[audio logo]

Speaker 1: OTAN Outreach and Technical Assistance Network.

Jerry Yamashita: Thanks for calling, everyone. This is. I'll let Cynthia start. She's the lead presenter on this. We just finished lunch, Cynthia, so make sure we kick up the energy a little bit, but yeah, go ahead.

Cynthia Peters: Should I get started, Jerry or?

Jerry Yamashita: Yeah, can you hear me?

Cynthia Peters: Is my face just kind of loomin like a really large screen there in the front? Perfect OK. Just how I like it. So, Yeah. Hi, everybody. Thanks for being here today.

My name is Cynthia, and I'm the editor of The Change Agent at World Education, and I do a lot of professional development as well. And I'm really happy to be co-presenting with Jerry today with this creative title, we came up with Digital Literacy Meets Student Written Content, and A Star is Born. So you all can be the judge of the stardom after we're through.

But what we do have to offer you here is this really cool combination of a lot of digital tools that Jerry is going to share and a really great resource for adult learners, which is a magazine called The Change Agent, which is written by adult learners. So you've got content written by adult learners for adult learners, which is very compelling way to teach basic skills. So what we're going to do is just do a little introduction and warm up. I'm going to tell you about The Change Agent.

We're going to skim one of our pieces called My Neighbor, and I'm going to just give you a little brief look at that. And then Jerry is going to do a deeper dive into pandemic haircut and show you some of the digital tools that you can use to teach that story with. I want to let you know about an opportunity to write for The Change Agent that students have. It's coming up. We have a new call for articles out and then we'll close up.

So to get started, I wanted to just actually open the floor and ask you all what makes you want to read a story or an article or any kind of text? What makes it compelling to you? And so people in the room, you know, Jerry, you can coordinate, but but I'll look at the chat and I see somebody in the chat. Tatiana is saying that it's compelling for her when she can learn something from the content. Great. Thank you.

Audience Member 1: When I connect with the story is something that's I feel like I understand the characters.

Jerry Yamashita: OK, so connection with the story. Can you hear us OK, Cynthia?

Cynthia Peters: Barely. You know, it's a little. It's helpful if you repeat a little bit, actually,

Jerry Yamashita: OK Yeah. So it was said that connecting with the story or the characters,

Cynthia Peters: Right. And then in the chat we have Krista saying that it's exciting and it's relevant to my life and my interests. And then Philip says, reading for entertainment. These are great, great ideas. Any more from the room there or from the online participants? What makes you want to read a story?

Audience Member 2: The opening line.

Jerry Yamashita: The opening line. Someone said--

Cynthia Peters: Ah, yes, that's so true. That opening cut, does it catch your interest or not. Good point. That's really helpful to remember when you're coaching students for writing to think about how they're opening. I get a lot of submissions to the change agent that open like this. Hi, my name is Cynthia. And I'm from so-and-so. You know, such and such and sort of not a compelling first line. Anything else?

Audience Member: [muffled voice]

Cynthia Peters: I can't tell if that was another contribution or just.

Jerry Yamashita: I think we can go to the next slide.

Cynthia Peters: OK, great. Yeah, well, the reason why I wanted to do that little activity with you partly was just to-- wait, so. And you're admitting people in, right?

Room Host: Yeah.

Cynthia Peters: OK, great. Thank you. I won't worry about that. It's because, you know, the change agent really aims to create and share compelling stories that learners want to read, because then the story acts as scaffolding for the basic skills that they're hoping to learn. And so what we do is we put out a call for articles once a year on a theme, and then we invite students to submit their writing. And then based on the writing we get, we put together three issues of a magazine on that theme.

And so what I have on the screen for you now is the last year's series, which was on immigrants and immigration. And we did three issues. One, well, the first one was just about telling our stories. The second was called creating new community, where we collected student stories about what do you do when you enter into a new community. What do you do to try to connect with people and create new community. And the third one was about finding our voices and using our voices to advocate for what we need.

So that's the content that's sorted into those three issues. And we also have the content available in various formats. So it's in PDF format, so it's really easy to print out and share it with your students. There's also audio not of every article, but a lot of articles. There's an audio version so students can hit these play buttons and listen to that chunk read out loud and multiple times if they want. They could try saying it themselves so they can follow the text and hear it read to them.

