Yeah.ision messaging. Good morning everyone. Good morning. Welcome to our virtual learning advisory committee known as VAC and we are so happy to see you this morning. We are
going to be uh looking at several documents and we know that educational technology and virtual learning are very important in our commonwealth as we provide uh enhanced learning experiences for our students and teachers. As a part
of this meeting, we have documents in your packets that we're going to refer to. Uh we're going to look at a website. We will look at the educational technology plan, a portion of that as we provide educators and administrators,
students with technology resources, uh applications, media, and adaptive software. and for them to be able to design, collaborate, and develop the technology skills and
digital skills that they need to be successful in the world today. This committee is very important and it's legislated. So, I really want to thank you for your commitment, your attendance, your participation, and
taking time from your busy schedules to be here with us today. We are pleased to have superintendent uh educational agencies and designes from the regions across Virginia. And so I would like to
give you an opportunity this at this time to introduce yourselves. Uh the microphones in this room work very well. Uh just speak up from all directions in the room. And uh we are we'll start here
with uh Philips. Hi, I'm Philips Gilstra, the associate director of the office of educational technology and classroom innovation. Trey Davis, superintendent Richmond County Public School. Don't go into the office early. Hi, I'm Megan Gordon. I think I'm the
representative for BSBA and I'm the Valley Region Chair and the chair of Pton Public Schools. Hi, I'm AJ Phillips, director of information instructional technology for principal counselors. Hi, I'm Karen Thompson, instructional data coach from Charlotte County Public Schools. I'm in for Dr.
Robbie Mason. Hi, I'm Nick Foley. I'm the digital learning coordinator at Department of Education, the Office of Educational Technology and Classroom Innovation. Hi, I'm Elmer Seward. I'm vice president of education services for WHRO. I'm Beth Wagam from Hampton City
Schools, coordinator of innovation and digital learning here for Dr. Ne. Good morning. I'm Kesha Tennessee. I serve as the K12 computer science coordinator at the Virginia Department of Education. Good morning. Ernie Longworth, chief technology officer, Chesterfield County
Public Schools. Hi, John Mustachio. I'm the - coordinator in K12 specialist in the office of cyber security and risk management at the Department of Education. So, it's nice to meet everybody. I'm Lincoln Whitaker. I'm director of technology for Pilaski County Public Schools. Good morning. I'm
Amy Griffin. I'm from the Virginia Association of School Superintendants. Hey everyone, Brian Mott, executive director, virtual Virginia. Morning, Brian Champion, digital learning specialist in the office of educational technology and classroom. Excellent. And we do have one guest if
you don't mind. Sure. My name is Travis Bling. I work for McGuires Consulting. We represent a client uh in structure. They host the learning management system canvas that I'm sure most of you are familiar with. Excellent. Welcome everyone. And again, thank you. As I said, this committee is legislated and
we want want to be sure that all regions are represented. So, we may be discussing with you how we can expand maybe to include um one additional person from your regions and your organizations. So, that information will
be provided to you. Uh we will proceed through the the uh sorry Just one moment please. Technical errors turn
off. We will proceed through the agenda as listed on the screen. If you'll take it a moment just to review that we are happy to provide lunch to you today. Uh and the facilities are
just outside the door and to the left. We do have water uh available for you at the table. All right, Dr. Michelle Wallace is delayed and we are going to bring her back as soon as she arrives and weave
her into the meeting to provide some greetings and information to you. Uh the purpose of course again your your attendance is very important as we talked about online courses and
inservice training digital resources blended learning online opportunities in Virginia schools uh as virtual Virginia provides lowcost uh summer
programs courses during the year for students And so we are following our technology plan in Virginia that includes digital learning integration standards, computer science standards in addition to other
video initiatives that we have that relate to what we the work we do as always and I think that you enjoy it. We share highlights from across Virginia. We attended a webinar that was
by CEDA which is um a organization technology directors association organization that provides a a huge impact in assisting state leaders with educational technology. And so with this
webinar that we attended on universal connectivity imper imperative that's the name of the do the document that they actually produced. We were impressed with one of the students and we have permission to show this excerpt.
Reading the question again, when I think of words like opportunities and leaders, I can only like it immediately relates back to how I go about my everyday high school life cuz I'm a senior in high school now and almost everything we do is digital. Our homework is digital. Every kind of thing we do is digital. And I just think about how the world is
really at your fingertips. There's no limit to what you can think you can do. And in a city more like city example, because I live in the city, there's a million internships available. There's a million programs who want to help seniors have access to financial aid and want to help people with the next steps
in their lives. And I think the internet is a very powerful tool and it helps people get where they want to be in life when they don't necessarily have the resources face to face to realize that. Like I come from a low-inccome family and I'm going to one of the best liberal arts schools in Maine and I have a full ride and it wouldn't have been possible
if I had never connected to the internships I've had access to or if I've never met the people that I've met. And it's all been through the internet. I applied through internships using things like Indeed. I look at my future careers and I get to go on a computer and imagine my whole life, you know,
like if I want to live in Spain when I'm older, I can open Zillow and look at apartments in Spain. Like the world is really your oyster. And I feel like not necessarily saying the people who don't have access to the internet lack imaginative thinking, but there's never a limit to what you can think and there's never a limit to what you can
do. Like the best pop artists have inspiration that they've probably heard on the internet and things like that. So like outside of school, it helps you be a person. If you want to listen to a podcast about wellness, boom, there goes your audio and it's wellness. You just have so much more access to the world outside of what you're confined to as
far as like your communities and your neighborhoods and your schools. And this is what you do in Virginia. That's so important a provide access. Uh John can speak to that. Uh certainly uh uh
through -ate programs, through other funding that is provided throughout the Commonwealth, uh you do so well with providing connectivity and think of creative ways that help students to be successful just like you saw uh Miss
Watson on the screen here reading. So at this time I'd like to present Dr. Brian Muk who will come up and share about the virtual Virginia program. Thanks Raj. My uh my goal today is I'll give you guys a high level overview of the last year. If you want to see more, I'm looking at our
handout page 32 has a lot more uh detailed information about virtual Virginia want to follow along and please do feel free to ask questions as I go through today's information. Okay. Uh for many of you who are familiar, you know that virtual
Virginia is more than just K through2 instruction. We actually have four programs. Uh our K- through2 instruction program, which is the backbone of virtual Virginia. Most people think about that program when they think about virtual Virginia, but we also have a very popular summer session available statewide, the statewide learning
management system, uh which we're going to talk about a little bit. And our professional learning program is growing as well. As I mentioned, there's historical information in the handout, but over the last year, I'll start in our K through2 instruction program. If if you're not familiar with our model, it is a partnership. Virtual Virginia
works with schools to support students and create that space for successful online learning. We do what we do best at Virtual Virginia. We provide access to the content, the course, the resources, and the teacher. School does what they do best, the student services.
They know their students, right? They're intimately familiar with the students and their families. They provide school-based counseling and mentor services and any textbooks and materials needed for students to complete their courses. Working together in this model, we have created uh spaces for successful
online learnings for decades in Virginia. Here is the up-to-date 2425 information in the top row. Uh it's all in italics because this is as of April 1. This is about a month ago and summer session is not included. So, some of these numbers are going to change. uh as we go through the summer session
enrollment period. The first thing I'd like you to look at is column four is the percent full-time and column six% part-time. We're staying relatively constant and as summer comes in, those are more part-time learners. You're going to see those numbers fall more in line. So again, uh virtual Virginia is
available for students to learn full-time. if they want to take all their courses online or part-time if they're just taking one or two courses as a complement to what's available locally to them. Why do students keep coming back? Uh why do families keep coming back and schools coming back to virtual Virginia?
Because they're satisfied. These are survey results from last year. 90% of students when they completed their courses felt comfortable in their courses, felt comfortable using the tools, moving through using a learning management system. Parents and families, 90% plus, are satisfied with the courses
available and are able to find the courses they want through virtual group. So, students and families are pleased. Students are completing their courses and parents are happy because students are able to find courses that may not be available locally or may not fit into the students schedule. School personnel,
many of you here today, 95% of school personnel are satisfied with the alignment of virtual Virginia curriculum largely because our alignment comes from the SOS. We we are Virginia based courses rooted in the standards of learning. So virtual Virginia is a popular option for a number of reasons.
