[music playing]

Announcer: OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network.

Julie Caspersen Schultz: OK, hello. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Julie Caspersen Schultz, and I'm an ESL faculty member at Sierra College. I've been teaching in the community colleges for about over 10 years. And before that, I was an ESL and civics coordinator and teacher in adult education-- in an adult education program. And my colleague is here to join me today.

Marcia Brock: Hi, everybody. I'm so excited to be here. So I'm Marcia Brock, also ESL faculty at Sierra College. Sierra College is a community college in the Northern California area. If you're not from here, North of Sacramento. And I have been in the community college system for 20 years. But before I was full time, I was a freeway flyer and worked at different colleges. And I just love teaching. And I'm very excited to be here and share Canvas with you all.

Julie Caspersen Schultz: OK. Just a second. So transitioning to online learning and making it work. I wanted to tell a little story before we get to our modules. So when we're on ground in our classroom community, it kind of reminds me of the picture when we're community building, it's inclusive, engaging, fun, challenging, welcoming when we're on ground all together in person.

And so when COVID hit, I felt like, oh, my gosh, what am I going to do? How am I going to community build? How are we going to be inclusive, engaging, fun, challenging, welcoming when we're not even with our students? And I was like, what am I-- what do we do?

So I was very worried that my students would just look at the computer, and just freak out, and drop class, and not continue. But my goal was that ESL students would be confident, and happy learning online, and that we will have fun practicing together on Zoom. So that was my goal.

And comes Canvas. That's our learning management system that we use at Sierra College. And we just want to tell you a little bit about Canvas and about our program at Sierra just a little bit before we start sharing our modules. So what is Canvas?

Canvas is the common Course Management Systems, CMS, or Learning Management System, LMS, for all of the California Community Colleges. Canvas is intuitive. So whether students are on their cell phones, laptops, desktops, whatever, the stream changes and modifies to fit their devices. It's flexible.

It allows customization to support a range of pedagogical styles. So we can do different things. We can be creative and deliver instruction in different ways however it best fits our teaching styles. And it's dynamic and cloud based. So they are continually improving it, and teachers can even make recommendations, like I'd like to I'd really like to see that you do this for faculty or for students. Can you change this feature? Add this feature? And they often listen to voices in the field. And so Marcia is going to talk about this part.

Marcia Brock: Right. So what I love about Canvas, it gives you the opportunity to really engage students, communicate with students very easily with discussion boards, announcements. I will be showing you hands on that interaction, simple and easy for instructors and students. It's fully supported 24/7.

So if you are in a bind, something happens, you get complete technical support. The other thing that I find it really great about Canvas is because it is quite popular, it's very easy to go to YouTube and find a video on how to do something really quick. I've been there, done that.

But you get a lot of help. So it's not scary to use. Trust me. And also, I will be demonstrating the different aspects. But it's very, very easy to do. I have to tell you that I'm not a techie person at all, never have been. I was the type of person that didn't want to do Excel spreadsheets or anything like that. And when I started using Canvas, it was just very, very easy and simple.

Julie Caspersen Schultz: So it's efficient. It allows us to do our grading very easily and efficiently. And students get immediate feedback. If they take a quiz and it's multiple choice, they'll see their score right away.

Marcia Brock: Yeah, I'll be talking about that. It's a lot of fun, actually.

Julie Caspersen Schultz: And then they get teacher feedback. We can say great job, or here's something to work on. So we can give immediate feedback like that the students can receive. And they like that. OK. Marci?

Marcia Brock: Yes, so Canvas is-- so here in California, we have a strong community college system, and it's used in all of the community colleges, a few of the UC and state colleges, UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, San Francisco, San Jose State, and then also private, Stanford and Santa Clara. So all the tiers of higher education in the state.

Julie Caspersen Schultz: So we want to tell you a little bit about Sierra College. So before COVID-19, many instructors use Canvas for basic things like grades and assigning videos to watch before the next class.

