(SPEECH) [AUDIO LOGO] (DESCRIPTION) Logo: OTAN. -- A white figure reaches up and out of a blue circle. (SPEECH) ANNOUNCER: OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network. (DESCRIPTION) Text: Leading Adult Education Through Support for and the Effective Application of Technology. Professional Development. Teaching with Technology. OTAN Digests and Newsletters. News and Social Media. Annual Technology and Distance Learning Symposium. Online Resources and Video Presentations. Website, O.T.A.N. dot U.S. - Phone number, 916-228-2580. Slide: OTAN Online. Text: Overview of Northstar Features. Presenters: Theresa Sladeck, Strategic Partnerships & Northstar Business Development Manager, Literacy Minnesota. Anthony Burik, OTAN Coordinator, Distance Learning Projects. September 3, 2024. Slide: Northstar Digital Literacy Overview. Logos: Northstar Digital Literacy, Literacy Minnesota. (SPEECH) THERESA SLADEK: Well, good afternoon, everyone. It's nice to see you. I am Theresa Sladek. I'm with Literacy Minnesota, and we are going to talk about Northstar today. I just want you to know that I'm going to give you actually a lot of information. I'm going to tell you everything that's available in Northstar. If you have a subscription, if you're participating in the pilot, you will have access to all of this. What I sometimes find is that organizations-- it's great because there's so much in here, but sometimes organizations will think there's so much I can't possibly do it all and I don't know where to start. Don't feel that way. You don't have to do everything all at once. You and we'll talk a little bit about some common ways that people start that organizations start. If you feel like you just want to tackle a little bit at a time and then and grow from there, that is definitely doable. As Anthony said, I love to hear your questions and you can either as we go along, unmute and ask them or put them in the chat and I can, see it and monitor it pretty well. Usually, it's best to try and answer the question as we're talking about the material because it's usually pretty relevant to what we're talking about. (DESCRIPTION) Slide: Agenda. Text: Literacy Minnesota overview. Northstar History and Philosophy. Features. Logo: Northstar. (SPEECH) Today, I'll tell you a little bit about my agency literacy Minnesota, and then how Northstar got started and why we do things the way we do them. We'll focus most of our time, though, on what is in Northstars. And so that would include all the assessments, the two types of educational materials, which are the instructor-led curriculum and the self-directed online learning practice lessons, and then kind of encompassing all of that or tying it all together is the Learner Management System and the reports that you can see. If you already have Northstar and you're here for a refresher, this is great for you too, because honestly, I feel like I'm always updating my slides with new things that the Northstar team is developing. And that seems like it's every week sometimes. So there's probably something new here for you that you may not know about. (DESCRIPTION) Slide: Literacy Minnesota. Text: A non-profit leader and a driving force behind the latest developments in literacy learning. Extensive direct service experience providing English Language Learning, Citizenship, High School Equivalency and Digital Literacy. Provide statewide training to volunteers and teachers working with Adult literacy. https://www.literacy M.N. dot org/educator hyphen resources. Nationally recognized for educational resources, advocacy and digital literacy. (SPEECH) Literacy Minnesota, we are adult basic education agency. We've been around for over 50 years. We have our own schools. We have of our own schools here in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul. I'm in Minnesota. If you didn't guess. And you know that is looking at helping people learn English, Adults learn English with literacy and also teaching them high school equivalency. And then of course, digital literacy. If you don't know about literacy in Minnesota, we also do statewide training for volunteers and teachers, working with adults on literacy and have for years. And so there are we have a ton of free resources at our web page that is looked at by people all over the world. Things like curriculum, working with people on phonics, working with people on math, there's little videos, there's tool kits. I will put this in the chat. But just quickly want to show you-- excuse me, I'm just getting over a cold. (DESCRIPTION) She clicks on the link and a web browser opens to the home page of Literacy Minnesota. It has a menu with dropdown options across the top right and features a search bar prominently in the center, with filters below for audience, topic, format, and level. (SPEECH) This is the Literacy Minnesota web page. I went to their Educator Resources here. If you look under where it says find Free Adult Classes in blue. (DESCRIPTION) She points to a blue button on the top right. Below it, she mouses over the Educator Resources dropdown menu item. (SPEECH) Then there's Educator Resources. And if you go to the Educator Resources Library, that's where I'm at right now. (DESCRIPTION) She scrolls down the page to featured resources, then scrolls back up and clicks on the search filter drop-down menus. (SPEECH) Like I said here, they show some featured things, but you can look by a variety of different topics, different audiences, format, what you're looking for and the level. And 95% of what's on here is free and you'll know if something's not. I will put this in the chat just in case. Well, it looks like Anthony did. Thank you. So it's a great resource for you to use. (DESCRIPTION) She returns to the Literacy Minnesota slide. (SPEECH) But today, we are here to-- Literacy Minnesota also does advocacy around adult basic education on a statewide and national level. And of course, digital literacy through Northstar and that's what we're here to talk about today. (DESCRIPTION) Slide: Northstar Digital Literacy. Text: Mission: To help individuals around the world master the digital skills needed to work, learn, and participate fully in daily life. Assessments and educational tools for basic computer skills. Used by 3,246 sites in 50 states, 11 countries. Over 8.8 million total assessments given. Available fully in English, assessments and practice lessons are also in Spanish. Fully compatible with Desktops, Laptops, and Chromebooks, making mobile compatible. (SPEECH) Northstar is a platform. It's a web-based platform, and its focus is on foundational digital skills. And this it starts with basic things like how to turn out a computer, how to search on the internet, how to send an email up through, I'd say, mid-level skills. So kind of your basic office Excel PowerPoint word programs that your generic office worker would need to use, and then some specialized things that will show they'll show you in just a second. It's used around the country and around the world. It was initially created in English and now almost all of it is also in Spanish. All of the assessments and all of the practice lessons are in Spanish. And the instructor-led curriculum, I think is about half of it's in Spanish and we are working on translating the other half. And so I would assume they do probably one every three weeks. So probably in the next, five months, all of the instructor-led curriculum will be in Spanish, too. Northstar is fully compatible with desktops, laptops, and Chromebooks. You can use it on a tablet. There are a few questions that are drag and drop that don't work very well. But sometimes people just skip those. You technically can use it on a cell phone, but it's really not a great user experience at the moment, especially for someone who has low digital literacy skills. We are changing that because we know that a lot of times learners, that's what they have our phones. We are going through all of Northstar, making the assessments and the practice lessons mobile compatible where it makes sense. We wouldn't do that for Excel because most people aren't doing Excel on their phone anyway. But for especially for the kind of basic things, we're making it all mobile compatible on phones and tablets. And as we do that, we're also working with an organization that works solely with vision impaired individuals and they're helping, they're going line by line through everything in Northstar and testing it on screen readers. And so giving us suggestions on how to make it even