ALISA TAKEUCHI: Just in case you are wondering, it says Mandilee on her thumbnail, but it's actually Diana. So if you do have some questions, I'm going to try to keep an eye on the chat. But if I happen to miss something, please just reach out to Diana and then she can interrupt me at any time. So we're going to keep this very casual. So thank you guys so much for joining me today. I'm super excited to be here. Let me share my screen. All right. Do you see my slides? You guys OK? 

SPEAKER: Yes. 

ALISA TAKEUCHI: Great. Thank you. Oops. I did not mean to do that. All right. Everybody, let's get started. So I'm very excited to be here with you today. My name is Alisa Takeuchi. And I am an ESL teacher at Garden Grove Adult Education in sunny Southern California. And I am here representing Access America through USA Learns. Usually, the director Andrea Willis is here, but she had some very exciting news. 

She applied for a grant from the USCIS and she got it. And so she had to do some training for it. And so it just happened to coincide right over this. And so she was really sad that she couldn't be here, but I am happy to fill in for her. And I'm excited to talk with you about the new course that USA Learns is offering. 

And so with that, we'll go ahead and get started. And again, if you have any questions or insights or if you've used USA Learns and you want to share some things, please put them in the chat, and we'll try to get to those. All right. So if you can put in the chat whether or not you've used the USA Learns with your students, that would be great. Just put Yes or No. And I hope that I'll be able to see the chat at some place. Let's see if I can get my-- 

All right. Oh, I see already a couple yeses and I see some nos. That's OK. Oh, yeah. For those of you that are nos, welcome. I'm super excited to share this with you. I think your mind is going to get blown away. It is a free resource. And it goes through all gamuts of the ESL language learners. So let's go ahead and get started. 

So here's our agenda for today. We're going to go ahead and talk about the purpose of USA Learns in general and Access America specifically. And we'll go over the USA Learns website and all the courses that are available to you. And then we'll go into a deep dive about what is Access America, and we'll take a tour-- a live tour on the website, and then I have some tips because I've been using it for quite a while now. 

And I teach beginning ESL. And so the things that I've done with my students could be very helpful for any student. I think that's-- because beginning ESL, we have to make things very simple and very scaffolded. And so I think that even if you have higher-level ESL students, maybe some of the tips that I have could be helpful for you. 

And then as we're going through this tour, and you're learning about USA Learns and Access America, I want your head to start spinning on all the things that you could actually do with your class. I mean, this is literally something that you could do with your students tomorrow. So I really want you to be active listeners and just really participate in how you feel this could be beneficial for any of your students. 

All right. So the purpose. So we wanted to make sure that we increase educators' awareness of Access America through USA Learns with an integration ESL course that helps immigrants and refugee English learners to be successful in the US and integrate into their communities by using the interactive language learning opportunities. And the reason why this is going to be important is because it's going to be a question that's going to be answered from 2008. 

We also wanted to share tips with you about using this free resource to support your learners in different ways. So USA Learns. USA Learns was originally funded by OCTAE, which is the Office of Career Technical and Adult Education. Because back in 2008, they wanted to know, can adults learn English online? 

And Andrea and her team were like, emphatic. They were like, they would say, yes. Even back then when the internet, things like that, it was still not as sophisticated, of course, as it is now. And so they really wanted to show the-- they wanted to show OCTAE that yes, this can happen. And the courses that are in this website focused on beginning and intermediate-level ESL. There's not really an advanced level. 

But I think that there's something coming up in the forefront. I think that there's something that she would like to do that she just doesn't have the funds for it right now. So like I said, this website was actually launched in 2008. And back then, I was-- it's kind of a full circle for me, because I actually helped with some of the curriculum design in 2008. 

Just a very small part of it and then I forgot about it for a long time. And then it came back around. And then now I work with Andrea in content development, things like that. So it's been very, very exciting to see this progress and the progression of this course. And it's extremely important to Andrea and her team that this website remains free for all learners. 

But with that, she has to accept ads. And so you will see ads on the website, but they are very meticulous in making sure that the ads do not interrupt with the content on the website so that students aren't confused about where it says, Click Here or Continue. That they're just clicking on random things and ended up being on ads. 

So they're very conscientious about where they're placing the ads. But technically, that really is like their bread and butter. And that's how they can keep the website for free. So here are some stats which are like unbelievable. So since 2008, the web page has been viewed 2.1 billion times. So I mean, that is extremely rare for a website to have lasted that long and to have that many views. 

The number of website visitors have been about 17 million. And the average monthly views have been about 10 million. And the average monthly users is about 190,000 per month. So those are incredible statistics. And because it's free and because it's a really good quality website resource, it really helps the students come back. And also just with a new upgrade that they've done with making device friendly, that's also contributed to success. 

