[audio logo]

Speaker: OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network.

Laura Waterman: And welcome to our presentation on formative assessments, engaging digital tools for adult learners. My name is Laura. And we're presenting together with these lovely ladies.

Chris Vela Che: Yeah, my name is Chris Vela Che. And I am a beginning literacy teacher. That's my population. And, Laura, what level?

Laura Waterman: I'm in the mid. I'm like mid to low to high, depends. Multi-level is technically the term of my class.

Mariana Silva: I'm Mariana Silva. And I typically teach intermediate-level conversation or reading and writing and level six, which is an advanced level for us. We all teach at MiraCosta and some of us in other places, too.

Laura Waterman: And we have a lot of slides. I'm not sure if we're going to get to all of them today. But you guys have the handout with all of the information that we would like to cover. It's also at the last part of the presentation. All the links are also there. They're hyperlinked. So if you have time after this and interest, you can always go and do that.

So let's see the second slide. I think we are just getting to know each other and discussing our thoughts. So where do you teach? What modality? Define formative assessments. Maybe give an example. And what formative assessments have you used?

So it could be a digital formative assessment or assessment that you use in class, whatever modality. But maybe we can connect three or four right here. You're kind of in the vicinity. Maybe if each other, you can skip question one and just talk about formative assessments.

You're like, oh, I never knew that. And that's why we're here, to get more information to help our teaching and help our students. And I think most of us, for formative assessments, we were over here. And they were like, I ask my students to repeat or to listen to what I'm saying. And then they give me verbal feedback. That's formative assessment right there.

And I think another thing when we're thinking about digital tools is that we want something that's easy, that doesn't require some sign in stuff with a password and a username, because it gets complicated. And we also want to stick to things that are free. And now with all this AI coming out, how can we get that to our students as well. So--

Mariana Silva: So what we're going to do in this presentation, because we're at a digital symposium, we thought of just covering the digital tools. And this could be good not just for online teaching or hybrid teaching but in-person teaching because they're, as Laura said, they're easy to use. And usually they don't require any student login. So it's very user-friendly on the phone. So it's easy access.

We know you're passionate educators. But hopefully you're going to get to learn something new or refresh some other tools or learn features of other tools that you may not have explored. So before we get to the tools, we're going to take a look at what and why. Why do we use formative assessments? What are they? Just quickly, we know you're already familiar with that.

We're going to explore. The chunk of our presentation will focus on exploring digital formative assessment tools. Checking for students' comprehension obviously goes along with the second bullet point there, the second check mark. And why we do it plays a huge role, lowering the effective filter for our students.

So just a little bit of review of why the formative assessments. We use them to monitor students' learning. We provide ongoing feedback to our students so they know whether they're on the right track or not.

We use the formative assessments to identify strengths and areas of improvement, enable students to work on their self-regulatory skills, and make adjustments to our teaching, reteach, teach in a different way, or have a different approach. I wanted to bring a little bit of research here. So I got this quote from CDE, California Department of Education. I feel like it's moving.

Laura Waterman: Yeah, there's a shake.

Mariana Silva: No earthquake, right?

Laura Waterman: No, I think it's from the-- I think it's from the heater.

Audience: That's the best thing about this room because the air is--

Laura Waterman: Yeah, it's the heater. It's shaking.

Mariana Silva: OK. I just had a moment. I'm like, is it me?

Audience: OK. Thank you.

Mariana Silva: I'm so nervous right now. So formative assessments, we think of them as a process in the learning, a deliberate process that takes place during instruction and not a test. We do it so we can get a lot of information and see how we can adjust that information.

Based on research, there are four main attributes of formative assessments. Clarify intended learning. Are they learning or not? What do I need to do? A lot of reflection for teachers. Elicit evidence from the students. Interpret that evidence, and then act upon it.

The why of the formative assessments, we pretty much discussed this. It's not just a number in a great book. It's a process that informs our teaching, informs the students learning and the adjustments that we can make. Both students and teachers feel empowered. Students feel empowered taking charge of their own learning. Teachers can make their own decisions about what happens next.

Chris Vela Che: But this model, I don't know if you're familiar with WIPPEA model. Are you familiar with WIPPEA model. This is great to memorize as you are creating your lessons, which is this. WIPPEA model stands for-- you begin with a warm-up in a lesson that is lengthy, warm-up, just what we did here. Introduction, what Mariana and Laura were talking about. And now we're presenting. Then we're going to practice if we have time, evaluate, and then apply the content, the skill that we want to see students show.

