Melinda: OK. Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce your presenter today, for the last session of the CAEP TAP summit, Kristi Reyes. Take it away, Kristi.

Kristi Reyes: Thank you, Melinda. Hello, everybody. As Melinda said, my name is Kristi Reyes. I'm an OTAN Subject Matter Expert and I teach non-credit ESL at MiraCosta College where I've been for a very long time. Again today, our topic is Project-Based Learning in ESL and ABE. So welcome, everybody. This is the agenda. This is what we'll be covering.

So first of all, what projects are and what projects are not? And we'll talk a little bit about why include project assignments at all, what are the benefits, and what are some caveats of project-based learning? I have tons of sample projects available for you. They are listed on that handout that you can download from the chat or from the CAEP summit portal.

And they're available to modify, use as is, or just spark some ideas. There a little bit more for intermediate and above ESL, and they would definitely be appropriate for ABE or adult secondary classes as well. And then we'll finish off with some sources for where you can come up with ideas for projects that you could use in your classes.

So by the end of this session, I really hope you have one new project idea and even more so, some inspiration for including projects in your instruction. So if you could take a moment to share in the chat, if you are a teacher, what you teach and where. And I know some of you are not. But maybe, you were an instructor in the past, so you could think of that.

Do you or did you include projects in your class as assignments? And if so, what was the last project you had students do in class? Or what has been your best or student favorite project? And what made it successful. So I'll pause for just a moment to give you a chance to answer in the chat.

OK. Thank you, Kristin. Former high school science teacher. And now teaching adult Ed and credentialing. Yes. So that would make sense. Teaching teachers to have them do projects as well. And I see. So a lot of you have some experience in K through 12, and I think K through 12 naturally do a lot of projects. Unfortunately, sometimes, because of all the standardized assessments, I see with my kids, the fun projects are usually at the end of the school year.

But they're so fun and engaging. Why not include them throughout? They don't have to be so huge is my big thing. They don't have to be these gigantic projects. So really, just a quick overview of project-based learning. We do projects. We, as educators, we have projects that we do. I love what you just put in the chat. Authentic audience and tangible outcomes. Thank you. Yes.

They're relevant, and they can be meaningful to students' lives and their futures because when they go on to college and careers, there is a lot of projects that they will do in the CTE classes, in their jobs. Students can demonstrate their knowledge and gain knowledge by demonstrating what they've learned but putting it all together, as you said, in this tangible end product that really can highlight their best skills and give them a lot of pride.

Also we do do drills and multiple choice quizzes. And those kinds of things are important to establish a baseline of foundational understanding, right? But when students do projects, they're going deeper and they're putting together all their skills, and this is great in language instruction because it's integrating the listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

And we're really giving students-- come on. We teach adults. We don't need to be standing over their shoulder. We're giving them personal agency, which is a hallmark of good andragogy. In addition to traditional reading, writing literacy, when we integrate technology, we're building students' digital literacy.

And I don't know if you've ever heard of the technologist Kathy Schrock. I heard her speak way back in 2015 at the Annual Q Conference in Palm Springs. And she has a great website that outlines the 13 literacies. So we have our work cut out for us. The 13 literacies that we should be teaching. Besides traditional literacy, there's visual data, information, and tool literacy.

So we can build up all those literacies with some technology integration. Also, we can meet standards, which I'm going to talk about in a moment. And finally, as I said, all of the skills can be integrated and going along with the college and career readiness standards in ELPS, English Language Proficiency Standards, when we build up these really great scaffolded lessons and the end product is a project that students do, we've built up all this background knowledge for them that they need to go on to college and careers as well.

So this is a quote from Bob Lenz. He is the executive director of the Buck Institute for Education. And I got this from a book about project-based learning. And he said, "The world has changed dramatically over the last generation, even over the last 10 years. Our lives have become more connected through technology, a global economy, and social media. Of course. Our awareness of the complexity of the challenges we face as human beings from climate change to issues of conflict and food distribution has grown substantially.

