A Tribute to GRACE Leadership

It's a weird time in education these days.  Coming out of the pandemic, everyone is recovering from the chronic stress of the past two years.  Students are less engaged.  Parents are feeling insecure.  Teachers and administrators are simply exhausted.  This has led to some interesting outcomes.  People are more demanding and less patient.  Burned-out teachers are choosing other professions.  

And, if you follow enough teachers on social media, you will find a lack of trust between teachers and their administrators.  This may be the saddest impact of all.  These are the people who should have each other's backs, but it seems that right now, people are too exhausted for empathy.  As a result, many administrators don't give teachers the benefit of the doubt, and many teachers assume the worst motivations from their leaders.

GRACE isn't immune, but because we already had a close relationship with our leaders and were in awe of them through the remote and hybrid times, we have been able to hold on to our loving relationships better than most.  As the year began, I prayed that this would be a year we would not have an opportunity to be in awe of their leadership.  This week showed that this prayer won't be answered for at least another year.  A teacher who has only been with us for a few months informed us the night before we returned from spring break that he would not be returning.  

With only nine weeks of school remaining, what is a school to do with this situation?  Try to hire a new teacher?  With the amount of time that would take, students would be left teacherless for most of the remaining days of the year.  As I said earlier, parents are feeling insecure about education as we emerge from the pandemic, and math is where that insecurity is most concentrated.  I don't know what would have happened in other schools, but here's what happened at GRACE.  Our principal stepped up and stepped in.  She was a math and science teacher prior to entering administration, so our kids will learn math well for the next nine weeks.  And, we know they will be loved for the next nine weeks.

But, it's not like she was loaded with free time before this happened.  GRACE administrators have jobs that are more than full-time already.  So, what happens with her principal responsibilities?  Other administrators have stepped in.  Our deans are doing more end-of-year planning, and our head of school is taking on more observations.  Our librarian, who was planning the DC field trip with our principal is now bringing it home alone.  The dominos just keep falling.

I don't know if shouting things from the rooftops was ever a real thing, but tribute must be paid to these awesome leaders, and this blog is the most public platform I have.  Thank you, Mandy, for stepping up at a moment's notice for our students.  Thank you, Meagan (our math department chair) for dealing with the inherent awkwardness this situation makes.  Thank you to Eric, Blake, Daniel, Cathy, and Willa Bea for taking as much off Mandy's plate as possible in the coming weeks.  Thank you to Marcia for making sure our 8th grade still gets a great trip to DC.  

And, thank you to everyone who prays for us.  Please add Mandy and the rest of these awesome administrators to your list if they aren't on it already.  And, if they are, give them a few more minutes.

  

Open to Change

Last night, I was drinking from my Wikipedia water bottle.  (Yes, there is a Wikipedia store, and they sell a pretty great metal water bottle.). What I love about that bottle is that it reminds me how much I have changed my opinion about Wikipedia.

Like most teachers, when Wikipedia first started, I hated it.  Students would sit in the computer lab, writing nonsense on pages, and the nonsense would stay for weeks or months.  I warned students against using it and took points off if they did.  Now, I have links to Wikipedia in my textbook, send students to it for some of my lessons, and donate to it every year.  So, what changed?  Well, Wikipedia changed for one, but I did too.  As it became more used, the people at Wikipedia recognized their need for a better error detection system.  They tightened up on who could contribute to their pages and created a system for flagging errors that was more efficient than they had once had.  I also watched a TED talk by founder Jimmy Wales in which he describes their structure.  He says something along the lines of "If you don't think our people care about accuracy, just remember that they volunteer to edit an encyclopedia in their free time."  I thought that was a very good point, and it changed the way I viewed Wikipedia as well.  (Listen, I'm not saying I let students use it for everything.  It still isn't the place to do formal research for academic essays - although, depending on the topic, it can be a good place to find sources.  But if you want to learn more about something as personal enrichment, it is often the best place to start.)

As a science teacher, I frequently use the phrase "our current best understanding" because that is what science is.  For hundreds of years, our best understanding of gravity was Newtonian.  Then, Einstein proposed some new ideas, and we think of it differently.  Our understanding of the atom has experienced five major changes between Dalton and the Quantum model, but each time it changed, it was based on new evidence or a new observation of behavior.  Most things aren't discovered all at once, so we must be open to change when new evidence is available.  When I was a child, we were taught that the brain didn't change after you reached the age of ten (which I found confusing because we were at school), but we now know the brain is plastic and can be changed by learning and experience.  While science is a search for answers, it can also be a search for the next question.  It is all our current best understanding.

