Kevin Jordan: Welcome, everybody. My name is Kevin Jordan, and I work for Los Angeles Unified DACE, Division of Adult and Career Education. Let me tell you a little bit about myself before we get started and get going. I've really adopted this through Malcolm X. He said, "Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today." And I truly take that to heart.

But I have 16 years experience teaching adults, anywhere between grade 6 to 12 as well as adults. I have a very strong 16 years teaching background, culturally diverse students. 16 years teaching adult single or multi-level ESL classes. Five years teaching citizenship with 100% success rate. In other words, all of my former students are now US citizens and are now voting. Five years as a distance learning coordinator through LAUSD. Two years as an integrated technology teacher advisor, ITTA. 10 plus years as a computer applications teacher. I firmly believe in integrating academics into all of my lessons. And I have a successful experience in implementing educational philosophy, teaching methods, and approaches. And I've never had a class closed because of attendance. And I'm consistently one of the highest student retention rates in every single school of which I've been employed.

I believe in using the cell phone, but some of the fears, though, is that teachers lost control. And honestly, that's actually one of the things that makes us fearful, is we've somehow lost control. But yes, sometimes texting friends and family during class is not the best use of time, and I get it. But you know, you got to get over that. Because more students right now are using cell phones for learning and organizational. And being on the cell phone doesn't necessarily mean the students are quote off task. So as fearful as we are, we still need to remember this is adult ed.

So the way that I do it in my classrooms is I establish guidelines, because I understand that working students may have a mandate that they need to keep their cell phone on, even while they're in class. Parents may need to be available for calls related to children. And you got to-- you have to accept that. But you just establish rules and guidelines. I hate the word rules, but I establish guidelines, that if you need to take a phone call, that's fine, but just go ahead and take it and take it on outside.

Negotiate the rules. And I want to emphasize this. If we come in in adult education and say, this is what we're going to do, then we're imposing something on them. And I think we need to look at agreed versus imposed guidelines.

Some cell phone student usage examples are calendaring. My students use it to calendar. If we're going to have a quiz or something, they calendar it. Taking notes. Use an app or function for class activities, such as right now in Zoom. I haven't had any of my students audio record. Actually, back up. I did. One of my students had broke her right hand. And so she asked if she can record the audio, so I did.

As you know, many of our students use a translator. I believe in building a cohesiveness. And so therefore they are encouraged to contact each other and build kind of a contact list. And this also builds cohesiveness, because again, what we're trying to do is we're trying to build a community.

As you see, the students will use the cell phone to take a picture of the homework assignment, or work assignment, or things like that as you're working. Share photos when it's related to class content, family vacation photos, this, that, and the other. And then what you do, you can use lessons with that photography that they've taken, designing lessons around that. Or just basic web searches. So there's a lot of usages for a cell phone for the student, which hopefully that we know and agree to.

Now, teachers using it-- I use my cell phone, such as a Kahoot!, Burlington English. I also use it to access a LMS, my learning management system. With LAUSD, we use Schoology. I know Canvas is out there. And there's a lot of other LMSs. But what I do with my LMS, is I set a daily agenda on every single day.

And I will do it, because I understand that not all of my students can come to class every single day. So therefore, I do hold them accountable. So in other words, if they miss a class on a Wednesday, they're still accountable for what we did on class on Wednesday. But they also know how to go in and use the -- find the daily agenda, what we're doing every single day.

So the daily agenda literally, the one that's on the board that you post for students is literally mirrored on the learning management system. I use it to send messages via Remind. I monitor students via a program called ReadTheory that I'm going to be talking about. But I've also-- I use the cell phone in class.

I'll send messages to students as an ESL speaking quiz. And because if you're, you know, especially if you have a, let's say 2 and 1/2 hour class, in the evening, and you're trying to get all of your testing in, and you have a chapter test on a particular topic or such, and you have a speaking quiz, then all of a sudden you're going to-- you'll literally blow out the whole quiz because the way that I do it is on my LMS, the students have the quiz, or their test. They'll have a listening portion on the learning management system that they take all online. And then I also give them the speaking quiz on Remind.

