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Anthony Burik: So we are here today to talk about Otan Curriculum Offers. So first, before we get started, I do have a link here to this-- so I actually don't have slides today. I'm actually using a Canvas course for all the materials that we're going to talk about. But you can-- if you click on this link, or open up this link in a browser, then you'll get a copy of this Canvas course. So the link-- it's a B I T dot L Y, a bitly link, slash and then capital T B L S lowercase offers. And if you're not familiar with bit.ly, after the slash you have to type it exactly as you see.

Speaker 1: I notice that I use in Europe--

Anthony Burik: Yeah.

Speaker 1: And they don't--

Anthony Burik: Yeah, they're not case sensitive, but bit.ly actually is a sensitive, so--

Speaker 2: It's-- they went up there.

Anthony Burik: OK.

Speaker 2: I'll get it. I got it.

Anthony Burik: OK. OK. So again, no, everyone's giving it. Yeah, so this Canvas course is publicly-- it's freely available and you can come back to it after today. So I put all my information in the Canvas course. But what we're going to talk about is, first, So hopefully by now you know about Otan. But I want to talk about Otan. There's something in particular about this session and Otan, and then we'll do a quick entrance ticket, and--

Speaker 1: Voice right in front of the camera, please.

Anthony Burik: Then, what I want to do today is, I want to keep a very kind of informal. I don't have a very formal presentation scheduled. I'd rather it be sort of a conversation. But I want to give you a sense about what curriculum offers we have available. Then I want to give you some time to take a look at some of them. My hope is that you will find one of them today that you want to be-- that you're interested in exploring further.

When you go back to your agency, maybe try it out in your classroom, maybe share it with your colleagues at your agency. We have these freely available for the field. And so we want you to take advantage of them, right? That's the goal here. And then, as we go along here, if you have questions about things, or want to-- if you notice, go ahead, we'll kind of leave [audio out] for discussion in that way. And again, the Canvas course is going to be available after we leave today. So Karen, how are we doing on the-- hi to all the online folks. How are we doing on that?

Speaker 2: Yeah, I just did the Bitly, and I-- for the reasons that you didn't co-host it.

Anthony Burik: Oh let me do that. OK. That's the problem. hold on one second. Maybe just sort of Canvas first?

Speaker 1: Let's see here.

Speaker 2: So you made you made this course public? And I need to share this.

Anthony Burik: Yeah. Right. So Canvas-- right. So normally, Canvas-- hold on one second. Yeah. Normally Canvas, you know, is subscription-based. But if you have a Canvas account and a subscription, you can actually change your course setting to a public course, so that makes it freely available for people who don't have Canvas licenses to join your course.

The only caveat to that is that it's nowhere near the full, souped-up version of Canvas that you get via a subscription. So it's very basic. So I can't do-- I'm not going to show you any videos, like Canvas Studio videos, or anything like that. We can't actually open up the discussion forum in the Canvas course, so we just keep it super, super, super simple here. OK?

Speaker 1: Good. Thank you very much.

Anthony Burik: OK. And so online folks, welcome. I know folks are just coming into the session here. So Karen has put the link to my Canvas course in the chat. So feel free to open that up and follow along today. I don't have slides. I'm using my Canvas course today. So that's what we're up to here.

All right. So let me go to the next slide. It's-- what? OK. So just a word about OTAN. So-- well, welcome everyone. We're glad that you've been with us the last couple of days. OTAN is a state leadership project for adult education in California. We're actually one of three-- CASAS, CALPRO, and OTAN are the three that support adult education.

We, of course, focus on application, technology integration-- everything technology. We're very excited about technology. So what we're going to talk about today is I'm going to mention, like, a number of vendors and maybe some products that you've heard about in other sessions during the conference. So I just want to be clear that OTAN actually-- we are not a vendor, right? We're not I'm not trying to sell you anything.

If you get a product or don't get a product, I don't really care. So that's up to you and your agency to decide. Our goal, however, is sometimes, we enter into partnerships with vendors for curriculum offers and pilot programs. So our goal is to kind of give access to the field with certain products that you might want to take advantage of it at your agency sort of long-term. The goal of the pilot is to give you kind of an experience with the product, see how it works out in your classroom or in your program.

