Episode 702: Back to School with Tech: Ideas That Excite and Motivate

Ashley Mengwasser:

Educators. Hello. Welcome to your one-stop shop for Teacher Talk, Classroom Conversations. This award-winning podcast is a media collab of the Georgia Department of Education and Georgia Public Broadcasting. I'm Ashley Mengwasser, your host queuing up part two of our special three-part “minis” series, Back to School with Tech. Half-length episodes featuring interviews with educators captured at the Georgia Educational Technology Conference from last school year. We're sharing them now to boost your instructional prowess from the jump. Enjoy hearing favored tech tips and tools from Georgia ETC that are transforming instruction for teachers of all subject areas. There's a small gold mine in here for everyone. Let's listen in.

My next guest needs no introduction. It's Oprah.

Shelee McCorkle:

Yay.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Just kidding. I've been wanting to say that.

Shelee McCorkle:

Wish I had all that money to give out.

Ashley Mengwasser:

I know.

Shelee McCorkle:

Definitely not Oprah.

Ashley Mengwasser:

There's my David Letterman moment. It's actually Shelee McCorkle from Schley County. Where is Schley County?

Shelee McCorkle:

Schley County is located, they're a very small school district. We're located between Columbus, Georgia and Americus. A little bit closer to Americus, Georgia. Very small town, very quaint. I love it.

Ashley Mengwasser:

You love it.

Shelee McCorkle:

I do love it.

Ashley Mengwasser:

And you teach first through fifth grade STEAM, so you're in elementary school. What's the culture at your school like?

Shelee McCorkle:

It's wonderful. The culture, the kids are just amazing. We have our school, whole school system. We have about 1200 students.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Wow.

Shelee McCorkle:

The school culture. Very great kids love to learn, eager to learn. Love it there.

Ashley Mengwasser:

You're excited to be here today.

Shelee McCorkle:

I am excited today.

Ashley Mengwasser:

With all of these other educational rock stars. What does it feel like to be an educator at an experience like this?

Shelee McCorkle:

This is actually my first time joining and attending GaETC, which I have been super blessed by being here and seeing all the other educators and meeting people across Georgia and other states as well. It's just been a phenomenal experience.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Your mind's already been blown. You told me that you're a Canva loyalist, when we start thinking about tech tools, but that might be shifting a little bit after what you've experienced.

Shelee McCorkle:

Might be shifting.

Ashley Mengwasser:

What is that about?

Shelee McCorkle:

I attended yesterday a session for Adobe Express and I knew a little bit about Adobe Express, but after attending that session yesterday, I might be shifting a little bit towards Adobe Express for the things I use with my students.

Ashley Mengwasser:

What appealed?

Shelee McCorkle:

They might be mad at me though because they love Canva. They have fallen in love with Canva, but what I learned was it's very much like Canva, but I felt like there were some other tools that I haven't seen within Canva that are in Adobe…

Ashley Mengwasser:

That are available.

Shelee McCorkle:

... Express, yes.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Does this have any free option for educators? Adobe Express?

Shelee McCorkle:

It is free, so our system actually has it and I actually have learned that Adobe Express is free for school systems. They just have to have it downloaded and stuff, but yes, it's free to school teachers.

Ashley Mengwasser:

I want to know what light bulb moments or aha moments you've had here today. I know one is with a particular AI tool. Would you take us through that?

Shelee McCorkle:

Yes, yes, so yesterday I attended a session with a guy named Brian Buffington, I think.

Ashley Mengwasser:

What a name first of all, Brian Buffington.

Shelee McCorkle:

Brian, I think I have that right?

Ashley Mengwasser:

Yes. That's a powerful person.

Shelee McCorkle:

He was incredible, so his whole session was about making music using generative AI and the tool that he introduced us to is called SUNO, S-U-N-O AI. I immediately just had a lot of ideas. Basically, that whole session, the audience members, attendees, we came up with some ideas, just threw some things out there. He put it into the SUNO AI generator, we hit enter and it spouts out two verses of a song. Of course, you have to use those ELA skills and give it, you have to learn about how to prompt with AI, how to get what you are looking for.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Which is a skill in and of itself.