Students are comfortable, courses are available and schools are pleased with students uh performing in virtual Virginia. I mentioned summer sessions a moment ago. We are in the middle of enrollment for summer session right now and uh it's a growing program at Virtual Virginia. You know, if I could throw a
graph um of regular school year enrollment, it would peak during 2122 and then sort of level off, right? If we go back to that data, summer session continues to grow. In fact, we anticipate our summer learning will again eclipse last year's enrollment in summer session 24. Um that's because
more students are looking for more options, right? And as our catalog in summer grows, uh so do the needs across the state. Let me share this briefly here. This year we are offering 52 summer session courses. 39 for initial credit and 13 credit recovery courses.
If I had to give you a top five of students looking to get ahead, there it is right there. Those are the top five courses of students who are looking to get ahead. The health and pees, the economics, personal finance, that third level world language in an advanced course uh mathematics. So most of our
summer session students are either taking courses for credit to get ahead or they're doing credit recovery opportunities as well. And one thing about that's unique about our summer session, we do have two cohorts. So we have a session one for our sess for our school divisions that
end a little bit earlier and we have a second session for our school divisions who still end uh in early or mid June. Trying to align to those division calendars the best we can. Okay. And any questions about summer session or the K through2 program? Those are similar, but there's they're they're
two separate programs. If not, we can dig into the questions later. All right. Our statewide learning management system. This is a program where Virtual Virginia outside of our K- through2 and summer session programs, we make the learning management system available to all
public school divisions at no cost throughout the Commonwealth. And as you know, a learning management system is critical. Our student Miss Watson mentioned earlier the digital learning opportunities available. A learning management system is really where you organize that. And I see a lot of faces in the room of folks who use that
learning management system every day here in Virginia and they can they can attest to how powerful it is to organize the delivery of instruction in 2025. And what's really cool about the statewide learning management system is in Virginia we have courses called our outreach courses where schools can
download those for free. And I'll get into that in just a second. Uh these are these are hubs. These are course resources free to any educator in the Commonwealth to take, modify, use, incorporate local resources and develop their own content to use in their
divisions and in their classrooms. And Virginia is unique. This is kind of the gold standard of statewide learning management systems in the country. And we're really proud of the results here in the as I mentioned earlier on the statewide learning management system. School divisions can do whatever they like. um they can make their own
courses, they can make their own resources, they can go out and bring external resources in or they can download what's free through virtual Virginia and these are called our outreach resources. These are K through2 resources that any educator on the learning management system can download.
Since 2019, we have a 154,000 plus. That's it's like a rolling tipper if you can imagine that in your head. You keep updating and releasing new resources. over 150,000 downloads since 2019, since we started the outreach program. That
doesn't include a copy made locally. That's just a download from us. You can make copies within your division, as you guys know, and there could be thousands upon thousands more that we we can't really track those those copies of those courses. What we do know is that one over 150,000 resources have been
downloaded from Virtual Virginia's outreach program. What is currently available? We have 154 K through 12 and 11 adult ed resources as well. And what we're trying to do is give students the resources they need at the right time. Give teachers things that are easy to
use and align to standards. And that is our outreach program. Okay. So, we're supporting students and teachers through this effort. All right. The final program I'll talk about for virtual Virginia Day is professional learning. This is a growing area as we know. um professional learning is shifting to more of a
digital platform, right? Either as a complement to what's happening face toface or entirely online and uh just year-to- date enrollments over 10,000 professional learning enrollments through virtual Virginia. What I really like here is this middle table, the top five offerings through our V
professional learning program. It's a healthy mix. We have our weekly statewide offerings. That's a virtual Virginia offering, our annual conference which is entirely online. Then we have two BDOE offerings in the top five as well. And then our number five is teaching people how to use the LMS,
which is our fifth opportunity. So that the top five changes every year. It's, you know, it's not always Alabama and Clemson, right? It changes here, virtual Virginia, but um it is unique to see the the types of offerings within these professional learning offerings statewide. And one that I want to call
out here in the corner is that reading specialist micro credential through the department. uh very successful offering but also a unique way of doing professional learning. It's a microcredential. That's a word we hear and sometimes we we know they're out there. That's a real microcredential, a successful one happening at the
Commonwealth today and uh it's really exciting to see that continue to grow even this year. About a third of the enrollments for that micro credential have come in since uh July. Okay. So, thank you. That's a summary of of virtual Virginia updates. Again, very high level. more is in your
packet and I'll be happy to answer questions later or or whatever you guys have about the program. Thanks, Re. Thank you, Dr. Mott. We always enjoy working with our virtual Virginia staff and Dr. M uh who
does who who really do a great job with offering not only uh what you've seen as online courses for students but professional learning uh the statewide LMS and we're so proud of of the programs. At this point of the meeting
we want to engage you and to break into groups. Basically, we've already divided you into three groups and you will have uh a facilitator from the department uh with your group to kind of guide you.
You will need to uh take some notes and because you'll be providing feedback to the entire committee as we go through this exercise. Uh so we basically have articulated the problem or we'll use a problem statement that you'll see in
just a moment. But we would like for you to discuss uh and generate any questions, feedback, things that might impact your area that you'll be reviewing today. and then any solutions
or impact for implementation things that you might use to strengthen that particular area or document or website that you'll be reviewing. So the problem statement is Virginia
schools must effectively leverage virtual learning options and advanced courses to ensure that students are connected for remote learning which will divi we'll dive into that and provide online professional learning for
education. So again, while when you look at your packet on the left side, you'll have an excerpt from the Virginia Educational Technology Plan. That's group one. You'll have online, you'll need to use your devices. Group two,
you'll be going online to the virtual learning hub or the website at the department. And group three, you have what we call the report regarding online courses and virtual programs. And this is a part of a report that goes to the
governor each year. So you have three important areas that impact virtual learning. On the right side, you have graphic organizers which has the question as well as the problem statement and the
information that you need to take notes. U and so you can just easily take your notes onto your organizer. So we wanted everyone to have all
sections. However, you only need to use the graphic organizer for your group. So, let's see. Group one is going to be our looking at our edte plan. And uh Kesha,
Tennessee, raise your hand. So all of you who are kind of around Kesha, Ernie, Dr. John Murray, Elmer, Dwayne Huff, uh in for Raymond, uh and John, that's
group one. The virtual learning website is here with Ryan. So Dr. Mont, Garrett Smith, Robert Graham, Lincoln Whitaker, Amy Griffith, and Dr. Walls. Then over here, Meg Foley, Dr.
Napolei. That's group three. We have AJ, Megan, um, Trey Davis, uh, Robbie Nason or Karen Thompson. Uh, and also part of that group. So, you'll have about, uh,
15 minutes to discuss among your groups, review your documents, and then be ready to give feedback. Any questions about what we're doing? The first group, Kesha, has the technology plan
portion. Second group, Ryan, you'll be looking at the website. And third group, you have the uh the large document and you can actually go to page 82 and 113. All
right, questions. We are actually here on our graphic. groups. I hope that we have someone designated to share out now. Yes. This time and Dr. Wallace has arrived. So, we'll welcome her after
this discussion. So, we could have uh us to follow anybody. Yeah, there you go. That's right. We're gonna set the bar, right? We're gonna set the bar learning advisory committee problem
statement one virtual learning um annual report to the governor regarding online courses and programs. So, I'm not sure if you guys have a copy of that. In fact, tonight um we just got to you know what what else needs to be in
the submission? I guess we talked about different school systems that don't all do virtual or they might do a a second or third or fourth party program. One of the big way in um where sometimes they do their own thing and how do we collect that information um systematically in a
in a timely manner to get that to the governor. So we we kicked ideas around about using obviously our SSWS system that would be able to submit that. Um, we're in, of course, it would be interesting because we're in the era now where everything's just continuously growing in this field of online
learning. Um, we talked the pros and cons of of all of it. Um, and I think some of the other the state doesn't require to have you have to have online learning options. Um, it's I think a lot of that has to do probably with internet
capability in a lot of remote areas. Um, and then uh what else did I miss? No, I think you did I think you did a a really thing. that we were talking about how um right now this is an appendix to the board's
um annual report to the governor about virtual programs and um the key as he said stated so eloquently was really that there there is another option versus just virtual online provider program and school divisions are also providing
their own option and so would you be able in some way to reflect that in another section of this um appendix and So then we started brainstorming as far as what would that data collection look like because if um you have two options
division you could be either a virtual school or a virtual program and if it's a virtual program that information doesn't come to the department whereas if it's a school with the school number it might be a little bit easier to get that information. So that's why we kind of brainstormed on what might that look
like and then we went also into I think what you were thinking what we just discussed last was um attendance right that same question that's been since you know I can remember the last nine years at department of education how do we count attendance how do we count hours
versus 990 hours versus seat time for virtual how do we capture that and make sure that is entered with fidelity and school divisions um really struggle in that area. So, we kind of went a little bit off of our report into that area and
had some really good um discussion about what would that look like as it does affect sorry the attendance does affect that because our kids will miss days but then they do all that work right because of the flexibility of online learning and it's just been amazing to have that flexibility but at the same time you
know we're hit with you know 10 no I was just going to say it just feels like I mean you have two of your largest school districts in uh in without data in here about online learning right, Prince William and Fairfax, and we have thousands of students each year in our program. So, if we're reporting
on virtual learning to the governor and that legislation, you're missing key data that it could be perceived that students are not receiving that online learning. You got two in this room. We got Chesterfield, too. Man, Chesterfield sitting here right here. Yeah.
So, that's us, Re. So, group number two. Well, well done, group three. 15. All right, group two had the virtual learning website, the hub. Oh, that's us. Okay, I will start. Um, we we we looked
at the website and I I believe we're our group was focused on what's missing. What's missing from that website? What pieces would help be helpful students, schools, and families? And uh the first we talked about was is that there um why
am I here? Like if I go to a website, there's a reason I'm looking for something and it's not organized in that way. Like if I'm looking for K5 solutions, middle school, high school, advanced courses, homeschooling, it should be broken out that way on the website. If you go uh to look at the website now, it's just a breakdown of
what kind of a virtual options are available. That isn't that that's not really a top- down approach. that's kind of at in the middle like okay I know what I'm looking for now where do I go find that so maybe the landing page the first page should be why I'm here what am I looking for what kind of solution
do I need and I'm going to jump in here with my part of this um we have a virtual school um those students are not doing as well as our brickandmortar students and maybe we should see some of that comparison how are these how are
the kids in the virtual environment doing as compared to students very important. Now, we've put forth an initiative. We have goals. We we want to be, you know, top four in the state. Um I can't promise you these virtual kids are on board with that because they're all over the state, right? They're not
coming to those groups, those meetings, all their class stuff. So, there there is that. And I just feel like that if parents are looking at this, maybe they want to know what really is the best option for my child. Is this M better than this one? And are they both better or worse than sending my kid to a brick
and mortar school? I'll say I did not use chat GBT till we did the exercise. So I I didn't put it into chat GBT until we'd already talked and and it did validate that we did. So very validation.
So the you know it needs to be easier to access especially since there's a family component to it. you have to go through. Um even when I Googled uh this site, it took me somewhere else to this committee actually and then I went by the breadcrumbs at the top to get to this site. So easier to access the design.
It's very wordy, lots of words and so it's not like visually I hate to say visually appealing, but you know, when I if I was a parent, I went to it, I'd be like, "Oh my gosh, this is too much for me." Even though there's not a lot, there still too many words. So more design with more visually appealing, easier access to different parts and
like um it was just said that um have some success stories or different scenarios, stories and testimonials whe whether it's data of you know how it's worked and I think uh Rob said this um
um see what I was going to say um the different type you know what is that what were you gonna say you said um like you have on your site um the different the success what's the characteristics of a successful online student these are the things that they do and these are the these are the practices that they
have said Brian you rob because I was thinking of blasting so anyway um that that kind of thing s you know what does a successful online learner do to be successful especially if that's you know this is your first experience and you're looking for online options that may that'd be helpful information to have
upfront what are the characteristics of successful online learning then what are the options where do I go from there. So, a little bit of organization structure. The other thing we got started down here um I wanted to bring back up was how's the website aligned to CT? Um it seems like we have we have a
robust program in Pilaski but there's still holes in it and try to get students into some of these virtual courses and conversation was how do you teach a kid weld virtually, you know? Um, so there's going to be I'm sure we could use AI and uh those great little goggles, but I
mean the end of the day I'm going to trust a mechanic who's done a brake job on a real car so that I'm going to trust one who's done one on a merge. And that kind of goes to maybe less for families, but for schools if with the 3E readiness indicator having was it high demand? I might say the terminology wrong. high
demand uh to get more points if a student has completed high demand CTE courses and a lot of divisions aren't going to have those courses. So we've heard the answer is going to be virtual. So where do I find that on this site for real quick access? That's pretty much for a school division though I think. So
cater to different audiences catering to students to families and to schools and then breaking out from there. We were very critical but you can't. No, I'm just kidding. We count on it. Excellent feedback. Thank you very much.
All right, we'll move into group one. Virginia pology plan excerpt. We did and we open our discussion really discussing how you know the success of our problem statement expanding virtual learning
opportunities as well as remote learning acceleration advanced courses. The reality is that it will vary school division from school division. But then we discussed like what are some of those factors and some of that is historical perhaps that school division has always had secondary opportunities with virtual
learning opportunities. Chesterfield is a part of this group and they mentioned that they've had secondary courses for over 20 years. So it's not in response to the pandemic but both Chesterfield and Hampton have both mentioned that they have expanded their virtual learning opportunities through their
courses that they have provided during the pandemic. So, we know that some school divisions are maintaining things that began during the pandemic and some school divisions already had that structure in place. And so, I do think going to the conversations earlier, a little bit more data on all of the
school divisions of where they are and perhaps even historically where they've been with virtual learning opportunities would be important. We also discussed remote days. So, our remote learning days and so how we can have more information in the technology plan of
getting giving greater guidance of what counts as a remote learning day. And so really maybe like a checklist or some recommendations about this is a successful remote learning day. Maybe some factors of determining asynchronous or synchronous. Sometimes that factor
just comes as do they have snow days at the bank and that determines if it's asynchronous or synchronous. You know, overall the school divisions have the infrastructure, the devices. It's really just knowing the characteristics and what will be viewed as a solidified
approved remote learning day. No longer is it about do they have the network, do they have the Chromebooks or the lapbooks, laps, laptops or the teachers having professional development. They are doing that and providing that. they just need a little bit more guidance from us at the department of what really
constitutes as remote learning day. So we discussed as well as the opportunities for acceleration um school divisions that have specialty programs virt um virtual learning has provided the flexibility for students to engage in perhaps especially high school and so they can take another course and still
enroll in something of that nature. Likewise teacher capacity. So, we discussed Chesterfield has a program called Focus in which they partner perhaps a long-term sub with a licensed teacher with experience of online learning and together they collaborate
and they pair together to teach a course. Right now, most of the courses are in math, but together those teachers teach that course. Students still come in live. the teacher or the sub at the moment um is handling all of the handson activities, but the teacher with the
license and the experience is providing that direct instruction virtually. What's really nice about this is that the pair work together consistently wherever there is a need and so that is managed by a central office and they're not tied to one individual school.
What's also beneficial from this is that that angle sub because they've had that kind of peer and that partner in teaching, they may decide to now move forward and become a certified teacher. So, it's a clever way to also address capacity and build their own teacher
pipeline at the same time. So, they've been in about three to four years of that program. So, not only are we using virtual learning to address students needs, but also teacher capacity needs as well. We were wrapping up our conversation discussing the standards,
my favorite part of the conversation. Um, and really how do we help school divisions really implement DLI and CS because oftentimes they do get the back seat. That was the phrase uh just based upon all of the other demands of the school division. uh one recommendation
is to really call out the DLI standards uh framing it around the portrait of a graduate because a lot of school divisions have a lot of resources already framed around the portrait of a graduate. So that summarizes our conversation unless anyone else would like to group they had already told me that I
was speaking so but just in case I missed anything. One of the things I did Thank you. One of the things I did mention in in our discussions center amount of topic that came up and and that is the pandemic and I think we
talked about factors that impact whether you are implementing online learning or not. I think in some cases school divisions try to implement online learning on the fly. It was such a negative experience for them that that
factors into how they approach online learning now. It's because they think that what they experienced is what online learning is and it's not. And so that's one of the hurdles you have to clear in order to get those school divisions moving forward. That's not
true for everyone, but I'm sure it is a factor. Thank you so much. We have awesome engagement and feedback and we have captured those notes from each group and we we thank you. Uh we want to at this
time go back to um sharing. Since Dr. Wallace has arrived, we welcome you to the meeting and we certainly want to allow you to provide
greetings and go back to a slide that belongs to you. So, I just want to showcase that through Zoom. Here we go. Well, good morning everyone. Okay. Good
morning everyone. I'm Michelle Wallace. I'm the assistant superintendent of instruction for the Virginia Department of Education. This is my second meeting with you guys, so I see some familiar faces around the room. also understand that we have some substitutions but we've had a great representation. It is
great to see our small and large school divisions together as well as our community partners. Um, this work is really exciting and the work of this committee as well as the work of the edtech and classroom innovation office at VDOE is really gaining momentum
particularly with the science computer science standards and the update to those standards and the requirement that they are to be integrated into content areas at the elementary level. Um, this is, I think, an area where our elementary teachers are overwhelmed as
it is with new standards in English and math and particularly with the Virginia Literacy Act. However, um, we do know that there are natural fits for computer science standards in our content areas. And so we'll be working a lot to help
with the training of those areas and um you know feedback that you provide and I know Kesha loves talking computer science integration um but feedback that you have is is really important to us. Um couple of different things. Um I
think you've already looked at the resource hub. Continue to give your feedback on that. Um we have that for all content areas. So you can even um view other areas or other um other contents if you would like. Um but continue your feedback on that
support framework. And then also our virtual learning website. Um you know, we're we're making changes overall to our websites. And so if you if you haven't had if you weren't the group that looked at the website, please visit the websites and continue that feedback
is really what I wanted to say here because and we know that some of you were going to be given direct feedback and um but it's it's not set up for an opportunity for all of you to give that feedback. So we do appreciate it. We're always looking to make things easier on
our parents and easier on our students. And I think um one of the most uh remarkable things in listening to your discussions is that parent connection. Sometimes our parents go to our websites, well sometimes our staff, DDOE staff go to our website and are
overwhelmed by the way it looks. Much less a parent who is trying to navigate um a difficult time or difficult situation for their child. And a lot of times we do get the phone calls. They usually end up with Calypso. My child is
struggling in in-person instruction. I want them to be in virtual learning. How do I do that in my division? What are my options? And so, we want to make sure that that is clear for our families and that we we do have virtual Virginia, but
we also have the MOPS. And then we also have the other um programs in Virginia that don't fall into those categories. So, it's great to hear the feedback from Chesterfield and Prince William on there's data out there too that you have and you're serving a lot of kids and
maybe our legislators and our governor don't realize that because it's not captured in the current framework of our reporting. So, um appreciate your time here. Know that we do take your comments very seriously and really appreciate um
your time to travel here and your time just to be with us and provide those comments. Um, we're doing a lot of great work. We're AI is is gaining momentum and that is also coming out of this office. We're doing a lot more with ITRTS. I heard things about training.
We're trying to get our um ITRTs reconnected with our content area specialists so that they can provide classroom supports as well. And that is, you know, maybe something we need to look at also in the virtual setting, right? like how ITRTS can really help
those virtual learning teachers to be innovative too. So just thank you. Enjoy your lunch. Enjoy your uh the rest of the meeting today and uh safe travels when you do leave this afternoon. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Wallace.
And as she mentioned, lunch is here. So we We're so thankful for lunch again. Welcome back from lunch. And there's another perspective that I'd like to share. uh the same student Dasia Watson
from the CEDA conference gives us additional views on being a successful learner. I heard some comments from our activities our previous activities about maybe uh implementing the
characteristics of a successful online learner on the website. So let's listen to Miss Watson. Data kind of going off of what Dre was saying, my um seventh and eighth grade
year were entirely on Zoom. So universal universal connectivity to me just reminds me of middle school and it reminds me of where I was coming from culturally and economically cuz coming from Philadelphia which is such a diverse city racially, economically, you
know, there was a lot of my classmates who didn't have access to internet and there was a lot of people in a lot of spaces where we were provided with the same exact opportunities and it made us feel special that people cared enough to make sure we had an equal seventh grade year and an equal eighth grade year. And
the way it works in Philadelphia is you apply to your high schools and it's ranked like that. You kind of apply like it's college. So I know me and my classmates felt very special that people cared and they could go out of their way to make sure we were where we needed to be academically on math levels and on
English levels and we were there and we saw our teachers every day. I graduated middle school over Zoom. So universal connectivity and free internet is such a big thing when it when you're talking about kids who are coming from lower income backgrounds and stuff like that. Now, isn't it wonderful that in Virginia
we can talk about students being successful, students that have online opportunities, students that have a wide range you we have de technology directors sitting in this room who
ensure that their students have access to technology. And now I I know that when Miss Tennessee was talking she said going beyond that now going beyond the equipment going beyond the access is now
we have to branch out and do additional training with teachers to be successful. We talked about pairing maybe a sub with a veteran teacher uh to increase capacities. Uh Dr. Wallace uh noted that
we still have work to do as we're integrating computer science standards and we're embellishing all of the standards in the content areas. Uh we have gifted programs. So we have so many opportunities that also impact online
and blended learning in Virginia. So again, this highlights the work that we're doing and we're so proud. And now we have new legislation. So when we look at this Virginia bill,
uh if as you take a a look at that, I am going to just read this uh and highlight some of these words shall develop and post on the website guidelines and information relating to virtual learning. These are things that you just
talked about. How can we enhance our virtual learning website to include statewide policies related to virtual learning? The availability of online and virtual options, pertinent information such as guidelines for educators related to
online policies and best practices. Continue the training that we're doing in Virginia. And then the department shall provide these guidelines to allow dissemination to school boards for distribution to
parents. And then uh we need to update and make sure that we keep this current annually. This last bullet uh really refers to the department of criminal justice services. Um and the portion in
the middle talks a lot about safety. you know, we are representing virtual learning. So, we're the safety part is it in another department and uh we can continue that discussion. Uh but we're
not going to be directly responsible for that. Uh but then the components of this audit that we will do each year, uh we'll talk about remote learning and closures and what you do to keep students and educators safe.
um during public health emergencies. So, we have some questions um and I'm I'm really going to ask our associate director Gilstra to uh just reflect on
this bill and add some additional notes as we have a discussion about these. Right. So, a little bit more history too about this bill uh is that it came out of the JAR report of the pandemic response. So, I think that's the reason
it's in the safety part of the bill. Um and when you're looking at a legislative piece like this, if you haven't before, the italics is the new legislation and it did pass um both sides with no comments from the public. So, we're really excited about any opportunity to elevate um virtual learning. And then
also to make another point, um, Elmer talked about that a little bit that emergency remote learning is not virtual learning. And also virtual learning is not remote learning. So we're really trying to distinguish the difference between remote learning and virtual learning. Virtual learning can be part
of remote learning, but we don't want to talk about snow plows and um, you know, uh, delivery of food to children. That's not the responsibility of this agency. that's the responsibility of the department of justice services and also the department of emergency management.
So uh so as you guys look at the bill and look these questions kind of be thinking about that lens of how do we as a committee better I guess market virtual learning to where people don't have that anxiety. I mean, I was a
middle school teacher during COVID and I I was a librarian and I was in a room like this where I had like 30 kids on a computer with this, you know, things and I was doing hybrid where I had 30 kids at home and, you know, that was stressful and wasn't very innovative and we were, you know, that was not what
virtual learning is supposed to look like. So, uh, so let's start with what is the definition of virtual learning during remote learning days. So what are some suggestions that you guys would have to help us define better that distinguishment between remote learning
because I think most people think remote learning means I'm on a computer at my house on teams versus what is virtual learning which could be I'm in a mop. I'm in a virtual Virginia situation. I'm at my school's virtual academy. I'm doing a homeschool program. So what is
uh what what kind of words you think distinguish those things? Me I thought snow plows. This is the difference. Remote learning includes snow plows or emergency aid. Anybody can share. Just feel free to throw it out there. Any thoughts?
Personalized learning. Personalized learning is virtual learning is personalized learning. Flexibility. Flexibility is virtual learning. One is plan. So like virtual learning is is plan is strategic. you're gonna start
this, you're gonna finish this. Remote supports the unplanned. Yeah. What that's one thing Reggie and I keep saying is an unplanned remote learning day and that is like we didn't put it in the schedule on purpose. Um, of course, in the ideal world, we would
love it if school divisions move to where virtual learning days are incorporated in their regular school calendar and maybe you have a day of like service or project based learning or crosscurricular innovation and those type things and that could actually be built into your especially with our seat flexibility that we're going to be
allowed. So, okay. So, we have planned, purposeful, flexible, personalized. Can I just follow what Brian said? Just thinking about our discussion. I think um what Hampton described is a planned
remote learning day for the unplanned school closure. So we don't want people to think that remote learning means just woo whatever comes to mind. It still should be planned in structured like so planned remote learning on an unplanned
on an unscheduled scale. Yeah, we will have to ask some AI agents to help like and then put some human intellect on top of it. So, and for me as a parent, you know,
virtual learning is okay, my my son I'm taking a virtual course with a virtual teacher who does that in as a specialty. Remote may be this is their classroom teacher performing remotely, you know, not out of their specialty, right? It may it may
not be designed that way. Yeah, that's good. A virtual learning is a is a course. It is a program. It is a school. A remote learning is a special situation or
circumstance. I think remote learning is for everyone in a community and virtual learning. So that might be to the distinguishment that virtual learning is personalized, individualized and remote learning is the entire community. Okay. So what do we need to
do to help our teachers when there's going to be a remote learning day? So we don't want to wait until their fall in the snow day train our teachers. I think of this as like the sub plans. you know, you're you know, at the beginning of the year when they make you have the emergency subplan folder and you're just
in case you call in sick and you know, it was totally unplanned. So, what do we need to do to make sure that our remote learning days that the teachers are prepared to post class like uh Dr. Mott just said, well, we took a few days off. I think it
was total hate first couple days we realized some other counties said, "Hey, virtual learning for remote and we weren't ready." And so, when we did come back and said, "All right, we've got to be prepared for another snow." And it was like And so with Madrid meeting, we sent out
information to our staff. They knew um what came back was basically we really weren't going to open up new instruction on those days. More collective learning, you know, going back over same exercises, kind of review type. Uh so we
had a couple of days like that. Um we thought after about two days that was going to be enough and then the snow stopped. Um because when you stay in that world it's just it's not the depth that you want. But um that's how we kind of evolved to it and we had some time to plan it about a week and a half out to
let all the teachers know expect if we do this virtual learning all agree it's probably not new topics to be discussed. So that maybe what type of instruction is happening on a remote learning. Yes, we need to ensure that they have internet.
So, uh we do know that that's going to have to be part of the remote learning plan. And again, that's probably not our lane. It would have to be like this is the scenario where they have virtual learning access and and also like what's the exception to the kids who are in because this all depends on is it a
public health emergency, is it an emergency? Well, I'm not talking about the kids like we have teachers of I don't have. Yeah. So, but again that goes back to the Department of Emergency Management kind of is in that bucket. But we do know that our plans whatever they are will be you can't do new
instruction because we don't know if the teacher is going to be available. We don't know if the students are 100% going to be available. What is attendance look like on those days for those type population. So parents might not be at home to support learning like that. Those kind of things. So u but that is an excellent valid point and we
will make sure um because we that's also the reason broadband is also a problem for teachers for grading papers but we were hoping with the be money we'll quickly be able to have broadband in every house in the next two years. So all right we had a comment in the back. Yes within Hampton we provide the
digital learning specialists give virtual learning management training excuse me in August to all the teachers. So, best practices and you know what to do in their Zoom room and teaching virtually. Um, we also help them set up their Zoom links ahead of time so
they're all on spreadsheets so they can get to them. We also go over GoG Guardian so that they can monitor the students within that platform. Even in the classroom, they need to know how to use GoG Guardian as well. Um, but we try to funnel a lot of that stuff ahead of time. And
then moving closer to any times that, you know, weather is a little dicey, we try to remind them of best practices and things like that. Hey, check your Zoom link, make sure it still works, practice it with the teacher. You know, the digital learning specialists do push in quite a bit to help the teachers with
all of that. And then we also have if we are shut down for virtual learning my entire department we have a zoom help desk open the entire day so teachers can jump in can jump in students can jump in with any issues that they have in that
as well. So help desk. Yes. Write that down right there. I have that. Yep. During co I was standing out there underneath the canopy, you know, helping kids with uh I I don't know why this isn't working. Let's get it figured out. Um, okay. So, speaking of what you just
talked about, go guardian and other ways we communicate with parents. Um, what do you think we could do to help our studentu our school divisions? Like what would be the minimum? You know, we can't get into use goardian at the Virginia Department of Education, but what would be your suggestions for us communicating
with parents for remote learning? Um, one thing we just got feedback on was making sure you know you have the person with the most personality calling the snow day. making also sure that they understand that virtual learning is going to be happening that day. So, whoever the person is, everybody's
excited to hear from is the one that clear clarifies it is going to be an asynchronous or a synchronous type day and what does that mean? What else would we need to do? What's the best avenue for talking to peers?
Yes, Dr. Mustachio. Uh, zip time management is a thing. So for people who are very well-intentioned and wanting to help their elementary school kids have their chargers right at their desk and zip tied to their desk in
a way that they can have their charger there all the time. uh from one tech director explaining in a a situation where they needed to go remote quickly, they had to get quickly a group of people into the building with the wire cutters to cut all the zip ties to get
all the chargers ready for the kids to be able to have their chargers so they could take home for an undisclosed number of days. So, you know, small things like that as far as thinking through the process of what happens during a remote day. Yeah. like the the supply list for
parents. Like just like we have the supply list at the beginning of the day, the beginning of the year, you need your hikaro pre-sharpened pencils. These are the supplies you would need for a remote learning day. I think you need to communicate at the beginning of the year, right? Like just ongoing, hey,
just a, you know, this is how we're going to handle remote learning if it were to occur. Potential of bad weather coming just to be prepared. like those constant reminders. Um whether it's a text message, phone call, a newsletter that we send out, whatever.
However you're communicating with school should be the same method. All right. And then uh look back at the bill kind of look at that list. I go back one. There we go. But looking at this list, statewide policies, which
ironically have no statewide policies, so that would be zero, but we we we were going to fix that. Uh so what can we do? We already kind of talked about the website a little bit. Um what else can we do to help sure make sure we get these three things communicated out to
the field? So we have statewide policies, the availability of learning options. I think we already kind of talked about that too, like our um our report to the governor. That would be an important place for us to communicate those better. Um maybe adding to our we have a query tool that helps us
communicate what MOP programs are available. Doing a better job of making sure that's available with other virtual learning programs. And then last, what are the guidelines or what are the best practices for our educators? So now I go back with those three buckets in mind.
