Teaching Languages Today | The 4 Secrets to Smart EdTech Shopping (feat. Enid Sierra)

What criteria should you consider when buying educational technology (EdTech) for your school? How can you evaluate the effectiveness of EdTech your school has already purchased? What are some best practices for helping teachers integrate new software into their classes? In this episode, our host Emily Sabo (linguist, PhD) sits down with Irving ISD District EL Instructional Lead Enid Sierra to discuss 4 secrets to shopping smart when it comes to EdTech software! ‘

You can connect with Enid Sierra at esierra@irvingisd.net or on Twitter @enidpsu. If you enjoyed the episode, subscribe to the podcast or leave us a review! 

For an example of an EdTech efficacy study, here’s ours: https://blog.mangolanguages.com/mango-works-heres-the-proof

Get your free PDF here: https://info.mangolanguages.com/hubfs/Downloadable/How%20Language%20Works%20Gated%20Content/TheSecretstoSmartEdTechUse.pdf

#languageteaching #worldlanguages #mangolanguages #languagelearning #edtech #educationaltechnology

Transcript

The 4 Secrets to Smart EdTech Shopping (feat. Enid Sierra)

Emily Sabo, PhD [00:00:00] You are listening to a Mango Languages podcast. Language teaching is hard, but there are a lot of reasons to be optimistic. That's why we created this show, Teaching Languages Today, a podcast for world language educators about what's working and what's not. Listen in for the problems the fellow teachers are facing. Learn what solutions they found and get some much needed self care reminders of why you fell in love with teaching in the first place. Hi, I'm Emily, your host for the show. And each episode I'll be taking you on a journey into seeing world language ed through a new lens by sitting down with an all star lineup of teachers, administrators, parents and students. It's my hope that the stories you hear in this show will get you thinking and feeling different about what you do in the classroom. 

 Emily Sabo, PhD [00:00:54] And welcome back to Teaching Languages today. I'm your guide, Emily. In this episode we're talking about the four secrets to Smart EdTech use, and there's a lot that we're going to get into. Like, what criteria should you consider when buying EdTech for your school? How can you evaluate the effectiveness of edtech that your school has already purchased? And what are some best practices for helping teachers integrate new software into their classes? I got to sit down with Irving ISD Districts EL instructional lead, Enid Cierra to discuss the four secrets to shopping smart when it comes to edtech software, you know, regardless of whether you ultimately use Mango Languages for your edtech software or whether you're looking for software to serve a different need in your school, this episode really does help you think about what software do you need? Who is it for, and is it going to be effective? I learned a lot in this episode and I hope that you enjoy it just as much. Without further ado, this was my conversation with a Enid Sierra. 

Enid Sierra, EL Lead [00:01:56] Hello. My name is Enid Sierra. I was actually born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Y trabajo en el instituto de Irving ISD in Texas. I've been in the district for 17 years and for the last ten and a half years I'll be working with the dual language secondary programs, as well as the foreign languages programs and for with our secondary ESL students. Una de las cosas con la que trabajo diario es motivar a los estudiantes para tener éxito en Inglés and my language story I guess it's my first one, which is Spanish, but I was fortunate enough to attend private school when I was growing up in Puerto Rico, so English was part of our education. I did not have perfect English, so I understand some of the struggles of some of our kiddos when they come to the country, they are learning a second language. 

Emily Sabo, PhD [00:02:45] Gracias Enid. So tell us a little bit about your school. You know, how many languages are spoken, how many emerging bilingual students do you have? What's the make up community? 

Enid Sierra, EL Lead [00:02:56] I work for Irving ISD in Texas. It's a mid-sized district around the Metroplex area of the present time, we have over 32,000 students, and out of those 32,000 students, we have close to 16,000 emerging bilinguals. If we talk about percent, it's 49.6%. So it's a district with a lot of emerging bilinguals. Our number one language is Spanish. That's where we have our biggest enrollment then is followed by French and Arabic. And then after that there's in total of 49 different languages, including dialects. So we've seen students that come from Africa in some Asian towns, so some of their dialects, it's what they call their home language. So, you know, sometimes we struggle with finding resources for them to be able to support our students in that sense. So there's not a lot of resources out there when it comes to dialect because, you know, it's local. It's it belongs to that community, to that specific place in the world. So that's kind of an overall what our district looks like. 

Emily Sabo, PhD [00:03:57] So in your opinion, what makes good educational software good and what makes bad educational software bad? 

