Be Like Sal: 3 Ways a Tablet Can Energize Your Digital Teaching!

Thank you so much for joining today or this evening, depending on where you're calling from. This is Jeremy Schieffen at Khan Academy, and I'm so excited they're joining with us because if anything at Khan Academy, 2020 has been the year of the tablet. We've given away, by my calculation, at least 50 tablets over the course of the year in response to questions like: How does Sal Khan make those videos? How can I make my own videos?

And that's why I'm so excited about tonight's session, because now you're going to learn from the experts themselves. First of all, we are so lucky to have Stacy with us. Stacy is a math teacher and director of innovation educational technology at the Bullis School in Maryland. One of the things that really impresses me is not only does she wear multiple hats at school, but she's also the author of "Tech With Heart," which is an amazing book on how to use tech in your classroom not just to break your students down into bits and bytes but to actually empower them, to lift them up. I think in 2020, you can't imagine a better lesson than how to use technology in a more holistic way. So check out "Tech With Heart"; it would make a great stocking stuffer.

And then also, I have to give a huge shout out to the Wacom team. If you're familiar with Wacom, the brand, they are the world's leader in handwriting tablets. Whether you use it for design or for teaching, there are these really powerful tools to bring your teaching style and your pedagogy into the digital world. In fact, Sal Khan himself has been using their tablets for a decade at this point and is still using them to make videos at this very moment. So a huge shout out to the Wacom team, especially because Wacom has been generous enough to give away five more tablets to lucky attendees tonight. You'll be notified automatically just for being in attendance if you're one of those lucky five.

Then in addition, even if you're not selected to win a tablet, Wacom is giving an exclusive discount code just to attendees of the session that Stacy will unveil at the very end of the presentation. Now, all that being said, I would be remiss in 2020 on a webinar not to mention that, number one, this is being recorded. You'll get all those goodies in your email right afterwards, including a PDF of the handouts and all the links that we talked about. Then, of course, because we're educators, all in all, we want to make sure the session is really interactive. So ask questions at any point using the questions tab, and Stacy will take a ton of those questions at the end of the session. So without further ado, let me turn it over to Stacy to tell you all about how you can use tablets in your own classroom to make 2021 even more effective. Over to you, Stacy.

Thank you so much! I'm so excited to be with you all this evening or whatever time it is over on your end. So I'm going to be sharing some ways that you can use the tablet. I have been using a Wacom tablet myself for years now. I think I got my first one in 2013. What I love about these tablets is that it's the same tablet that I was using in 2013. I'm still able to use it today. So I'm going to showcase some of their newer products. It has worked for me over the years, and it's a way of allowing me to handwrite on anything, and as a math teacher, I need that.

In addition to my role in really working as a coach with teachers at my school and helping them onboard the tech that will work best for their classroom, I'm also an AP Calculus teacher. I've taught a number of classes over the years, but in the past several years, I've taught AP Calculus AB. I also taught a purely online version of AP Calculus AB for a number of years. I am a flipped classroom teacher, so I'll get into a lot of how I started exploring the tablets and how I'm using them now, and hopefully, some easy ways to help you get started. If you are on Twitter, I would love to connect with you. My Twitter handle is @BuddyXO. If you are there, please connect with me, and if you have any questions at all, I'm so happy to follow up and answer as many as I can. I do have a contact form on my blog.

So now that we're done with that little intro, let's go ahead and let me start off with some of the things I hope to achieve today. First of all, how to get started with a whiteboard application. Then, how to use the scratch pad in Khan Academy. Then we'll talk more about how to ink up slides and make screencasts of your own, and then, as Jeremy said, we will have some time for Q&A.

So before we get started, I'm going to just put a question out to you: What subject do you teach and what grade levels do you teach? You can go ahead and type that in. Okay, we've got the poll on your screen, so feel free to start answering right there. About a third of the 500 or so educators across the country have answered. We're up to about two-thirds now, and it looks like there are a lot of educators who are following in your footsteps, Stacy, because as we close the poll and share the results, you can see that a plurality are math educators. Awesome! Hopefully, that's right, but also a nice diversity of educators across the content spectrum.

Let's do the same for grade level now, so elementary all the way to high, maybe even beyond or before, and it's looking like a little bit of a horse race between middle and high school. We'll go ahead and share that, and it looks like a lot of high school educators again. Your tribe is here in force tonight, Stacy, so a lot of high school math educators have joined us. All right, we'll have some fun tonight!

So this is me back in the day. Let me go back into present. This is me back in the day when I started flipping my classroom. This was back in 2010, and what I had here was a tablet PC, actually, so this is how I got started making my videos. I had a microphone that I got, and I was using my tablet PC, which is what we had through our school. That was kind of how I got interested in the first place. I said, "Hey, I got this technology in my hands. Let me start making some screencasts for my students." Especially when I started AP Calculus teaching, you know how much content there is to get through— not enough time to get through it. So I wanted a way to offload that very teacher-directed lecture to video, and I started using my tablet PC to do that.