Marcia Brock: I want to talk about that. OK. [laughs]

Julie Caspersen Schultz: So we were using it as a flip classroom, watch a video for home work, come back, and we'll discuss it, or blended learning. Because when we were on ground, we were still using Canvas a little bit to supplement the instruction. And so now, at Sierra College, all our classes are asynchronous campus wide. But ESL instructors have the option of scheduling optional synchronous Zoom meetings. And Canvas is used as the instructional platform for all of our departments.

Marcia Brock: Yes, I want to say that I'm very grateful to have been able to use Canvas. Because we had Canvas for a while, about 15 years. But what I really love about Canvas is the fact that you can use-- you can start by using it as little or as much as you want. And I think that's very welcoming.

Because we've before COVID, we were not forced. We just had it as-- we were incentivized to use it, but it was not-- and we were not, in any way, coerced to use it. And so I started it very gradually. And without any pressure, very user-friendly. That's, I guess, what I'm trying to say.

And I was incentivized to use it by the fact that I was very interested in flipping the classroom and saving that classroom environment for real, meaningful, communicative activities. And so having the students watch videos on Canvas, read materials on Canvas, and then come to the classroom and really have not waste, quote, unquote, "time" and just have that really good interaction. So I will say that Canvas is really wonderful for blended learning, integrating hybrid, or just using it as much or as little as you need to.

So I was never an online teacher. I still do not consider myself an online teacher. But the fact that Canvas was so friendly and I started using bits and pieces of it-- I'll tell you really quick the very first thing I used to Canvas for was Announcement. And the reason is because at community college, we give homework, and I would write the homework on the board, or sometimes I would get little pieces of paper, here's your homework.

And then I would always have a few students next class meeting say, you know what? You never told us to do that, or you didn't give us the page number, and you never said that. And so I said, OK. Now, we have Canvas, we have videos. But the thing that I want you to do is check your homework on Announcement.

So I would send the message on Announcement with the very detailed of what the homework is. So every time a student said, well, you never said that, I didn't do the homework because you never told me to do it, I would show, OK, here's the method. And there it is. So it was-- and that's how I started, just with the homework thing.

And then after that, I started adding videos and adding materials. But very user-friendly. And so I was not an online teacher. So when we did, mid semester, have to move online, my biggest stress was actually learning Zoom. Because even though we had Zooms applications in our computers, I had never used Zoom in my life.

And so going to that 40-minute training and trying to figure out how to do breakout rooms and all those features of Zoom were more stressful for me than actually putting materials and using Canvas. And so I just wanted to share that part. Because Julie, in fact, is way more techie than I.

Julie Caspersen Schultz: Not really. [chuckles] I'm learning. OK. So when we went-- when we begin teaching-- when we went high-- when we went remote, sorry, and we started using Canvas solely, our Canvas provided a lot of training for us but also for students. It is a challenge to be able for our students to be able to use Canvas in the way that is expected.

So we need to provide a lot of support for our students. So this is some of the ways Sierra Collage support students. Our ESL department, we offer a two-week training or tech orientation at the beginning of the semester for our lower-level students. So we have like an open, live Zoom hours that were there waiting, hello, students can come in and ask questions. We can share screens and help them.

And then we also support all ESL students during the semester with open weekly Zoom hours staffed by our instructional assistant. That's for all levels. In the beginning, we try to focus on the beginning levels, and then we continue on all semester a few hours a week with our instructional assistant. We also have past peers who are embedded tutors, and they're just invaluable.

They're right there in our classes in Canvas as, I believe, they're as tutors or instructional assistants. And so they can comment on students' work and provide support for the students. And also, they work in the virtual tutor center. So students can use them for additional tutoring outside of our class if we decide to have Zoom sessions.

And then through the CARES Act, we've been able to give students laptops. And we also loan them hot spots, earbuds, and webcams. So those are the ways that they're supported the college. And then some resources that have sort of inspired my teaching, and I've been teaching a long time.

But recently, last year or so, this couple of books I wanted to share. The Missing Course by David Gooblar. And I love this book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain by Zaretta Hammond. And then I have to say thanks to my very special colleague who I've never met. Her name is Laurie Woods.

And she is from Cuyamaca College. But she has really helped me, and guided me, and mentored me for the way I teach on Canvas. Because you can also-- yesterday or Wednesday, I think they had a little session on Canvas Commons and how to share your information, and then download other-- so we share modules, we share materials, and I was able to get a lot of her materials off of the Commons in Canvas, and then create my class based on the way she set up her modules. And I'll talk about that.

