutoring. You were
22:56
Speaker 2: going to spend about fifty dollars on your child in
22:59
Speaker 2: a summer. That's very inexpensive tutoring for an entire summer.
23:03
Speaker 2: If your child happens to do a second Bingo card again,
23:07
Speaker 2: you're now going beyond tutoring. You're getting to achievement. How
23:11
Speaker 2: much money would you spend to make your child passionate
23:14
Speaker 2: about learning and to help them avoid that forty percent
23:17
Speaker 2: academic loss that happens to young people when they take
23:20
Speaker 2: eight straight weeks off and spend their time just browsing
23:24
Speaker 2: the internet, playing video games or on social media. I'd
23:27
Speaker 2: spend one hundred dollars per child to ensure that didn't happen. Frankly,
23:32
Speaker 2: I would love to just have a fund where I
23:34
Speaker 2: could pay one hundred dollars for everyone else's children. But
23:36
Speaker 2: I don't have that fund right now, but it's worth it.
23:39
Speaker 2: That would be an excellent use of funds. If our
23:41
Speaker 2: schools got motivated to see that summer slip stop. We
23:45
Speaker 2: spend much more than that per child to ensure test
23:48
Speaker 2: scores go up. An easy way to make sure they
23:50
Speaker 2: go up is to make sure we don't go so
23:52
Speaker 2: far down this summer. So support learning over summer. Mitigate
23:58
Speaker 2: harmful tech in the classroom. And when tech is in
24:02
Speaker 2: the classroom, we need to make sure that it is
24:05
Speaker 2: deliberately supporting our learning, because it is distracting, because it
24:09
Speaker 2: is harmful to focus at times, and it is not
24:16
Speaker 2: always set up. Sometimes it's set up for engagement, not
24:18
Speaker 2: actually for deep work. Okay, I hope this is encouraging.
24:22
Speaker 2: Let me know if you have any questions Nathan at
24:23
Speaker 2: Gospel tech dot net or at Love Good Use Tech
24:26
Speaker 2: on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, where we hope more people
24:29
Speaker 2: will engage these resources, ask the hard questions, and yes,
24:32
Speaker 2: I promise. When I wrote down those three, I said
24:34
Speaker 2: we were going to talk about more capable than they think,
24:36
Speaker 2: how kids love fun, at the pace of your life,
24:37
Speaker 2: and healthy boundaries. It was going to be one and
24:40
Speaker 2: this took longer. So we're done for today. Join us
24:42
Speaker 2: next week as we continue this conversation about how we
24:44
Speaker 2: can love God and use tech and how we can
24:47
Speaker 2: learn to use the best tech well in the classroom
24:49
Speaker 2: and talk with you then