So I love what he wrote here. That's bringing in these real-world topics are something we need to do as well. The world of work is changing rapidly too. More and more tasks are being automated for manufacturing, to driving, to writing database reports. Robots are doing the work of so many people. Furthermore, collaboration has become the norm.

Most people in information age companies work in and across teams. Finally, has become a project-based world. A project-based world. Our jobs are to prepare students for the world outside of our classrooms. So it just makes good sense, I think, to do projects. So what are projects? Well, they're not a grammar exercise, not a reading passage, not a worksheet, not a paragraph, not a dialogue or drill, but some of these things could be turned into projects.

For example, we could turn a paragraphs, as I often do, into a project by having students, perhaps, make a digital story of it or using a tool like Book Creator, creating a flipbook, compiling their work in a class magazine or on a website. A dialogue could become a comic strip or a student-produced video. Why not?

We can. These could be the steps to that final product. So good projects, they are assignments that students can do individually or in teams, and they typically investigate challenging problems or questions that cause students to think deeper, and is it important to have students present to their class or even better to a wider audience?

So it's a publicly displayed product. I'm sure, if you've used projects in your class, you can see that when you have students working together or presenting their end work, you're really creating community a lot. And students are communicating with an authentic purpose rather than just reading a dialogue.

We can align projects to standards, and of course, you don't have the project until you have taught through direct instruction and a carefully scaffolded lesson. All the content that will build up students' background knowledge to be able to produce the product. But at the point of the product assignment-- the project assignment, excuse me, we can give students choices. And that's another hallmark of good andragogy.

For language learning, and if you're teaching an ELA class, a language acquisition or an English class in an ABE program, then students can use all of those language skills, so teaching some grammar, teaching commas. Well, now they can, maybe, apply what they have learned in a more meaningful and relevant way that will relate to their goals and their lives. And you can give them ongoing feedback and a chance to reflect.

And finally, with a project assignment, students are treated more as adults, because then they're more autonomous, especially, if you give them choices. And you've seen it, I'm sure as I have, when students are presenting or displaying their products, they feel so proud. And this success, it can spill into other areas of their life, because we're building up their sense of self-efficacy and overall confidence.

We are also honoring their backgrounds, their experiences as adults, and I really like to, again, give students choices because then they can choose what they're best at and really shine. So benefits and caveats. Well, I hesitate to use the word PBL, project-based learning as some of you are familiar with, because that is more often in K through 12 stretched over a very long time.

And with our adult learners, especially, if you work in an open enrollment, any type of program like that, that does not work. So project-based learning, more traditionally, is sustained over time. I like to make them short, short projects that we've built up over time. But then that class period that they can mostly finish the project within our class meeting time.

I try not to schedule or to give the assignment outside of class time. Acceptance, sometimes, when it's really individual type of project. Group projects. We really need to include them, but again, give class time. I'm sure that if you've ever assigned a group project and you've stretched it over some time, you end up having to rearrange the groups, and it can be disastrous.

So again, if you really plan it out well, it can be done within a class time-- single class period. And of course, when you are basing the project on a topic that students are highly interested in, it's relevant, it relates to their goals and needs, then you'll be surprised, as I am, that they start working on their own outside of class time even though you give class time for it.

So I just had that recently where I signed up a project, and I hadn't really given the details because we ran out of class time. And I said, I'll tell you more next time we meet. And before the next time we met, they were already turning in their projects, because it was so interesting and engaging. So you're probably familiar with this. Does anybody know what this is called, if you can share in the chat? This famous pyramid?

I'll give you a little moment. Maybe not? I'm sure you are. Yes. Bloom's taxo-- Bloom's taxonomy. So you know, yes, Bloom's. You know when we're teaching something and we're just asking students to answer simple questions, that's important. We need to make sure they understand before we can go forward.

