Marjorie Olavides: Just make sure to accept the record dialogue or else you'll be removed from the meeting. And with that, I'm going to now turn it over to Kelly Henwood who will be presenting planning and collaborating to prepare and equip students for digital equity and inclusion.

Kelly Henwood: Thank, you Marjorie, and we're really happy that everybody chose to join us this morning-- Friday morning at 8:30. Thank you. So I'm Kelly Henwood, and I'm the consortium director for San Diego Adult Ed Regional Consortium. And I'm very happy this morning that we have a really great cross-functional partnership team to talk about our journey into digital equity in what we've been doing as an institution with our partners from the city of San Diego.

I just wanted to say a few words, and I'm going to turn it over to our team to talk about their sections. But I wanted to just touch on some points of how this relates to our consortium's strategic plan. And so this was actually part of our addressing educational needs for our three-year strategic plan that we just submitted. It's also actually been a component of our annual plan.

Since the pandemic last year, we included digital equity as a large part of our strategic plan or our annual plan as well. Just really quickly, we are a two-member consortium. We're a two-member consortium. So it's San Diego College of Continuing Education and San Diego Union School District Adult Ed Programming.

And so we're a two-member consortium, and we are a large non-credit institution. I think most people know that. One of the things I just want to talk about why we actually started this journey into digital equity and inclusion or digital equity and literacy is we've been doing a lot of different efforts pre-pandemic and during the pandemic in terms of digital equity. But it became very apparent that there was a lot of disparate efforts in our organization, and we really wanted to bring it together.

And so there was a team of faculty and myself that came together to put together a large plan with the goal of ensuring that all of our learners were ready before and after enrollment in terms of being prepared and equipped and skilled in terms of digital equity for both their educational programming and post-enrollment success.

And so we came up with a pretty comprehensive large plan that we're still working the plan right now that includes things around looking at our data related to digital equity, looking at assessment of the needs for onboarding that our students and potential students have, looking at digital learning platforms, mapping existing cross-program, learning what we're actually doing right now to prepare for digital literacy and where some of the needs might be.

And the we also-- we're looking at campus facilities space for tutoring centers and different tutoring models. So again, we've developed this plan and we're still working the plan. I think one of the aspects of this presentation that we want to share is something related to work-based learning and also community partnerships.

And so we have a relationship with the city of San Diego, and we have two presenters here this morning, Kelsey Baird and Amina Hayat, who are going to talk more about what the city of San Diego is doing and a broader view of what we do as an institution and as a consortium. And so just really quickly, just as everyone else probably experienced through the pandemic, we lost about half of our learners at the midpoint of the pandemic from pre-pandemic during the pandemic.

We also knew through some surveys that we had done that a lot of our learners, one had never taken any online or distance education courses, and many of our learners also didn't have adequate equipment or Wi-Fi in order to stay engaged in their educational journey. And so because of those reasons, we know that this is an ongoing thing that we're all dealing with in the sphere of adult education and higher education.

And so that's part of the impetus of us coming together and putting together this plan and continuing to work this plan. So those are some connections to our consortium and our planning process. What we really hope that you walk away from this presentation, this morning is to learn more about what a large non-credit, adult education institution has done through the pandemic and now what we're doing after the pandemic.

And also how we form these relationships with nonprofit partners as well as with the city of San Diego. And then also we hope that you get a lot of information about what the city is doing, showing great leadership in terms of access and digital equity issues. And hopefully, that will help inspire some of you to work with some of your public agencies, whether it's your city, your county, or your regional public entities to move some of your goals forward as well.

So with that being said, I'm going to click on, and I just want to ask a few questions. And this is, actually, something that you can put in the chat. We really just want to find out why you chose this session. So what aspects prompted you to choose this session? What are some of the gaps that you're still seeing are your learners? And what types of partnerships are you looking for to support your digital equity needs?

And you can put all that in the chat. And then what we want to do is make sure that through our presentation, we're addressing some of those questions. And as Marjorie said, you can raise your hand if you have questions as you're presenting, but we also are going to take note of that and then at the end try to make sure that we actually are addressing some of the reasons why you came to this session. So feel free to answer those questions in the chat if you can, if you have things that prompted you to choose this session. And I'll just give you a moment for that.