So they have data that shows that every single country except North Korea, have access to USA Learns at some point. Andrew used to say every single country. But then her boss went and looked at the map. And there was one teeny tiny little dot, and that was North Korea. So North Korea has not, unfortunately, used USA Learns, probably, because they don't know about it, because they're very limited in the things that they do have access to. 

But every other country in the world has had access to US Learns. All right. So here is USA Learns as an umbrella. There are many different courses and how this website first was introduced was that Andrew and her team had access to different kinds of ESL development courses. And they took those courses and then they reinvented them and made these courses in the website. 

So some of these that you'll see here, you might be familiar. If you've been teaching for quite a while, you'll notice that there's some distance learning videos and things that are embedded in this course. That's where they came from. So the first one that we come to is the first English course. This is designed for low beginning, high beginning ESL. 

And it follows a series of-- it's a series and it follows ESL students with their teacher, Miss Marquez. And I just know from experience that this is a very popular course. It's very user friendly, very low level English friendly, and the students invest in it. They invest in the characters and their storylines and they invest in Miss. Marquez. So Andrew was telling me one time, I think, on Facebook-- somebody on Facebook asked for Miss. Marquez's information because they wanted to ask her out on a date. 

So they really do kind of get invested in these series, and all the different situations that the students actually go through as well. So that's the first English course. Then we have the second English course. Sorry. Then we have the English 1+. So it's kind of a bridge between the first course in the second course. They actually got this later on after the second course. So they wanted to make a little bridge between the two. 

And this follows the story with Anna. And Anna has moved to Washington D.C. and she's getting a new job. And she puts ourselves into these predicaments. And again, the students really just get invested in her little antics and she's funny. And so many weird things happen to her. So the students really like that. And so this is more for beginning high intermediate lowish vocabulary and English level. 

And then, the next one, the second English course, if any of you ever used my EFA, my English For All, the English For All series, you'll see that he's very recognizable. He's a genie. And he goes through and again, it goes through a series of stories and how he interacts with a bunch of different characters. And so in the course of their daily lives and things like that. And this is geared more for intermediate students. And it's primarily based on job and life skills. 

And then the next one is practice English and reading. This was actually some news stories that Andrea and her team had been given. And they're authentic news stories that they recreated to make into these units so that students can read and then do comprehension and questions. And this is more for actual intermediate students and maybe a little bit higher, intermediate, intermediate high-- excuse me. 

All right. So one of the newer courses that have been developed for USA Learns is the skills for the nursing assistant. Now this, again, was also a course prior to coming to USA Learns. And Andrea was able to get access to it. And then they created a whole course for this. And this is really good if you have any kind of medical or health care pathway at your school. So not only is this good for ESL students because it goes through vocabulary and goes through communication and things like that, but the nurse who actually helped create the curriculum that gave this to Andrea said that many Native English speakers actually use this course as well because a lot of it teaches about communication skills and patient care and things like that. 

So even though it is geared for ESL students, native English speakers also can benefit from this. So if you do have a CNA course at your site, you might want to tell the CNA teacher that this course is available for free. And that the students can use it as supplemental material. One of the most popular courses in USA Learns is the citizenship course. 

This has been groundbreaking. USCIS has acknowledged it. There have been so many recognition's for this particular course. And it goes from the beginning to the interview. So anything from even thinking about trying to get your citizenship, applications and things like that, all the way to the interview and everything in between it covers. And so it's a very comprehensive course. And again, it's free. So if you have citizenship classes at your school, tell your citizenship teachers about this. A lot of them probably already know about it. But in case they don't, this also can be used as supplemental material or used as their distance learning material or actually just used as their curriculum for their class. 

So what I was mentioning earlier about Andrea not being here is because she applied for a grant through the USCIS because the USCIS actually just updated their curriculum. So the USCIS has their own curriculum course and it's been upgraded. And so Andrea has gotten the grant to use that money to upgrade her citizenship course to reflect that curriculum. So that's going to be on the horizon in the next few months. So take a look at that as well. 

So here is Access America, near and dear to our hearts. It was launched in the spring. So this is a very new course. And this was actually created from the ground, up. Everything from the actors, to the script, to the scenarios have been created specifically for this course. Nothing was taken from another previous course. And so you will follow a family and this just happens to be one of Andrea's friends. And he agreed to be the father and the husband in the course. And then his actual three children are also in the course. And then they hired an actress to be the wife and the mother. 

So it's very near and dear to Andrea's heart that this course was created with some of her friends as the characters. So this is a new integration course. This was something that was in the mix for a long, long time because many people, agencies had asked her to create a course that could help new immigrants to acclimate to life in the United States. And so that's how this all developed. 