But when we have students do projects, you can see that we're getting to the higher levels of Bloom's taxonomy. We're having them analyze. Of course, they're applying. But we're having them analyze different options, evaluate, and of course, create. And all of those require more complex thinking, maybe multi-step processes, and higher order cognitive skills.

So we know that we need to teach critical and creative thought. And with projects, we can get to that. How many of you are familiar with the college and career readiness standards and/or the English language proficiency standards? Can you type yes or no in the chat? OK. So I won't go over them in depth, but you know that the college and career readiness standards really call for rigor.

And so the reason is because we need to prepare students not just for jobs, but for careers because a regular job in California is not going to pay the bills. When the gas is $7 a gallon and minimum wage will not pay for a one bedroom apartment, it's our responsibility, really, to try to help students get the language and the preparation they need to get on a pathway.

So the college and career readiness standards say we need to have regular practice in our lessons with complexity of texts that students need to use evidence from text to answer questions. And we need to build students' background knowledge as well. So not just reading the Dick and Jane books, but bringing in real content that they may read in their workplaces, but also exposing them to some college topics as well.

And the English language proficiency standards. You know that those are stepping stones that will help the English language learners be successful in attaining the CCRS. So the focus is on, again, of course, rigor, but helping students build their academic language, use language strategies, and, of course, develop their critical thinking skills.

What's interesting, of course, in the English language proficiency standards, it does include a mention of technology. I was in a webinar a couple of weeks ago where someone suggested that both standards should be revised. Both set of standards to include technology throughout. So maybe that's the next step.

Let me ask you, how many of you are familiar with the TSTM-- teaching skills that matter. Can you type yes or no in the chat? It's OK if not because it's-- OK. Rachel, you are. So it's pretty new. I had the opportunity to be an instructional coach in the first three cohorts. This comes from OCTE-- the Office of Career and Technical Education. It's not a prescribed curriculum or anything like that.

But you may recall, SCANS-- if you've been teaching as long as I have, the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills. Well, this is kind of the new 21st century. The foundational skills. Not only work skills, but life skills. And you can see the list there. Adaptability and willingness to learn, communication, critical thinking, interpersonal navigating systems, problem solving, processing and analyzing information, respecting differences in diversity and self awareness.

And so this toolkit is available online for free for you. It includes different lesson plans for ESL and ABE that will help students build these skills in different areas. And so one of the methods that it recommends is project-based learning, along with problem-based learning is one of the other ones.

So the TSTM. Yeah. Really important for folks to know. It's rolling out slowly. And again, it's not something that's going to be forced upon anyone just like the CCRS and ELPS. They're just a set of standards to help agencies. They're not being forced on anybody. But this is just a great toolkit resource. And so within the resource, there are ELPS and CCRS aligned lesson plans for projects in each of these different areas-- civics literacy, digital literacy, financial literacy, health literacy, and workforce preparation.

So they may work really well for your particular students, but you may need to modify them for your students' level. One that I really caught my eye and I wanted to do so badly is the digital literacy one. And it focuses on having students use technology tools to tell a folk story. Well, the lesson is, OK. It didn't have enough content. And so I wanted to use this in my conversation class.

So I built it out a lot further. And so what I offer for you is this lesson plan that you could use in your class. It is on the handout that is available to you that goes with this presentation.

So I, first of all, had students do listening cloze-- about, what is a folktale, with a video I found on YouTube. And they listened to me tell a folk tale. And did a structured retell activity, where I gave them a printout of images from a PowerPoint slide, and they listened to me tell the story, and they took notes, and they told their partner the story in their own words orally.

And so then this folk story has a twist at the end. Kind of like a riddle they had to solve. So they tried to solve the problem. And then you could, and I did do this. I had students write individually a summary of that folktale. We worked on the pronunciation of past tense verbs, and then students prepared their project. So this is kind of the outline of the prompt that I gave students.

But they needed to find a folk story from their country. And they could find the translation in English, or maybe they were able to find it in English easily or use Google Translate and then have me check it to make sure-- because translators are not always perfect. And then present their folk story in the form of a narrated PowerPoint slide show or one student, in particular, she used my instructions and tutorial to create her Chinese folk story using what used to be called Adobe-- it's now called Adobe Express.

