My name is Veronica Parker with AEBG TAP, and today's presenter is Melinda Holt. She is with OTAN as well as AEBG TAP, and she will be presenting on USA Learns, a free web based program for adults to improve their English. And still no one's having any technical difficulties, but if you do, please be sure to let us know via the chat pod and we will help you. Everyone knows where the PowerPoint presentation is located, so please be sure to download that. This webinar is being recorded and will be available on the California Adult Education website later on this afternoon. And I'll be sure to post the URL where you can find the webinar recording as well as the PowerPoint presentation later on.

At the end of this evaluation-- excuse me, at the end of this presentation an evaluation will appear on the screen. Please be sure to fill out the evaluation and let Melinda know what you thought about today's webinar. And if there are any additional technical assistance or professional development needs that you have at this time. We do use the results of our evaluations to plan and coordinate future professional development activities. So please be sure to give us your feedback. Now I will turn it over to Melinda, who will get us started with today's presentation. Melinda?

Woo-hoo! Hi, everybody. Yes, my name is Melinda Holt. I am a Project Specialist 2 here at the Sacramento County Office of Education, which is where USA Learns was developed. I actually helped develop the first site, a long time ago, back in 2007 when websites were relatively new for distance learning, which is how the USA Learns website came to be. I'm not going to get into the history of it because we don't really have that much time. I know an hour and a half sounds like a lot of time, but it really isn't where you start to get down into the nuts and bolts of the site. So if you want to learn the history, I am going to be showing you the resources area of OTAN or-- oops, of USA Learns, and you can read all about it and how it came to be through there.

So Veronica made mention of the PDF. This is-- the PDF is actually a mirror of the presentation that you're going to be seeing. You don't really need it. It will describe a lot about USA Learns, so if you're here because you want to know about it, maybe you want to start integrating it into your program. Or you want to show it to-- maybe your board of education because you want to adopt USA Learns as one of your learning tools, and you need to show them a little bit, go ahead and use that PDF.

That being said, I've had a few little issues here and they're uploading into the Adobe Connect room. So if you're missi-- if you look through it and it seems to be missing graphics, or there seems to be text that doesn't really make sense, it's kind of Greeked, or as we say ASCII text, please let us know. You can email what is it, tap at-- I can't remember. Veronica's going to type it so you can-- there you go. tap@aebg.org or you can email me directly. I am-- I'll type here, mholt@scoe.net I think that's S-C-O-E there we go.

So anyways if a PDF seems to be a little off-kilter that's OK, it's just mirroring me, haha. But I'll get you a good copy I think it's OK I went through and checked it, but just in case, OK?

All righty, so using Learns, I need to know how many of you use the site now. That you actually use it with your students. All I need you to do is type a yes or no. Yes, you use it with your students. No, you do not. No, no, no, yes, we have an Elaine OK, Elaine from Lompoc, good deal. Who else was-- Cecelia is typing. No, she decided not to. Come on, it's just a yes or a no.

Some students choose it. OK, so you're not actually working it with them, but they are actually choosing to use it on their own is what it sounds like. Which is totally doable, but even after a student starts using it on their own, you can get them into your class. And I'm going to show you how to do that in just a little bit here. And I see some typing still going on, so we'll wait just a little bit. Do we-- did everyone answer? Do you know? Dana, Cecelia, Alisa, OK. You give them the choice, this is one, OK.

All right, so there's lots of things you can do as teachers on the USA Learns site. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go over the first few slides of the PowerPoint. And then I am going to actually get into the site itself, because I think it's much better to see it than to look at a dry slide that just has pictures, OK? So I'm going to click on the Resume button so I can see what I'm doing here, and we're going to go ahead and present. I'm using--

OK everyone, it looks like Melinda may have been kicked out of the system, so she will be back on momentarily. Yes, please just hold tight and we'll get her back on. Yes, Melinda is coming back on. She experienced just a little bit of technical difficulties, looks like she is back on now.