All right, so I kind of want you to think now about how it is with your students, whether you have some new immigrants, or you have some students who have been here for a while, what are some of the challenges that they face when they first arrive or when they try something new? If you can put that in the chat for me, that would be great. So what are some of the more challenging things that new immigrants face when they first arrive? So it could be in general, or it could be specific for your students. Yeah, for sure the language. 

Barriers, so the buzzword is always about the barriers. What barriers do our students face? Yeah, not being able to communicate or not feeling self-confident enough to communicate because we even have students that are in intermediate English and above that still don't have that self confidence in them to be able to express themselves the way they want to. And so yeah, definite. 

Need for translations, yep, absolutely. Our students-- and especially if you teach beginning ESL, they're very dependent on their family and their friends. And sometimes that can be a burden. And I know that they don't want-- if they want to move out of that place where they're not so dependent, that they can self advocate for themselves. Anytime they go someplace new, and the thought of them having to maybe speak English really does frighten them. And so yeah, I think that the language definitely is one of the biggest barriers, of course, for our ESL students. 

Also navigating systems. Sometimes our students, again, with intermediate English and stuff, sometimes they don't understand how our education system works or how does the bank work here because a lot of times, there's distrust of the banking system in their own country. And so maybe they're just not interested or they're very hesitant to learn about the banking system here, or about employment. What goes on a resume, or how do you apply for a job and things like that because again, doing those tasks in their country could be a totally different experience. 

Great. Thanks so much everybody for contributing. If you think of something later on, please put it in the chat and we'll continue to monitor that. So here we go. Access America. So Access America is an innovative and free integration ESL course that covers all three pillars of immigrant integration. Linguistic, civic and economic because these are the three things that we really want our students to succeed with. Of course, we need them to apply themselves and learn the language. But in that, as they grow confident with them, we want them to be responsible citizens and not necessarily citizens of the United States, but citizens within their residency. 

So within their community, we would love for them to start volunteering or start working in-- helping out at schools, or in their church, or even become leaders as time goes on. If they wanted to be more in a leadership role within their community, that would be great. And then economic. We want them to be economically independent, either from family or from themselves so that they can go and buy a house or get a loan or things like that. Things that they would like to do, but they just don't know how to yet. 

All of the courses in USA Learns are self paced, or teacher guided. So I'm going to explain that a little bit. You, as instructors, have choices on how you would like to use any of the courses in the USA Learns website. They're contextualized, intermediate-- it says intermediate, but is actually beginning intermediate ESL lessons, including hundreds of multimedia elements that promote learners access to knowledge, skills, resources and services necessary for success in the United States. 

So when Access America first came out, Andrea had asked me, hey, can you take a look at the course and gauge what level it was? And I really felt like a beginning high students could be very successful on this independently. And even-- because I teach beginning literacy, beginning low. I use this also in my class more as teacher directed, but then with some independent learning. But just to have them do it independently might be a little bit too hard. But for beginning high students and definitely intermediate students, this course could be done independently on their own without any teacher help fairly easily. 

And that also aligns to EL Civics. So this was also another big thing because EL Civics is such a big proponent in our ESL classes and in also the college career readiness and things like that, we really wanted to make this not just a separate entity, but really how can we integrate some of these things that we do all the time anyways into this course, or how can we find things in this course that can correlate with my textbook and with civics. And so I'm going to go into that as well. And your mind is going to be blown. You're going to be so excited about what I'm going to tell you. 

And then, of course, this course right here really goes well into a smooth transition into the citizenship course. So the key features for Access America is that it explains how to navigate US systems, how to obtain work, housing, educational, Medicare, and a lot more. It helps learners access available community resources in a very authentic way. And I really do want to push that. There is a section in there where students actually find uses in their own community to use what they've learned in the unit to prepare themselves for outside the classroom work. It connects learners to the communities with the In Your Community activities that encourage learners to take what they have learned into the real world. And then it simultaneously teaches, like it says, intermediate English and beginning English. 

So here are some of the key terms that have been shifted. So originally, things like the word, honeymoon, like the honeymoon phase, or stress, or coping, adapting and fully integrated, USA Learns actually change those so that it's more user-friendly, student-friendly. Instead of the honeymoon phase, it's called New Beginnings. Instead of talking about stress, it's like facing challenges. So these are euphemisms for the same thing, but more in a calming and SEL way. 

Taking control. Instead of coping with something, you're taking control of something. Instead of adapting, you're becoming part of something and then fully integrated, you're settling in. So again, they were really mindful in some of the vocabulary words that they used to really help students transition into this, especially coming out of the pandemic. So we're going to go ahead and take a tour of USA Learns. So I am going to change my share. And let me get out of this. Just a second. Whoop. 

And as we're going through the live session, I would love for you to just again, get the mind spinning on how you can use this in your classroom tomorrow, or the next time you teach a class. So I am registered in-- oh, I'm sorry, can you see Access America? Can you see the page? 