And it's a very simple tool that you just import images and you narrate and you choose the background music, it's really simple. We even had beginning level students use it. So I won't show you her whole-- it's on YouTube. But I won't show it to you. Every year in our school, we have a diversity day and we invite our students to make presentations or play music or sing or share whatever they want about their countries.

And she presented her folk story, and everyone was shocked and amazed. But as I have here, it used to be called Adobe Spark Video, now called Adobe Express. Completely free. So easy to use. It's got an app for iPhone. But you could also do that in Canva as well. And that turned out so amazing.

I happened to stumble across this, maybe you K through 12 teachers are familiar with this. Before I go into it, how many of what a Japanese Bento box is? Can you type Yes or no in the chat? OK. So I have a user-like image here. It's not very appetizing. A Bento box is a little lunch box in Japan. And it's got the separated items, so you have your protein in one section, your rice, of course, in another.

And whatever vegetable or something in another. That's called a Bento box. And I was just searching one day online, and I subscribed to many different listservs. And I got this one about a Bento book project that a lot of high school teachers use. And I thought, how can I use this with my students?

A Bento book project takes your stale, boring book report and turns it upside down and makes it interesting and fun. So what students do is they, after reading whatever book, for our students, maybe, it's a chapter of a book or a short story, right? They take different objects that they have at home, so it's pretty low tech. They arrange it so it looks like a Bento box sort of, and then they take a photo and send it to you and they make their presentation.

It's as simple as that. So every year in my school, we have a reading festival where we bring either-- it's typically a California author, quite often, a local author. And last year, we had a professor from our college-- yeah, like a shadow box, maybe-- a professor from our college named Sonia Gutierrez. Her publisher let us share with our students some chapters from her book called Dreaming with Mariposas. Intentionally incorrect preposition combination there, because she wanted to use her son-- and she grew up right here in our community, and her book is quite autobiographical and a bit emotional. It's a great book.

And so we read chapters of her book in class, and then she came and spoke to our students through Zoom, because we were still remote at that point. And so what I had my students do, this is my sample. I read the whole book, because I bought the book, and I arranged my Bento book project here.

But I assigned groups of students to different chapters and they created a Bento. But then I was thinking, I don't always have books in my class, because frankly, there's not enough time to read a whole book a lot of times. So I was thinking, how can I take this project a little bit further? And what I did just this past August, teaching-- oh, darn. Teaching a conversation class, I decided to have students create Bento box displays on a shared Google slideshow.

Well, they just took the photo and they texted it to me through Pronto-- instant messaging program that we use through Canvas. And they used it to introduce themselves. So this was my student, Maribel. You can see how creative she is. She is a professional dancer. And she revealed to us the second week of class that she's a cancer survivor. So that's why you see the hope here.

So I brought up each person's Bento, and they introduced themselves. This is Damaris. And she has a photo there of her brother who passed away. And they were revealing things about themselves and creating this community already. Do this very personal type of presentation. So it was a great yes. You could do this with young adult books, anything, right?

So it turned out better than expected. But that's how you could do a project for having students introduce themselves, for example. In my class, going along with college and career readiness in ELPS, when I create my syllabus, I put the list of topics labeled as "College Topics." Even though they may not be exactly college topics, I do this. I have never covered this topic until last spring, because I feel very vulnerable having no knowledge about art.

But I have found many students know a lot about art and are very artistic and want to share something. So I decided to include the topic of art. So in class, we read the biography of van Gogh. And at the same time, nearby was the immersive exhibit. I don't know if any of you saw that. It was amazing and beautiful. So some of my students had attended the van Gogh immersive exhibit. And then others watched the film Loving Vincent, which is a beautiful film.