Thank you, Gina. Thank you, Rachel. OK. So we're going to turn it over because we do have some really great information that we want to share with you. So I'm going to turn this over to Kelsey Baird, who's from the city of San Diego in the Access 4 All project. And so over to you, Kelsey.

Kelsey Baird: Thank you, Kelly. Yeah. So I am the Digital Equity Lead for the city of San Diego. And what that means is I manage digital infrastructure efforts, so broadband access and also our digital equity programming. So SD Access 4 All is the city's Digital Equity Initiative. It came to being during the pandemic when city council allocated funding with the goal of connecting low-income communities to the internet.

And so we subscribe to a four-pillar model. That is, access to the internet, access to devices, digital skills, and the creation of public spaces from which to engage in the first three of those pillars. And to note, we have a public Wi-Fi rollout with over 400 open public Wi-Fi locations. And those were determined in partnership with community-based organizations.

We participate in the Emergency Connectivity Program via our public libraries. So we have 4,000 mobile hotspots and also chromebooks on offer for checkout. We also offer tech on the go, computer skills training programs. So those are 11 classes weekly. No cost to residents held throughout the city.

And then, now we're really proud of our grassroots community-led outreach efforts around the Federal Home Internet Subsidy, the Affordable Connectivity Program. But I really want to say that our Digital Navigator Services are truly the connection point between community and the suite of resources. It's really the glue that binds everything together.

And our program is currently funded entirely through city budgets. So we've built it very, very lean with hopes to continually scale and formalize as more funding becomes available. So we have, right now, 11 navigators. They are fluent in eight languages. And they're placed at seven host sites, including, city libraries, a recreation center, and critically, San Diego College of Continuing Education where we have one navigator right now with plans to add more and scale up shortly.

And I also want to say that navigators do a ton of outreach events. And we have a toll-free help line. That is live 50 hours a week, which works to triage services and offer to support two residents in all areas of the city. So if you could just go back a few slides, yep, perfect. So San Diego has a population of roughly 1.4 million residents, and that's just the city, not the greater metro area.

And 53,000 households in our city lack internet. So we really work on focusing Access 4 All programs and services in three key, what we call, digital equity priority areas of the city. And you can see on the map in the orange where these areas are. So up to 28% of households in these orange areas lack broadband access.

And 18%, which is double the county average, lack of computers. So these neighborhoods are subject to what is called digital redlining and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance defines this as discrimination by internet service providers in the deployment, maintenance, and/or upgrade of infrastructure or delivery of service.

And so they're really facing-- these communities are really facing structural barriers to access. In the city of San Diego Households of Color report internet subscriptions at half the rate of white identified households. So a primary digital equity priority area of the city, and you can see it in the middle there. Is the San Diego Promise Zone.

It is a federally designated 6.5 square mile area comprised of partner organizations that work through a collective impact model on a common goal areas such as increasing access to jobs, access to healthy foods. So at the onset of the pandemic, promising partners, were really describing significant challenges that they and their clients were facing, accessing basic internet and computers so that they were having difficulty just participating in society on lockdown.

And really, some type of navigation assistance was identified as a need in these working group meetings. CCE was the first partner that the city formally approached to discuss. The viability and development of a program such as our Digital Navigator Program. And there are really four core reasons as to why CCE was such a critical partner.

Number 1, they were already doing the work. CCE offers no tuition education. They support an adult learner clientele who is really directly impacted by the digital divide but not supported through more traditional or more visible K through 12 digital equity efforts. They already offer digital literacy programming. And so essentially, we consider them as subject-matter experts that we could really learn from through this process.

Number 2, CCE really got it. I will say that, we approached a lot of partner organizations and they didn't quite understand what we were trying to do here or maybe why it mattered. And we didn't really have to have that conversation with CCE. They were already bringing us data as to why digital equity is really critical for things like workforce development and just daily life.

Number 3, CCE has an extensive footprint of 40,000 students, I believe, with campuses located in our digital equity priority areas of the city. So we knew that our focus populations were going to be present, and there was going to be high traffic if we located a Digital Navigator Program on a CCE campus.

