Narrator: OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network.

Nikki Ross: Hi, everybody in the room and online. We are from Grossmont Adult Education, and our team one introduce ourselves. And then we'll go through our presentation on transforming and aligning our distance learning, and then making a move towards a digital literacy program.

Barbara Van Dyken: I'm Barbara Van Dyken. I'm an ESL student at Grossmont Adult Education.

Nikki Ross: Student?

Barbara Van Dyken: Student. Yes, I'm a student and a teacher. Teachers are the best. Yeah.

[muffled conversation]

That's all I think about in my students.

Jenna Hansen: I'm Jenna Hansen, and I'm a distance learning teacher with Grossmont Adult Education.

Jennifer Owens: I'm Jennifer Owens, the director of the DL Program for Grossmont Adult.

Nikki Middleton: And my name is Nikki Middleton. I'm a program specialist for Adult Ed at Grossmont Adult Education.

Nikki Ross: OK, let's get started. So just an overview of our presentation today, we want to tell you about a few things that we have got going. A lot of it. We are also on the Digital Leadership Academy with OTAN, so we're a team in this past two year's program DLAC. So one of the things that we've worked towards is aligning our distance learning program to our in-person classes. Jen will talk about that. Both Jen and Barbara will give you an insight to how we're trying to use technology in new ways, better ways, to reach more of our students.

And then I'll give you a little bit of a snapshot as to what we're trying to do towards professional development for our teachers, to make a lot of this new technology integration happen. We'll talk about digital literacy objectives. So these will be a big part of incorporating technology into our classrooms across the board, doing that in a way, so every student, hopefully, has a very similar experience. And then Jenna will come back and tie this all to our site plan through DLAC. So you can see what the big picture is for us and what we're looking towards. And then we hope to have about 15 minutes for Q&A. So with that, Jenna.

Jenna Hansen: Hi. So Nikki had talked about our distance learning program being tied into our-- it's been a long time goal. Sorry, guys. Just got caught up in my own brain. It's been a long-time goal to put our distance learning program into action to get it aligned with our in-person classes. Nikki is our program specialist, and Jennifer is our admin. And they really helped me carve out the time to be able to do that with distance learning because there's quite a few students, and there's a lot involved.

And so we were able to do that together. And also, it is, as Nikki was saying, part of our DLAC plan, was to get our DL program on our LMS and aligned with our in-person classes. So being able to do that finally was a huge accomplishment. And I definitely was not dreading it, but thinking like, how are we going to do this? But it wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be, especially having the support of admin and our program specialists, obviously. And it also being part of our site plan.

So the sense of community that Canvas is providing for our students. The other LMS I was using was great, but there wasn't an asynchronous and a synchronous aspect to it. So now with Canvas, we have the discussions and things like that. So students can see what they're writing in the discussion area and see my comments and feedback. And so that's really cool having that sense of community there. That wasn't there before. And then they talk about it too, in-person, if they come in to meet with me. They'll talk about what they wrote on campus.

And so it's actually really beautiful. The Ventures is what is loaded on our Canvas. So it's Leveled Learning. And it's a good transition between Zoom and online and in-person with Ventures. I don't know how many of you have used Ventures. Everyone's pretty familiar with it. So that's a great platform for in-person or online or via Zoom. Alignment DL is now aligned with in-person classes. Seamless transition between both provides meaningful learning for students. The utilization of the Chromebooks.

So we do have Chromebook carts in our classrooms. There's none in this one, but in room 11, there's four of them. There's a teacher hoarding Chromebooks. Anyway, a lot of teachers' currently are not utilizing their Chromebook carts unless it's for classes testing. So we're hoping to get teachers to utilize the Chromebooks more for digital literacy purposes. And I've actually been able to utilize them more, getting people on Canvas, using it with me during our meetings. If they want to come in for extra help, then they can use it. Let's see.

Big increase in student digital literacy skills. Obviously, they're on Canvas, and they're active on Canvas. And they're digital literacy skills are going to increase because they're using that platform. And increasing accessibility to materials and education, not only for students that cannot attend in-person classes, but provides a reason to have no lapse in their educational goals. Sorry, I don't know why I'm so nervous.

- Just breathe.

Jenna Hansen: Anyway, so would you say about this one?

Barbara Van Dyken: Oh, oh, Helen no. Beautiful above.