And then I invited credit college art professor from my school to come to my class to Zoom. And she asked me before class, what are the nationalities of your students? And she presented what is art featuring the cultures and art forms of their countries in a very short presentation that was amazing.

And they felt so empowered that they could understand and follow a college professor. They felt ready, even though I was telling them, you're ready to go on. They felt ready then. So then I created, using Microsoft Sway, some note taking about artists for the grammar. And then we came to the product, which was students use Google Arts and Culture. Are you familiar with that website?

Yeah. It was beautiful. Wasn't it, Rachel? The van Gogh immersive. Google Arts and Culture, wow. It's so amazing. Isn't it? Melinda knows it because she's a Google guru. So students had a choice. They had a choice of creating a presentation for the class about an artist or a work of art. It could be from their native country or anywhere.

They could create a slide show, a narrated slideshow, or a video using any video tools like the ones I already mentioned like Adobe express or Canva. And I learned so much. This is the beauty of teaching adults, isn't it? I was so impressed. As you can see here, I made my samples. It's good to write a sample.

I made simple Google slideshows for my students. Dorothea Lange to teach a little bit about the history of times in our country, Watts Towers, close by. Students could go visit. One student created a video that was so top notch. So amazing.

It was about the street art of comuna-- I can't say in Spanish right now. Quince? No, that's 15. 13. It's a place in her hometown of Medellín, Colombia that was just full of gang members. Graffiti, garbage, crime. It was horrible.

And there was a donation of money to clean it up and to give art supplies to the people. They cleaned it up, they created beautiful murals. And now it's their community. So they take so much pride in it that no one, no one destroys their community. It was such an amazing video that she made. I wish I had time to show you.

But some other topics, I had a Catholic priest in class. And Tracy, thank you. My Spanish doesn't come when I need it. We had a Catholic-- actually, not a priest. He's a monk. And he told us about the history of the Gregorian chant. A Russian student talked about Tchaikovsky. We know about all these famous Mexican muralists, but I did not know about Aurora Reyes Flores.

The reason we don't know about her, even though her murals are amazing, is because she was a very staunch feminist and critical of the government. So she got silenced, but her work is amazing. So many other different-- everybody's presentation, everybody's product was different we learned so much from each other. Oh, I love this one.

Well, I recently attended the English Language Fellows, if you've heard of that from the State Department. They now have a virtual program where people here in the United States usually, you go and live in another country for a year. But now they have a virtual program where you can teach English or train teachers overseas while staying at home.

I know it was kind of interesting, but right now, I'm pretty happy doing what I'm doing. But it was very interesting for me to learn that. The number 1 request in other countries for English teachers is not business English, not teaching English for agriculture, nothing like that. It's English for climate change.

And I've never covered that topic very much in my class. So I decided, I had better. And so I called the college topic, Environmental Science because, really, let's give students that academic language. So in class we read about plastics. Did you know there are seven types of plastics, right? But only how many were actually recycled in the United States?

Of the seven, only two. All those soft plastics get trashed and just end up in landfills. So we talked about in class how we go to Starbucks, single-use plastic. You feel, oh, it's OK. I can go put it in the recycle bin. It says, Recycle.

That recycle little circle doesn't mean much at all because if it's any sort of a soft plastic except for the very large heavy, durable plastics, they don't get recycled in this country. China won't take our stuff anymore. And our recycling facilities are not able to handle it right now. Yeah.

So we talked about that. Thank you. Yes. So we read about that. There's this Ted-Ed if you're familiar with that. Earth School video series. All about environmental science. And we brainstormed using Jamboard what are little things. I mean, I can't save the world, neither can you. We can't reverse climate change overnight.

But there are little things we can do, so we brainstormed. And then students wrote paragraphs and then created infographics based on their paragraphs. And so these are two samples used with students permission. And they were made with Canva. Canva free. Students do need to make an account. Are you all familiar with Canva? Can you type yes or no in the chat?