So this is just a great model that can just be very, very helpful when you are creating your lessons. Anybody has any questions. Do you guys use this when you are creating-- when you're in the process of creating lessons? Yeah.

Audience: It allows me to work smart instead of working hard.

Chris Vela Che: Exactly. OK. So what do I need to do first? How do I introduce, let's say, AI to my beginning literacy, and then introduction to AI, and then present. I create content, visuals so I can teach that content.

And then practice. Now, show me if we're understanding the concept. And then evaluation, which is maybe you can prompt AI to-- I don't know-- give you an answer to something. And then application, which is the skill that we want students transfer in their daily life beyond the classroom.

So great thing to always think about the WIPPEA model as you create any lessons pretty much.

Mariana Silva: And, Chris, Can I add something?

Chris Vela Che: Yeah.

Mariana Silva: The reason why we put the slide here is because we felt like could use these formative assessments at any stage in your lesson plan.

Chris Vela Che: Yes, that's a great thing to add here. Yes. So we're going to be giving you an introduction to some of these digital tools. I was actually talking to some of you about what you guys use in your classes.

And we used the traditional formative assessments before technology got into our classrooms, ask questions, or do dictation, or use a board. That's typically what we know how to do. But there is so much out there that can save you so much time. And it can be engaging and fun and it's something new.

So we're going to give you-- we're going to be giving you a list of the quizzes and games that are all free. And if you can see, we have smiley faces here because they are easy to use. No student login required. Yes, please.

Independent study or group work. You can create some of these activities using these quizzes. Engaging and leading-- well, use at any stage of the lesson WIPPEA model. And then engaging, leading to persistence. Effective in any teaching modality.

So we'll be presenting you some quizzes, games, student practice, surveys, polls, video quizzes. So please, don't be overwhelmed. Like Mr. Joe Marquez said in that presentation yesterday, just pick one, one, one. And forget about the rest. This is great. You'll have the slides, so you can-- next month, you can go back and see, oh, I want to try something new. Let me check this session that I went to, the TDLS.

Anyway, so let's go to the next one. So the first one is low-stake quizzes. So I think some of you use-- I heard some of you using Kahoot. Kahoot has been here for a while and it's fun.

The only thing I don't like about Kahoot is that sometimes I create-- the speed in which you respond an answer is rewarded instead of the actual response. So you will get-- yeah, so that's the thing. It takes me a little while to process the language, but I still got it correctly. It still doesn't reward me. I want my star.

Mariana Silva: Or sometimes it could be internet, right? Sometimes it's internet connection. So a student being behind because of that.

Chris Vela Che: But just a disclaimer. Students, I know this tool is going to assess how fast you answer a question. But for those of you who are not very fast, that's OK. You got the correct answer. And that's also applauded. That's good. That's what I would change from Kahoot.

Quia, I haven't used that. But I know some of my colleagues have used that. They can talk to you about it. Quizlet. Are you familiar with Quizlet? Yeah, Quizlet is very good. Excellent. Quizziz? Yes. Yes. And then Blooket? Oh, yeah, Blooket. I haven't used this one.

Audience: Middle schoolers love it. They steal gold. They do gold hacking and stuff like that. Math, definitely yeah--

Chris Vela Che: Oh, my gosh. Look, I might have to--

Audience: So there was a conversation between them and then they just--

Laura Waterman: I'll talk about it because I use it in my--

Chris Vela Che: I want to use that. So that's going to be my-- yeah.

Audience: Does anybody use that for adult Ed?

Laura Waterman: Adult Ed, yes.

Chris Vela Che: Yes.

Laura Waterman: We have grammar and pronounciation.

Chris Vela Che: She does.

Laura Waterman: I haven't used vocabulary yet, but there's also things that are pre-made for you that you can apply or you can create on your own.

Chris Vela Che: Pre-made too.

Laura Waterman: It time-saving.

Chris Vela Che: I like that.

Laura Waterman: And they like it. And the students really enjoy playing with it.

Chris Vela Che: Yes. And then this one is beautiful. I've tried it once, but I just haven't had the chance to continue exploring. But Word Wall, are you familiar with that? Oh, it's beautiful.