And then long-term, your agency would make a decision about whether to invest in the product or not. If you do so, great. If you don't, that's great, too. It's whatever your agency has decided. But I just want to be clear that OTAN itself, we're not a vendor. So I'm not here to sell you anything. It's merely for informational purposes, OK?

And again, we're happy to have you here at the conference. And OK. So what I would like to start with is just a quick entrance ticket, a quick survey. And again, you can get to all of my-- I'm not doing slides in my session. I'm using my Canvas course. So Karen will put the link to the Canvas course in the chat. And if you can navigate to the entrance ticket and go ahead and take that.

So let's just talk about the survey-- the entrance ticket here-- for a second. So if you can indicate your primary program, that's your agency. And then what is your role at the agency? Question two. And then the next five questions-- just fill out any products-- let me know about any products that you're using in a particular-- in your program. So it doesn't-- I know a lot of us are just in one program or the other.

So I'm just curious to see, kind of, what programs are using. What are the particular products that you're using? So questions 3 through 7, just feel free to put whatever information applies to you. And then we'll take a look and see what the group results are in a second, once you get a chance to finish that.

So we have a nice mix between some ESL folks, some ASE folks. We have Corey from CDE as well. OK. Great. And all teachers, except for, I'm going to guess, Corey. All right so let's take a look and see, first in ESL.

So some folks say they're using Burlington English. They're using Canvas. Cambridge One-- not sure about that one. English in Action 2. So some textbooks. OK. Good. All right. ABE. Let's see what we got going on here.

With ABE, we have Aztec, Reading Plus, IXL. OK. Good. Pretty typical. Let's see. With the ASE-- OK. So we have Edgenuity, EdReady Math. Good. Odysseyware, Aztec Online, IXL, Quizlet. Sites. So other sites. Good.

All right. CTE. CTE. Not sure. OK. That's fine. And then the last one, what other products? Edgenuity. I would like to use more already developed ESL curriculum products at no cost to students in Canvas. OK. Great. All right. Good. You came to the right session. So hopefully, you'll see something that kind of piques your interest.

OK, good. So thank you for taking that survey. Let's move on to the next slide. OK. So on the OTAN website, we have a web page that is devoted to our curriculum offers information. So if you go to the OTAN website-- I'll show you that right here. If you go to the OTAN website-- OTAN.us-- we have this Resources tab. And under the Resources tab, We have a page for our Curriculum Offers.

And so when you come to our Curriculum Offers page-- we have it organized here. Some of these are more for teachers, and some are more for students. So I'll just say that this page is something that I'm hoping to kind of reorganize in the coming weeks. But today, I wanted to give you a different view of our curriculum offers on this page, here.

So back in the Canvas course, what I've tried to do is kind of organize it by program area. So you can see which products are more for ESL students or classes, which offers are more for ADE or ASE, which ones are more for CTE, and then we do have a few offers that might be for something completely different, right? In some cases, with digital literacy skills.

And then we also have something devoted to blended learning. So if you want to learn more about blended learning and how to organize blended learning courses, that would be something that you might want to take a look at. And then on the left-hand column here, all of these links are clickable to the Canvas pages where you can get more information about these different products. OK?

So far, any questions about this chart or table, what we're looking at here? Or online questions? I'm sorry. I keep turning my back to the online mode. OK. Let me go back to the home page for a second.

So I want to talk about how these products are organized, how we have them organized so far. So right now, we currently have two pilot programs that we're running. So one is with learning upgrade, and the other one is with more of to help develop literacy. So the idea with the pilot is that we give you and your agency the opportunity to participate in a pilot program where you're basically kind of test-driving the product at your agency-- so maybe with a few of your classes, maybe in one of your particular programs back at your agency.

But it's really an opportunity for you to try out a particular product that we think might be of interest to agencies, because it's in a particular program area, or it deals with technology skill-building, digital literacy skill-building. So these are our current pilot programs. And they will change periodically, from year to year. So we try to keep the field up to date on what kind of progress programs we're running.

Then we have a few things that are kind of ongoing. So this would be Learn360. This would be our work with the ENRA project. And then this will also be the blended learning course from Essential Education. And you might have heard about some of these products during the conference, so we'll talk more about this. So these are a little bit more open-ended. So you can kind of join whenever it's convenient for you. Beginning of the school year, middle of the school year, end of the school year, whatever the case may be.