Enid Sierra, EL Lead [00:04:06] One of the things that make educational software good is that the programs are simple, that they're easy to navigate, that both students and the teachers are able to access it. And you want to make sure that, I guess design is attractive to students because sometimes some of those some words are just so bland and they're not student appealing. So I guess that could be one bad thing. Like if they're not appealing to your audience or if you're talking about a software for elementary or for secondary, you have to have different types of graphics because if they look too childish, then, you know, the older kids are not going to tend to gravitate to use it successfully. 

Emily Sabo, PhD [00:04:45] Okay. So point one was that the software needs to be user friendly to engage both students and teachers. That brings us to point number two, which has to do with tracking student progress. 

Enid Sierra, EL Lead [00:04:55] In order to continue to support, you know, any application or any software that we purchase district wide. We have to be able to provide data that shows student growth, that shows that there's really been that academic growth in the student. So if we are just spending our money's on a program that is not going to meet the needs of our students. And the way for us to assess that is looking at that data like how often are students logging in? You know, how much time on their spending in there is? Has there been any progress when it comes to language acquisition or to academics? Are we seeing growth? So if the program doesn't provide that, then it's like, well, just might not be the right software for us because it's the only way also to talk to parents and tell them, you know, how our students are, how their kids are progressing is it's all about their parents and the teaching community working together to make sure our students are being successful. 

Emily Sabo, PhD [00:05:47] Okay. So point number two was, does this software make it easy to track student progress, After all, teachers need to be able to easily assess student progress and administrators need to be able to easily view student usage data. Now on to point number three, which is all about getting proof that the thing actually works. 

Enid Sierra, EL Lead [00:06:07] There's a lot of educational software and applications out there, but when you have the research behind it, okay, so this is a company that have also been looking into what's working and what's not working and then adjusting to the needs of our students. 

Emily Sabo, PhD [00:06:21] Yeah. Before I would buy a piece of software, I would want to know, is this pedagogically sound? Is there an independent study that has been done to demonstrate the efficacy of this product pedagogically? And that is one thing that I like about the Mango product is that we do have that independent study that demonstrates the success on student outcomes. Does having that kind of information beforehand help your school make its decision? 

Enid Sierra, EL Lead [00:06:48] Oh, yes, of course. It's that hard data to support an investment because at the end of the day is an investment that the district is making on the product. 

Emily Sabo, PhD [00:06:56] Okay, got it. Point number three, get proof that the software actually works. Point number four. Our last point in this episode is about can you guess it? Customer service. 

Enid Sierra, EL Lead [00:07:07] If there's not really good customer service, then you're in limbo. So I need to invest on a tool that provides that very human customer service. Like if there's an issue and it could be as little as, Oh my God, the app is not working today, let me call or let me email this person and you get an immediate response. In the past, I've worked with other companies. That takes days in order for a response. And then you're like, You have teachers waiting, you have students waiting. So then your customer service becomes also our customer service, because at the end of the day, that's who we're serving to. We're serving teachers and students. And one of the things that I love about Mango is that any issues, there's always an immediate response. And I appreciate because it lets release a little bit of my stress on my side. Oh my God. Like I can get a hold of it. Oh no, that's not true. I can get a hold of them immediately and things will move quickly. So it's very, very important, like customer service. Like I will say, one of the top after, you know, looking at the data and a research, customer service can take you a long way. 

Emily Sabo, PhD [00:08:08] I'm so happy to hear that your experience has been a good one. 

Emily Sabo, PhD [00:08:11] Okay, so now that we talked about the four secrets to Smart EdTech use, let's talk implementation. Because let's be honest, oftentimes just purchasing the software doesn't solve all the problems instantaneously. Actually, it usually doesn't. There needs to be a process of implementing the software into the classroom, getting teachers to integrate it into their curriculum. It's really worth taking a second to think about how you're going to integrate the software that you're purchasing with the curriculum that you have. 

Emily Sabo, PhD [00:08:37] When you're introducing a new educational technology to your teachers, is it something that you require all the teachers to use? Is it optional thing? How do you guys usually handle that? 

Enid Sierra, EL Lead [00:08:49] A lot of the software, like in this case, it's encouraged because we were very targeted on who we give access to Mango. Like this year we're being working very closely with our middle school and high school newcomers to our years, 0 to 3 years in the country. You know, we want to be intentional about who we are trying to impact and how we're going to impact. So once we identify those students and those teachers, then we meet with them and we had several trainings with the mango reps and then we also had some in-house follow ups to make sure that the teachers are accessing the program correctly and providing the tools to the students. Because this is a supplemental software, this is not going to drive 100% of the teacher instruction. This is just to support that language acquisition. We really encourage, especially at the high school level, we have our a newcomer class that is only for specific qualifying students and that's part of one of their station rotations is the use of Mango. So we've been very intentional providing the support that teachers need in order to use the app. And now with the new rewards is like, Oh, okay, you have this many students logging in constantly. How can we continue to encourage the rest of the class to log in and use the application? So so we do provide the training that you guys have supported us with and then we do our follow up piece and try not to say that it's mandatory, but encouraged, encourage our students, our teachers to use it as often as they can. 