So we'll talk about all of these. Maybe we'll go a little faster on the ones that you already are using, but we'll give you a chance to ask questions about the ones that you're not very familiar with. Next one is-- yes. So this is Quia. And I think my colleague Laura is going to talk to you about-- have you used Quia?

Laura Waterman: Yes.

Chris Vela Che: What.

Laura Waterman: It's been around a really long time, and it's free, and it has created materials as well. And you can see here that it has various options for you to choose from. It's free as a teacher and the students don't log in. You can share a screen and have them participate.

The one that I've used several times happens to be titled rags to riches. It's a millionaire style. As you can see, they start at the bottom and they reach the million dollar mark.

And you can use it in person or online, having the students have a card, like a piece of paper that says A, B, C, or D, and they read the question at the top and they decide what the right answer is.

And then we collectively show what answer everybody thinks so you get to see the mixes of comprehension. And then you can stop and talk about why the answer is what it is. And then you click the answer and you go up as a class.

Super easy, free, and they enjoy it as an in-person activity. I put them in groups of four. They have to converse and decide together what the answer is, which is also sharing and learning through coworker or coworker classmates.

Chris Vela Che: I just want to add a little bit of things here. Because I'm a beginning literacy teacher, I know this could be challenging for my students, even though it's easier on our end to just logging in and play with it.

But I think a good best practice would be telling students up front, hey, we're going to try a new game. The first time, it might be a little confusing and you have to adjust. But let's try it again the second time, and then maybe the third time.

So then they get used to what they need to do, especially if it's a new tool for limited English learners. So always put that in mind when you are introducing a new tool, even if it's the easiest tool that you use. Just a little--

Mariana Silva: There are a couple of questions.

Laura Waterman: Oh, yeah.

Audience: So I just got confused by what you just said. So the students aren't on device.

Laura Waterman: No.

Audience: We're just leading it--

Laura Waterman: Yes.

Audience: --into the class and they're doing--

Laura Waterman: Correct, correct. Yeah, as an in-person, I would have it projected at the front. If I were on Zoom, I'd have it as a screen and then everybody's either on Zoom. If they don't want to participate with their cameras, they can put it in the chat.

Audience: OK, got it.

Audience: So there's no way they can join with using their digital tool, it's going to be just you--

Laura Waterman: This is totally led by me because I want to see what they know, I want to do this formative assessment, this formative check. Then you can see here, this one was a prepositions in, at, and on, which they could use tons of practice with because they're super tricky. So this one particularly I really enjoy because it's easy and you get that instant feedback. And it's called rags to riches.

So, yeah. I'm going to talk quickly about Blooket because I do love Blooket. It's a game competition based, and it's usually used in middle schools and high schools, but I've used it in my adult.

And adults need to have fun too. So they're stealing. I use the fish frenzy. They're fishing for different types of animals, which is also introduction to vocabulary, like frog and jellyfish, which maybe doesn't come up often in your class.

And you can see here that you can select the type of game. What I just talked about was fishing frenzy. She talked about the gold quest, where they steal each other's money, and they get excited. They're like, who stole my money?

And their other classic is Kahoot, where they're all answering at the same time. The reason why I like this also is that they're individually answering on their cell phones. So again, if someone's at a higher level differentiation, they're getting more questions. If we're at a slower pace, they're processing it at a slower time.

It does give points, where I see the caveat there, but they're individually processing the information at their own speed and they're getting feedback in the moment, like wrong. And it gives them the answer so they can try again the next time.

Chris Vela Che: Do we have time to try, like you all being the students and then--

Laura Waterman: No, because I want her to talk about the AI. You and I can do it later.

Mariana Silva: Don't, don't say that.

Audience: Does it have to be a phone? Can you use your Chromebook?

Laura Waterman: You can use-- yeah. Yeah, yeah. And oh, it's free, and there's no student cap, which Kahoot has a 20-limit for the free version. It's a 20-limit student entry. This one doesn't have a cap, and it's free. Oh, did you not know that for Kahoot?

Audience: I've been playing it with more that 20 students.

Audience: Their school might have it.

Laura Waterman: Yeah, yeah. My institution doesn't happen to have a subscription. So when I had 36 students, they are like, teacher, I can't get in. I'm like, oh, it's a 20-limit, at least the way that I use it. I'm going to hand it off to Mariana, and she's going to talk about Quizlet.

Mariana Silva: So can you raise your hand if you're familiar with Quizlet? I figured you do. I've used it for a long time. But do know you have some cool AI in it? How many of about this?