more compatible with screen readers. And then we're just updating it to as we do that. So that's probably a year-long project and they're done a few topics which I'll show you. And they're working on right now on internet basics assessment, I believe. (DESCRIPTION) Slide: Northstar History and Philosophy. Text: Started at request of local library. Standards based. Accessible. Grade 4 Reading Level. Web based. National reach. Subscription model pays for maintenance. (SPEECH) Northstar was started now it's probably 13 or 14 years ago when the country was in the last, big recession. And our local library here in Saint Paul was getting in a lot of displaced workers who wanted to take their computer classes in order to show prospective employers that they had these skills. And the library was having a hard time because they were getting people who had such a wide range of different skills that the classes weren't very effective for anyone. They came to us and they said could you create some kind of an assessment that will let us place people in various classes. And we thought this was a great idea. First, we looked out to see if there was anything already developed, but we couldn't find anything. So we got together a group of national experts, and they started looking at, well, what would we consider to be foundational digital literacy. And once they developed those topics, like using email, then for each topic, they started creating standards. And as you know, standards are the skills that we feel are what is needed to be competent in each of these topic areas. And the standards are always very testable concrete standards. For example, in using email that topic, one of the standards is how to attach a file to an email. You can tell if someone knows how to do that or not. Because we work with adults ourselves on literacy, we wanted to make this as accessible to the people that we work with as we could and we felt that we could write it all at a grade 4 reading level and still kind of maintain the digital literacy integrity of the assessments. And we also decided to make it web-based. So as long as someone has a device and reliable internet, you can access this from anywhere in the world. We initially thought it would just be used by Saint Paul public libraries and were amazed at how quickly it gained national attention. And that's really because there was nothing else and there still isn't anything else out there that assesses these skills, and then provides some of the training materials and especially at a low cost because we are a nonprofit. What we do charge organizations helps us pay for staffing so that we can maintain digital literacy. You know that digital landscape is constantly changing. We want to make sure we're up to date and then adding new features that we hear from our subscribers like you. And I think that's all I wanted to say on that. (DESCRIPTION) Slide: Assessments. Text: Essential Computer Skills. Basic Computer, Internet basics, Using Email, Windows 10, Windows 11, Mac OS. Essential Software. Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Google Docs. Using Technology in Daily Life. Social Media, Information Literacy, Career Search Skills, Accessing Telehealth Appointments, Your Digital Footprint, Supporting K-12 Distance Learning. Coming Up. CyberSecurity - end of year. Internet Basics being made mobile friendly. Asterisk, Those listed in blue are also Mobile Friendly. Accessing Telehealth Appointments is in blue. (SPEECH) We currently have 16 different assessments. Excuse me. And you can see that they're arranged in these three different groups, mostly for convenience for you. I know what I was going to say. Northstar is always free to any individual. Only organizations are subscribers, and then they provide it free to those that they work with. Here are the 16 different assessments. No one has to take all 16. It really depends on their goals, your organization's goals, and the needs. It could be that someone-- in fact, I encountered a person a couple months ago who had a job and he wanted a promotion. And he knew that to get the promotion, he needed to know how to use Excel, but he didn't feel that confident in his Excel skills. He went to his local library and there they had Northstar and he took the Excel assessment, figured out what he knew and what he still had to learn, learned it, and then passed the assessment and showed his supervisor the certificate that he had passed. And the supervisor was very impressed by his dedication and promised him that he would move up in the promotion. So he got the promotion. That's an example where this person just used one of the assessments. Sometimes there are people who want to do all the assessments. It really depends. I would say that mostly organizations will use the first three and individuals, the first three. Basic computer, internet basics, and using email are the most frequently used, because if you can't pass those assessments, you really can't do much else in digital literacy in Northstar. You see that we have these three different areas. Essential computer skills these are those foundational skills. The first three are the most common. And then Windows 10 or Windows 11 really depends on what operating system you might have at your organization. Windows 11 would is more used in a business setting. If you have people who are looking to get a job, that might be more helpful. And then Mac OS and/or Mac OS, so depending on what operating system someone's going to be using. The essential software, these are workplace skills and/or educational skills. Then using technology in daily life. Most of these you know what they are. Information literacy is the not the ability to just search, but the ability to use critical thinking when searching so that you're putting in search terms that will get you relevant results and you're understanding what websites might be reliable. And what might not be. Again, that next step in searching. Most of these then, career search skills, you know what that is. Accessing telehealth appointments. Your digital footprint is helping keep you safe online. When you do things online, you are often making it public without your knowledge. This helps a learner understand how to make things private. And also the awareness of just what they're putting online might be viewed by other people. And then supporting K-12 distance learning. This was made during the pandemic for parents to help their students. But I'm finding in talking to community colleges that many, many community colleges are using this particular assessment because they're finding that students are coming into the community colleges without knowing how to use the distance learning platform. And that's kind of setting them back right from the start. This can be used by adults to just to learn how to use those distance learning platforms. Northstar is always planning on new things and we're planning on adding a specific cybersecurity assessment by the end of this year, by the end of December. We do have a lot of cybersecurity embedded in several of the assessments like internet basics and using email and your digital footprint. But we hear that people would like, just one assessment on that topic. That is the plan. And then as I mentioned, we're making internet basics more mobile-friendly, mobile compatible. (DESCRIPTION) Slide: Assess Skills. A screenshot of the Northstar Accessing Telehealth Appointments website features a man on a video chat on a smart phone screen. (SPEECH) The assessments themselves-- as you can see, here's an example of a question from the accessing telehealth appointments. The assessments themselves they're not theoretical. They actually have you show that you can perform the skill. And then they're typically, except for some at the very beginning ones, typically kind of in a real world scenario, so something that an adult might encounter. I don't know how many of you have taken the assessments, but I would like to give you maybe seven minutes to try them. I'm going to show you where to find them. We're going to do-- Northstar has free assessments and then the subscription assessments are actually the same assessments. The main difference is that there's no tracking or reporting on the free version. And in fact, in the free version, unless you yourself write down your score or take a screenshot, even Northstar doesn't keep that information. I'm going to just take you to that, those free assessments for right now. And I'll put it in the chat as well. But I