However, I am a Mac user, and this tablet PC wasn't my preference. So when I learned about Wacom, then I had my solution because I could plug the tablet into my Mac, and I still had the pen and the handwriting, and I've been happily using that solution ever since. There are two main types of Wacom devices. There is the slate style, like this one on the left. This is a blank slate, and you can write just looking up at the screen is what you would have to do there. So that you're not seeing what you're writing, actually, you're looking up at the screen to see what you're writing. Then there's also the display style tablets, like this one, where you actually either mirror your screen or you use it as a second display, just like if you had another monitor attached. So that is really amazing, especially in remote learning. I think we've all learned that we need two monitors, and so this can be a simple way to have two monitors available to you.

I really recommend the Wacom Intuos. There are different styles of it, but I like the one—this is the small one that I have. It's a small style, but it is Bluetooth, and I love that because it's wireless and I can move it around easily to carry with me. When we are in the actual classroom and we're able to move around, this is a great device to have, throw it in your bag. The Wacom One is what I actually make my flipped classroom video clips with nowadays. You do have to plug it in, so it is much larger. I have it right here. I don't have it plugged in because I didn't want another screen going right now, but this is really great because I can have it to write out all of my lessons, make my screen recordings, and it feels so natural. It really feels like writing on paper. The quality of this tablet is amazing, and I recommend the Wacom One because it's the lowest price point for a screen display style tablet that Wacom offers, and it's met all of my needs as a math teacher 100%, and it feels so, so nice to write on.

So those are the two styles of tablets. I just wanted to throw those out there for some background, and then I'm going to pose one more question to you right now: Do you currently have a writing tablet? I think there's a poll that you can answer on this one, and it looks like we're up to about almost 90 percent of the votes here. Stacy, it looks like, as you can see here on the screen, about a third of teachers have that writing tablet already, but the majority do not. So just a little good background to go on. Awesome! Hopefully, some of that background was helpful in helping you understand the different styles of tablets that are available and which one you might want to purchase going forward. If you're really just looking to get started with the most affordable option and the most portable option, that is the Intuos style tablet. Again, there's a Bluetooth version of that, which is what I really like because I can just be using it, just click a button—no wires needed, and I can move around, and it's wireless.

Again, the Wacom One, I love it for making my classroom videos. It does need to be plugged in, so I just like to mention that because I think it's important to weigh the options. Do you need portability, or are you going to be making videos all the time? In which case, I think the Wacom One is really worth the investment. That's what I use most of my time, and I just love it. All right, so let's continue on and start with some of the basics.

I wish that I could just tell you, "Hey, this is what I recommend. This is what you should do," but the reality is we are all at different schools that use different technologies that have different subscriptions. But also we’re at Google schools, we are at Microsoft schools, we are at Google Meet schools, we are at Zoom schools right now. So I am going to present, again, a variety of options—ones that I would most recommend depending on which of those camps you fall into. So if you are using Google everything already, if you're using Google Meet, even if you're using Zoom and your school is a Google school, I think Google Jamboard is the simplest whiteboarding option that I can possibly offer you. There is a video of how the Google Meet integration with the Jamboard whiteboard works if you haven't used that before. Again, these resources are available after, and I put a little play button so that you can know that you can watch this video afterward if you want to review it. I'm trying to load you up with some resources to really help you out. But I'm going to show you just a basic demo, and you can get started by just going to your Google Drive, pressing the New button, going into More, and then using a Google Jamboard. That's how you start up a new whiteboard. Or if you're in a Google Meet, you'll see that option right when you click the three dots.

So let me show you what a Jamboard looks like. It is super simple, super basic, but it is collaborative or it can be just more instructional. Like anything else in Google, you can share this and make everybody else an editor or you can share it with view-only permissions. If everybody else is an editor, it's real-time collaboration. Amazing, right? So there is a pen tool right here, and again, the options with this one are very, very simple. You only have a couple pallets of color here. You do have different pen thicknesses. You have a marker, you have a highlighter, you have more of a brush tool, and so you can just very simply get to writing. If you want to write, you can also pull in an image. Sometimes I like to use this to say, you know, if you have a question that you want, take a snapshot of the question, pull it into here, and then just use your tablet and write. That’s basically it. You can present during class with this also. There's this nice laser pointer, so it's easier for students to follow what you are writing, and you can more easily point. There's a sticky note that you can have, and then for people who need some shapes, there are some basic shapes here available too.

So this, I think, is one of the simplest options available. It is automatically built into Google Meet if you're using that, or if you're using Google Drive—sorry, if you're a Google school—then this will save to your Google Drive, so that's the nice ability there too, and you can share. Lastly, you can always export this, save this as a PDF afterwards so that you can share these as lesson notes. If you can't get everything on one slide, you can make multiple pages just like that. So those are the very, very basics of getting started with this, and there's also the ability to have some grid paper background.