I tested it recently. I'm like, when did this pop up on my Quizlet? Because I use it on a weekly basis, and not just once a week. So this is amazing. I'm going to demo you quickly to see what it looks like. Where is my Quizlet? Because I did one open it.

Laura Waterman: It's the first one, Mariana. Yeah, there it is.

Mariana Silva: Oh, yes.

Laura Waterman: It's lined up.

Mariana Silva: So when you log in-- I just have my MiraCosta email, but I don't think it's any-- it's still the free version. I don't have an upgrade. I don't pay for it.

At the top right, there, you can see generate. Let's see what it does. I told these ladies recently, and we were all mesmerized by it. And I haven't tried it a whole lot, but I did try it. So here what it does, you can paste text, you can upload a file, Google Docs, videos.

For this demo, I'm going to get just a quick link from a video, any YouTube so you can see how it's working because it just stunned me. I'm like, oh, this is free AI. Oh, sorry.

What do we search for? I did this with my students. We were talking about endangered species. And there is this Ted Talk. It's called Why I Love Vultures. This guy. So just any URL are all. OK, and I'm going to paste it here and see what it does for me.

Laura Waterman: What is it? It says--

Mariana Silva: I didn't put video. Sorry, sorry. OK, there. I was too fast for AI. And it's creating our magic notes.

Laura Waterman: Abracadabra alakazam.

Mariana Silva: But it's pretty fast. Look at this, colleagues. You have an outline, and it's pretty good, because I know, I looked at a few. I like the headings.

You can see, you can skim through. You don't have to read everything, but you can skim through. And look at the many options it has on the right. So that's the outline we're looking at. We have flashcards. Just the regular flashcards.

Laura Waterman: Yeah.

Mariana Silva: Oh, sorry. Again, I'm too fast sometimes. Sample essay questions.

Audience: But--

Laura Waterman: Yeah, I know.

Mariana Silva: And then he's giving you more based on that URL. How quick. I just discovered this and I was like, we need to talk about this. Oh, Cindy.

Audience: Now, this information is really based on the video itself?

Mariana Silva: Yes, everything is based on the video. Yes.

Audience: Interesting.

Laura Waterman: Yeah, she's used it. And we practiced with this one and she said this is accurate as to what we practiced in class.

Mariana Silva: The same thing it does, if you-- and it has this Q-chat. Look what the Q-chat does. So all those options. I love the section about academic integrity. Ask your instructor and try to use it wisely. I was like, OK, I like this.

Let's see what it does for us. So based on the video, anything you uploaded there, it's trying to get you to teach the new vocabulary. So it says, what is biodiversity? And I try to play with it. I'm like, I don't know. Give me a hint.

And it's based on that because you see the keyword vulture is right there. Maybe you type something wrong. It's telling you, try again. It's really cool. What did I want to say? The same thing works if you-- let me try to go back. What is that? Oh, an ad.

So same thing works if you upload a file from the computer. I tried it with-- let's see, I can open this quickly so you can have an idea there. But you can try it and discover a bunch of things.

Laura Waterman: Your syllabus maybe.

Audience: What if it was like really low ESL, like a story or something, that it would just come up with questions about that material?

Mariana Silva: Yes. So everything is generating a full lesson plan basically on that. Oh, it says from my computer. I'm just going to say Google Docs. Maybe I can--

Chris Vela Che: Or you can make your own videos like, hello, my name is blah, blah, blah. And then students can see you, and then this thing can generate questions about your own video, which makes it even more personalized, humanize, blah blah, blah. Oh, my god. I see many possibilities. I have a lot of low beginning videos that I have created, so I'm going to be using them. Thank you very much, Mariana.

Mariana Silva: I don't know why document I selected. So I hope I didn't select a--

Laura Waterman: Hopefully--

Mariana Silva: I hope I didn't select--

Laura Waterman: --it's school-related.

Mariana Silva: Oh, I think I didn't have anything.

Laura Waterman: That's all right.

Mariana Silva: So anyway, you get the gist of it. It's very cool. I don't want to say much, but I did attend a really cool AI presentation yesterday, but it's expensive.

So for me, I hear things and I'm excited, but then I'm like, oh, OK. I'm excited, and then just kind of deflate. I'm like, oh, I can't do this. It's too pricey. But this is free, just like chat.