So again, my name is Julie Caspersen Schultz and Marcia Brock. And here are our emails. And then we have a couple minutes for questions, and then we're going to go right into sharing-- taking you right in our candidates courses, showing some student work and the way we set up things. So do we have questions?

Speaker 3: Not yet. I don't see anything in the chat. Folks, remember that you could use a chat for questions or comments and if anybody wants to unmute and ask anything so far. Otherwise, we'll continue. Looks like we're good, ladies.

Julie Caspersen Schultz: OK. Now, Marci.

Marcia Brock: OK. All right, so I will go ahead. So hi, everybody. So this is the Sierra College website. And a very user friendly. So here, that's where students click on Canvas. And I just have its username and password. And then they go to their courses.

So when they click on their cars, the first thing they get is something called the home page. So I'll be talking about the navigation bar and other things. But the whole page is great, because it's a live page. It can be edited. And I actually do that, as you can see, in yellow here. It's some urgent messages, go to Zoom.

I try to update Welcome to-- we are in week six. So I put that way. It's the first thing they see. But then I tend to keep the home page as it is. And this is-- in the beginning of the semester, this is what it looked like.

It started with welcome to our class. And as you can see, photos. You can put Zoom links for-- there is a link for an orientation. So students-- and I'll show you in a minute. So this is our instructional assistant. She's our tech support.

I happen to have two tutors for this class. Here's my video embedded on, just saying hello and telling them about where to go in the navigation. And then there's actually a Zoom link that shows the students where the navigation bar is, just kind of showing Canvas.

So I leave that there, but I'm able to just kind of tweak the top of it, which is the part that they see right away when they get into Canvas. Call for Zoom. So what I do is I move the Zoom schedule to the very top so they don't have to scroll up and down. So our class Zooms are in conference Zoom.

And then the tutor sessions, they have to click on links, because they're in the tutor center. So it's a different system. But what I love about Canvas is the ability of having Zoom right here. So let me talk a little bit about before I go to ConferZoom, the reason I have ConferZoom on top.

So this is our navigation bar. And what I love about it is you go to Settings, and you are able to hide a lot of the items. So my students are basic students. I don't want to confuse them. I want to make it as simple as possible for them to navigate.

So I actually hide, if you can see here, that they cannot see these links right here on the navigation bar. So you can hide and/or show as much as you want, customize. The other thing you can do is you can change the order of the buttons here and navigation. And so what I do is I put the ones that they really need to use up on top.

So I consider Zoom one of the main things we do. So I want to make it very easy for them. So I put it as the first one. Like I said, when they log in, it defaults to home. So defaults to home, they see the crucial thing. Here is the Zoom schedule in case they didn't copy or they want to be reminded.

I don't change it. Our Zoom schedule stays consistent, the whole 16 weeks, the whole semester. But when you click on ConferZoom-- and I can make this bigger for you guys if you need to a little bit. But what I love about it that it's very little work for you. So in the beginning of the semester, you can click on Schedule and make the schedule recurring Zooms for the whole semester, the whole 16 weeks.

So here, for example, on Monday, I have office hours from 3:00 to 4:00, then we have our classroom at 6:15, Tuesdays and Wednesdays also. But what is great about it, and it's happened to me before, is that OK, I set up the Zooms for the whole semester. I completely forgot about holidays. So very easy to go back there and just delete the holiday one.

Or if you're ever sick and you don't feel well, OK, I go to Announcements, I send them a message, and I go to the homepage. And then I'm able to come here and actually delete the Zoom if I'm sick, and we're not going to meet that time. And that way, they're not lost in La La Land trying to get to class in case they didn't get the email, the announcement, and the home page of me saying, sorry, I'm sick today.

So very easy to customize and to change. And I just really like the fact-- I don't even have to think about it. It's there. It's consistent. They find it very easy to do. So what I was talking about that making the top ones are the ones that they're going to use to make it easier for them. So in this basic class, besides Zoom and Home, then the next thing I want them to do is click on Announcements.

