[EdTalks] EdTech in Greenville County Schools: Creating, Not Consuming

Is the rise of classroom technology creating a generation of passive consumers, or can we harness it to empower students as active creators? This episode tackles the critical questions surrounding modern classroom technology integration, exploring the fine line between meaningful engagement and excessive screen time. We dive deep into the strategies and philosophies required to ensure technology enhances, rather than replaces, the invaluable human connection in education.

In this conversation, we explore the evolution of educational technology, from the first Chromebooks to the challenges of remote learning. Greenville County Schools instructional technology experts Stephanie Williams and Avis Canty-Duck share their on-the-ground experience, providing a masterclass on how to shift the educational paradigm from consumption to creation. This discussion offers a roadmap for the purposeful integration of technology, emphasizing the core debate of creators versus consumers in education. We examine practical strategies for amplifying student voice, ensuring accessibility, and avoiding common pitfalls. A major focus is the essential role of professional development for instructional technology, highlighting how empowering teachers is the key to successful implementation. Looking ahead, we break down the future of learning, including the responsible and ethical approach to using AI in education through platforms like Magic School, the growing importance of accessibility in educational technology to support all learners, and the rise of eSports as a new avenue for student engagement. This episode debunks the pervasive myth that technology aims to replace teachers, reaffirming that the educator's relationship with the student remains the cornerstone of all learning.

Episode Resources:

• Learn more about Greenville County Schools Educational Technology Services

• Explore the Magic School AI platform

• Discover Google for Education Certifications

• Find out about ISTE Certification

Introduction

Erin Rigott: Classroom technology has transformed the way teachers teach and students learn. It has opened new doors for engagement and personalized learning. Today, we'll explore how these changes have taken shape, the challenges and opportunities ahead, and how the district supports both innovation and student well-being.

Mary Leslie Anderson: On this episode of Simple Civics: EdTalks, sharing their insights are Greenville County Schools Instructional Technology Facilitators, Avis Canty-Duck and Stephanie Williams. Let's get started. Erin and I are here with Stephanie Williams, Executive Director of Educational Technology Services in Greenville County Schools, and Avis Canty-Duck, a technology specialist here in Greenville County Schools. So thank you for being here, y'all.

Stephanie Williams: Thank you for having us.

Meet the Experts: The Voices Behind Greenville's Instructional Technology

Mary Leslie Anderson: If you would, would each of you just give a short little rundown of what brought you to this place in education?

Avis Canty-Duck: I started 20 some odd years ago as a special education teacher, and I was very thankful and grateful to have principals that allowed me to be a guinea pig for using technology in the classroom. Because I had smaller classes, we could make mistakes, but still stay on track. So it just allowed us to grow and experiment, find what works.

And from there, I just catapulted over into instructional technology, really. So that's what I've been doing for the last 13 years. I've been very blessed to be able to have certifications in Google. So Google certified level one, two. I'm Gen AI certified, working on ISTE certification, but just very passionate about helping teachers see technology, not as something extra to do, but an enhancer that empowers learning.

Stephanie Williams: My love of technology started way back in 1996. I took a workshop and I thought, this I don't think this is going anywhere. What do I need to do to make sure that I'm able to prepare my students to use technology to enhance their learning? And so I've just been dabbling around with it since then and just love how it can enhance the instructional practice of teachers.

I can't believe it, but I'm going into my 18th year in Greenville County. What is interesting is that Avis and I used to be adjunct instructors for instructional technology when we were both still in the classroom. And we would go out to different schools around Greenville County and lead different professional developments. And from there, we both ended up in instructional technology.

This is my fourth year as the director of instructional technology. I can't believe it's been four years. It's been definitely a huge learning curve with all the ins and outs that surrounds what it means to be technology. Now, my background is in technology education, which is really different from instructional technology or educational technology. Anything that's used to solve a problem is technology. A pencil is technology. So trying to interweave both technology education and instructional technology has been absolutely a pleasure. And just to see how our teachers in Greenville County have latched on to technology has been wonderful.

The Evolution of Classroom Tech: From Chromebooks to Remote Learning

Erin Rigott: On that note, I remember celebrating the first Chromebook cart arrival with both of you way back, 15 years ago. So I'm really excited to talk today about how it's evolved since then. Obviously, that was a big deal then, but so much has happened in 15 years. So how would you guys describe what you've seen over those years and where we're headed?

Stephanie Williams: I would say that just from that excitement of the Chromebooks to not even just so much the Chromebook itself as a tool, but even strategies that teachers and students can use to strengthen their instruction and also strengthen their learning. Now, of course, in 2020, when COVID hit, technology use took a big hit. Our department probably delivered over 300 hours worth of professional development just to help support teachers throughout that transition.