Jenna Hansen: Above. OK. Anyway, a lot of our students, they don't just want distance learning. Maybe something happened with their family, or they're sick, or something. You guys know all kinds of things happen in life. And so they'll do distance learning with me for a short time, and they'll be on Ventures on Canvas. Then when they go back to in person, they're using Ventures in the classroom. So that's what I mean by a seamless transition between curriculum. So it's better for the student, and for the teacher, too.

Alignment with the community colleges, as well. So our community colleges that they usually transfer to when they graduate from us, in a perfect world, they use Ventures, too, on Canvas. So they're used to the curriculum and the material. So it's better for everybody. OK, how are we doing inside?

[interposing voices]

Jenna Hansen: All right. They talked about this already. The transition between digital platforms for DL, actually doing it, I talked to a lot of them about it beforehand. Look, we're going to change digital platforms. This is what it's going to look like. So actually physically show them, hand this in person, a lot of them, because a lot of them are lower levels.

This is what the platform looks like. This is what you're going to have to have. You need an email. Try and get them set up with email if they didn't have one or making sure their emails are correct. That's a big one. And a lot of students are still coming. We transitioned it completely the beginning of this term, so most of them are completely on it.

I still have students coming in. Teacher can't get on it. And usually, that's because they're already signed in with the college or with a different platform. Other than that, it's been really easy to get them to log on to it, even just through email. And if they need extra help, will come in person. But the Canvas invite is super user-friendly, So about half of them have just done it on their own, and then the other half have come in with me and met with me and like, teacher, help me.

Nikki Ross: Yeah. [muffled voice]

Help me do this stuff.

Jenna Hansen: It hasn't been too hard. Yeah, that's covered all that. Any questions so far about--

Nikki Ross: --questions. So students are coming different times? It's like, drop in?

Jenna Hansen: There's a lot of drop-in, but there's also a lot of scheduled meetings, as well. They know my hours, so they'll come in to room 9, talk to teacher.

Nikki Ross: So they are all on different modules of the--

Jenna Hansen: Yeah, I actually have three. That's a good question. Yeah, I should have put that in there. There's three sections and three different levels, three different modules. And I'm trying to organize them according to time period, so morning is supposed to be the higher-level Ventures, afternoon, middle, and then evening is technically supposed to be the lower levels. But sometimes, that changes. But that's easy to modify with the student.

Barbara Van Dyken: One more question here.

Jenna Hansen: Yeah.

Barbara Van Dyken: So students working independently then with the curriculum?

Jenna Hansen: Yes. And they also meet with me, usually, at least once a week.

Barbara Van Dyken: Once a week, because that's your required minimum?

Jenna Hansen: Yes. That's the best outcome for everyone. I do have situations where, teacher, I'm pregnant. Can you give me four weeks, or whatever? I'm flexible with them.

Nikki Ross: Do you collect student like attendance hours?

Jenna Hansen: Yes. We use ASAP for our attendance. They sign in, they get attendance. They get in-person attendance on ASAP. We have both. We have distance learning and in-person.

We were talking about all of the benefits of transitioning to campus and what were some of the things that were difficult. And this is kind of a joke. I had the Canvas app on my phone. And I was out to dinner with my husband, it had like 146 To-Dos. My notifications were just popping, and I'm like-- It was funny. Definitely need to keep up on the Canvas or change the settings, so you're not being notified constantly on your personal phone.

And as far as the challenges, this is with every platform, right, the grading part of it? But yeah, some of them were resistant to transfer over to it because they thought it was going to be a little bit more difficult. A lot of the lower level ones were like, teacher, I don't know, I can't do this. But honestly, once they came in to meet with me, and then I would talk to them one-on-one and show them this is what you do and this is what it looks like, I haven't had any resistance to it. Everyone's been fine.

[side conversation]

Nikki Ross: So just from an administrative standpoint, as we've been involved with DLAC, it's given us a chance to examine the classes that we offer, the types of classes that we offer. So just for you today, I just shared with you some of the data that we've been looking at as a school. This is compiled from-- we do an in-person orientation, introduction to ESL classes.

And as part of that, they take the student technology survey as part of that class. So the data that I'm sharing with you comes from 368 submissions between August and December of 2023. So the first two terms of the school year. And just as we go forward planning, this data is reflective of current students.