So hopefully you give it a shot the next time you give us a full presentation on different other cool ideas on how to use it. Hopefully that was a new thing that you could take away. Yes.

Audience: If you upload the Google Docs or even the one that you were doing before, where you generated something, can the students write-- they can actually write in the document, they can answer the questions and things like that?

Mariana Silva: I am not sure. I haven't tried that.

Audience: OK, OK.

Mariana Silva: And I'm curious to see. I asked some of my students to test it and see how it's working. So I haven't done a whole lot of work. I discovered it recently and I played with it by myself.

Audience: With the Q-chat they could?

Mariana Silva: Yes.

Laura Waterman: Yeah.

Mariana Silva: Yes.

Laura Waterman: That's the interactive one where they type right in. Yes, it's pretty cool.

Audience: One little question, though.

Mariana Silva: Yes.

Audience: When I tried to log in, I forgot my link and-- I mean, the username and everything, and then they sent me-- there is a purchase price, there's a group price, and then there is a free trial.

Mariana Silva: For Quizlet?

Audience: Yes. It ends in April 1, right now.

Mariana Silva: Oh.

Laura Waterman: So maybe that's for the school.

Mariana Silva: I've had Quizlet for a long time, so I don't know if this--

Audience: Is it like Kahoot now because they see people are using it and --?

Laura Waterman: Well, that's what I was thinking.

Audience: It could be-- charge.

Mariana Silva: But I would say check if you select educator, if that's free. Again, this is not an upgraded version I'm using, this is just the basic version. But I've had it for a long time, so I don't know.

I've heard similar things about Padlet. I have unlimited Padlet access. I don't know if it's maybe because I've had it for a long time and their settings were different. And as you said, people started using them, and they're changing. I don't have the answer.

Audience: [muffled voice].

Laura Waterman: Yeah, be careful, especially if you do the free trial and you forget when your free trial ends. And then you're like, oh.

Mariana Silva: The next tool, maybe most of you are familiar with it, Quizziz. Are you?

Audience: Not at all.

Mariana Silva: Yeah. So it's somewhat similar to Kahoot. You can create different quizzes or you can just curate, there a bunch of them created for you. So once you create an account, it's going to look something like this.

The lightning bolt, guess what, it's premium. So you cannot really access that unless you pay for it. I don't remember how much the fee is because I don't sign up for that. I'm all for free stuff.

But there are different activities that you can do without the premium account, just the basic account. It has a lot of grammar, vocabulary, reading comprehension, so it's pretty nice to explore. It's very similar to Kahoot in that sense.

Audience: It's not competition-based.

Mariana Silva: Competition-based.

Laura Waterman: Correct.

Audience: You can just do it at different times. Students can join at any time at their own pace. Look at the points and things, but they don't have to compete with others at the same time. That's what [muffled voice].

Mariana Silva: You can even assign it as homework. right?

Laura Waterman: Yeah.

Mariana Silva: Yeah. Wordwall, anybody familiar with it? I learned this from one of my coworkers recently. You are limited in how many you can create with a free account, but there are a lot of also curated or pre-made activities.

So basically, let's say you do-- I often do the Ed pronunciation because I know that's a hot topic. I struggle with that as a student before too. So if you create that or you find it online, then you have all these options that you can have that game played in different ways.

So you can have a match up, you can have a random wheel, you can have-- the students really like the game show quiz because it's really like a TV game. Boom, boom. You hear three, two, one, go. And they're excited.

It's fun. It really makes students feel like they're empowered, as we said earlier. And they learn by having fun. I don't think we have time to explore all of these, but again, we have the links at the end if you want to explore all of them.

We picked one from each category to demo a little bit. Any questions about this one? Again, on different skills, you can create these games or just use the copy one that is already created and added it.

Chris Vela Che: Yes. So these are great choices to get student's feedback, because students like feedback, I like feedback if I'm doing something, and you'll give us feedback at the end of the presentation. So we want to know if we did good, maybe not so I can improve, so students can improve.

So these are options and multiple ways to practice either grammar or reading or writing. So we have Liveworksheets. Are you familiar with that? Maybe. Yes, very good. So we'll talk a little bit about that. Test-English, anybody. This is great for grammar. Perfect English grammar.

Pronto. This is what I use a lot, Pronto, for my beginning literacy students. Our district has pronto integrated into Canvas. I know some districts under the K through 12 umbrella not necessarily have access to pronto, but I use a lot of pronto.