And then a third format that we've been playing with basically since the pandemic is putting our content into Google Slides. And so I have one story that-- we actually have two that we're going to share with you in Google Slides.

For every story we tend to have before you read and after you read this activity, so for this story, it's called "My Neighbor," and it's a story about how she connects with this neighbor. But just to invite students to talk about, Well, how do you connect with your neighbors? And get people, you know, discussing this topic.

We review some vocabulary. Sometimes an article is written at a very accessible level for the most part, but there's a few hard words in there, which I like to keep the hard words because it helps build the vocabulary and it challenges students to take on more and more complex text and more complex vocabulary. So there's a Before You Read Activity.

And then here's what the story looks like on the page, and I'm going to share the story in Google Slides just to be able to walk you through a little bit about what this looks like.

The first slide is usually something that looks like this. It's some instructions for you as a teacher. So you can use this slide show exactly as it is. You have access to it in view only. You can only view it, you can't manipulate it in any way.

But if you want to adopt it, and you'll Jerry will be sharing with you some ideas about how to adapt it, then you need to make a copy of it for yourself. So you need to go to File and make a copy. If you have a Google account, you can make a copy.

If you don't have a Google account, you can just download it into your presentation software and then it's yours. You own it, you can adapt it, you can add quizzes, you can add little learning features, you can add audio, you can do whatever you want to it.

So here's the story of "My Neighbor." There's a little about the author piece because we like to create the feeling of like, This is a person, a student like me, and you kind of see yourself in the writer.

And here are the Before You Read Activities that I already mentioned, and then here's the story. So we won't read it out loud, but basically the idea of the story is she has a neighbor who's a cranky older guy who won't be friendly and won't speak to her.

He won't even say hello, and she tries to speak to him, but he ignores her, and she thinks, Oh, maybe he's an introvert. Maybe he doesn't like Chinese people. She reflects on why won't he speak to her.

And then in the summer, she grows her own vegetables, and she gets an idea, which is to try to share with him a bag of some of her vegetables. So she does that and she put a note inside the bag, and it turns out this helped a little bit. This time he starts answering her politely, she says, and he stopped kind of totally ignoring her.

And then in the winter of 2021, there was some heavy snow, and so she decides to shovel his walk for him, because she knows he's elderly and might have a hard time doing that. And so these are her gestures to try to build community with this neighbor.

And after she shoveled, Bill thanked me very much, she says. So she finds out he's older, that his children live far away, that he hardly sees his children, and so since then, they've developed a good relationship. And she ends with, When you treat people with love, they will be friendly with you most of the time.

[group laughing]

So I feel like this is a really-- I guess I just want to hear from you. What do you think? I mean, I know you didn't get to read through the whole thing, but how did that story sound to you? Did it sound like something that might resonate with your students, something they might be able to relate to?

Audience Member 1: Absolutely.

Jerry Yamashita: Yeah. A lot of nodding heads here.

Cynthia Peters: OK, and Tatiana saying, Yes. And do you see, it's very accessible, right. The English is not super hard, but the thing that's so wonderful about publishing adult learner writing is that it can be very, very accessible, but it's not dumbed down. It's not simple, it's not simplified. It holds the complexity of being human in this life, of being in a neighborhood and trying to relate to people.

And her ending, If you share love with people they'll be nice to you most of the time, acknowledging not necessarily always, but so I love that quality of the writing that it holds that complexity just so beautifully. Christina, says, "Yes. Wonderful story. I came in a little late where can I find the story--

Actually, I'm going to put in the chat, the link to the Google presentation, and I'm sure people in the room can get this as well. So yeah, it's there in the chat.

So then what happens is there's a way then after you read, there's some more activities, and one that I thought would be interesting for people to try might be to actually go investigate the text. And this is a very important college and career readiness standard aligned skill, which is to be able to go back to the text and point to evidence for how the writer expressed herself.

So one option might be to share a graphic organizer like this with your students. What is a strategy that Xuiping tried? So list the strategy and the source for that could be the slide number.