So Announcements are interaction. So one thing that I do in the very beginning of the semester is I ask my students to download the campus app on their smartphone and to turn on notifications. It's a free app, wonderful, works really well. Like Julie said, it's very customized to different devices.

So that way-- and I promise, I tell them, you know what? I promise I will not be sending you announcements in the middle of the night. So they turn it on. What happens is their phone beeps. They know they have an announcement.

Also, every announcement you do goes to their email. So they can see it on Canvas. They can also see it on email. It automatically goes there. Love about announcement. So here, for example, it's my tutor Vilma. So she communicates with them. I communicate with them.

And one feature that is really great is you can say reply to this announcement. And I have one in the beginning of the semester. So what happens is if students don't understand the message, for example, they can just click here on Reply, open the box, type of message.

Don't understand. Click Post. And then you'll be able to see if there's a problem with your message. So that makes it very interactive. One thing that I do remind students to always check is the date of the announcement. Because sometimes, we'll say, come today. I try to say come today Monday, come today Friday. But here has the date.

Another thing-- oh, one thing that Canvas does have-- I'm in the teacher review right now, but you can go to student view right here. And if you click on Student View, it's fantastic. Because you see exactly what the students see and how the students see Canvas, which will be different from how you see it.

Because as a teacher, you can hide a lot of things from students, as I will be showing you, which is to our advantage so that everything is ready to go. I call it hide, but the term in Canvas is published and unpublished. So you can publish things, unpublish things, hide, unhide things from students. So the Student View is really helpful.

So Announcement is my communication tool with students primary. So like I said, I like putting things on the home screen. But then I'll cut and paste, click on Announcements, click on New announcement, and boom, send them an announcement. So again, keeping with the order, where is the class?

I'm online, or I'm hybrid, or unblended, where's the class material? Where do I go? How do I learn? Where is the stuff? So very easy, modules. The way I like to show modules--

Julie Caspersen Schultz: Just say leave, Marci, because you could--

Marcia Brock: Sorry. Sorry about that, guys. Yeah. So yeah. The way I like to explain modules is like this. So think about a filing cabinet. So the module is the drawer of your filing cabinet.

And then pages, which I hide from students, because they don't need to see one million pages I have of class material, so it's hidden, the pages are the files, right? And the modules is the actual drawer. Now, what is-- so you can have as many pages in the module as you want.

And what I absolutely love about it is that you can organize it whichever way you want. So for example, we have 16 weeks in the semester. So I like to do it two ways, actually. I have by week, which you can see here, week six. My week always start on Monday and on Sunday by midnight, so they have seven days to do the work.

So I like to do it by week. But one thing I have changed recently, for example, in the organization of the modules, I used to have one-- two, three. So when we were in week eight, so on, and so forth, students have to scroll all the way down. Well, our students struggle with technology, and some of them, even though I said this is the most important thing you ever have, your mouse, some of them are still doing the finger.

So what I do is I put the current module on top. So we are in week six. That's what you see. As you scroll down, you will see week five. So it goes back. Everything can stay open for them all the time, which is great. So I said, you know what? You didn't study last week, go back to week five and study it.

It's open seven days a week, 24 hours a day. And so you can organize this whichever way by week. But what I really love about it is the fact that you can also have it by skill. So for example, as you get-- when I finish my finals here, week 14, 15, 16.

So for example, I still have, as you can see, all of this is hidden from students. So this is for my benefit. So I have a reading module, where I have a reading circles in the classroom. I have a listening module.

You can have a writing module. I have a conference module with things that I want to demonstrate to you, guys. So you can-- there is no limit to how many modules you can have and how you want to organize it. The other thing that I love about modules is-- so this is what the students can see.

And I do have Discussions, Quizzes, Grades, People, Syllabus, all the things here. But the two things that they have to do is go to Modules, the materials are there, and then the Quizzes and Discussions, which are activities that my students in this basic level do every week are embedded in the module.

So for example, here in week six-- it's quite long. So these are all material I'll be showing you, guys. So at the bottom of week six, because it's due on Sunday, they have a quiz and a discussion. So they don't have to be clicking on Quizzes, and Discussions, and trying to find which one do I need to take? No.