And the number 4 is just that CCE is fantastic, really not only at delivering on their educational mission, but also in providing these additional supports and wraparound services, which this program would fall under that category. So they were really a perfect partner and a no-brainer in this program.

And I will also add that Kelly Henwood was an already active member in the Promise and Working Group Meetings which are hosted by the city. And so she was always already centering digital equity and the needs of the students in the work that we were already doing. So their consistent engagement made them really just a natural partner on this program. Next slide, please.

So program. If you could just move to the next slide? Yep, perfect. So program development has taken two years from first idea to implementation, because we're a city, and we're a big bureaucracy. And it always takes five times longer than you hope. The whole program is based on a national model founded by the nonprofit, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance. But we have really taken great pains to adapt it locally.

Eight organizations, including CCE, also the Housing Commission, the International Rescue Committee, Local Computer Refurbish, or Digital Literacy Organizations, libraries, and parks and rec were met jointly as a working group with the NDIA to really design, co-design the program so that it worked across entities and systems. So that was really important that we did that work in the beginning.

We self-launched this July and officially launched in October. And to date, the program has supported over 900 community members with approximately 600 direct client contact hours. So I will say that there is a basic formula for creating a program, a Digital Navigator Program and that would be first, of course, very importantly funding.

Next would be staff. So having your digital navigators in place. Some type of program management, additional support, if possible. The third would be a ticketing system or a case management system to track client interactions over time. And then there would be a resource database to use for client referrals.

And then finally, a host site or a hotline, a helpline. So I will say that, like I mentioned, our program is funded entirely through city budgets right now. But there are opportunities for funding that will be coming down the pipeline from the federal government in the state. Our navigators are currently student interns who work 20 hours a week, right? And we recruit based on lived experience, diverse language, and cultural skills. And really passion and patience.

Those are the most critical. Patients and passion to connect community to resources. And in addition to their normal duties, navigators are trained on policy, they're trained on structural racism, and income inequities, and how those are involved in digital access and processes like digital redlining. And they're also trained in public speaking.

All sites utilize a software application or all of our city sites, and we will be expanding to our community sites. A software application system for the ticketing case management. And that really streamlines client interactions so far. We have also partnered with 211, who refers folks and they trained our navigators to search their online database.

So we have a back and forth reciprocal referral system. And we really work to place our navigators at sites and digital equity priority areas of the city at organizations such as CCE who support our focus populations that have high traffic and really importantly, who are trusted by community. And I will hand it off, to Armando

Armando Haro: Yeah. Thank you-- Can you move to the next slide, please? Thank you. Oh. Thank you, Kelsey. Hello, everyone. My name is Armando Haro. I work for the city of San Diego as a Digital Navigator and Digital Equity Intern, specifically, under the Digital Navigation Program.

Before I start, I'm going to give an overview of what I want to talk about. So I might be reiterating some things that Kelsey already mentioned. So like why we need digital navigators, what are digital navigators, the definition we came up with in the program. How we assist our clients and where we assist them. Also tips on how to help adult learners develop their tech skills and how adult learners at SDCCE have benefited from working with a digital navigator.

And then lastly, just a personal statement from myself, a digital navigator of what I've learned in this field. So to start off, during the rise of COVID-19 and lockdown, organizations in San Diego reported struggling to support their clients to gain manage and access to technological needs, including getting internet they could afford and also navigating online government applications like paycheck protection, rental assistance, and also just having enough computers for the clients.

So it was evident for a program like this to exist. Luckily, it's already been mentioned by Kelsey, but I feel like it's very important to reiterate it. The National Digital Inclusion Alliance, a national non-profit organization, whose mission is to advance digital equity, create a digital navigator model to address this type of need. We have spent over a year collaboratively adapting their framework with our partner organizations.

So now, what are digital navigators? So we come up with this definition. So digital navigators are trusted guides to assist residents in getting connected to the internet, digital devices, and other digital inclusion resources. But also us digital navigators, we like to take a holistic approach when we're assisting clients.

So for instance, just anything tech-related, two months ago, I had this client come and she needed to get-- she needed to apply for a low cost before this computer. So we helped her with that, and also she needed help creating a resume. So it just depends on what our client needs.