And then lastly, we do have a few curriculum products that we have partner organizations that we work with, and so we want to let the field know about some of these products in particular that are available through our partners as well. These are not, like, in a pilot program or anything. These are just kind of freely available to those in the field. But we want to just bring a little bit more attention-- for example, like, with CK-12 we've actually been kind of actively working with CK-12 to build an adult education space on their website. And then on that space would be freely available kind of OER, Open Educational Resource, courses in the different program areas. So ESL, CPG, ADE, and ASE.

Speaker 3: I have a quick question on CPG on this.

Anthony Burik: Sure.

Speaker 3: Is that just, like, an online textbook? Or does that include, like, you know, tests, lessons, and all that?

Anthony Burik: Right. So the question is about the CK-12 offering. So basically, it's the online courses, or the online textbooks, that you can use in your course. And it's really up to you what you would like to include in the course-- or in the textbook, sorry. So with CK-12, what you can do is you can create an account on the CK-12 website, and then basically, you can download a copy of that textbook, put it into your own account, and then you can customize it the way you want.

You can keep it as is. You can add new content. You could take out content. You could add assessments if they're not there. So you have a lot of flexibility--

Speaker 3: And some stuff about it.

Anthony Burik: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. OK. Yeah. Good. Other questions? Online questions? Or any written questions? OK. So what I'd like to do-- again, kind of keeping this kind of informal today-- is I want to give you a chance, maybe about 10 minutes or so, to take a look and see-- go back to this kind of guide to the offers. And again, depending on your program area or where your interest is, take a look at some of these products in particular. Again, you can visit any of the Canvas pages by clicking on any one of these links to get some more information.

Let's just go to the essential, just for example. So on the pages, I've just put some basic information about what the product is. In this case, this is a blended learning and adult education course. It's kind of a self-paced course that you can create an account, sign up for, and then you can work your way through the blended learning course. But basically, it's going to give you a lot of information about how to teach your blended learning courses-- how to get started, how to organize the courses, what's going to happen in the classroom, what's going to happen asynchronously, what's going to happen synchronously-- things of that nature.

I have a link to our web page on our website. And in this case, for the blended learning course, if you're interested in this course, there is a form to complete. It's at the bottom of the page. Just go ahead and fill that out, and you can get started with the self-paced course. And then if there is some more basic information about the course, I've also included that on the page as well. And that's kind of the organization of these different Canvas pages.

So again, I want to give folks about 10 minutes or so just to kind of explore. I'll circulate around the room. Karen will help me if there are any online questions, if you want to ask those. But I just want to give folks time to explore, if we have any online questions.

Speaker 1: Yeah, just that they wondered why the link's not working. I just restarted the Bitly link if you want to go there to sign up for stuff. There's a button--

Anthony Burik: The buttons?

Speaker 1: Yeah. They're trying to hyperlink to the books that you were showing.

Anthony Burik: OK. So on the guide?

Speaker 1: Yes.

Anthony Burik: OK. So if these-- oh, sorry. If these links on the guide are not working for some reason, just go back to the home page, and then all of the products and vendors are down here towards the bottom of the page on the homepage. OK.

So let's take 10 minutes or so just to kind of explore. I'll walk around. Karen will let me know if there are any online questions. And then we'll come back and discuss further.

All right. So why don't we-- we'll come back together and talk about this a little bit more if people have questions. Why don't we start with-- so let's start, again, with the two current pilots that we have, which are the learning upgrade pilot and the Northstar digital literacy pilot. Do folks have questions about that? Do we have any folks in the room who are actually using either one of them?

Do they want to, I don't know, talk about how they're using it at their agency? That might be helpful, too, if anyone's using Learning Upgrade or using Northstar.

Speaker 4: We had a PD a few months ago. And everyone took the Northstar test to see your digital skills. And it was interesting to see where you scored.

And we actually had some staff that are using it. They're getting hours to do professional development, and they're just using the Northstar system to review their skills and upgrade their tech skills. So it's really good, I think, for either students or staff. So a great little tech for humans.

Anthony Burik: OK. Great. Thank you.

Speaker 1: Tom has his hand up.

Anthony Burik: Yeah, Tom. Go ahead.