Shelee McCorkle:

It is definitely a skill in and in and of itself. We basically came up with trying to advertise for an upcoming Holly Jolly Christmas dance and we had a break dancing Santa and-

Ashley Mengwasser:

Naturally.

Shelee McCorkle:

Yes, of course, have to have that. Then we had an elf, I think it was a photo booth with an elf and sizzling hot pizza. So those were just some of the things that we-

Ashley Mengwasser:

Pizza. I don't usually think of pizza at Christmas time, but maybe I should be.

Shelee McCorkle:

It's what came out. We hit enter and basically SUNO AI will generate five, you get five free downloaded songs. I thought that was really cool because you can download and save the song and then upload it into Canva or your Adobe Express ...

Ashley Mengwasser:

If you're using that tool!

Shelee McCorkle:

Yes, it was just incredible and my mind just started rolling with what we could do. The first thing I actually want to do, I don't think I mentioned this to you a minute ago, is my old school and district I came from, had a principal who had very talented, her children, personal children were very talented and she had them come up with a song, a school song, and sang it. That's just like the school song was what we did all the time. Any assembly, any function, and it was very catchy. My mind went to, I'm going to get my kids to come up with a school song.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Look at this.

Shelee McCorkle:

You can even put into SUNO AI, like the type of voice you want. Do you want a lead female vocalist or do you want a gospel choir? You can actually put into the type of music you're looking for. It was just incredible. Lots of possibilities there.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Let me just rebut any claim folks might have about AI or technology stymieing creativity because in the example you just gave, it is a creativity generator.

Shelee McCorkle:

It is, and I think sometimes teachers have that, which we all naturally, I'm not going to lie. I too, when I first heard of AI, like, "Oh great, this is going to be terrible. Robots taking over our jobs." If you do have-

Ashley Mengwasser:

Fear.

Shelee McCorkle:

There is that fear factor initially, but I learned in another session yesterday, and I wish I could remember the exact quote, but it was something along the lines of if you don't learn AI and get on board with AI, then someone that knows AI could possibly take your job. I don't remember the exact quote, but it makes you think because it's just like the internet-

Ashley Mengwasser:

Stay on the crest of the wave, yes.

Shelee McCorkle:

You have to as an educator, and if we don't, we can't give our students the skills that they're going to need. It's not going anywhere. It's only going to get bigger and better and it's skyrocketing right now. I think we have to have that positive mindset. I do have students that we actually in our, we'll talk about that in a minute, but they're coming up with scripts for things and using AI. I think if teachers just have that positive mindset and you look for those ways that you can use it in your classroom, it's not stifling creativity. It's actually helping them with that process and thinking processes, so it's a great tool.

Ashley Mengwasser:

What strikes me about the experience you're having here at GaETC is you're having your own personal awakening as an educator. You're sitting in a room, ideas are trickling across that are dawning on you and awakening ways that you can integrate this into your lesson plans, the curriculum you already have to enhance it to make it better. It's a word I keep using in this episode. Enhancing.

Shelee McCorkle:

Enhancing. Agree.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Because you're using this to build upon what you already do and then you're getting that creative tingle yourself.

Shelee McCorkle:

Exactly.

Ashley Mengwasser:

When you're sitting in the room. Is that what you think the process recommendation is to other educators like you if they come to something like this? It's ...

Shelee McCorkle:

Absolutely

Ashley Mengwasser:

...be here to absorb.

Shelee McCorkle:

It is. You'll just be amazed at the things you will learn here. It puts a fire back into you.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Oh, I love that.

Shelee McCorkle:

That we should all have that kind of fire about what we can do with our students to first of all, make the teaching process a little smoother and easier. It is a very difficult job to have, but AI can make it a lot easier.

Ashley Mengwasser:

It sure can.

Shelee McCorkle:

It can.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Teacher's best friend, I want to hear a use case, so let's look at Wildcat TV.