And we just found it interesting that 64% had said that they preferred in-person, 25% said that they preferred hybrid, and online only, 11%. So online only would be what Jenna does. And the hybrid is what Barbara will talk to you about in a minute. So this helps me, from an administrative standpoint, go for it, helping to figure out what classes we need to offer to serve the students that we do.

The other part of the student information technology server I thought was interesting that when it asked what type of device you use for your online learning, 73% of the students said they use their phone. So that's something we also have to consider moving forward, making sure that we provide curriculum that's phone-compatible and easy for our use of students for their phone.

[interposing voices]

Barbara Van Dyken: Push my button here. All right. So for the hybrid class model, I work with Learning Upgrade, which is an online curriculum English, for just about any of the-- English, math. But we focus on English.

I had, at the beginning of the first term one, I had 40 students in my class, and it was a lot packed in to the class. And I thought, this is ideal for hybrid. Half of you come on Monday and Wednesday, and the other half of you come on Tuesday and Thursday. And then when you stay home during the time that you would normally come to school, you got to do this Learning Upgrade.

They were a little reticent at first, but they jumped right on. Most of them got on to Learning Upgrade using their smartphone or another device at home, but primarily, smartphones. They had to work for two days a week at home, and then the other two days of the week, they come in, and we'd have a classroom where we'd cover much of what they had been learning through Learning Upgrade in the live classroom.

What I found was that when the students-- I found that the students were on board. I could track them using the Learning Upgrade interface and see that they were on between those times that they were required to be online and to get credit for their time in the class.

When they came to class, the enthusiasm in the classroom, those enthusiasm levels had risen. They come to class, and they were so much more engaged and very talkative with each other. And of course, the teacher plans it that way. I planned for lively, engaging classroom activity.

So at the end of this pilot, I had many, many students-- I mean, all the students knew each other's names. They could interact with one another. There wasn't a lot of like, sitting in rows and sitting back and being a wallflower. So I thought that that was really cool. But let me go through some of the--

With this pilot, I took the stats from Learning Upgrade, and I ran some numbers on them. And through the statistical package social services-- to analyze the numbers, I use SPSS. And so the idea was to analyze the collected data. And that's another beautiful thing about Learning Upgrade is that it collects all of the data that you might need to crunch so that we can evaluate how the program influence the performance of our adult English language learners.

And then this is pretty much what the data look like. So you can have Learning Upgrade run any report. And this report I ran was on NRS growth, learning days and the growth per year. So I got to get back to here. OK. So the data over here. So we examine the key metrics of average NRS growth, average learning days, and annual learning progress to understand the program's efficiency and effectiveness.

The significance of this is that by understanding these metrics, it gives us insight into the program's impact on the student's language acquisition and overall academic progress. The average NRS growth, students experienced an average increase of 1.9 on the National Reporting System which indicated a notable advancement in English language proficiency.

And the average learning days, we took it all and divided it by the number of students. And on average, students dedicated 112 days to using the Learning Upgrade curriculum, which reflected their commitment to enhancing their language skills. And the data project that an average annual growth of 6.4 signifying yearly progress in students learning outcomes.

So I looked at this and I'm like, OK, what does this mean, really? So an average of 1.9, 112 learning days, 6.4 average growth per year, what that means is that in the time that they use Learning Upgrade, they increased their level by 1.9, almost two levels. And the 112 days of average learning days, that shows that their engagement in the Learning Upgrade program and then the growth per year, if we took away the pilot and said, we do this all the time, average growth per year is projected at 6.41.

So once I started looking at it this way, I thought, wow, this is pretty remarkable. And right here, this QR code, this will link to an explanation of these stats. So it is very thorough. With the help of AI for full disclosure, AI helped me to articulate the strengths of this pilot. Thank you very much.

Audience: I have a question--

Barbara Van Dyken: Yes?

Audience: --in the chat. The question is that comparable to-- scroll down a little bit-- what you're seeing in TE?

Barbara Van Dyken: TE? I don't know.

Speaker 1: I guess your program administrators should know.

Nikki Ross: I think it's referring probably to CASAS score, so we would need to look at Barbara's class.

Barbara Van Dyken: In regard to the CASAS scores. I ran CASAS scores at the beginning of the pilot, in the middle of the pilot, and then towards the end of the pilot. And those scores, There was a slight increase. It showed slight increase.