You go ahead, and you put it right in the module. So it's week six. They're doing quiz seven. In the week five, for example, they did quiz six. So it's just very organized for them. So basically, they're using ConferZoom, Home, Announcements, Modules. They don't need to do this.

So I technically could hide these two buttons if I wanted to make it even simpler for them. But one button that I think is absolutely fantastic is the people button, because they are very interactive. Because by clicking on the classmates they can email the classmates. They can also email me, and Julie happens to be here too. Oh, you can add-- you can talk to your campus administrator and add a co-worker to your Canvas.

Julie Caspersen Schultz: We often do that. So we put each other in our classes, so we could see what are they doing? How are they doing things? How is my colleague doing things? And then we can learn from each other.

Marcia Brock: So our instructional assistant, our techie person, the person who helps students with all the technology, Zoom and Canvas, Maria Hernandez. She's right here. So they can just click on her name and send her an email, and myself, the tutors, and each other.

So what that does is there is no need to memorize people's emails anymore. You really are in the community of learners with two clicks. Boom, you're sending each other email, and you can study together. Canvas, of course, has a 24-hour tutor, and all other great goodies, and great things.

But like I said, I try to keep it very user-friendly and simple for my students, especially with the technology. Because we get fooled sometimes, because our young students look very techie, they have their smartphones. But that does not necessarily translate to knowing how to do online work and understand Canvas. So that's what we need to have the orientation.

So Julie will do more advanced things, but this is for my beginner class. So I always have, in the first two weeks, even though we do the orientation, I have these pages where what is Home? What is ConferZoom? I explained to them, and I read this and talk about it when we are in orientation.

And then this link here is the Zoom orientation of Canvas. Kind of like what I'm doing right now with you guys. So when you are in modules, so here we are in the page inside of modules, you can just click Next, which is also helpful. So you don't have to get in, and out, and in, and out. So you--

Julie Caspersen Schultz: Just click Next, Next, Next.

[interposing voices]

Marcia Brock: If you wish to go back. So I want to show you some examples of pages that I have created for this beginner class. So for example, one of the topics is volunteer work. So because it's a beginner class, I prefer not to put too many links so that they don't have to go out and get lost.

So what I basically do on my pages is I type on my pages, I ask them to copy in their notebook. Everything that they read, they need to copy. So this is, for example, it's a speaking activity, and it's about kindness. So we have a warm up. So these questions, I type them there.

They can look at them and think about them. And then in Zoom, I share the screen, and we start talking about, is it important to be kind? Then I have this great little video. It has no sound. But it's a story by--

[music playing]

It does have music, but this is a very selfish guy and how he doesn't help anybody. Until one day, he does help, and it changes his life. So what's important-- what is the importance of being kind. Also, I show students how they can make the screen big, or they can make them small to fit their screen.

Then I have some post video or speaking conversation questions. Again, I would be doing this in Zoom. But the students can start doing this with their tutor or by themselves at home. So then, I click Next. So that was a speaking activity. This is a writing activity.

For example, they're starting to write a paragraph. So I have the warm up questions that the topic is favorite item. But so I just type it there. And very, very user friendly. You can use different fonts however you want to do it. It's a live page, so you can cut and paste.

So if you have Word documents, you can just copy into Canvas page directly, so you don't have to retype everything you've done. Very easy to insert picture. So I talk about my favorite item is my aunt's piano. Then we do have a studio, which is very helpful. And I insert-- there is a video of me. So they--

- Let's change to we.

Marcia Brock: So I'm speaking very slowly. Studio gives us the option of closed captioning. So you click on CC, you click on English somehow.

- Let's change to Vilma and I.

Julie Caspersen Schultz: Marci, about a five minute mark.

Marcia Brock: OK. Already? Oh, my gosh. OK.

- I know. [laughs]

Marcia Brock: Time flies if you're having a good time. I just have-- I just really enjoy using Canvas. So again, you put in pictures. This is a profession. So it's a woman welder. And then again, my video. I like dialogues, so this is a dialogue that I've created.