That was kind of a roller coaster ride. So I'm going to try this again. I'm actually going to try and share this again. I know Veronica's going, no, don't do it! It'll be fine. What I think happened was that it really doesn't want to go into the present mode on the slides as well as the Adobe Connect mode. So I'm hoping that this screen is big enough for you to see because we're kind of stuck with it.

OK, so free, it's absolutely free, there's no charge to use the site. Absolutely no charge, for teachers or for students. OK, so I need I need you to understand that. It is web based, there's nothing that you can download. It's all in the cloud, you can use any browser you want, but it is free, OK? By the way this is me. That's who I am, and this is what we're going to try and cover, the features and functions. And I see Adobe Connect is jumping up and down. I'm hoping it doesn't mean anything.

OK, here we go. So US Learns is free for adult learners who want to improve their English language skills, and teachers can also use it with their students. The target audience are-- they're are adults with beginning or intermediate English language skills. That's important. Beginning NRS levels 2 through 5 is where you want to start students, and they can use the site. If you have someone that has absolutely no English language background whatsoever, they don't-- they come from some other country and they don't speak any English at all, do not have them use the site. They will get frustrated and they will leave. It's not for beginning low or beginning beginnings. It's for beginning or intermediate English language levels.

It is a very popular site. So I just updated the stats yesterday. The total number of page views to date is 1.6 billion. Total number of users to date is 10.8 million. And then we've got the average number of pages use per visit, 54 pages. That's unheard of in learning or distance learning tools. 24 minutes on the site at a time. And the number of sessions per day, now, it varies, we found out Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday we hold at about 8,000 hits. The number of sessions per day on Wednesday is 11,000. So that kind of tells me there are a lot more adult schools using English or having English language classes and using USA Learns on Wednesdays.

The next slide is going to show us every country in the world has used USA Learns. Even Greenland currently it's holding at 31 sessions since 2008 when the US Learns first launched. So I don't know who in Greenland is trying to learn English or why, but there is someone there. The dark blue color here, that's the country that uses it the most right now. I believe the top five countries are United States, Mexico, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil. So if this picture had come out a little bit better you would have seen the darker countries reflecting those numbers.

So again this is yesterday at 9 o'clock, we had 159 people on the site. So I'm going to go through these next slides. That's just to give you a little idea that it's holding their interest. When students get on the site, it's holding their interest and they're using it. They're not just going in and doing a couple of things and then getting off, they're actually staying on the site and going through the activities, OK? There are some requirements. There are computer requirements. If you want to use-- the microphone isn't a requirement, it's highly suggested because there are some activities that require the microphone in order to work.

So I think we've got some questions. Still no sound? Uh-oh. Are we OK? Veronica could you come on and just tell me we're OK?

We're good.

OK, we're good. Good, good, good. I'm sorry, I got paranoid. I saw some questions coming up, so I wanted to make sure.

All right, broadband internet connection. That used to be an old requirement because back when the USA Learns was created in 2008, we didn't really have the bandwidth that we have now on Wi-Fi. So Wi-Fi is OK. Broadband is better, but broadband is actually a wire, OK? But Wi-Fi is doing it, it's OK. So if your students want to hang out at Starbucks and do their USA Learns lessons, they can, or the library, or any place that has a solid Wi-Fi. If it's pretty spotty it's not going to work. If you can play a YouTube video on your Wi-Fi, it's going to be OK. All right so that's basically, all you have to do to test, is go to YouTube, to play a video. If it works for you there then USA Learns' site is going to work as well. If it doesn't, well then you might want to consider getting a plug, a wire.

Here's some computer skills the users have-- they're going to be using a computer, they're going to be using a browser, so they are going to need some computer skills. And yes they will need an email address, but there's a way to get around that and I'll show you that here in just a little bit.

USA Learns Features-- there's videos that are converted to interactive web based learning system. We took Putting English to Work and English For All, and we morphed those into different courses. We also took another course that was online it's called cdlponline.org, and there were news stories that used to have videos. We lost the rights to videos, but all of the activities based on these news stories, we took those and made those the third course. And we'll go over the courses and what they have in them. We also added photos and clipart, and there's professional narrator. So it's a very developed course, it's not just showing little stick figures walking across the screen trying to learn-- trying to teach English, rather.

