Blog Post 5

Google Meets & Kami 

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Google Meets

Overview:

Google Meets and other video conference call technologies have become much more prevalent in schools around the country and around the world in response to the recent pandemic. Google products such as google meets are the platforms primarily used by the districts in which I have been employed. It is difficult to narrowly define the primary function of Google Meets within school because the applications of this product are so vast. All uses of Google Meets fall under the broader category of communication, and this technology can often be substituted for in person/face-to-face interactions. 

User Engagement/Influence On Communication/Information Consumption:

The use of Google Meets by students began during the school shut downs that resulted from the Covid pandemic. In these early uses of Google Meets, students were able to join their classes virtually to receive instruction and interact directly with their teachers and peers. As virtual learning progressed, students' use of Google Meets expanded. Students began to collaborate with peers through break-out rooms and some even scheduled their own google meets to work on projects, collaborate on work, and even to socialize. As school returned to some normalcy with all students in person, students continue to utilize Google Meets for group work after school from their respective homes, and when out of school for an extended duration due to medical circumstances to receive instruction from their teachers or school provided tutors.

Google Meets became a critical application for teachers during the pandemic. My first year of teaching was 2020-2021, which was hybrid for the entirety of the year, with some of my students remaining virtual the entire time. During that school year, I was able to use Google Meets to provide direct instruction, teach socratically, and facilitate some group work through break out rooms while displaying visual aids simultaneously. Following the initial boom of Google Meets at the start of the pandemic, its uses for teachers continued to grow. In the last few years I have used Google Meets for conferences with parents, department meetings in which members worked in different buildings, and CSE meetings. Google Meets has greatly improved the CSE and Parent conference process for schools because this communication tool allows parents more flexibility and yields higher parent attendance. Lastly, teachers have a far greater ability to invite guest speakers to their classrooms via Google Meets. As a history teacher, I could reach out to any museum or historical society around the country to increase my professional knowledge or invite these far away experts to share their expertise on relevant topics with my students.

Google Meets has greatly improved engagement of parents. Many districts, including ones in which I have worked, use Google Meets as an format option for parent-teacher conferences and CSE meetings. Prior to the usage of google meets, parents either attended conferences or CSE meetings in person or by phone. In-person meetings such as these work best for communication and collaboration, however in-person meetings are often very difficult for parents to attend with their work schedules or child care responsibilities. When these meetings are held through Google Meets, parents are able to join during their lunch break to avoid missing work, or from home while watching their children. Comparatively, Google Meets fosters greater communication with parents because documents and work samples can be displayed over the call and features such as translated subtitles can assist parents with low English proficiencies. In the three school districts that I have worked in, administrators and teachers report that parent attendance for these types of meetings has nearly doubled since the implementation of Google Meets.

Impact on Learning:

When Google Meets was first implemented at the start of the pandemic, it had the greatest positive impact on student learning out of any and all platforms used in schools. At the beginning of the pandemic, there was certainly a learning curve for teachers, students, and parents, but Google Meets was the only method available for teachers to communicate with their classes and have direct interactions with their groups of students. As teachers, students and parents improved their navigation of this platform, interactive activities and group work became commonplace. 

Although Google Meets was the best solution to continue the learning process during the pandemic, there were certainly many drawbacks. The level of attendance of students was certainly much lower than when students were in person prior to school shutdowns. Students in secondary schools were often left home alone so many would sleep through their scheduled meets, keep their cameras off preventing supervision, and many would play on their phones or games while logged into their google meets.  

Google Meets continued uses such as tutoring for students with absences resulting from extenuating circumstances, meetings between school employees, and meeting with parents have certainly helped to increase the communication and cohesiveness of each student's teaching team made up of their teachers, administrators, related service providers, and their parents. This improved team work certainly has helped to improve student engagement and student outcomes.

Privacy and Safety:

The use of Google Meets as a communication platform is fairly secure in that all Google products comply with Ed Law 2D to protect personal, identifiable information. There have been incidents that I am aware of where students have joined google meets for classes in which they are not students, and there have been instances where individuals unaffiliated with the school have joined Google Meets. With the correct configuration of the settings, teachers can approve or deny entry to regulate who is able to enter the Meets. Additionally, many students struggled, or were unable to find private/quiet spaces in their homes to join Google Meets, especially in circumstances where siblings shared bedrooms. In these instances, students had a tougher time engaging with classwork due to distractions in their environment. Building upon this distractibility aspect of learning through Google Meets, younger students who would receive regular prompting from classroom staff when in person had much less support through these Google Meet Classes. Many younger students were home with their parents who were working virtually for their jobs, which resulted in those students having less support during instruction. 