Again, customized it, then I read the dialogue to them with closed captioning. I really want to show you guys the quizzes. Here's another dialog. Again, using lots of photos, using my video. Here, I have two-- there's no limit to the number of videos you can insert on the page and the number of illustrations and materials.

So this is a Discussion. A Discussion is a very interactive feature. So I want to show you this one, because this is a grammar one. And here are my students. So here's-- they posted their answers. And what is really great is after they post their answer, they're able to see their classmate's work.

So here, for example, Mayaire says, excellent job. So they communicate with each other. We do a little bit of netiquette in the beginning. So they can also correct. So here, it says, it was perfect. The other one says, well, I think you need to use capitalization. And then my corrections, my feedback.

So after they post all their work, I give them feedback. This is another discussion. This one, they have not done it yet. Let me just move on, because I really want to show you guys the quizzes. Oh, I had a bunch of discussion. So you can use it for reading, writing, listening. They can post videos.

So this is a listening quiz. So really, what I really love about the quizzes, they're so easy to make. And for my basic class, I use multiple choice and true and false only. But what is really great about it is, for example, you can insert your video. So here's my video.

- 17

Marcia Brock: 17, and they have to mark, is it 70 or 17? So this whole video, it's a listening video. So this whole video is with my videos. Oh, I think I have to get out of there, Julie, just a minute. OK, I'm just making it. I'm going to make this quick, yeah.

Julie Caspersen Schultz: Show your final exam.

Marcia Brock: I do want to show you the final-- I'm sorry. But I really do. I feel proud of this. And let me say something. For those of you who do not give quizzes, I know it is called quiz. But what it really is, it's a really fun activity. My students are so excited about this.

It's like a video game for them. They love clicking. I start with very easy questions. So they love their ability to click, and then they get instant feedback once they finish. They can take it 1, 2, 3, 10 times. After the last time they finish, they get the feedback, correct and correct. And it's just really fun.

They are excited to do this. It is like a fun video game for them. It's not stressful. They do get points, because we are in community college. You can put a video direction, written directions and all of that. But I wanted to show you is that you can mix and match in your quiz.

You can have just a straightforward, just type and answer. It's multiple choice. You can have-- so just like this. Fill in the blank. They click on the right answer and keep going. You can, like I said, but in the video. And here, I ask the question.

- Where is Sierra College?

Marcia Brock: But they can click on my video 20 times. So there is no-- they do have a time limit to take the quiz, but they can click many times. So you can have-- we have multiple levels students. You can also have-- my question here is-- I press and continue.

- What are they doing in the picture?

Marcia Brock: What are they doing in the picture so that you can put your video and the picture. And then I want to make sure they're clicking the right grammatical form. So again, inserting pictures. You can put a video. So here is a little YouTube video for them to watch.

And it doesn't have any words. And again, they can watch many times, and then they can fill in the blanks, fill in the words for the sentence, complete sentences with the information from the videos. And I do have Malala.

And so the-- I have true and false for Malala again. I try to make it as interesting for them. Sometimes I-- Julie will show you some of the funny pictures she puts. But it's just pretty. It's nice. They enjoy it. It's fun. It's not a stressful thing to do. So I will stop. And Julie will be going over some more advanced. I don't know if we should look at the chat right now.

Julie Caspersen Schultz: Yeah, I think it's a good time to stop a second. Oh, I see it actually, Neda.

Speaker 3: Oh, good. OK.

Julie Caspersen Schultz: I see one. And Marci, it says, I've never-- Krista said, I've never used Canvas before, but I have used other LMS systems. Is it challenging to set up? I had used-- I think it was D2L at American River College. And I mean, there is a learning curve.

I'm not going to say you could just get on there, and you're good to go. We've done a lot of training. If your school site gets set up with Canvas, I'm sure they're going to offer lots of trainings. And you can just start really simple. That's a nice thing about Canvas.

Maybe just start with announcements, maybe just start with like a little quiz. Just a little bit by little bit. But as you're learning, you can add on. But there is-- I would say there is a learning curve. And the more you want to take it, the more trainings you can do.