would like to give you about seven minutes. I want you to all try taking an assessment. If you don't finish, that's completely fine. I just I mostly want you to see what it's like and what the experience is like, what the students you would be working with would experience. And also, I will say that I talk to groups all the time and have for years and have yet to meet anyone who has passed all 16 assessments with 100% on the first time, even those in IT. And that just goes to show that, this is digital literacy is lifelong learning. And that's a good thing for us to remember and to be able to tell the students that we're working with. And you might learn something new. The assessments are here on the Northstar home page, which is digitalliteracyassessment.org. (DESCRIPTION) She goes to the page on a web browser. It has three tiles in the middle, titled Assessments, Education, and Reports. (SPEECH) And I'm going to put this in the chat, and then when I let you on explain where to go, then you can go ahead and choose your assessment. So you're going to scroll down just a little bit and you'll see a green oval that says Try An Assessment Now. You're going to click on that. (DESCRIPTION) The button is at the bottom of the Assessments tile on the left. A page titled, Take an Assessment, opens, with tiles listing assessment skills in a grid of three tiles below. (SPEECH) And then if you scroll down a bit, you'll see all 16 assessments here. Please take whatever assessment you want. What happens when you click on one of them is you'll get asked if you want to test your audio, you can or you don't have to. Then there'll be a short-- there'll be an option to watch an orientation video and you can skip that if you'd like. And then you'd start the assessment. Again, don't worry if you don't finish. I'm going to give us until 27 after the hour. And so go ahead, get started. Make sure you're muted. If you have any questions, please, put it in the chat or just unmute and let me know. And then once you're finished, if you can put in the chat, you don't have to put your score. But if you could just put what assessment you took because it's kind of fun for me just to see the different choices people make. So go ahead, go to that link I put in the chat, scroll down, pick an assessment, and get started. (DESCRIPTION) The screen flashes. (SPEECH) And you could see that, when you took them that there was audio. There's words written on the page. Again, you have to show you can do the skill in order to go on to the question. And then of course, there's the I Don't Know button, which is great if you don't know because that allows instructors like you to know what people need help with. For those of you who were able to finish and some of the I'll also say some of the assessments are longer than others. If you're feeling-- don't feel bad if you didn't finish because sometimes some are longer than others. But if you did finish, you saw that you got this results page here or something like this (DESCRIPTION) Slide: Results Page. A screenshot of the results page has the result as a percentage in the upper left. This page has the score 85.8%, in green, with the text, You Passed!, above it. Correct and incorrect answers are listed below in two columns. To the right of the score is test data and statistics. (SPEECH) and it shows your percentage. And Northstar says you have to have 85% or higher to pass. What's more important, I think, is in these two different columns. You'll see in the green column on the left. This shows you which of those skills or standards that the person knew. And then in the gray column on the right, this shows me all those standards that did not pass. It can really help focus down where I need to learn. And now, like in this case, what you didn't see on the free version but which is in the subscription version is you can see that I missed standard 5 here. Just demonstrate understanding of how to use browser tools. And to the right of that, there's a barbell that says practice. If I clicked on that right from this screen, I could go to the practice lessons, right to that standard. I passed I don't need to do the whole lesson. I can really focus just on that area that I still have an opportunity to learned something. It really is very tailored to each person's learning needs. If my score had been much lower, I could start at the very beginning of the practice lessons if I wanted to from this page. (DESCRIPTION) She indicates a black button on the top right. (SPEECH) Under this plum colored bar, you see it says Go to NSOL. And NSOL is Northstar's acronym for Northstar Online Learning, which are the practice lessons. Now you definitely don't have to go to the practice lessons from the results page. I find that many people really want to learn. It's kind of gamified in a way because you get your score. And so people are kind of like, oh, I want to get 100% or whatever it is. They can if they want to. But again, we'll talk about the various educational models that we have to use once you've given the assessment. (DESCRIPTION) Slide: Badges and Certificates. Text: Passing score = 85%. Unproctored and pass. Digital badge, (unproctored). Proctored and pass. Digital badge (proctored). Certificate - printed or emailed as pdf. (SPEECH) I said the passing score was 85%. Whenever you give an assessment, you can decide if you want to Proctor it or not Proctor it, and proctoring will get into it much more in detail tomorrow. But proctoring really just means that you're there watching the person take the assessment, so they're not getting help or using notes or whatever it might be. If an assessment is unproctored and someone passes, they'll get that results page that says they pass and they can also get a digital badge, which is like a micro credential that some organizations use and some don't. And it would say they had passed and what the assessment was and that it was on proctored. If the assessment was proctored and someone passed, they of course, would still get a digital badge. It would say this time that their proctored and they could also get a certificate that you either print out and give to them or you could email it to them as a PDF attachment, assuming they have the digital skills to open a PDF on an email. You would know that you and they would know that the best. (DESCRIPTION) Slide: The power of certificates. Text: Prove knowledge to employers. Confidence Building. Persistence and Goal Setting. (SPEECH) We initially created these the certificates to show potential employers the digital skills that people had. And this has proven to be very effective. I've heard many, many people who've gotten jobs because they were able to show or talk about these certificates and that they have these digital skills, especially if your resume doesn't really indicate that you might have them. Especially for people who, let's say they've been incarcerated for a while or staying at home, taking care of family or this might be their first job in this country or their first job ever, or maybe they're wanting to move from a more of a physical labor type job to more of a desk type labor type job and their work history doesn't suggest that they have these skills, showing that they have these certificates by listing them on their resume or talking about them in an interview can be really helpful in getting a job. What we did not anticipate, and which we should have, but which is far more important is how much confidence getting these certificates gives people. For the most part, many people who have low digital literacy or no digital literacy are actually pretty afraid of computers. They're afraid they're going to break it, they're going to mess things up. And even more I think, they're afraid that they are never going to be able to learn the material. And so by getting the certificate, this objective certificate that says they know this information, it is amazing to see. I've had people start crying when they get them. People give you high fives. Many learners I know have purchased frames and hung them, hung the certificates up in their homes. And so it can be really powerful. It also helps in persisting in other educational goals. You know that trying to learn English or getting your GED or whatever it might be, those are long term educational goals. And adults tend to be hard on themselves. They often don't see the progress they're making. Northstar is a much quicker win. You don't have to spend as much time to see the results. You can see the change in your