We're just going to be reiterating what Kelsey said. Currently, we have 11 digital navigators funded through the Human Resources Department Internship Program. Our digital navigators come from diverse backgrounds, and we bring a lot of skills to the tables like lived experience, intercultural competence, and also in total, we're fluent in eight languages. In total, not each one of us.

And also importantly, technical knowledge. We have undergone extensive training, not just providing hands-on support but also national and local policy, social racism, digital redlining, and collecting data to understand need in assets. And on San Diego's unique landscape and community based partners.

Now onto how we assist our clients and also where. So usually, digital navigators are placed on sites. These sites can be, like Kelsey mentioned, city libraries, rec centers, community centers. But what they all have in common is that they're located in digital equity priority areas. We're also reachable through a toll-free hotline just so-- just based on people's language preferences, we can just help them in-depth tech support or if they want to schedule a one-on-one with a digital navigator.

So during the appointment, we conduct a quick intake survey, and then a skills assessment to understand a person's goals and confidence levels. Then we'll help them work towards their goals like, for instance, telehealth appointment. We may help them check out a hotspot, which the libraries provide in the city. Also simultaneously, we can get them to enroll in the Federal Affordable Connectivity Program for monthly internet subsidy.

And let's just say like a senior comes and they want to learn how to use Skype, we help them with that too. If there's any other thing that's beyond the scope, we refer them to the right organization using two on ones database. So now, I think this is my favorite part. Tips on how to help adult learners develop their tech skills.

So anyone that has experienced trying to learn a new language knows how difficult it can be. So this is the same thing. This is the same case with adult learners. So fortunately, I was brought up learning the tech language. It's very easy for me. [inaudible] taught me in elementary school. These adult learners have that. So it's very difficult for them to learn these new things.

So you need-- so as digital navigators, we had to approach with that mindset. Just teaching them a new language. Also something very important, I think Kelsey also mentioned it, patience. Patience is crucial. Sometimes, adult learners can be impatient because it's-- some things like the internet are, for me straightforward, but for someone else who's just beginning to learn how to use a computer, pretty difficult. Or any digital device for that matter.

Also regular check-ins when you're helping a client. So just making sure that they understand and also allow them to take notes and also just take time with them. Usually, when we deal with adult learners, we'd like to schedule following appointments. So we know for sure that they grasp just the concepts.

Also just be friendly. People don't want to work with someone that's not friendly or is not enthusiastic about this work. So yeah. I highly recommend that. And also disability accommodations. So some adult learners may have disabilities. For instance, one of our digital navigators, what he did to one of our clients was, this senior, she had hearing problems. So what he did is that every time, he adjusted her keyboard in her tablet.

So every time she pressed a key, she would hear one of the keys. So for instance, I press S, it says like the letter S. Or G, G, H, H. It's out loud, so she can use the tablet. So stuff like that, accommodations to adult learners. Next, how adult learners at SDCCE have benefited from working with the digital navigator.

Their academic achievement has increased because of the [inaudible] of computers digital classes, digital literacy classes and also broadband adoption, which honestly, it's just crucial for anyone, especially, after COVID to have a computer and also have a broadband adoption to access classes, turn in assignments, and access a wealth of knowledge in the internet.

And lastly, it's a personal statement. So something that I've learned as a digital navigator is that everyone wants to be part of the digital world, no one wants to live a hard life, and especially right now, I mean, if you compare people that do stuff online, let's just say, cash checks. I feel like everyone would prefer to just do that at home than actually go to the bank and cash check. So yeah. That's all I have for you today. And thank you for listening.

Kelly Henwood: Thank you, Armando. I don't know, Amina, do you have-- we want to transition over. But I think you have-- I know you're not necessarily a navigator, but you have an interesting story as an alumni of College of Continuing Education.

Amina: I do thank you very much, Kelly, for the opportunity to speak. Yes, I am an alumni for the SDCCE. I used to attend a Cisco Networking classes at SDCCE. This was when I was about 20, in my early 20s.

And then I didn't even get a CCNA certification, but I got a job right out of the classes. Actually I got an internship opportunity for a Cisco event that was happening in San Diego. Cisco Live was happening in San Diego that year. And I was an intern at that event.