I would like to submit that we apply this to our understanding of people and situations as well.  One of the best things about teaching 8th grade is that I have more chances to watch students change than most people get.  A student that started unmotivated and misbehaved can become a great student by the end of the year.  A new kid who begins the year socially awkward sometimes ends the year a leader.  Since I also teach juniors and seniors, I have the privilege of writing college recommendation letters.  Often, the theme of a letter is how much that student has changed since I first met them.  

When we think of growth mindset, let's not just apply it to learning math or studying for tests.  Let's recognize that experiences cause change in humans, and humans are having new experiences all of the time.  Just like science and Wikipedia, be open to changing your opinion about people when you observe new evidence.

Pressing On to What Lies Ahead

The proofreading sweater is now in retirement.  Yesterday was my final yearbook deadline - not just of the year.  It was my last ever yearbook deadline.  In my Thanksgiving post last November, I wrote about 18 years of being the yearbook advisor and why it was time for me to hand it over to someone else.  In that post, I promised to talk about what happens next.  

Let me go back to April of 2022 when I began thinking about this.  Our school has grown dramatically over the past 18 years, and when we got an email about our growing enrollment, I recognized that the methods I have used to make the yearbook all these years were not going to be scalable to this size.  One sleepless night, I had the thought, "In a few years, it may be time to pass this on to someone who can delegate better than I can."  Within a few weeks, I was thinking that perhaps this should happen sooner rather than later.  I wanted to make sure I stopped while I still loved doing it (If that sounds strange, listen to this episode of the TED radio hour in which Daniel Kahneman discusses the Peak End phenomenon of our memories).

But I am not a person who walks away from things easily, and I'm a pretty reflective person (hence this blog).  So, I started thinking about what I have loved about doing the yearbook all these years.  What things do I get from it that I don't want to lose?  There are a number of small things, but there were ultimately two major ones.  

1. Connections with many teachers - Our school is currently on two campuses, with our TK through 6th grade located down the hill about a quarter of a mile from our 7th through 12th grades.  While we have occasional large group meetings, most faculty are not well-connected with those on the other campus.  Because I might pop into a room with my camera at any time and send email requests for photos, I have more knowledge of what is happening in classrooms than most, and it is part of why I love the school so much.
2. Legacy contribution - Teaching is about projecting something into the future.  While we obviously do that with our students, it is important to think about the future of the school itself.  I have been at GRACE for 20 years, and preserving our memories in the yearbook has made me feel that I was making a tangible contribution to the school's legacy.

These were both things that I didn't want to lose, but I was uncertain about how I would maintain those things as I moved forward.  In the midst of all of this musing, I was having an email conversation with our academic dean about doing some presentations on cognitive science with our teachers for professional development.  It was then that the penny dropped, and I realized that this was how I could keep dual campus connections and make a contribution that would carry forward.  

I ran this by a couple of colleagues to see if they thought I was crazy, and they were excited about it.  I carefully crafted an email to my principal with all of these notions, thinking she would be shocked.  Her reply was two sentences - "Sounds great. I'll start working on it."  I ended the year with a pep in my step as I was having new ideas about how to pursue this new role - even though we haven't fully fleshed out what it will be.

This will begin, in part, after spring break.  I will spend six Tuesday afternoons presenting professional development sessions based on the things I learned at a Learning and the Brain conference about the science of learning, and the librarian and I are going to purge and reorganize our professional development books to make the shelf more user-friendly.  Since I won't constantly be heading out to games and events every afternoon, I have joined the Y (I've been going for two weeks now, and I sense blog posts with fitness class analogies in the works).

Next year, I will begin making resource recommendations to my colleagues (and by "begin," I mean "continue" because I've been doing that for years - it will just be official now).  I will teach a study skills elective using the works of Barbara Oakley and Daniel Willingham.  I will observe anyone who will let me and talk through cognitive science-based pedagogy with them.  I hope to make monthly presentations in faculty meetings on a variety of topics, starting with Working Memory and Cognitive Load.  I was also thinking it might be a good idea to send parents some tools to help their kids with studying.  There may be a few other things in the works as well.  If you think that sounds like a lot, I assure you, it won't add up to the amount of work I've been putting into the yearbook.