There are also outside factors that present a security/privacy risk for Google Meets being used in education. One instance of this was students who received individual counseling as a related service during virtual learning. These students were supposed to receive individual, confidential counseling with a school counselor, however, it was difficult to know who was in earshot of what was being said on the Google Meet. Examples that I saw as a special education teacher in a behavioral social emotional program were students who were in abusive homes. In these circumstances, students could not tell the trusted adults in their lives such as teachers and counselors what was going on because their parents could have possibly heard exactly what they told these school employees. If an abusive parent overheard their child reporting something, the second the Google Meet was over, they could receive even worse treatment from their parent. Additionally, if a student did report something and their teacher/counselor involved social services, social services often did not remove the child from the home. This meant that the child’s life did not improve and they would be stuck at home during virtual learning with their abuser with no reprieve. 

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Kami 

Overview:

Kami is a PDF and document annotation tool that has become widely used through schools around the country. This tool serves many purposes and has many functions including its main ability to aid in the completion of work in a digital format. This program allows for documents downloaded from the internet or scanned and uploaded to be opened, assigned and annotated/completed in a digital format. Kami also contains features that allow users to run text recognition to turn PDF documents into text-rich documents. Once documents are text-rich, tools within Kami such as the highlighter allow you to select text to add in annotations such as notes, comments, and reminders. On Kami documents, users can also use provided features to free draw, underline, erase, insert shapes, and insert math symbols and equations not not found on keyboards. Kami can also be used to provide accommodations such as text read, word/line tracking, and there is a provided dictionary within the program which can provide definitions for words highlighted by users.

  User Engagement/Influence On Communication/Information Consumption:

Kami became a revolutionary program for students during the pandemic because it allowed students to complete nearly all types of assignments and access all types of information when in a remote learning format. One of the major issues regarding schooling at the beginning of the pandemic was the question: how can we most effectively continue teaching. Along with Google Meets, Kami and similar programs helped make distance learning possible. At the start of remote learning, many students did not have school provided devices such as chromebooks and many did not have printers at home to be able to print out traditional worksheets assigned by their teachers. Once students had chromebooks, they were able to access their work and Google Meets through their Google Classrooms but many still would not have had a way to complete and submit their work without Kami. Kami helped to simplify the process of completing and submitting work. Students would not have to copy down or print out work to complete on hard copy to then have to scan/photograph their work to submit for credit. With Kami, students just needed a school provided chromebook and an internet connection to complete and submit work more easily given the world circumstances. In the schools that I have worked in the students have all had touch screen chromebooks, which has greatly enhanced the usefulness of Kami. For assignments in classes such as math which require symbols and formatting for work that is difficult to complete using traditional technology methods, Kami allows students to insert math symbols, equations, and freehand-write their work using their chromebook touch screen and Kami. Students are also able to collaborate on the same Kami document which has helped to streamline group work because all members of a group can be progressing on an assigned job within their group on the same document which results in one cohesive final document from each group. Students can also continue group work outside of the classroom when they are in different locations because unlike traditional group work with a single worksheet for the group, Kami allows all members of the groups continued access from anywhere. Students can also access homework assignments through Kami that they had lost the hard copy of to allow them to still complete their homework. Lastly, student organization is aided by this product, because students can organize their work for each class into digital folders which decreases lost work and assignments significantly. In turn, this helps students manage the volume of paperwork that would previously be carried in their binders and backpacks. Unlike in years past, students do not need to have overflowing binders for each class by the halfway mark of the school year, resulting in them either throwing out older papers or lugging around refrigerator sized backpacks to and from school.

For teachers, Kami was instrumental in adapting to teaching through the major world changes of the last few years. Many teachers who have been in the workforce for decades had little comfort with high levels of technology usage. Many of these teachers had binders full of hard copy assignments that had been staples in the classes for years. With the use of Kami, they could scan nearly any type of assignment and transform it into a workable distance learning resource. I know through the stories shared by colleagues who specialize in subjects requiring work such as mathematical equations, graphing, graphic organizers, and many other traditional school work formats that are not easy to create and display through traditional digital means, Kami offered a solution to these problems during remote learning. Through my own experiences, I have been able to use Kami to differentiate instruction in real time to share off to students and I have been able to annotate texts as a whole group with my classes to then share off those annotated examples/texts to each student for them to be able to use in independent/group work that came next. When using Kami to create digital assignments, transparency is also promoted as parents are able to have more direct access to see what their children are working on because parents can often view these posted assignments from their children's online classrooms. 