And next thing you know, I had a job. And for the next decade, I was traveling all over the world, deploying networks for really high end Salesforce, Adobe, Google, Cisco, all these companies, and set up networks for their events. So it was quite a journey in SDCCE, definitely opened that door for me.

Kelly: Thanks, Amina. So we're going to-- I just want to close this partnership spectra. And we're going to-- there's some slides at the end with some links is the value of the public sector partnerships. And so I know every local area across the state of California is very different. And we do have some links.

So there's data around internet connectivity, broadband, infrastructure, funding that's happening. And I really encourage folks-- I just want to say that because of the leadership that Kelsey has been providing from the promise zone and now in the city IT department but also our mayor in the city of San Diego has been really instrumental in supporting through funding these initiatives through the digital navigator model. And so it is a model that can be replicated to other places.

NDIA is a national non-profit organization. So I encourage folks to look at that and maybe approach them. But there's lots of ways that we can go outside our sphere of just our adult ed nonprofit, non-credit world in terms of public partnerships. So I really encourage people start doing some looking around if you're not already doing so in your local area about what those connections and partnerships may be, so.

And I'm going to turn this over now to-- sorry, was somebody's going to say something.

Leah: Kelly, there was a question about somebody who is in a rural area trying to get hotspots and that sort of thing. And I don't know if there's any, because we're urban, right? So there is that big distinction between an urban population and a rural population in terms of connectivity. And I don't know if there's any information that any of our panelists have about rural zones. What's happening out in the rural areas?

No? I saw the question. So I want to make sure--

Kelsey: Yeah. So I'm just trying to read you the question. Yes, there are-- Oh, go ahead, Amina.

Amina: Oh, yeah. Alejandro asked a question. I did reply with our contact information to reach out to us. And we would love to connect them to our current partners. I'm not sure too much about the rural area, as Kelsey and I do work in the city. But yeah, I just thought I'd-- I did reply to him.

Kelsey: Yeah. OK, yeah, we're happy to touch base one-on-one. I will say there are specific challenges for rural areas versus urban areas. But we were able to start our hotspot program through a federal program, the Emergency Connectivity Fund. So I would look into that and I'll put it in the chat.

So it's available to all communities, urban and rural, yeah. And then yeah, but happy to connect.

Kelly: And I'll just say that the California Emerging Technology Fund is a state organization also. And they actually have really good data. So you can actually-- there's a lot of federal-- and people might know this. There's a lot of federal and state money coming for infrastructure supports.

And so I don't know what's happening in Needles and Blythe. I think that's what the area was, yeah, Needles and Blythe. I don't know what's happening in that area. I'm not sure if that's Imperial County. But there are ways that-- if it is Imperial County, I apologize I don't know that, that SANDAG, I'm not sure, I think that they might have some reach into Imperial County.

So there's some things that you can do to look at where the funding is coming for infrastructure supports. But that's a whole another public entity that's really related to the infrastructure pieces, so. And it's a big, really big issue that's happening right now. And I apologize I don't know what's happening in that area of the state.

Kelsey: And I will add that the state of California through our legislation which is really groundbreaking, SB 156 will have $6 billion in funding for digital equity and specifically broadband access. And the NTIA and FCC at the federal level through the infrastructure bill are releasing billions of dollars funding that will come down through the state. And a lot of that funding will be earmarked for digital equity. So programs like this, it's B funding.

So it's not being released yet. The states are doing digital equity planning right now. I will put some links in the chat. But you can get involved right now. It's not too late.

Kelly: OK, so I'm going to turn this over to-- I'm sorry I think it goes to Leah or Ingrid right now. And if I'm not on the right slide, let me know. I think I am.

Leah: I think it's you, Ingrid now.

Ingrid: I believe it's the next slide. And Leah, that's yours.

Leah: Is this me? OK. So we notice-- I'm an adult basic education instructor at San Diego College of Continuing Education. I have traditionally worked with the lower level ABE students who have reading challenges, math challenges, perhaps some identified or unidentified special education needs. And so I have been in the classroom with students and worked with them for many years.