I will always be grateful for the 18 years I have spent advising the yearbook, but I am happy to press on to what lies ahead, empowering teachers in their decisions with knowledge of research and making kids better learners by showing them how their brains work.

NCTIES Conference Notes

I am at the NC Technology in Education conference in Raleigh.  These are my notes.  Please know that it will not simply be a summary of what the speaker said but also my own musings about what they are saying.  

Keynote - Keith Hawkins

I am always suspicious when a speaker tries to get everyone to say something and then say it louder (How you doing?  Better than good), but he does have a lot of positive enthusiasm.

Whenever someone asks him how he is, he says, "Better than good."  He told ten stories about people's reactions to that.  What he means is that he's grateful.  He asked a student in a school who was a basketball player, what kind of shoe he would most want to play in.  He said, "I'll play in any shoe that fits."  He said that was not a muscle his own kids had developed because they would want the best or most expensive.

Some students with behavior issues have had a previous experience that has caused them to unplug.  He's not my child, but he's somebody's child.  What you think is what you become.  Protect your minds.

Motivation comes from effort.  Inspiration comes from a desire to create change and empower others.  Motivation is temporary; inspiration is permanent.  Motivation is a feeling, and feelings don't always tell you the truth.

He said that schools are designed for statements, not questions.  I don't know how anyone who spends time in a school could think that.  Schools are full of questions.  He is also making the assumption that we all live for breaks and that Sundays are terrible because we hate thinking about work on Monday.  For someone who has all of this positive energy and is "better than good," this is a negative take on our jobs.

It is not someone else's job to make you happy.  Find and keep joy.    

Google Tools to Support All Learners - Eric Curts

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JrkpV_nqKIMJGf9stP-8jgMZuXVuqRF7vtCSUti0-Ds/edit 

His book is Ctl Alt Achieve - many ways to use Google products in your classroom

Not all of these tools are made by Google, but they all play well with Google.

•  Read and Write is a Chrome extension - has both a free version and a paid version - It adds a toolbar to your Chrome browser.  Just click on the puzzle piece extension to get the toolbar.  Hit the play button and it will start reading the web page or google doc to you.  You can change voices, languages, and speeds in the settings.  Students can listen to their own google docs to help with self-editing.
• Immersive Reader is a Chrome extension - It pulls the text from a website into its own window with larger font and highlights as it is reading, so you can read along with the voice.  You can edit text size, spacing, and colors.  You can color-code parts of speech.   It also pairs images with many words.
• Google Lens allows you to point your phone/tablet/computer at a physical object with words on it, and it will read it to you.

He's not actually talking about this, but he just used a tool called Google Magnifier, which allows you to place a "magnifying glass" over part of your screen. This would be good to point to certain things during class.

• Docs Voice Typing types whatever you say into a google document or slideshow
• Google caption doesn't type it in a document. It just shows what you are saying above the screen.

Assessment - What Assessment? Using Flip and Discovery Ed by Caitlin McCommons and Aubrey DiOrio

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1S-k6YZ_3bQujB7zWdCa6XpDefNCqnGGxz2dlNgqZMzo/edit#slide=id.g21689213634_4_32

Test anxiety prompted her to find new ways to assess her students.

Flip (the artist formerly known as FlipGrid) is free and works on any device.

• Allows students to explain their thinking.  

• Making a video is not scary for this generation.  They’ve been filming themselves their entire lives.

• There are tools in the system (stickers, emojis, etc.) that gives them choice.

• The instructions can be read to them with an embedded immersive reader.  (They have 1st graders, so they can’t always read the instructions themselves.)

• Good for any time you want kids to talk to you, but you don't have time in the classroom because they can all records at once, and you can watch them later with a checklist of the things you are looking for.

• I may start doing math practice homework rather than paper. They can do it on a whiteboard and talk through it.

Discovery Ed Live Quizzes can be used if you are concerned about the accessibility issues with Ed Puzzle.

• This looks a lot like GoFormative to me in terms of being able to see everyone's responses in a grid.
• It does have a "try again" feature, which GoFormative does not have.
• Drawback:  The questions cannot be put in ahead of time.  They can only be asked verbally or projected.