That was a time where we knew our teachers were prepared if something were like this to happen. But whoever thought that this would happen, that we would actually go home and do remote learning. I think the times that we spent preparing schools during the PLA gave teachers just a different mindset of an approach. When you think about technology, you just think about putting a student on that device and hopefully that they're being creators instead of consumers.

A lot of times when students are coming into the classroom, they've been using technology for entertainment purposes. So having them to transition their thinking from entertainment to educational practices. That has been a big, huge jump in the last 15 years is we use it a lot for entertainment. Social media has taken the world by storm. And so students are used to that. They're used to those different platforms. But how can we turn those platforms and make it educational? How can we help our students become creators and not consumers? That has been the big, huge jump over the last 15 years.

Shifting the Paradigm: Fostering Student Creators, Not Just Consumers

Mary Leslie Anderson: And I love how you say creators versus consumers. I just wrote that in my notebook. Because I think that we see students sometimes in classrooms that are more consumable than creative. But just that statement right there, and I know, Avis, you're doing this daily, helping teachers to say, we want the technology to help students create, not just consume. How do we do that?

Avis Canty-Duck: I would say, as I think back, Erin brought back the memory of the Chromebook carts and just the rollout as having the PLA, Personalized Learning Academy, for every single school before the Chromebooks or any devices even hit the doors of the classrooms. I would say that we've done a lot of work on the back end to be very purposeful in the integration of those devices. So we knew going in that as soon as someone said we're putting Chromebooks in the hands of the students.

We have to write our own story and we have to get ahead of the screen time, screen time, which is not it at all. So with that purposeful integration, we focused on technology that supported learning goals, amplified the student voices, because that's so important nowadays where kids will not speak up for you. But if you give them a device and a different way to say what they want to say, then they can shine. And we wanted to ensure accessibility.

So with that, technology helped us to remove some barriers that we were seeing, and not necessarily from the instructional technology department, but I have the benefit of coming directly from the classroom into this role. So I could see there's students that would not speak, but we give them a device and all of a sudden I've got a chatterbox. And what they said was absolutely phenomenal. And I still have voice snippets of my students when we were doing mini podcasts in the classroom and what they were saying was just amazing. And it just did my little heart good. I had a special ed class, so we were smaller and we were a family, as is, I know the classroom teachers are as well. But just being purposeful and intentional with what we were doing, everything that we roll out has a purpose. It's not just because.

Stephanie Williams: It's a new thing, as you said, we have to be very intentional simply because we're trying to tell a story that technology is not a tool that is going to harm. Can it harm? Yes, absolutely. But that is not our intent. Our intent is to make sure, as Avis mentioned, that we are providing that access for all students who may not necessarily have access at home. So when they come into one of our buildings, they are able to share that voice.

And I remember this one particular student, when you said that about their student voice and the recordings, I was over at one of our middle schools and we were doing videos and they had to record themselves and put together a video based on whatever the standard was. And the student was like, man, I am so professional right now. And I just paused and I just laughed. And he was just showing him how to make transitions. And he had built out this video showing his understanding of that particular topic.

This is what he has learned over the past two or three weeks. And now he was able to share his creation of his understanding about this topic. And it is just such a joy when they are excited and you see that they are constructing knowledge because they are consuming the information that the teacher has shared, they are processing the information, and now they're able to turn that around and capture it in some type of a project to really encapsulate everything that they've learned.

And so that statement of, oh man, this is so professional right now. He just knew that he has just hit the top when it comes to video creation. I was just like, you're right. That is so professional. But I wonder where he is today because... I think that really one of the things that the teacher said from that lesson, it was wow, the students were highly engaged. They were not compliant. They were actually engaged because sometimes we confuse compliance with engagement. Just because students are doing what you ask them to do, they're just sometimes just being compliant. But when they're actually truly engaged and using the academic language and what they're creating, that's when you know that you have transformed the learning experience for those students.

Supporting the Educators: Strategies for Effective Tech Integration

Erin Rigott: Y'all kind of just hit on this, but technology is such an amazing tool for the classroom. We've got Google Classroom that helps us stay organized from documents to saving paper because we can post things to review games to software that helps us show what we learned. There's so many pros to it. How do you help teachers understand how to use it in a way that is that creation versus an easy way to post instead of teach or get on this instead of us engaging in a conversation about it? How do you find that balance for teachers? How do you help them find that balance?

Stephanie Williams: Finding that balance is definitely a journey. And also, you have to look at your audience and where they are in their comfort level with technology. If you think about classroom management, if you really have poor classroom management, unfortunately, adding technology to the mix is only going to amplify that you have poor classroom management. And so we really try to support teachers in small, bite-sized portions. Think about, let us just come and do this one activity and model that activity.