AUDIENCE: Yes. 

ALISA TAKEUCHI: OK, great. Thank you so much. Before I move on, I want to make sure you guys all see. So these are the different courses. So here is Access America. And I just want to give you a short tour about what it looks like and what your students will see when they actually get into it. So I'm going to go ahead and select a different unit. So first thing we're going to do is we're going to go to USALearns.org. And it goes straight into their students sign in. So I am going to go ahead and log in as a student. Oops. 

We'll talk about creating an account in just a second, but we'll just go ahead and do the coursework first. So let's go ahead and go to Access America. And as you can see, there are five units. And here are those names that we talked about, New Beginnings, Facing Challenges, Taking Control, Becoming Part of a Community, and Settling In. As you can see on the right hand side, there are these boxes. Now when a box is empty, that means that the student hasn't even started that particular unit yet. If it is halfway full, that means they've started it. Not necessarily they've done half of the work, but they at least started a part of that course. And so it just shows that it's been started. 

And then if it's fully blue, like this one would be, that means that unit has been completed. And once it's been completed, you will see some scores here because at the end of every unit, there is a test that the students will take. And depending if they're just doing it on their own independently, or if you are monitoring their work, you might want to say, hey, make sure that your test is 80% and above. And if it's 79, or below, maybe you might want to take the test again or go through the lessons one more time to get a score that's even better. 

So it really just depends on how you want to use this course with your students. So let's go ahead and do the New Beginnings. And I'm going to make sure that I'm sharing my sound. 

AUDIENCE: There's a question, Alisa. 

ALISA TAKEUCHI: Oh, sure. Sure. 

AUDIENCE: Are there worksheets or videos? 

ALISA TAKEUCHI: Embedded in the course themselves are the videos and a lot of listening and a lot of videos in all the courses, in every unit. And for worksheets, it's all embedded within the course. They do it interactively. Now that's a really good question because for me, personally, I have created some actual PDF things to supplement with it, but that was on my own. So there isn't like a workbook or pages or something that you can print out. Everything is done interactively. Thanks. 

All right. So this is the beginning of the course. And so 1.1 is A New Community. And within this course, you can see all the different activities. And the nice thing about it is that it's very consistent in every single unit, every single lesson. There's always an introduction, places in the community-- oops, sorry-- and then it goes through here talking and goes through grammar. And then it has different-- the names are going to be a little bit different for every unit, but it goes through the same kind of system. It breaks it down into different sections. And then there's always an In Your Community. And then there's always a review and self evaluation. 

So it's very student-friendly so that every time they go to a different topic or a unit or a lesson, they'll pretty much see the exact same thing. So let me show you the meet the family video. And you'll also see that there is a video here. And let's go ahead and start that. 

SPEAKER 1: This is the Martinez family, Diego, Elena, and their three children, Blanca, Rudy and Mario. They moved to the United States from El Salvador five years ago. Moving to a new country isn't easy, but the family has learned a lot about living in the US. In this course, you're going to learn along with them while you watch videos and practice new vocabulary and grammar. 

ALISA TAKEUCHI: OK. So as you can see in here, the pattern of speech is quite a bit fast for beginning, beginning students. For me, I would play this video two, three, four times. Maybe pause it, talk about the different family members' names, things like that. I would really scaffold this because it was quite fast, even though some of the vocabulary is quite basic. But the speech pattern was a little bit quick. But for beginning-high, maybe intermediate-low students, that should be a very comfortable pace for them. So you would have to preview and know your students and then decide how much or how fast you want to go through these courses with your students. 

All right. When the students are in the course, they always refer to the next. That is one of the key things that Andrea was really adamant about for ESL students, is that it was very student friendly and that as soon as they finish something, all they have to do is continue with Next, and it will go on to the next activity. So its next, next, next, next. Until they don't have any more time or they want to stop for the day or whatnot. But as far as just continuing with the lessons, all they have to do is click on Next. 

If they ever want to go back, or for you, when you want to go back into the main menu, you just hit the Menu button. And it takes you back. So this one takes you back to this lesson. And if I hit Menu back one more time, then it goes back. So you'll see where you are in the cookie crumble trail. 

So as you can see, there are many, many videos within this unit. And then there's almost also always a vocabulary word. So there's a lot of listening as well. So if you go to the Learn Key Words, you're going to go ahead and practice the words and so you'll go to Next. And then they'll go ahead and they have the vocabulary word. They have a definition and then they have a sentence. And when you click on Listen-- 

COMPUTER: Schedule. A schedule is a plan that shows when things will happen. You can find the dates and times on the schedule. 