Speaker 5: Hi. Thanks. It seemed like Learning Upgrade-- it has its own LMS, or it is the platform. That's what it is, which is-- I'm trying to figure out what I could use and what I couldn't use.

And because I have to have my stuff in Canvas, I can't use a platform that takes them out of Canvas to do the work for class. Right? So I'm thinking-- I'm wondering which of the items I can't use. For example, it seems like Learning Upgrade would not be an option for me.

Anthony Burik: Yeah. So for example, let's talk about the Learn360 for a second. So we know that Learn360 is available through Canvas as a-- I'm not sure, as a LTI, or a plug-in, or-- don't remember the-- the what?

Speaker 1: An app?

Anthony Burik: An app. OK. So a product like the Learn360, for example, would kind of seamlessly integrate with Canvas, for example. I think also, maybe, the CK-12 would as well. So I know-- yeah. That's like a big issue, right, with these products, is that they don't always talk nicely with one another. And so some of them are further ahead with their Canvas integration or other LMS integration, like Google Classroom, for example.

So it really kind of depends, you know, sort of app-to-app, product-to-product, how it's going to work. But I would say kind of, off the top of my head, the Learn360 and the CK-12 textbooks would probably be good places to start.

Speaker 5: Great. And do you know about accessibility, also?

Anthony Burik: With Canvas, or with the products?

Speaker 5: With the products.

Anthony Burik: The products, right. Yeah. I think that this is kind of another variable, is how accessible are these products. I mean, when we talk with the partners, I mean, we do-- for sure, we let them know about our concerns about accessibility. And I think a lot of folks are working on it. Some are better than others. Some are farther ahead with accessibility requirements than others. So you know, we do try to figure out which one of these are going to be more-- which products are going to be better for accessibility purposes than others.

Speaker 5: OK. Thanks.

Anthony Burik: Yeah. Thanks, Tom. Were there other questions? With either-- oh, let me just talk about the Northstar again, in particular. So with Northstar, what we offer is basically-- so with Northstar, typically, an agency pays a yearly subscription to become a Northstar location. And when you become a Northstar location, that enables you to offer the assessments-- the proctored assessments.

And then you can earn badges and certificates if you pass those proctored assessments. And Northstar, recently, within the last few years, has really worked on developing a digital literacy skills curriculum. And so you can either use that-- their curriculum, and their modules, and such-- you can use them in your computer courses, depending on-- and computer classes, and even your regular classes. Like, however you would like to integrate that skill-building into your classes.

You can also offer the modules asynchronously, so the students can do online learning as well. So that's all within the parameters of being a Northstar location. So the current pilot is for an agency, if they're interested in becoming a Northstar location, basically, OTAN will cover the annual subscription fee. So it's only-- well, I shouldn't say "only." sorry. It's $400, $500, depending on-- well, it's probably $500 per agency per year.

But OTAN will cover that for the year. And then the goal with the pilot is, then, for the agency to decide if they would like to continue as a Northstar location. Then, they would pick up the cost of that after the end of the pilot. So that's what the current Northstar pilot is right now.

So we've been adding agencies since the start of 2023. And so if you're interested in learning more about that, there's a form that I provided on the Northstar page, and you can go ahead and fill that out. And I'll be in touch with you, and we can talk more about your interest in becoming a Northstar location. OK. So other questions about the Learning Upgrade pilot, or the Northstar pilot? Or we can move on?

Speaker 6: No, I was just wondering if it's something that can be used on the phone?

Anthony Burik: Yeah. Right. Learning Upgrade, their angle is that they really encourage mobile learning. So everything is learned on the phone. They have a number of different courses. So they have ESL courses, but they also have reading courses, math courses, GED prep, digital literacy skill-building. They have a kind of a range of things as well. They also have some kind of-- like, soft skill training, workforce training.

They have financial literacy-- a financial literacy course as well. I think they're also developing a citizenship course. So they're trying to cover sort of a wide range of adult education program areas in Learning Upgrades. But it's mobile learning, yeah. OK. Other questions? Learning Upgrade? Northstar? OK.

So let's talk about the next set of offers. So the Learn360 is primarily using video in the classroom. So it's easy to integrate the Learn360 into your LMS, whether it's Canvas, or previously, Moodle, with OTAN, Google Classroom. You also can-- it's not a robust LMS within Learn360, but you can kind of organize some of your classwork within Learn360.