Marcia Brock: It can be very incremental and non-threatening. So for example, the first time I did a quiz, I didn't put videos or pictures. No, I just typed the question, and then I just clicked multiple choice, and I typed the answers. And then I clicked on the right answer, and I clicked Save. That's all I did. And then I thought, hmm, maybe I should try to add a picture. That is going to make it fun for students. But anyway, you can start really small.

Julie Caspersen Schultz: Thank you. And I'm going to share-- So Marci shared about how Canvas kind of looks for students in the navigation, and she shared about modules. And I'm just going to go directly into one week's module. It was actually last week's module.

And I'm going to show you how it looks and how I structure them each week. Because they're pretty much the same. I try and keep it the same. So I'm going to show you my class, which is-- it's the next level after Marci. And it's a reading, writing class. And grammar is integrated in there also.

And again, Marci teaches our beginning level, and I'm the next level. And in my level, we're reading two books. One is Seedfolks. I don't know if you've ever heard of the Seedfolks. And the other is Gold Rush. So my modules are built around our readers.

So this is my home page, and I made this on Canva. Somebody did a workshop on Canva yesterday or Wednesday I noticed. So I put a little-- I think it's called a GIF, or GIF, or something just to make it fun. I'm really into making my pages look fun, and funny, and interesting, and I get a lot of feedback from students.

Oh, this class is not only fun, but it's funny. So I try and add it. That's kind of what I like to do. And so when I go to Modules, this would be week five. This was last week. So every week, in my module, I have a welcome. And I try and change the picture.

So I made a little Bitmoji. So every week, I'll have some different saying or different picture. And then the students get to see what they're getting ready to do this week. So it's like a little preview for what they're going to learn in the week so then they can read this and continue.

We just go to next. And so next, they're going to read the chapters in Seedfolks. And I've uploaded-- I just found this on YouTube. Thank goodness. It's an hour and 54 minutes. Somebody had read the whole book. Somebody already did that. I didn't have to do that.

So whatever I can find and integrate, I feel like it's great. And that's the easy way that you can put things into Canvas from outside. So this is a YouTube video. And so I just tell students-- I actually usually tell them where to start and where to stop.

Because it could be confusing. Because this is two hours, and they only read a little bit each week. So I tell them where to start and where to stop. And then I tell them to follow along in their book. As they're listening to the speaker, they're following along in their book. And then maybe, sometimes they don't use their book and just listening.

And then I tell them, pause it. Repeat the sentence and repeat may be a vocabulary word. They can go back and replay it. And then in this level, they're practicing annotations. We're teaching them how to annotate. So here are their directions as they're listening and reading the book.

They're supposed to be actually marking the book. So putting a star next to an important idea, circling new words. Here's all the directions. And then when it looks like-- when a student turns it in-- I'm just going to show you one student that allowed me to show her work. And where is it? Let me see here.

Where is SpeedGrader? Let me make this a little smaller so I could-- here we go. So this is SpeedGrader. And this is how we actually go in, and we grade things, or you get feedback. I mean, maybe if you don't actually grade, you can at least provide feedback to the students.

And so in this class, I've asked them to make a submission, take a picture of their page in the book, and then submit it. And so one student looks like this one, for example. So this is her page uploaded, and I'll annotate it. And then I can give her her points, and I can say super job, your annotating well.

So a little feedback. And she can reply to me here if she wants to. And then let's go back here. So the next part in my module is they would take a vocabulary quiz. Marci showed you how the quizzes work. So the vocabulary quiz is based on the vocabulary, of course, in the book that we're reading.

And then they would go to a comprehension quiz. So again, about the book, some questions about basic comprehension. And it's set up just the way Marci showed. There's just multiple choice questions. You can't have essay questions. In that case, the teacher would need to go in and grade the essay questions.

But if you just have multiple choice, Canvas grades it right then and there. Students see their score immediately. And then we go to next. So now, they're going to-- this is a reading, writing class, so they're practicing actually paragraphs. So we're getting to the paragraph.

This is week five, we're just writing our first paragraph. So first, I'm going to have them talk about it. And this is a discussion, like Marci showed you. And so they're going to talk about one of the characters in the book with each other. So I give them a little picture of Virgil. That's the character in the book.