Also, let me go ahead and move into the next option, which, since I was on Google schools, I feel like if you are a Google school that is already a Kami user, if you are using Kami or if your school has a site license to Kami, I really recommend checking that tool out if you've not heard about it before. It's not the absolute thing that you need right now. I want you to pick which one is going to fit your needs the best, but what Kami is, it's integrated again with Google Drive. But it also can be kind of a whiteboarding tool because there are these amazing pen tools built right into Kami. This is a Chrome extension, by the way, you can get it so you can open any of your Google Drive files with Kami. You can also just go to Kami on the web, and you can write. Again, I can just write and talk. There are so many more features available in the Kami. I could do a whole webinar on Kami to be honest.

There is even the ability to make your whole screen capture right here in Kami if you have a paid version. But what I like to show here is just like this, for example, I was just showing how students can kind of upload work that they were stuck on, and then they can pull it all into a document. Then I can use the pen tools like I used right here to guide to say where they went wrong, for example. We can discuss errors as a class, so again, this is one of the really nice whiteboarding tools. You can add extra pages as you go when you want to add more pages. Again, if you need lined paper, you can have that. If you need grid paper, you can have that. If you want a music sheet, you can even add that. So if you are using Kami already and you haven't thought about using it as kind of a whiteboarding tool, that's going to be my recommendation to you, and that's really, again, if you're a Google school because that's tied with Google.

So let's move on from Google schools. If you are using Zoom, Zoom has a whiteboard built right in. I have a demo here. Again, if you want to watch this after the fact, you can just press play and watch how to get started with the tool. But it is one of the simplest options available. What's more, in Zoom, you can actually write anywhere on your screen, so it doesn't have to just be a whiteboard that you're writing on. You can ink up anything using the annotation tools that are in Zoom. If you haven't used that before and if you're using Zoom, then again, use your Wacom tablet. Now you have an actual pen and you can be handwriting instead of just using your mouse, which is very difficult.

So that Zoom, again, if you're using that, I would definitely check out this video if you're not already. The final whiteboarding tool that I'm going to showcase is if you want something that's not tied to Google and not tied to Zoom but is very simple to get started with, I like Awe App, which is a web whiteboard. I'm just using it for free, so you do get advertisements—that is the only downside to this. But otherwise, it can be a collaborative board, so I can invite other people to it. So it can be collaborative, or I can just be doing my screen share and writing. There are some more options in this one, so this is actually a tool that I use quite often because it's simple, but also there's a little bit more functionality.

I can upload a picture or even a PDF. I usually just would upload a picture of a question that I want to solve as a class, and then I can choose from more of a variety of color palettes right here, or you can choose from the color wheel so you can get more colors right there available to you. There's an undo button very easily, and then again, you can be writing as you're talking. You have the eraser tool, and this one gives you a variety of options here where, like, you can change the size of the eraser. You can also erase the whole thing in one click, which makes it a little bit easier to use than just erasing little bit by little bit, especially when you're doing a whole lesson. I know it sounds minor, but it can be very helpful. Again, you have some shape tools and then you have some text. What I like about this app too is that as you're writing—so you know you can be doing a problem—let me change the color like over here. What you can do is you can actually zoom in and out and you can write on different parts of the board.

So I can be zooming out. I can move my write over here too. Then I can move my whole board over. So I just have this is kind of like a huge canvas that I can have and I can keep writing. If I want to see everything, a snapshot of everything at the end of class, I can zoom way out. I can do full screen, and I can move around a little bit more easily with this little mini-map tool here. So it's again one of those that you can explore a little bit more, but I've really liked this one. It's very simple but also a little bit more robust in terms of being kind of like that canvas feel, which I like. If I want to solve a big problem and I don't have enough retail space on my screen, I can play a little bit more with some of these options. So that is Awe App, and again, there's a paid version or a free version. I'm just using the free one.

As you're going to the next section, I just want to give a shout-out. You're getting so much love on the chat. People are saying, "Oh, I love Kami! I love Jamboard! I love Awe!" So everyone is sharing their favorite tools, and there are even some additional ones that are popping up. So thank you for sparking a good conversation!

Oh, fantastic! I know, and that's the hardest thing. I want to come on here and make this as simple as possible for everybody and say, "You know, this is the best one," but the problem is there isn't a best one. As you can probably see that coming into the chat, there's probably a lot of conversation about what people love. Again, I encourage you to think about what tools your school's already using, and maybe there's one that already resonates with you. But also, getting students on it more easily—if you're already at a Google school, Jamboard's going to be super simple for you and for your students.

At this point, I don't want to present too many more tools in my classroom because we already went through some of the pain—the growing pains of getting onboard—and that's always the hardest part. Now we're in a routine. So, all right, let’s go ahead and dig into using the scratch pad in Khan Academy in case you’re not using that already.

So I'm going to go ahead right now—actually let me go back and just tell you what I'm going to talk about. So the first thing I'm going to talk about is using it in the student view. This would be from the assign tab, and this is something that students also have access to. So even if they don't have a device, you know, even if they just need to use their mouse, they can at least ink up a little bit as they're thinking through things, which I know is very difficult, but you, as a teacher, can also use it.