Pronto is just texting/chat app, just like WhatsApp. And our students are very familiar with WhatsApp, they communicate with their families overseas with WhatsApp. So why not using a tool that mimics something that they already know? So that's why I love Pronto. Pronto is great.

You can ask students to introduce themselves using the voice recording feature from Pronto. So I use this a lot in my conversation class. I have a conversation class.

So again, feedback. I give feedback to students and they also do the formative assessment if I ask them, hey, how was your week? So we are practicing simple past so then I can get student's recording. Yeah, Cindy?

Audience: Chris, is that part of Canvas, Pronto?

Chris Vela Che: Yes, it is. Yeah.

Mariana Silva: And we're going to look at that. We have a slide on that.

Chris Vela Che: A slide on pronto. And then Canvas Studio. I know some districts don't have this feature. My district has Canvas Studio, which is a feature that allows students to record themselves and submit through Canvas, all in Canvas. It is great. I've used it with my beginning students.

I record myself, what is your first name? And then the submission has to be a video. They can either show their faces or not. It gives you the options to record just your voice or your entire face. So it's great for that speaking and that listening skills if you want to assess that.

And then, of course Zoom features. Oh, if you're using Zoom already, just try to use everything that Zoom has to offer. So you don't have to be out and bring in all the new tools.

Zoom features are great. If you teach students how to use the Zoom toolbar, you can get a lot of engagement because they'll feel comfortable to annotate, or to chat, give you the answer in the chat, or take a picture of what they already wrote and then put it in the Zoom chat. So I would concentrate a lot, if you already using Zoom. Zoom has a lot of things to offer, and why not learning from something that you are already using?

So this is Liveworksheets. So Liveworksheets Test-English and Perfect English Grammar. You have the logos here, so when you're looking and drinking your cup of coffee looking for these tools.

These are great because they foster independent work. These are beyond the class-type practice. It correct an answer instantly. All of it-- well, actually, yes. This one, yes. Yeah, I haven't used it for a while.

Mariana Silva: They can check their answers right in the Liveworksheets. There is a lot of fill in the blanks. And then at the end, they can check their answers. There is a button, Check My Answers, or even Submit To My Teacher, or Share With My Teacher.

Chris Vela Che: Yes.

Audience: This is great--

Mariana Silva: Liveworksheets, yes.

Chris Vela Che: Yes.

Audience: Is it all pretty much the same?

Chris Vela Che: Yes.

Mariana Silva: And we were using Liveworksheets a lot, especially when the pandemic started and we're just trying to figure things out. And it's so easy because a lot of materials are already created. So you can--

Chris Vela Che: Yes.

Laura Waterman: So we have a question.

Audience: I can create my own worksheets?

Mariana Silva: Yes.

Chris Vela Che: Yes.

Mariana Silva: You can create your own worksheets or you can reuse others.

Audience: On all of them, I can create my own--

Laura Waterman: No, Test-English is all there. It's grammar, vocabulary, listening, reading. It has all the skills. And it's divided by level, so A, A1, B, B1 and things like that. But you can't create. But it's very well-organized.

And like she said, the students get to practice what they want, so you're giving them choice. And then as they're processing the information and putting in their answers, they click the correct or Check My Answers and it gives them instant feedback and why they got it wrong, which is what I love about it.

It's like, OK, you got it wrong, but why? And it explains it. And it also gives them a document to the grammar that explains the grammar too. So there are several options. That's why I personally like Test-English.

Mariana Silva: And the Perfect English Grammar, you also cannot create your own worksheets, but what it does, they have explanations and then they have worksheets that you could either print for the students or have a PDF file, or they could just type their answers. They get instant feedback.

And I love their infographics. When you try to explain to students, this is past simple. We use it for this, we use it for this. Or especially, present perfect. That could be crazy. Like, hey, you said unfinished actions, but it's also recent action, it's also life events.

So very nice infographics. Just one-page showing an example, adverbs of time used with that, and what they express. Very quick one-page. My students have loved those, especially if they're visual learners.

Chris Vela Che: Yes. And the most important part about all of this is that it gives instant feedback, kind of like Duolingo. I don't know if you're learning with Duolingo. I love just instant feedback. Tell me if I'm doing it correctly. So I like that as a learner. And your learners will love this if you offer them.

These are some options. Perhaps you can start with one, because again, if you're teaching English language learners, this is overwhelming. I mean, this is overwhelming for me, imagine for your students. So maybe you can introduce something.