By the way, when I say we, I still think of myself as part of USA Learns because I poured a lot of my heart and soul into this site when we first created it. It was a labor of love. I did a lot of the coding behind it, and worked with the developers along with the teachers. So when I say we, I'm not involved in it anymore, but I know the site back and forth. So just I'm just explaining that I'm not I'm not part of the we anymore, but I kind of slip and say that anyways.

So USA Learns, the design. It's very simple to use. We actually watched in beta testing, we watched users use the site to figure out where are they naturally looking for the button to click, or where are they were naturally looking for the play. Or-- we watched them, and then we based the site navigation on that. There's some pedagogical assumptions, ESL techniques applied, you've got all of this in the PDF that you can download. I'm not going to go over this because it's just too much time.

So there are two components, site components to USA Learns. There's one that's the core, it's www.usalearns.org, and that's for self-guided and teacher led students. They're usually referred to as students, which means they're teacher-lead and learners, which means they're teaching themselves basically, they're learning on their own.

And then the other component is usalearns.org/teacher. That is the site for teachers and tutors. They go and create classes, and then they basically attach themselves, or they provide the students a handshake, a code, so that the teachers can see how the student is progressing through the site, what their scores are, how much time they're taking all kinds of different stuff, OK? So you don't actually see the activities when you're a teacher, but you do see what the students are doing on the activities.

There are four different courses on USA Learns. The first English course, again, NRS levels two to three beginner right? There are 20 video based units, 192 lessons and 639 activities. The second course, NRS levels four to five, there are 140 lessons, and 848 activities. The second English course is based on English for All for, those of you that are old enough to remember that. And-- let's go back-- the first English course is based on Putting English to Work the first module of that that series, OK?

The next course we call the Practice English and Reading course. It's at an intermediate level. There are 11 News topics 93 stories and 905 activities. There's a lot more writing practice in the English and Reading and the students actually submit the work through the course to their teachers. And their teachers actually grade the writing in the course. So there's a little communication there, and again I'll be showing you that in just a second here.

Fourth course, Citizenship. So this is level intermediate to advanced, and there are four units in that course. Now the full description of each course, is located on the USA Learns site. I'll show you that within Resources. And you can get you can actually lead your students. If they already know the steps to becoming a citizen, they could go to the unit two or three wherever they're at. And the Citizenship course was just recently added and I was a part of that. But it was a fun and collaborative between the California State Library, New Americans Campaign, and the Sacramento County Office of Education. So all of these entities here EL Civics, USCIS, they all had a hand in developing the course.

These are the things that-- oops-- the students will learn-- why did you do that? There we go. So they'll learn about the benefits and requirements of becoming US citizen, they'll learn the basics of US history, they'll practice English small talk-- which is actually part of the test did you know that? And they will learn what to do after the oath ceremony. And here is the course now, my thought at this point, I'm looking at the rest of the slides real quick while you're reading this one, because I did want to show you this.

This is the core structure for the students. So they will start at the home page and then they go to a unit, then go to a lesson then they go to the activity list, and then they actually do an activity. There are buttons, there are links that they can get back and forth really quickly. Here are the activity types so we've got vocabulary, comprehension, grammar, writing, speaking, life skills, and assessment. The writing scores we do not-- or USA Learns does not grade the writing, that's still on the teacher. If the student is a learner if they're doing this on their own, they can send the writing to somebody if they want to but it doesn't get scored.

And after that, yeah, and then it's going to go into the different types of lessons or activities that are on the site. So that is something that you can show your teachers, right, without actually going to the site. I am actually going to go to the site and show it to you. And to do that, I am going to go to usalearns.-- oops, I'll spell it right. You can use any browser. I'm using Chrome, you don't have to if you don't like it, use something else. Right here is the homepage. Usually you know, you've got a new student, they would click the Start now button. They do have to have an email address, first name, last name they submit a password, and then they type the same password again.

