[audio logo]

Narrator: OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network.

Susan Gaer: Welcome, everybody, here. My name is Susan Gaer, and I am a Google innovator. I am a chief subject matter expert, and I teach a class for the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul, Afghanistan.

And I'm working with a lot of women, and I'm teaching right now. I'm teaching writing, and I have been teaching reading. I guess I'm teaching grammar next semester. OK. Kristi?

Kristi Reyes: Hi, everybody. I'm Kristi Reyes. I've been working with OTAN for a while, and I'm an ESL instructor in the non-credit program at MiraCosta College, and it's raining here today. I'm in Oceanside. Yesterday I was up there in San Jose and it followed me down here to the South somehow the rain. But anyway, we need rain, right?

Susan Gaer: It's cold here, but we're not. It's been raining, but it's cold. OK, so next slide. I'm sorry. This goes a little bit slower than I want it to go. There you go. Kristi, go ahead.

Kristi Reyes: OK. So first of all, we just like to know what you teach and where, and if you're not in the classroom, what is your role in your agency? So if you have your phone, you can open up your camera, point it at that QR code.

How many of you are familiar with Padlet? It's one of our favorite tools, especially now that Jamboard is kind of going away. And if you've logged into Padlet, probably will notice there are, I don't know, I didn't count, but several, several templates specifically for education, so check it out.

So if you can go ahead and if you're in Zoom right now, I've just posted the link in the chat. Click on that, and all you need to do is if you are on a phone and you've scanned the QR code, just tap anywhere on the screen or look for the pencil. If you are working on another device like a computer, you're going to look for the pencil or around usually pink circle in the bottom right corner. Just tap on that.

And again, let us know what you teach and where. And if you're not teaching, what you are doing at your agency. And we want to know what is the last technology tool you used in class, and why did you choose to use that specific technology tool.

So we're going to give you a moment and then I can-- probably, Susan, you might want to click on that link in the chat to open that up, and we can have a look really quickly at what you've all entered.

Susan Gaer: Do you want me to do that now, or do you think--

Kristi Reyes: We'll give them a second. So far we're seeing Google Classroom. Sonia, ESL at Mount Sac. Slido, which is a really fun tool for presenting and having some interaction with students, and you wanted to give students a quiz on their syllabus. Yeah, see if they were paying attention that first day when you were going over the syllabus.

And again, while you're posting, I don't want to distract you, but one of the reasons we really like Padlet is because it has a multitude of uses, and that's really what the best course is about. Finding a few tried and true tools that can be used for many different things and give students a certain familiarity and confidence with those tools.

And Padlet is really wrapped around responsive design because it works perfectly on a phone, a tablet, a computer, and students don't need to log in. They don't need to remember some other password to log in. All you do is you create the wall, and all they need to do is tap and post. Easy as that.

Susan Gaer: And if they can't draw and you want them to do visuals, Padlet now has I Can Draw feature, which will actually draw for you, and rent for adults on the moon, and that's what I got.

Kristi Reyes: So we have one more person who's posted that they teach multi-level ESL family literacy. Bless you for doing that very hard work. You have a brand new whiteboard, so your students were practicing how to use ventures on the whiteboard. Wow, what a great hands on activity for them.

And do your students also have access to a Google Classroom with a variety of materials that they can use? Thank you, Susan. Yes, so you are really giving them the 24/7 opportunity to extend their learning outside of the classroom.

Hello, Victoria. Victoria is joining from-- she's one of my new friends who has her own AI company for ESL. So Victoria is a former AI researcher now building AI for ESL learners at Pace AI, and it is free. She's very excited to be here and she is very active in all the PD over here in California, even though she's all the way, I believe, right. Victoria in Boston. Thank you, Victoria, for being here.

Speaker: Thank you.

Kristi Reyes: All right. So I see Nearpod, ChatGPT. Google Suite. Jamboard. Yeah, we're just so disappointed that Jamboard is leaving us. But again, Padlet is a great fill in for that. And we also have another ESL instructor and online faculty mentor facilitator at San Diego College of Continuing Education.

Teaching a high beginning ESL class, Quizlet. Wow. I mean, and we think of Quizlet as just for vocabulary, but you could do all kinds of things with Quizlet and play those live games that are just super fun for students. Give them that spontaneous--

Speaker: [interposing voices] practice.

Kristi Reyes: And Padlet for introductions of students, and Laura at near Susan's old stomping ground, Santiago Canyon College. Adobe Podcast. Now there's a new one. I bet a lot of us haven't heard of that one, right. You can use to create dictation sentences that you put in Canvas. It's still in beta, and it's free for now.

The UI leaves a lot to be desired, the interface, but it does a great job of removing background noise, which we probably could all use when we're working so much from home these days, and it makes professional sounding recordings. Well, Thank you for everyone for posting to that Padlet. I think we'll go ahead and move on, Susan.

Susan Gaer: So what is the best course that we teach? We teach actually two courses at OTAN. One is the triple E, and this is what we call the best course. And the reason why it's the best is because, number one, you get Kristi and I, but also because it's a building and EdTech strategy toolkit.

And we believe that tools need to be used and the students need to know how to use them so they just don't focus on the tool, they focus on the learning. And so it's a five week online course with completely-- we have synchronous sessions, and we have async sessions. And as always with OTAN, everything is

Speaker: Free.

Susan Gaer: Free. Thank you. [laughs] We need that in our branding, Kristi. So this is what we're going to do today is explain-- we were supposed to have student testimonials, but we were not able to get enough students to run the class last time, so we have no students right now, but we're going to run it again in the fall, and we're hopeful that all of you are going to join us this time.

Speaker: How many students do you need to run the class?

Susan Gaer: More than five. 10 would be nice. And then not everybody finishes. So you want to have a couple finishers, but we'll show you. I have testimonials. It's a really good, fun course.

Speaker: How many hours?

Susan Gaer: How many hours? So it's five weeks, one hour a week online synchronously, and then maybe two to three hours of work, right, Kristi? Two to three hours of work on your own. You can work more than that, of course, but yeah, so you're looking at five weeks, five hours plus two, 10, 15 hours, and we get certificates. We'll explain.

Speaker: Doable.

Susan Gaer: It's doable. We try to make it doable. We try to make it less sessions, but we really need the five. It doesn't work with less. All right. I think the next one is going to be yours, Kristi.

OK. So this course, what I love about it, because I love technology tools. And in my early days of teaching, I don't know if anybody was like this, I would go to something like OTAN DTLS about a new tool and use it, and then learn a new tool and then use it. And I was giving students whiplash, sort of, because really what we need to do is start with the learner first and start with what works best for students' needs.

So we start off with that premise, starting with student needs, and instead of calling it needs, because that kind of comes from a deficit minded perspective, what this course calls learner needs is more like learner factors. So you learn about an amazing resource that would just blow your mind, called the Adult Learner Variability Navigator. We'd like to call it ALVN because that's a mouthful. We just call it ALVN.

And so you explore that, and it starts with learner factors, things like first language background, things like age, but also strengths that students can bring to the classroom.

So when you're thinking of your learner factors and don't think of only weaknesses and barriers, but thinking of everything our adult learners can bring to the classroom, we would like you-- I've just put into the chat, we're going to do a word cloud. I don't know if you're familiar with answer garden. It is a completely free, so-easy-to-use tool for creating word clouds, great for check ins or exit tickets, which are a couple of strategies.

So if you're in Zoom, if you'd like to click on that link in the chat, if you're in the room or on Zoom, you can open up your phone, point it at that QR code with your camera, and open up your web browser and type in your response. So with answer garden, there is no teacher login, there is no student login.

So we'd like to ask you again, what factors, strengths as well as needs do your students bring to your class? I think about some of my students who are elderly, and sometimes they feel like things are too fast for them because they need slower pace. So pacing could be a learning learner factor.

So go ahead and-- go to that URL or to the QR code and please go ahead and type in a couple of things your learner factors, strengths and needs. We'll give you time to do that.

Speaker: True. Strengths are important.