ALISA TAKEUCHI: And so it goes through and you can see here that there are 16 vocabulary words. So here is where I had made a vocabulary list page so students could do this in their notebooks as well, but if you wanted to create something that was uniformed, they can have a little worksheet and it says the vocabulary word and then the definition and then the sentence. So maybe my students would copy this to practice even more, like their writing, and then getting used to the vocabulary a little bit more. So that's how they would use the vocabulary words. 

So as you can see, there are different sections for this unit and then it goes into the grammar. So can and can't. And prepositions with times and dates. And then there's always a dictation. I want to say always, but I'm not sure if it's 100%. But many times, there is a dictation section where the students will listen. 

COMPUTER: Can I pay my bill in person? 

ALISA TAKEUCHI: And then they're going to type. Now one of the new features with this particular lesson that they actually changed from the other courses was that the students used to have to type up here in these little lines. But actually now they just type into this blue box and then it will fill it in. So they can listen to it as many times as they want. 

COMPUTER: Can I pay my bill in person? 

ALISA TAKEUCHI: Quite fast, right? And vocabulary, a little bit more intense. So again, from beginning literacy, beginning-low, probably not ideal unless you're doing it with them or they get to play it over and over and over again. But for beginning-high intermediate level, I think that would be a very good-- this would be a good exercise. So I'm going to listen to it one more time. 

COMPUTER: Can I pay my bill in person? 

ALISA TAKEUCHI: So it does go through punctuation as well. So can I pay my bill on-- I forgot what it said. 

AUDIENCE: In person. 

ALISA TAKEUCHI: In person. Thank you. 

[LAUGHTER] 

So I'm just going to say on person, just so I can show you, on person, question mark. So again, this is now going into digital literacy because students need to know how to make a capital and they also need to know how to make a question mark, which if they don't have a lot of practice typing on a computer or on their phones or on their tablets, they may not know this. And so if I didn't do that, it would check me. But I'm going to check. And then you can see, it does give you an example. It gives you some sort of clue that, oh, something is wrong. So then you can go back and change it. And then check again. 

And then it gives you little stars. The stars really don't mean that much. But if you get it right the very first time, it'll give you two stars. And then if you go back and fix the problem, it'll give you one star. And then if you can't get it even past then, it'll just say, nice dry or good job. And it'll give you some encouragement. So again, so there's six of these that they could practice. And they could do this over and over again. 

AUDIENCE: There's a question if they can record their vocab words. 

ALISA TAKEUCHI: Not within the course. There is a place where they actually can practice their speaking, but it doesn't keep the recording because that would take a lot of bandwidth. And so they could, if they wanted to keep a recording of them speaking or practice any kind of language, they actually could just do it on their phones. But within the course itself, there is no place to keep recordings. They can record and practice their speaking, but it won't keep it. I'll show you that too. Thanks for the question. Yeah, thank you. All right. 

And then I'm going to show you the In Your Community section. There is an In Community section in every single unit. And so in this activity, you will study and talk about your communities. Select Next, so it gives them some directions. And it gives them an assignment. So they're going to choose a store in their community and answer the questions. So what kind of store is it? When is it open? What can you buy there and do you want to shop there? So of course, they don't say, the Home Depot, they say the house Depot. But I mean, they could pick Costco, or Sam's Club, or the supermarket, their local market or something like that. 

And then they could do their information and either do it on a piece of paper or maybe they do it on a Google Doc or a Microsoft Word. And then they submit it to you for checking. And then here is that place where they get ready to speak. So here is an example. So my suggestion would be that they write it down first. Write down their little information first and then they're going to practice speaking it. And so here's an example. 

COMPUTER: There is a hardware store near my house. It's open seven days a week, from 7 AM to 9 PM. It's a big store and they sell a lot of things, like tools, paint and building supplies. I'll probably shop there sometimes because the prices are good. 

ALISA TAKEUCHI: So again, this student answered all of those questions that were previous-- those four or five questions that there were. And wrote a little, tiny, short-- little, short segment. And then when you go Next, then they can go ahead and talk about it. So we're going to listen. 

COMPUTER: Now it's your turn. Talk about a store in your community. 

ALISA TAKEUCHI: And so they could do some free speaking or they could just read off of their paper if they want. So I'm just going to do-- there is a store near my house. It sells tools and it is open every day. And now I can play it back. 

ALISA TAKEUCHI (RECORDING): There is a store near my house. It sells tools and it is open every day. 

ALISA TAKEUCHI: So again, it won't save this. As soon as I leave this page, it will disappear. But if the student wanted you to listen to it, they could play it back and then you listen to it and give them some feedback on pronunciation or grammar or whatnot. So it's a really good way for them to practice some of the things that they've been learning within the unit. And then practice the speaking part about it. So they're telling, maybe they're going to give a review like, it's a good store-- like he said, it's a good store and the prices are good. So maybe you tell the students to make some sort of review or would you recommend this store to someone? Things like that. 