I also serve on the Council of-- for the San Diego Board-- Council on Literacy for the county of San Diego. And so I am connected with other organizations in the county who are working with this lower level adult basic education population. And what we noticed and what I noticed is the minute we went down into the pandemic, we are all at home doing virtual instruction. My students disappeared or quite a few of my students disappeared. And I was-- the ones that remained had a lot of digital challenges.

And so I was working quite extensively with them to try to help them download documents to do day-to-day kind of things, four or five days a week. So it was very emotionally and professionally draining for me to do this kind of work. So I started looking around for what's happening in terms of digital equity and inclusion work in our school. And we have many, many departments who are doing great work in department-- by department basis.

And so I began to learn what was going on. And it sort of ignited my journey in terms of working across departments, getting them more involved in academic-centered activities to try to bring these issues forward on an institutional level. So we had a lot of enrollment challenges with our students.

So there was a definite crevasse of people who were not able to enroll in our programs. They were not able to adapt quite effectively to this online education world, getting stuck in the enrollment process, not being able to-- and so our school reached out in many different ways. Our classified-- our staff went beyond the call of duty to try to help students enroll, meeting them one-on-one on the phone, on Zoom, whatever they could do to help our students get enrolled. But we were aware that the digital divide still existed.

And we were trying to figure out how to support our students' needs fluidly-- what do we do, how do we work from this instructional side of the house to the student support side of the house, and how do we cross that divide. So those are some of the challenges we faced-- who is responsible for what. And the administration at our institution was very, very helpful in supporting our work and especially in supporting faculty, reaching out and trying to figure out how do we go about making this work for our students.

So this summer, actually, this summer, we were able to provide-- do some research into what's going on, best practices across the nation to find out what other people doing to help with this, because I know we're not the only place that's having this challenge. So that's what started our planning process really or at least what started to codify it and put it together so that we were working more in tandem across departments and across the institution to bring these efforts forward. So I think that's a little bit of introduction to how we got started on our plan. And I guess we can go to the next slide. Ingrid?

Ingrid: Thank you. Thank you so much, Leah. And I really appreciate how you talked about the collaboration in our institution, the San Diego College of Continuing Education, because we have been collaborating even since prior to the pandemic. Administration, faculty, classified professionals we have been collaborating to offer distance education, online education, teaching modalities, because what we found is even before the pandemic, some of our students would say, teacher, I have children at home. I cannot drive to campus. Can I study online?

So as early as 2010 and 2016, we have been offering fully online education classes to our students, especially in business information technology, English as a second language, our older education emeritus, and other programs. And so while it was a small portion of our overall student enrollment, it has-- it's been a very important piece of our digital equity development, because we had models of online education for our students prior to the pandemic. And we are able to scale those up with the pandemic.

However, as Kelsey, and Armando, and Leah, and Kelly have pointed out, we quickly found during the pandemic that some students were sidelined by all of the technology. They simply did not have the device, the hardware. They didn't have the access to the internet.

So what we're showing here in this slide is data from the SANDAG report. In San Diego, the local SANDAG organization, they published a report in late 2021. And it captures many of the digital equity issues that are happening in our region. And as you can see, as an example in the first bullet, 28% of households earning less than $50,000 a year, do not have broadband subscription in inner cities.

So if you look through this list, many of us who are adult educators, I think we will recognize these are our students. Our students in adult education often do not have internet subscription in their homes or apartments. And I also teach English as a second language. And right now, I'm teaching a fully online beginning ESL literacy class. And my students, we have class three days a week on Zoom.

And what I find is my students are joining class with their phones. And they do a pretty good job finding the Zoom class and participating. We learned to mute and unmute ourselves. But what happens, the students are depending on their phone, Wi-Fi, internet connection. And they often get bounced off of the Zoom class, because they don't have enough bandwidth.

And so they're missing out on the lecture, the partner, and the pair work, the group activities, and Zoom breakout rooms. In fact, just last night when I was teaching during Zoom breakout, I got a pop up message as the instructor on Zoom that two of my students did not have the most current version of the Zoom software uploaded on their phones and could not participate in the Zoom breakout room. So I join them in the regular class.

And that's a big part. Students may have a phone, but it's an older phone. It doesn't have the memory. And so I so appreciate this partnership with the city of San Diego in helping us find devices, newer devices for our students, whether it's a laptop, a tablet, or a newer phone, because Zoom software and our learning management system is called Canvas, all depend on newer devices that can handle the upgrades with software, Zoom software and Canvas software, constantly being upgraded and putting more demands on the memory of our devices.

And our students need not just the internet bandwidth, but they need the appropriate device. And again, I'm going to just point to the data in this slide. As you're developing your plans for your region, your community, please find the data with your local organizations that represent your community that show the digital divide, because this is really powerful information. We've been able to present in white papers. And soon hopefully, we'll be applying for funding with our partners who are joining us today.

So it's just super important to be using the data as well as stories to tell our story so that when we apply for funding, we can receive it. As Kelssey pointed out, there's so much federal funding that's going to be launched in the next year or so. And if you haven't already, please join NDIA and their listserv. And you can learn so much about from their webinars. It's all free and really powerful information.

All right. I saw a chat sparking up. If there's anything in there, let me know. But I think we're ready for the next slide.

Leah: OK, I think this is my slide, right? So what are the things we want to talk to about are about bridging services and collaborating with public agencies. So our former President was very much behind in supporting, bringing in county and other case management resources for our students in terms of centers that provided food, and information about food, and housing. He really wanted us to bring the community to campus, sort of bring the campus kind of community campus model to us. And so I think collaborating with public agencies has been within our world view for several years now.

And we had what we call here on the slide the technology access project. And through that project, we were distributing broadband, or hot spots, and laptops to students. But we also were using partner agencies like Computers to Kids and Futures Foundation which could provide and already are doing the distribution of these devices in the community. And so it doesn't necessarily need to be that the school itself is providing the service, that somehow, we are a bridge for these things to other agencies that the students can access just like this digital navigator project, right, so that we are not necessarily having to create these institutions ourselves. We can partner with community agencies to make these things happen.

So sorry, Kelly, I was looking at your pop up. So that was-- we were trying to do provide more support to students that didn't necessarily need to come from our institution but that could be partnered with agencies that are providing, that are experts in this area. We're an educational institution.

We teach, right? That's our goal. That's our-- but we can connect people together to make these things happen for our students so that they can get to class.

We also provided virtual student services through the classified professionals at our institution. And they would meet and use Zoom and those devices to help students get the services if they could not get enrolled, if they could not access the Canvas, LMS-- everything requires a password, everything requires a user ID, and if it's difficult to keep them all or to remember which one you had, and then like Ingrid was saying about updates. So everything is difficult, right?

So in our institution, the classified professionals were critical to bridging that divide for our students. They would reach out and really meet one-on-one with students in a way that the faculty couldn't. Although, we do see students every day and we did our best. But we couldn't do it alone.

So it did require a team to make this all happen for our students. So we used her funds to pay for the technology access project. But we were inundated with requests for laptops and broadband access by students. And we would run out quickly. And so then we had to reach out to other partner partners to make this happen.

Kelly: And if I could just add a tip, Leah, for people, and we can talk about this at the end, but in your local area, it's worth taking a look at refurbishing operations, legitimate refurbishing operations. There's lots of people doing different things with recycling-- e-waste recycling and stuff. But if you can find a local nonprofit that has a legitimate refurbishing operation, we are lucky in San Diego. We have two. And they actually get old computers from the county of San Diego and from the K through 12 school districts and refurbish them and donate and also do low cost computer access. So in each of your areas, you might have a similar operation but definitely look for the legit organizations that are doing refurbishing. So sorry, Leah.

Leah: It's OK. OK, next slide. OK, so this is the beginning of our research journey. So this summer, we had a small project or summer project for digital equity and literacy inclusion. We played around with the name. But we did do some in-house visiting with classes that were taking place on our campuses in our office skills program. We have compute basic computer literacy classes. And we went and did a class visit this summer.

And you have here on the left slide, a picture of the class where students were getting help one-on-one with getting enrolled in different things and learning how to keyboard and learning some of the basic computer skills they need to be successful in classes. And on the right, we also visited another institution, the Grossmont Adult Education Complex which is in the east part of the county. And they are providing two-week digital literacy instruction for their students to help them get ready to take the CASAS exam and get enrolled in their ESL classes. So the classes themselves serve a dual function of actually teaching students some office skills training and also preparing to take the CASAS test and get enrolled in the ESL program.