And so I'll give them a question. They must respond to me using their using their cell phone on Remind. And I actually talk about that. You could set up QR codes and then let students go through like corners. And corners activities where they go through and use a QR codes, and then they can do web searches on the QR code.

Alarms or timers. I'll set up a timer on a speaking quiz, for example, or a speaking-- I may have them do like a peer to peer speaking. And I'll have them-- give them like three minutes as a back and forth, back and forth. And then the timer tells everybody to stop.

Augmented reality, which is something I'm now exploring. I take attendance through the cell phone on my-- we have a program called DACE-SIS over at LAUSD. But I do take attendance a lot of times on my cell phone. That way I don't have to go back to my desk, go back behind my computer. And in other words, essentially move away from my students.

I can still, as students are doing board work or coursework or doing worksheets this, that, and the other, I can take attendance right then and there. I could project topics from my phone via Bluetooth to an overhead projector, which is phenomenal. Sending an email.

Also the cell phone usage, as many of you know, that you can send a quick text message. For example, if you're stuck and you need to go to the restroom, you need a faculty member to come into your classroom and hold it, hold your classroom for five minutes while you run to the restroom. And use that as well.

I believe the technology in the classroom encourages literacy. And literacy, I think, it is a big portion of what we need for our students to move forward. Whether it be ESL, ABE, CTE. There is a literacy gap that we're still trying to close. Our ESL students use-- I encourage my students to send me messages via Remind. And I always respond to them-- if they make a grammatical error, what I will do is I will respond to them. But I'll also give them the grammatical error correction, so they know how to do it the next time.

It'll obviously help your mainstream students, special needs, or at risk. These are some of the programs that I use in my classroom. I use Remind, Kahoot!, Burlington English. And also the program called ReadTheory, which again, which I'll talk about.

First 20 minutes of class, I use my cell phone with my students. I use it for Kahoot!. For example, what I will do is I will set up a Kahoot! quiz. I will send it out to be sent five minutes before the class starts. Because what I want to do is I want to set up a bell to bell schedule that my students know that at 8 o'clock, my class starts. Actually five minutes before.

Because remember, we're still trying-- a lot of our times, we're still trying to prepare our students for the world of work. So if we're teaching them the world of work, you don't want them to be late. So five minutes before. So they get to-- they move out of your program. They go on to the workforce. And they're at their job five minutes before, guess what? They're never late.

So you start teaching a bell to bell teaching for students and you start setting up guidelines and boundaries. And yes, I even do this during the lockdown. That's what we've got going on right now with our students on Zoom. I will schedule a Zoom meeting with my students from, let's say, 10:00 to 11:30, but I will send them a quick Kahoot! quiz, and it'll be like five questions or so. It'll be set up to go to them at 9:55, for example. And then that's about a 10 minute quiz.

And so when they start to come into the Zoom, into the Zoom meeting, then they've already got their quizzes. So that way we can actually talk about it. So it's a nice blend to move on to whatever you're getting-- you're going into.

Extended usage of Remind. I love this feature on Remind. Remind, if you click on the Remind application, and as if you're going to compose a message. There's a little button that when you're going to compose the message to your class, you've got a camera. You can use the gallery. In other words, your pictures on your phone, or a voice clip.

And I love the voice clip. The voice clip features send out for quizzes, messages with a personal touch. And then you can record an audio. If I'm not mistaken, I think it's about 10 to 15 seconds that you can record the audio, and then you can send it out as a attach message. Again, this is also how I do the in ESL, how I do the speaking quizzes.

Because I know the best part, the students can respond using this technique as well. So they get the message. They can respond back to you via the same way. They click on Respond. They can click on the voice clip. They can click on the Record button, attach it. And it'll come back to you as a message. And then what you can do as the instructor is you can grade their quote speaking quiz, and you can give them-- give the student immediate feedback.

And I want to emphasize when you do this, be sure that you set up the guidelines as to how the students are going to be graded on the speaking quiz. Don't just give it to them just open. But if you give it to them as this is what an A looks like, or a B, or a C, or D, whatever. You give them the guidelines on what they're looking for, then you can actually score them in accordance with your promotional tests, for example.

And you can do this on a chapter quiz. You can do this for just a regular quiz. And this is a great response, because again, because teaching ESL, many of our students are looking for ways to improve their pronunciation and their speaking ability, because that's actually one of the biggest gripes of our students, particularly ESL, is they don't do enough speaking. So during this time of the lockdown, we can still give them speaking quizzes.

Kahoot!. I love Kahoot!. If you notice, what I've done on this, on talking about Kahoot!, what I've done is I've actually upgraded to the premium version, because it allows me to create my own. I look at Kahoot!, and I've looked at Kahoot!, and everything that I've seen from Kahoot! that I would even consider are from colloquialisms from other parts of the world that may not apply to my students.

On a Kahoot! quiz, for example, there's a little button where you can click on Discover. If you click on Discover, what it will do is you can type in, for example, adjectives for example. And it'll give you adjectives. But it'll be a Kahoot! quiz that somebody, maybe from the United Kingdom, created. And when the creator made that quiz, they referred to the flat. Now, if I told my students a flat, that you're going to name the best part of your flat or whatever, my students would not understand what I'm talking about, and I'm having to explain a flat versus an apartment. And I don't want to have to do that. So my recommendation is Kahoot!, upgrade to the premium.

I understand right now during the lockdown, if you go in through Kahoot!, you're actually automatically upgraded to the premium version, and can actually make your-- and you make your own. Highly recommended, and I believe that's the way to go, because it's designed-- your Kahoot!s are designed for how you want to teach your class. I just believe in making your own.

Some other extended uses of Kahoot!s. What I do is on my LMS, I will post to have a posting. And I'll say, please post your Kahoot! score here. Then the students take the Kahoot! quiz. Then they post their score up on the LMS. Again, for us, we use Schoology for Los Angeles Unified. But they will use-- they'll put their score on Kahoot!. For my students, I tell my students that-- sometimes they are embarrassed about the score. And I tell them, look, it's especially ESL, it's not really about the score. And I don't really-- I'm not really worried about the score.

I mean, I kind of am. But everything else will take care of itself. But what I'm looking for is an ability for the students to communicate. And I believe that students to communicate is reading, writing, listening, speaking. And also digital communication. The ability for your ESL students to digitally communicate and post a score on an LMS is huge. And this is going to be another form of communications.

So I believe in doing that and having your students post their scores. What I do is when they post their scores, good, bad, and different, I always like on the Schoology, there's is a way to like the posting. And I always like the posting. Again, I don't care if they got a 2,000 on a Kahoot! quiz, or if they got a 10,000. I like the 2,000 as well as the 10,000, because the idea, particularly ESL, I want my students to have an ability to post. And I think this is a-- it's a digital literacy skill that our students need.

Burlington. I love the Burlington application on the cell phone. I believe-- I love their speaking ability. If you want to install the application, then you go to your site. There's a way we can click on vocabulary practice. And you click on the desired course.

My students, because I'm teaching beginning high, what I do is I do English in America beginners, or everyday English 2 on the beginning-- on the Burlington English. The reason why, of course, is just because it fits. And then it'll come up with a screen that will have word lists. On the cell phone, it does have a feature that I really like that's designed for contrast and size of the text.

So what I've done, I've taken a screenshot of the students' Burlington English cell phone. On the lower right hand corner, when they go through the vocabulary practice, everyday English 2, on the lower right hand corner, it'll be-- it looks like an orange button. And it has three lines. If you click on that, the student will see things that they can do with the 25 words. They can match the sounds, fill in the blank, match the translation.

And again, it also has the-- looks like the disabled placard sticker that you can use. And what it will do is if you click on it, if you can click on it, you can adjust the size or the contrast. Now, in Burlington English on the teacher's side, I can mimic the student's phone. Which is wonderful, because in the classroom I can use it for like prepare for classes, virtual class schedule.

If you have a student that's having problems with the cell phone or with the Burlington application, you can actually-- I'll walk around. I carry my cell phone with me all the time, like most of us do. You can literally work with the student hand in hand and show them with your cell phone how to use whatever you're trying to teach them, whether it be the readers, or prepare for classes, or the speaking portion.

Virtual class schedule. I love this feature that Burlington put in on the phone, because of what it does is it allows you to set up a Zoom conference. And then you can schedule online lessons via Zoom, WebEx, Microsoft Teams, GoToMeeting, or Adobe Connect. Because of the Zoom, with the Los Angeles Unified, it's a correlation that Los Angeles Unified has with Zoom. I always use mine with Zoom now with my students.

Again, this is the feature that I was talking about. The arrow points to the little disabled placard, if you will. And it allows you to adjust contrast for a larger text. And I love that feature.

ReadTheory. This is my go to. Great for reading. This is a web-based program, no applications necessary. This is a phenomenal program. It teaches the students to read and think critically. Again, being in my 16th year, one of the things I've always been looking at after probably about my second or third year teaching is teaching my students how to think critically.

I want to teach them not to just try to get the answer one time and be happy. I want them to think critically in order to advance and grow their learning capabilities. ReadTheory is another great first 20 minutes of classroom thing that you can do with your students. Again, it's web based. It's easy to log in for the student. The students and the teachers can track progress.

So the student can track their own progress. It also can be done on the phone very easily. So you don't, you don't have to check out the laptop cart. You don't have to check out the iPad cart. You don't have to go to the computer lab. You can do it on their phone. And this is phenomenal, because most of our students carry the cell phone with us.

We've done a-- Los Angeles Unified every year does a survey, does a technology survey that states-- and the most recent findings was that 92% of all of our students in Los Angeles Unified in the adult education program, 92% of all of our students have a smartphone.

So I started looking at that and breaking it down. And so out of a class of 25, you've got 22-- out of a class of 25, you've got 22 students that have a smartphone. That is huge. So I mean, yes, you need to address those other three, and I get it. But we're closing the gap and the gap is closing dramatically.

So students want-- people want to know about ReadTheory. And honestly, I wish I was really smart. But I don't think I really am. But what I am is I listen and I talk to teachers. I talk to other teachers, I talk to-- because I teach a level two beginning high, I talk to the level six teacher. I talk to the reading class teacher.

And I ask them, what can I do at level two to help my students prepare for your class? So not only am I trying to get my students out of my-- out of the level two onto the level three, I'm looking at moving them all the way through to the level six program. In Los Angeles Unified, we have what they call the TABE test, T-A-B-E. The TABE test. And it is a reading test that the students have to take. And they must-- it's a 25 questions, 25 minutes, and 50 paragraphs test, that a lot of students do not pass the first time around, and they need to read at the ninth grade reading level.

So this program, it's a web-- again, web based. There's no application necessary. It goes from K-12 all the way to adult education, ABE. ReadTheory serves all of them. It's also perfect for reinforcing English as a second language. As for CTE, it doesn't-- CTE has technical writing and technical reading. And I understand that.

You can use it in a CTE class. But it's a different kind of reading. But what it will do is it will teach your students how to think critically, what you need to be able to-- in a CTE class, the students need to be able to think critically to be successful in that CTE class.

So tell me a little bit more. Well, the growing database fits every level of reading. It guarantees that the student will never get bored. It has enough texts for year round reading comprehension practice. And including home practice. Again, because it is web based. They can take quizzes or give written response to passages. So in, for example, in level two, I want them to read and then take a quiz.

I've talked to level four, five, and six teachers, ESL as well as reading teachers, and they had the students do the written responses to passages. So it's adaptive to your student based on your level. Again, it's a-- I cannot say enough good things about this. It gives Lexile levels. It gives reading levels, and you can track it.

It's adaptive and it caters to the individual's needs. So in ReadTheory, what the student does is they log in. They have to take roughly 10-- I think it's 10 quizzes. At the end of the 10 quizzes, then what it will do is it will place them in the appropriate level, wherever they are, Lexile level, reading level, grade level, et cetera, and it will build on that.

So if you're teaching even a level one class, level one, ESL, the student can log in, take the quiz, take the 10 quizzes. And then if let's say they're reading at the first grade level, well, the first quiz that they take will be at the third grade level. Every quiz starts at the third grade level. And then as each quiz is either they do well or poorly on that quiz, then it'll either go up or down for the student.

So the second quiz, if they do poorly on the first quiz, the second quiz will go to the second grade level. Then the first grade level. Then the second grade level, the third grade level, so on and so forth. And then you can track the student's growth over time.

I always challenge, and this is something that I challenge my students with, is I understand that you can do 999 quizzes. But I always challenge my students to do the 999, and then take one more, then tell me what happens. It is kind of a-- it's a fun challenge. I don't know what happens when you reach number 1,000. I don't know.

And so I want them to do the 999 and then take one more. But here's my thinking. I mean, yes it's fun. Yes, I can have the students do that. But when they-- but now, I've given them a goal to do 999 quizzes and take the one more and then come back to me and tell me. And then of course, that keeps that student involved, engaged, and moving forward on the program.

Is it easy to use? Oh, yes. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. You can create an account, and it's easy. And you can add students as easy as 1, 2, 3. As well as students can use it on a cell phone. If you don't feel comfortable technology, but would still like to use ReadTheory, reach out to their support team. They have a very responsive support team.

It usually-- well, I haven't tried to use the support team during the lockdown, because of everything gone online. But prior to this, if I needed to respond to them, if I sent an email in the morning, for example, I'll have a response from the ReadTheory support team in the afternoon.

So it's really rapid response. So if I had a question from within student, on a student account, let's say at 9 o'clock in the morning, send them a quick email. The support team by 2:00, 3:00 o'clock in the afternoon, I'll actually have the response. And so then the next morning I can go in and I can tell the student as to what's going on.

Or what I do is once I get that question answered, what I will do, I will send a message via Remind on my cell phone, to let them know as to what's going on. Because it's the idea that I keep my students engaged at all times in my class. I believe, I wholeheartedly believe that it's a 24/7.

Again, tracking progress. Absolutely. The student can and you can. You can easily identify struggling students and also high performers. This will also allow you, as the instructor, that if you want to do pairing. For example, let's say you're teaching ESL, and you're doing a speaking practice. What you can do is you can take-- you can you can now identify your high level readers, and you can pair them accordingly.

You can have Karina with Janet or Jeanette. And you can have them do a speaking practice, because you know that their reading level is very, very similar based on what you see on ReadTheory. So there's a lot of back channel that you can use to help and work with students. You can analyze performance on the individual level and the class.

All texts are accurately aligned to grade level standards, and a Lexile measure is provided for each. Now, many years ago, I taught a reading program in K12. And it was all about Lexiles. And students, they had to pick books and online material based on their Lexile level. Like the little scale. But you can pass this on.

Now, you can also trust the student performance metrics and the reading level. Now, the thing that I use with my students is-- hang on, let me go back. The thing I use with my students is when we're working on the Lexile levels and going from, let's say, level two into level three on an ESL classroom, for example, or they're promoting from four to five or five to six. Pass the codes. Have the students on. Then what you do is-- I don't know if you're like me, but what I've done is I will work with the level three teacher the day before.

The last day of class what I will do is I will bring my class over to him. And then what he will do is he will have my class. And then I'll work with students-- and my students and their students --to have everybody transfer from my class to his class by adding the class code.

There is a class code. What you can do is you can transfer back and forth. So that the student does not have to start over. And I don't believe that the student wants to start over. I don't want a student to have to start over and create a brand new account and all this kind of thing. That'll just keep going. Because when you've also, with ReadTheory, when you go from one level to the next level-- for example, ESL, --what you're able to do is you're actually able to give the new teacher, let's say, a three or a four or five, like the next level up teacher --you're actually able to give that teacher something to look at so that they understand more about your student, each and every one of your students as they're walking in the door.

And what it's going to do is it's going to cut down the time of that next level teacher so that he or she does not have to analyze your students and figure out where they are on the reading level, the speaking level, or the reading level, the writing level, et cetera. They have all that information and all that data on.

So I highly recommend if you use ReadTheory, to get the next level up teacher or the next promotional level teacher, or whoever they're going to go to or work with. Collaborate with that person, and let them also get involved on this program. This is a wonderful, wonderful program, because I believe in a nice-- my idea, my ideal is when they go from my class to the next level, you want a very easy handoff.

Let me give you one more tech tip. Because you all are busy-- you are a busy teacher. There's a program called CC Cleaner. Get that for your phone. Because what it'll do is it'll help clean your cache memory, keeps your phone running smoothly. There's a free version and a paid version. And I've got the free version.

And I put up a picture of what it looks like. There's a scheduler. There's a booster, where it can boost your performance of your phone. An advisor, like an app advisor-- if you have apps on your phone that are idle, it'll actually tell you.

There's an app manager. You can hibernate. Photo optimizer, if you have some photos on your phone that are not as-- that are not-- you have duplications on phone, it'll actually help you to eliminate, delete. It'll optimize the memory on your phone. You can analyze your storage.

Cloud transfers. That cloud transfers, system info, I believe is on the paid version. But what I use is the scheduler, the booster, the advisor, and the app manager. And the photo advisor. I use a free version. I don't have to pay for it. I don't want to pay for it unless I absolutely have to. But that's your tech tip of the day. Melinda, I'm going to let you take it away.

Melinda Holt: OK. Kevin, we have a few questions in the Q&A here. So I'm going to start up here. If Remind only lets you record 10 to 15 seconds, how do you put a full quiz on it? And let's start with do you put a full quiz on it?

Kevin Jordan: With Remind, what I do is I don't put an actual full quiz. And what I will do is I will put one question on for a time. And I'll have like three questions. And what I will do is I send them out of quiz, have them respond. I'll send them out another quiz, have them respond. I mean, yes you are going to have a series of questions. But particularly for the chapter test, what I'll do is I'll put one, two, maybe three questions, and that's it. On your chapter quiz.

Because the chapter quizzes, we use the book Side by Side. And Side by Side has some questions. They have a series of like 5 or 10 questions. I'll literally-- what I will do is I don't want to have all 10 questions. I want pick 2 or 3. 2 or 3 or 4 of the best ones, the ones that align with the promotional test the best.

Melinda Holt: OK. How do you use Kahoot! in remote teaching?

Kevin Jordan: How do I use Kahoot! with remote teaching is I create my own quizzes. I send them out to my students. And then what I will have them do, they take the quiz, then they have to put their scores on the learning management system.

Melinda Holt: OK. Do you ever have students that do not have a phone?

Kevin Jordan: I have not had one that's not had a phone. Well, actually back up. I did have one student that had one phone that he was having problems with it. But it's a case by case basis. And it's so-- it happens, yes, but it's very rare. Here's what I've learned, that if you have-- through the state of California, as I understand it, if you have an adult student, adult that has a small child, they can be given a phone by the state of California.

And generally, that phone is a Android. It's a Samsung, for example, like the latest is the 10 plus. They might get the Samsung 7 Android phone for free, because it's designed for the parent so that he or she can have access to making a phone call in the event of a 911 emergency. So most students will have a phone of some sort. It's just a case by case basis, though.

Melinda Holt: Does ReadTheory have a listening component, or is there only reading and quizzes?

Kevin Jordan: ReadTheory is only reading. It does not have a listening component. It's all, just it's all a reading component. And I look at-- the listening component, I look at Burlington English. They had the Burlington English readers. I will do other listening exercises. I'm actually starting to explore a couple other programs. But Burlington English, the readers is phenomenal for the little listening exercise.

Melinda Holt: There were a couple of chats and Q&As regarding Burlington English. Is that a free tool, or a paid tool? How much does it cost? And if it is a paid tool, and do they have anything free going on during this time?

Kevin Jordan: Burlington English is done through Los Angeles Unified. I would talk to your administrator. Start asking your administrator about Burlington English. Do they have anything that's free right now? I'm not for sure-- I do know they have a lot of free webinars right now that you can sign up. And you can use the webinars for free. I know you go to burlingtonenglish.com.

And then I would say explore it. As to if they have anything free right now. Don't know. That'll be a Burlington English question, but I would talk to your administrator to ask about Burlington English. Their support has been phenomenal. We have a dedicated-- Los Angeles Unified has a gentleman by the name of Matt Huffine here in Los Angeles. And he is dedicated to Los Angeles Unified for us. And he has just been phenomenal. If you send him an email or text message, he goes through. He does a lot of webinars. But Burlington English is a district program. It's not an individual class.

Melinda Holt: Okey-doke. What do you need-- back to ReadTheory --what do you need to add students? Email, cell number? How do you do that?

Kevin Jordan: The way that I do it, I actually have-- it'll be on the OTAN website. There is a how to for Read.

Melinda Holt: Cool, and--

Kevin Jordan: And there is a cell phone number, really. There is a-- you will need like a backup email address, just in the event that the, for example, if the student loses their login information, they can recover it without sending you a Remind.

But the way that I do it, because I have such an open communication and I believe my classroom is 24/7 for my students, if a student sends me a message, let's say, on a Saturday morning at, let's say, 8:00 o'clock on a morning, Saturday morning, but it's an evening class Monday to Thursday, something like that. You know what? I'll go ahead and respond.

Because my idea, especially during this time, is that if I have my students involved in my classroom on a Saturday morning, that's awesome. That's wonderful. That tells me that my students are involved in my classroom. And then therefore, it's going to help your student retention rate. So if they send me a message on a Saturday morning on Remind, absolutely. But the answer to your question, do I actually have the a how to on ReadTheory? That will be on the OTAN website.

Melinda Holt: OK. We've got a lot of questions about the CC Cleaner. And you've still got the screen up there. Is that specific to Android, or can it be downloaded and installed on iPhone?

Kevin Jordan: As I understand, there's a CC Cleaner for iPhone as well. I do have an answer--

Melinda Holt: Do you know the publisher?

Kevin Jordan: I've got it. I also have CC Cleaner on my laptops.

Melinda Holt: Do you know the publisher?

Kevin Jordan: Oh, I don't know the publisher. I apologize.

Melinda Holt: No problem.

Kevin Jordan: There's Stanley Arias our ITST, our internet technology service technician introduced me to CC Cleaner. And I've been a fan since.

Melinda Holt: And it looks like Stanley just typed in the chat. It's by Piriform, P-I-R-I-F-O-R-M, for the-- so for the iPhone users, look it up by publisher, if you're not finding it just by typing in CC Cleaner. Kevin, I think-- oh, we have-- the CASAS NRS level Lexile correlations. Jill, you typed that in and I'm not sure which app you were referring to. Could have been ReadTheory.

Kevin Jordan: Would have been ReadTheory, because Read Theory is based on Lexiles and grade levels.

Melinda Holt: I hope-- I'm thinking that answers the question. Cleaner, cleaner, cleaner. I'm looking through. I think, Kevin, I think that answers the questions. If anybody has anything more they can certainly put it in the Q&A, or--

Kevin Jordan: Can I add one more success story--

Melinda Holt: Absolutely.

Kevin Jordan: --for everybody on ReadTheory. I had one of my students, and this is a huge success story for me. I had one of my students that for LAUSD, she was at level 2B trying to go to level 3. Her writing met the standard to go to level 3. Her speaking was spot on. She was ready for level 3. Her listening skill was great. She did very well, she passed all the listening tests and such for level 3. But a reading level was very, very low.

And so I talked to the level 3 teacher, because I'm a big collaborator. I believe in open communication between me and the next level teacher. So what I did was I talked to her and said, hey, this is where she is on the reading level. She had like a 210 on the CASAS score. And we needed like a 216 reading level.

And so I said to her, I told my student that I'm going to hold her back on this, for this trimester, because I need her to get her reading level up, because her reading level is not ready for level 3. So this is really my first dive in the pool. And here we go on ReadTheory.

I told her, I said, here's what I want you to do. I need you to do any time, anywhere that you have five minutes, pull out your phone. I want you on ReadTheory. If you have a question, I want you to send me a text message on Remind. But I need you to do quizzes on ReadTheory.

Well 225, 230 quizzes later, at the end of the next trimester, she hit 216 on the CASAS reading level, and she passed on the reading level. And therefore, I was able to promote her to level 3. It is a lot of work for the student, but it will help, and it raised her CASAS score from 210 to 216.

Melinda Holt: OK, and I have Mariano Rodriguez also mentions, esl-lab.com is also a great site. It has free listening and reading activities for ESL students.

Kevin Jordan: Oh, OK.

Melinda Holt: So there we go. What if some of your students are not on your LMS and may never be? Do you just use-- or do you do everything with them in remind?

Kevin Jordan: No, all of my students are on the LMS. There's no option. See, because Los Angeles Unified has adult education email addresses. I put my students on the LMS via their school email address, because Los Angeles Unified uses Schoology on the LMS. And my students are on, 100% are on the LMS. If they're going to be in my classroom, they're going to be in my-- well, before the lockdown, if they're going to be in my seat, they're going to be on the LMS, period.

And there's really, really, really no option. Because I will help them to get on the program. If they don't have-- the students that are still learning how to navigate the cell phone, I'll have them on a Chromebook, or have them on an iPad. But they will be on the LMS. In the event that those same students at home, what I do is I'll have a Zoom class. Then I'll take that PDF document and I'll send the document out to the student via Remind.

But bottom line is, when they take their chapter tests-- and I've been, actually this is now the second or third year that I've done this. When they take a chapter test, they take the chapter test on the LMS, so that way I have a graded score.

Because the way I look at it is I have in the ESL, if I have a student that's borderline but they're doing-- but their scores-- but all of their chapter quizzes are high scores, in other words 85%, 80- 85%, basically a A or a B on the chapter quiz, but they're borderline on the promotional test, then it gives me an opportunity to take that information, take that data, take that information.

I will take that over to the next level teacher and say, hey look. I'm looking at Susana Gomez, for example. And she's borderline on the promotional test, but her scores on the LMS chapter quizzes are very, very high. So now what would you like for me to do? Would you like me to go ahead and send her on? Or should I hold her back?

On the converse side, if I have a student that's borderline on the promotional test but does very low, very low score on the LMS quizzes, chapter tests, et cetera, I'm not going to send them. I'm not even going to entertain to take that student to the next level teacher. So I use those LMS tests and quizzes for promotion. And this is good for that borderline, for those borderline students.

Melinda Holt: OK. To address, because there's quite a few people that unfortunately don't have the perks that LAUSD does, and they don't have LMS, and they don't have district emails. So folks, we haven't forgotten about you. There are a lot of other options that you can connect to your students, still using the tools that Kevin showed you.

And Anthony, I'm going to have you come on, and I believe we have a cell phone guide from West Contra Costa that is now available on OTAN site. And this might help some of your teachers along with-- and Anthony, give me one sec here. There are a lot of different platforms. You don't need an LMS. You could use Padlet. You could use Google Sites. You could use-- there are so many tools out there, that OTAN has been trying to get as many of these webinars out there to you, so you can look at them and decide which one you want to use.

Just watch the webinars, watch or ask us directly using support@otan.us, and we'll send you in all kinds of different directions. And Anthony, I'm going to let you take it over from here. We're going to do the housekeeping and close the meeting after that.