And then down here at the bottom, there's always a vocabulary review. There's that Check Your Knowledge. So that's kind of be like their assessment. And then that will give them the score. So when they finish the whole unit, then everything will be in blue and then they'll see a score at the end. Are there any questions in regards to what you've seen so far? I'm going to open up the chat again. Let's see here. Worksheets-- so far, we've got all the questions that I see. If there are any more questions, please. Oh sure, let's see here. Let's go back. 

Vocabulary Review. So they're going to listen. 

COMPUTER: I love the furniture at the store. 

ALISA TAKEUCHI: So they gave them a sentence, not like-- for lower levels, they would just say furniture or something and then they had to choose. It's an actual concept. And then the students had to listen and then choose the answer. They would check it and two stars. Good job. And then there are 13 exercises with that. 

COMPUTER: Where can I throw this away? 

ALISA TAKEUCHI: OK. And then again, I can listen to it as many times as I want if I didn't quite catch it the first time. And then if I select and check, then they're like, oh, nice try. Please try again. And so then I could try again, check it. And they say, OK, great job, you got one star out of that. So these are different ways that they can go ahead and use that vocabulary that they learned, but not so much in-- it's a very subtle way. It's in a different kind of context, but they still have to listen to speech that is fairly quick paced and then go ahead and find the picture that correlates to that. 

If you have higher level students and this might be a good one and you really want to check they're listening, you might want to just ask them to listen once. They could only listen one time and then try it and see how they do. And then they can build up their listening skills so that they know they only have one chance so that they have to do that focus listening. All right. So this is just one of the units of Access America. And again, to go back into the main part of it, you're just going to go ahead and go back to the menu and these are all the different units. And then they have the unit test. 

Oh, sure. Dictation was the one that I did, was the typing. It was-- let me see if I go back to that. They listened and then they typed into the-- 

COMPUTER: Can I pay my bill in person? So they're listening to that sentence and then they're typing into the blue box. And again, it does correct them on punctuation and-- spelling, punctuation and contents. When you set up the class as a teacher, do you have to utilize an email? Yes. And we haven't gotten to that yet, but yeah, your question is, yes. The students and teachers will need to have an actual working email to access the course. And I'll show you that right now. 

So let me go back to the PowerPoint. Only one page? It is one page of dictation, but there's I think there were like six sentences that they actually do and each unit might be different. It may not follow the same rules. So each unit might have more or less dictation sentences, but it's basically a sentence that they listen and then they type the sentence. 

So teacher registration. So I'm going to show you how to register as a teacher so that you can create your classes. Now the reason why I say this now is because, like I said, you can use USA Learns as a whole, or you can use parts of it as you please. So you, as the teacher would create your teacher account and have access to all of the resources that's available to you. Now you can also create a student account because you cannot see how the students would look at it through the teacher registration. That is one thing that they did not do. 

So you won't see what a student sees through your teacher account. So you need to make a teacher account with your teacher email and then a student account with another email. So they can't use the same email as well. So for example, you might want to use-- you don't have to, but you might want to use your teacher registration with your school email address and then your student account with maybe a personal email address, if that makes sense. 

But you don't have to have a school email address to do a teacher account. You can still use Gmail, or Yahoo, or whatnot. But they just can't be two of the same accounts. When you go to USALearns.org/teacher, you're going to see this picture and you're going to Register. Once you register, you're going to put in your email address, your first name, your last name and an alias. The alias is what the students will see. 

So my name is Alisa Takeuchi, my students call me Alisa. But maybe I see on here that Mrs. Mullins, maybe they don't-- Mrs. Mullins doesn't want them to see her first name on there, so she's going to put Mrs. Mullins. So she registers with her real name, but then under Alias, she puts Mrs. Mullins because that's what her students will see and that's what they call her. And you'll put in the country, the agency type, most of you are probably going to be in adult school. If not, you could put in community college, or whatnot. Agency name and then a password. So you're going to need to make a password for your account. 

My suggestion also, for me, this is what I did just to make it easier on myself is that I have a teacher account and a student account and my passwords are the same for both. So I don't have to keep memorizing a bunch of different passwords and stuff because that's a hassle. So I have my teacher account and my student account and then my passwords are the same for both. 

After you create your account, you're going to go back to your email, the one that you used to register with. And you'll have an email from USA Learns. I think it'll say, Support. And you click on the blue link, that's confirming that your email address was real. So again, you can't put a fake email address because you're going to want to go back to that email and click on that link to confirm that that's your email address. And you'll see it right there. And then you'll go ahead and sign in using the same credentials, your email and your password. 

And then here's where you decide if you would like to have a class within USA Learns, you can create a class. The reason why you would want to create a class is if you want to manage your students. So if you have your students in your classroom, you can see the progress that they're making, which unit they're on, how much time have they taken, their scores, which units have they finished, which ones have they started, which ones have they not started? So you have access to all of that within the teacher course. 

