Zach Diamond  0:03  
Welcome to the modern classrooms project podcast. Each week we bring you discussions with educators on how they use blended, self paced and mastery based learning to better serve their students. We believe teachers learn best from each other, so this is our way of lifting up the voices of leaders and innovators in our community. This is the modern classrooms project podcast,

Aimee Yocom  0:25  
hello and welcome to the modern classroom project. Podcast, my name is Aimee Yocom and I am an eighth grade social studies teacher in Antelope, California, and a modern classrooms implementer and mentor, guest podcast hosting today as well. And I am joined by Dana Kravchick of the platform Wavio. Welcome Dana.

Dana Kravchick  0:53  
Thank you really nice to be here.

Aimee Yocom  0:57  
It's so exciting to have you. And thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. Our topic today is the wavio platform. But before we get started, I've got to ask, How are you feeling today? 

Dana Kravchick  1:11  
Great. It's really nice day here where I am, in California, actually, both of us, and it's very, very sunny. And yeah, I'm feeling wonderful. Thanks.

Aimee Yocom  1:23  
Totally agree, the sun is out in the Sacramento area as well, and so couldn't have asked for a better day to do a recording, which is awesome. So tell us a little bit more about who you are and how you started working with MCP, 

Dana Kravchick  1:42  
it's a big question. I am neuroscientist in my training, switched to education about four years ago, basically coming to this as a parent, where I first, you know, I, both me and my co founder, sent our kids to a school called can Lab School in the Bay Area, founded by Sal Khan. And in that school, the it was the first time I experienced and learned about what it means for kids to learn in a self paced, mastery based learning environment. And, you know, it's been a long, you know, turn of events that you know that led me, but through the interaction with what I've seen at KLS to, you know, start wavio And and and later be joined with my co founder, Andy Choi, who is, you know, developing this incredible platform, and, you know, serving teachers. Because you know what, what we've seen, first in KLS and later in other schools, is that kind of magical feeling when where students learn independently with the same one I saw in your class, actually, when I when I came and it gives me this kind of awe every time I walk into a class and I see that, and I really want to see it everywhere, not just in, you know, those private schools where it's easier. It, you know, with quotation marks, it's never easy to get this started, but once it's there, so it, I just so for us, really, what we're interested in is to see this happening everywhere. And I guess that's that's what kind of made us start wavio And do what we're doing and work with you all. So it's funny. So MCP, it's like three different ways it kind of crossed our path. So, you know, first I met Michael hakernin, which is the partnership director at MCP, and we met in Aurora, and we kind of connected. And I, you know, we talked about what MCP does. I think it was in some sort of like a drinks event by transcend or something. And then I also heard about MCP from Mark Siegel, who is the assistant head of school and adelphian school, who is a, it's a private school in Oregon who's been practicing self paced mastery based learning for over for almost 50 years, which is crazy when you hear about it. And he told me, You got to talk to MCP, you got to talk to them. And then another person that you know, I know from KLS already, and who's. Work with me. Her name is Kat Clark. She also did a little, you know, partnership with MCP for a little bit. She worked for Apple education and she she now works as marketing director for Wayfinder. She also told me, You gotta talk to MCP, you guys are, do you're along the same path. And so all these people kind of like, you know, kept saying those things. And, you know, I met Michael and so, and things just started rolling from there. I reached out to Kareem and then started talking to Matt and Rob, and this is how it's all got, you know, kind of started.

Aimee Yocom  5:45  
So can you give us an elevator pitch for wavio? I mean, what is it and how does it work?

Dana Kravchick  5:52  
Sure, my pleasure. So wavio pulse is a Progress Tracker that we developed from scratch for MCP educators in partnership with MCP. Obviously, it's free and open for all teachers, but the intention was to create a Progress Tracker that's going to replace the current auto updating tracker and which I think MCP stopped supporting, and long term, but we, we designed the the wavier pulse Progress Tracker with a group of 20 DMCs, including you Amy, so you know this from scratch, from the beginning, very, very beginning, where we, you know, just started thinking and brainstorming about this and through the launch and throughout this year. So and the idea is really to create a place where it's very easy for teachers who are practicing self paced mastery based learning to easily track the progress of the students and and also make it, you know, very easy for the students to understand The process, to take part in it in a simple way,

Aimee Yocom  7:24  
and it has definitely been such an amazing journey. As a teacher who started with wavio from the ground up, it has been an absolute joy to see where it started and where it's at now, and it just keeps getting better and better. I can definitely say You mentioned earlier that you are really excited to see that. Aha, that self pacing within a classroom. And I'm curious beyond that, what, what kind of drove you to begin to create this kind of program, this platform for teachers?