Engaging Learners with Math and Science - Apple

Apple Classroom has similar features to Mosyle.  The device can be locked by the teacher.  When you open an app, you have the option to lock it as the only app they have open.

Apple is the largest platform for Augmented Reality experiences. There are interactive apps that allow you to consume or create interactive experiences.

Visible Body would be a good app for Zane.

You can screenshot or screen record the augmented reality experience and upload it.

There are over 200,000 education apps and EPPP partners that work on iPads.

PDFs within a book in the Books app can be annotated on the iPad.

I know this sounds cynical, but for some of these things, it is not necessarily better learning; it just looks cooler.

Just Say No to Screen Zombies: What to Look for in the Connected Classroom - Marsha Sirkin

This was meant for administrators, but I didn't see anything else in this time slot that I wanted to attend. It was a HIKE over the Sheraton, so I got my workout in for the day.

Why is it that everyone who is offered a microphone thinks they don't need one? Everyone needs one.

"Beware of quiet classrooms." I would add some nuance to this. Ask why it is a quiet classroom because there are times when that is a good thing and times when it is disengagement.

Don't promote technology for the sake of technology. Promote it so they can learn skills that will be good for society.

She shows a picture and asks what we notice. The lady next to me insists on finding something negative in everyone. There's no context to the picture. We don't know why they are writing on paper or why the computers are facing the wall (likely because they have to be plugged in, which limits your options).

I may need to leave.  She just used the chart that shows retrieval practice works (the forgetting curve) to say this was “teaching to the test.”

High Five - Instructional Strategies that Impact Student Achievement - Susan Alpin 

https://app.peardeck.com/student/tpdwcvcig

Instruction matters more than technology.  
Chose your outcomes, then strategies, then tools.

She’s my favorite person so far because she just referenced John Hattie.
"Our children can't succeed in classrooms where there is a tool surplus and a strategies deficit." - Wes Kieschnick

• Direct Instruction (0.6) - Not the same as lecture. Lecture is one way (might as well be a video or is a video). Direct instruction is interactive, has students doing things including guided practice and independent practice. It has an effect size of 0.6, so it is a powerful tool.  
• Attention - grab their attention with a 30s video, story, or quick quiz to connect the day's lesson to something they already know.
• Transition
• Lesson (or Lecture) - If you use a tool like Peardeck or Edpuzzle, it can be saved. If you use games mid lectures (instead of at the end) you can get formative information from it.
• Activity - Student DO something to show their learning
• She didn't talk about transition or the summation, so we only learned ALA.
• Feedback (0.73)
• At its best, feedback least to better teaching, new learning, self-reflection, insight, and improvement. At its worse, it is just criticism.
• It should change what we do.
• Meaningful feedback is specific, frequent, personalized, about performance, and helpful with their next step.
• Jigsaw (1.20) - a cooperative learning strategy
• Expert groups (all the same) research and report back to home group (everyone is different).
• Be careful, your expert groups must learn correct information, or they will just teach the home groups wrong things.
• She says you can use them at all levels of learning, but I personally wouldn't use it for new information. I would give it to them after some basic instruction from me.
• Spaced vs Mass Practice (0.60)
• Regular retrieval will cement learning in the brain better than mass practice (what we used to call cramming).
• The more complex something is, the more frequently it needs to be revisited.
• Repeated practice makes learning sticky.
• Self Assessment (1.33)
• Have students quiz themselves frequently with feedback.
• You only get the maximum benefit if you give them opportunities to do it DURING a process, when they can still make changes, NOT JUST AFTER they finish a project.

BEST ONE SO FAR!

30 Tips and Tricks for Teachers - Apple

I was a few minutes late, so I came in in the middle of Apple Translate

Tools that are built in on iPads and the latest operating system.

Machine learning will allow you to take any image and select the thing to keep and remove quickly.

Live Text - is text to speech. It allows you to have the text read to you (It seems like there are a ton of tools for this).

Files app - allows you to digitize printed work from your phone or iPad. (That was an impressive demonstration.)

Measure (AR) - Creates measurements of objects. Could be good in math classes.

Screenshot and Screen Record - These I already knew and have used daily for years!