This gives a lot of teachers pause because some of their students don't have an email address, or they don't want to create one. Or they're just learning how to speak English, you want me to get them an email address as well. There's a way around this. And it's called a Gmail alias, you have to use Google to do it, OK?

I have an account and is called usalstudent@gmail.com. So this is the real account here, and I'm going to make this bigger so that you can actually see what I'm typing, OK? So this is a real account usalstudent@gmail.com OK? If I click between the username usalstudent@gmail.com and the at symbol, and I put a plus sign and then I put my first initial and last name because I'm not going to forget that, or I could put a number like 899 just for grins, OK? This will fly, this will work on the USA Learns site.

And if a student forgets their password, or if they forget their-- well they wouldn't forget their email address, or they might it's OK because they can click on the Forgot Password link and guess where the email goes, it goes here to usalstudent@gmail.com. That's my account. I'm the teacher, I created the student account. I created this Gmail address, I should say, OK? So I can go into that Gmail and I can look for the Forgot Password verification, click on it for my student, boom, they're back in, OK?

As a teacher I also have some special voodoo powers that I'm going to show you after we get this-- or sign in as a student, but I wanted you to see this. If your student doesn't have an email address go and create your own Gmail, OK? Do not give them the password for the Gmail account, they don't need it. After you have something and I'm going to use-- Dana, your name is coming to mind. Dana teacher OK? So let's say you're able, that nobody else in the world has danateacher@gmail.com OK? So you go to Google and you create this account. Then you come back to this usalearns.org OK? And you tell your students, OK, let's say your students name is Jose. OK Jose, I want you to use this email address, and you hand it to them, and it is danateacher+jose@gmail.com OK?

And then he types in his first name and his last name OK I know that's not a first name, but-- and then he types in a password. Now as a teacher, I'm going to be on the proactive side and I'm going to tell Jose I want you to use the password USALearns, OK? Why am I going to have them use that password? Because it's right here on the site. They'll never forget it, OK? You could also have them use the same email address as the password. That's getting a little long, but it's up to you.

Now the password has to be at least six characters. I would not recommend you use anything with a special character. This says that you should have at least six letters or numbers, no spaces, you can use special characters, but students always forget those. So make it something simple. And guess what-- all of your students can use the same password. So if they all use their first name with this Gmail along with the password U-S-A-L-E-A-R-N-S, right? And then you confirm, USA Learns and they click on Register and they will be in, OK?

Now we all know that Dana has not had time to go to Gmail and create this account, right? So I already have a student account. So I'm going to go back home so if your students don't have an account, they will have to click on Start Now. If they have their own email address, great, have them use it. If they don't, you go to Gmail, create a Gmail account, and then come back to-- then have them come back to USA Learns, rather, and just tell them to add plus whatever you want before the at symbol, and it'll work for them.

All right, I'm going to go ahead--

Melinda?

Yes?

You have a couple of questions in the chat pod.

OK, go for it.

All right so the first one comes from Cecelia. She says that she's confused. She wants question students use my Gmail address and put their name, and then how does it work? What does alias account mean?

Oh and I didn't-- OK, alias account means that it's not real, OK? An alias is like it's just not real. But it's going to a real address, OK? So right now I'm having a grayed-out moment. Hey, you know what? It'd be easier-- I'm going to start at teacher's side so I can show you all of the aliases that I have, OK? Just a sec. So this is the teacher side, OK? And I'm going to open one of the classes that I created. And I'm going to view that class roster. And here we go.

Now the core Gmail address is usalstudent@gmail.com OK? So I went to Google google.com all right? And I am signed in as the teacher right now, but I went to account and then I created that account I created usalteacher, here it is usalteacher@gmail.com so after I created that-- I'm sorry, gosh, I created one called usalstudent@gmail.com usalstudent@gmail.com all right? And then I took my-- I told my students OK, BeeDoo, BeeDoo, here is your email address to use on this site. You're going to use usalstudent+904@gmail.com. And then I told Kooda Berry, to use usalstudent+911@gmail.com. Cookie Choo uses usalstudent plus 909.