score. And we have heard from many organizations that it actually helps learners understand that by putting the time and energy into studying, they do see results and that helps them in their other educational endeavors as well. That's always very exciting for us. And there's a good question in the chat about how does Northstar verify that something was proctored versus unproctored? And if you are going to Proctor an assessment prior to proctoring the assessment, you enter in-- you would have a Proctor code that you would enter so that would let the system know that you're actually actively proctoring. And we'll go over that in more detail tomorrow how to do that. But that's how the system recognizes something's proctored or not. (DESCRIPTION) Slide: Certificates. A smiling man holds up a handful of certificates and a paper that reads, I passed all of the Northstar certification assessments! (SPEECH) This is a picture of one of the students that we had at one of our schools. And you can see that he's holding several of the certificates in his hand. You can actually print out just one certificate that lists everything that someone passed. But people are so proud of getting these certificates that they want a separate one for every assessment. And this man was typical a lot of the students that are seen at this particular school in that he had been an auto mechanic for his entire career and just got to a point where he physically just couldn't do the job anymore. But he wanted to stay in the field but didn't have the computer skills necessary to get the job he wanted. So he came to our school. He ended up passing all the Northstar assessments and getting his dream job at Napa Auto Parts helping behind the counter. It was really exciting for us to be part of his journey. (DESCRIPTION) Slide: Assessment Uses. Text: Assess instructional needs and provide relevant instruction. Prepare staff. Upskill employees. In person and remote proctoring available. (SPEECH) How do organizations use the assessments in conjunction with the educational materials? Ideally, in an ideal world, if you could assess every-- if you could Proctor every assessment, that'd be great in case someone does pass, then you could give them the certificate. But sometimes, you know you don't have the staff capacity to do that or the space or whatever it might be. If that is the case, I always recommend giving an assessment as a pre-assessment. You're giving it first to see what someone knows and choosing to do that on proctored and then providing whatever relevant instruction is needed and then give the assessment again and Proctor it that time and the post assessment in hopes that the person would pass. There are times-- and we'll talk about this later, but there are times when an assessment just might be too much if someone who really has no computer skills or maybe their English or Spanish language levels are really low. The assessment might just be too daunting. But in general, it's helpful to have someone take the assessment initially so you can see where there's the opportunity to learn more and what they already know, so you're not wasting their time on learning things they already know. A lot of programs, we talked about-- I'm going to tell you a lot about Northstar and there's many places to start, but a lot of programs will start by having their staff take the assessments and then beefing themselves up on whatever they don't know. Most of us have taught ourselves digital literacy, so we all have gaps. And if you're a teacher and you've never taught digital literacy and you're faced with now teaching digital literacy, many people get kind of nervous. So by going through the assessments and the relevant training materials themselves, instructors feel a lot more confident. And that really comes through when they're talking to the students. You can also just use it for professional development, even if it's something you're not going to teach. Again, I've learned a lot from taking the assessments and then the related learning materials. And then finally, I'll say that proctoring can be done in person or it can be done remotely. Both are really easy. We'll look at both tomorrow how to do them. But they're both really easy to do. I'm going to just pause for a second and see if anyone has any questions related to the assessments before we move on to the educational material. I see something in the chat. OK, all right. Well, let's go on then. (DESCRIPTION) Slide: Instructor-Led Curricula. Text: Essential Computer Skills. Basic Computer, Internet basics, Using Email, Windows 10, Windows 11, Mac OS. Essential Software. Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Google Docs. Using Technology in Daily Life. Social Media, Information Literacy, Career Search Skills, Accessing Telehealth Appointments, Your Digital Footprint, Supporting K-12 Distance Learning. Next Up. Spanish translation of Social Media. Asterisk, Those listed in red are also available in Spanish. All the Essential Computer Skills and Essential Software except Windows 10 are listed in red. (SPEECH) Next, we're going to talk about the two types of educational material. And the first one I'm going to talk about is the instructor-led curriculum. This is more like what you'd see in a traditional classroom. You can also use it for one-on-one tutoring or if you have digital navigators, they can use this one-on-one. We have all of the topics that we have assessments for. We also have the instructor led curriculum for. You can see that we've translated about half of them into Spanish and the team is now working on social media at the moment. And instructor-led curricula, like everything in Northstar, is aligned with those Northstar standards. (DESCRIPTION) Slide: Curriculum Features. Text: Aligned with Northstar Standards. Easy to Use. Learner-centered and interactive. Independent lessons allow for flexibility of sequence. (SPEECH) It's also very easy to use. We, at Literacy Minnesota, we have many volunteers who also teach Northstar and they may not have any teaching background, so it's easy to use the lessons. All look the same, they have the same format, the same components. The curriculum gives you instructions on how to use it. It gives you the words to say. It gives you the worksheets and the answers. So it's kind of a complete package. And it's also very learner centered. We wrote this with adults in mind in terms of what they might find interesting. And we also created a lot of practice. Our philosophy is that you really can't learn digital literacy through lecture alone. You really have to get in there and actually practice the skills. And there's a ton of repetition, so much so that the first time I taught it, I thought the students aren't going to get kind of bored. But they actually loved it because it helped them feel very confident and competent in the skill. And if you have people who are moving really quickly through it, you can always jump ahead. Obviously, the curriculum is a guidelines and you know the students that you're working with the best, so you know where you need to slow down, speed up. The lessons themselves are independent of one another. If you have a class taking the assessment, an assessment, and you see that they all standards 1 through 5, you can skip ahead to standard six. If you just wanting to teach how to recognize spam, let's say you can just pull out that lesson and only teach that lesson. Very adaptable to what you would need and what the learners are needing. (DESCRIPTION) Slide: Curriculum Logistics. Text: 8 lesson plans per unit topic on average. Each lesson plan is estimated to take 2 hours to complete. Final unit project aligned with College and Career Readiness Standards. Lessons may be adapted for one-on-one instruction. Instructional guide for in person and remote teaching. (SPEECH) Each unit topic, so unit topic again would be like using email, each unit topic has about eight lesson plans on average. And the curriculum writers felt that it would take about two hours to complete each lesson. If you did everything from start to finish, you're looking at about 16 hours. It will depend on the size of your class, the language level of your class, the digital literacy level of your class, whether you're remote or in person. And also, frankly, how much time you have. I have talked to programs who have three-week courses where they meet three times a week and that's it. And they cover the topic. Sorry. I'm just going to mute myself for a second. And they'll cover