And then what was the result of her strategy? And put the source there, so you're kind of driving the student back to the text to get evidence from the text and then put notes about it in a graphic organizer, which is just hitting so many standard-aligned skills, being able to do something like that.

But then you could also-- and I gave you a cheat sheet, so for teachers, I put what I thought were the correct answers to this, basically, just to make it a little easier for you. You can obviously delete this slide or not share it.

But then another extension here would just be, what's a strategy you have tried and what was the result of your strategy? Again, using a graphic organizer trying to take notes, using the vocabulary that you've generated by reading this piece with your students, and students could also interview each other.

And this is a great digital opportunity because you could be taking notes together in a Google Doc. In this case, it's on a Google slide, but you could take this and put it in a Google Doc or you could use a hard copy of it, but it's an opportunity to embed digital literacy in your activity by having the notetaking be on a chart that is sort of elastic that it's a Google Doc.

Does that make sense? Any comments or thoughts about using this resource?

Audience Member 1: Is there a bank of resources if you want to get a story about a neighbor, you would go to this place and type a neighbor, or is that what she--

[interposing voices]

Cynthia Peters: Yeah, no. It's not searchable, unfortunately. We're a pretty low-budget operation. It's pretty much just me with help from one person once a month. We don't have the resources to make a very robust website. What I can do is I can show you how the website's organized and then you can take it from there.

So if you go to our top page, you'll see this Issues tab. So you can click on the Issues tab and you can find all of our back issues here, and so you can scroll through and you're looking at basically thematic, a theme as your entry point.

So you find a theme like say you're teaching about-- well, here's a Mental Health issue. Here's one on Voting and the Census, here's one on Play, Indigenous Peoples, Math, Hair. You can see there's pretty diverse content in here.

So you can come at the content that way, and then another way you can come at it is you can go to Resources and you can scroll down to this third blue heading, which is a big index of all of our content and you can sort it by level. So now you have a mixture of all the different themes, but you have your zeroing in on the level that is most appropriate for your students.

Now these are grade-level equivalents. You'll have to transpose that in your mind into whatever leveling you use, but it gives you an idea of the level of the piece, and then it shows which ones are available in audio.

Jerry Yamashita: Cynthia, could I just add one suggestion too?

Cynthia Peters: Yes.

Jerry Yamashita: For searching, if on the previous page where she was at with the issue archive, because they are themed issues, one kind of low-budget cheat would be to Command F, Control F, and search for a keyword that you're looking for.

Cynthia Peters: There you go.

Jerry Yamashita: Yeah, it'll highlight on the page for you. So it's not a web search necessarily, or a index search, but it should do the job. [laughs]

Cynthia Peters: Yeah. Thank you, Jerry. That's a really good point. I'll put in the chat and maybe I can even add a slide. There's a lot of free materials on the change agent website, but a lot of the content is also you need a subscription. It's a very low-cost subscription. It's just $30 per teacher per year, and then you share your credentials with all your students, so they all get to log in for free.

So we do have the subscription model to try to keep the lights on at the change agent, but it's pretty low-cost and pretty affordable. So I'll put some more direct links in the chat of the free content, and there is quite a lot of free content.

So speaking of which, I'm going to show you another set.

[interposing voices]

Go ahead.

Audience Member 2: I just looked at the title of the "Pandemic Haircut." [muffled voice]

Jerry Yamashita: Yeah, she was just noticing the title, and It's a fun title.

Cynthia Peters: OK. So you'll see this referenced here, Lesson Packet Number 25. We have a whole bunch of lesson packets on our website and they're all totally free. So I'll put the link to the lesson packets in the chat and you can find them that way.

So this piece, like the other piece that we just looked at, the "My Neighbor" piece, it's available in Google Slides, it's also available in audio and PDF, so you can choose. Also, I recommend as a teaching strategy to try using all three of these formats.

Start with the one that you think is most friendly for your students, but it's a great practice for students to get just a one page of text where they have to decipher, OK, what is this? This is a pull out quote. What is this box? How do I take on this document, this text? How do I interpret some of the different features and things?

And then being able to listen to it is another way to communicate the message and hear the story, and hear-- the inflection kind of helps communicate meaning, and it also teaches punctuation, because you get to hear the sound of a period versus the sound of a comma.

And that's a great way to teach punctuation honestly. You can teach comma rules all you want, but a lot of it has to do with like, what does it sound like? And that's a great way to remember that you might need a comma there because you needed a certain length of a pause right there.

And then the Google Slides, which have that same instruction. Make a copy, make a copy in Google Slides if you want, then you own it. It's your Google Slides, it's in your drive, download it into PowerPoint or whatever your presentation software is.

Now you own it, you can embed more activities, and we're going to see an example of that when Jerry takes us through this next round. So, Jerry, is this a good time to switch to you?

Jerry Yamashita: Yeah, let me make sure I can share. OK.

Cynthia Peters: I'm just going to look at the chat while we're here. Christina says, "Wonderful story. I came in a little late, where can I find this story?" Yeah, and I think I gave you the link.

Tatiana says, "New immigrants may feel more comfortable reaching out to others after reading that story." Yeah, I hope so, or just might give them ideas, or a lot of people might feel uncomfortable reaching out and for good reason, and that might introduce that topic in the classroom, which wouldn't be a bad outcome either.

Just giving people a chance to say why they feel uncomfortable doing what this learner did. So whatever it is, it's a thing to bounce off of and let the students take it in the direction that is meaningful to them.

And I see somebody else is writing, "The topics are relevant to our students." Great. Well, that's what we're aiming for. Thank you, all. Thanks for your comments. I'll keep monitoring the chat and I'm going to let Jerry take over and talk a little bit about "The Pandemic Haircut."

Jerry Yamashita: All right. Thanks, Cynthia. I want to just make sure-- maybe a thumbs up from people in the chat, you can hear me OK at this level?

[muffled voice]

Do I need to scoot over? Just want to make sure. You guys can hear me OK? Yeah? OK, great. OK. So my name is Jerry Yamashita. I'm with World Education as well, colleague with Cynthia. Actually this is our first presentation together, so I'm really excited to be able to collaborate with her. So if I'm a little rusty, it's our first run, so forgive me.

So the reason why I'm kind of here to help put into context, I think, a little bit about how we can integrate the change agent as source material into digital literacy instruction, integration into the classroom, and also, what does that look like as far as using specific tools as vehicles to get that done?

And one of those is actually an in-house initiative of World Education through CrowdED Learning, it's called SkillBlox. Has anyone ever heard of SkillBlox before.

Audience Member 2: Yeah.

Jerry Yamashita: OK, cool. So we will be learning this all together because we just kind of did a relaunch, I guess. Is that fair to say? [overlapping voices] It's been updated to include a bunch more features, a lot more functionality. I'll get into all of that in a second here.

So one of the things that I wanted to reemphasize, I guess, is the ability to adapt a lesson. These lessons that are provided, either free or through the subscription, which I highly encourage, and maybe we can all sign a petition, maybe vote time can help make it statewide. Let's see what we can do.

That there is a system at the beginning that this is basically a Creative Commons license. You're allowed to take this material and adapt it in the way that you want, the only thing that is asked that you just don't change any of the language, or you don't change the original writing.

So you can replace photos, like somebody was saying, you can add audio or other assets to the presentation, or make a new one, whatever you want to do, just not changing the author's words. And so we'll take a look at what that looks like here. And yeah, let's take a look. [laughs]

So let's imagine I downloaded this from the Resource page. OK, so I've downloaded "Pandemic Haircut," and I've actually started to adapt it for myself.

And that's why I put this disclaimer here along with a Creative Commons license that says, "You are allowed to remix this work, but you need to give attribution," and that's why I said this originally came from the change agent, and it obviously shows the title and the author there, and then that I've remixed it specifically for 2024 TLS. OK?

Audience Member 2: Yeah.

Jerry Yamashita: All right. So we're going to do an activity here as well, so if you have your phone with you. we're going to have a code

So consider this. This is the first slide, and as Cynthia mentioned, that there's always a Before You Read activity. In the slide deck. All right? What do you see here and what do you think is going to happen? OK.

So this is where you would create an activity.

So here's the responses for the first slide. What do you see? So this is interesting because you're getting a literal description from some folks, and some folks are kind of predicting already, they'll get a haircut. One person says that the man who had a haircut. So do we know if he had it yet or not? Is this before or after the haircut?

Audience Member 2: Yeah.

[laughter]

Jerry Yamashita: [laughs] People who want to have their hair done, both of them-- I mean, how are we assuming that he's the one getting the haircut?

Audience Member 1: Yeah, I think so.

Audience Member 2: It looks.

[all laughing]

Jerry Yamashita: OK.

Audience Member 1: This is almost like a metaverse, like a circle map where you're writing the ideas down, and that also is like a thinking.

Cynthia Peters: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And if you are not familiar with this tool, it's called Mentimeter. So you have it now kind of linked on your phone. I believe we're going to share the slides into either the TLS portal or we'll get it to you somehow so you can have all these resources as well.

OK, so that's the first one. Let's see if-- So now it should switch. Your screen should switch to another question now. What do you think is going to happen?

Here we go. Responses are coming in now. "Someone's going to get a haircut." "A haircut." "Maybe he needs." Again, we're assuming that he needs the haircut.

[woman laughs]

"Haircut job will be performed." So the fun thing about this is that we can use this tool synchronously or asynchronously. So if we added this into the slide deck and we gave it to a student, they can access these polls on their own. It doesn't have to be a live view, but we're just using the tool and we can use it in different ways. So they can still enter their answer at another time, and then you can check it later.

So, OK. Someone's assuming that they're going to have a date.

[laughter]

Wow, this is very cool.

[interposing voices]

This is a safe space. I mean, it's anonymous, so we don't have to know how we got there from a picture of two people and a set of clippers. [laughs] Great. "Thinking what style haircut." That's interesting.

OK, so you could see that we can use this tool to engage our students, get them thinking about-- and kind of see like, what are people thinking about before they even get into the story. We're not even there yet?

[audience] Mm-hmm.

Jerry Yamashita: So this is the beginning of the story. So we've showed them the first slide. We did the activity together, and they can also do it on their own, and we'll go through the story. So this is about, basically, What happened during the pandemic for this particular author.

And so there's some fun things in here, and we're not going to go through the story in detail, but, basically, the author's talking about how she researched how to give a hair cut.

[interposing voices]

Right, and he was saying, actually, it didn't matter if it was bad, because no one would see them anyway because during lockdown. And so he was ready, he was open for it, and it's great. So yeah. So she researched, she learned a little bit, and then they prepped for it, and then described how she did it.

[all laughing]

And I guess he liked it. They both liked it. So they had fun during this time. You kind of remember this time, right? Like very uncertain for sure, stressful for a lot of people. People were looking for things to do.

Cynthia Peters: Can I inter intervene and point out something.

Jerry Yamashita: Yes, please.

Cynthia Peters: If you go back to the very first slide, the way she introduces the whole subject, she says, "The pandemic has shut down many activities. We have to stay at home for a time to make the virus spread slowly in our community. It feels like we are in a war. This war involves everyone in our Earth village."

And I wanted to actually read that out loud because she does go on, and to have a lightness, and a joy, and it ends on a joyful note, but she starts with a pretty profound kind of acknowledging of what it was like in those early days of the pandemic.

And it's another example of what I was saying before about the other story of just being able to hold the complexity, but still writing in a very accessible way, but a way that I think just deeply resonates for people, because it does hold the spectrum. So I wanted to just bring that back into the story here.

Jerry Yamashita: Yeah, no, and it is a great point, and definitely, I think, that resonates with me is being a former teacher, and seeing other teachers not have a lack of resources in a lot of ways. Teachers might be using things that are designed for younger audiences, for English language learners, which the content is maybe level-appropriate--

But, I mean, the reading level is appropriate, but the content is not really relevant or appropriate. So I think this addresses that in many ways, not only the topics, but that it gets the learner involved in the process as well. So it's fantastic.

So let's do that. So I've done another one now. So now we take a look at his haircut. What do you think about this haircut?

OK, so overall pretty good impression. Someone says, it's all patchy, and someone says his beard needs a little work.

[all laughing]

Yeah, I mean, I can't-- I don't know [muffled voice].

Audience Member 2: There seem to be a disconnect from the top down to the [interposing voices].

Audience Member 1: Yeah.

Jerry Yamashita: And, I mean, you get what you pay for also.

Audience Member 2: It was her first, right?

Cynthia Peters: Yeah.

[audience laughs]

Audience Member 1: It's next in the Google site.

Jerry Yamashita: So let's see. There we go, we're back. So yeah. I wouldn't call that a beard, I mean, from a beard haver.

Cynthia Peters: Yeah, have a little Van Dyke. It's not really a [interposing voices].

Audience Member 1: You are the expert.

Jerry Yamashita: No, I mean, I wouldn't be like, You're not in the beard club.

Audience Member 2: No.

Audience Member 1: And this is on Google Slides?

[interposing voices]

Jerry Yamashita: We're back to Google Slides, and this is an adapted slide. All I did was add the QR code to the slide that was already in the template.

Cynthia Peters: I think they call that a patch.

[interposing voices]

Jerry Yamashita: OK So then there's the Author Profile, and then there's an after you read activity. So again, there is a code, if you want to take a look. We don't have to do the activity, but just so that you can see what I've created here. It's a different activity, different tool.

Cynthia Peters: And I'm just checking, and this is already created in within the chat?

Jerry Yamashita: This is the slide, but only thing that I added with the QR code, because I made an interactive version of these exact questions.

Cynthia Peters: OK got it. Got it, got it.

Jerry Yamashita: So you'll be able to see when you--

Cynthia Peters: And then they can put in, so therefore increasing their digital literacy, also connecting it to writing?

Jerry Yamashita: Correct.

Cynthia Peters: OK.

Jerry Yamashita: Yeah. Yeah, because you can do this in person. Like if you were doing this presentation in person, how would you do this?

Cynthia Peters: We would be charting it, probably.

Jerry Yamashita: Maybe you're charting it, maybe you're having it right into a writing journal or something, and that's fine. You can do it that way.

Cynthia Peters: But this is to get them motivated to see from here to there.

Jerry Yamashita: Yeah, and I mean, if you are trying to meet any digital literacy objectives, I mean, this is a way that you can look at integrating that type of activity into your lessons. So did everyone grab that? I Think, also, I can't see the chat, Cynthia. If there's a link, I think--

[interposing voices]

Cynthia Peters: Oh sorry, I'm thinking and not copying.

Jerry Yamashita: So what I did here was create

Audience Member 2: A google form.

Jerry Yamashita: A Google Form, and I made it into different sections. So each question has its own section so that they go through, and I added a photo.

For instance, I linked directly to the music video that's mentioned here so that they can view it within the form, and then answer. So it's right there, they don't have to swap out.

Audience Member 1: And this is in Google?

Jerry Yamashita: This is in Google Forms, I used.

Audience Member 1: So it did, Menti, was create the QR code where then Google connects some writing that he's put in, and it connects to--

Jerry Yamashita: Yeah.

[interposing voices]

Audience Member 2: I guess I don't understand the sequence, with the first slide, that slide that's underneath the chat looking thing. That's Menti, right?

Jerry Yamashita: No, this is in the slide deck from the chat.

Audience Member 2: Oh, OK.

Jerry Yamashita: Yeah, and all I did was add a QR code to an activity.

Audience Member 2: I got it, and that connected you to the chat looking thing.

Jerry Yamashita: No, that was her opening the chat.

Audience Member 2: Into Zoom?

Jerry Yamashita: That's on Zoom.

Audience Member 2: Oh.

[all laughing]

Jerry Yamashita: I know, a lots of things happening here, but yeah, so. Yes?

Audience Member 2: Then does this end up showing up as a Google Doc that you have access to?

Jerry Yamashita: Yeah. So let me show you. So everyone got the-- OK, so let me come out of this.

Audience Member 1: Isn't it cool?

Jerry Yamashita: A second OK. And then so what that looks like is I created this. So this is the-- Basically, all I did was create a new form, and created sections, one for each of the questions that were in the slide. So the first one was Try.