So let me show you what I mean. If I am in that assign tab right here, and then I click onto any of the assignments that I have given, so let me go ahead and click into this exercise. If I click on student view—say for example, I just want to do like an introductory lesson. I found some really nice questions that were in Khan Academy. I don’t want to assign them for students yet to do on their own. I want to just have a class conversation about it. I can go ahead and pull this up on the board, and then if you click on here, the little whiteboarding tool, then you’ll see that again I get kind of like my grid paper, which I know we love as math teachers, and I can just mark it up.

So, you know, I can be writing and talking. I think there’s real power in being able to highlight while I'm talking, being able to write so students can follow what I'm doing. I'm saying, you know, the limit as x approaches negative two. So now I'm telling everybody, you know, pull your eye to negative two here, and again, it's just this quick little visual of what's going on. So I can pull that out for them and then say, you know, well, what do you see going on from the left-hand side? I can just be drawing and talking at the same time, and then my students can maybe unmute their mic, chat it out, we can talk about it. Then, you know, just what's happening from the right-hand side. So we can discuss it, and I think that just makes for a really nice little discussion. Then we can choose the answer together, so this is, again, this could be used for class instruction or maybe you assign something, and students got something wrong. You could pull this up, or you could have them pull it up on their screen share and ask them to kind of use these tools to try and explain what they were thinking so that you can work through it and coach them together.

So that's a really nice little tool in case you haven't used it before. Then the other way that I wanted to show it is after students have responded. Say that you already gave an assignment, everybody did it for homework, and now you want to discuss it in class. You can use a teacher report, and again, there is a drawing tool that's available more on a sidebar in this case. So let me go ahead and go back, and this time I'm going to go ahead and go into my scores. Let me click on this.

So now if we're reviewing all students here, say that I want to discuss this one because one person got it wrong. So I can go ahead and pull up the draw tool right here, and then I can just write on the side. So again, super simple. I can’t draw on the drawing itself in this case, but here was an example that I just laid out right here. For example, you might say, "What are the three things that you are looking for here?" I could just write that out, and I will—I’m able to write that out because I have the pen tool on my Wacom tablet. If I was using my mouse, I would not be able to write that out. So again, that can be a really nice way to just talk about things in class.

So those are my two favorite ways of using the whiteboard ink right within Khan Academy to bring things out during class or to do kind of one-on-one individualized coaching with students also. So let me pause again and see if there's any questions coming in before we get into some simple screencasting options.

Yeah, so there are so many questions, Stacy. What I would recommend is why don't we finish up the content and then save maybe like 10-15 minutes to really dig deep into these questions? Sounds good to me!

All right, so again, I'm presenting four options here depending on what you need for screencasting. When it comes to screencasting, there are a lot of options out there. I'm going to say, again, if you're a Google school already using Google Meet, and if you already have the ability to record—not everybody has the ability to record in Google Meet, but if you have the ability to record in Google Meet, you would see it under your three dots, and you would be able to record. Everybody who's using Google for education right now should be able to record in Google. They've made that available for this year.

So if you're doing that for class already, you know what? You can join a Google Meet just you and yourself and make a nice little screencast because you will have created a video, right? So you could just join the Google Meet all by yourself, you can open up, pop open a Jamboard, for example, and use the whiteboarding there. There you go—simple whiteboard screencast that you can then upload to your Google Drive and then you can give it to students to go ahead and review.

If you are using Zoom, there's a record option right in Zoom. So you could use the whiteboarding tool again, write in Zoom, and you can just record. Let’s keep it simple. If you are wanting a Chrome extension, there are a couple—you may have used Screencastify or Loom. They're both very similar. I usually recommend Loom because it is free for educators. Screencastify has a limit for what you can do with the free version, so that's why I say Loom. If you sign up as an educator—not everybody knows about that; there's an educator form that you can fill out, in which case you get free access to Loom.

So that does allow you to do both like, you know, the little video and your screencast at the same time, or you can just do the screencast. You get to choose what you want to do there; screen only, screen and cam. You can record, again, you can upload that like to your Google Drive. You have some different options there. Then, lastly, I'm going to present one paid option, which is Camtasia. I present that because that's actually what I use to record my videos— that's what I've been using for since 2010, actually. I use that to record my videos, and I use that to edit my videos.

What I like about that is that it does have a pretty robust editor. Also, I can add in like little annotations at the end. I can cut things if I made a mistake. I can do some transitions—all of that good stuff. So if you want to invest a little bit more time and energy into creating videos and editing them—that's something that you enjoy. I really enjoy editing my videos—then I would recommend looking into a Camtasia license. Make sure that you look for an educator discount on that because they do have some educator discounts available. But that is a paid option, and it is available for both a PC or a Mac.

So, I am going to keep this as simple as possible again. One of the easiest ways to start inking up anything is to use PowerPoint actually, and there is a pen tool available even in PowerPoint online. So I'm going to show you PowerPoint online because this is how I actually got started with things. I just opened up a PowerPoint. I had my PowerPoint as my base, my presentation. I had a question and a lot of blank white space, as you can see here. That's kind of what it looked like. Whatever's in red is what I wrote while I was making the screencast itself.