those aspects that are the hardest for students to learn on their own. And then they'll have people work on the practice lessons on their own time. It really depends on-- you can make it work for whatever situation you have. We also have each topic has a final unit project that's-- so Northstar will show you how it's aligned with the college and career readiness standards. But there is a final unit project that's directly aligned with them. And this takes all the skills that were learned in a unit and then a couple of paragraphs of reading, maybe two or three. And if you want to use it academically, it talks about looking at the main topics in a paragraph, looking for supporting evidence, really delving into that literacy piece of the reading piece. But then, ultimately, you take what you learn from the reading and the skills you've learned and you create a project that is given to you. So it's a great way, especially for those learners who really want something more or who want to put what they've learned to use in a practical sense, it's a great-- the unit projects are really fun. Totally optional. You can decide if you want to use them or not. We do also, on the other end of it, and I don't list this here, but we have made kind of PowerPoint slides that you can use with low level English language learners to help introduce digital literacy into your ELL classes. So looking at some basic slides with pictures and really simple wording to start teaching that vocabulary because digital literacy is just like any other topic. It's a topic. And so there are words that you need to learn. There are not only how to do things, but just the vocabulary of it. That's also part of Northstar. And so the curriculum, you can use it one-on-one, you can do it in-person, you can do it remote. And actually in our training on Friday or maybe it's next week. Sorry, it must be next week. I'm going to go through some of it so you can see what it's like for me to teach remotely as well as you get the student experience of that. (DESCRIPTION) Slide: Each lesson includes. Text: Warm-up. We will learn, (student friendly objectives/purpose). Model and Explain. Do It Together. Pair Explore. Individual Practice. Vocabulary Work. Wrap-Up. (SPEECH) Our curriculum was written by people who have taught adult education, and they looked to best practices in adult learning to create the lessons and the lessons then include that. All the lessons start out with a warm up. We know that adults come with a lot of wisdom and we want to tap into that. This helps not only get people talking, but it also lets the instructors see where the knowledge is and where there might be gaps and then allows you to connect to what they know to what they're going to learn. The next piece of the lesson is called We will learn. And these are really the objectives written in student-friendly language. I felt when I first taught this that I would just write these on the board and we'd go through it really quickly. I was really wrong. The students wanted to write this all down in their notebooks. They were English language learners. They wanted to read it out loud. They wanted to ask about any words they didn't understand. Even though it was a digital literacy class, it became kind of a mini English language learning lesson at the beginning. And people were really, really invested. I will say, as kind of a best practice, I've found that adults really like to have a notebook or some kind of paper to write down digital literacy, certain terms or whatever it might be. And also they like to keep the handouts and refer back to them and maybe even write or draw pictures on them or something. Just so you know that's something that I found learners really like. The next piece is where the instructor will model the skill and explain what they're doing, and we give you instructions on how to do that. And then the class performs the skill together. As an instructor, then, you can make sure that everyone's following along and see if someone is not understanding it. And if that's the case, which often is. There's something called pair Explorer where you can pair up people who are understanding the skill and know how to do it and people who haven't yet learned it. And that gives the person who already knows it another chance to teach it and the other person gets another chance to practice it. Ultimately, everyone does their own kind of worksheet and/or practice, and then you come together as a class and you go over that. And then there will always be digital literacy vocabulary work specifically built into the curriculum. And you've kind of close it up with checking those objectives and doing a little just test, not test, but asking questions to see if people comprehended the topic. That's how the lessons go. (DESCRIPTION) Slide: Internet Basics Lesson 7: Internet Privacy. A table is broken into sections for Northstar Digital Literacy Standards, Vocabulary, Technology Concepts, and Teacher Prep Guide, each with lists of information. The teacher prep guide section also has links to resources. (SPEECH) And this is what the first page of every lesson would look like. And you can see that in the upper left-hand corner, it will list the standards that are in each lesson. If there are specific standards you want to teach, we do have a every topic list out all the standards and which lesson you can find them in so you can quickly find them. Then on the upper right, this shows you what vocabulary lessons will be explicitly taught in this lesson. Sorry, what vocabulary words will be explicitly taught in this lesson. And technology concepts, this is really the objectives of the lesson written in instructor language, along with any teaching tips that we feel like it would be helpful for you to know. And then at the bottom, this is the prep guide, so it's telling you what you're going to need to do before the class starts. What you're going to need to make copies of, what you're going to need to project. And if you're doing this remotely, you can just click on those blue links and it will bring up those handouts. I will say that, typically , when I was getting ready for a class, the first time I ever taught this, it only really took me 20 minutes to go through the material and make the most of the time was spent making copies. It's very intuitive for instructors to use. (DESCRIPTION) Two more table boxes are titled Warm Up and We Will Learn. The Warm Up has activity instructions, and the We Will Learn has the objectives listed in three lines that each begin with a verb, with some bold vocabulary words. (SPEECH) Kind of delving into the curriculum, this is what that warm up looks like. You can see it's getting people to think about these topics and letting you see if they're answering this in something where they're keeping their financial information safe by hiding it under the mattress. That's different than if they're talking about doing it online, so you kind of know where they're at. And then We will learn. These are those objectives I was telling you about that you go over with your class. (DESCRIPTION) The next box is titled, Model and Explain 1. It includes an explanation, quoted sentences to say to learners, and actions to teach such as, "Show learners how to delete history." (SPEECH) And here's an example of the model and explain. So you can see we actually give you the words to say, which is great because it can maintain consistency across your classes. And a lot of times all of us, we know how to do things, but we may not know the correct terminology. And when you're teaching it to someone who doesn't have digital literacy, it's much more confusing if you don't use the same words all the time. So by having it written out, it kind of helps you maintain that integrity of vocabulary, I guess. I would say that the most helpful or the best thing about this is that it's been a long time, I'm sure, since any of us did not know how to turn on a computer or send an email or search the internet. And because of that, we forget all the steps that actually are involved in doing what to us now seems very simple. And so sometimes when we're trying to teach people, we'll use jargon or we'll assume that they know things that they don't. And for people who already may be fearful or anxious about their ability to learn digital literacy, if they run into that, they're going to be convinced that they really can't do this. We want to meet students as much as possible where they're at. And so the Northstar curriculum writers have