But the primary goal is using video in the classroom or asynchronously for homework, or with a flipped classroom, for example. Learn360 has also been adding supplemental materials to the videos-- so, like, worksheets or other activities that you can use in conjunction with the videos. Learn360 is primarily a K-12 product, but we've also added on the Classroom Video on Demand, which has more of the secondary school focus-- or secondary student focus.

So that's where you're probably going to find more of your ASE kind of videos, some CTE videos, even ESL as well. It's a little bit more older age oriented than some of the material that you might find, just in the regular Learn360 platform. But again, the goal is to try to use more video in your classroom and educational activities. We talked a little bit about the ENRA project. So basically-- oh, Michael, yeah?

Speaker 2: I just looked it up in Canvas. This was under Apps?

Anthony Burik: Yes.

Speaker 2: It says is a subscription is required?

Anthony Burik: So one of the things that we're trying to work on between us and the Learn360 folks, and our Canvas folks, is to see-- because we're kind of new with Canvas as well, at OTAN. So we're trying to figure out a way to integrate that together. So we're kind of working on that at the moment. You should be able, though, if you have the Learn360-- at least you can link to the videos. You can put links to the videos in your Canvas courses, and I think, bring some of those materials into your Canvas course as well.

Speaker 1: You can embed the videos in.

Anthony Burik: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Karen said embedding videos and the materials in the Canvas course. That's kind of a workaround.

Speaker 2: Subscription to premium.

Anthony Burik: So right. So right. So Learn360-- so OTAN has purchased sort of a bulk subscription, as it were. So anybody who works at an adult ed agency can sign up for an account. And then once you have your account, you can go ahead and explore and get the videos you need for your courses, set up the kind of LMS, sort of, kind of, within Learn360.

Speaker 2: I think their request form is at the very bottom.

Anthony Burik: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Just go down to the bottom of that page. OK. Then the NROC project-- we talked a little bit about that. That's basically the secondary-level math, so ASE primarily, although there also are-- especially with the math courses, we do have-- sorry, NROC has a number of, basically, math for the workplace courses, right? So depending on the kinds of CTE programs that you're offering, you may want to take a look at some of those specialized math courses that might tie in with the math skills that you need for your particular CTE program or workforce program. Karen?

Speaker 1: There is a person in the chat who asked, I started to do that, and the form asked for the principal, et cetera. I'm thinking it might need the 360?

Anthony Burik: Yes. Yeah. The Learn360 form, I think we just went-- so on the forms that we have, not just to Learn360 form, but we often ask for the name of the administrator because we get a lot of teachers who fill out the form. And sometimes, we just need to make sure that everybody at the agency is on the same page.

We love teacher initiative. I'm not going to I'm not going to discount, ever, teacher initiative. But we just want to make sure that everybody at the agency-- you know, before you sign up your agency as a Northstar location, just make sure that everybody is on board with this, everybody is aware that you have now become a Northstar location.

We don't want anybody after the fact to be, like, what are you talking about? So that's why we ask for the name of the administrator on the form. Just we know who's all there.

OK. The NROC, right? So the NROC, again, has the secondary level math and English courses, in particular. And then with EdReady, you can do that customization. So with the NROC courses, probably the best thing to do would be to email us. We would need to do a little work to get you set up with an EdReady account, but we're happy to do that.

And then the other was the Essential Ed. We talked about that a little bit. So that's basically kind of a PD offering-- professional development offering. So for those of you who are interested in blended learning-- maybe after this conference, you've heard a lot about blended learning, but you want to learn more about it kind of at a foundational level-- so this is really a self-paced course that kind of walks you through the steps of, what is blended learning? How do I get it started in my classroom? What are the things that I need?

What am I going to do in the classroom? What am I going to do outside of the classroom? How would these things kind of integrate to create a blended experience, a hybrid experience? So that's really a self-paced offering right there.

And let me pause there. Any questions about any of those products, or online questions? Karen shaking her head. OK. So then let me talk about the last set of-- oh, Karen? Karen? What time?

Speaker 1: What time?

Anthony Burik: What time? It goes till 2:00 or 2:10?

Speaker 1: I don't know.

Speaker 7: It goes to 2:10.