Shelee McCorkle:

Okay.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Tell our audience about Wildcat TV and how you might integrate some tech tools there.

Shelee McCorkle:

Wildcat TV is a school announcement. I have a team that actually applied and auditioned to be a member of Wildcat TV. This year, that Wildcat TV is comprised of 14 fifth grade students. At the beginning of the school year, Wildcat TV auditions were held. I had about 25 students that applied and auditioned. And it's really just exposing them to all of the possible careers in media, and so basically-

Ashley Mengwasser:

I'm patting you on the back for this show.

Shelee McCorkle:

Yeah, they have a lot of fun. My students are learning to plan and to come up like using template sheets and who are we filming today? They're using iPads and technology and microphones and all kinds of things to go in film. They're going into classrooms to film students. We go over what are you looking for? What do we not want? What do we want? They're learning to edit within their iPads. Then they learn to Air Drop and edit into Canva-

Ashley Mengwasser:

AirDropping in elementary school?

Shelee McCorkle:

One thing that they have to do, which I'm still fussing at them about on their planning template sheet, we have kids everywhere. There might be some kids here filming the thought of the day and kids down the hallway doing the Pledge of Allegiance and these kids over here talking about an upcoming school event.

On their planning sheet they're supposed to check off. Yes, this has been filmed. Yes, it's been uploaded or Air Dropped to me, so I don't have to guess which iPad it was filmed on. It's a whole learning process and the level these kids were, a lot of them were confident anyway, but to look back at the first sessions of Wildcat TV this year, and I didn't mention this, but they're writing script as well and they have used some AI to help them write script just because it's more efficient. I don't think it's cheating, it's efficiency.

We do have a little bit of time that we're working with that they come to me and we have things to get done for that Wildcat TV to be edited and uploaded in time. They are just getting that whole immersive experience of doing all the behind the scenes stuff in order to have that final product of Wildcat TV. I actually have had some students, too, that are creating all the templates so they kind of know the outline of what I have created in the past and kind of what the outline of Wildcat TV should be. They have used Canva and come up from scratch their own templates to utilize and they love it because if I use one of their templates and we input everything in there, they edit it. They know at the beginning or at the end of that Wildcat TV session, it will say the template was created by Mia and Fisher, or whoever it was. They love to see what they've created on TV.

Ashley Mengwasser:

You are giving them a gift, Shelee. You're giving them the tools that they will use in the world at a young age where they can become masters of these tools now. And it's a beautiful thing. Thank you for being here Shelee McCorkle from Schley County.

Shelee McCorkle

Yes ma'am. Thank you for having me.

Ashley Mengwasser:

To bring us home in a flourish, wearing sequins is Amy Long, instructional coach with Stonewall Tell and nearby College Park. Welcome Amy.

Amy Long:

Thank you so much for having me.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Tell us about your school. I have not heard of Stonewall Tell.

Amy Long:

Absolutely. Stonewall Tell is an amazing school in College Park and we're one of the only IB schools at the bottom of South Fulton. We're excited to always implement project-based learning and just do our best to do cross-disciplinary learning.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Absolutely, and this is a full circle experience with Fulton's Vanguard, which Heather told us about. Why do you enjoy being on Vanguard?

Amy Long:

I'm a very proud tech geek, first of all, but I just love helping teachers grow and then just the functionality that technology can bring and the efficiency it can bring to our classroom. I love sharing that with teachers and leaders around Fulton.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Preaching the gospel.

Amy Long:

Absolutely.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Amy was actually a presenter here today at Georgia ETC. What did you present?

Amy Long:

I presented Power Up Your Feedback with Power Automate.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Tell me about that.

Amy Long:

Yeah, so we know that time is our biggest factor. It's our biggest limitation. Why not leverage AI to make our lives easier and still make us winners at our school? Basically, what we can do is just take a Microsoft Form and we're thinking about emails that we send all the time, like parent feedback emails or just any type of follow-up email that you may send, and it takes forever because you have to individually craft each email.

Ashley Mengwasser:

A fresh experience.