attempted to do that by giving you language to meet students where they might be at this level. And of course, again, you can change the words or say things in a way that you would say it to make it your own as long as you're using the correct terminology. That's just fine. (DESCRIPTION) A worksheet with fill-in-the-blank exercises appears, titled Handout A, Private Windows. (SPEECH) The last thing I want to show you as far as the instructor-led curriculum goes, this is an example of a handout, and so a couple of things to notice. You can use this if you want to for reading instruction as well or for writing. You have to write out a sentence. The other thing is that if you look at the first names in these questions, you can see that they come from a variety of different cultures. And so in all that Northstar does, we try to in all the videos and all the pictures and the names, we do try and show people of different cultures in the hopes that people who are using Northstar identify with the people in Northstar. Are there any questions at the moment about the instructor-led curriculum? Then I'm going to go on to the practice lesson. So these are the kind of self-directed practice lessons, also called Northstar Online Learning that people can do more or less on their own. (DESCRIPTION) Slide: Northstar online Learning. Text: Essential Computer Skills. Basic Computer, Internet basics, Using Email, Windows 10, Windows 11, Mac OS. Essential Software. Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Google Docs. Using Technology in Daily Life. Social Media, Information Literacy, Career Search Skills, Accessing Telehealth Appointments, Your Digital Footprint, Asterisk, Those listed in blue are also Mobile compatible. Internet basics and Accessing Telehealth Appointment are in blue. (SPEECH) And you can see that we have 15 of the 16 completed. The only one we haven't created is the K-12 distance learning. We haven't created yet is the K-12 distance learning. (DESCRIPTION) Slide: Northstart Online Learning. There are four links listed. The actual URLs are not visible. Text: Self-Directed Online Instruction and Practice. Learner Dashboard - learner view. Individual Learner Reports - staff view. Tracks Time on Task. (SPEECH) And I want to show you what this looks like. I'm going to go ahead and click on this link. You'll see a picture. You should see a picture of a laptop. There should be some words written above it, and then you should hear audio reading those words. So I won't talk until she's done reading so you don't have to hear me talking over her. So let's go take a look. (DESCRIPTION) She clicks the top link. A web browser opens to the Basic Computer Skills page, where a picture displays ports on the side of a laptop. (SPEECH) It takes just a moment. [VIDEO PLAYBACK] INSTRUCTOR: If you look closely at the outside of a computer, you will see buttons and many small holes. These holes are usually called ports. Each port has a specific shape for different uses and different types of plugs. [END PLAYBACK] THERESA SLADEK: So you could hear that she reads very slowly and clearly. You can speed up the audio. You can slow down the audio. You can turn off the audio. There is also closed captioning for any embedded videos that we have. And you can listen to it either in-- listen and read it in either English and/or Spanish. And so this is an example of this slide is an example of being taught something, so educational material. Instructional material. But like I said, at Northstar, we believe that you can't really learn through instruction alone. You actually have to get in there and practice the skill. So I'm going to click on the Next button at the bottom below the laptop there and I'll show you an example of one of the practice pages in the practice lessons. (DESCRIPTION) She clicks the blue Next button in the bottom middle and a small photo of a flash drive appears in the top left. (SPEECH) [VIDEO PLAYBACK] INSTRUCTOR: Here is a flash Drive that you can plug into a computer. Click on the port that matches it. [END PLAYBACK] (DESCRIPTION) She clicks the USB port. (SPEECH) THERESA SLADEK: So then if I click here, I'm told, yes, this is the USB port. If I clicked on the headphone Jack, I would be told no, this is the headphone Jack. Look for something that matches the shape of the flash Drive. And so again, the philosophy here is that you're going to have some of this practice or some of the instructional materials, some of the practice material, instructional material practice material for several of the standards in the topic. And then there'll be a little quiz. It'll be like a three-question quiz. And once you take it, it will say you're ready to go on to the next section or go back and review what you just saw. And if you should take the quiz twice and not be able to pass it, then it will give you help with the answers. This is practice, not the assessment. It'll give learners help with answering those questions are really teach them what they didn't understand. And I would say each topic has three or four sections that have that little quiz. And then the last section after the quiz, it will say you're ready to go take the assessment again or go back and review x, y, and z. So, again, very tailored to each person's individual learning needs. If someone was to do one of these unit topics, one of these lessons from start to finish, it would typically take 90 minutes. However, they don't have to do it all at once. If they have 10 minutes to work on it and then they can't come back for another couple of days-- sorry. Then they will save their place and get back to where they were. The way they do this is on their Learner Management System. This is a good question in the chat, though. Which is more popular or more widely used, instructor-led or self-directed? It kind of depends on who you're working with. With people who are working with lower-level English language learners, typically, it's instructor-led. If people are native English speakers or native Spanish speakers, or if they're looking at a little bit higher level skills, I would say it's usually self-directed, often self-directed, but you can also do a combo. They're all connected by those standards. So a lot of times instructors will teach something and then they might give the practice lessons as homework. Or for people who missed a class, they'll say, OK, we covered these standards, so if you could do those to catch up with the rest of the group. They'll sometimes talk about one topic that they find is more difficult for their students and then they'll have them do some of the more easy things on their own. So it can be a mix. The instructor-led are probably better really for people who don't know anything about computers initially to do that first and then do the practice lessons again, repeat that same information. And then the practice lessons will be better for someone who's got a little bit of understanding. Great question. I want to show you what the learners see. We have a learner dashboard so they can see the progress they've made, their scores on assessments, where they are in the practice lessons. (DESCRIPTION) She returns to the slides and clicks on the second link. The browser opens to the dashboard log-in page. (SPEECH) And the learner dashboard looks like this. Well, not like this. Let me log in and get there. (DESCRIPTION) She answers two questions on a Where are you? page and clicks a green Save button on the bottom. (SPEECH) Looks like this. (DESCRIPTION) The dashboard opens. It has a Need help getting started link on the top left, then a set of tiles with the header, Essential Computer Skills. Each set has donut graphs displaying progress and buttons for assessments and lessons. (SPEECH) So you can see that they can see all the different topics. You can hide topics if you want to but you hide it for everyone. If you're saying at our school, we're never going to do MacOS, you could hide that if you wanted to. I personally feel like letting people explore is great. But up to you. So now let's look at internet basics here in the purple in the middle. And so what this is showing the learner is these two rings are kind of a graphic representation of what they've been doing. The outer ring, this dark purple ring is showing someone how well they've done on the assessment. So if it's a full circle, they got 100% The inner ring is showing how much of the practice lessons they've completed. So in this case, it's about half. The icon in the Middle, If you see a hexagon with