Now if that's too much for you and you're just like, oh, that's a lot of work and that's one more thing on my plate and I really don't want to do it, not a problem. You don't have to create a class. Your students can still use USA Learns on their own, but they don't need to be in your classroom to have access to it. They would just do it independently. The side note on that is that you can't see where they're at, unless they show it to you individually. 

So that's the difference between having a classroom and then just having the students use USA Learns on their own. If you decide, yes, I really want to create a classroom for my students so that I can manage their progress, then you're going to create the class and then you're going to title the class. For me, I wrote Beginning ESL AM, because I had two classes at the time. And then they're going to do the first English course. And then I just put a description on here. If you just type in, please complete the units, or something easy for your students. The start date would be the date that you want the class to open. 

And then we recommend that you don't put an end date because if that end date comes and you don't take it out, it will stop the course. It's just nothing you can do about it. So you can just actually leave it blank. You don't even need to put an end date. And that way the course can be open for forever, if you want it to be. And then you create your class. Once you-- oh, I'm sorry. Once you create your class, then you're going to be given a class key. This is what you give to your students when they sign up then they're going to put your class key into their account. 

So now they're enrolled into your class. Now the nice thing about this is if a student forgets to enroll your class and they already start working-- they're in USA Learns they're in access America and they've already done some work and then you realize on your end you don't see them and your roster and you're saying, hey Bob, did you join my class? And they go, oh no, you know, I forgot, or I didn't, not a problem. They can enroll any time and the work that they've done carries over. So they don't have to start over again, they're not going to lose any of their work. Vise versa, is that if your student stops coming to your class and they're not coming back to your actual class anymore and you drop them from USA Learns, they still have access on their own. 

And again, they haven't lost any of their work. Their work is still there. And then they can just continue on their own. So nothing gets lost in between transitions of being put into a classroom and doing independent work, which is really, really nice. All right, so how do the students register and how do you preview the course? So remember what I told you about how, as a teacher, I can't see what the students see, unless I create a student account. So I'm going to create like a dummy account, but with my credentials with a new email address. 

They're going to go to USALearns.org. No forward slash, that's all it is, USALearns.org. And they're going to Start Now. And they're going to fill in this registration form. Now I wanted to show you what I did. So for me, like I said, I have beginning ESL students and for them to-- because they don't have a lot of experience on chromebooks and laptops or typing and things like that, what I did was-- I don't know if you can see this or not, but I created the registration form and I made a screenshot and I put it on a piece of paper and all of my students, they do the information on the paper first. They write all the information down so that I could check, did they write their email address correctly? Do they have their first name and their last name and not flip it, which a lot of students do. 

And then for the password, I force a password on them. I tell them to use their student ID numbers so that in case they forget, which they inevitably will, they'll forget their password, at least I know what their password is and I can tell them, your password is your student ID number. Then they can remember what their student ID number is and put it in. And then there's always going to be some small, little math problem. It won't always be the same, but it'll be a very easy math problem because they didn't want to put a captcha on it because sometimes those captchas are very difficult, even for native speakers or computer literate people. 

The ones where it says, click all the pictures that have a crosswalk, things like that. I mean, those are really difficult for students. And so they decided to make these very easy math problems for students to do just to make sure that they're not fake, that they're not robots. And then again, they're going to have to check their email. So whether they use a personal email or a school email, they're going to-- yeah, exactly. I'm going to hear you. They're going to have to check that email and click on that link as well. 

And then they'll sign in. And then remember that class key that we have. So at the very top of their home page, it's going to say Enroll in my Teachers Class. They're going to select that and then put in that key. And then they will automatically be enrolled into your class. And if you go into your teacher site and you go to the roster, you will see that they have-- that you'll see all the students who have actually enrolled in your class. So here are some of my tips to help you out. And this goes with any level. Again, I keep reiterating that I'm Beginning level, but it would work for any level. 

So because I already have my textbook, our school it has a textbook, we use Ventures. And so I didn't want to make a whole separate thing. I wanted to really use Access America to work with my textbook. And so what I did was that I have the chapters of my textbook and all the competencies, health, employment, shopping, blah, blah, blah. And I went back and I went to the USA Learns teacher resource page. And I went and I found all the different-- so I'm going to, I'm sorry, I'm just going to do this real fast because I know we're running out of time. I'm going to get out of this. 

All right. And then I am going to do a New Share. And I'm hoping this works. So do you see my teacher page? It says USA Learns for teachers. You guys OK? Yes, no? I'm going to-- I'm hoping you're saying yes. Thank you, Tim. So this is my teacher page. At the very top, you'll see the word Resources. And if I scroll down, you'll see Curriculum, Scope and Sequence. And every course has a scope and sequence. And for this one, for Access America, they also have a vocabulary word list, which is really, really kind of nice. But what I want to use is the Scope and Sequence. And this breaks down every single unit, every single lesson. And it breaks it down into different sections. 