So it is great. They just need to make an account. They type in infographics, see all the different templates, choose the one they like, just click and type in Change Images. It's so simple to use and beautiful. Beautiful designs. I was able to find-- I was a little bit rushed for time, so I didn't create my own tutorial how to do it.

I was able to find on YouTube. Some teacher created a tutorial about how to make an infographic with Canva. So I sent that out, and that's what students did. And then they were able to present their infographics. So going along with the idea of environment, a different topic that I use, because I had some students last spring who continued with me in the summer and I just knew that I have so many students who love animals.

So I thought this would be a high interest topic for them. And that's the key. Really knowing your students and topics they'd be interested in. And having interest in it yourself too. So we read about endangered animal species. And what it that is threatening their survival, and some that have recently been brought back from the brink of extinction.

So I don't if you're familiar with CommonLit. Can you type yes or no in the chat? I love CommonLit. It has really, really great fiction and non-fiction with questions where students are having to use evidence from the text. Again, it's not specific to adult Ed, but it's adult topics. So they have a really great lesson, Destination Endangered Species. I was browsing the internet one day and I found this website called Insights to English and it has projects with a subscription that I never pay for.

You can get all of the projects. But without a subscription, I found this one on their site called Web Quest Endangered Species that I modified. And I called it Claim your Species Project. So each student had their own slide on a Google slideshow. And they could create more slides. Most of them were two or three slides. And I gave my sample.

And so I used a local endangered species. And so students, they loved this project. They were able to talk about animals from their country that were endangered, that they really cared about. And one student went off the topic, but that was OK for me. She talked about back in Russia, her native country, some friends of hers founded their medical doctors and they quit their jobs and founded a sea lion rescue.

And so that was really-- she felt so good talking about something that she was familiar with. So I think this is an important topic. And my students really liked it. And talk about college and career readiness, right? So let me see how much time I have. Are you familiar with OTAN's Teaching with Technology database? Can you type yes or no in the chat?

So this is a database. I started working on it when I first started. It's been, I think, more than 12 years. And it used to have about 1,000. I'm serious. 1,000 different websites in tech tools. But it wasn't super valuable in that. So it is undergoing a change. And in the new year, it's going to be available to not just have a website, and here's how you can use it. But full lesson plans with standards.

It's going to be amazing. So I have contributed some of my lesson plans there for the include projects and have many more that are listed on the handout that are going to be entered as soon as I have a winter vacation. And one, it's not my own idea. It again, comes from this website called ReadWriteThink. Are you familiar with that website? If you are in K through 12, you may be familiar with that one. ReadWriteThink.

I love that one, because I get a lot of great ideas. And one teacher somewhere created a lesson plan with a video about pathos, logos, and ethos. And so persuasive techniques in advertising. When I brought that up to my students, they thought, and they learned this very academic type of language. Pathos, ethos, and logos. Oh, my goodness. They felt like so sophisticated in their languages.

So it's a pretty complex lesson plan that I built out. Starting with that, ReadWriteThink. But students, we talked about-- had conversation about consumerism. They filled out a note-taking chart based on the video provided in ReadWriteThink. We practiced identifying strategies, looking at some commercials I gathered from YouTube, deciding if it was pull on your heartstrings, pathos. Or if it was logos-- appealing to your logic.

And they were really able to do this so well, even though this new terminology had been completely not part of anything that they had studied before. So then students work together in teams to analyze a commercial and decide what is the main message of this commercial, what is the product or service, what is the company, and what are the rhetorical strategies being used?

And based on this commercial, would you buy this product or use this service? Why or why not? And they really enjoyed that. Other projects and lesson plans that are on the site, TWT site, as soon as it rolls out, a digital film about a holiday or celebration. I love this one. It's a very robust, actually, unit.

My name project. Students research what their name means. National symbols. This one, at the beginning I asked you, what has been students' favorite project that you'd ever use? This one is always my students' favorite project. And so I call it the college topic of advertising. And logos and company marketing.

And in this, students use a website called Famous logos. They find a logo for a company or product that they use and they make a very brief presentation about the design of that logo. Then they create a personal logo using either Google Draw, or they can use a couple of other websites that are free.