• Command Shift 3 - screenshot the entire screen
• Command Shift 4 - screenshot a portion of the screen by drawing a box around it.
• Command Shift 5 - screen record

Keynote Live Video - will kill Google Slides and Powerpoint (in the opinion of the presenter).  It allows you to simulcast yourself in your keynote slide.  (I WILL USE THIS)

Stage Manager - allows you to see everything you have open in a sidebar of icons.  Then you can choose what to open.

Multi-Tasking - allows you to split screen.

DAY 2

Hey Google, How Do You Promote Rigor and Engagement? by Jenny Combs

tinyurl.com/wakeletncties

SAMR model - Subsitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition

Connecting it to Blooms - I would say think about how they connect, but don't automatically assume if it is high on SAMR that it is also high on Blooms.

Logo Math Art looks interesting.

Google Meet doesn't have to just be for virtual learning.  You can use it to create a jury for a mock court case.  

Google Forms could be used for escape rooms because you could lock it so they cannot move on to the next question until they have correctly answered the one on the question they are on.

Google Slides can be used to make digital notebooks, pair videos and questions, could make a "choose your own adventure" by linking images on one slide to other slides in the show. (Per Marcia - you can share it with them in play mode so they cannot just skip to whatever slide they want to go to.)

Google has augmented reality tools.  Instructables.com allows you to make a headset for students to us for AR without needing the fancy, expensive headsets.

YouTubeVR has virtual field trips.

Podcasts are available for classroom use.  They come with questions.  Brains On!

There is a portion of Google Earth that is Google Moon and Google SkyMap.  There is also Google Mars.  You can even do a virtual reality tour through Access Mars (in Google Experiments in Arts and Culture).

You can change the dates in Google Earth Engine to see how areas have changed.

Experiments with Google Arts and Culture has music interactives (Chrome music lab can related music to fractions) and art interactives. 

Google is always changing, so keep checking back.

Digital Revival:  Saving the Lost Innovation by Katey Balikian, Heather Wilson, and Grayson Bendenbaugh

bit.ly/3J4tLfS

In 2020, we thought the "21st century skills" were inherent. When CoVid happened, we had to bring things back down because of social distancing. It was too hard to do collaborative work.

the goals of bring technology into your classroom is student engagement (I would maintain that's a tool, not a goal), differentiation, redefiniton of learning experiences, and purpose full use in pedagogy.

Methods of fostering innovaton

• Augmented reality allows you to explore scale and proximity in math, work with 3D math equations, go on firtual field trips, and create virtual prototypes in projects. (Green screening counts as AR?)
• Personalized learning (I'm finding that this means 1 of 6 different things depending on who is presenting - these guys just mean having choice is how you show your learning) - Explore Boards, Canva, Free Form, Flipgrid
• I don't know much about Explore Boards, but they look interesting (like amped up infographics). Make note to explore them further.
• Coding across the curriculum
• Creative Media - Doodle art, logo creation, collages, documebtary/news reports, gifs, publishing ebooks, digital storytelling (Adobe Express, Clips, iMovie, Keynote, bandlab, Canva), create a magazine cover, modernize a book cover, make album art.
• 3D Design - Design a structure (greenhouse, school building, home), solve algebra or trig problems involving the Z-axis.

Professional development - Have your high flying teachers share their excitement with others. Coach each other.

Learning How to Learn: Strategies for Success in a Digital World by Barbara Vinal and Spencer Ziegler

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1z-Y0fS8YEeWazO_b9Opqbj0-yIiXG1uAxkcVC_n8W3w/edit#slide=id.g792cfae46c_0_0

Focus on three standards: Learner, Designer, and Analyst

Look! Some real cognitive science research!

The Amygdala - Your emotions influence your ability to process what a teacher is saying. You will learn better if you feel safe.

Wait! He just messed it up by saying our brains are wired for a world we no longer inhabit. The brain's ability to register threat is still just a necessary today. It may not be a Sabertooth Tiger anymore, but we still need that. People's whose brains are lacking that are in serious danger.

Consider your audience type. Are they scientists who want ideas and data, professors who want facts, friends who want stories, or inventors who want fantasy? We all probably have some of this at different times and contexts.

Okay, they've won me back. Good research coming.