Emily Sabo, PhD [00:10:16] It sounds like your school uses this edtech software mostly for ESL, right? Not for world languages, is that right? 

Enid Sierra, EL Lead [00:10:23] Yeah, that's right. We use it in the ESL classrooms. Yeah. 

Emily Sabo, PhD [00:10:26] I think that's a good reminder too that you don't have to go all in on educational software every time you're looking for it. I think your approach to being specific about why you need it, who needs it, and then being intentional with how you're spending that money, which is precious for every school, I think that's I think is a really smart thing and I'm glad to see that you guys are doing it well. Did you have anything else, Enid, that you wanted to share with our listeners? 

Enid Sierra, EL Lead [00:10:52] I guess one last thing is that, you know, when you see students working on their software education and being successful and feeling successful and getting that motivation that they need in order to learn the language, then it's like when you go, Oh, okay, you know, little things here and there are making an impact. And we can definitely see it because, you know, we're all humans and we all have the capacity to learn 3000 languages if we want to is just being able to provide the right tools and the right features to be successful. 

Emily Sabo, PhD [00:11:21] And I think a key aspect of the motivation pieces, when you're thinking about some edtech software to buy, you want it to be challenging and allow the student to feel successful like they they can't just be one or the other. If it's too hard, too challenging and not engaging, students simply won't use it or get anything out of it. If it's too easy, they'll feel successful, but they won't be making that learning growth. So I think striking that balance, it can be tough, but when you do, it's so worth it. 

Enid Sierra, EL Lead [00:11:50] It is it is very rewarding. It is very rewarding. And you can see. We have this year some students that have been here three months, five months, and how their language has progressed so quickly. But it goes back to that engagement and that motivation. And, of course, you know the teaching factor, because they're the ones in the trenches. So these additional tools have definitely help our kiddos. And it's just so rewarding when you see them not being afraid to speak with an accent or not. You know that little reward moments that, you know, they feel make up. 

Emily Sabo, PhD [00:12:23] Yeah, I know. At Mango we're really passionate and insistent that edtech and software should never replace real life teachers is, it always should be seen as a supplement. And I guess the only exception to that is if a school district is going to if they don't have any funding for real in-person language teachers, it's just not in the cards. Sure. Some education, some software is better than no education language. But by all means, the teachers are the ones in the trenches. 

Enid Sierra, EL Lead [00:12:51] Yeah, yeah. But it's great to have those tools like Mango to support the growth of our students. 

Emily Sabo, PhD [00:12:58] Excellent. Well, thank you so much Enid for being on the show. It was a joy and I hope you have a safe and happy rest of your week. 

Enid Sierra, EL Lead [00:13:05] Oh, thank you. And you too, you too Emily.

Emily Sabo, PhD [00:13:13] Well, that was my conversation with Irving ISD District, EL Instructional Lead Enid Sierra. We discussed the four secrets to shopping smart when it comes to EdTech software. So to recap, here are the four questions that a need recommends all schools ask when vetting and purchasing educational software. Number one, is it user friendly? Number two, is it easy to track student progress and student usage? Number three, is there proof that the product works the way the company says it does? And lastly, point number four, does the company have a demonstrated history of good customer service? If you'd like to connect with Enid Sierra, you can follow her on Twitter at Enid PSU. That's E-N-I-D-P-S-U. Her email is esierra with 2 'r' @ IrvingISD.net. We've linked all of those handles and emails for you in the description of this episode, and what you'll also find in the description is a link to a free PDF that summarizes those four questions every school should ask when shopping smart for EdTech. Well, that's all for today's episode. Thanks for listening and I'll see you in the next episode of Teaching Languages today. Bye. Stay tuned for our next episode of Teaching Languages Today. If you want to be the first to know when that episode goes live, then make sure you follow the show. If you like today's show, I invite you to give us a follow. Give us a like. Leave us a review. Well, for me and the Mango Languages family, we hope you have a great rest of your day. Ciao. This episode was hosted, produced and edited by Dr. Emily Sabo. Our production manager is Dr. Erika Caturegli in our audience was, Oh wait, that's you. Thank you so much.