Anthony Burik: Oh, 2:10? OK. So all right. I'll pause it here. I won't rush it. OK. So then the last set-- of the CK-12, USALearns, Skills for the Nursing Assistant, and the ISTE SkillRise. So these are really offers that we make available through our partnership with certain adult ed agencies and other agencies that we work with. So the CK-12, they are primarily a sort of K-12-oriented organization. But the goal with CK-12 is to create online textbooks that are customizable for your own classroom, for your own program.

So we actually entered into partnership with CK-12 a few years ago to create an adult education space on the CK-12 website. And so when you go to the website, you'll see that we have some online classes, some free online classes, that are available in the different program areas. So we have some ESL classes. We have some ADE and ASE classes.

Sorry, not classes. Textbooks. Textbooks. ESL textbooks, ADE, ASE textbooks, and CTE textbooks. So really, you're free to create an account on the CK-12 website. And then what you can do is you can download copies of those free textbooks into your account, and then you can customize them further, however you-- you can use them as-is. You can customize them for your classes.

They're open educational resources, so you're free to do with them whatever you would like. Depending on the version that you create, you actually can add that version to the community space in CK-12, so other adult educators could also get those versions of the textbooks as well. So that's really the goal, is to try to create textbooks that are freely available for students so they're not spending that extra money for textbooks and other kinds of big ticket item materials.

So that's CK-12. Oh. One thing, too, I'll just say is with CK-12-- so if you really get into CK-12 and you develop your own textbooks, let us know at OTAN. Because we're working on building more textbooks for the CK-12 site, but if you are-- if you're creating your own textbooks, please let us know. We'll work with you to get them onto the CK-12 page, so that they can also be available for other people, too. And Tom. Yes, Tom.

Speaker 8: Hi. Yeah. What form do those textbooks take? Are they web pages, or PDFs, or what kind of files are they?

Anthony Burik: Right. Yeah. They're basically web-based. I think you can-- you might be able to download them into PDFs. Not positive about that. But they're basically web-based. So that way, you can integrate them into your Canvas courses, for example, or use them as a supplement. But that's how they're organized.

Speaker 8: And I can edit the web pages?

Anthony Burik: Yeah. So what you're going to do is you're going to get a copy of a textbook, and you bring that copy into your account. And then from there, once it's in your account, you can do with it whatever you would like. You can customize it the way you like.

Speaker 8: OK. Thank you.

Anthony Burik: Yeah, sure.

Speaker 9: So it's a customizable little textbook then you would have then in your Canvas?

Anthony Burik: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. On the CK-12 site, they have some information about how you can integrate with Canvas. So I would just follow their directions on how to do that.

Speaker 9: And yeah. That's good.

Speaker 10: Yeah, it doesn't work with ALEKS there.

Speaker 9: ALEKS-- it doesn't work around it.

Anthony Burik: No.

Speaker 10: It works in the background, and it's technically about the bells and whistles, actors and--

Anthony Burik: OK.

Speaker 10: I was just wondering if you knew that.

Anthony Burik: Yeah, I'm not familiar with-- what's it called again?

Speaker 10: ALEKS Lab. A-L-E-C and Lab.

Anthony Burik: ALEKS Lab. So it's with McGraw-Hill?

Speaker 10: Yeah.

Anthony Burik: Yeah. We're not currently-- we don't partner with them on that. But I mean-- but thank you for asking that, because I did want to say-- so we really encourage you all to let us know about products that you're using at your agency, or things that you might think might be of value to the adult education field. And we're happy to take a look and see what those are.

Speaker 11: When you state a customer, does it allow us to pitch margins over one or specifically gradual. So they're gauging margins and trying to be useful for our contract.

Anthony Burik: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 12: Where do we make these recommendations?

Anthony Burik: So if you want to pop this-- our support app for that. So basically, you can email us. Give us a call-- support@otan.us-- and we'll start from there.

Speaker 13: Some are actually using UC Scout.

Anthony Burik: UC Scout?

Speaker 13: Yeah. University of California. And they have they're own A through G curriculum, and so they approve stuff, I guess, for those who use it. But it's more than even the secondary curriculum. They'll give it to you for free, but they will only allow you to host it on their own campus.

And then you can show it on your own campus. And that's why one of those little statements that we could have it on our own so we can control it more. But they have maybe a little more control than somebody would like. So I just started looking into it, and I thought, oh, that would be cool if we could get that there.