So one thing that we encourage our facilitators is getting into the classrooms and modeling the lesson. One thing that I think is to our benefit as instructional technology facilitators is that we are on the front lines and we're trying to model best practices. Sometimes it is scary for teachers. And so utilizing other avenues to reach teachers through our newsletters, our social media, and showing other teachers and how other teachers are using it. That has been very helpful.

And showing teachers the difference between just posting an assignment and actually using the technology for students to create. And so it definitely is a journey. And unfortunately, it's a journey that we have to repeat every year. Summer gets long. We have that summer slide not only with students, but we also have that summer slide with teachers. And how, invite us in. We're here to help you to see the difference between just posting an assignment or providing that feedback in Google Classroom to, okay, how can I take, let's say, the Transcontinental Railroad and have the students develop a journal. It could be a digital journal as if they were one of the individuals that was actually working their way towards the continent and just different ways to reach students.

A big thing with technology is also just that accessibility piece. We're going to hear a lot more about accessibility and make sure that we're able to reach all students and all their ability levels. And so we have students who they are reluctant to write. We want to get them to write, but how can I help them move that reluctancy so they're still producing? And technology is just one of the avenues that will allow them to be able to reach that particular student, whether they're using their voice to record or even just using their touchpad to draw and lay out. But it's definitely a journey. And it's a repeated journey. What do you think, Avis?

Avis Canty-Duck: I will piggyback off of what you said. Our department motto is teachers growing teachers. So at the forefront of everything, when a teacher contacts us or a leadership team says we need help with this department, with whatever, Our goal is to empower those teachers. So before we go in, we want to make sure that we are doing something that's going to build the teacher confidence so that they will have this technology as part of the instruction and not an add-on.

As we look at ways on supporting teachers, we have PD sessions. We will come into a school, we will do team PD. We will have staff PD, hands-on workshops we try not to ever do sit and get during the workshops we want you to actually do while we're showing you how much impact this tool could have in your classroom. We have self-paced courses because lots of teachers, as soon as you say you have PD on a Wednesday, that's what they're looking like. So we've got the self-paced courses. We send out a newsletter every week with things that the district has paid for. Here's how you can use it other than it's just technology. How can we use it to impact instruction?

And like Stephanie said earlier, we collaborate a lot. So if we need to go in and model a lesson, if you want us to go in and co-teach with you, we can do that. If you want to do it and you just need us to make sure the kids are doing what they're supposed to do or the technology is working, we can do that. We want to support you so that you're confident when we walk outside of that classroom. When you feel empowered, then you're going to go tell your teammate, and then your teammate's going to do it, and then it's going to spread. So that's our goal.

The Next Frontier: AI, Accessibility, and eSports in the Classroom

Mary Leslie Anderson: What emerging technologies or trends do you see for the next three to five years?

Avis Canty-Duck: I am in charge of teacher efficacy, so the latest trend, and I've been attending conferences to learn how to do this, is setting up a platform for digital credentials for teachers. So we are exploring different ways to recognize them for the skills they are learning. We recognize that they don't get everything from Greenville County School District. But it's important to acknowledge the effort that they have put in to gain new skills, and it's important for them to have that recognition here in their own district. So we're looking at digital credentials, of course, to celebrate teacher growth and skill development.

Stephanie Williams: We know AI is here. AI is not going anywhere. And it's going to be ever evolving over the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years. This tool is one of the tools that is definitely different from tools of the past. One thing that is different with AI that is different from other tools in the past, let's say, for instance, the calculator watch. It's just a calculator. There really wasn't a lot of change, but it can't be so big because it's a watch that you're wearing around your arm. You think about the TI-85 graphing calculator. It's still going to have the sine, cosine, tan, all that. There's really not a lot of changes to the graphing calculator.

Here we have AI that is constantly morphing week by week, sometimes day by day. It's a tool that is constantly learning and is based on a lot of data that's being trained on. So it's going to be interesting over the next few years how AI is really going to transform learning as far as teachers' instructional practice, how they're utilizing that tool to create content, to help support students. And when I say create content, they're not making up something. Of course, it's always going to be based on our standards.

But as far as what kind of learning experiences teachers will be able to create, our focus over the last two years has just really been focusing on supporting teachers and making sure they have the best understanding of what AI is, particularly generative AI, and how they can support their instructional practice. Now, this being year three, we are moving towards our secondary students and getting them some exposure to AI, but it's really under a very controlled setting. We're using the platform Magic School, and students can't just go on to Magic School and interact with AI, teachers are going to have to create a room for students to go in.

And those rooms that teachers are creating are very purposeful, whether they're creating a chatbot where the students can interact with George Washington, or they're giving students opportunity to quiz themselves on a particular standard because they have a test coming up in the next week or so. So they're being very purposeful in the type of generators that they're creating and putting into these rooms for students to have access to. So AI is definitely going to be a huge technology that we will stick closely to and make sure that we are providing enough support to our students and making sure that they understand the bias and also the ethical use of using such a tool.