Susan Gaer: And a little picture there, Kristi, because it's kind of hard on the phone. It comes out so small, but there's a little question at the top and there's a little light box there, and you type in your answer in the White box and then you hit Submit. Forget all of the junk that's underneath it. That's how they get it for free.

Kristi Reyes: And then just to let you all know, sometimes it's usually populating live, but if not, you always just do a refresh and you can see the word cloud happening in front of your eyes.

Susan Gaer: Well, I'm going to open it up now. I think everybody who's going to. It looks like I'm seeing it being populated, I see motivation, life experience, educational gaps, optimism kind of related to motivation, resilience. Definitely, learning styles or preferences. Nowadays, it's kind of trending more towards learning preferences.

So that could be a wide range of things from we're seeing at our school students who prefer learning online from the comfort of their sofa, and others who want to be in person. That could be students who prefer to watch a video and other students who prefer to read the information, so lots of different things there.

So I'm just going to refresh one more time and you know that with a word cloud, anything that is entered more than once, and when I just refreshed, I see barriers really large. And so that means more than one person put the word barriers. I see positivity, fossilized errors. I imagine that's with our English language learners diversity, which is a great thing actually, isn't it? So I'll refresh more and more time and see if anything else came up.

Speaker: I don't know.

Kristi Reyes: Diversity is second. It's the second largest next to barriers. All right. So we can see background education as well. That can be both positive and a little bit of a barrier for some of our students who come in with an imposter syndrome type of idea. So thank you, everybody, for participating in that, and we'll go on to you, Susan.

Susan Gaer: Yes. Let me just open up the slide deck again.

Kristi Reyes: Actually, this has my name. I can continue on. So we'd like to-- for those of you, if you can share in the chat, and for those of you in the room, Susan's going to call on you. Cold calling. So we'll give you a moment to think. If you can tell the group, if you're in person, if you're online, please share in the chat.

How and/or where do you learn about new technology tools? Hopefully here at OTAN TDLS, but where else? Go ahead, and Susan, if you would like to go around the room, I'll monitor the chat.

Susan Gaer: Who wants to go first? TDLS-- OK, besides TDLS.

Speaker: Coworkers.

Susan Gaer: Coworkers.

Speaker: The EdTech Center at World Education Newsletter.

Susan Gaer: EdTech Center at World Education Newsletter. You guys are unfamiliar with that. It's a very nice tool. You just go to World Education and sign up for the newsletter. They also have Friday chats.

Speaker: I learn something new. World Education.

Susan Gaer: And so, Laura, how about you?

Speaker: --center?

Susan Gaer: Yeah, World Education Newsletter. Laura, how about you? Where do you get ideas from? Sonia, how about you?

Speaker: Other teachers or presenters. I saw someone using Slido to present.

Susan Gaer: And then you said, I'm going to try it.

Speaker: Yeah.

Susan Gaer: And we see on the chat, we have a YouTube. I think that's where a lot of our students learn new information too. Colleagues, conferences, OTAN. I'm glad to see OTAN show up a lot now.

Speaker: In my school, I have to be ahead of the crowd because the teachers are learning from me. So I have to attend conferences and learn to train the faculty.

Susan Gaer: OK, good. Shall I move on, Kristi? Or are you going to--

Kristi Reyes: Let me just. I'll speak for the folks in the chat. Surprisingly, OTAN and Kalpra, YouTube and colleagues. Again, WorldEd came up there, and I just shared I'm on lots of different mailing lists, if you've ever heard of Matt from Ditch that Textbook. There's a gentleman in Sacramento, he's actually in K-12 but trains teachers Larry, Ferlazzo.

And then I'm keeping up, I'm sure you are too, on social networking. I'm learning a lot about all the AI tools coming in from different people I follow on LinkedIn and let's see what else we have. Google search. Yes, when you're looking for something specific and language learning forums and you also subscribe to some newsletters, Instagram and TikTok. Thank you, everybody.

Speaker: I have not gone there yet.

[laughter]

Speaker: You too.

