Imagine This - Ideas & Stories for Creative, Meaningful Teaching

What does it actually look like to support over 300 classrooms every year?

In this episode of Imagine This, Dylan, Jen, and Carlo take you behind the scenes of their work as educational technology coaches. From co-planning lessons with teachers to jumping between kindergarten and grade seven classrooms in a single day, they share what they’ve learned about designing meaningful, engaging learning experiences with technology.
 
This conversation explores the evolution of their role, from early days focused on teaching tools and devices to a deeper, more impactful focus on curriculum, competencies, and student learning. Along the way, they unpack what makes classroom projects truly successful, why technology should feel invisible when done right, and how small moments of support can lead to big shifts in teaching practice.

They also walk through real classroom examples, including podcasting projects, terrarium-based science lessons, and collaborative inquiry work that connects students beyond the classroom.

Whether you’re an educator, school leader, or just curious about what’s possible in modern classrooms, this episode offers a candid look at the realities (and possibilities) of meaningful tech integration.
 
About Classmate

Classmate partners with educators to co-create engaging, meaningful learning experiences in the classroom. Rather than focusing on technology for its own sake, they work alongside teachers to design projects that spark curiosity, creativity, and real student engagement.

Through a blend of instructional coaching and technical support, Classmate helps schools bring ideas to life, making learning more collaborative, purposeful, and connected to the real world.
 
In this episode, you’ll hear:
  • [00:00:22] Introduction to the podcast and the Classmate team
  • [00:01:00] What it means to support over 300 classrooms each year
  • [00:02:03] Explaining the role of an educational technology coach
  • [00:04:17] What a typical week looks like across multiple schools
  • [00:05:59] From kindergarten lessons to grade seven podcast projects
  • [00:09:37] How the role has evolved from tech training to curriculum integration
  • [00:12:14] Why foundational tech skills matter (and how they’re applied)
  • [00:12:51] Teacher isolation and the importance of collaboration
  • [00:16:38] The terrarium project: bringing the water cycle to life
  • [00:21:53] Why technology should support learning—not be the focus
  • [00:22:34] The immigration podcast project and authentic storytelling
  • [00:25:13] Why real audiences make learning more meaningful
  • [00:29:04] Iterating on projects across classrooms and schools
  • [00:33:20] The fur trade survival guide and collaborative learning design
  • [00:38:03] Why time and structure matter for successful projects
  • [00:39:45] What teachers should know when starting with tech integration
  • [00:45:02] Why curiosity matters more than age or experience
  • [00:46:04] “We don’t teach technology”—we use it with purpose
 
Classroom Chronicles Articles discussed:
 
Resources discussed in this episode:

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Contact Classmate: 

Creators and Guests

Host
Dylan Ismail
Dylan Ismail is the host of Imagine This and an Educational Technology Coach with Classmate, a Vancouver based team that helps people in schools succeed with technology through fun, collaborative learning experiences.
Guest
Carlo Sayo
Carlo Sayo is a Creative Coach at Classmate, where he partners with teachers to design meaningful learning experiences that connect curriculum, creativity, technology, and student voice. Drawing on a background in design, community programming, and creative technology education, he collaborates with educators to turn ambitious ideas into authentic projects and experiences that engage learners through experimentation and creative problem solving. He believes meaningful learning can happen anywhere, especially when people feel connected through a shared purpose. Whether through community arts initiatives, youth programs, or classroom learning, Carlo is drawn to experiences that invite people to become creators and contributors to something larger than themselves. Carlo is particularly interested in storytelling, migration narratives, place-based education, and the ways creative production can make learning more meaningful, memorable, and visible.
Guest
Jen Chen
Jen is an educational technology coach with Classmate who collaborates with teachers to design engaging, creative, and inquiry-driven learning experiences.

What is Imagine This - Ideas & Stories for Creative, Meaningful Teaching?

Imagine This is a podcast about what’s possible in classrooms.

Each episode features conversations with teachers who are building meaningful, creative (and sometimes boldly real-world) projects — the kind that help students create work that matters beyond school. From documentary field trips and immersive role-playing games to student-made podcasts and more, we explore ideas that make learning feel alive.

Hosted by Dylan from Classmate — a team that partners with educators to co-create fun, collaborative learning experiences — the show blends reflection and storytelling. Some stories come from classrooms we collaborate in; others come from schools and educators we meet along the way. Each episode includes a teacher interview alongside reflection from the Classmate team on what worked, what surprised us, and what we’re still learning.

This show is for K–12 educators (and really anyone who cares about learning) who want school to feel more meaningful, more imaginative, and more real.

Dylan: [00:00:02] They were sitting in a social square doing a podcast about food. And you could hear the backgrounds.

Jen: [00:00:10] Like ancient civilizations. The students had made advertisements that were relevant to the time.

Dylan: [00:00:15] Hellofresh.

Jen: [00:00:16] YellowFresh, yellow.

Dylan: [00:00:18] Try this Caesar salad.

Jen: [00:00:20] Try our Caesar salad.

Dylan: [00:00:22] Came with 18 knives or something like that. How many times he was stabbed? Many times. Hey, welcome to Imagine This, a podcast about what's possible in classrooms. My name is Dylan and I work with Classmate, a team in Vancouver, BC that helps people in schools succeed with technology. I'm here with my colleagues, Jen and Carlo.

Jen: [00:00:43] Hello.

Carlo: [00:00:44] Hello.