But there were problems with the information reported from CASAS, and that some of the CASAS reports had an asterisk-- was it the asterisk, which shows that they were below-- because it's too low. And so that I couldn't really use that information to compare it to the information that I found here, you know, just using a Learning Upgrade and these three metrics. Does that answer your question? She's OK?

Audience: Can I ask you a question? So did you compare before you were using this learning repository online the student completion of your class? You said there's a lot more engagement? Did more students persist through the end of your course than previously when you were not using this technology?

Barbara Van Dyken: Yes. Well, I had more students attending regularly than before and less attrition. And I think that has a lot to do with easing up on them and not requiring them to be there all four nights or all four mornings, but that gave them a little bit of flexibility in their schedule so that they could complete their Learning Upgrade according to what their personal schedules were demanding of them.

Audience: Yeah.

Barbara Van Dyken: Does that answer your question?

Audience: 100%

Barbara Van Dyken: OK, good. Any other questions? Oh, come on. You got to stump me. I'm prepared.

[all laughing]

OK, so let's see. OK, so if you want the link to an explanation of these stats, it's right here on this QR code. You just take a picture.

Nikki Ross: So your average learning day means the total hours, really, that they were using that system?

Barbara Van Dyken: Yeah. They had to at least kiss it. You know? And that's what we do with our kids at home. You don't like the broccoli? You have to kiss it. You have to at least kiss it. But no, they were engaged, and they would come into class, and they'd say, teacher, let's do Learning Upgrade in class. So we would do Learning Upgrade in the classroom, as well, so that I could help with any trouble that they were having accessing it or things that they didn't quite understand that were being taught in the module.

Nikki Ross: Marilyn online has a question. Did students have an easy time navigating the app? There seem to be many options. It looks busy on the initial startup page. Would you mind going through it, what it looks like for the student to use the app?

Barbara Van Dyken: I don't have the app with me. I'd love to do that.

Nikki Ross: Barbara, give her your email address.

Barbara Van Dyken: Yes.

Nikki Ross: Yeah, go ahead.

Barbara Van Dyken: All right, you ready? Bvan, V-A-N--

Nikki Ross: B-V-A-N.

Barbara Van Dyken: D-Y-K-E-N--

Nikki Ross: D-Y.

Barbara Van Dyken: K--

Nikki Ross: K.

Barbara Van Dyken: E-N--

Nikki Ross: @--

Barbara Van Dyken: @G-U-H-S-T.net.

Nikki Ross: G-U--

Barbara Van Dyken: H.

Nikki Ross: H-S-T.net?

Barbara Van Dyken: Yes, that's it. There was another part of that, too. Well, having Learning Upgrade in the classroom, I had one student in there that she would complete a whole lesson, like a whole level of lessons, so teacher, I want more. I want more. And you open it up-- I did anyways. I didn't give them the whole enchilada at once. I guided them so that I could teach some of these concepts in the live classroom. And she was in there helping other students to understand the platform. Most everybody preferred to do it on their smartphone.

Nikki Ross: And they didn't have troubles navigating?

Barbara Van Dyken: No. Yeah. OK. All right. So let's see. So the average growth per year, the data projects an average annual growth of 6.4. And I don't know how that's in the wrong place, but that's OK. So the 112 days using Learning Upgrade curriculum reflects their commitment to enhancing their language skills. I would say that's really right on. They are very committed to that. I don't know why this is. We've got them in there two times, guys. But that's OK. It's on a loop. OK?

Audience: Are you going backwards?

Barbara Van Dyken: I'm going backwards. Wrong button. It's the chimpanzee behind me.

Nikki Ross: OK, that's it.

Barbara Van Dyken: OK. Moving forward. There you go.

Nikki Ross: So moving forward, after Barbara ran her pilot, and as she was talking, she said-- she had this huge class, and all of a sudden, she said to her boss, we're going to do this. Which was great, and it worked out. For me as an administrator, it gave me pause, and I thought, OK, now that we have this model, and we have an idea of how this can be organized, we need to relook at our onboarding process.

We typically would place students strictly on class time, not morning, afternoon, night. Now that we have so many options for students, we are starting to have a discussion at administrative level about a more high touch onboarding where we can get those 64. 24 and 11, 25, 11% into the classes that they went from the get go. And that's something that we're working on, and we're going to try to be--

We're planning on rolling out for summer where we have the help of our translator, our school counselor, and our transition specialists. Having a more high touch, meaningful intake process so that we can get students going in the right track from the right time. So students who want a setup like Barbara's hybrid class, they're selecting it from the get go rather than us going, oh, hey, let's do this now.