And so I'll just show you what their logos look like because every time I do this project, this is the one that I don't even-- let me pause for one second so I can bring that up. OK? Let me go back, because my browser is not updated. One moment. This is the one that students, as soon as I assign it, they start working on it before I've even talked more about it.

So they design their logo, they write about their logo, and then they present their logo. Well, let me open that really quick just to show you what they come up with, because here we're talking about creative abstract thought a bit more. And let's see if I can find it. OK. Here it comes.

And I do this early in a term so that they can use this as the icebreaker as well. So let me resume share. So here's my sample. Teacher, love, et cetera. And then I had a photographer. This one was so interesting. The student's name is Pan. So she has P-A-N. It was just very funny how she described why she chose a snail. She's from Taiwan, and her husband is not living here in the US, because he's a successful businessman. So she is here with the kids alone.

And so like a snail, she's like a hermaphrodite. I thought that was very funny. She's playing the role of both a male and a female in her family at the time. But just a few others, just to go through. This was with a special logo creator website. So you can see Canva, again, has logos. And so they wrote about this and presented and got to know each other. I got to know them early on in the course.

I love it. I love it. It's such a great project, and students love, love, love that project. So let me pause for one moment and get back to my slides. Almost finished here. Just a couple more things to say. And so hopefully, so far, you've come up with maybe something sparks an idea in your mind. Thank you so much.

OK. So I'll resume share. Everyday life skill. Relocation. I have a project on that. And many more. I won't read all of these. But many more projects I've done over the years that really put together the content in an end product as we've talked about all of these different ones. Oh, the one I really loved recently too is students do some research about UNESCO World Heritage site and present to the class.

One time, I teamed up with another ESL instructor who was teaching the same level. And this is very interesting to have students write and present about home remedies. I learned that if you have a cold, you should cook chopped onions and rub it on your chest. You won't have a lot of friends, but you won't have a cold after.

And so students made videos, they made PowerPoints. We teamed up and we put all of their work together on one Google site so they could all learn from each other. Another ESL teacher I teamed up with one summer, we had students define what is a hero. And then students made presentations to the other class about their hero. And it was very interesting how the heroes were not the people I thought they would be. They were people like their moms and dads. Was really touching.

So this is a screenshot. I had one student on the left who I created, I explained how to use Google Slides and she typed out everything on one Google slide because she had no experience with computers. That's OK. The other student on the right, she talked about her hero, her dad. And this student is so experienced with computers, she has her own YouTube channel where she has videos of herself when she has traveled around the world. And she even has a drone.

So with the different levels of tech experience, we can differentiate not just our expectations based on our student's abilities. I let them choose what they can use, basically. So you can see, student choice. OTAN has a great article about choice workboards. This is a sample. Of course, this would be way too much to offer to students. I would probably limit to a couple of things like, maybe, an infographic or a video, for example.

But just to give you an idea of what a choice board looks like to differentiate the technology side of it. So where can we get ideas for projects? I like to think of what I'm interested in, but I do my best to get to know students as much as I can within the first week or even before I send out an intake survey to ask them some questions about themselves and try to craft my syllabus as best as I can.

But some other resources would be these listed here, which are on the handout. And with that, again, you can find the links for everything here with the sample projects, even lesson plans, and so forth. They're on that handout in the portal. And I believe Melinda has shared it in the chat.

And I'll just take a moment to look. Yes. I love that. So Rachel says, I had a choice alphabet for high school courses. They could choose one project, but not the same in one school year. That's awesome. Great idea. So hopefully, you've all walked away with a project idea that you can try out. You can, again, visit the handout and browse those different lesson plans and ideas that I've used.

And more important, just inspiration, because this is what students need to be able to do to be successful in their workplaces, college careers. Projects are what we do in our everyday lives. Even later today, I have a project to go do the laundry. Thank you, everybody. Have a great day.