Dana Kravchick  8:12  
Yeah, so before we build a Progress Tracker, we worked with schools that do self paced, Master based learning, and we still have, you know, product like this running in a school in Dayton, Ohio, where teachers get a lot of the information from all the different learning platforms into one place so they can easily Look at what students do throughout the day, and also incorporate automatically this data into their standards and their you know, what we show as all their learning competencies in one place, and it's all been done kind of like smoothly from this information directly to that view. But, you know, working with private schools, it's it's wonderful. It's great. You learn a lot about how the role of the teacher changes, and about, you know, how, how well this model can expand. You know, I've seen kids doing two or three academic year of learning in in one year, closing gaps that are unimaginable in a few months. And the start is always challenging, but once they get into the habit to see what they can do it. It blows your mind and but it cannot be, you know, left only in the realm of the private schools. It has to be everywhere, right? We cannot like neglect potential of. Kids that cannot access to private schools, because we just, we just lose so much human potential. So for me, I mean, this is, yeah, it, you know, it's a no brainer, right? We gotta do this. We gotta, we gotta lower that potential energy to make that happen in regular classrooms fast, yeah, to make it super easy for teachers to just do what, what you you do in a very, very easy way, and adopt this whole model like, you know, in a in a in a second, it's like no time. So, so my hope here is, you know, with with this tracker, if we can help the MCP model expand and grow, and, you know, just scale and have teachers adopted a lot faster, that would, that would make us really happy. We would know, you know, we kind of achieved the goal here. So yes,

Aimee Yocom  10:59  
and it's definitely, definitely something that is very, very viable and important for teachers that are implementing that standard based, mastery based model in their classroom. Can you expand on how wavio works in a classroom.

Dana Kravchick  11:24  
I mean, you could talk about it a lot better than I do. It's so funny because I always interview you, and now you're interviewing me for a first time. So, um, yeah. So thinking about what wavio does in the classroom, it's kind of like, I want to think about it as, you know, three folds, right? So if you think about self paced, Master based learning, the role of the teacher really changed, right? You know, you're almost like project managers, in a sense, right? You have got all these kids working on different things, and you kind of have to look at all of them and know what everyone needs at same time. So the you know, the data visualizations that you need are different than before, and it also has to be a lot smoother. I mean, you can't waste time on that. You don't, you don't have the luxury, right? Because you do a lot more than traditional learning. So, so, so one of the aspects is, obviously, to give this information for the teacher and make this whole process a lot faster. So for teachers, you know, you guys have this sort of a learner view, and this and lesson view, very similar to what it was in the auto updating tracker, but, you know, within a web app. So it's designed not like a table, like a spreadsheet table, and in terms of, you know, the kids, what we like to think is, we, you know, in the auto updating tracker, the kids had some option to edit, but We wanted to give them an outlook on their progress, right, something that looks more like a path that that they can actually track and see and kind of feel their way as they progress, and also give them a sense of accomplishment. So, so everything you put in your content for a unit or a lesson gets visualized very differently for the kids, like those little boxes that they can actually check off once they complete and that lets the teacher know that they are ready for review. And what I've noticed is that, you know, we kind of build it this way because we want the kids to check off the boxes. We want them to feel this sense of accomplishment and also to be able to see and feel the navigation of their learning path. So that's on the student side. And you know, I can dive more into this, but, and then the third part of it is really increase the teacher student interaction. Right when a student checks off things, it shows up immediately on the teacher side as that's ready for review. So you as the teacher could tell that this kid is has completed it, and you can go take a look and mark it as mastered or requires a revision, etc. 