Amy Long:

It takes a lot of time, so why not save yourself hours, make yourself a Microsoft Form and leverage Power Automate or the Google version of that is Zenphi.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Zenphi?

Amy Long:

Mm-hmm, and basically, you would set a trigger whenever you hit submit on that form, it crafts a beautifully written email and sends it with the answers that you placed in your form to the parents, to your principal, to yourself, or whoever you need. It's a really great time-saver.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Incredible. Can you give me an example of some of the templates that you have saved?

Amy Long:

Sure, so as an instructional coach, we actually do our look for tools. When we go into observe teachers, we use a Microsoft Form to provide them feedback. As you may know, teachers sometimes feel frustrated when somebody observes them in their classroom and then there's no feedback for them at the end. They're like, "How did I do? Did I do okay?"

Ashley Mengwasser:

They want that feedback.

Amy Long:

Yes.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Teachers are pleasers!

Amy Long:

Absolutely, and we realized that was a problem and we know that to get better, faster, teachers need feedback faster. To solve that problem, we implemented AI at our school at Stonewall Tell. We Power-Automated that form to go back to teachers immediately as soon as we hit the submit button when we leave their room.

Ashley Mengwasser:

Do you know what I like about that?

Amy Long:

What's that?

Ashley Mengwasser:

Amy, they can look at it when they're ready.

Amy Long:

Absolutely.

Ashley Mengwasser:

It's there for them to consult. It doesn't have to be a face-to-face, which occupies more teacher time. They can sit with it and consult that at their leisure.

Amy Long:

Then another benefit to that, for you as the coach and the leaders, instructional leaders of our room, that gives you a record so you know what to talk about in your next coaching conversation. Then you keep the regular functionalities of looking at the data in Microsoft Forms. You can see trends across your school grade level and individual teachers. It's really awesome.

Ashley Mengwasser:

What were some of the reactions in the room when you were talking about this concept of automating feedback?

Amy Long:

Yeah, I think people just don't think about it. You know what I mean? They're like, "Let me just copy and paste the email," but one teacher actually mentioned sometimes when I copy and paste the same email and then tweak out the words, sometimes they'll mess up a pronoun or they'll forget to...

Ashley Mengwasser:

Change the name.

Amy Long:

...change a name out.

Ashley Mengwasser:

That's happened to me before.

Amy Long:

That's so embarrassing, so we're like caught. Whoops. Again, AI was going to help us be very accurate and we're going to make a frame basically with Power Automate or Zenphi that we can just plug those differentiated answers to from our form.

Ashley Mengwasser:

That is beautiful. For those who have not yet experienced GaETC. What do you have to say? You give us maybe three adjectives about what this conference is like.

Amy Long:

Yeah: powerful, exciting, and motivating. I think just walking around and seeing so many people that are passionate about technology, about the ways that we can implement it into our classroom to not only support student learning but teacher learning and then to benefit all of our people in our school and community members. It's just been great, and so I've learned actually so many, I'm a tech geek and I've learned so many cool new things here. Just love talking to like-minded people. If you're a teacher that just wants to save some time or learn something new about classroom management or a way that you can use technology, you should definitely consider visiting the Georgia ETC.

Ashley Mengwasser:

If the call to action were do this and change your profession today, what would you leave teachers with?

Amy Long:

I would say if they would be strategic, if we can align strategy with technology, then we know our results are going to be coming. We're going to be having those positive results because we're going to be able to leverage that technology to provide instant feedback or to save us hours of time where we can really focus on the most important thing, which is the teaching and learning.

Ashley Mengwasser:

What a fascinating interview. I can tell you're a tech person because you're so efficient, Amy, thank you for being here.

Amy Long:

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Ashley Mengwasser:

I'd like to thank technology for all the heavy lifting it's doing for teachers and students. You can register now for the 2025 Georgia Educational Technology Conference, taking place November 5th through 7th at the Georgia International Convention Center in College Park. There's one more piece to this three-part tech pie. It's fresh out the oven next week. Keep listening to Back to School with Tech interviews and transform your classroom instruction this school year. I'm Ashley. Goodbye for now.