They all have the same password. They all have the same password, but they do have different email addresses. That way, when I go to look at BeeDoo BeeDoo's work I can see just what that person has completed, and as you say doesn't look like they've done too much. OK so I'm going to go to the first English class and then I'm going to as you see right here this is telling me this is what they've done, OK? So it's about halfway done. And here is what BeeDoo BeeDoo has done so far on the course. I am signed in on the teacher's side, so that I can show you all those accounts, OK?

BeeDoo BeeDoo has been there for a total of two minutes and well actually two minutes exactly. They got 100% on meaning match which is great. But then listening match, they only got 50%. So as the teacher, I'm going to tell that person, OK you skipped the welcome, you skipped learning goals, you skipped the Meet Miguel, so you skipped all these activities I want you to go back and redo we do these, OK?

Does that answer the question as far as the accounts are concerned? Let's go back to the account here we go. Did that answer the alias account? So yes, you create the core account. You can name it anything you want. I would suggest you name it something that's going to mean something to the students maybe your site name if you can get it. ESL class, I can guarantee you it's already been taken. Google is used worldwide, so that that's probably not going to be available.

But if you work at San Juan Adult Education, maybe sanjuanae@gmail.com so you create that as the teacher. Then nobody else has to create anything. You give your student a little piece of paper that says sanjuanae plus 101, and then you give the next student sanjuanae plus 102, right? And they all have the same password. So if Jose forgets his password, Dalia can tell him it's USA Learns. Or it could be San Juan, it doesn't matter, right? You decide.

And if it comes to-- if you want everybody to have their own password, that's fine too. If they forget it, you can click on a student within your roster, and you can actually edit the student account. This is really helpful when they start getting their own email address, their own digital persona you can change their first name, their last name. You can change their student credentials, so you can update their email address. You can also type in a password. And make sure you type it correctly twice. You can't see it, I know that's a pain but-- you click Save. Now BeeDoo BeeDoo will have to sign in with the password I just typed. Are we OK? We're good?

Yes, Cecelia said she's OK.

OK, good. So I'm going to copy this email address and I'm going to open up Firefox. So what I'm-- I'm opening up Firefox you can't see it yet, here we go with Google Chrome, I am signed in as the teacher, but I want to show you both sides. And the only way I can do that is to be signed in twice, once as a student and once as a teacher. And the only way I can do that is to have two browsers open. So I'm going to go back to the usalearns.org site OK? Now as a teacher, I would have clicked over here, and that would have taken me to the welcome to USA Learns right? That's usalearns.teacher, but the student site has nothing at the end of the address. So it's usalearns.org that's very important that the students actually sign up on the right site, or the learners, it doesn't matter student or learners. So we're going to click Sign In and so I don't have to type it again paste in that. I'm going to type in the password. Hit Sign In and there I am. By the way, don't ever save passwords on the browser, whether it's your computer or not. I'm also a Google trainer so you get two for one here.

All right, so here we go. Here's the student account address. This student has no messages. So I can click there, I have no messages from my teacher. Here are the courses. The last one that I accessed will appear at the top. OK, the other-- and they appear in order. If I'm with a teacher then English Wonderful Class is one that I created. This one up here, Bloop with Brooklyn, this was actually a workshop that I did on USA Learns, and somebody created this teacher account Brooklyn and they named their class Bloop. So if I click on one of these links, go to my next activity or select a different unit, I can select-- there's all of the units within this fourth course, OK?

Evidently I did nothing in the first unit because there's nothing in this box. This tells me as soon as I do any activity within a unit, it will start filling up this box right here. And when I complete it, then I get a score. So as a student, I know that a half-filled box means I still got some stuff to do, an empty box means I've done nothing, OK? If I want to get back home, I could use the Home button here, I can use the My Home button here, or I could use my browser's back button. I'm going to go ahead and hit Home, and there back to my home page where all of my classes are.