Dylan: [00:00:45] And as educational technology coaches, we have this unique perspective where we get to support a ton of classrooms year over year. And friends, I noticed something recently. I did a count of how many classes we support every year. We're over 300 classes every year.

Jen: [00:01:01] That's a lot of classrooms.

Carlo: [00:01:02] That's a lot of counting.

Dylan: [00:01:04] It's also a lot of possibilities. In these classrooms, we get these amazing opportunities to collaborate with teachers, to support with tech integration, and to co-create lessons and learning experiences that we know have a real impact in the classroom. So today, we're going to take you a little bit behind the curtains and share with you some of the incredible things that we've learned about supporting 300 classrooms every school year. Let's get into it.

Carlo: [01:30] Let's get into it.

Jen: [01:31] Let's do it.

Dylan: [01:37] Okay. Carlo.

Carlo: [01:38] Mhm.

Dylan: [01:39] We're educational technology coaches, but a lot of the times when we say that in public spaces to people who are not in education, they look at us with a 'oh, yeah, that's nice'. So what do you say to them, when they say, "what does that mean?"

Carlo: [01:53] Yeah. So when I think of somebody who's outside of education and I have to explain my role to, I usually think of an auntie at a family party. So. Hi, aunties. I usually start with the most basic thing, which is, we support educators with creative projects through the use of technology in their schools. And then it usually just leads into more questions. But that's kind of my starting point, is that we support educators to do creative and engaging things with the use of their technology.

Dylan: [02:31] That's a really incredible way to start, and I'm sure the follow up questions are something like, "oh, so they must have like a ton of iPads or a ton of Chromebooks."

Carlo: [02:39] Yeah. Usually the follow up question is like, "oh, so you work with computers?" And I say "yes sometimes". And then I say that "all of that is possible through the infrastructure that our tech team has to actually set up for us." So once all of the Chromebooks and iPads and the Wi-Fi and all of that is working, then we can do all the fun things that allow students to be more engaged with what they're learning.

Dylan: [03:00] Yeah. So technology doesn't normally succeed in a school unless it disappears. The problems disappear. So the other half of our team, Kelvin, Derek, sometimes John, who's also there, they're the ones that really set up the network infrastructure, the device management. And when we roll into the schools that we've that we partner with, we kind of look like rock stars, right? We show up. Everything has been completely smoothed over. There's no Wi-Fi problems. All of their iPad carts look beautiful. All of their brand new MacBooks have been set up.

Carlo: [03:37] I mean, even rock stars have to have someone to carry the cables and set up the show.

Dylan: [03:43] Don't talk about Kelvin and Derek like that. They will pull the plug on the Wi fi as soon as we get back into the schools. We love them, we love them. They do all of the hard work so that when we.

Jen: [03:54] So that we look good.

Dylan: [03:55] So that we look good. Yeah. Yeah. So when we roll up, Jen, what does our week look like? Starting on Monday, what does our week to week look like when we're going to schools on a regular basis?

Jen: [04:07] Yeah. Yeah. This is one of my favorite questions to answer no matter who asks, because I think we're in such a unique position. A typical week for our team, we start off our days typically, together in person at the office. And this is a great chance for us to meet as a team, either as an entire team or sometimes in smaller groups to talk about things that are coming up, things that we're excited about. Just share stories.

Dylan: [04:32] Classroom projects.

Jen: [04:32] Classroom projects.

Dylan: [04:33] Maybe record a podcast.

Jen: [04:35] Exactly. It's Monday today. It's Monday today. And, for me, it's a great way to start my week. People usually get the Sunday scaries because they're worried about Monday. And I never feel that because I'm like, Monday, I'm just going to get to see my team and do some work together and get ready for the week together. So that's Monday and then for the rest of the week, Tuesdays through Thursdays, typically the three of us are at a different school, either for all three of those days or sometimes two. It just depends on the schedule in our schools. And when we walk into those schools and each school is a little different, obviously, but generally speaking, our calendars are already booked up either by teachers that book some time with us to sit down and chat, ask some questions, or we've pre-booked time with them to check in on a project that we've been talking about for the last few weeks, or scheduled a time to be in a classroom. And these are the days that look the most different. Not a single day looks exactly the same.

Dylan: [05:40] I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, Jen, but a couple of weeks ago, you actually ran Pro D for the entire staff on how to use Sphero Robots.

Jen: [05:49] Yeah.

Dylan: [05:50] Yeah. So your weeks are kind of different depending on when we ask you what you're doing.

Jen: [05:57] Yeah. At that particular school, it was just because they got access to, they got to purchase a class set of Spheros, which is super exciting because it just opens up so many more opportunities and doors for classroom projects and the way to integrate that into their curriculum. But before all of that, they need to know how to use them. And so we're still currently in the process of going through that with the entire school, like all the classroom teachers. That was with the K to one teacher. This week it'll be the grade 2 to 3 teachers. We're doing that so that we can use them in the creative matter that we talk about. And so our days look sometimes right in the morning. We can be in a kindergarten class doing a project on push and pull, forces in motion. And then right after recess, we're in a grade seven class, checking in on a podcast project that they've been working on. And sometimes it feels like whiplash, but in the best way, because the content is different, the curriculum is different, but the kids are also just the students depending on the age and the way you interact with them.

Carlo: [07:04] You could say that there's like a mix of teacher training, planning with teachers, and then actual lesson delivery in front of the students.

Jen: [07:11] Yeah.

Carlo: [07:12] So there's a lot.