an icon, that means that someone has passed this assessment. And we'll go into we'll go over this more in later trainings. But if we now go to the lessons button you see on the bottom right. (DESCRIPTION) She clicks the lessons button for the Internet Basics tile and an Internet Basics page opens. It has three tabs: Practice, Standards, and Assessment History. (SPEECH) And if I go to the Standards tab, if I've taken the assessment, it will tell me what standards I've missed. And then I could go over to the far right and practice them. (DESCRIPTION) She clicks the Standards tab and a list of assessments appears with either a red X or a green check mark to the left, and either a practice button or a practice complete button on the right. (SPEECH) If I hadn't done it, it would look like that barbell there. If I have just a few standards to work on, I can pick and choose just to go to those standards. If I wanted to do the whole lesson next to the right of the rings, it says Start Practice. And that would start at the beginning or wherever I left off. (DESCRIPTION) She clicks the Practice tab and scrolls down through a list of practice tasks. (SPEECH) And then if we go to the Practice tab, what we were talking about just a second ago, well, here these upper case bolded words, these are those sections that I told you each has its own little quiz. And then the bulleted points, these are the standards. So, again, if you said, OK, you missed a class and we talked about fill out an online form. So if you could go over that on your own time before the next class to catch up, that'd be great. Or if last week you talked about identifying top-level domains and you wanted everyone to just review on their own time for five minutes at the beginning of the class this week, you could have them do that. There's a lot of ways that you can use this in conjunction with the instructor-led curriculum if you choose. Another great question in the chat is do schools use North Star as a separate digital literacy class or lessons embedded into regular ESL classes? And I will say both. Many schools will have separate digital literacy classes, but some schools don't have the room for it or the funding or the teachers or whatever that might be and/or they might just want to also include it in their ESL. And so many do start out by incorporating digital literacy into their regular ESL classes. And again, I sometimes hear people say, well, my students aren't advanced enough to learn digital literacy in their language, and digital literacy can be taught to pre-beginning English language learners or Spanish learners and beginning Spanish learners. It's again just another topic. It has its own vocabulary. You can start out by even we've had pre-beginning classes where people are learning the alphabet and they might learn, let's say the letters F and J. They're not using Northstar for this, but they learn the sounds of f, the sounds of j. They learn words that start with those letters, how to write them, and then they'll go to a free typing online platform called typing.com. It's just a free website and it will let you practice typing F and J so they'll get that tactile sense. So they're learning digital literacy skills while they're learning the letters. So I highly encourage both if you can, but we will talk more about how to embed it into the regular ESL classes as we get further into the training next week I think it is. That's a wonderful question. Thanks for asking. The learners have their own dashboard that they can kind of see their progress. And then you, as instructors, also have a kind of a individual report. There are many reports in Northstar. We're not going to go over them all today, but one of the ones you can see will show you an individual's progress. (DESCRIPTION) She returns to the slide and clicks the third link. The browser opens to a page for Theresa with her name in the top left. On the right there are lists of gray tags and a green button that reads, Apply Tags. Below is a table titled History, with columns for Module, Best Score, Practice Lessons, Badge, and Certificate. There are rows for the Northstar skills. (SPEECH) Here, Theresa is the learner. And if we look under the Module column, these are the different topics. And you'll get to know the icons. But if I hover over it, it will tell me what it stands for. And then Best Score, that's what it sounds like. So that's my this learners best score on each of these assessments and it will tell me how many times they've tried to take it. And you can take an assessment as many times as you'd like, but the same assessment twice in one day. And the reason for that is, we don't want someone just taking the assessment over and over and learning the right answers to the assessment. We want them to learn the material and so they can do it. We let them take it twice in one day in the belief that maybe they take it as a pre-assessment, they do a bunch of learning on their own or in a class, and then they take it as a post assessment and they've learned they've improved their score. So that's how we work. Under Practice Lessons, this is the percentage of the practice lessons that this person has completed. We'll show you if they have achieved-- if they have earned a badge. And if it's in color, that means it was in a proctored environment. If it was in gray and white, it would mean that it was not proctored. And then under Certificate, it shows you if you can give them a certificate or not. (DESCRIPTION) To the left of the table, in each row, is a gray icon with an eye shape. (SPEECH) Now, in Northstar, if you see on the far left there, the eye with a circle around it here, this always means at Northstar that there's more information behind that button. So if you click it, then you can see which of the standards they've missed. (DESCRIPTION) She clicks one of the icons and a list of standards with a red X beside them appears, with practice lesson information on the right. (SPEECH) And if you're using the practice lessons, you can see if they've done that practice or not. (DESCRIPTION) She scrolls down to a section titled, Complete History. (SPEECH) If you scroll down to the very bottom, you can see how many times they've taken the assessment, if it was proctored, what their score was. But again, if you click on the circle with the eye (DESCRIPTION) She clicks the eye icon in the top left of the Complete History section and a page titled Assessment Details opens with a table of information including Name, Tags, Module, Date, Number Correct, Passing Status, Score, Time to Take, and more. She scrolls down to a section with questions listed with green check marks and red X's. (SPEECH) and go all the way to the bottom, this will show you what actual questions they're missing. If you feel like this person does know the information but they're not able to pass the assessment and you're not really sure why, you can come down here and see what questions are they missing. Is it because they're not understanding some vocabulary or it's asking them to give three answers and they're only giving one or it's multi-step or something like that. I wouldn't expect that you would remember what question 22 on internet basics is. If you click the actual red box, it will bring up not only the question, but also underneath it tells you what standard it's related to. (DESCRIPTION) She clicks one of the missed question number boxes and a pop-up with the question and standard appears. (SPEECH) I would never advocate that you teach to the test, but this would let you see is it something in the wording or they're not understanding or do we need to really focus more on the standard. That can help you as instructors. (DESCRIPTION) She returns to the slide, where the final link is, Tracks Time on Task. (SPEECH) The other thing I want to talk about in terms of the online learning, the practice lessons is that it does track time on task. So for your funding, for recording funding or recording time for funding, this is very important as we know and it will break it out into time that's spent with you in class or at school versus time spent at home, at the library, at friends house, wherever they might be. We do that because we assume that you're probably tracking time that they're in class or in the school anyway. And many times, many states will let you use the time that they spend at home as kind of a distance learning platform. The way that Northstar does this-- I'm not getting into the programming, but if a screen is left untouched, there's