Aimee Yocom  14:49  
Yeah, using it in my classroom. It definitely my students love it. They love being able to check. Check off what they have accomplished. It's like this big, huge checklist. They also get to see where the end is and where they are at. I know that they appreciate the percentage of completion bar graph at the top of the of the of the platform, where they get to see this is how much I have completed out of the unit, and it also provides such great feedback and information for me, as well as a teacher being that I can now see these students might need a little push, might need a little bump, and these students are way far ahead. These students are need to be pushed to complete those extensions those aspire to do's, as we call them, and so the having all of that information in one location that not only is driven by the students, but also data that is accessible and easily joined for the teacher, is amazing. And I think for me, the best part of it is that now that I will have used it for a year, when I when I open it up for next year, I will have all of the stuff that I had from this year, and it will cause me, like no work on my end, to input stuff into the tracker, which is going To be great. I don't have to reinvent the wheel every year. So I'm looking forward to to to that piece of it. What have other teachers besides myself shared about this platform? Dana, 

Dana Kravchick  17:00  
I can share a few of my favorite kind of stories, slash, you know, of quotes from teachers so. So one of them is a teacher who told me, you know, for the first time in a very long time, I could take a personal day and not worrying about leaving my kids with some fluff. You know, work, because I know that they can do what they need to do because of wave you and you know that teacher felt so good about this. And for me, it's like, yes, success, because we hear all the time about, like, you know, teacher burnout and so much work, and how hard is it? It is. So, you know, these kind of stories really kind of make my day. And then one teacher said something so awesome. Just recently, we, you know, I interviewed teachers almost, I don't know, twice, three times a week. And so one of the teachers said to me, something so nice, is kind of it, kind of like is gonna make me blush saying that she was, like, you guys need to do all the to design all the education stuff out there, because you just make it so simple. It was, it was really, really heartwarming to hear that, that, you know, she felt it was, it was, it was so much easier to just onboard and get this stuff flowing and use it. And I definitely know our onboarding Could, could get better, but, I mean, it was, it's it. We're never, like, 100% satisfied with what's going on and so, but it was so nice to hear that. 

Aimee Yocom  19:03  
Well, I definitely agree with that teacher, because one of the probably the best thing before this came out was the fact that you and Andy spent so much time talking with mentors and distinguished modern classroom educators and really picking our brains about what we wanted this platform to look like, what what our needs were. And I can truly say that it's probably the first time in my 30 years of teaching that someone has created something and has put the teacher's needs at the forefront, because it is so sustainable, it. Is so easy to use, so user friendly, and you completely changed or adapted, I should say what our needs were and made it happen, and for that, I envision such great things for this platform, because, like you said, you would love to have all the teachers use it, and I totally agree it, it, there should. There is no reason why they can't. I guess that's the best way to say it. So I also know that you came and visited my classroom and got to talk to some of my students, a couple of my students, I would love to hear what they shared with you in regards to what they thought about the platform,

Dana Kravchick  21:03  
yeah, um, thank you. That's my surprise question, I guess, right. Um, they would, they said it. They like to see where there are. They like to know, you know, it was, it was almost like it's, it was coming from the place of they like that feeling that they know where they're at. And they have this kind of power almost right on, on, you know, their status, on their progress. And, you know, you know, it's, it's, it's so obvious, right? It's, it's, it's something that, you know, it makes total sense. Why wouldn't they? Right? They we have, you know, as parents, we have power struggles with our kids all the time, because they want power in their life, right? On things so and education, the process of learning is just, you know, it's, it's just such an important part of what they do, you know, for them to want to have a, you know, a sense of control and power over this, it makes total sense. And it's just, it was, it was really lovely to hear that. I mean, we don't have the video ready yet, but we're, you know, but we will get there, hopefully soon. We just updated, by the way, the website with your classroom photo. I don't know if you saw it. 

Aimee Yocom  22:41  
I have not seen it yet. I will have to definitely check that out. 

Dana Kravchick  22:45  
Yeah, yeah. So I see that, and I, you know what I hear from some teachers, you know, we at the beginning, when we first ran this, and you know, your kids filled it out. Some, some of the other teachers in the pilot filled it out. We had this survey for kids to ask them, you know, what do you think about wavio? Give us your feedback? You know, the responses were, you know, overwhelmingly positive. Obviously, there are things that we should change all the time, right? There's like, they want the font bigger here, they want this. But the thing that came out from all of this was the very positive feeling of, like, knowing where they are, you know, their sense of accomplishment when they check off things. Kids also, like that expert, like, you know, animation, where the things fly out. So, so and some teachers actually, you know, I had a couple of teachers actually do their own internal surveys to ask the kids, which trackers do you like better? And it was, is really encouraging to see that they prefer wavio And so, yeah, what kids say is a lot along the lines of, like, you know, the sense of accomplishment, a sense of I have that, You know, knowledge of where I am, and I can scroll, and I can move to wherever I want. And you know, I know where I am, kind of sense of control, right?