Play around with one of these and see which would fit best for your class and then introduce that, hey, students, we're going to learn about this cool tool and this is what you should be expecting. And so, yes. Yeah.

Audience: So with these, is that for the students to do on their own and then--

Laura Waterman: Can we pop into one right now and show you really quickly?

Audience: Because I was wondering if they do an assessment on--

Laura Waterman: Which one do you want to do? The testing.

Audience: You'll share with us.

Chris Vela Che: Yes. For Liveworksheets, yes. They have the option to email you, email your answers to your teacher. And it's just-- yeah. They can send that information to you. And this is Test-English.

Laura Waterman: So they come in, for example, this is the be verb for A-1s. And then they click, are you a teacher? Yes, I are. And they come down and they check their answers. And it says, 0 out of 10. And it tells you why.

And then for each answer-- for each one, they have multiple exercises. So this is choice. They have text type, fill in the blanks. Contractions are here. And this one is fill in the blank. And then you can always do a screenshot or something like that. And then here's the explanation of the grammar right here.

Audience: So how do they actually access this? Do you embed this in your classroom?

Laura Waterman: It's linked as a hyperlink in my Canvas course. When we're in the computer lab, I actually have them do 30 minutes of independent practice. But you could use it as an assessment too if you wanted to formally assess.

And you can see, it's vocabulary-based. There's listening, reading, writing. I use the grammar portion mostly.

Chris Vela Che: Don't you have sometimes students who are, teacher, the grammar? There's always one student who wants grammar. So this would be great for them to have that practice.

Laura Waterman: And you can see, I just typed Test-English and I popped right in. There's no sign in, there's no login for the students or for myself.

Chris Vela Che: Awesome. So any questions so far? I think the next one is Pronto. And I think we have a great class here. This is not my picture, but this is--

Mariana Silva: This is my class.

Chris Vela Che: Oh, my goodness. OK. Well, as I said earlier, I use Pronto with my beginning literacy class, and it's such a great and user-friendly tool for them as well once you introduce them and see how it works.

Because once students know how it works and then you start building that community by asking, hey, how are you doing this week, or how was your week, then students start opening up and start sharing about their day, pictures with their classmates.

The only thing you probably need to be careful is, what is the culture in the digital environment, what kind of things they are allowed to share? So maybe talking a little bit about the netiquette, which is the rules of when you're texting, how much information you should be sharing, what type of pictures you should be sharing.

Mariana Silva: But I want to add to that, Chris, also. So because it's embedded in Canvas, it's very private-- I'm sorry, it fosters privacy a lot and security as well. So if something were to happen, if a student sends you a text that is inappropriate or there is any discussion, we can track those. Because it's not an off-site--

Chris Vela Che: You delete them.

Mariana Silva: --thing. Yeah, it's embedded in Canvas. And we can use it for exit tickets. I like to do that with the students, but especially the community beyond the classroom. Students just love connecting and you cannot see anybody's phone number.

Chris Vela Che: Exactly.

Mariana Silva: Sometimes students say, can we create a WhatsApp group? I'm like, no. And you know how tedious that is, adding everybody's number. If you missed a digit, it's all messed up. But this is, everybody who is a student will immediately have access to it. It actually looks like this in our Pronto.

Again, as Chris said, it depends on your institution. But if you use Canvas-- how many of you use Canvas? And then if they want to adapt it, maybe tell them, like they've noticed a lot of persistence in the students because we communicate with them.

It also declutters your email because students, oh, I miss my homework, or what did you do in class today? And somebody else can respond so you don't have to really respond to so many other students. So that's the Pronto.

So they all have access to it here, but obviously we encourage them to download the app because it's for easy access. And usually they communicate very well saying, I'm sorry, I'm running late, or whatever happens. So it's nice to get that from the students.

I had somebody do a presentation in my class about the environment, so they were also engaged there. And I posted the pictures, and they were all so happy because I took pictures of the event. And then they were so excited that they were part of that community. And it was so easy to share that right away. Sorry, Chris.

Audience: [muffled voice].

Mariana Silva: It's a texting tool. It's kind of what you do with any communication app.

Chris Vela Che: Messenger.

Mariana Silva: But you can also do videos. So I had a couple of students who wanted a more confidential talk to me and I said, OK, do you want to meet at 4:00 PM?