Dylan: [07:13] I can't remember who exactly I was talking to, but we landed on this idea that our responsibilities and the people that we teach age from age 6 to 66. I would even broaden that range a little bit. We've even had like five year olds. Well, I mean, in kindergarten, they're five.

Jen: [07:30] Yeah, they're five.

Dylan: [07:31] They're five years old. And some teachers are older than 66. So we're like, we've spanned that whole range.

Jen: [07:38] I think we just liked the sound of 6 to 66.

Dylan: [07:41] Yeah. It's like what you would find on the back of a board game.

Jen: [07:43] Yeah.

Dylan: [07:43] Ages 6 to 66. It's kind of incredible the amount of variety that we can encounter in a day. But the cool thing is that all of this is being centered on one thing, which is creating these educational experiences within a school, within a classroom that focus on like engagement and using tech in meaningful ways, utilizing tools that maybe teachers wouldn't normally put into their repertoire without the support of someone who thinks about this all the time.

Jen: [08:14] And sometimes all it takes is just a single sit down session with someone that you feel comfortable with, like a friend showing, hey, like, check out this thing that you've been wanting to try out but haven't necessarily had the time to or just haven't necessarily been able to yet. And as soon as you see how simple it can be, that's the first step, right? Like that's the first step in getting it into your repertoire. That's the first step in thinking of maybe I can experiment with this.

Dylan: [08:43] Just a little bit of exposure.

Jen: [08:44] Yeah, exactly. And then to take it a step further, if you want someone to experiment with you, that's what we're here for as well.

Carlo: [08:51] It's like providing support from the classroom to the staff room.

Jen: [08:55] All the way around the staff room to the classroom, both sometimes.

Dylan: [08:59] Staff room to the classroom. We're gonna keep working on those, but that's the rest of the episode. Okay. So there's a lot of surprising things about this role. We've been doing this now, I've been doing this for seven years. Jen, you joined us four years ago, Carlo, a year before me. So eight years, I've been doing this a while. Carlo, what's one of the things that surprised you when you started working in this area of integrating tech and supporting teachers?

Carlo: [09:27] I think when we first started, a lot of the job was really teacher training. It was, here's how you use your device, here's how you use your device, first of all, and then here's how you use your device. Here's how you use your projector. Here's how you use the apps that you're using. Here's the software that you'll be learning how to use. And it was very teacher focused, very much in front of the educator to be able to use the devices that they have been allocated. We did a little bit of classroom stuff at the beginning, but it wasn't really our focus. And I think a big part of what we've learned over the years that I think I didn't expect from from the beginning, is how much we've had to dive into the curriculum here in BC, how much we've had to understand about competencies and rubrics and assessment, and how much that has really become the job is understanding all of that so that we can provide the support that we need for educators and build interesting projects in the classroom and all of those things, the curriculum, competencies, assessments, the way I see it is that it's not really just a part of the job, that's become really central to how we do our work and the success of our work.

Dylan: [10:46] We still obviously support teachers with some of the core use of the technology in their classrooms, but that's all in service of trying to get them to create these engaging learning experiences in their classrooms that are directly linked to the curriculum, the skills that the kids are developing, and finding ways to support students in ways that meet them where they're at. I think a good example would be using Seesaw to record audio. In earlier grades, where written output is a little bit slower, and you're trying to capture reflections that you might not have the time to sit down and have them all read. But, if you have a couple of minutes, you can record a quick video or a quick audio recording with them. So learning those core skills now as a teacher that we focused on a long time ago, we're still bringing those through, but we have this connection now to making sure that those skills are in service to the students that are in their room.

Carlo: [11:44] And to your Seesaw example, I think it's the difference between understanding the difference between knowing how to press the record button versus communicating your thoughts with audio in Seesaw, right? And so those are very different things, but you have to know the foundations to be able to communicate something that is accessible, I guess.

Dylan: [12:04] One of the things I think that surprised me was, and coming from a collaborative team that like ours, where we do a lot of talking, is that there's a lot of teachers that have to struggle with some isolation in the classroom and not having a lot of places to go to come up with new ideas or to spend time, like you said, Jen, being exposed to different ways of teaching or different ways of creating experiences in their classroom aside from,the traditional like Pro D days or networking days or things that that are on these large scales. There's not a lot of time built into the day.

Jen: [12:41] Yeah. Not day to day.

Dylan: [12:42] To yeah, to collaborate with their colleagues. And especially in schools that might be like a single stream school where there is only one grade four teacher. There is only one grade five teacher. They don't have a lot of other grade five teachers to talk to. And yes, the curriculum is close to six and four, but it would be really nice to talk to somebody who has familiarity with the grade five curriculum. Right. So the isolation was kind of a shock to me. I don't know for you, Jen, if you noticed the same thing.

Jen: [13:08] Yeah. I mean, I think I had the luxury of coming into the team last. So things had been established or experienced or figured out within the two of you where you were able to share some of that with me.

Dylan: [13:20] Our wisdom.

Jen: [13:22] Yeah, exactly.

Carlo: [13:24] Our mistakes?

Jen: [13:26] What did I call you guys? I called you my training wheels. But honestly, the isolation part of teaching didn't surprise me coming into this job, but it was surprising to me years ago when I very, very seriously contemplated going into teaching because I enjoyed it, I really enjoyed teaching. In my early days, one of my first jobs was to teach in summer camps, but it was a science based summer camp. So a lot that we were following curriculum and following content. And I seriously considered it. And a lot of my friends from that work environment ended up becoming teachers. And that was one of the things that was brought up all the time, which was to some extent, isolation. It was coming from this team environment where you're working all together to teach these programs together to then being in a classroom by yourself, coming up with curriculum and content on your own and then teaching it. You're never alone with your students, but you're not like in a room with colleagues all the time. And I like being in a team environment too much.

Dylan: [14:31] It's also the double edged sword of the BC curriculum, where you have so much flexibility to kind of teach the way that you want to teach. But in order to discover that method, that way that you want to teach, it would be really nice to talk to people while you're doing it.

Carlo: [14:48] Right.

Dylan: [14:49] It is interesting that we have this perspective where we can move from classroom to classroom and share ideas across grades. And obviously the schools that we support are K to seven. And so we have a very specific window of teachers that we support and ideas that are directly transferable from school to school. That's why we started the Classroom Chronicles, so that we could share projects out into the world instead of just keeping them for ourselves on the Monday where we discuss them and share them amongst the classes that we support. So we wanted to get that out there. And this podcast is another way that we wanted to get these stories out there.

Jen: [15:25] Yeah. And I think the Chronicles was one of the most obvious ways that we started seeing connections being made from class to class, because teachers would just read something we wrote the week prior about a project in a grade four class, and as the grade for the singular grade four teacher in that school, immediately they go, can I do that? Can I try that?

Dylan: [15:47] When's Jen gonna be here?

Jen: [15:48] Yeah. Like when can we do this?

Carlo: [15:50] Yeah. I've talked with teachers before, even within their own school, within their own staff, about this desire to have a show and tell of what's happening within each other's classrooms. And I think in a way, our Chronicles contribute to that because we're able to say, "hey, check out what happened in this other grade three class from another school. Is this something you want to try in your own classroom?" Or "here's a success story that we've had from kindergarten. Do you want to try this in your class?"

Dylan: [16:17] Yeah, on that note, Jen, you had a connection between two classes that started with a class that you did yourself when you did a terrarium class. Can you tell us about how that went?

Jen: [16:28] This was a couple of years ago. My sister had surprised me with a terrarium building class for my birthday. It was a gift. It was my birthday gift. And we went to a really nice studio somewhere in Vancouver, spent two hours building just this most beautiful terrarium in a big glass jar. And we learned all about what type of environment does it do your plants need or your terrarium needs to survive? And then built these very esthetically pleasing looking terrariums, which I still have right now.

Dylan: [16:59] Still exists? Still alive?

Jen: [17:02] Yeah, almost two years now. And I've had to prune it like the plant inside doing great. And it was shortly after that within the next few months where a grade two teacher was talking to me about the water cycle and saying like, "hey, the way that I'm teaching the water cycle, I want, I want something more hands-on. I want something fun." And the water cycle, it's a big thing. You can't really, there are ways and I've done smaller ways of you can put water in a Ziploc bag, tape it against the window, and you can start to see the condensation rise and precipitation fall down. That's a great example. But she was like, "okay, what else is there?" And during this class that my sister took me to, we were talking about how in this terrarium, you get to see every stage of the water cycle, essentially because we were watering it at the time to introduce water to it in the first place, but over a year and a half, I've watered it like once because that's just how it works.

Dylan: [18:01] Recycling.

Jen: [18:02] Exactly. I had this moment where I looked at her and I was like, what if they made terrariums? She looked at me like I was crazy.

Dylan: [18:13] As we normally do with new ideas.

Jen: [18:15] Exactly. And I was like, hear me out, hear me out. Showed her some pictures of my terrarium and some pictures of the condensation. And I even went home later and started taking pictures of what it looked like throughout the day.

Dylan: [18:26] Started documenting.

Jen: [18:26] I started documenting and showed it to her and we decided, let's do this. I think we can build a terrarium in the class. And it would be such a great way for the grade twos to see the water cycle happen right in front of them. And then exactly what I was doing was going into Seesaw, which they were already familiar with, and taking pictures throughout the day. I think they did it for like a couple of weeks and they would call out the different stages, whatever it happened to be in. And so we did that in the first classroom. We wrote about it in our Classroom Chronicles. So there's a newsletter on that. And then another teacher from another school, another grade two teacher, they didn't know each other approached me and said, "Jen, did you build terrariums in this class?" And I was like, "yeah". And she was like, "all right, how do we do this? I want to build terrariums in my class. I've also been thinking about the water cycle."

Dylan: [19:36] It's not on purpose, but a lot of times throughout the year these projects happen around the same time. And so we post it. It shows up. Another teacher is like, I'm about to do this project. I would rather do it this way. The integration with using Seesaw to document, I think is such a natural connection there where documenting the water cycle through the actual water cycle that's happening in front of them using a tool that they're already familiar wit just connects so easily.

Jen: [20:09] Yeah. It was a no brainer to have it be a part of this whole process.

Dylan: [20:12] Yeah. And this is where setting up the infrastructure first, having iPads, having Seesaw accounts, being able to sign in. They already do. I'm assuming some of their reflections or journaling in Seesaw. So this was just sort of a natural connection of that tech. It wasn't focusing on it.

Carlo: [20:28] You're scaffolding those skills, right? Because at the beginning of the year, they might be signing in for the first time. They might not know all the tools, but then they have to become familiar with it. The point isn't that they're familiar with the tools just to do it, they're familiar with the tools so that they can document learning in other areas. It becomes the thing. It just becomes another classroom tool that they use.

Jen: [20:49] Yeah. And in one of those schools, I don't actually remember if it was the first or second. In that class, they weren't exactly super comfortable with using Seesaw yet. I think they had voice recorded before, but they had never taken a picture. And so before we even got into the terrarium making, there was a class that I helped out with just like a scaffold that I was learning to start there. And that's another reality of what it looks like during a typical week.

Dylan: [21:14] Yeah. So this is great. So we have a creative project that we want to do in a classroom, but the skills aren't lining up with that project yet. And so now we have an opportunity to go back to basics or sort of like the first steps.

Jen: [21:27] Yeah. And that never stops us.

Dylan: [21:29] And scaffolding up towards that creative project. I think this is something that we definitely have learned over the last 7 or 8 years is that when you jump into the project right away and those skills are not there first for any teacher listening, they're going like, duh, of course.

Carlo: [21:43] But I think that's like a big surprising thing that maybe some teachers aren't aware of is that like the planning of all of that really starts from the beginning. It's not something that is like, now we need to integrate technology into a lesson somehow. Technology is not the lesson. It's like the lesson is somewhere else. And we're using technology to share what that lesson was about or share the learning. It's all part of it. It's not something that just gets added onto at the end.

Dylan: [22:10] I think a really good example of that is the immigration podcast that we've done in countless grade five classes.

Student 1: [22:18] Hi there. I'm the host of this podcast, and this is my immigration story called From There to Here, pisotwo. Have you ever wondered how your family came to the place you are today? Well, that's what I'm going to find out. So I'm interviewing my grandfather. He was born in 1942, June 10th.

Dylan: [22:44] This was from a teacher. What was it, three, three, four years ago now?

Carlo: [22:48] I think we started it four years ago.

Dylan: [22:50] Four years ago? And the project centered around an interview with someone in the student's life who had immigrated to Canada or was related to somebody who immigrated to Canada and knew the story of their immigration.

Student 2: [23:01] Hello, everyone. Your host of From There to Here. In today's episode, I will be taking you on a family background journey. Let's go. Have you ever wondered why your family.

Dylan: [23:13] And the idea of the podcast was that they would retell the story through the podcast. So not just recording the interview and saying, I've recorded a podcast, but record the interview, write a script, write the questions for the interview, and then produce a podcast at the end.

Student 3: [23:30] Hey there viewer, it's another host, back with you on From There to Here and welcome to a new episode for...

Dylan: [23:43] And that project is inherently like a tech project. You are recording voice, you are editing audio. We've even added on the element of podcast artwork and created a video in Canva that plays back the episode. There's a lot of tech skills that go into creating this, but I wouldn't say that the podcast project is assessed as a tech project. It is a social studies project about learning about immigration, learning about push and pull factors. It is a writing project that focuses on synthesizing ideas from the interview that they had done first, and then turning that into a story and making sure that your script is impactful and using sound effects. It's those things that really hold the project up. And the technology is just there to support this sort of media that allows them to experience all these things.

Student 4: [24:37] Have you ever wondered how you came to Canada? I have. This is From There to Here podcast episode six.

Dylan: [24:43] The original version of this project, Carlo, maybe you can tell us about the original version of what the immigration project was before it was the podcast.

Carlo: [24:50] Before a podcast, I think the way that many of these immigration units start is a presentation, and I can tell you from just different ones that I've witnessed, it often starts with an interview because I want to come back to the interview portion in a second here, but a lot of it comes down to interviewing someone that they know who's immigrated to Canada and retelling the story somehow. But often it's like, here's a photo of them on a slide. Here's their story, in which sometimes they write an entire page and they just paste it onto a slide. And I've witnessed a student have his back turned to the class, and he literally just read the whole story. And it took a really long time. So there was no editing involved. I think like when you imagine all of the skills that come from a single project, again, it's not just hitting record and publishing. You're synthesizing, you're analyzing the story, you're rewriting the story, you're drawing the lessons out of that, and then you're presenting that.

Carlo: [25:53] So there's a lot of steps there that show a progression of learning. What I think is really, really valuable out of this particular podcasting project versus other podcasting or audiobook projects that I've done that are similar in technical scope, but I think what's really special about this one is that there's a sense that it's very real, that they have to interview somebody outside of their classroom, and they are left with a product that they share with that person that they interviewed. So they have a real audience to listen to this. I've done audiobook projects that kind of go through the same process, but there's no audience other than the teacher who listens to it. And it doesn't hit as hard and it doesn't have like a, I don't know if the learning is as impactful because the students don't have anywhere outside of their classroom that they're presenting this to. And when there's something outside and real and there's actual people involved, I think the learning gets internalized so much more strongly. I think the learning gets internalized in a strong way.

Dylan: [27:01] Yeah. I mean, I think what you're touching on is our integration of project based learning and having an audience making projects visible outside the classroom. And this project is something that does that.

Jen: [27:15] Giving the students a role.

Dylan: [27:16] Giving the students a role. And a project like this does that without it being focused on, well, how are you going to record this? How are you going to make a video? Those are all just sort of like secondary skills to the real product, which is you are creating a story that you can share with your family, or you can share with the people that you recorded.

Jen: [27:35] And those things still need to be understood and taught and done well. But yeah, it can be applied in so many different ways. This podcast project, I think since that and since you started doing that in that class has had so many iterations, not just in terms of the same project, but in different grades, different topics. We've done it in, I think a lot of our intermediate grades.

Dylan: [27:59] Yeah, we did an ancient civilizations-like travel podcast where they were sitting in a social square doing a podcast about food and you could hear the backgrounds.

Jen: [28:10] Like ancient civilizations, the students had made advertisements that were relevant to the time. What was it? It was.

Dylan: [28:19] Hellofresh.

Jen: [28:20] Yes, YellowFresh.

Dylan: [28:22] YellowFresh, try this Caesar salad.

Jen: [28:25] Try our Caesar salad.

Dylan: [28:27] Came with like 18 knives or something like that. How many times he was stabbed?

Jen: [28:32] Yeah, however many times. Yeah.

Carlo: [28:34] We should just play some of those ads on this podcast.

Jen: [28:37] Yeah. That's true.

Student 1: [28:43] Hello, all you lovely legions. Welcome back to another episode of Ate Food Brutus with your host, Alirio Varicosas. Today with me, I have a very special guest, famous winemaker, Hortensia Vinum.

Student 2: [28:58] Happy to be here, Alirio.

Student 1: [29:01] As you can guess, today we'll be talking about the importance and impact of wine in the Empire. But before we begin, here's a message from one of our sponsors, Chambers and Chariots. Are you ready for adventure? Have you ever wanted to storm Carthage and bring glory to the Empire? Well, now you can.

Jen: [29:24] And then in grade six, you know the human body system. So they were podcasting as doctors and specialists, being interviewed about their field and the conditions that they were that affected the different body systems they're learning about. So many iterations have come out of that based on that one project and other teachers seeing what was happening and being like, I want to do that.

Dylan: [29:44] Speaking of teachers, seeing what other people are doing, Carlo, you are doing a fur trade project right now and you're doing it in two classes, like week after week in two separate schools.

Carlo: [29:54] Yeah. So two separate schools and their timelines sort of lined up. I was working with two teachers who are both new to the grade four curriculum, and they both asked if there's anything that we could do around the fur trade and how to get students to learn a little bit more about the fur trade. And so we took some information out of the social studies textbooks. And we thought, how can we actually turn this into something that is not just dry reading of the material or slideshows of the material separately? At first I started developing this with the two teachers of creating a survival guide to the fur trade. So the question was like, how do you take your knowledge of what you're learning and then share it with others? So if you are an expert who has survived the fur trade, what is the knowledge that you need to know about that and then share it with other people? And so the survival guide was kind of that thing of like, you've become an expert, we want you, we want to hire you to write a book about your experience. So what the kids had to do is they had to learn about different roles that might have taken place during the fur trade. They had to have a biography of like, who they are as a fur trade explorer/author, who they worked for. So whether it was like the Hudson Bay Company or the Northwest Company, and what are some of the things that you might expect on a fur trade expedition? So what are the dangers? Who are you going to meet? What will you trade? So they started out with a biography because every book needs an author.

Carlo: [31:26] And then we had them role play in groups because an expedition is always in groups. So they had different roles on the expedition. And it was interesting how this turned out because one class took their biographies and like, they went all out with a writing project and they went into their background of like where they are from Europe and like what their trip was before they came to Canada. And we were like, okay, yeah, but you remember that the fur trade happened at this time in Canada on rivers and not big ships where you're going to get scurvy and stuff like that. So we had to readjust. But they wanted to go back to the backstories of these characters. They went all out. And again, you know, if you're assessing the writing and their sophistication or how they build this character, that's fine, even if it wasn't completely centered on the fur trade. In the other class, the teacher took roles and kind of assigned roles to the students. And so it was much more structured. They still were able to create their backstory, but they had a much better framing for it. And then when we moved on to the section of, okay, so now you're going to meet other fur trade explorers and now this is your expedition team.

Carlo: [32:42] You are a cook on this team, or you are an interpreter on this team. You're a hunter. So what are the supplies that you want to bring that you feel are important for your expedition, but you're limited in terms of the weight that your canoe can carry, and you're limited by the amount we call them trading units, like the value of your goods. So muskets and wool blankets, repair kits, food. And so they had to learn to negotiate what kind of supplies they were going to bring. So if a hunter is like, well, I need like five muskets, and the rest of the team was like, why do we need five? You know, well, we could trade with them. Oh, but they weigh this much and we can't fit all of that in our canoe, or we were going to run out of our budget because they're expensive. So now they're learning these skills of negotiating and collaborating with each other and advocating for themselves as that character about what they feel is important. And then they have to do a reflection on it. Okay, here's what I thought I needed to bring. Here's what we compromised with. So they're learning all these skills of negotiation. And a lot of it was kind of we really wanted to integrate math into it. That's why we had weight limits, right? Why we had like trading units? So they had to tally up everything and finally have an inventory of their stuff. Yeah. And that all went into their fur trade, like their guide.

Dylan: [34:00] And so you were working with one class and you were testing these things out. And then the next week, you would take what you learned and you brought them to class and say, hey, this class did this in this way. You guys should do it this way.

Carlo: [34:11] Yeah, and it was really interesting because one class was very open. Like, I'm so grateful to these teachers because they're both open to just experimenting.

Dylan: [34:23] Trying something new.

Carlo: [34:23] It was the first time they were doing it. It's the first time I was working with them. One class got the benefit of what the first class did. And so we could kind of get a better version of it. But even if that wasn't necessarily the case, their teaching styles were very different. And so I think you would naturally have these breaks or these variations regardless. And it's where you identify the learning, right? And so we got to one point where the one teacher wanted to finish off the unit. And so the production of the guide itself was quite rushed, but the value of the learning was in the writing and the collaboration and like the negotiation and the reflection of that process. And it kind of ended out that like the output of the guide itself maybe wasn't as clean.

Dylan: [35:14] Though the journey there.

Carlo: [35:16] The journey there.

Dylan: [35:17] And most of the learning came.

Carlo: [35:18] And even though output in some ways is still important because that shows what you've learned throughout it all. But next year is going to be amazing. It's going to be a great project.

Dylan: [35:28] Yeah. This is the iterative process, right?

Carlo: [35:30] Yeah, exactly. And I think that's like the neat thing is that we can take something and improve on it. We have that luxury, I guess, of saying like, hey, we've now experienced this, I can take this out. I'm not as busy as a classroom teacher who has to move on to something else. We can iterate on this and work with that teacher again next year to make this better.

Dylan: [35:51] Yeah.

Jen: [35:51] Yeah. No, but seriously, because for a classroom teacher teaching a specific grade, the next time you get to try this again is next year, which is fair. Fine. But for us, what's nice is sometimes that can be next week, next month, or in a few months from now. The terrarium project, I think, was within the same school year. And I did them a few months apart, but I immediately had so much more to share because I got to experience it for the first time with the teacher and that first teacher, we were like, yeah, if we were to do this again next year, here's what we would change. And I take that and like the second teacher gets the benefit of like, we're just going to go straight for this version. And so for projects like that, the differences are immediately noticed, right? Because the structure feels different. The method in which we do it, it just feels a little sometimes it can feel a little less hectic because we've figured it out and we have the benefit of trying something 4 or 5 times in a school year, and times that by the three of us and we come back and we talk about it, you know, we just learn so much more so quickly.

Carlo: [36:56] There's something interesting about the fact that we're working with these teachers in these ways where we can iterate on a project as opposed to, let's say I was a historian who knew everything about the fur trade, and I was just like dropped in for one class and said, here's everything you need to know about the fur trade, and then I go to another school. Here's everything you need to know about the fur trade. And it's not like that. And I know that there are experts out there who do that kind of thing. And a lot of classrooms can benefit from that. And then take that information and then go do something with it. I think what's neat is that we can take something and stretch it out a little bit and really go through a learning process, both for the teachers and for the students.

Dylan: [37:35] I think we've learned from working with these teachers that reflecting on these projects and thinking about how they can evolve or change or be better supported in the next iteration is something that we really take to heart now. Yeah. This is part of our process. We want to hear about projects that teachers are working on. We want to make them better. We want to support them in ways that either use tech in a way that is safe and reliable and engaging and.

Jen: [38:10] Meaningful.

Dylan: [38:11] Meaningful, not in a way that kids are just consuming, like watching videos or clicking buttons or things like that. So it really has become a part of our process, which is teach a teacher how to do something and then come back and reflect on it and then try it again with another classroom, or go back to that same teacher and share what we've learned and what's bubbled to the surface after, like I said, with that podcasting project, we've done it probably like 15, 16 times now.

Dylan: [38:43] I mean, 300 classes, right? Yeah. That's true. That's pretty easy. How many grade five classes are there that we support? I think everyone has done it now.

Carlo: [38:51] And I will say the quality of the productions that come out of that vary a lot. And when there is enough time given to prepare and to deliver the lessons, you get way better student output than something that feels rushed and tacked on.

Dylan: [39:09] Yeah, I think I've become pretty direct in saying that if you want to take this project on, you need to give it a month. You need to have these milestones, which are to create the questions for your interviewers first, then conduct your interview, then record your podcast, then edit your podcast. There's certain milestones that need to be hit. And like, I think it's okay for us to say, hey, you're not ready to do this if you're not going to give it this much time in your curriculum. Let's try it again next year.

Jen: [39:37] I think we say that all the time. And I'd say that at this point in what we're, how we're supporting our schools is these projects can span multiple weeks, sometimes months. We're prepared for that. And the teachers also know, I think most teachers now know, this is not going to be a two week process. And if you know your timeline just doesn't work out, then that's okay. We will try it next year and we will do something different right now.

Dylan: [40:07] If we were to start with a new school tomorrow and we had to tell them like day one, here's who we are, here's what we want you to know about the projects that we work on and the technology that you're going to start using in your class. What would you want those teachers to know first?

Carlo: [40:25] It's interesting because I think when I've been asked similar questions in the past or even now, like at the beginning of this.

Dylan: [40:35] Like right now when I just asked the question.

Carlo: [40:38] Like I think, well, let's say it comes up at the beginning of a school year and there's new staff members at the school.

Dylan: [40:44] That actually happens all the time.

Carlo: [40:45] And you want them to know, like, here's the creative things we've done in the classroom. I feel like so many of them get introduced to our entire team as tech support, us included. And I think that gives a very specific view of what a person like that looks like. And so for new staff members, they always kind of like, oh, my computer is not working. Can you fix it? And I think the biggest thing that I want them to know is that we can go beyond just fixing your computer. Like we're actually here to help you engage in learning with your students.

Jen: [41:26] Yeah. I would say, and sometimes it can be really confusing for teachers, right? Especially if it's a new teacher entering a school that already is very familiar with us, not understanding, wait, who does what again on your team? Because, you know, Classmate does all these different things and we are usually.

Dylan: [41:43] Managing technology supporting devices. Help desk. In your classroom, helping you teach with your iPads and your Chromebooks.

Jen: [41:50] Lesson planning with you side by side. Yeah. And we like the three of us, are often the ones that hand them their new computer. Show them how to sign in, and like the way that the school uses their Google workspace or whatnot. So I don't even blame them when you know something is not working. The first people they think of are like specifically us on the team. But yeah, like in terms of if we started with a new school tomorrow or we were onboarding a new teacher, I think step one is to show them everything that we have, whether that be Classroom Chronicles, our newsletter, this podcast, and just different things that we've done to help them understand, oh, okay. It goes beyond this level of support. It's supportive, it's support in terms of planning, it's support in dreaming. Honestly, sometimes we dream with teachers of like, wouldn't it be cool if we did this? And how can we make that actually a reality?

Dylan: [42:49] Yeah, I think what I'm hearing is that like, we have this amazing role where we can come into your classroom and help you with these projects and do these really fun things. I say it's amazing because I think it is amazing. It's amazing. That's selfish, amazing. I think it's amazing that we get to do this.

Jen: [43:04] It's amazing. That's what I mean. It's amazing for us. This is like, yeah.

Dylan: [43:08] And for new teachers or new schools, what I would want them to hear is that experience is attainable. And we're here to get you to that point. And step one is not maybe, run a podcasting project in your classroom in the second week of September. Step one might be like, let's make sure that you're competent and feeling good about using the technology that is directly available to you, checking your email, checking Google Drive yourself, getting your calendar organized using the projector, but that they will be there to help them scaffold upwards towards these, these projects. That's where I think our team really does a great job of supporting teachers from the very beginning all the way until these, these creative projects that they're able to run.

Jen: [43:53] Yeah. And we've seen the changes in teachers too. Absolutely. Right. Like some teachers that we've worked with for years, if we think back to where their, what their relationship with their technology looked like a few years back, sometimes you forget that so much has changed and so much more like they just how much more comfortable they are. And because they tell us that. Or we can just see. I like to point it out too. I'm like, I want to remind you like, yes, look where look what you.

Dylan: [44:19] Just reflect on this.

Jen: [44:20] Yeah, look at the question you just asked me, right? Like this goes beyond what you were asking me just last year or two years ago.

Dylan: [44:26] I think that you're hitting on something as well, which is, something I hear a lot, maybe from outside the education sphere is new teachers, people who are like, I would say younger. They're probably better with this kind of stuff. They're better with technology, they're better with integration and running this stuff in the classroom. I wouldn't necessarily say that it is an innate skill. Just because you are younger doesn't mean that you are better at this kind of stuff. It just means that you grew up with it. It doesn't mean that you can manage it in your classroom. It doesn't mean that you've been imbued with the ability to design, create with it in 30 kids in your classroom. With this in mind, and I feel like sometimes it gives undue pressure to teachers who come into the role feeling like they have to, like, do these things. And I think the more true thing is if you are curious and you're willing to ask questions about the good use of tech in your classroom, that's usually the thing that makes you better at this. And that has nothing to do with your age. There are teachers who are five years from retirement who are like, they're our best students because they're super curious about how to change this stuff in their classroom.

Jen: [45:42] They have no problems experimenting.

Dylan: [45:44] And they have no problems experimenting, because they're confident in their pedagogy and their style of teaching, and they're being asked to integrate something new and that is not scary to them. And so I feel like sometimes teachers that have that growth mindset are definitely the ones that sort of succeed in this area a little bit more.

Jen: [46:03] The age 6 to 66 just rings true.

Dylan: [46:06] 6 to 66. It has nothing to do with if you just graduated from university or your PDP program or whatever it was. It definitely has more to do with your willingness to experiment or change or iterate on the stuff that you're doing in your classroom.

Carlo: [46:22] You mentioned pressure. And that's an interesting thing when I think of teachers who asked me to help them teach technology, I'm like, oh, I'm looking at my term and I have to integrate technology somehow. And I think if you go back to your earlier question about things that I wish teachers knew, was that like, we don't teach technology.

Dylan: [46:44] Yeah.

Carlo: [46:44] I think we use technology, but it's in the service of greater learning.

Dylan: [46:53] We could do an entire episode on how the advanced skills in the BC curriculum are in service of the other skills in the curriculum. They are not a standalone thing that you teach in isolation.

Jen: [47:06] Yeah. And often when we do get requests like that or questions of, hey, can you come in and teach my class how to use Google Docs or how to use Canva as just a blank statement to teach them this tool? I feel like none of us do that because we were like.

Dylan: [47:21] Yeah, there's always got to be something connected to that.

Jen: [47:23] Yeah, let's tie that learning into something you're already doing in class, a unit plan that's existed or that exists or is already about to happen, at the very least, right?

Carlo: [47:35] I went to a conference recently. I know we got it just very quickly, one of the things that stuck out with my mind was how we learn, for utility, like we learned because we want to use it, and like, if we're going to 'learn technology', then what are we using it for? What is it in service of? So that's like a big thing. If we're making slides, are we learning docs? Like, why are we learning those things?

Dylan: [48:00] Well, all the projects that we've talked about today are written about in The Classroom Chronicles. So head to our website, classmate.team, and look for classroom projects at the top. And you can subscribe to our newsletter, The Classroom Chronicles. You can also follow us on Instagram at classmates.team, where you'll see a lot more about the cool projects that we're doing in classrooms, as well as some of the schools that we've been visiting outside of the schools that we partnered with, who are doing really interesting and amazing things that we want to bring into our practice.

Jen: [48:29] Yeah. Or if you just want to learn a bit more about our, our team, who we are, put some faces to names we yeah, lots of stuff on there.

Dylan: [48:37] You can also subscribe to imagine this on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite Podcatcher.