Aimee Yocom  24:33  
It is definitely a great tool to help build those executive functioning skills in our students, which is something that all students need to work on. The fact that they, like you mentioned, they get to see where they're at, definitely helps them with their time management. That's. One of the great things about wavio is being able to put in the suggested pacing on being able to complete the tasks that are needed to be able to be successful on the end of unit assessment, whatever that might be, but also just developing the skill of, like you mentioned earlier, checking things off. I've got this done, and managing. Am I a little bit behind, or am I a little bit ahead? Do I have some time to, you know, some extra time to spend on this assignment? Do I need to, kind of, you know, move along so that internal time management, that that platform provides is really great. Wow,

Dana Kravchick  25:51  
I'm so it's really interesting. You say that, because this whole thing started when I was still, you know, doing biotech. I was, like, assigned, you know, working in my lab. And as a as a mom, I was working with KLS teachers to understand the executive function skills of kids. And we were looking at, how do you, how do you quantify time management success for the kids? Can you even quantify that? So, you know, long story, long story short, it's, it's not easy at all, as you can probably tell. It's, you know, scientists who do this in the lab do this in the lab. So it's not real conditions. It's kind of fake conditions. So there all the stress and the, you know, environmental influence that a student really experiences in real life is just not there. So it's not a real measure. On the other hand, if you just ask teachers or parents, that's a subjective so you got to find an objective way to measure it. So part of, part of how we thought about, you know, measuring this, is by looking at at real time student progress. And, you know, I don't know if we'll ever get to this with wave you but I mean, I think that at least you know, we can see, according at least to what you say, is that you know, students are making better progress with that. And this is something I also hear from teachers, is that, because the kids see their name jump on the Lessons tab, and you and I talked about it, they really love to check things off and see their names jump forward, and they work harder to be on pace. And that's one of the things that a teacher told me, and I was shocked, like, it's obviously, this is not quantitative, it's just qualitative data at this point, right? Because we just launched in December, but she said, my kids are more on pace. Do I mean? Do you see that as well? I'm just curious, because now I can ask you, and it's okay to say no, I know we're recording. It's okay to say no,

Aimee Yocom  28:33  
I do. I do see it in my classroom as well. Like you said, you the kids get to see their name jump from space to space when they you know, from task to task when they complete it and they mark that it's completed. I also think that the the feedback feature as well, that that teachers can provide to students is super powerful as well. The feedback in regards to their assignments, the feedback in regards to their mastery checks, is also important as well. And I think that that's that feedback, that instant feedback, is huge for our for students, especially in the society that we are in when things come so quickly to them, their expectation is that things are going to come quickly now when you talk about the internet and whatnot, so it's really nice to be able to have that feature as well.

Zach Diamond  29:39  
Hey there, listeners. This is Zach. I've got some announcements and reminders for you. Calling all school and district leaders. We're hosting a virtual summer summit on June 24 for leaders supporting modern classrooms. Educators. Leaders will learn practical skills from fellow leaders, attend workshops of their choice and. And connect with the modern classrooms project leadership, collaborative community. Modern classrooms co founder Rob Barnett is our featured keynote speaker, and will share insights from his book, meet every learner's needs alongside voices of students, educators and leaders. We invite educators to share the summit with their leaders, and invite leaders to register. Want to start building your own modern classroom. Sign up for our summer virtual mentorship program from June 23 to July, 22 work with one of our expert mentors to build materials for your own classroom. We have scholarships all over the country so you can enroll for free if you teach in LA Oakland, Chicago, Minnesota, Alabama, and more. To see if there's an opportunity for you, check out modern classrooms.org/apply-now. That's modern classrooms.org/apply-now. We are hosting two book clubs this summer. We're reading the promises and perils of AI in education by Ken Shelton and Dee Lanier in June, and the identity conscious educator, by Lisa tallison in July. Look out for more details coming soon. You can check the show notes of this episode for more information and registration links for those first two things I mentioned. But for now, let's get back into it with Aimee and Dana,

Aimee Yocom  31:23  
one thing I would love to ask you is, I would love to see if you could tell us a little bit about what is the future look like for this platform. Do you have visions of the end product, what it would look like, or will it you add a parent feature, for example? I know that we have talked about that a little bit, but what? Yeah, what goals do you have going forward?