That way, they're making a purposeful decision for themselves of what works in their life and what doesn't. Or if they need Jenna's class for either a temporary time or a long-standing time. And just have such appreciation for the people that I work with. They love their students. They love what we do. It makes my job so easy.

And just their dedication and making sure that students get what they need, help them get going where they need to go. and I'm just grateful for that because it makes it so seamless and their willingness to participate in DLAC, for our agency, it has been a tremendous opportunity. I'm not going to say it was a ton of work. Because Neda is here.

Audience: Hi. But it's been a lot of work, but it's been a lot of good work.

Nikki Ross: And if you want to push yourself as an agency and you want to make yourself better, just the structure of DLAC with our coach and with the support of OTAN, it's really made a big difference, and it's helped us move forward in probably ways you wouldn't have been able to do. That was an unsolicited plug. But it's true from my heart.

Audience: I'll tell you later.

We really realize, and think a lot of this did come about for us through DLAC, just the realization-- I mean, we know that we have teachers with different levels of digital literacy, but through DLAC, we've been able to partner with other schools, hear their stories, learn about their site plans.

And one school, Torrance, they're presenting here as well. They moved forward with a school-wide NorthStar training really focused on-- and they did. They said everybody, except for janitors, did these first three modules of NorthStar. And when we came back and shared that with our administrator team, with our leadership team, it seemed like something that would be a really good fit for our school, as well.

We also had a professional development almost immediately after our last meeting where we did a breakout and teachers and I, I led this breakout, and I was fortunate enough to have teachers from almost every program. So we had like Reentry, CTE, Academics, ESL, and just share the story of the Torrance team, and what it would be like, and we went through one of the assessments. And everyone in the group was really interested in making this happen.

So that was kind of a nice sample of a cross-section of our teachers. Could this be something that we could offer? So we're currently planning to offer professional development three times before the start of the next school year. And our ask will be that teachers go through these first three modules in NorthStar.

It's coming together, too, on the backend, which is a little bit exciting. Because incorporating technology school-wide in enhancing what we do hits in a few different areas. So we have the California guidance for adult ed digital learning. We have our CIP goals, which you know, we have a new CIP goal for '23, '24 that will have a baseline for digital literacy for all of our teachers.

And we're always keeping our WASC recommendations in mind. So we had a review in 2022. And our recommendations come into play here in a few different areas. So Barbara will talk about the digital literacy objectives and how we're taking those to our PLCs for review and adoption in the course outlines. So making PLCs more relevant school-wide is something that came about through WASC.

Continuous and better curriculum review in line with our mission and goals, as well as our strategic plan for the consortium are all things that support and I think help our admin team support doing this NorthStar training for our teachers. And then we do have an EL Civics Teacher Team. And one of the ways that we've been testing out technology for all of our programs is going completely digital for our EL Civics co-ops.

And so that covers our EL programs. It's now being done in our academic programs because we crosswalked our intermediate and advanced ESL students with our ABE students. So now, they're doing co-ops. And then we also do co-ops and several IET classes.

So it's a way that a lot of teachers at many different levels have been using technology and make it more of a touchstone for teachers that aren't yet.

Barbara Van Dyken: All right. So the digital literacy objectives we identified for EL levels, basically, it come from-- it's kind of a blueprint of NorthStar. It's aligned with CASAS scores to share across programs. It's aligned with NorthStar standards to tell you with the teacher training. And the next steps in regard to this will be to use them in our PLCs so that they can review and incorporate it into course outlines.

So the teacher can do that on the front line as part of an already in progress course outline update for CA and WASC. This is a QR code. It links to these digital literacy objectives that are aligned. So digital literacy objectives level 0 through one are basically the foundational skills. This is the same QR as the one before.

Basic computer skills, internet basics, email essentials and online safety-- now these are what we want to cover on these levels, but the truth is, they're going to be doing this from here on out. This is their orientation to doing these things and developing their literacy. It's the beginning. For levels 2 and 3, while we identified intermediate skills as file management, internet search skills, and basic social media.

And then for levels 4, 5 and 6, we focus on advanced skills-- online communication and citizenship, advanced online tools, digital problem-solving. And this, I would have to say, is all AI. Of course, this is where we will be learning or we will be teaching them. They will be learning how to use AI as an assist. And everything that Joe talked about this morning in our opening, all the ethics, all of those things that we have to teach, this is, I think, where it really comes into play. Once they have a few digital skills under their belt.

And, you know, we cannot discount the fact that they're using telephones, the smart phones, and then have a certain amount of digital literacy already by using those phones. So it's sort of augmented, I guess. OK, this is for you.

Jenna Hanson: Yeah. This is the tie-up slide. This is a part of our site plan. This is just a little segment of our site plan to bring together some of the things that we talked about today, and also to highlight the things that we've accomplished so far. And I Think some of our goals, too, as well, but mainly some of our accomplishments so far being a part of the lab and with OTM and everything else that we've been doing.

Let's see. So teacher support/resources and digital literacy in course outlines allow for Digital Literacy and Canvas Utilization Guideline for each area of our EL program. I'm not going to read through everything on here, but if you'd like to snapshot it, go ahead, feel free to because we only have, I think, we're doing 15 minutes for Q&A and stuff.

So I'm going to talk about the examples that are working. We have our EL civics assessments in Canvas, which is huge and was a huge part of that I know. We got to give yourself some prompts on that one. Putting that together, but I know that's a big step for our program is getting elicited from Canvas and those assessments, and getting teachers to go on Canvas to do that with their classes. So that's huge.

And having it all in one organized space is really, really cool. And not having all those paper packets all the time. And utilizing the Chromebooks, also, on top of all that. It has been really, really cool. So that's a big accomplishment. EL Civics practice and assessments in Canvas. Also with practice--

Of course, requirement percentage of IET, activities completed, distance learning aligned, students put digital literacy into practice, Canvas being used. So for distance learning aligned courses with in-person classes, transfer to Canvas, I talked about that already, but a major part of that in the beginning was also our last review was to align all of our programs and classes, including distance learning.

So it is really nice, as a distance learning teacher, to not be on this island over here with everything totally different, to be aligned with the in-person classes, like I said, whether that student is considered long-term distance learning or whether they're going to jump back into in-person classes, or transfer to the colleges. So that part of it is great.

Published course shell to utilize curriculum. So I told you I'm using Ventures, just like a curriculum in the classes on Canvas for it all. And yeah, I don't really think I should highlight anything else there. Is that good for you, guys?

Nikki Ross: OK. Leave us some time for Q&A and to wrap everything else up.

Barbara Van Dyken: All right, Good. So our action steps, spring and summer of 2024. We're in it. This is it. So talk to Jen, talk to the team, and what we want to do. Professional development for teachers to complete NorthStar modules. This will be offered in April, June, and August.

PLC leads will introduce Digital Literacy to PLCs for review and approval. And oh, DLO, for short-- Digital Literacy Objectives. And PLC's asked to include DLOs as part of the course outline updates. EL Civics offered in Canvas, phase out of Google Forms in '24, '25 for all levels.

And I think it's time for Q&A. You've been such a good audience.

Audience: I have a quick question. So a lot of EL civics have forms-- fill out this form about an accident to fill out this job application. How did you convert that to Canvas? Is it like a--

Speaker 2: So there's two ways that it's been done in the classes. So annotation. We have a form. And one in particular, like the employment form. For the practice, we split it into three pieces. We have a video tutorial on it. So that's all the practice that leads up to it. And then when they actually do the assessment, they can annotate it or they can download it, fill it out, and then upload it, and send it.

And obviously, we get some pushback on that. But when it comes down to it, that is a digital skill, is being able to download something, complete it, and upload it. I mean, it's something that our students will have to do and should be able to do. So I think there's argument, both ways, like what's best. But the Annotate feature works. It's not perfect. It's not as clean, but both of those guys.

Barbara Van Dyken: Yes.

Audience: Could you speak a little bit to Learning Upgrade. Just describe it, and--

Barbara Van Dyken: OK. Learning Upgrade is an online curriculum. It's an online platform. The students are given a username and a password, and they go in, they log in. And the first thing they get-- I'm just going to speak to English because there's English, there's math, there's digital literacy, and there's all-- the levels range from beginning on up to, like, 12th grade in your traditional K through 12.

But the English portion of it, they come in, they take an English placement test, and it identifies what level of English they are. And then it provides them content in the form of interactive videos where they cover things about like, for instance, the main idea. And then they give this whole thing about what the main idea is. And then within it, there are quizzes that they complete to see if they're reading the text and they're pulling the answers from the text.

So it's a video, and it's cartoons. And the narrator is kind of outlandish. Like if they do something well, they go, excellent! It's just to stimulate their brain a little bit. You don't know how many of these students are coming into the class now, saying, excellent! They're mimicking what they're hearing and what they're seeing.

When I first looked at this, and I heard it, and I did a few other, this is obnoxious. Why would anybody want to put their students through this? But what they're teaching and the way that they're teaching it, it stimulates their mind, and they're engaged in it.

Audience: How much does it cost?

Barbara Van Dyken: Oh, that's a good question. Really, the cost is-- well, let me answer your question. You think education is expensive? Try ignorance.

Audience: OK.

Barbara Van Dyken: OK. That's my assistance. But it's on the high end, so I don't really know what the real numbers are in terms of cost, but they're not giving it away.

Nikki Ross: OK. Avi, has his hand up.

Barbara Van Dyken: Yes, Avi, Good, give me a good one.

Speaker 4: Hey, guys, I got a question for everyone. You know that I teach everywhere and nowhere. And everywhere that I teach, Zoom does not come equipped with the Annotate feature except for one campus. Does your district use the flavor of Zoom that includes the Annotate feature?

Jenna Hanson: Avi, are you talking about when I was mentioning EL civics and annotating? Or just in general? So I was referring to Annotate in Canvas.

Avi: OK.

Jenna Hanson: But I think we have Annotate on Zoom. But yeah, I was referring to it in Canvas.

Barbara Van Dyken: Yeah, I think so, too. I mean, it works for me.

Jenna Hanson: Do you guys have Annotate? Yeah, you guys don't have it, Avi?

Avi: We don't at either of the universities. Only one of the community colleges, and not at the adult school.

Barbara Van Dyken: Because it's not paid. Or maybe, it's a free-- It could be the colleges. With the colleges there, Zoom is part of their whole right --

Nikki Ross: You guys can explain it better than I can. Whereas with us, we're using Zoom, we do it separately. It's not part of our school. It's not part of Grossmont Union High School. Part of a university or college?

Barbara Van Dyken: No, it's part of the K-12, like, high school. I'm at the adult school, but--

Audience: Cindy. Nikki, could you explain a little more about the training you did for the faculty to get ready for the EL Civic testing, the new offering?

Nikki Ross: Yeah. So for IET, it's just really one main teacher. And then, I usually assist her. And now we have a second teacher that's helping with our EL civics testing for IB students. For the foundation teachers, which is intermediate, high, and advanced, I met with them individually. And they are doing their EL civics in canvas, although for some of those tasks, they're using embedded Google Forms because we did find that that was kind of an easier transition for teachers.

So if we could get them to use Canvas, it was just easier for them seeing it and using it if it was an embedded form. So our hope is that we'll be able to just make it a test in Canvas.

Barbara Van Dyken: I think so.

Nikki Ross: Yeah. And then for our EL teachers, we really only had a couple that did EL civics using Canvas. And we're very fortunate to have one of those as a beginning low teacher. So that's really nice that she's at our lowest level that we're offering or that we're doing EL civics currently, so that she can speak to what is possible for students.

The rest of the teachers were using Google forms, like most other schools that we talked to. And we had a couple group meetings and then some individual meetings for teachers that were either struggling in particular or just needed some extra training.

Barbara Van Dyken: So Marilyn online would like to know why you decided to go away from Google Forms.

Nikki Ross: Well, I think in, in general, it would be nice if all of our programs and classes were using the learning management system. There are some glitches. If I'm speaking specifically to EL civics, that might be avoided if we were using the learning management system. So a student wouldn't need to remember their email password that they might never remember because it's just on their phone for them.

And if they are from the beginning, the first week of class, familiar with Canvas, that's where they go for their class information. That's where they go to collaborate with their classmates and their teacher. Then they could sign on to Canvas, and it would be there.

So we have a student sign on for our laptops and a guest sign on for our Chromebooks. The guest sign on for the Chromebooks will work with Google Forms. The student sign on the laptops will not. And so we can use the classroom with the laptops if we were using Canvas.

So those are some of the other ways that Canvas, besides the fact that it would be nice if all of us were going there and that this seemed like a way that we could reintroduce the LMS, and maybe, get teachers to go there.

Barbara Van Dyken: Any more questions?