So we have policy availability and professional learning. So we do a lot of those things but we obviously need to do more. There's a new bill for it. So what can we do to make those studies? We don't want to like in a year
go we didn't do anything because we already awesome. I know one of the important things that you mentioned is reshaping the website. For example, communicating with parents. I think now it's going to be important that what we're talking about the
training information about remote learning needs to be on the website as well. I'm just gonna visualize like a little video clip of for parents of and a reminder every time there is a like
people could reference it whenever there is a snow day where they're going to be doing virtual learning or whatever that you know like a video clip a reminder what it is supposed to be doing or I don't know something I don't know how they access it but I'm just thinking how do you get it in front of parents so
they know where public media partnership that might work out for making videos and delivering those to parents sounds like a great way to spend our public media dollars is to make a virtual learning option package. Yeah. And I mean I think that's is an
opportune time to say you know this whole conversation goes back to his comment earlier on virtual learning or remote learning may not have been the best in some areas and we maybe need to rebrand remote learning versus virtual learning and just making sure that
parents understand and teachers understand. So I agree. I never really thought about it that way until you you all said it. You know, when people think of virtual remote, right, they're thinking about what happened during the pandemic and they're not thinking about the way it is now very much. Well, and
really defining virtual learning is the big word, but then you have hybrid blended online learning can actually be happening in a classroom. I mean, that's what most of our high school students are having online learning every day. It's just not it is virtual sometimes,
sometimes it's not. So, yeah. So really, we need to better define and market. And I think a a video clip of those will help everyone too. And then also maybe some of that beginning of the year training package for school divisions to be like, show these to your teachers. So
this is best practice. Making sure your links work and they're well published and sent to teachers. You should know how to send a communication to all the parents in your class. um how are you going to deal with your special needs students and your students who don't speak English as their first language and those techniques. So,
awesome. Well, are there any last thoughts about House Bill uh 2640? Right. Well, as we start working on implementing this, we will be writing a report um in October to go to the um House and Senate to talk about what
we've done on this bill. So, of course, you guys will be very aware of that in December or November whenever we have our next VWAC meeting. But we really do look forward to your feedback. We'll probably send you some of those things as we're working on them and being like, "Hey, you guys remember you asked for a video. Well, here's a first draft." And,
you know, we'd love to hear your feedback and those kind of things. And as things come up with your divisions like in your region, that's the purpose of this is just because we're having a meeting today and we don't have another one until the fall, we want to hear that as the year goes on, too. So, this is a formal meeting, but we would love to
hear from you throughout the year as you go back to school and think about what are we doing for remote learning training and those kind of things. Hear what's happening and what works really well and what concerns you have because at the state level, we know use cases work best. Everybody likes to hear what everybody else is doing and and
duplicating that. So, so speaking of that, we have two highlights. We're super excited to tell you two success stories from our schools and thanks to Lden County Schools uh who
brought this forth about um at the you can see the Buffalo Trail Elementary School where these elementary students were doing a writing project and they actually used the technology to create
these lenses revising uh their work. So as they wrote, they created these and the teacher took seeing through new lens. So kind of using that theme and they
designed their own using the CAD software and the 3D printers. Um and they related that back to what they were writing. So I thought that was a clever way to you know connect English so along
with technology. These high school students went beyond that and started designing tools and applications and equipment that students with disabilities could use. So this was very
innovative. They designed these uh tools and equipment and they put them in the hands of students with disabilities and then those students gave feedback on the operation and how well they paired together. So that that's an awesome
example of how again we're working together to pair content area and instructional technology. So, speaking of instructional technology and innovative ways to expand virtual
and remote learning, let's talk about and switch gears to generative AI. And I'm going to bring Philipso back up to talk about what we're doing at the department with AI. Yes. So, uh, I appreciate because a lot of the people
in this room have been part of our AI initiatives. And so, this might be a review for some of you, but we really wanted to kind of give you guys the overall strategic vision because you may have only been one part of it, and now we want to kind of go over all of it. And this will be going before the board of education um, on May 21st. It's part
of their business meeting. Um, and we will continue to work with the governor's office very closely as to what the AI initiatives are as a whole state because education is a really important part of the overall task force um that he has. So um about a year and a
half ago, executive order number 30 came out and it asked the Virginia Department of Education to develop and issue tools, instructional resources and to support integration of AI into the classroom. Um, and that included creating AI education guidelines. We worked with
Chev and the Virginia Community College System to make sure that our students are fully equipped to be able to use AI when they go into the the workforce. So, the I guidelines were then written. They were published in December of 24 and uh
they sorry 20 December 23. I they're all it seems like so fast all at the same time. Uh so the guidelines then uh for AI integration focused on the effective use and the responsible use. Um there was actually just a national report that came out and
really talked about how Virginia really did the best part of talking about do no harm for our students and our teachers. Like that is really unique in our guidance. And another thing that's really unique about our guidance is we do not just talk about K12. We talk about what does it look like in the community college system? What does it
look like in higher education? And what does it look like in the workforce? So the three key factors that we have in our guidance is the guiding principles, making sure that AI is ethically used, that we're ensuring there's privacy and security and fairness first. Um, and
that it also should support education and not replace humans. It should be like enhancing education, not supplementing education. We think that schools should provide AI training for teachers specifically and then integrate AI into the curriculum. It shouldn't be the icing on the cake. It should be part
of the cake. Um and then last we want to make sure that there are responsibilities like our policy makers, our education um the educators and our institutions all have specific roles in that guidance and talking about who's responsible for what inside of that guidance. So, if you haven't read those
uh two uh the executive order and the guidelines, I recommend reiterating them and then also elevating those to your teachers so they really understand where we're going as a whole state and it's not just like BDOE says that it's like no, the whole Commonwealth is moving this direction because we are such a
technology savvy state. Then um on April 23rd, the White House came out with Advancing Artificial Intelligence Education for American Youth, which was the executive order from Donald Trump's office. And it was really great to read this order because I was like, we're already doing half of
those things. Um so, you know, we always like to be first and think we're an example. So, this focused on embedding AI in education, which we already talked about that. Um and then it also wants us to do better with AI literacy, having early engagement with our AI concepts and then having extensive training for
our teachers which we already are doing those things as you know in our computer science standards we have AI we have done teacher training which I'm going to talk about here more in a second and then also we believe in AI literacy in everyday learning not just like oh again
it's not special. So after we passed our after we got the executive order, we came up with our guidance. We started incorporating AI into our standards. So our computer science standards and our English standards of learning have both passed since the executive order and the guidelines came out. And those approved
standards in the front matter specifically address AI. So if you have people who are hesitant about AI, we would say this is in our standards of learning and it's not just in our computer science standards and our digital learning standards. it is in our English standards because we want to
talk about responsible use and how we collaborate with robots. Um, Miss Tennessee is now going to come up and talk specifically about you get as much time as you want, but she is she does love to talk
about she so that's right. Okay. I think as Calypso pointed out, it's important to know that AI literacy is interdisciplinary. And so that's why you're going to see them in our guiding principles and currently you see them in
the 2024 English and computer science, but they're likely forthcoming in all um updated standards as well. In computer science, um we are pretty much leading the way of being intentional about embedding AI literacy in our standards. We've done it in a very seamless
approach really leveraging on computer science as foundational knowledge uh to understand the development of AI as well as becoming more technical and expanding students understanding of AI. So this is starting as early as our K students. Um
really focusing more so on input output data processing up until our upper elementary where they do start discussing machine learning concepts such as labeled data sets, reinforcement learning, supervised learning, unsupervised learning. All of that is in
within K5. Once we get to middle school, we really take more of a deeper dive and call out AI explicitly and really get into other elements of AI. Of course, as you get into the secondary level because computer science is more so broad, uh we will discuss neural networks and things
of that nature, but our goal is to prepare students for other specialized courses, say within the CTE realm, which there is an AI fundamentals course under development. That was impressive. Yeah, Miss Tennessee will always come and talk to
you more. So, and then up next we have Dr. Megap Foley who is our digital learning coordinator. Talk about and Mr. Chney. Okay. So, Ryan's gonna take the long way around one more time and I have notes because last time last meeting I went
way over. Surprise. And so I have a few notes. And so together Ryan and I are team digital learning and as such our focus is on supporting the Virginia Educational Technology Plan. And a huge component of that are the digital
learning integration standards. And so we are going to share today a little bit of how the DLI for short standards um have the close ties. It might not be um explicitly stated but very close ties to artificial intelligence do exist. And as well group one, I do want to let you
know that yes, we have those connections to the profile of a graduate right in those digital learning integration standards. So we hear you and they are there. So uh the DLI standards, the seven concept strands align with the
seven student roles of ISTY and they also have the learning priorities that naturally align to artificial intelligence. So as you see the digital citizens strand there are three key learning priorities that intersect with AI. A major challenge of generative AI
is bias as we know I just had some of that in myself when I was going through for something and hallucinations where AI told me that there was a great AI evaluation tool. It did not exist as I asked for it to tell me where did this
who was the developer said oh I'm sorry thank you for be having me be better because I made them so it will tell you so as educators we need to ensure that we are helping our students to recognize that there is some bias and that they
can understand copyright and intellectual property as well and privacy and security concerns within the knowledge constructor strand it's the focus of curating and utilizing diverse digital and assistive technologies. So this again is where some of those com
computers the AI can generate falsehoods. They can actually make up references that do not exist. So we want to as educators ensure that we are teaching our students how to verify their sources, how to fact check and how to critically analyze the information
that they encounter. And with the empowered learning strand, students are demonstrated um are guided to demonstrate their technological competency through the effective use of AI. They're encouraged to build networks and customize AIdriven processes. But by
focusing on basic tech skills like troubleshooting and exploring new AI tools, we need to help our students learn to make better decisions and build the technical skills needed to succeed in our digitally driven
environment. Thank you. If we stand together, one of us is completely cut off from the camera because I'm down for and probably uh so as we look at the next the next two strands and we look at uh creative
communicator and global collaborator. Uh AI can help enhance student engagement by acting as a thought partner. This is probably something that you see in a lot of schools and we even use it ourselves where we're trying to think of an idea, we're getting stuck. That whole idea of writer's block I feel like is going to
disappear in certain regards. So thinking about that and acting as a partner can help boost student confidence in order to assist in everyday tasks like having discussions and even their writing and you're starting to see some of that now. And then it can also act as a connect uh connecting agent to allow personalized
learning, right? to be able to have that ability to not only uh not only get that information but also to be able to share it with others and then finally with innovative designer and computational thinker. So it's vital for students at this point to understand how to use AI
as a brainstorming partner and to help generate new ideas and even highlight connections that maybe they uh miss on the first uh the first time of processing it. And then with computational thinking AI can break things down into manageable parts. So thinking about this idea of prediction,
testing, refining and then finally solving students can break it apart into smaller uh portions and then be able to solve those problems. So thank you speech drama debate coach. So I just always love a good speaker. Um so we uh
got the executive order. We passed guideline or we wrote guidelines. We have passed two sets of standards that definitely have it in integrated specifically digital learning. We revised those. I'm sure we'll be off uh adding to AI. So then it was time for
educator training. So we uh did a new model with our German community college where we uh basically were able to work with German and German then went out to all the other community colleges and built partnerships for us to deliver in-person training about generative AI.