When you do this in PowerPoint, it's going to save all the annotations too, so then you have a kind of a final version and I usually save my original version and I usually print out the blank version for my students so that they can take notes right on the PowerPoint as they're watching the video. Then you can just go ahead and go to this drawing tab. I'm in PowerPoint online here, and then you go to the drawing tab and you can choose from a bunch of different colors. And it's nice that it has your recent colors that are saved right here. You can change the thickness of the pen tool, and then you can also use this different pen tool. They're a little bit different and have the colors. You have the eraser, you have a highlighter, and you can just get started with making a screencast.

So again, you could open this up, then use one of the screencasting tools we talked about. You could open up a Google Meet with yourself and press record. You can open up a Zoom and record yourself. You could also use Screencastify. I use Camtasia when I use Camtasia. Something else I like about that is I can just like choose what portion of the screen I want to record. So I would just like select this portion of the screen with my mouse. You know, so it would like record just this portion, and then obviously I was not using my tablet there, so it was very messy. But I would just record that portion, and you wouldn't be able to see any of the background stuff. So a lot of the different tools allow you to choose just a piece of your screen instead of recording the entire screen. So that's something to keep in mind. Also, Loom has that ability, I know.

So yeah, that's the easiest way to honestly get started here— PowerPoint. You use it, and it's all free if you have PowerPoint, like the desktop version. This is coming to Mac. I don't think it's rolled out to everybody. I know I'm in a program where I get some early releases of things, so it is available on—I am using it on my Mac right now. There is a record slideshow. It's been available on a PC for years. If you have PowerPoint downloaded to your computer, you can actually—it's a one-stop shop where you can create a video and record your screen right using PowerPoint all in one. Like you don't even need a second tool if that's something that interests you.

I have a reference article and also a video tutorial that is a Windows-specific one, but it should be similar for the Mac starting soon. Anyway, I just wanted to present that as an option. If you’re using PowerPoint, this is something that a lot of people aren't aware of. Again, it's a record slideshow; it's right baked into PowerPoint, and you can export it as an MP4 if you want students to watch it as a video, or you can also give a share link, and that share link is kind of like if I shared these Google Slides with you right now where students can press like the next button and the next button, but it will play like a video. It's really cool! I encourage you to check it out if you are a PowerPoint fan. If you're not though, I've provided some other options for you to explore today.

I did want to show you my actual process, and this is a video of my actual process these days. I use Notability on my Mac. I paid for that. It wasn't very expensive, but I did purchase Notability, which is—you might be familiar. There is an iOS application for Notability, but there's also a Mac application, and I just like it as I have it as my digital notebook, so that's what I'm using these days. But honestly, I start off with a PowerPoint, and you can replicate the same thing in PowerPoint, and I use Camtasia to make my screen recordings. Then I upload those for students to watch. So again, if you want to see my exact process, that video is available.

All right, last— I think this is like almost my last question for you. How many Flipgrid fans do I have here today? Okay, so let's cue this one up here. So we launched the Flipgrid poll, and it's looking like a lot of folks love it. Maybe more have never used it before, so this is a great chance to share something powerful. All right, so we'll go ahead and share those results. It looks like about 70 have not tried yet, so feel free to share more, Stacy.

Okay, so I am obviously in the love-it camp. So Flipgrid, there are two main things that you can do in Flipgrid. One is that you can record—sorry, you can have students record responses, so it comes in all like a grid of student replies. I'm not going to focus on that today even though that is amazing. I use it in my math class all the time for students to explain their math thinking. They don't use any special whiteboarding or anything like that. They just use a phone, and they hover it over their piece of paper, and they talk about their math solutions, and it's all posted on one big grid.

But what I'm going to talk about today is more of like the teacher-created portion here since that is the focus of our session today. So when you're in Flipgrid—and this is free, free available for everybody—there is something called the Shorts camera, and that is to record a short video. You can record up to 10 minutes in here, so when I record a short, that's gonna do my whole screen recording and provide me with a whiteboard. This is super simple, alright? So what I'm going to do here is I’m going to go to my effects. I know I'm covering a lot rather quickly, so here we go. You can choose a board, and I can choose a whiteboard. What you can do here is you can also split the screen, so I could be like in the side of the video or I can just be like, "I want only a whiteboard," and again, I have some different types of paper that I can choose from.

Then all I have to do is press the record button, and now it's actually recording everything that I do. I can go ahead and open up a pen tool, I can change the color of my pen, and I can get to drawing. So it's very simple, very quick. I would just have this one screen. I can always pause if I needed to. I could reset my screen, so I could delete everything. You can even in here—just to let you know, there is a record screen feature in here if you ever want to use that to record your screen. If I didn't already give you enough options, right?

But what happens is once you make this—let me go down—it’s actually recording everything that I do. I can go ahead and open up a pen tool. Alright, so if you made a little mistake, there is a very simple editor here where you can like double—actually, sorry, you can double-click, and you know how you can trim like the beginning or end of the video? You’re able to do that here. So I can do that. I can confirm. Now, say you forgot to add a clip—you can add more—or you want multiple boards, you can do that.