Dana Kravchick  31:55  
So obviously, right? We have there, you know, the auto updating tracker that got built over several years, and it has so many awesome features. I know Zach here wouldn't, wouldn't let that one go, because it he has so many things that we don't have yet in ours and and I appreciate that things like the check in form and, you know, emails to parents, right? So all of those things we are planning to add in, and you know, you know, a lot of teachers are talking about groupings, and I would really love to get the check in form and the data around it soon. I would like to get parents in the loop of what's going on, you know, in classroom for their kids, because you know, first and foremost for the kids, right? Because when you close that loop, parent, teacher, student, you really empower the kids very, very strongly, because their entire support system is there and is acknowledges where they are at. But also, you know, thinking about this long term, why we need the parents to know what you guys are doing, because, without parents advocacy for this model, you know, it, it's it's gonna take, you know, let's say the opposite, right, with parents advocacy for this model when they know how well it's going for the kids and what they are doing, my hope is that it's actually going to help this model scale, because I know for myself as a parent, I would love for my daughter's school district to have teachers that practice this model, and but if, if parents don't know about it, or don't know enough about it, we're losing this power that that we have, right? You know, every teacher teaches about 100 kids, that's 100 families that can know about this model. And so, you know, I'm really hoping that we could get more parents into this loop for the first and foremost, for the kids, and also for other kids, right? For more kids. And then, you know, long term visions, right? We, you know, there's a lot of stuff I'd love to get in, things like standards, things like, you know, doing all your assessments, not having to go to other platforms to for the kids to, you know, get their Google Docs, or whatever they they're working on.

So. So yeah, we have, we have plans for sure. But you know, like I kind of said in the beginning, if we can, if we can, with this tool, make the adoption of the model faster and easier, that's a really good outcome in my mind. You know, it's a really great outcome.

Aimee Yocom  35:27  
Yeah, I can tell you, just from my own experience with the platform that you guys are continuously updating and adding new things. In fact, we just got an email today that said, you know that we, if we have a co teacher, that we can add a co teacher to the platform as well, which is really nice for classrooms that have More than one teacher. So I I look forward to what's coming in the future. It's I think this platform will always be a work in progress. There will always be something new to add to it, and I just appreciate the fact that we can communicate our needs and our wants with you and you and Andy make things happen, and that's amazing, instead of just leaving it as status quo. So before we wrap up, I would love for you to share with our listeners the easiest way to connect with you, if they've got questions or would like to take the leap and try the platform out with their classrooms? 

Dana Kravchick  36:47  
Yeah, absolutely. So teachers can email me. They can also text me in the chat, but it's inside a the platform itself. I'm also going to give you guys a calendar link so they can book a time on my calendar if they want to ask me anything or just chat or have a, you know, a feedback or support session. They can Facebook me. They can, you know, be friends on LinkedIn. I like I'm available as possible. I want you know, I love talking to you all, because everything we do, we get the ideas from from you. I mean, the expert, that was a brilliant thing I've seen on another teachers, a tracker. You know that expert thing, so that we have now. So I love I, you know, reach me anywhere as possible. You know, I try to be as available as I can, you know, at some point, right when we ended, when we ended the pilot and you guys started implementing, I think I gave all of you my phone number so, so I've been texting with with some of you as well. It's a lot of fun. I really appreciate when, when you find a time to talk to me, I'm really grateful. So just any way possible, I'll give you all the you know, all those links to put in the show notes if you want it. 

Aimee Yocom  38:23  
Yeah. Awesome, awesome. Thank you, Dana, for being here with me today. Listeners, remember, you can always email us at podcast, at modern classrooms.org, and you can find the show notes for this episode at podcast.modernclassrooms.org We'll have this episode's recap and transcript uploaded to the modern classrooms blog on Friday, so be sure to check there or check back in the show notes for this episode if you'd like to access those. Also, we are asking our listeners to leave a review. If this podcast has been helpful in supporting you to create a blended, self paced, mastery based learning environment, it does help other folks find it. Thank you all for listening. Have an excellent week, and we'll be back next Sunday.

Zach Diamond  39:26  
Thank you so much for listening. You can find links to topics and tools we discussed in our show notes for this episode, and remember. You can learn more about our work at www.modernclassrooms.org and you can learn the essentials of our model through our free course at learn.modernclassrooms.org you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at modernclassproj, that's P, R, O, J, we are so appreciative of all you do for students in schools. Have a great week, and we'll be back next Sunday with another episode. Episode of the modern classrooms project podcast.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai