Speaker: OTAN. Outreach and Technical Assistance Network.

Josh Eick: So we, the school began on August, 2022. It was a skeleton crew. It was literally one distance learning class, which was really-- it was just completely asynchronous. We didn't really have any Zoom classes immediately. And we just had a few people working to build up the school. Mrs. Gonzales was able to recruit a few people pretty quickly. And it's going. So by October we were able to open two synchronous ESL classes and had hired Student Tools for Education Pathways or STEP instructor.

So we got off to a very quick start and then really quickly, within the last six months thanks to the extraordinary work of our principal and a few of the teachers who really stepped up, we were able to expand the staff, schedule the enrollment numbers exponentially in a very short time. It's been very impressive and we have a long way to go. So I'll tell you a little bit about what it looks like. I do want to discuss enrollment for the third quarter.

We had a goal for 1,000 registered and attending students by June, 2023. That was actually lowered from 2,000, which was an extraordinary ask. So they said, OK, can you try to get 1,000 students in your school by June, 2023. We had a humble third quarter. Enrollment only increased by 59,300%. And that is not a lie. That is a true number, which we started at zero. So I like telling people this number. It sounds impressive. I think that may be a record in history for any school.

As of today, enrollment is over 750 students. So we're already 3/4 of the way to our goal. And enrollment really is ramping up. So we're going to have 2,000 way before the deadline. So that's good news. The programs that we currently offer-- we have a program that's currently just morning and evening. And we've also hired two advisors to help us out, which has been a godsend for our school. We have an ESL advisor and an ABE/AIS advisor currently, but they also fill in for the CE classes that we have as well.

Our current schedule includes one ABE/AIS STEP class, 12 ESL classes, one distance learning class, one citizenship class, six ABE classes, four combination ABE and ASE classes, one reading class, two math labs. When I was rehearsing this I kept saying meth lab. So we don't have any meth labs yet, but that's one of our goals.

Speaker: Practical chemistry.

Josh Eick: Yes, exactly. Two AIS labs and two CTE Computer Essentials. And again, this has all happened really since October, so we've been moving pretty quick thanks to the work of our administrator and the advisors and some teachers have been working really hard.

Speaker: Wait, I'm sorry. What are advisors? Counselors?

Josh Eick: Counselors. So their job is really is to-- they do a lot of outreach. They do registering students, everything. I mean, they're just doing way more than their--

[interposing voices]

Josh Eick: Questions right here? Yes?

Speaker: How are you assessing everyone in your--

Josh Eick: I'm going to talk about that in just a second actually. That's the next thing we're going to talk about. So our expansion plan is to expand our schedule to include afternoon Saturday classes as well at some point in the future, hopefully. We'd also like to expand all of our current programs as well as expanding into these program areas. We would like more CTE classes, which is a challenge because we're 100% virtual. But one of the ideas we have is partnering with in-person school CTE classes, so that they do the in-person part.

Like for example, a mechanic class you go there and you work on the car, but then you can come to the virtual school for the language part and vocabulary, whatever, the knowledge part. So we can share duties that way. We want to start HiSET prep and testing, high school recovery, parenting classes eventually will be great. CASAS and EL Civics testing. We do currently-- I'm not sure for all students, but the STEP classes, which I'll try to talk about in a couple of minutes, they have started to give CASAS entry tests.

Speaker: All online or--

Josh Eick: All online. We don't have a building. We don't exist in the real world. So everything is virtual.

Speaker: We have a question here. Are your programs open entries?

Josh Eick: Open entry?

Speaker: Yes.

Josh Eick: As far as I know, yeah. I can't speak for all of the programs, but I think yeah.

Speaker: Are you planning a post-test? Because-- That's [inaudible]

Josh Eick: Right, so that's coming, that's coming. The district is working on that. Ruben, do you want to address that?

Speaker: I think we're currently piloting the CASAS and EL Civics testing. I think with a small number of students, and then we're going to build on that next year.

Speaker: And next year. Is basically all this is your funding out of your budget, but you're not getting a lot of money back, right? Right now. Yeah, we're piloting, and we're planning on expanding that next year.

Josh Eick: In terms of recruitment, we have no budget for recruitment--

[audience laughing]

Josh Eick: --but our hope is that we'll change soon. Who's listening?

[audience laughing]

Josh Eick: Thank you. We need to hire more advisors as well as an outreach navigator, and an outreach navigator is crucial because we don't have a place where people can walk up and sign up. So our goal is to be able to recruit via social media. As it stands right now, we can only use the district website in terms of social media-- Sorry, the district's social media sites, so need our own. We want better communication with other schools to try and recruit in partnership with the other ten schools in DACE.

Blackboard Connect increased distribution of flyers at those physical schools. Mailers and marketing materials and of course, our own website, which is one of our top priorities. So hopefully that will happen sometime in the future. [inaudible] So understand that all that recruitment that I talked about before-- those 750 students-- we've done all of that with the help of the district, but without this. So once we get all this going, we just imagine those numbers hopefully will expand even faster.

Building and prep. So Prishay was going to talk a little bit about the difference between online versus in person, and what that looks like for us. Really the truth is the only difference between in person and hybrid and fully online is that they're never in person. Really that literally is the only difference if you think about it. So the fact that they never come into a classroom, but everything else is the same.

They're interactive. There's cooperative learning. Students engage in speaking, listening, reading, and writing activities. Differentiated learning opportunities exist. There are homework assignments, so really there is not much difference at all between in-person and online class. Online class is a class, just online. Yeah?

Speaker: And so how many students would you have per class?

Josh Eick: So the numbers of students in the classes online reflect-- sorry. The capability of the number of classes online are the same for in-person, so base tries to cap it around-- they try to hit 30. As a massive amount of rule, they can go over 30, but as we all know because of the pandemic, numbers have really grown in a lot. So our classes aren't that big. I think I have one of the largest classes. I have 30 regularly attending students. On average per day, it's anywhere between 20 and 22, and that's large right now, but of course, as we expand we hope all the classes-- the numbers will increase.

But I mean I can imagine having more than 30 students in the class. If I can handle it in person, I can probably handle it. I had 90 students when I was-- my first year of teaching-- in one class. That was a good way to learn how to teach.

[audience laughing]

Speaker: Back in the day, right?

Josh Eick: Back in the day. Oh, and students are assessed and receive feedback. So everything is the same as everything that happens in person or hybrid. There are some distinct benefits of having a fully online program, which actually maybe don't exist with in-person, and that's that students can work from anywhere. Students can access course content anytime. They don't actually have to just be in class during those hours. So if they don't come to class they still get full access to the classes even at midnight to get home from work. Students learn important time management skills because they are learning on their own-- well, they're not learning on their own, but they're sort of responsible for their own learning more. There are no child care issues--

[interposing voices]

Josh Eick: Can also break up the challenge. Students learn accelerated tech skills because they're forced to. They have no choice. Teachers have a myriad of electronic tools that streamline learning. So say for us, we have to really hit that learning curve pretty quick. And then recruitment can expand outside the immediate neighborhood or city which is a real big benefit as well because they can invest in your school.

So there are actually challenges as well. Assistance can be more convenient in person, especially for students who are lacking in tech skills. It's so much easier to just stand behind somebody and point than they have to get online in order to get tech help. So right there is a barrier, but our step teachers are really adept at helping them out in that area.

CTE classes are a challenge, as I mentioned before, but like I also said there is that workaround, right? You can divide up between in person and online. Onboarding students with low tech skills is the big challenge-- I just mentioned-- especially if they're not physically present.

There are always technical problems with devices and internet. I don't care how good your device is or how good your internet, always problems. Can always disrupt learning. Communicating with students outside class time can be difficult.

Students aren't able to form bonds easily outside of class of course, there are workarounds and there are solutions to that. Testing can be difficult-- we just discussed, and we are working diligently to address all of these challenges and we've already actually figured out a few. So we're in a good place. I'm just going to pause for a second just to ask if anybody has a question.

Speaker: The chat has no questions.

Speaker: Which ones have you figured out?

Josh Eick: So communicating with students outside class time. There's so many ways to do it. Apps like Remind, WhatsApp, calling people on the telephone, email. Yeah, so there's tons and tons of ways, and that hasn't really-- I think all the teachers that I've spoken to it's not an issue anymore. We've been pretty constant in communication with our students. And then students aren't able to form bonds. They just share their social media addresses with each other through the teacher. You have to make sure that they're going through us, if they want to share. And in testing, yeah. We're working on it. We're piloting the process, and also we have our LMS's schoolOGY so you can embed tests in school So that gives you more. I'm sorry. You had a question?

Speaker: Yes. What are some resources or the tools you use for on board students that are local.

Josh Eick: So I'm going to actually talk about that in just a second. That's our step program.

Speaker: And Josh just recently we had focus groups with some of our A-plus students, and we found that the breakout rooms a good way to create bonds with each other.

Josh Eick: Yes. OK. All right. So all of our students need a single sign-on email address, which is assigned to them when they register--

Speaker: We have a question.

Speaker: Are the CTE courses the same price as they would be face-to-face?

Josh Eick: Yes. Zero.

Speaker: Zero?

Josh Eick: Currently. We don't charge for our CTE class-- well, we only offer one CTE class, which is computer essentials which is a basic computer class, and there is no charge for that. I don't know about in-person. I'm sure that some of the CTE classes do charge for supplies and whatnot, but--

Speaker: It could be personal care.

Josh Eick: Right. Because we're not physical, we will never have to charge for that. The in-person schools can do that part.

Speaker: [inaudible]

Josh Eick: So each new student is issued a district student email address, and then they have to get a password because they have to be able to sign into schoolOGY, which is our LMS that we use. Most of the teachers use apps like Google Suite and other things like that. So they're going to have to use their SSOs for that, and that is something that the step teachers do. It's one of the first things that they address.

When the student registers, they go through a step class, which is a 12-hour class. Usually happens over the course of one week, and during that time they get their DACE email and password figured out-- I don't know what that is. I didn't do the slides, sorry. They activate their Gmail account using their student email and their password, and then onboarding the students-- Prishay is going to show you her Sis site. I don't have access to her site, so I'm not really sure what she was going to show, so I apologize. But they go over basic competencies. Basic of using a computer, if they need help with that. Introduction to schoolOGY, and--

Speaker: I can add something to that--

Josh Eick: Please--

Speaker: --because I teach that--

[interposing voices]

Speaker: So--

Speaker: Come here.

Speaker: So for the step classes, the onboarding class, and as Josh mentioned it's a 12-hour class. Jonathan Noelle also teaches it. So we take the students through this process where we activate their school email and password, which is their SSO. And then as he mentioned, it enables them to get into the student portal, which is DACE-Sis, and it also gives them a legitimate Gmail account. Some of them have "party girl," for a personal email, and we provide them with a very good business of email. It also gets them into our learning managements in schoolOGY.

We do have them go into their student portal which is called DACE-Sis, and that's where they do forms. So we all DACE and so we have them do the class's entry form and update forms. We also as a CTE class, we have them do the program's eligibility forms, and then they also need to verify competencies because we are competency-based. And so the students learn how to do all of that in the same class, so I think that's what she was talking about.

Josh Eick: Thank you very much.

Speaker: I'm sorry, just to follow up because there's one for ESL as well, right?

Speaker: Yes, there is.

Speaker: And so the first step for anyone who's becoming a new virtual student is that they're attending this 12-hour class that is on specific days and times in the week, right?

Josh Eick: Yes, but it is flexible, also. They don't have to do it concurrently-- Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday-- they could come two times in the first week, and if they can't they can finish it the following week, but they need to get through that they cannot go to [inaudible].

And it's extremely helpful because when they get into the classroom, there's a lot of things that they've already done in the step, which saves the teacher tons of time because if they enter your class week four and they're coming in cold-- and they don't have those basic computer skills. They don't have a password, so they can't get into schoolOGY which is our main way of teaching our classes-- it really disrupts the class. And now the teacher has to figure out a way-- I've got to spend an hour with this new student while my other 15 students, their lesson's interrupted. --so this is just such a huge help.

Speaker: There's a teacher or a couple of teachers that are doing that as part of their assignment every week. They might have two new students in that class during the week they might have 20, right?

Josh Eick: Right, right. And like I said, right now we only have the CTE step teacher who's helping us with some of the other students, but we're trying to find a couple new-- Once our budget picks up, we'll get a couple other teachers. So right now the advisors are kind of stepping in to help, the evening step teachers helping with the morning program a little bit, and then the teachers filling the rest of the gap. But eventually, we'll have enough step teachers in place where we won't have to worry about any of that.

And of course, attendance. They talk about the importance of attendance, and then they also onboard them to schoolOGY, and I'll show you an example of what one of our schoolOGY classes look like later. Students learn what schoolOGY is and how to log in, and what it looks like, and how to navigate a little bit. How to participate in the course discussions. How to upload and create assignments. It gives teachers so much time when they do that in their step class.

SMART goals. They work on SMART goals a little bit. They talk about why is it important to be specific, measurable, attainable, and these are really helpful for the student in terms of time management because the focus is on you're-- nobody's going to be holding your hand here. You're going to be in your Zoom class but when you leave Zoom it's all about you, so what is your goal? How do you want to get there? How are you going to manage your time so that you can meet that goal? And that's very helpful as well.

OK. Oh, there it is. All right, my part. This is my wheelhouse.

[audience laughing]

Josh Eick: I'm confident about this. So I'm going to talk a little bit about the vision of our classes. This is not necessar-- what I'm going to talk about does not necessarily reflect what is happening currently in our classrooms-- is there a question?

Speaker: Yes from Monica. "Do students have to purchase textbooks or are 100% of course materials available online?"

Josh Eick: I do not know the answer to that question, but my guess is that none of the teachers are using purchased textbooks, as far as I know. Everything is online. 100%, but I cannot speak-- my principal would be able to answer that better, I apologize. But I'm pretty sure they're not selling textbooks.

Speaker: And we have some guides for some of the classes that we'll mail out to them, if they want are copies of the guides for some of our classes.

Speaker: And a lot of their content [inaudible] for student discussions, activities, assessment, audio, video. We built that in-house, and put it on the [inaudible]--

Josh Eick: Could you ask the Zoom if they can hear the people in the back?

Speaker: Yeah, I've already asked them. They said they can hear it.

Josh Eick: OK, good. Thank you.

Speaker: Mic is [inaudible]

Josh Eick: So again I do want to reiterate that what I'm going to talk about is our vision for future classes, and it doesn't necessarily reflect what's actually happening currently. The vision that I'm going to present is the district's vision as well. So our hope for AEVA is that we become a model for 21st century schools, both online and in-person, and to achieve this our classes will, hopefully, in the future focus on the access to technology, 21st century skills that matter, clear goals and expectations, engagement strategies, differentiated learning, feedback that promotes growth and success. And I'll go into each of these points, individually.

So as we're fully online, access to technology is critical. If they don't have access to technology, there is no chance. They cannot learn. So DACE is committing to lending devices and hotspot connections to any AEVA student who requests one. We're very, very lucky in that regard that LAUSD made a huge move during the pandemic. The first year of the pandemic to really make sure that everybody was connected-- all students were connected, and luckily that spilled over into the adult division as well. They've been very good about providing devices and providing technical help for any students who need it.

They also provide hotspots. Students who don't need a device, but they need internet connection. It's worked very well. However, there are students outside the area who may not be able to get one. So we do have to think about that. So we encourage all teachers to create content accessible on any device, including phones and tablet, right?

So schoolOGY for example-- this is a screenshot of what the computer app looks like online, but then they also have their phone app that they can download, and it works pretty much the same. The phone app is a little wonky like any phone apps are when you're dealing with education. But it works well enough, so that the students are only able to participate on their phones, and most of the time it's fine, and again, teachers can always help their students who need help. We try to make instructional videos, and the division makes those videos available in our resource folder to any teacher who wants to download them or add them to their school vehicles?

Speaker: Josh?

Josh Eick: Yes?

Speaker: All right. If you can go back, I wanted to ask about that comment there.

Josh Eick: OK. [inaudible]

[laughing]

Josh Eick: Where are my controls, I don't see my controls.

Speaker: There's a-- on the keyboard there's a little button?

Josh Eick: Thank you.

Speaker: "Students outside the area," how is that defined for you guys?

Josh Eick: Well, for example, we have students who are in the county, but not necessarily near an adult school. And with their crazy schedules maybe they can't get to one of the schools to pick up a device? It's rare, but it does happen. So we just want to make sure that even if we have somebody who can't get one that they have access no matter what device they're using.

Speaker: OK. My understanding is that-- from what you said-- you're going to be advertising on social media and various public-- conceivably just like in a session earlier we had the participant here-- oh, in Connecticut participating in TDOA. Is there going to be some sort of school district policy about just how far outside the area one can be to participate?

Josh Eick: That's a district question. I will let the district people answer that.

Speaker: We have a district policy, and the policy is that every student needs [inaudible] So whenever a student signed up for AEVA, [inaudible] they-- please, we need to California [inaudible]

Speaker: But even California is a little bit farther along than LA Unified is typically--

[interposing voices]

Speaker: But yeah, so we limit right now-- because of our OK funding we limit our students address to-- we need an address from California.

Speaker: What about the teachers? Will teachers be able to participate as teachers in the Academy, if they have a California address versus the in-person in any address?

Speaker: So most of our AEVA teachers teach from an LAUSD campus unless they have some kind of reasonable accommodation, and so right now they teach from a campus that's closest to their home. And so [inaudible] in LAUSD.

Speaker: So what consortion were you guys with? You're talking funding. Wouldn't that just be funding students for that consortion?

Speaker: Yeah so you could have a class for county kids because I've got my own consortion, and that's where we get our money.

Speaker: I'm just-- you just said all in California. I don't know about that.

Speaker: I don't think we've had anyone outside of LA--

Speaker: LA County.

Speaker: Yeah, right.

Speaker: Yeah, if we can't have students-- whether ones that we don't service. That's quite your stuff. That's on you.

Josh Eick: It's an interesting discussion though. All AEVA classes meet on Zoom. Instructors are encouraged to use the schoolOGY LMS for class content and feedback. In addition, some popular apps used in the classroom-- something we've talked about this in the sessions here-- Burlington online, APEX, Quizlet, Kahoot, Google apps, Office Suite, et cetera, and add into my-- As long as it's a district approved app, I believe you can use it, and in the district it includes lots of apps.

Speaker: For ESL and Burlington [inaudible]

Josh Eick: Mine, personally? No. Some features, yes. We actually created-- when the pandemic hit, we had a small group of teachers create class shelves for classes-- all of the ESL levels. Do you remember, Reuben? What else? What other-- was there any CTE that was graded or ABE or just--

Speaker: Academic.

Speaker: Academic. So we have schoolOGY available for teachers. It's fully loaded with content for the entire course, and then teachers can just tweak it to their needs. So it's ready to go, or if they want, it can be Burlington. They can use any other-- but we encourage OK.

Speaker: Ventures.

Josh Eick: Venture

[interposing voices]

Josh Eick: In order for our students to be successful employees, transition to higher ed, and engage community members in the 21st century, they need to learn and master the skills that matter now, including-- adaptability and willingness to learn, communication, critical thinking, interpersonal skills, navigating systems, problem solving, processing and analyzing information, respecting differences and diversity that comes from links. And this is the vision of DACE. This is where we would like our teachers to focus on. Very important. If our students don't have these skills it'll be very difficult to survive in the 21st century. Oh, and self-awareness, sorry.

In addition, there are also five topic areas that we are focusing on civics, digital literacy, financial literacy, health literacy, workforce prep. And this is a big, big, big focus of the vision right now. Three approaches that we're focused on are integrated and contextualized learning, problem-based learning, and project-based learning.

We have a new course outlines that were designed by a group of folks-- including Jaemi Allison Goldstein --which reflect all of these 21st century skills and they're fantastic. And we've been slowly kind of turning the ship that giant LA district in that direction, and we've been making some very good progress and like lots of PDs and COPs as well.

Since our students are not learning in a traditional classroom, which is a controllable environment-- somewhat-- online teachers must compete with tons of distractions including their kids, and mutant cats with no face-- I got this. We weren't-- we can't use copyrighted material, so send me the DALL-E 2. The DALL-E 2 is just a little baby-- it's the AI image creator, and they always-- they're just-- everything's awful little bit.

Speaker: The uncanny valley.

Josh Eick: It's really creepy.

Speaker: But I kind of like it.

[audience laughing]

Josh Eick: So there are several strategies that may be used to engage online students to deal with those distractions. A few evidence based successful strategies are upfront and clear expectations, so the students know exactly what's expected of them from the moment they enter class every day. Checklists, which repeat those expectations prior to submission of work. Assigning interesting projects which involve all skills, language, and knowledge taught in a unit. Cooperative learning, problem-solving activities, student choice, inclusive content, immediate feedback, and consistent communication.

So by doing all of these things the student is really-- they know what is expected of them. So we put a little bit of the learning onus on our students, which is good because they need that self-efficacy, and then they have that growth mindset, so that they know how they can see their progress throughout. And also we make sure that we give a lot of feedback, and we're in constant communication with them, so that-- with all that noise going on in their life-- there is that line between the teacher and the student [inaudible]. So that they can get through that clutter. Yes?

Speaker: What format are you using for communication?

Josh Eick: So like I said, there's a myriad of ways to do it. schoolOGY. You can communicate with the student right on the assignment themselves-- through feedback right on the assignment. You can also email through schoolOGY. A popular app with teachers is Remind, so most teachers have Remind [inaudible]. WhatsApp. A lot of people use WhatsApp. Straight email, phone call

Speaker: It's kind of up to the teacher what's best--

Josh Eick: Totally.

Speaker: You mentioned Blackboard Connect, are you using that too?

Speaker: I don't know. That's per shades--

Speaker: I don't even know what that is.

Speaker: That's fair.

Josh Eick: Can you tell us about it? Do you know what it is? In there. Does anybody know what Blackboard Connect is?

Speaker: Blackboard Connect is LAUSD communication, so if you need a blast everyone in LAUSD you go to Blackboard Connect, and it can give them a phone call on their own, can even give them--

[interposing voices]

Speaker: Text messages

Speaker: Almost like a message blast.

Speaker: [inaudible]

Speaker: That would make sense that the admin would want that.

Josh Eick: Yeah, just using my class as an example. I'm constantly in communication with my students, and if somebody doesn't show up for a few days, I've got three or four ways that I could try and contact them, and it works very well. So I noticed that my attendance and my attrition mirrors, if not better than-- sorry-- some in-person classes. So online is really not what a challenge it appears. You're just doing your diligent duty making sure your students learn and communicate.

Speaker: Do any of your teachers use Google Voice?

Josh Eick: Yes, thank you. That's another one, Google Voice. That's a big one too. People like that one.

Speaker: Sorry, you have the lowest levels of ESL, all right? Beginning--

Josh Eick: We have all levels of ESL--

Speaker: And they're finding their way online and being successful?

Josh Eick: Yes. It's a challenge, but yeah.

Speaker: So that's probably because of that first week too that there was [inaudible].

Josh Eick: Yeah and we actually-- we also have a few new teachers, and we've given them those schoolOGY master courses, and those help so much because everything is built into all of them. So they just really need to become familiar with the content, and figure out how they want to teach it. So they don't really have to create a lot of content it's all there for them, if needed.

Speaker: Yeah, and it's the content in the master courses is aligned to our district course outline. So if a student is changing from one school to another, they'll get the same part because it's uniform across it.

Josh Eick: And they are aligning with those 21st century skills that matter. When we designed them, we made them project-based.

Speaker: Do you have any classes that are two different levels in the same virtual class?

Josh Eick: I have. My class is multilevel. I've got three levels in the same class.

Speaker: And how-- give me some examples how you do that because--

Josh Eick: So it's-- and I'll go into it a little bit. It's all about focusing on skills, and when you focus on skill then you can have any topic, any language content, any grammar content that we want because you're really focusing on skills, and it's those skills can be applied to anything. So it really opens up the lesson to student choice because I can ask my students, OK we're going to talk about money in this unit. What do you want to talk about? What do you want to learn because I already know what skills I'm going to teach them, and I can just lay those skills onto whatever they want to learn.

Speaker: Because we're using Burlington. They have students at whatever level--

Josh Eick: Yeah. Another challenge in the online classroom is not being physically present to address every problem at every moment. By tailoring lessons to meet each student's individual interests, needs, and strengths, some of these problems can be avoided all together. This can be accomplished through surveying students to ask their interests, and to gauge their abilities prior to the start of class. This is something that I do, and something that I'm trying to give to my fellow teachers in terms of really helping out how to plan their classes. Including students in the course of planning like I said, if you're teaching skills, the students can really decide what they want to learn.

Offering students choices within one assignment, so when we do reading assignments, for example, I'll give them five or six choices, and they can just say which one is interesting to me because, again it's the same thing. They're focusing on that skill. They're not really focusing on content necessarily. Planning general tasks or projects which allow for a wide variety of student choice as well as a variety of production methods. If I want them to, for example, explain why advertising can be manipulative, they can decide how they want to do that. They can do a live presentation in class. They can do a written presentation. They can do a poster. It doesn't matter because again I'm focused on skills and that language is in there, and that content knowledge is in there however they wish to provide evidence of that learning.

And scale-scaffolding assignments and tasks to allow students to choose their level of difficulty, we can do in my multilevel class because I've got level 4, level 5, and level 6, but really some level 4s are really level 2 in some areas, right? So I say, OK, here's the task I want you to do, and then I give them some choices of how to do that task and this one, maybe I'll give some sense starters for the students who need that help. But down here for my advanced students, it's just sort of a more generalized question. So they can sort of decide the difficulty of how they want to demonstrate learning. I'll pause for a second. We have a lot of stuff coming.

Speaker: Since you-- I guess you probably-- were you going to show the school [inaudible] or?

Josh Eick: I can show you. Yeah, I can show you my course for just a second. So let me just zip through this real quick because I do want to get to the last part, which kind of brings this all together. Providing feedback when you're online is a big challenge, so we have can do immediate feedback in Zoom just like you're do it in person. There's nothing different. People talking to people. The schoolOGY LMS as well Canvas. Canvas allows you to get feedback right on the assignments themselves. Question?

Speaker: Cindy has a question.

Speaker: "I'm trying to envision exactly what Josh's Zoom class time looks like in real time. Can you ask him what a real-time activity looks like?

Josh Eick: It looks like real-time activity in an in-person class. So for example, if we're doing a Jigsaw reading just like in person, you're going to have your group separated in your classroom, I'm going to have my group separated in breakout rooms. And then we'll come back, and I'll regroup them just like you would into different breakout rooms, and they're going to share out. So again, there's no difference between online and in-person. It works just the same. It's just rolling into a breakout room instead of putting them in the corner.

We can give formative feedback using email, text, or phones and then I do self and peer-peer assessments. I use Google Forms in my class, and then we also use rubrics in schoolOGY to give both formative and summative sentiment. Sorry, I'm going to speed along a little bit. One of the advantages of being forced to use some type of electronic medium to host lessons, activities, and homework is that it allows for multiple opportunities to show students what is expected of them from the first step to the last.

So you can just put a list of-- just like they do in textbooks. In our schoolOGY unit you can just sort of "Here's what you're going to learn this week," "Here's what we expect you to do," so when they know what is expected of them, They kind of-- it allows them again, to measure that growth. To measure their progress that whole growth mindset thing, and self-efficacy, right? Relying on the students more than the teacher. Rubrics-- I think I'm going to just skip this part. I'm a big advocate of rubrics.

So here's the big payoff. I came up with an idea that I'm going to pitch soon for a virtual fair that I would like to do at our school.

Speaker: DALL-E 2.

Josh Eick: Poribal Spappoot.

Speaker: I have no idea what that means.

Josh Eick: I probably typed in-- I said student language fair in a gymnasium or something like that, and this is what I got. My idea is every year that those AEVA students will choose a virtual fair theme. So they can have all the students vote on a theme, and then each class will decide on a project that reflects that theme. It's just like the Rose Parade. It could be a wide variety of stuff, right? And the project maybe a collaborative class project, a collection of individual student projects, or anything in between-- any combination.

The fair projects will be collected and curated on the AEVA website, once we get it. Anyone with a link can attend the virtual affair including students, family, and friends, politicians who fund us

[audience laughing]

Josh Eick: There would be an opening night Zoom gala, but the fair could run as long AEVA wants. We could have it going the whole year, and then you can just be on the website, virtual page, you just jump in any time you want. You can see students projects.

So the idea behind this is that it serves multiple purposes by increasing growth mindset amongst the AEVA students, right? So they can take a look, like, "Oh my God, I did this. I created this." Teaching real-world community, academic, and work skills. Encouraging project-based learning into classes, which is a big goal of our division right now. Focusing on the 21st century skills that matter. Promoting school spirit which is really important at a school which you can go to a gym where you can "ra ra ra." Promoting the school's programs that would be a great tool for that. Recruiting visitors, so when people come to check out the virtual fair, "Oh this is cool. Maybe I'll take a class," and is that it? Oh, and acting is a word-of-mouth tool.

So it kind of encompassing everything I've been talking about today. This is my big idea. If I can get people on board, we're thinking maybe we can actually do this, and maybe next year this will be our [inaudible] I'm done. So if you have any questions, we've got a few minutes left.

Speaker: Please show your school.

Speaker: Josh, this is like an interview for you.

Speaker: You're hired.

Josh Eick: All right so this is one of my courses, and this is actually co-created the master course, but I tweaked it so much since I created it. And you can see that this is where I send students when they first come to class. There's a lot of class information in there. How-to this is all those videos I was telling you about, so if they need help with anything they can just go to this folder, and find help with anything that they might need help with.

You go back-- oops, what happened? Sorry, folks. I went back too far-- and then I got everything by unit and because I'm focused on skill there's no timeline. So a unit can go three days. A unit can go two weeks. It depends on the class that I have, and then within each unit let's see here My Cultural Identity. More. So there is upfront expectations, right? "This is what you're going to learn, and here's how you're going to show me that you've learned that."

So right? The first thing they see are those expectations they know exactly what's going to be happening, and what they're responsible for learning and showing me. And then I try and normalize my units, so every week the first lesson is always reading, the second lesson is always speaking, third lesson will be grammar or some type of other lesson, and then listening, and then finally, a project. And when you norm those things they know what to expect, and then it helps them with time management skills.

And I'll just hear quickly. How much time? I've got two minutes. Let me show you a project report. So one of the projects we did was my cultural identity, and I probably don't have permission to show these, but I'm not sure I can show you any of the actual presentations. But checklists again, really important for making sure the students know what's expected of them, and in this case, what they did is-- and here's the rubric, which reflects that checklist, so again there's no surprises. And what students would do is they would create-- what they did was they created a Google Slide presentation about their cultural identity, and then they linked the Google Slide presentation onto a discussion patient's eulogy. So that all the other students can go check out their presentation, and then there was a Google Form that they would fill out to assess their peers.

Speaker: Yes, so the things you just showed. The assignment, the outline, new teacher comes in they're getting everything that you have here other than student things, or they're getting

Josh Eick: They're getting most of what you see, right? This is much different than what I created a year and a half ago for the district, but most of everything you see they're seeing all of it.

[interposing voices]

Speaker: --for teachers and then they can tweak it any way they decide [inaudible].

Josh Eick: Right.

Speaker: --and all the other teachers.

Josh Eick: But again, assuming like a beginning teacher-- the assignments are basically there if they want them they can add [inaudible] and all the shelves are known.

Speaker: So each of the lessons within the unit echoes each of the other units? So that there's always that sense of [inaudible] Thank you.

Josh Eick: Thank you very much, thank you very much for coming. Oh, I do have it moved on, if you would like to contact me for any reason.

Speaker: Tonya said, "It's very inspiring."

Josh Eick: Thank you, Tonya. There's my email. I appreciate--