Another way that I really like to use this is to, again, just upload a little image. Maybe I have an image of a graph, and then I can just draw on that graph. Let me show you how you do that. Add more. I can go ahead into my effects, and I can use the photo. You can go ahead and upload a screenshot maybe from your textbook or whatever it may be, and then you would be able to just ink on top of it. How can you ink on top of it again? You just go into these drawing tools right here, and that's really it. I won't show you all the fancy frames that you can do, which the kids love— you know, all that good stuff.

When you're all done, you go to next, you can title it if you want—choose a cover photo. So let's just choose something from the middle there. There we go. Confirm. Great image! The beauty of this is it's going to generate a link for me right now, and that's the link that I share with my students. That's it. Now this is a video—there's nothing else to do. There's no uploading; there's no downloading. This is a quick whiteboard style video. I guess it's preparing it still. That's it! See, it's available already. That's it.

So I’ll just stick with that. There's so much more in Flipgrid that you can do, but I’ll stick with the simple. Again, if I talked about that too quickly and this is the option that you're like, "Oh, this is great! Simple, let's get started with that one," I have a little video tutorial on how to set up your Flipgrid, how to get started with that also.

Alright, so I want to leave plenty of time for that Q&A, like you said. The last piece, which I'm not going to get into today, but I just wanted to present is the last piece of how do we engage our students during class? Because this is more like instructional stuff that we do. But what do you do during class time to make sure that all students are really participating? I am really lucky in that I actually have a class set of these Wacom tablets. You can see my students writing with the Wacom tablet. I pair this up with Paradox, and Paradox is an add-on for Google Slides. It's also available for PowerPoint online, and it allows me to see the work of all different students in this dashboard view in real-time.

This is how I was using it now where students don't actually have a tablet. I'm just doing the writing with my tablet. Students can still circle and answer, so I can see if students are all trying, if they're all responding, if they're giving it some effort, and then I can kind of, you know, write out my reply. The only reason that I bring this up is that we might have an opportunity to bring you all another webinar, so we just wanted to gauge some interest to see if that is something that you are interested in learning more about—the class discussion piece—learning more specifically about how I use Paradox. We could definitely do a whole webinar on that.

So we're going to do a quick little survey right after the session ends to see if that is something that you are interested in. I'm going to just close with this quote. I really believe if we empower students with the resources they need and coach them through the process of using these tools, then students can take ownership for their learning, and that's where the real magic happens. For me, flipping my classroom—giving my students all the resources through the video that I prepared them with before they even walk into class—oh my gosh! It's been so transformational.

I really didn't even get to talk about my flipped classroom, how that's transformed my teaching. I assign my videos through a tool where I can see how students are watching the videos. I can embed questions in the videos. I come to class prepared because I know what students need, and that has been really transformational for me. But, of course, the first step is knowing how to make the videos. So, hopefully, you got some ideas today, and we'll have plenty of time for Q&A. Of course, I want to share that code for you all to get a discount on a Wacom product. Thank you again to Wacom for offering this discount for everybody joining today.

There are a lot of different products to explore, so this link will be dropped into the chat. I see Jeremy's already done that. Thank you! You can explore the different devices that are available, and you would save 10% with the code that's available there.

Alright, should we dig into the Q&A? Let's do it! I'm about to give you a huge shout-out, Stacy, because I know you can't see it, but there is so much love pouring in the question section, saying, "Best professional development ever! I've learned more in 40 minutes than I learned in like 40 hours of traditional training." So thank you for being really, really actionable with the kinds of tools that teachers can use tomorrow, wherever their students are.

But let's back up one little bit here because at the very beginning of the session, Michael wants to know, "What do these tablets even look like? What does it look like when a teacher uses it?" If you don't mind holding up yours, just give folks a sense of how it looks and how it feels.

Okay, so this is the one that's really portable. This is the Intuos one—this is a small Intuos. So it's the one that you're seeing like on my screen share actually right now. It's a small one, the one all the way on the right. This is the Bluetooth version of it, and so literally, you know, you just press the button to turn it on and off, and it's Bluetooth-enabled.

When I am using the pen here, it works exactly like a huge mouse pad, okay? So think of this as a mouse pad. This top left corner corresponds to the top left of my screen, and this top—the bottom right is like the bottom right of my screen. So wherever I'm positioning my pen is where I'm going to be writing on the screen. I have a pen, so it mimics exactly—it's like a giant mouse pad—and I'm able to write with the pen.

So that's this style of tablet. I don't see my screen; I have to like look up at my screen to see where I'm writing. You might be thinking this is so difficult! Here's what I found: My students all have one of these; I have a classroom set of these. It takes about a month, so the first time they use it, they're like, "What is this thing? How am I supposed to write with this?" It does take about a month to get used to it—to get used to like where you're writing on the screen; you're not dragging it like a mouse, but you're actually just writing on the part of the screen. Once you get used to it—and you can't see, but there's these little grids on it too, so it's easy to like align and write straight—it’s really helpful to have those little grid lines.

I use it a lot. There are also little buttons here if you need to click and use it as like a right click or something, so you really can use this to navigate anything that you need. Yeah, I found you get used to it in about a month, and the writing on this is so wonderful. This is used by artists, so it's way more than I need as a math teacher, but it feels wonderful! It feels like you're writing on a piece of paper, which is what I love.