So the question was, notice-- or the activity was, notice how the author uses "No matter," in the first paragraph, try using no matter in several of your own sentences.

Well, instead of having them refer back directly to the document again which might be confusing, I took a screenshot of the slides and put that in there so that they could just see what that slide looked like for reference right there.

So now they can see that here's the sentence that has no matter in it, and then I can just enter my answer.

Then I move on to the next one after I've submitted that. This is a watch activity, so then I'm going to watch this video, and then the prompt is to compare how Alicia Keys uses the word matter in the lyrics, and then write some sentences using it in the same style.

And then the third question is, explain. And in the next, what is the main idea of this essay and then submit. And so then if you haven't used Forms before, all of your responses will be collected in one place, and you can see them all here.

One thing I will also share regarding QR codes, because this does not generate one like Menti does if you wanted to. If you haven't tried this yet, you can do this with any web page.

When you are in presenting or when you are sharing this, so it would be like in preview mode, right? So this is what you want people to fill out. So this is the link you would want to share. You go to the three dots, and go to Save and Share down here, and then create a QR code. And that will create a QR code--

Oh, It's not showing on the screen. You guys, it's a little window that pops up right in the corner and you can copy it or download it, so it generates a QR code for any website you're on.

Audience Member 1: So cool.

Jerry Yamashita: Yeah. So that's a quick tip for how I created that QR code. If you don't have to go to an external tool to create QR codes, you could do it right in your browser.

Audience Member 2: I was thrilled when I found that. [laughs]

Audience Member 1: And then this like at the end of your Google Sites that you've added?

Jerry Yamashita: That QR code is right back--

Audience Member 1: No, no, I understand that, but these last four questions that you just added at the end where you put a Google form.

Jerry Yamashita: This form is based on the questions that are in the slide--

Audience Member 1: I understood that, but where do you have that?

[interposing voices]

Is it at the end of this? Yeah, I mean, sorry, I'm just asking. I understand. I understand everything you're doing, I'm just curious about that last little bit. Where is it? Is it at the end of your Google Doc Slides? How many more slides do you have there?

Cynthia Peters: Well, no, it's not in the Google Slides. It's lives in his Google Drive.

Audience Member 1: OK, that's all I ask.

Jerry Yamashita: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, the form lives in the Drive, and then all the responses and everything will be collected in that one.

Audience Member 1: OK.

Cynthia Peters: Jerry. Jerry, do people need to also-- if they wanted to use this, they would need to make a copy of it so it was their own, because otherwise the responses would go to you, and you don't want them.

Jerry Yamashita: Correct.

Cynthia Peters: How would they make a copy so that they could?

Jerry Yamashita: I think I created this in ours, and it's not a shareable one, so I'll try to update that before we upload the slides so you guys can have-- all the links will work the way they're supposed to.

Cynthia Peters: But just to reiterate for people. So Jerry might have made it in our World Education Google Drive, which has really high security settings so you can't make a copy of that, but any of these times when we're giving you adaptable Google Docs, or forms, or slides, we make it in a different folder that doesn't have those kind of security settings so you can make a copy.

And if you got a form like this, you would definitely need to make a copy of it and make it your own so that the responses would go to you and not to Jerry. [laughs]

Jerry Yamashita: Yeah, yeah. So if you fill this out, I get them. If you copied that and gave it to your students, I'd get the responses. Like you would get--

Audience Member 1: That makes sense.

Jerry Yamashita: Yeah, so I'll fix it, basically, it makes it kind of like a read only template where you have to copy it before you can use it.

OK, so here's another slide, kind of activity. So have you learned any new skills during the pandemic? Yes, I have. I learned how to, or, No, I haven't. Is this the one where I-- I can't see the notes-- is this the one?

Cynthia Peters: No, I would just go straight to SkillBlox at this point since we're getting a little low on time, and yeah.

Jerry Yamashita: OK.

Audience Member 1: What class was this aimed at? What level?

Jerry Yamashita: I'm not sure. Do you know what level this one is?

Cynthia Peters: I can look up the level, but yeah, like an interval.

Jerry Yamashita: So, yeah. Sorry, we have -- So this is how we integrate and how we can share out all of these kind of activities all in one place using a tool called SkillBlox. So if you want to scan this one, it'll pull up, and it shows how mobile friendly it is also for your students to access.