So we did site visits. Of course, summer was a little difficult. We reached out to several organizations. But we felt maybe that if we had done this during the school year, we may have been able to do more site visits.

But having been in on-- some of the super region meetings where public adult education programs were talking about their skills. All over the county, there are things taking place in different locations to help students get enrolled with pre-enrollment, two-week classes, orientations where students get digital literacy instruction. So we've seen or heard about many of these efforts going on in the county of San Diego. So those are just two of the places that we visited. All right, next slide.

So some of the suggestions that have been made to the digital equity committee-- digital education committee in San Diego at our institution is the counselors have requested that we create a student digital skills checklist, a little handout for students-- can you do this, can you do that, so that the student-- because the counselors themselves have found-- have found themselves doing little mini Canvas trainings or mini Zoom trainings in their meetings with students. And so if we could provide a digital skills checklist to them so that the students can answer these questions upfront, then that might help speed up the process.

Also NorthStar, I don't know how many of you out there are familiar with the NorthStar program. We are trying to pilot it here at continuing ed. It has been developed by the Literacy Minnesota prop program. And it is based on college and career readiness standards. And it provides an assessment on digital literacy skills and provides training to students and is a wonderful free-- it can be free.

You can also pay to be a host site and provide instruction through assessments and things like that. Also, we're thinking to provide one-on-one tutoring for our students and orientations where students can bring their own devices, because we often find that even if we're helping them, if we are not looking at the device that they're looking at, we aren't able to adequately provide the right support and instruction for the students. So we are hoping to open up orientations with students can bring their own devices, maybe two-week digital literacy classes. These are some of the suggestions we have about things that we've seen in our research this summer.

Also digital literacy offers hours where students could maybe meet with teachers or meet with support somehow one-on-one, maybe like a call center or a support center from morning to evening because we also have evening classes. And those student-- evening students often need support. And it's more difficult for them to find it.

And then also multilingual instructional aids in our ESL program is the star of this. They have a lot of instructional aids who speak various languages so that the students can get enrolled and supported in their own native language, while they're also learning their computer literacy skills. So those are some of the suggestions we've come-- that have come out of our work this summer. And I don't know, Ingrid, if you had any you wanted to discuss as well that I had not covered here. But I think--

Ingrid: I think you really did a great job covering that. I'll just carry it forward. In this slide, in the image there, you see people holding a Google phone and also an iPhone. And as Leah pointed out, as educators and as the distance education coordinator, what we are finding is that for every student, their device is unique. You cannot create a cookie cutter training, a group training for all the different devices that our students have.

And so that's why we recommend one-to-one tutoring, open labs, digital navigator, as our partners are bringing this amazing resource called the digital navigators. That one-to-one support for each of the unique devices and software is so powerful for our students. And what I'll say is at our community college, we have participatory governance. And through that effort, we work closely with the academic senate, the classified senate, and administrators to support all of these efforts.

So if we can move forward because I'm looking at the clock here-- and I see-- I've been thinking about bring your own device night as a basic computer skills workshop. Yes, highly recommend that. That's from Alejandro Clark. Thank you for that.

So our work is ongoing. And SANDAG has a Digital Equity Task force. I want to thank Kelly Henwood for leadership and partnering with them. And there's a Get Connected Campaign in the state of California. Our agency is already enrolled in that.

And I highly recommend that you stay connected to local, state, federal policy. And be sure to look at the federal legislation that was passed in fall 2021 regarding the funds. And as Kelsey mentioned millions of dollars will be flowing to each of the states to support that effort. And please join the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, a really wonderful resource. And keep an eye out for new funding that's going to start flowing through the state of California to our local agencies.

Kelly: So we do have-- we do have the PowerPoint. We've sent it to TAP. We think it's compliant with 508.

There is a link of resources. Here, there's a lot more, too. But we actually want to just to give you some resources that you can click on. I think we might have added a couple more in the chat in terms of some of the links we gave you.

But we want to open it up because we have about five minutes to see if there's any questions that people have. And you can just go ahead and raise your hand. And Marjorie's is going to help us with this, So.