Then, the other one—what I use more often, especially now since I'm at home—this is the Wacom One. So it is like—okay, let’s see—much bigger, wow! It's 13 inches, okay? This one, and this is a pen display style one. I don't have it plugged in right now because I just didn't want to—I was afraid with all these people on that my internet would lag or something when I had too many screens plugged in. I have so many things plugged into my computer right now, so that's why I don't have it on.

But pretty much I keep this thing plugged in all the time into my computer. Again, you plug it in with a USB into your computer, so you plug it in with the USB. You also do have to power this one into a wall, so that's just something to know. But if you're making videos, you can see, like, kind of on my screen here, this would be the image. It's mirroring your screen; it's just like if you're in a classroom and you have a projector. You know how it mirrors exactly what's on your screen? That's exactly how this works. So it is like a second display, and you're able to see what you're writing on, so it feels a lot more comfortable.

I definitely like my Wacom One; that's what I use for all—right? So I use it for making my videos. I also use it for grading student work, so grading student work, I actually use Kami. Students just turn in a PDF. I open it; I open up the PDF in Kami, and I'm able to handwrite all over it. I'm also able to leave video comments and able to leave voice comments because we have a paid subscription to Kami. It's a huge tool if your school already has it, and you haven't explored it yet, I really recommend checking it out. If you have any questions, I have a video library on Kami itself, but I use it for that. I use it for lesson planning, and I use it as my daily notes because I can just mindmap whatever I want to do, and I'm using my Wacom One for that because I'm plugged in pretty much all the time right now. So I hope that helps!

Cool! That's great! And so, you know, the next obvious follow-up question is: "Hey, this looks amazing, but Max and I want to know, does it work with my platform? With my tools? In general, are these compatible with, like, Macs, PCs, Chromebooks? Do you know about that?"

Yeah, great question! It is compatible with Macs and PCs. It is not compatible with Chromebooks.

Okay, got it! And then you were showing so many of these applications, whether it was Jamboard or Kami—I assume pretty much anything where you're on a Mac and a PC and you have a document that you're interacting with, you can use the tablet on it—is that right?

Yeah, so again, any of these Wacom devices think of it as like how your—if your mouse currently works with the program and you're able to currently like press the pen tool and draw with a mouse and you know the unpleasant experience of trying to do that—then with the Wacom, you just literally now have a pen that you're writing like you're writing on the screen. So think of it as your mouse pad with a pen.

Cool! That's really helpful! And then I think the elephant in the room question comes from Janetta, who says: "Hey, I want one of these so bad, but how do I afford it?" Have you heard about teachers using DonorsChoose or other platforms to make this more available to their classrooms?

Yeah, I mean, definitely! People have asked their schools too. I know a lot of schools are providing them this year. If you wanted to ask for the most affordable option, the Wacom Intuos line would be the one that I would go for there. Honestly, I would ask for the Bluetooth one because it's only like ten dollars more for the Bluetooth versus the wired one, and it's something—this is my thing, and I've talked to some teachers about this who want to ask their school about it. This is not a device that we are using just now because of remote learning—not at all! I mean, I've been using these devices for years and years and years.

This is a device that's going to amp up our classroom in all different ways. There are so many ways we can use it. We can use it in class; we can use it before class to, you know, make our classroom-led videos. We can also use it post-class to grade student work to make everything be in one space for students. There's also a lot of benefit to having all of this saved for students in their Google Drive or whatever it may be because don’t forget if you are making this digital work and you're saving it for them in a digital way—giving them that digital feedback now becomes searchable! So that's something else that's really powerful.

Again, I've talked a little bit about Kami today, but Kami is what I use, and I grade the student work in that too, and this has OCR—optical character recognition—and that means that anything that's on here, even handwritten stuff, becomes searchable. Super powerful there! So that's what I would say is like this is not something that we're going to just be using this year.

Not to mention, so I showed you some of the newer Wacom products right now, but I'm being completely honest here. I'm not just saying this because Wacom is here with me, but the class set of tablets that I showed you—like this class set here—you can see that this tablet looks different than the one I showed you; that's because this is an older version. I got this class set in 2013. It is still going strong! I'm still using the same class set of tablets since 2013. Like what other technology are you using seven years later, and it works just as well as it worked on day one?

And that's the—I think the power of these things is because like it's not tied to an operating system or anything like that. You just plug it into your computer. Worst-case scenario? Now the USB doesn’t plug in, and I need a USB-C adapter. Like, that's really the only difference. But they have true staying power! These things are built to last! It's going to be, to me, an investment for—if you're making an argument to your school—it's an investment for your school.

Very cool! Well, speaking of staying power, I'm seeing so many questions about battery life because I think here in 2020 our phones are dying, our iPads are dying—we can’t even get enough chargers to plug everything in! What's the battery life on these things?