The nice thing about SkillBlox is that everything on there is searchable, open educational resources that you can you're free to use. It's basically sort of like building your own playlist of resources and activities or whatever you want to put in there.

Audience Member 1: This is kind of what I was talking about. OK. Great.

Jerry Yamashita: Yeah. So you can put anything in here, OK. Now another great thing is the barrier to entry is very, very low for your students because they don't have to make an account or anything. They just get the code, or they get the referral code, or they get a QR code, and they're in. That's it.

All the activities are yours that you need to have them direct back to you if you want that connection to you, but otherwise, it's open for everyone. OK. And think the link is also in the chat as well --

Cynthia Peters: Yeah, the SkillBlox link is in the chat.

Jerry Yamashita: Yeah. So what you're seeing on your screen now, how do we do this? That's probably the question. So let's take a look at SkillBlox itself. This is the start page, and all you have to do is make an account. So you log in, or if you haven't signed up yet, you can go ahead and sign up. Are you going to log in to my account?

Audience Member 2: Yeah.

Jerry Yamashita: And you'll see I have a few SkillBlox that I've built, and here's my "Pandemic Haircut" one. And so I've added all of the things that we've talked about. From starting from what Cynthia introduced all the way to what I've built, I've added into one SkillBlox that I can share out to students in one place using one link. So all of those are there.

Audience Member 2: OK, It's all in there.

Jerry Yamashita: It's all here. So it'll take you to the Before You Read activity. It has the article in PDF form as a presentation in Google Slides form, and it has the audio there for reference, and then it also has the After You Read activity, and, well, both, to have both After You Read activities that we did together.

So all of those are here for you to share out to a student. Now, how do we do that, building that? All we have to do is add a new activity. You choose the format, whatever it is. This is just to classify it. So a lot of these.

Let's say I added a quiz, I can add that. I put my link in to my quiz, I name it, and I say where it's from. I've added them as Teacher Created if I've made it, if it's from somewhere else, I cite the source, and how I use it.

And then when you add it, the you'll see it just like this. The other thing, and I'm not going to go deep into this because you can explore this on your own, but there's all these learning activities that you can all search from that are already in the database.

So you can choose from these domains and these are all aligned to domain and then skill. So you can do digital literacy, and then you can choose in a framework or by a keyword, and then you can find different things.

So if I want Essentials, they are all aligned to-- I believe these are aligned to the Seattle Framework, Seattle Digital Literacy Framework, and we will probably align them to our new forthcoming framework soon.

So let's say I wanted anything that has to do with using accessibility features, and then all of these come up on the right side, and these are from open educational resources that are vetted and reputable. So we've got GCF in there--

Cynthia Peters: Jerry, sorry, but we think we have a hard stop at 4:00.

Jerry Yamashita: Yeah. So anyway, that's it there. So that's kind of it for that, so if you want more information on SkillBlox, we can talk afterwards. Here's all these things--

I think, Cynthia, I'll pass it back to you at this point to talk about the links and everything.

Cynthia Peters: OK. Yeah, you keep sharing and we'll just close up by saying, when you get a copy of these slides, you have some direct links to some of the free content on the website. I wanted to make sure you had that.

And if you go to the next slide, just to reiterate that there's a Call for Articles out, and the deadline is not till early May, so there's plenty of time to support your students to write something and try submitting it to the change agent.

I do get hundreds of submissions. I can only accept about 60 in the course of a year, so a lot of people do get rejected, but the process usually feels pretty good to students, even when they get rejected. What I hear from them is, Well, you treated me like a writer and I felt like a writer, and so that's very powerful for students to get to have that experience.

So do share the Call for Articles. The theme is Our Digital Future, and there's a lot of writing prompts in there that students can respond to. So I would love to get more California submissions, so please do circulate that Call for Articles, and the link is going to be right there when you get a copy.

We wanted to see if you wanted to share something that you might be taking away as we have maybe a minute left. So if you would like to put something in the chat, I would love to hear. Jerry and I would both love to hear if you have something there that you want to share in the room please do.