Right here Testy Teacher actually has English Wonderful Class and English Two For Class, right? We actually saw those, it's probably too quick for you, but we saw those when I signed in as a teacher. This student has not started the second English course yet. As a teacher, if I want to know what my students are doing at all times, I am going to have them sign into my first English course, my second English course, my practice course, and my citizenship course. So I'm going to have at least one class of each of those courses. And then I'm going to have my students sign into each one of them. So that if I as a teacher go into my roster for the second English course, and I see that BeeDoo BeeDoo has done some lessons there, I'm going to have a little talk with BeeDoo BeeDoo, because they shouldn't be on the second English course, they should be taking the first English course, OK?

As a student you can also not be in a teacher's class. You could actually, if the teacher doesn't care-- I want my students to do the first, second, and the citizenship course let's say the Practice English and Reading, teacher doesn't really care about that, the student can do that without a teacher. And you can see here there's no teacher name next to Practice English and Reading. There's no teacher name so I can do this activity, and my teacher will never know it. OK, so you can do, as a student you can do the classes without being enrolled in a teacher's class.

If I enroll in the teacher's class, can I get out of it? No. The teacher has to drop me. The teacher has to drop me from the class, and then I can take one of these courses as an independent learner, OK?

We're here at the spelling so let's go ahead and do this now. You're not going to be able to hear it, but I can hear the word being said by a native English speaker. The word that was just in my ear is body, so I'm going to type B-O-D-Y, OK? I'm going to have the site check it and it's correct, woo-hoo! I'm going to go to the new word. And notice that body is right here. So I can click on-- oops, no I can't. Well that's different. OK, used to be the way the words went in here, you can click on them to hear them again. And that might be at the end of the activity because they were talking about doing that.

So I'm going to click listen again. The word that was spoken was disease. I'm going to get it wrong. And I'm going to hit check. Oh, you see what happened, it's telling me to try again. And it's also highlighting the letters that are incorrect. So I can go back here, select the letter that's incorrect, and check it again. And there we go. You're allowed to get it wrong once on the spelling, and then you're given the correct spelling. You go to the new word, disease gets up in the list. So that you have your vocabulary list for this unit the entire time. Does that make sense? I'm going to assume yes unless I hear Veronica speak up.

As I went back this is the activity menu-- remember when I was, on the homepage, I basically told this, I don't want to go to the next activity. It knows, it keeps a marker, OK? So if I had ended with multiple choice my next activity would have been write it. As it was, I did definition match, so it took me to spell it, OK? So that's-- and I haven't finished it yet because there's a box here, right, and there's no score.

There are some activities that cannot be scored. So if there's a little dot, we can score that because the students actually doing something on the site, OK? Definition match, they're matching words to definitions. Spell it, they're actually typing something out. But for something like basic story that's actually a video. So if I click on that-- actually it's audio I thought it was a video, so we're going to hit listen-- sometimes it takes many years for diseases to be found-- and I'm going to pause because what it's doing is reading the story for me, OK?

If I hit Next, you'll go to the next activity, or I can go back to the activity menu. And there I see basic story is complete, but there's no score. We can't score things that students aren't actually touching. They're watching something or they're listening to something, but we can't actually score those. So if you see a little dot, and the teachers will also see a little dot on the student activity report. So if you see a little dot, just means they haven't done it yet or they haven't completed it yet. As soon as they finish, so as soon as this little box is all filled up, there will be a score underneath the score-- in the score column. If the little box is all filled up, but there's a dash there's not going to be any score.

And some of you are probably going, what good is that because I want to see how long. Maybe they just went through and hit Next, kind of like what I did. You can look at the time. So you will know whether or not they actually read that story. And to prove that I'm going to go back to the teacher side. Now, we're looking at BeeDoo BeeDoo's, all right? We're going to-- here's my roster, and just so that you know how to do the whole-- how to get through the site, I'm going to click the Home button here.

Here is my roster, we were looking at-- Oh, no we weren't in-- oh, yeah we were, oh nope nope we were in practice. BeeDoo BeeDoo was actually doing an activity in the practice English course, which this teacher doesn't have. All right, so let's go look at BeeDoo BeeDoo somewhere else, OK? We're going to look at another activity.