And they have some directions. Tell me three character traits. Because we're working on character traits and adjectives. So then one student would come down here, and she copied my question here. And then she answered. She is hardworking, emotional, and embarrassing.

And then they can reply to each other. And they have little conversations even at the second level of ESL. So that is a discussion. So in this class, we're working, as I said, on character traits and adjectives. And they're using adjectives to describe a character in the book in their first paragraph.

And then next, they would-- this would be like a wiki page but it's within Canvas. So this is a page in Canvas, and they can share their thoughts. So we're talking about Virgil again, and we're sharing adjectives about Virgil. So students put their name here.

I always give an example. So my example was about Virgil. She's hopeful. Well, how do I know she's hopeful? Well, I found a quote in the book. So we're teaching them citations too. But this could be used for many different-- in many different ways.

They could share vocabulary words, or they could share pictures. I'm going to show you a few different ways. But I just wanted to walk you through a module, and see how it's built, and the activities build on each other. And then the next part would be to-- this is a speaking activity now.

And I use Flipgrid for several years now. And this would be like something that maybe you would do later. Like we said, you can work into Canvas just little by little. But I figured out how to integrate other apps into Canvas. So Flipgrid is integrated. So here is my activity on who is your favorite character in the book and why.

So here is the-- here are their responses. And they all tell us about their favorite character so far and why. And so Gricelda, I'm just going to share Gricelda's-- oops. So let me just click on that one.

- My favorite--

Julie Caspersen Schultz: Can you hear that Marci? Can you hear that? OK.

- --character is Gonzalo, because he's powerful, smart, loving young man.

Julie Caspersen Schultz: So the next thing they're going to do is they're going to take their three adjectives that they chose to describe one of the characters in the book, and they're going to write a paragraph. So on the next part, they're actually going to type a paragraph on word and turn it in. And then I'll just go to SpeedGrader and give feedback.

So we talked about topic sentences, detailed sentences, and a concluding sentence. So we're just doing one paragraph. So I found this funny little video thing, put it all together. So hopefully, it kind of makes it less intimidating, lower the effective filter, make it kind of fun for students, so they're not all nervous using these kind of different things that I find.

Oh, another thing you can do in Canvas is make a rubric. So this is the rubric for their paragraph. So I can just go in here. For each student, I can click how they did in their paragraph. So I can click here, here, here, here. And then they'll read it, and it will accumulate their point.

So then they'll see their points at the bottom as I click inside of these boxes. So you can integrate rubrics something maybe later. Again, I didn't do this at the beginning, but I've been learning more and more. And then this is kind of an equity, kind of an activity that I do every week. And also, again, I change the little GIF here.

So every week, I do a little humanity check-in, because I want to hear from each student. So I want to hear a question you might have about the week, or just tell me, all is great, I'm excited, or to express any concerns. So this is the way I can connect with each student.

And I really look forward to this of everything every week, because this is how the students can really tell me how they're doing. So I get things like, oh, I love the modules this week. I love the book, or the videos were great, or gosh, Julie, I really didn't understand the present progressive. And so I could-- then I can comment back, oh, OK, let me send you a video, or can you meet me in Zoom?

Or a student might say, I had a really bad week. I lost my job, and I'm really depressed. And sometimes, they open up like that. And so it's a way to really get-- to be able to support each student where they are. And then--

Marcia Brock: Julie, where did you found your rabbit?

Julie Caspersen Schultz: Oh, I just google these things. And I think I actually made this on Canva. So another thing that I made. A lot of these I make, because I try to make my own-- as much as I can, make my own graphic kind of things. I find them on free places. Because I get a little worried about copyright, so I try in either find them-- it's called-- it's just a common share or something, like an OER type of thing.

Marcia Brock: I want to play something that-- I started very basic. So all I knew-- I didn't know Canva or anything. All I knew was Google Images. And so I will just-- it's out there in Google, so I should be able to get it. So I will just save it in my PC, and then upload it from my PC, and then it would stay there on the Canvas page.

And I will say that even in the advanced level, having illustrations or having animation, so, so great. Because students get really intimidated by just reading, having a lot to read. The lower level, my lower level has sometimes more pictures than words. [laughs]