OK, open your Pronto. I'm going to call you. And it's kind of a Zoom call. Obviously not with screen sharing because it's just a smaller app. But it was nice. The students got off their problems.

Audience: Is the default setting is just between you and student, or default setting is are?

Mariana Silva: Very good question. So it's the group per class per course. But also you can text everybody or you can choose private messages with a teacher or any other student. So student--

Audience: [muffled voice]

Mariana Silva: Yes, yes.

Audience: So you can see the private?

Mariana Silva: I cannot see the private messages.

Audience: Between the students.

Mariana Silva: Between the student. I cannot, yeah. So it could be very private in that sense. So if student A texts students B, I cannot see that. If one student texts to the entire group, I can see that. If I have a private message with a student, it's only me and the student who sees that. And they like that because--

Chris Vela Che: Yeah, just make sure and cautious, just tell them how to text privately. You don't want anybody exposing things. So when you're introducing this tool, just be very upfront, this is how it works and these are how we're going to be rolling this class. If you want a private message, this is how you do it. So they know if they want to share something very private.

Mariana Silva: Yeah.

Audience: [muffled voice].

Chris Vela Che: Remind, yes. Competition. Oh, three minutes.

Mariana Silva: Yes, we have three minutes.

Chris Vela Che: I don't know if I--

Mariana Silva: Another tool we have is--

Chris Vela Che: Canvas Studio.

Mariana Silva: Studio Studio.

Chris Vela Che: Canvas Studio is great. It is an integrated feature in Canvas. It is not available to all districts, I have found out. But it is such a great tool. You can make videos, and make quizzes, and then students have to submit through video, or you can do a lecture in Canvas Studio and then they can revise it later.

I mean, everything is in there. You don't need to go to any other tool to create a video, you can make your own videos using Canvas Studio instead of viewing a video in Zoom per se.

So everything is all integrated in one place. So great tool for getting students to send out videos, talking, and you can assess their speaking, their listening, and so.

Mariana Silva: You can also upload, for example, any other video, a YouTube video you like, and create a quiz on that. So instead of having the students watch a three-minute video with no pause, they may not listen towards the end of it, this way, you pause and you create some questions. And so the video pauses and the students are prompted with a question, and then they have to come up with the answer.

It also has amazing automatic captioning that you can also add it because sometimes it doesn't perceive student's names or names in general very well. We say MiraCosta. God knows what is coming up there, it is not MiraCosta.

I use it a lot to trim and edit videos. I do some videos for teachers, so I like to record those and I'm like, OK, how do I do that cool highlight? And it gives me those tools. Very user-friendly because I'm not such a video person, but I've learned a lot with it. Chris, did you want to--

Chris Vela Che: No. I think it's all good.

Mariana Silva: I think we only have a minute. So Zoom, I think you pretty much--

Chris Vela Che: Yes, we covered the Zoom. I would just give you a piece of advice. If you're going to be using Zoom, just use-- well, if you're already using Zoom, I would give you the advice of just exploring all the features.

And one of the cool features is the whiteboard templates. If your students know how to annotate, you can pretty much test them right in there. OK, such and such, I want you to give me the answer, or circle the answer, or underline the verb, whatever.

And you also have templates. If you're doing anything with the KWL chart, you know what you know, so students can start as a group texting over here or writing over here.

So there's many ways to get that interaction using Zoom. Again, students need to be aware of how to use their Zoom toolbar in order for them to show you their engagement there.

What else? Annotate polls in Zoom, live reactions. These are all ways to prompt students, OK, get that engagement going. Tell me what you know, how you feel, the constant asking in the same tool. So I think that is all.

Mariana Silva: So we have a lot of surveys, polls, if you want to explore. We already did Mentimeter together. Pear Deck, have you heard of this? It's an extension to Google, and it's very interactive. So you can have a slide in the middle of many other slides and ask for students feedback. Very cool tool.

AnswerGarden, no login. Ask a question, and students will answer. I do my midterm feedback with this and students love it because I just put the link and say, in two words describe the class. And that's all they do. And it's anonymous. It doesn't show who did it. So it's really cool.

So in Pear Deck. You can explore Padlet. Some cool videos with a lot of AI. ESL Video, our colleague Ryan is the creator of that website, so you have listening, comprehension, or watching comprehension videos. And we don't want to keep your attention more, so hopefully you learned something new. Thank you for your patience with us.

[applause]