Parents are the least impacted group of students, teachers, and parents in the use of Kami, however there are several uses that improve communication, collaboration, and content consumption by parents from their children's school. Kami assignments are often posted on the online classrooms such as google classrooms which many parents have access to, so they are able to view exactly what their children are working on. This enables parents to better support their children in their learning. In terms of content consumption and communication, many forms and parent letters can be sent home to parents as Kami assignments which can circumvent the issue of parents not receiving notices sent home with their children. Forms and parent letters such as permission slips sent home to parents as Kami assignments allow parents to use the signature feature within Kami to instantly sign and return those forms.

Impact on Learning:

Overall, Kami has had a positive impact on learning by offering features that allow students to do the same things they would have previously done on hard copy assignments through a digital format. Kami does offer many more features than just allowing students to do traditional activities digitally, Kami has many “accessibility”  features that help to accommodate for the varying needs of students. Kami streamlines Special Ed consultant teachers' ability to quickly share off differentiated versions of work such as annotated copies, and provided notes. Kami also improves the ability to accommodate for students that require passages read, and assists students with low lexile levels through its provided dictionary features. Kami can also foster higher levels of collaboration than on traditional paper copy assignments for group work, prevent lost paperwork, and streamline the exchange of forms between school and home.  

As with all technologies and innovations, Kami is not without its flaws. If students do not have touchscreen enabled devices, many of Kami’s features are less user friendly. And if students don’t have their electronic devices charged, they cannot complete this type of work and they either need a charger provided or a paper copy instead. Additionally, if schools send home forms to parents in this format, parents need to regularly check their emails or just as many forms could be missed through this format as sending forms home with students.

Privacy and Safety:

Kami complies with educational law, so Kami does not sell or share any personal information but with all digital formats there is the potential for bad actors. If a school gets hacked any and all Kami forms that contain sensitive information can be compromised. Also, any forms sent home to parent/personal emails could be compromised if those personal emails are accessed by individuals other than the intended recipients.

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Required Literacies:

Both Google Meets and Kami require a certain level of digital literacy, media literacy and social literacy. Teachers who often post or initiate the usage of Google Meets and Kami need to have a higher level within these literacies to create, schedule and facilitate student and parent usage and participation on these platforms. 

As with all new technologies used in schools, there is a required level of digital literacy for all users including teachers, students, and parents. All users need to be literate in accessing, locating, and employing the features of Google Meets and Kami. Teachers tend to need higher levels of digital literacy in these programs to act in a presenter capacity and to help students and parents in their use of these programs.

Users also need to have reasonably developed media/social literacy to successfully communicate and collaborate with other users in Google Meets. Teachers need to be able to share their screen/window while also monitoring student activity and leading/facilitating communication. Students need to know how and when to unmute themselves to communicate without being disruptive, including using features such as “raise hand” to signal their intention to participate. Parents need to be able to locate Meet links sent to them and how to join the call and mute/unmute at necessary times.

Kami Users need to have developed media/social literacy to communicate and collaborate with users on that platform. Teachers need to be able to jump between assigned student Kami assignments to be able to add comments and suggestions. Students need to be able to collaborate on the same Kami documents to perform specific jobs without deleting the work of their group mates. Parents need to know how to receive and send documents between home and school to communicate through this alternative format. 

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Reflection on the implications:

Both programs, Kami and Google Meets, have many positive impacts on the educational process. In a world that is always continuing to increase in its use of new technologies, it is important for students to have exposure to and learning experiences in these new digital/technological formats. In all areas of work in the adult world, Google Meets and other video conferencing technologies are being used more and more. More and more frequently, companies are moving away from in-person meetings where staff have to travel long distances by car or plane to now meet through video conference calls. Additionally, the world is becoming more and more paperless, so students need to acquire these new literacies that allow them to perform traditional tasks through these new digital formats such as Kami. Kami and Google Meets are a good fit for use within secondary education, but they do require a background of developed skills in traditional literacy formats. Similarly to many other new media and digital platforms, parents are often unfamiliar with these programs when they are first implemented. In order for parents to best support students when platforms such as these are implemented, parent workshops or tutorial videos would certainly help in their support of their children's education. 

These programs absolutely align with educational goals as they allow learning to take place in alternative, authentic formats that have permeated daily life. These programs facilitate required content learning and standards while fostering increased literacy in new media. The implementation of these new programs provide learning opportunities that prepare students for the realities of the digital world in which we live.