I'm going to go to the English Wonderful Class I'm going to look at the class roster, and here's BeeDoo BeeDoo, and then we're going to look at the scores. OK. They've only worked on the first English class, they've done the introduction of vocabulary. And here is how much time is spent. So if this said 10 seconds, OK, this is-- right here the last two numbers on the right are the seconds, the minutes, and then hours. If you see that someone has spent 10 hours on one activity they probably didn't. They probably left the browser window open and walked away to go do their job or whatever.

But even just pay attention to the hours there as well. If those-- that's too much, and if the seconds are not enough, you know that they're not actually on the site. And what's supposed to happen is that they will time out. The site will time out and sign them out. If they come back to an activity and try and do something, when they hit Submit, they won't do anything. So they actually have to sign back into the site and then go back to that activity. So that's something to keep in mind as well.

So we just saw that BeeDoo BeeDoo did some-- an activity on the practice English reading course right? And I, as the teacher, know that BeeDoo BeeDoo has done some work and I want to see what he's done. So I'm going to enroll this student in my Practice English and Reading Course.

Here's how you do it. You actually have to create a course to do it. So I'm going to go-- as the teacher I'm going to go back to my home page. I'm going to start a new class. The title of this class is just-- I'm just going to be very unimaginative and type Practice, and put the number 3 because this is going to be based on the third course. So I get to title my class whatever I want. And then I base the class on one of the courses. I'm going to base this class on the Practice English and Reading Course. If you don't want to type a description, this is a little hint for you, just hit the spacebar bar, OK? The start date it always defaults to today, if you don't want your students to be able to enroll until tomorrow then you would put 9/6 be careful about the end date because the end means end. You can always go in and change it, but if you put the end date is 9/6/2018, nobody will be able to use their that class until you open it back up. OK, so be aware of that I don't ever put an end date here.

I'm going to create my class right now. Oh, the description field yeah, yeah, yeah. So space doesn't work more. Let's try period. There you go, that works. So a workaround just put a period if you don't want to type in the description. So here we go, here's Practice 3, OK? I have nobody in the class. All right. But I can get them to enroll by giving them the Class Key. If we're in a lab together, we can look at it together. Here it is. Or I can print out instructions, all right, to hit this little print button, and there it is right there. OK, these are instructions on how to enroll in the class.

Or I can actually email the instructions to my student. Now be careful because if you have used a Gmail alias, so if I typed in here usalstudent-- oops-- plus 90 I don't know, I think it's 4 at Gmail, right? If I type that in there, the email is actually going to come to this account, which is me. So don't send the email instructions to students if you use a Gmail alias, all right? What you would do, again, is to print out the instructions, hand it to them, or everybody does it at the same time, or you can actually have them sign into their account and type it for them.

So I copied this code, I'm going to go back to my home page, I'm on the student side now. I'm going make this bigger so you can see it. Pump this up just a bit, there we go. OK, now right here is the last class that I just did something in, but there's no teacher name, right? So I'm going to enroll in a teacher's class. And here is the Class Key, and then I hit enroll, and that's all I have to do as a student. I can go to my next activity, I haven't lost anything. To prove that, I'm going to select a different unit, and here we have Health and Safety, still has the box halfway filled. Here's the body scan, this is the body scan is where we just did, this basic story. We just did that one.

OK now I'm going to go back to the teacher side. You guys are going to get whiplash, I'm going back and forth between accounts so much. Here's the teacher side. I'm going to go to my class roster. Hey, look at that, it happens just like that, instantly. BeeDoo BeeDoo is in my Practice English course. If I had signed in, I would have seen all of my classes, I would have gone to Practice 3, I would have viewed class roster, and the same result I would have seen BeeDoo BeeDoo, OK?

So I'm going to click on that student name, and I'm going to look at their scores. And here we go, Health and Safety, it mirrors the student side, body scan, and here are the activities completed or not completed by the student. The number of times that they tried it. And right here is a big tip off, 18 seconds on the basic story. So this is a story. Whenever it says basic story or read it then you should probably be spending a little more than 18 seconds on it, right? So I might tell my student you need to go in and do that again. Does it give it a score? No, but I can tell how much time they've taken to read the story. So if I look at this and the next time they attempted is 20 seconds, I'm going to have a little talk with BeeDoo BeeDoo.