Anthony Burik: Yeah. I will say that from our point of view-- from OTAN's point of view-- so we really are interested and want to encourage the use of OER, Open Educational Resources, right? Versus commercial products, for example. So that's why we really like something like CK-12, because that's how we are.

That's freely available. And really, the goal is to be able to use it and customize it, and then maybe share it back out with the field again, or you're developing your own textbooks, and then we find ways to share that with the field. So from our point of view, we really like going the OER route, because it's really going to benefit students ultimately, right? Because they'll be able to take advantage of these free resources. And sometimes, for the benefit of the teacher, but for the benefit of the students as well.

Speaker 13: Right. Anyway, this kind of staying in public schools and public school students. I think they do try to control it in private. And--

Anthony Burik: Right. Right. Yeah. And we all know that in the K-12 adult ed family, that sometimes our relationship with the K-12 district is a little tenuous at best. So you know, we can't always take advantage of some of these things. But sometimes, if you work in partnership with your K-12-- you know, the IT folks, or the instructional technology folks, or whomever over there, there might be a way to kind of piggyback on some of the K-12 materials that are available.

Speaker 13: Right.

Anthony Burik: OK. The next two products the USA Learns and the Skills for the Nursing Assistant. So actually, one of our close projects at the Sacramento County Office of Ed, where we are, where OTAN is, this is-- they had developed USA Learns, which are ESL classes, and they also have a citizenship class as well. So these are online classes.

They are now more kind of like LMSs, as well. So you can sort of have these organized as online courses for different ESL levels and for citizenship. And then the Skills for Nursing Assistant is also developed by them at the County Office. And so this is specifically for the nursing assistant students and their teachers.

So this is really a series of modules that kind of walk through some of the skills that you need-- kind of a lot of soft skills that are needed for the nursing assistant program in particular. They might be good for other kind of CTE programs as well-- maybe medical assistants dental assistant. You might consider those sort of soft skills that are transferable, right, between the CTE programs. But this is also freely available. And you could use it as a supplement to the nursing assistant curriculum.

And then the last program is the ISTE SkillRise. So this is another digital literacy skill-oriented program, but this is more digital literacy skills for the workplace. So kind of that area of digital literacy training.

So the idea is actually for teachers to kind of walk through the ISTE SkillRise curriculum, and then they would, in turn, kind of turn around and then do that skills training with their students for workforce development, workplace training. And ISTE is one of our partners. Actually, ISTE-- if you've heard about the Digital Literacy Guidance, we also worked with ISTE in developing that, and we're continuing to work with ISTE to develop some new training materials for the guidance as well.

All right. So that's kind of, again, just sort of a rundown of the curriculum offers and the products that we have available when you visit that part of the website. So I don't-- Karen, were there are any online questions, or-- we're good?

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Anthony Burik: OK. Just a question for the group-- I mean, you talked the NROC classes. Is anybody out there using any of these products currently that they want to take a minute just to talk about how they're using it in their classrooms, or in their programs? Just for the benefit of the group? Don't be shy.

Speaker 14: We'll use email. I'm excited to look them over.

Anthony Burik: OK. We don't use anything. So yeah. Yeah. Really, I mean-- if you kind of latch onto one of them and just start with that and just see how it goes, then let us know about it. Online folks, anybody currently using any of the products, or you want to speak to any of them?

Speaker 15: I go to the CK-12 app, open our Canvas app and into our Canvas instance. So it's there. So I'm going to try to promote it, particularly on the high school diploma side. I was hoping maybe that-- ESL, we have a lot of stuff going right now. I'm not saying Northstar, we used some of the free things in the ESL class.

Anthony Burik: Right.

Speaker 15: We let some students take them, particularly those with lesser skills who were not that strong. Some of the higher flyers just buzzed right through it. So we played it a little.

Anthony Burik: Good. The students-- we know that the students who earn the certificates-- we know that they really love those certificates. They'll frame them. They'll put them up on their wall. They're really excited when they earn those certificates. And now they can also earn badges as well. So if they want to use that for, you know, if they go for a job, or a resume, or whatever, they can also add that as well. Karen. Yes.

Speaker 1: Question from the chat. Do we need to get USA Learns through OTAN?

Anthony Burik: No. For USA Learns, you can go ahead and create your own account. I would probably do that first, before you-- if you want to use it in your classroom, for example, or if you want to suggest it for your students, then you might want to create your account first and kind of just get oriented to, for example, like, which of the ESL courses you want to offer, if you want to offer the citizenship course as well.

So just kind of get oriented to those courses first. And then with the USA Learns, they have a separate email creation and login for the students. And then once the students create their accounts, you can add those students to one of the ESL courses that you have in your account. So you basically just sort of add them as students to that account. And then you can-- then you'll have your roster, and then you can see how they're doing with the different USA Learns activities, with the course activities. Yes.

Speaker 1: Question. Cyber High Fresno is an amazing credit recovery program. Does OTAN know about this, or knows and chooses not to include?

Anthony Burik: I'm not personally familiar with it, so I appreciate the recommendation. We can definitely take a look at it. Karen, if you want-- if you can share-- who is it?

Speaker 1: You have to open up--

Anthony Burik: Oh, OK. So whoever shared the information, if you can--

Speaker 1: Suzanne?

Anthony Burik: Oh, Suzanne. OK. Hi, Suzanne. So yeah. Just-- if you can email that to-- you can email me, aburik@otan.us-- Karen, if you want to put that in-- just email the reference to me, Suzanne, and I can take a look at it. That'd be great.

Speaker 2: Is Putting English to Work kind of a OTAN regular offering?

Anthony Burik: So right. So Putting English to Work-- we actually just had a session on Putting English to Work in the morning, there. So we've worked a long time with LAU. It's originally an LAUSD product, and we've partnered with them over the years to offer the online version of Putting English to Work in Moodle, previously.

OTAN has made the transition away from Moodle at the end of last year to Canvas, 100%. So we actually-- you may have heard that if you went to that session-- that we've been working on developing the Canvas versions of Putting English to Work 1, 2, and 3. As we kind of get our Canvas organized on the OTAN side, we're going to figure out a way to make that also freely available to the field as well. So we'll let you know when that comes out. But yes. That's our goal.

Speaker 2: It's going to be sharing a-- man, this is-- I don't even know what--

Anthony Burik: Yeah. So right now-- yeah. So in the move from one LMS to another LMS, there's always kind of speed bumps along the way, right? So we're trying to figure out-- sorry, OTAN, right now, is trying to figure out the best way to share those courses with the field. So once we kind of crack that net, then we'll let you all know that those are available. And then you'll be able to get copies of those PET courses into your Canvas account, and then you can start distance learning, or however you're doing it back at your agency. Yeah. Thank you for that.

Speaker 1: And then Suzanne said she has five years experience using this in the classroom. I think she's referring to PET, but--

Anthony Burik: No. Suzanne was the Cyber High.

Speaker 1: No, but she wrote another comment.

Anthony Burik: Oh, another comment. Sorry. OK.

Speaker 1: As soon as you were talking about the PET--

Anthony Burik: Got it. OK. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a lot of folks have used the Putting English to Work with their distance learning students over the years, and so we want to bring those over to campus and make sure people can take advantage of that as well. OK. So I think we're almost at 2:10. Any last questions in the room or online? Again, if you have any questions about-- oh, Tom. Yes.

Speaker 16: Hi. I just wanted to say I'm totally interested in Putting English to Work. How will we get updated on when that is available?

Anthony Burik: Right.

Speaker 16: Through OTAN and Canvas?

Anthony Burik: Right. So as soon as we-- like, say, as soon as we figure out where on Canvas, we're going to house those and make those available, we will definitely let you know. We don't want to, like-- we're sort of chomping at the bit as well.

Like, we really-- I think right now, Paul has shared, I think-- Putting English to Work 1 and 2 are basically, like, ready to go. And he's working on the final touches for 3 as well. So yeah. I mean, they're coming together.

We just need to figure out where we're going to put them on Canvas, so we can share them out. Yeah. And we'll let when that happens. Yeah. Great. OK. Other questions before we break?

OK. So again, thank you for coming. Please take advantage of these freely available curriculum offers. And if you have questions, or want to get more information, or if you have suggestions for other products to let us know about, you can email me, you can email Karen, and we'll take a look at those and figure out how to get them out to the field. So I think with that, I'll sign off here.