• The Spacing Effect - We all know cramming doesn't work for long term learning, but now we know why. No one starts preparing for a marathon the day before a marathon. They build distance over the course of weeks. Your brain should have to reach a bit to retrieve information (desirable difficulty)
• Supporting the Spacing Effect - Anki, Duolingo, Kahoot, FOrms, Quizizz, Padlet - I mentioned Anki once online, and the responses were amazing. I had people tell me that their spouse who was in medical school used Anki all of the time.

• Working Memory- You can only think about a few things at a time. If you are introducing a new piece of technology, try doing it with familiar material to avoid taxing their working memory. Then, when they are comfortable with it, you can use it for new material.
• Take a 10 second break every now and then. You can make it a turn and talk. You can also make it a stretch break or just a "take a deep breath" moment.
• Limit how much content you put on a slide. Don't ask students to listen to you talk and read something at the same time. Give them a chance to read it before you begin speaking, so you don't overload the spoken language part of your working memory.
• If you are going to have to move quickly during class, provide the ability to look at it on their own later.

• Putting content into your brain again will not help you remember.  Retrieving it after you have put it in will.  (I always ask students if they have ever memorized a script for a play - actors don't memorize their lines by reading the script again - they do it by trying to remember.)
• You can encourage flashcards, quizlet, low stakes quizzes.
• He used the forgetting curve correctly!!!

Fear Not the Awkward Pause

The first time I was observed teaching, the feedback I received was generally positive, but there was one constructive criticism that stuck with me.  Increase the amount of time you wait after asking a question.  I'd like to say that I was just nervous about being observed, but that isn't true.  I was uncomfortable with silence.  Most people are, and young teachers, in particular, feel like there should be no down moments in their classes.  When people talk about wait time, it is usually framed as being helpful to our students with slow thinking, learning disabilities, or auditory processing issues.  But, in truth, all students would benefit from a longer wait time, and it is likely you don't wait long enough.

Fortunately, there is research that can help inform our practice in this area.  First, let's look at where most of us are.  Teachers overestimate their wait time.  If you ask them, they how long they wait for an answer after asking questions, they will give an answer more than twice as long as it actually is when measured.  It's not because we are dishonest; it is because people have a poor internal sense of time (even more so since the invention of the smartphone).  When measured, the average time between a teacher asking a question and their next move (calling on someone, rewording it, or giving the answer themselves) is between 0.7 and 1.5 seconds.  That's a small amount of time, but like other averages, it might be less helpful to know than what is most common (finally learning about mode in math is paying off).  The most common wait time is 0.2 seconds.  Open an online stopwatch right now and measure it; that's nothing.  In fact, it is only 0.05 seconds longer than Usain Bolt's reaction time between the firing of a starting pistol and coming off the blocks!  Can we really expect our students to process the meaning of a question and think long enough to come up with a meaningful answer in less time than the world's fastest man?  

So, we know where we are is too short.  What does the research say about what our wait time should be?  Well, there isn't a magic number of seconds.  There are just too many variables (age of students, the complexity of the expected answer, new content you are asking them to speculate about or recall of previously learned information, even time of day) to say that there is one right amount of time.  Researchers did find that the tipping point on getting better answers was three seconds and that after five seconds, students started filling the silence with irrelevant things.  So it, seems that 3-5 seconds is a reasonably good range.  I already said that we have a poor internal sense of time, so we can't just hope to get it right.  The advice my observer gave me all those years ago was to five in my head.  When we count, we usually do it at slightly less than 1s per digit, so that would ensure I landed somewhere around 3 seconds.  I think that is still good advice, but it prevents you from processing what else is happening in the room, so we may want to do something more "feely" than "thinky."  We may want to wait until the silence feels a little awkward and then let it sit just a bit longer.  It'll take some practice, but if students start talking about other things just to fill the science, you'll know that's a little too long.  If you practice, you can train yourself to stand the awkwardness longer than they can.  

One thing I had never thought about until a few weeks ago when I was listening to the podcast Tips for Teachers with Craig Barton was a different kind of wait time.  He was discussing the amount of time you might wait after a student answers a question.  While you might not want to wait 5 seconds after that (as far as I know there is no research on this period), waiting a beat before affirming or correcting that answer will give other students time to process whether or not they agree with that answer.  You might even ask another student if they agree or if they can elaborate on that answer.  I haven't played with this yet, but I look forward to experimenting with it in the next few weeks.