It was just a basic foundation overview. uh it was a lot of tools and fun and uh just engaging with AI and talking about you know bias and uh those things about hallucinations and those kind of things but also how do you become more efficient as a teacher using AI. Um so
we had 360 educators participate in person and that was a train the trainer model. So those 360 teachers then could go out we did sell out that was the maximum capacity of what we were able to do. Um, and then we had 70 educators that were invited to pre present at our
March 27th uh, showcase where we basically took all those things that the teachers learned and then took back to their school divisions and implemented and did some really super cool stuff. We had a keynote speaker. It was really really important um, work. What was super cool for me is that by the end of
all of this training, 89% of the uh participants said the workshop was excellent, which if you've ever looked at reviews from a conference, you know 897 doing great. And this is even more important especially for this committee to think about. 100% of the participants
said, "We want more training like this." So, we really need to start thinking about how does this professional development work? um and doing better at getting that leveraging into the the the local communities and working with our community colleges to provide that professional development, working better with our EP programs to make sure that
they're providing the training to their pre-ervice teachers and those type of things so they're ready to teach. Um so we're excited about that training. One thing uh that we love to talk about too is our leadership workshop that we had the Virginia Association of School Superintendent um was working with
advanced learning partnerships and they created uh cohorts 16 cohorts um of 75 different school divisions who did a fourperson in in like four in-person training days. It was almost like a workshop more than training um where in
the morning we learned more about each of the cool new AI tools and implications. And what was nice about that is it was throughout the whole school year. So like each month it was crazy how much AI had changed like in the four to six weeks in between each session. Um but this was really
revolutionary because we had everyone from the cabinet at the table. It's unusual for you to be able to get like a superintendent or procurement person, an instructional person, the tech director, the special uh education person all sitting at a table and talking about what are we going to do with this new
emerging technology. One thing that was really profound for me was I was sitting in region two and the superintendent had just watched um our facilitator talk to chat GPT in another language. So like he was talking and then was translating back and so we had two people speaking two different languages and chat GPT was
and she looked at her team and she was like I want this right now. Here's my credit card. And the procurement director was like that way. And I was like, what a great profound moment for us to talk about, you know, being purposeful and strategic
and those kind of things. We got similar um feedback from our superintendent. At the beginning, on the first day, at the beginning, we did a formative assessment. 34% of superintendents felt comfortable with integration of AI. And by the end of the four days, 88% felt
comfortable with the integration of AI. So again, revolutionizing not just AI, but how we are training our teachers and our leaders on how we're going to do emerging technology. So really great stuff. We are looking right now investigating how are we going to scoop up the rest of those school divisions
that were not able to participate the first time. Um we again sold out right away. I think it was open for like three days and it sold out immediately. Um and and so we know there are school divisions who still want that support. Actually be a plan for 60 and we ended up taking 70 75. Yes. And so thank you
Bass for you know really expanding and squeezing in and uh we we've heard stories from people being like hey we want to come and they're like great you're gonna host because uh we're out of space. So um we appreciate our our partnership with BASS and and that I I really do think this is the future of professional learning our our leaders.
So So here's one example. Um Alam Maro County is one of our counties that has done a really great job of product that came out of their um um work with VAS and ALP. And then uh Louisa County did some really great stuff, too. So great that we decided to have them on our
podcast. So, we're going to watch a little excerpt um from our podcast. If you guys have not subscribed, highly recommend listening to Activated Learning. We go around the state. We have 24 episodes out now um where we basically spotlight places of innovation. So, if you want to hear what
other school divisions are doing, especially uh in areas of innovation, we would love for you to listen to our podcast. And if you haven't been on the podcast, I think you should all email me and tell me about something awesome that's happening in your region so we can we can get you on there. So, okay.
Hopefully this all works. Reggie, do hit the right arrow. Yeah. Views expressed on this program, not necessarily those of Blige PBS, the Virginia Department of Education, or the Virginia Society for Technology and Education.
I'm Tom Landon. We recently traveled to Louisa County to talk about how one small school division is successfully rolling artificial intelligence tools out to teachers and students. But when we got there, we realized it's about a lot more than that. Superintendent Doug
Staley and director of CTE steam and innovation Kenny Ballots shared how the division has created an environment where administrators, teachers, staff, students, and community members work collaboratively to create a framework for innovation which helps ensure the success of any new initiative including
incorporating AI in the classroom. Well, as I say, culture isn't a thing, it's the thing, right? And so culture is so important and to and to really understand how difficult teachers jobs already are and to be able to say how can we help them uh embrace certain
things that are going to make their job easier or make it a little less burdensome. And I would say what's really u really been important for us is saying is in our conversations is saying we're not going to push this on anyone. We're not going to force anyone to go down this route. We're going to start
with who wants to try this? Who wants to be a part of this? And really exposing everyone to it uh initially just saying, "Hey, here's where what we're looking at this year. Here's what we want to do." And so if you are interested in jumping on board and being a part, we want to
talk to you. And so we really went into the year looking at saying if we could get one-third of our staff to jump on, uh we would feel really good about that. where where are for for kind of new adopters, what's the process look like? Where do they start? Yep. So, what I
tell our teachers is um when it comes to you using AI to help yourself do your job better, as long as you're using it safely or being aware of, you know, data privacy concerns, the sky's is the limit on whatever you want to use. So whether that's chat GPT, Claude, Gemini, okay,
Claude and Gemini, I know Chad GPT, sure. Uh so Gemini would be Google's version of ChatGpt. Um, everyone's certainly out there. It's a competitive market. Everyone's kind of raced to the top who can develop the best model. Um, Claude is again a standalone. So, very
similar to Chat GBJ, that large language learning model where you type in, you ask a question, you get a set of uh instructions, you get a response back, right? So, our teachers will use lang large language models like that for um helping as simple as write an email or writing a class letter. Right? When you
think about how much time you might spend sending an email to a parent, maybe this parent's upset with you for whatever reason. Okay, you're going to really go over that email five times. Did I get every typo? Did I get this? Did I get that? Now, you can really write that that email out, put it into a chat GPT, and within a matter of seconds
have a pretty polished response. It's still your language, still what you said, but a very, you know, you don't have to worry about it as much. So, you just cut your time down in half. That's time you can spend somewhere else building out presentations, building out lesson plans, right? These are all that what I say like that lowhanging fruit. Now you start getting into let's say
image generation. So uh video generation. Wow. Right. I want to explain to my students what it was like to see Abraham Lincoln give the Gettysburg address. I could go on, you know, Sora or one of these other video generators. Generate that video, put some language to it, and give them an experience they would have never seen
before. And kudos to Louisa and Abomar for their work that came out of the training. Thank you Amy for your leadership with uh VAS and the training that we were able to do across the state and as
Coloso said capturing uh additional school divisions and continuing this work with AI. So with our last five minutes with AI being integrated into the schools, let's talk
about the impact of AI as we talk about online courses in service training. Uh what can we do to expand this with digital instruction? So with AI in place, how can we enhance
the learning for students? And I'll combine number two, protect the students data and privacy. So what experiences are are you having as you and your organizations and
school divisions and virtual Virginia dealing with AI? What impact has it had on student learning? How can we continue to protect students? I'll be honest. When he said they put stuff in the chat, GPT, I had a heart
attack because the the issue for us and Prince William is the trust to have in our teachers to be able to put the right things into there. And so we are very lean in implementing AI because of that
fear of them putting in private information. And so things like a chat GPT, if we just open that up and let teachers put stuff in there, we'd be in the Washington Post. Um, so I I think that
that is a real legit concern um in moving forward of protecting um our students and our staff from what they don't know and don't understand. So I think putting the cart before the horse, not just releasing AI, but maybe
entrusting and giving that training that's needed so that teachers understand the value of AI, but yet the risks and the challenges of just opening up an application. Yeah, I I I mean we
struggle with teachers just using software and creating accounts for students, let alone giving them an opportunity to go to ChatGpt and say, "Create an IEP for me." All right. Is there a list? There's so many educational AI platforms out there. Is
it there a list curated of safe places that educators can use that will not share private data? like skill struck as a a platform that we can have the teachers create IEPs because they don't share that data out. But is there a list
created for the state with those types of things on it? No, the Virginia Department of Education does not endorse project project. We're just it's not allowable by the law that we can endorse or create. uh we are we have talked in
our department about creating criteria or like a checklist a readiness guide types sit um we haven't been directed to do that work yet but um John's office for sure he works in cyber security so we are talking about that so we certainly can create criteria and
checklist but we would never be able to unless they change the state laws um be able to create like a ramp type program um we're hoping VA will maybe filter that in a little a little bit as we have hardware that is got AI in it and those kind of things. But yeah, unfortunately
we're kind of hoping school divisions can help with that. And that's also where I would say BASS and our schoolboard association hopefully are helping fill that gap because Virginia Department of Education is not. I will say that's one of the things they did in this year learning is the teams develop
um depending on the division some of them develop rubrics or vendor letters and types of things the things that they're looking for before the that can be used within the division. So that's the main main types of documents they they design in the year learning. So as
certainly I'd like to add and thank you for the input and expertise for sure. You know, sitting from a perspective of the office of cyber security and risk management, you know, I I do hear the concern about uh data privacy and PII and the proper use of technologies that
might be so abstracted from the user that they don't realize their unintended consequences for sure. So, trying to make sure that we're careful about the choices that we make. And um you know one of the things I'm curious about lately and maybe this is a rhetorical question for the moment but I'm interested in hearing more at some point
as well but just more about the um the software um adoption process that occurs uh within the procurement process with that that the division level. So as Calypso is saying you know at the VOE we're not we're not permitted to promote
particular products. So we can't necessarily just publish a list um because of that not not wanting to promote particular products or not being able to but uh certainly being uh helping to help with the leadership about being more um mindful and
thoughtful about the uh procurement of products as as they and also where do they get rolled out to. So maybe what would be on the operation side wouldn't necessarily be something that should be available on the instructional side.
Yes. I think one thing from the conversation is really thinking about where technology is today. We've leaned so much on our tech department and school divisions because at one point in time everything was installed by them. But now teachers have so much access to
other platforms and tools that we really need to provide the training for teachers to understand the fundamentals behind it. for another plug for DLI and CS standards. If they were to implement these standards, topics such as the exceptional use policy, PPI, uh data
privacy, all of that is embedded in the standards, right? So, we can get to a place that we're providing instruction on it. The teachers are knowledgeable about all of the concerns that the tech department is having so that we don't jump before and just say let's talk
about use. Let's understand what it is and what are the capabilities. So I think it's a balance between not only how how is it helpful for convenience but understanding again the capabilities and the limitations of all of our technological choices. And I think that
you all said it best to help our students. I think that you're putting components in place that help our students be prepared. We want them to be knowledgeable. We want them to be skilled when they go out into the workplace and various industries. We
also want parents to understand because we've talked a lot about today how to reach out to parents and how to best navigate information that can educate them as well. I did ask to speak about the website because I think we kind of
you know we went across that but there is a website from these 75 schools who participate. Yeah, the VASS and the advanced learning partnership pages both have um all of the resources that the school divisions developed. So, if you're looking for a vendor letter
example, if you're looking for a procurement processes and those type things, Hampton was a part of VAS. So, I I'm sure you guys have your things on there. But, um yeah, we we all that's always a problem. So we we'll we'll continue to depend on VAS to be able to
help school division support that by sharing the information that they they created during that. Um and we want to continue and deepen that conversation so that there could be a list but a list scares us at the Virginia list. I think with change I mean things are coming out so fast changes so fast. Can I say one
thing though? I think it's cross alignment across your curriculum areas because how often do we put out well you should be you should use zern you should use lexia or Virginia high school lead use discord to chat in esports well you should not be using discord with students in esports so as we get
communication sometimes from be from the curriculum areas it goes against our security guidelines and privacy and technology so that's very difficult to manage that when we have these coming across from the curriculum areas and so I think it's a cross collaboration that
sometimes there's a disconnect. Excellent discussion. Yeah. And I I'll say that I think opportunities like Zern Ignite and Lexia were one-time opportunities. You're not going to see that kind of push always. You know, it's the first time I'd ever seen it from DOE
and um been doing this for a long time. Um what we do have are our textbook and high quality instructional materials that are curriculum materials that can be adopted. They do have virtual components to them. A lot of them have online components them. So that might be
an area where AI specifically might be thought of. you know, uh, HQIM is already exploring at the national level. Um, some of the HQIM tools that could be or AI that could be used with HQIM to
help teachers better implement those HQIM, but those would be adopted by the localities, right? The the curriculum HQIM materials would be adopted by the localities. And so then you know the AI options then would also be selected by
the localities. But I think your point is valid. Yeah, I think I think that's just it's just my opinion. This is editorial opinion. I feel like if VOE is putting out resources they want us to use and they have there's some not great
security put in place for AI from one of these if if your textbook adoption includes a a company that has not great protection of PII then we should not be recommending them but that's my editorial opinion at Prince William County. Thank you. Thank you. What what powerful and
engaging conversation today you can see that these topics are very important and uh we want to extend uh a great deal the discussion with this we'll continue this through email uh continue to collect
information on remote learning as it relates to virtual continue to talk about AI implementation we will certainly publish this presentation on the VLAC website. These resources and internet links will be there uh for your
convenience and we will have um Thank you. That's my cue to be on the last slide. So that's the pain. The uh the additional topics will be discussed. We will bring these back. Uh they're worthy
of bringing back in the fall. and look at the week of October 27th through 31st on your calendars. If there are major conflicts or events that occur during that week, let us know right away before we put this on the calendar to plan. Uh
we appreciate again your input today. We thank you for your participation. Uh thank you Dr. Wallace. Thank you, Philipso. Thank you, uh, our department members, uh, who participated with us today. And we, um, certainly wish you
safe travels as you go back to your destinations. All right, have a good afternoon. conferences that