And what I do is because next week, we're going to be in my textbook, I'm going to be in the health unit. What I do is I do Control F and over here-- I have my Zoom stuff in the way, sorry-- I'm going to type the word, "health". And as you can see, there are 13 places where the word "health" comes up in the Scope and Sequence. And what I can do is I look for where it says "health", and it says, "dealing with health care". So I know that in Access America, unit 2.3 is dealing with health care. 

And this would probably be good supplemental material for my textbook. And so I can have the option to look through this and go directly to this unit and pick and choose what I like to use with my students. Some of them might be too hard and I don't want to use it, or if it's a little bit challenging, maybe I'll use it at the end, or if it's a pretty good resource like vocabulary words and things, I'm going to use it right with my textbook at the same time. 

So this is a really good way, a very quick and easy way to find which units in Access America correlates with the units in your textbook. Another one that they have is 3.1, Eating Healthy. And so again, if I went down here, I can just go through all the different places where health comes up. And the next one was Eating Healthy, 3.1. And this goes perfectly with our EL Civics Nutrition unit. There's a nutrition unit in EL Civics that talks about healthy and unhealthy foods. And this particular unit goes really well with that. 

So I'm not going to create more work for myself trying to get all my students doing the textbook, plus the EL Civics and plus Access America, I'm going to use all of it at the same time so that we can just utilize all the resources without having to do a lot of extra work. So let me go back and let me just finish up what we're talking about. So Andrea got a really nice grant from the Dollar General literacy foundation. And she was able to take the old way of using USA Learns on devices and make them actually design-friendly so that they can be used on phones, tablets, and laptops. 

So these are like the old way, how it's all scrunched up here. And this is the new way that it looks. So those are really, really-- it was a really good idea because most of our students don't have, or many of our students don't have laptops and things. So they're using their phones to access. And so if the design can be friendly on their phones, it's going to make it a lot better for them to be able to access the courses and then work on their own. 

The other thing that I suggested to her because I was creating my own, when a student actually finished the course, I was creating certificates for them. And then I mentioned it to her. And she's like, oh my gosh, that's a great idea. So they actually went and they created a certificate where it has these fields that are empty. And then you, as the teacher, can fill them in, or if a student was doing it independently, they can create their own certificate when they finished a certificate. 

USA Learns has been approved in Texas and in other states as their foundational digital literacy framework. And so we're really trying hard to get this out nationally and as a distance learning curriculum. This was the new grant I was telling you about that Andrea got from the USCIS for the citizenship course. And she and I are also working with RTI International and we're making a teacher's guide for this particular course, because again, we want to spread this out nationally. And so we are designing an all inclusive teacher guide for this particular course. And it's not quite ready yet, but it will be hopefully, by the end of this calendar year. 

Back to that place where I was telling you. The wheels are spinning in your head. I know you're thinking, wow, this is really great and I know I can use any of these courses, one or any of these courses with my students. And so I'm hoping that in the chat, you can put in some ideas of how you might want to use it. And if you have any more questions, please ask them. And I'm going to check the chat. 

And I see that Diana put in the evaluation as well. Please, please, please, take the time to fill out the evaluation. It really does help presenters. I know that sometimes it's a little bit of a pain, but when presenters do their presentation, we really enjoy the feedback that we get, and the honest feedback because we really want to make the presentations the best that they can be. And so when you tell us that there was too much of this, or not enough of this, we really take that to heart and we really do want to create presentations that are be worthwhile for everybody. 

So please take the time to fill out that evaluation for me and for CAEP. And I hope that you guys are enjoying the summit and that you're really going through some of these sessions and things with open minds and really just accepting some of the information that's being passed on to you. Let's see here. Oh, great. So thank you, Patricia. Yeah, she's saying that Access America, it looks great. And we hope so. We worked really, really hard on it and we're hoping that it will be super beneficial. And not just USA-- I mean, not just Access America, but citizenship and all the other ESL courses as well. 

If there's nothing else, than I completely thank you for your time. And if you need any help, please reach out. 

AUDIENCE: Yeah, thank you Alisa for the wonderful presentation. 

ALISA TAKEUCHI: Absolutely. 

AUDIENCE: Yeah, thank you everyone for participating in the second day of CAEP Summit. And as Alisa already mentioned, please take a moment to provide feedback in the evaluation. I just posted the link in the chat for this session. I hope everybody has a great day. 

ALISA TAKEUCHI: Thanks so much, everybody. Take care. 

AUDIENCE: Bye. 

ALISA TAKEUCHI: Bye.