Another area I think we're going to see a lot of growth, and it's been there. Accessibility. It has been there for a long time. But as we have more and more students with different types of disabilities, we need to address that, particularly if we're doing a lot of things that are digital. Not only just our students, but even our parents, our parents who want to support their students. And if you say, hey, go to my website, I have this resource there. If that resource that you created is not accessible, that parent can't help their child. So that is going to be another focus in the next few years of making sure that whatever we are creating and putting out there for our communities to view, we need to make sure that it's accessible. Those screen readers, they're looking for certain tags, and if they can't find the tags, they can't support.

And so those are the two that really sticks out in my mind. AI, accessibility, and I also always say maybe a thing about eSports, that is going to be another area that is growing leaps and bounds. And just another way to capture students who may not normally be out there in that football field. But have the mindset of, because it requires the same skills, not necessarily the same physical skills. Actually I'll take that back because there are teams that they are doing physical body training to help their students to understand. You're sitting in a chair, what are some things that you need to take care of yourself physically in order to maintain that type of engagement with those types of different games?

So Esports is another one, I think, that particularly for us in our area, we're doing some research right now and how we can bring that. We do have a couple of schools that have been dabbling around. Actually, I think one of our schools, if they won a regional championship or state, I'm not quite sure, but we're very excited, but it's a middle school. And we want to continue that pathway for them at the high school. And right now, there isn't a pathway. So I think that it's going to be another area that we're going to see some growth.

Beyond the Screen: Debunking Myths About Technology and the Teacher's Role

Mary Leslie Anderson: We like to wrap up our sessions with asking if there was anything that you want the public to know about public schools and technology. What would you say in just a couple of sentences?

Avis Canty-Duck: I wish the public knew how intentional we are about using technology. When we go into the classrooms, our goal is to help enhance the teaching, but not replace the teaching. The relationships that the teachers build with the students is paramount. It comes before everything. And when I was in the classroom, my students would not take a risk for me to learn something new or do something that would stretch them if I didn't have the relationship with them.

That is the heart of every single one of us is a classroom teacher before anything else. And the children that we encounter every day come before anything else. And that probably got me in a lot of trouble in school because if I had to do something that meant I had to ignore the child for even a moment when I saw that they needed me, that's what I would do. The relationship comes first, and we are thinking every day about what is best for them when we introduce or when we use any piece of technology. How are they going to take this and run with it and become their own?

Stephanie Williams: One thing that's misinterpreted about technology is that we are placing students on a device from the time they hit our doors into the time that they leave. And that is just so far-fetched. We can't build relationships by putting a student on a device for seven, eight hours a day. So I think that is definitely a misrepresentation of what individuals think may be happening in the classroom, is that students are day in and day out.

I am all about monitoring screen time. But our students are not, they are given opportunities to turn and talk to a neighbor, to an elbow partner. Having those conversations with their teachers because it's so important. So if anything, technology is only here to enhance the learning experience, not replace, as Avis mentioned. We need that human component. We always will need a teacher.

That has been a big concern too with AI, that AI is going to replace a teacher. AI cannot replace a teacher. That's another technology. Google didn't replace a teacher. Wikipedia didn't replace a teacher. This is another instructional tool or another tool that we can use for instructional purposes that is not going to replace that human element. That human element is so crucial, particularly when it comes to AI and bias and ethics and just understanding the importance of emotions and how those play into our day to day.

Our students come in with a lot of different emotions. And I think it's very important that we recognize those emotions, whether they're angry or upset. We think that they're a child. You don't have any bills to pay. Why are you upset? But they have all of these emotions that it takes that teacher interaction and that relationship so that we can pull out what is best for our students. So if the thoughts and ideas is that our students are on our device for six or seven hours a day, they are highly misled.

They are highly misled. That means they haven't yet to step into a classroom, which I will say, I love how our district, particularly our schools within our district, are telling their stories. When you go to visit their websites, they're telling their story. Their social media is telling their stories and how their students are engaging with their peers, engaging with the content, engaging with teachers. That is just so important. So that is one thing. We're not sitting on a device. We don't have that kind of time.

Erin Rigott: Thank you guys for being here with us today. We just so appreciate you tapping into what you guys do as a team for the teachers in the district and the amazing training you provide, especially in our summer tech conference that is amazing if you are local and in the area, you need to check that out. But also how we continue to fight this battle every single year, and it's not going to end of how do we continue to evolve and learn the new technologies and try to figure out the best way to use them with purpose in our classrooms. Thank you for joining us for today's conversation. We're Mary Leslie Anderson and Erin Rigott with Rooted Consulting. Until next time, keep nurturing school culture. And keep growing strong roots in your community. Simple Civics: EdTalks is a joint project of Greater Good Greenville, Greenville First Steps, and Public Education Partners Greenville County.