OK, now we all work with adults, so she shouldn't have to do that, but I'm just showing you. We've also USA Learns is also used in high schools. So and in some, for lack of a better word, detention facilities, because there are a lot of low level English-- not English speakers, but low level English learners at detention facilities. So this is being used, OK?

Melinda?

Yes?

There is a question-- or there are two questions. The first one is how do you select level?

How do you select level? Level of what?

OK--

Because here's-- let me go back to the home. When you start a new class, and this is kind of a segue, right here I see I have 37 students in the one class, and 14 students in the second course-- English Two For Class, OK? You don't really select levels. You don't get to decide which activities are viewed by the students in a class. So the level of the reading level of each course it's in that PDF, the reading level of the first course is 2 to 3 I believe and of the Two For Class is 3 to 5, the practice course is 4 to 6 and then the Citizenship prep is intermediate and above.

OK, Nancy says thank you. The courses are by level, she got-- she has it now.

OK.

And then the second question is from Alisa. So students have to be within the USA Learns site, logged in, for them to input the code to be added to a class, is that correct?

That is correct. Something that I did because-- only because I'm a trainer, I need to have a bunch of accounts that I could use. And I didn't want to take up time in a workshop to have everybody type in their first name, their last name, their email address. So I went in and I created yes folks 900 and some odd accounts. It took me a couple of months. I did 101 through 199 because I needed a bunch of accounts. One thing-- and I still have these 900 numbers because I still sign in every once in a while.

Here's something to keep in mind as both a student and a teacher. There's a time limit on how long you can not be on USA Learns, or that you can not be using USA Learns, OK? Students have six months. They have to sign in at least once in a six month period. They don't have to do anything. They just have to sign in. So the last time Sneaker Snak logged in was 4/17, that's when I signed in everybody. The last time Miley Wiley signed in, with a different-- I upgraded the email address because they wanted a different email, OK I did that. And Itty Bitty Witty, same thing. They both signed in at different times, and then the last time that they did any activities is listed here, OK? So you have to sign in.

Now as a teacher the time limit, you get a little more. You get a little more because you're a teacher so you get a year. All you have to do is sign in. So this teacher, Testy Teacher, has to sign in one year from well, one day less than one year from now in order to retain their account. If as a teacher I don't, let's say I retire I forget all about USA Learns I know you guys would never forget about your students, but let's just say you forget about USA Learns. Your account is deleted, but the students retain theirs. They're just disconnected from your class. So you lose all your classes but the students are still there. Now let's say you're on sabbatical you were out learning something and then you come back. Oh no, I don't have my account anymore, it's OK. All you do is register on USA Learns, right? You start a new class, let's say you call it English Wonderful OK? You give your students the ID or the Class Key, have them sign in, boom, they're back in your class, no problem.

OK, can more than one teacher have the same student in their class? That depends. English Wonderful Class is owned by Testy Teacher OK actually all of these classes are held by Testy Teacher. OK, what if BeeDoo BeeDoo did not enroll in Practice 3 with Testy Teacher? What if BeeDoo BeeDoo signed up with I'm trying to think of a Dana? Let's say Dana had a class and he based it on the Practice English and Reading class course OK? BeeDoo BeeDoo could be in Dana's class. Can BeeDoo BeeDoo be in Dana's third course and Testy Teacher's third course? No.

Can BeeDoo BeeDoo be in the second course with one teacher and the third course with another teacher? Yes. I hope that made sense. It makes sense to me. So a student can be in two different teachers' classes as long as the classes aren't based on the same course. There. All right? So if you have a student you teach beginning English and you want them in your English Wonderful class. They can do that they keep their English Wonderful class and they move on to Dana who is the English 2 or intermediate English teacher, then they can sign up in that class. So they can be in two different teachers courses as long as the courses are different. I hope that made sense.