Susan Gaer: So let's talk about routines. So one of the things that we do in the best course is this stuff is overwhelming. There's more tools out there than you could possibly-- and I want to tell you, if you listened to Joe yesterday, he said there's so many tools, and you start going tool-centric on the students because you want to try them all out, and that inhibits the learning process because they're focusing on the tool rather than on what they're supposed to be learning. So-- Yes. Sorry.

So what we want to do is ask you two questions. Do you have instructional routines? And if you do, why do you think they're important? And why do you think it's important to have students use technology in routine ways? So if you're in the Zoom room, please post on the chat the answer to these two questions, and I will work with my participants here, and we'll talk about routines and what they are, and why we think they're important. So who would like to go first?

Speaker: I teach-- this semester I teach in person, and I think I have to establish that routine for students to get into a habit of using that tool, either Quizlet or Padlet. And I'm trying to introduce one tool at a time that they would have the habit of using it because if I introduce more than one, it will be confusing because they teach you so beginning level.

Susan Gaer: So you're going to focus on Quizlet this year you said?

Speaker: No. A couple of weeks, I'm going to use Quizlet, and then I will add a little more tools--

Susan Gaer: As you go through.

Speaker: As I go through.

Susan Gaer: Yeah.

Speaker: When our partners definitely been in co-signing your name, but what you just said on building that habit, a lot of times it's the muscle memory.

[interposing voices]

Speaker: You said, is building that muscle memory so that students can automatically--

Speaker: I'm trying to establish routine, and they're not very good at that.

[laughter]

Susan Gaer: [interposing voices] how about you?

Speaker: Well, our semester just started. I'm teaching in person this semester, and so things like Quizlet, we have a lab. I try to take them regular, or my plan is to take them regularly. So they just learn one time how to use it, and then for all the new vocabulary we practice, they don't have to learn again. They already know how to do the practice. Let's see, what do we have online?

Kristi Reyes: Yeah, that this helps them in the classroom and in their personal activities to have that structure and organization and expectation, and lessens the fear, consistency, habit, reinforcement or some words we're seeing here. Let's see what else. Sorry, I have to scroll up a little bit.

What else? Routines I love this, Laura. Thank you. Create habits which are important to establish because willpower doesn't work consistently. Also, routines can ensure that a variety of skills are being practiced. Wow, thank you, Laura. You said that so well.

Ofilia says she used Padlet before in the past, and would like to start using it again. Yes, it's very helpful. We need to keep them up to date. I think that's one of the greatest things, is with the routines, all those different qualities built into the instruction that lessen the fear, And then as Ofilia said, if we don't teach technology, our students are going to be left behind.

And so now we-- during COVID, I'm sure you felt this, at least probably some of you did, is that our students learned a lot of technology in their digital-- that digital literacy gap that used to exist kind of lessened, but now we've got all the new gaps with the artificial intelligence tools. And if we don't teach them, who is going to teach them technology?

So yeah, using technology in a seamless way is really important to give students that familiarity and lessen the filters that may give them certain pause and fear of using technology. Thank you, everybody.

Speaker: May I add something?

Susan Gaer: Yes, go ahead.

Speaker: First of all, I'm teaching students how to find and use Canvas if they're in person. And I want them to know that this is Canvas, and I think for my class, it's a skill number one, the most important.

Susan Gaer: Yeah, so one of the things that we really focus on in this class is developing routines instead of just activities. Activities are great, but once you get a routine going, the students can do it over and over again and, hopefully, they can make that bridge to their real life and use it as a tool in their real life.

So a routine is replicable within a variety of contexts. That's the critical point. Subject areas, and it can occur on a regular basis. So you can do different contexts with it, but the same tool, and an activity is a specific exercise like a listening practice or a speaking practice or a grammar activity. These are things that are involved with the activity itself and it's related to the context, but you can't keep doing it over and over with different contexts.

So we focus on in this class teaching routines, and it is the one sticking point a lot of times that we have to work really hard on is what is-- we keep reinforcing it over and over again because a routine and activity are very different, and people tend to think in terms of activities instead of routines. But in this course, we really focus on the routine.

Speaker: I have a question.

Susan Gaer: Yes.

Speaker: We'll give you sharing slides with us?

Susan Gaer: Yes, Kristi will put the link to the slides in the chat box, and--

Speaker: But I don't have access to--

Susan Gaer: Correct. And I will then take that link and put it up on the board in a large font, and you can be able to get it that way.

Speaker: Thank you.

Susan Gaer: Yeah. So is this mine or yours, Kristi?

Kristi Reyes: Yeah, so I'll just mention here like you see those images there, K W L, you've probably heard of that. It's like when you're beginning a new lesson to find out what students know, tap into their background knowledge, it's what they know, what they want to know, and what they learned after they've either read a text or gone through a lesson.

So, for example, you might use something like a Google form, or you might use a Google Doc that students make a copy of and fill out. That would be a replicable routine because they're using Google Docs or Google Forms routinely for different purposes, not just a one off activity, whereas you see below, if you were teaching a CTE class and Excel was part of it, that would be something different.

But let's say you're teaching a class and you want students to do a budget on, Excel or Google sheets, and that's the only time you ever use that tool, and that's the only time, then that is not replicable, just to give you an idea of what that is. So, yeah, you can go ahead and go to the next slide.

So a little bit more, Susan has talked about the class, and here's just a little bit more information. So as we said, there are five weeks with four sections. So the first section, as I've mentioned, we start with the learner factors.

We're looking at what strengths and what barriers your students may have. We're using this ALVN tool, which starts with learner factors, shows you a variety of different classroom based strategies that often link to technology, but not always that you can use to-- use those strategies or instructional approaches in your classroom.

So then we start with the learner, always student-centered, then in section 2, we're looking at all those different teaching strategies. So also thinking about where our students are coming into our classes in terms of their digital skills, and we have to cover. We can't dismiss the topic of accessibility, making sure that any tools you are using can be used by all learners, that we are 508 compliant.

So that's an important thing that is not always covered, and we give you-- of course, that would be a whole course unto itself, learning about accessibility, but give you some tools to help you make sure that you're not leaving any students behind.

So looking at strategies, then we have the fun time, which a lot of people are just-- they gravitate towards OTAN because of EdTech tools, so we go over some-- we give you some resources for searching up something new, and do a little tool exploration, but making sure that you started with a learner, you found a strategy that would work for the majority of your students and meet their needs and their assets and then match the tool to that strategy. Not starting with tools. So goals before tools.

And then our last section, you create an EdTech routine, you try it out with your learners, you see how it works, you modify as necessary, reflect on that, revise it, and present it. So towards the end of the course, as we said, it's five weeks, you see there are four sections.

Towards the end of the course, we offer some online office hours drop in as you need or set an appointment if you need any assistance. It's like a coaching model, actually, which, you know, I've read every teacher should have their own coach. Coaching is not telling you what to do, but you're cheering you on and supporting you.

Susan Gaer: And if we get enough people, we will divide up into small groups, but last time we only had enough people for a small group. So that's what we're hoping to buy, advertising and marketing that we can get more participants in the course. And this is what it looks like on Canvas. Kristi, do you want to go over this too--

Kristi Reyes: Sure. So if you can share in the chat, if you're in Zoom and if you're in the room, can you just say yes or no. How many of you are using Canvas for your teaching?

Speaker: In my room, just one person.

Kristi Reyes: Only one? OK. So Canvas is the one that is used by the majority of the community colleges. It was adopted, I don't know, quite a few years back, and so by learning it, and hi, Marsha. How are you? Marsha was one of our participants in the best course before.

So by using it, you can get the student view, which is so helpful if you decide to teach online. Google classroom, some of you are using, which if you are using some sort of learning management system with your students, you're giving them a really important skill set because that is where a lot of the community colleges are.

Even if they are not offering a hybrid or fully online class, they are using it as a support for supplemental. So at my school, all teachers have to have a Canvas course, and minimum post their syllabus.

So you can get that view from the student side and see how that feels to be an online learner. So there are discussions, there are different sections where you do some learning, then you apply that learning with an assignment, and we follow this routine in all of the modules to model. That's how you teach hybrid or online courses, following a consistent order.

So I think it's a benefit to be in the student seat, to feel what that feels like and see what Canvas is like anyway. So that's how the Canvas course is organized.

Susan Gaer: So, of course, expectations, approximately three hours a week, but it depends on you. Some people spend a lot of time, some people spend a lot less time. Well, it says 1.5 hours online work in Canvas exploration, but it doesn't always go 1.5 hours. We're heading more towards an hour, but we give it an hour and a half in case there are questions or issues we need to work with.

There are three certificates, and this is where the beauty of this course comes in. You can decide how hard you want to work. The first level is you just come to the meetings, and you do all the assignments, but you don't do anything with it. So if you don't finish your project, you can still get a certificate of achievement.

The leader is attending all the meetings and submitting to routine templates which will give you the form to fill out, so then you get what's called a leader certificate. We're trying to get badges, but we haven't gotten that far yet because we have to work with OTAN, and they haven't yet given us the approval for the badges, but they're coming.

And then the last one is innovator. And innovator is you do the two routines on the template. You try them out in your class, and then you reflect on the use, so that we're adding that reflection piece. And then you get the innovator certificate. You can call yourself a best innovator. Any questions about that?

Speaker: Nope.

Susan Gaer: Anybody online have a question?

Kristi Reyes: I would just like to say that Marsha, who is Zooming in all the way-- remind me, Marsha, is it Chicago? Was a participant and she is a dean, and she recommends this, so you should think about it.

Susan Gaer: Marsha talk when we get to testimonials, Kristi.

Kristi Reyes: All right. Thank you for coming, Marsha, really appreciate that. So I don't see any questions, but what we're going to move to next is just to have you hear from a couple of former participants about their experience in the best course, and then, Marsha, if you would be willing to unmute yourself, but no pressure here. So our first participant is Susan Coulter. Go ahead and play, and I'll make sure that you are sharing with the audio.

Speaker: What I learned, can you learn about factors, strategies, different tools, and finally, a routine to meet my needs and the needs of my students. What I appreciated the most was all the amazing resources geared to adult learners. Let me show you.

First, we explored learner factors. There's a lot of information here that can be tailored to your specific classroom. Next, we looked at strategies for more than 70 different strategies for the adult learner.

The fun part was exploring different tools. Everyone got to choose a tool. I selected Quizlet. And finally, we developed our own routine to use in our classroom. I want to thank Kristi Reyes and Susan Gaer for sharing what they have learned in this course. I walked away with a plethora of resources and my own EdTech routine.

Susan Gaer: So that's Susan Coulter's. And now I'm going to share the next one.

Speaker: Hi, my name is Debbie Jensen. I'm an adult education instructor. I've retired, but I continue to work in the field and enjoy working and learning new things. I want to tell you about my experience was best. For me, the best course offered a one-stop place to explore, validate, and try new research-based methods to improve my teaching and gain greater student success.

Too often we're given new tech ideas to try, and try we do, but with mixed results. Then we run after the next best tech tool to try. But with the best program, participants are given places where they can find sound analysis of tech routines. The course walks you through the what, why, and how of evidence-based learning strategies.

You will come away empowered to use these tech strategies correctly. For me, most importantly, I can return and reuse the resources again and again. Bookmark them for sure. The digital learning selector in my favorite, the Learner Variability Navigator by Digital Promise, which will give every instructor the tools to improve their trade and provide greater success for their students. I recommend the course, to all adult educators everywhere. Thank you.

Susan Gaer: So let's see if Marsha would like to talk to us.

Kristi Reyes: Marsha is unable to speak right now, but I believe Marsha, she gives two thumbs up. If I can speak for Marsha. And Marsha has-- I copied Marsha idea.

Marsha has shared in the chat how part of her routine, even though she's not in the classroom, was a best practice for student assessment is portfolio, and she created this amazing Google slide show that is in the chat right now.

But it was a Google Form with these-- it looks like some sort of magazine. It looks like so professional. It's a Google Doc with tabs where students can put in some different types of work, different assignments. So Marcia has created her in-- thank you, Marsha, for finding that and sharing.

I made a copy of Marsha's work, and one of these days, when I get back to having some time to have students create a portfolio, this was just amazing because all students need to do is click and copy paste, put in images. We know that portfolios are a great way for students to showcase their work. There it is. Look at that. I love it.

Speaker: Yeah, beautiful and nice. So, yeah, beautiful.

Kristi Reyes: So if you are in Zoom, you can click on that link, and I would do this. I already did. Click file, make a copy, and you'll have your own. Wow, Marsha just gave you a great gift. So glad you made it, Marsha.

Susan Gaer: Can you compile these links because the people who are attending face to face would like them all and I have we have to put them up on the screen?

Kristi Reyes: So, yeah, what we can do, I'll compile them, I'll put them on the slides right now, and then at the end, what you can do for the people in the room, Susan, is if you're in Google chrome, create a QR code, or I can do it really quick too. Yeah, I'll compile these and put them at the end of our slides right now.

Susan Gaer: Thank you.

Kristi Reyes: So what I did is Marsha shared it, and I clicked on the Google Doc, and I selected File, Make a copy.

Susan Gaer: And I did try to get the video from Jill. She also gives it a two thumbs up. But unfortunately, her audio track didn't come out. So I'm just showing her picture and saying that she also took the course and gave it a two thumbs up.

We are here. This is us trying to recruit you all to come to our best course because we have five people who are waiting for more people to come. And if we can get another five people, we will teach it in the fall, and we will customize-- we'll figure out what your times are. We'll ask you when you're free so that we can actually make a very customized course for everybody who's interested.

Speaker: So I'm saying, yes, I'm interested.

Susan Gaer: It's a form. You're going to fill it out and say, yes, you're interested. It should be a Google Form that you get when you scan that QR code or click on the link, and we have already the four or five people that we got last time waiting, and they're waiting. They keep asking us, when are you going to teach it, when are you going to teach it? So we can teach it in the fall.

Speaker: Are non-teachers allowed?

Susan Gaer: Sure. Yeah, we have administrators and staff members that take it because--

Speaker: Am I allowed?

Susan Gaer: Yes, you're allowed.

Speaker: Yes, we need your ideas.

Susan Gaer: And yeah, so we're hopeful that we can get 10 people from this session and the five that we have, and then we will be able to teach the course. And I promise you, right, Kristi, you're going to learn a lot.

Kristi Reyes: I mean, when else can you have pretty much one to one with someone like such an EdTech expert as Susan Gaer.

[laughter]

Susan Gaer: Two powerhouse people. And what we also-- we learn more from the participants than you can possibly imagine because we also learn how other people want to use these tools and what tools they want to use.

Kristi Reyes: And something we just added last go around is AI tools. So we give you some resources, and during that EdTech tool exploration section, we all share and learn from each other, so it's not like one just information going to you, it's group sharing.

And I think I've learned so much being a part of this that it goes really to andragogy that we're facilitators, we're learning with you, and that's what makes it very rewarding experience.

Susan Gaer: Yeah, I think the first part of the course Kristi and I teach you about ALVN and the learner factors, and once you learn that stuff, we also go over universal design and accessibility, digital frameworks, and all that stuff.

So once we get all that information in your hands, then we have fun, and we explore those tools using that information that we got. So the first part was kind of heavy duty us teaching, and then the second part is more where a group of people learning how to use stuff.

Speaker: How do we apply to be part of your tools in the exploration phase?

Susan Gaer: So you just need to bring it in. We would love to view your tools.

[laughter]

We're always got to be free, though. That's the thing.

Speaker: Teacher accounts are free. Student accounts are not free, but teacher accounts are free. So the teacher can play around with it.

Speaker: The teacher can make it, and then the students can participate on it, or only if they have an account with the institution.

Susan Gaer: Yeah, we'll explore her tool when she comes to our course. So as everybody had a chance because the next part is the evaluation, if you have any questions, we're here to answer them.