I don't know what the battery life is on the Intuos—the Bluetooth one. It lasts a really long time! I mean, I really don't know. I just plug it in occasionally. It's not like it's not going to run out during my class day! It also doesn't stay on the whole time, so I don't worry about that. The Wacom One has to be plugged into the wall all the time, so there's that.

And then the class set that I have is the one where they plug it in, so I've never run into that before because it doesn’t—there's no battery. So I don't—I don't know the exact specs on how long the battery lasts.

Very cool! I see a lot of questions coming in about like using this for specific use cases. I know you're a math teacher, but have you heard about teachers using this successfully with younger students, especially if you're giving them the tablets and asking them to input their own handwriting?

Yeah, okay! So I guess the first thing that I really believe in—I really do believe in the power of handwriting, both for students and for us as teachers. For example, when I make my flipped classroom videos, I'm always writing as I'm talking. I've seen some people, they feel like their videos look a little bit more professional when they write it all out ahead of time because their handwriting looks neater, you know, like they're kind of scripting it; they're able to write.

Then I think students follow as I'm writing, so I like to write and talk because they're doing the same, and I want them to be taking notes, and they're able to kind of see how I'm working through the flow of that problem. I think there's huge power in being able to write and talk, so like to me a lot of times I think that making a lesson where I kind of have maybe even I'm just using the Jamboard very simply, and I have a little bit of bullet points, but then I have—I'm writing as I'm talking. I'm writing out some bullet points there.

I think it's more engaging because students are seeing something on the screen versus just the flat text. Do you know what I mean? Even if you just like draw little images as you're going, that can be really powerful too! So, I also have a niece that's six years old, and she's also using Seesaw, and sometimes we get on the video, and we do it together. It's like she's trying to add the numbers, and she's doing really well with it, but sometimes she just needs those visuals!

So we're able to either draw them out—sometimes I tell my sister to go get her some crackers so that she can pull those up too! And, but you know, you could even take a picture of some of those, pull them into Seesaw or whatever it may be, and then use the pen to cross things out. I think that's the power—like starting to verbalize your thinking process.

Whether that's a student or you as the teacher who has a device, you're able to make it visual to students what’s going on. Again, not just like a PowerPoint presentation with some fancy animations. I personally just find this harder to follow. I need to see the writing, the flow. I also need to be doing the writing! To me, like I cannot—I don’t know about other math teachers. I cannot like type a math solution. I like when I'm doing my solutions, I have to handwrite it!

Totally! Maybe I'll type it up afterwards, but I can't think like that! There's something about the sketching, the doodling that actually unlocks your brain in a powerful way! Oh yeah, I also don't think completely linearly! I think that’s it too—like with all these whiteboarding apps, we can be writing in different spaces on the screen, and it doesn't have to be so linear.

So we really can map information together and help our students understand how all this stuff webs together. I think that's why I liked the Awe App that I showed you too, because you can have—like you can be writing here and here and here and here, and then you can zoom out and see that web all come together, make those connections.

Very cool! Well, speaking of making connections, you've connected so many educators across the country tonight, Stacy, to each other and to awesome opportunities in their classrooms. So I have to thank you so much on behalf of this audience.

That being said, any final words of wisdom as folks get ready for the end of the year and the start of a new one?

Oh my gosh, right? First, I just want to say thank you to everybody who is on this call today because I know how much everybody's already doing right now and then taking the time out this evening to just further grow as an educator. I mean, this is why I love teachers! When I first started teaching, I was like, “I know I’m in the right profession!” as soon as I saw how generous educators are, and just like that love of learning! So I really appreciate you being here, and everything that you know you all are doing right now in the classroom and trying to make it all work!

If I can help in any way, please do reach out. Again, my information is here. My contact information is on my blog. Also, if you are on Twitter, I'm very active on Twitter, and you can go ahead and leave me a message, and I will definitely respond back to you. If you click on any of the videos that I shared today, again, they're also in the PDF that you can take home later. If you watch some of those videos that I have on YouTube and you have a question, please just put it in the comments on YouTube! I definitely get to all of my YouTube comments!

So that’s sometimes the easiest way—you know, you’re watching and you’re like, “Well, what do I do here?” Just let me know, because as I said, I just wish that I could have come to this today and said, “Like, these are the three apps that you need!” But that wouldn’t be me being real.

Me being real is trying to find what you're doing at your school already and offering a solution that's going to work well for you and your students, even though I might have a favorite one that might not be what's best for you and your setting. So I hope that the variety of tools kind of got you thinking, and then you will be able to click on one of them, zone in on that, and as you do and as questions come up, please do reach out, and I’ll do my best to answer!

Cool! Thank you so much, Stacy! And thank you again to everyone for joining tonight. Just another quick recap: You will get an email with a recording of the session as well as Stacy's PDF. You'll get a link to that generous discount offered by Wacom, and everyone who joined live will automatically be entered into a drawing for one of five Wacom tablets, and we'll notify those winners shortly.

In the meantime, thank you, as Stacy said, for all that you do. We wish you a tremendous conclusion to the year and a great start to 2021, and we can't wait to see all the incredible things you do next based on some of these awesome tips. Thank you so much, Stacy, and goodnight, everyone!

Thank you! Bye!