no movement on the screen if no one's doing anything on the practice lessons for 10 minutes, if it's sitting idle for 10 minutes, then it stops the counting. You can get up, go to the bathroom or go get a drink of water, whatever but you can't leave and take your dog for a walk. That's how it kind of determines. If there's no activity on a page for 10 minutes, then it will stop recording the time. Yes, I believe that Anthony is recording this, and Anthony can send you the slides too, if you want. If you want those to share. All right, any questions about the practice lesson? Any other questions about the practice lesson? We've been asking great questions so far, so feel free to jump in if you have any. (DESCRIPTION) Slide: Learner Management System. Text: Add Learners by staff or self sign-up. First name, Last name, Email address. Bulk Creation of Learner Accounts. Tagging Learner Accounts. (SPEECH) In order for students to be able to use the Learner Management System to be able to use the practice lessons, they have to be signed into the Learner Management System, the Northstar Learner Management System. And it's very easy. All Northstar asks for is a first name, a last name, and an email address. Now, many people who don't have digital literacy skills or have low digital literacy skills don't have email, don't know how to use it, and that is OK. You can create a Gmail account for them. They don't have to know how to use it and they don't actually ever have to access it. It's just a way for them to log in. Many times instructors are or staff are creating adding people to the Learner Management System who don't yet have those skills. We've also made it very easy for you to add learner accounts in bulk. So let's say you have a new cohort or a new class that you're starting and you want to add it all at once. We have a spreadsheet that lets you fill in that information, one column first name, one column, last name, one column, email, and then save it to your computer and then bulk upload it. And all those accounts will be created at once. We also have a feature that is really helpful called tagging. And the reason this is helpful is that when you run Northstar reports, the default is that you're going to get a report of every one you have in the Northstar system. And sometimes, that's what you want to see. You want to be able to show funders what you've been doing, how you've been using Northstar, You want to maybe show the community how you're helping people learn digital skills. Those can be very powerful reports. But there are other times when you might want a subset. So maybe an instructor just wants to see the class that they're students in the class are teaching. Or maybe you're working on a special project and you just want to see the people involved in that project. You can do this by tagging learner accounts with whatever names that you want to tag them, and that allows you to run the reports. And Northstar doesn't create the names for you. You can choose whatever makes sense for you. The only thing we don't let you use is personally identifiable information. So no birth dates, no Social Security numbers, nothing of that sort, no driver's license numbers. But otherwise, you can use whatever tags you'd like to help you run those sub reports. (DESCRIPTION) Slide: Reports. Text: Assessments by Site. Summary Report - number of assessments taken per module. Detailed Report - number of passes by module and question. (SPEECH) Speaking of reports, I'm going to show you some of these big picture reports that are, again, helpful to show what your agency is doing in terms of digital literacy and Northstar. Let's take a look at these. (DESCRIPTION) She clicks the text, Assessments by Site, and a web browser opens to a dashboard with Summary and Detailed report tabs on the top left, and also buttons for each report on the bottom left and right. In the middle there is a row of summary statistics with a filter button in green in the top left. (SPEECH) Here, on the top, under the filter results you see in green. This is the dashboard and you can see, it shows you how many unique learners have been served at this location, how many of the learning hours would be, how much time they've spent in the practice lessons. Assessment Time would be how much time they spent on assessments and then Total Time is that time together. It also shows you how many assessments you've given, how many were passed, what that pass rate is, how many badges were claimed, how many certificates awarded. (DESCRIPTION) She clicks the Summary Report button and a pie chart titled Assessments Taken appears with a legend on the right. (SPEECH) Then if we go to summary report, this circle graph shows you how many assessments of each type your organization has given. And if you hover over the piece of the pie, it will give you the exact number. This can be really helpful, again, to show funders what you're doing, show your community what you're doing. But it also is helpful to show to for your own purposes to say, let's say you're giving people the option of what they want to take and you're noticing that, wow, there's a lot of people taking windows. Not that many taking MacOS. Maybe we want to have a class on Windows and MacOS is something that we let people do on their own time. It can help inform you how you might want to spend your instructional time and energy. (DESCRIPTION) She scrolls down to a horizontal bar graph titled Assessments Passed. (SPEECH) And then this bar graph here, these Assessments Passed. This is showing what percentage of each type of assessment have been passed at a certain agency. You can see that, a lot of people are passing telehealth assessment. Not as many of the PowerPoint. Maybe you would say, well, at this agency, it seems like telehealth is somewhat easy for the people that we work with, so maybe we would have them do the practice lessons on their own for telehealth, whereas PowerPoint seems kind of difficult. So maybe we should have someone work with a digital navigator if they want to do that or maybe we should have a class in that because it seems like it's more difficult for people to pass. Again, just giving you some interesting perspective on how the students at your agency are using Northstar. So that was the summary report. Then if we go to the detailed report, we do have a lot of that same information. (DESCRIPTION) She clicks the Detailed Report and a page opens with a green Filter Results button in the top left, then the report in a table below with the columns, Module, Report, Number Records, Number Passing, and % Passing. Under the Report column, each row has a blue button that reads, View Report. She clicks View Report for Basic Computer Skills and a table of data appears. (SPEECH) But if we click on View Report, so I'm in the basic computer skills here, it tells me the fourth column down fourth row down, I guess is the average duration. So you can see here it's 15 minutes, 5 seconds. I would say, for people who have digital skills, it typically takes 7 to 10 minutes to take an assessment. Some are a little harder than others. For people who are lower in digital skills or perhaps in their language learning ability to read the language that it's being shown in, 15 to 20 minutes is more typical. But you'd be able to see what it is that your location at your agency, and then you could use that when you're looking at, time management for if you're deciding you're going to Proctor assessments or not, how much time you might need. (DESCRIPTION) She scrolls down to a Question Performance horizontal bar chart with the bars split between green and purple, with green correct and purple incorrect. (SPEECH) If you scroll down, this will show you which questions. The group of people you're working with are having trouble with in aggregate, so which ones are the most problematic for the students at your location. And here you can see question 13, a lot of people are missing. (DESCRIPTION) She scrolls down to a table with the columns, Question number, Summary, Standard, and % Correct. Within the % Correct column, low-performing questions have a brown warning triangle icon. (SPEECH) So if we scroll down some more, we can see that that's also indicated by this brown triangle. And we see that question 13 the question here is about opening hyper on opening hyperlinks, But you can see it's related to standard five about identifying mouse miners. And if I click on the actual question, it would bring up the question. (DESCRIPTION) She clicks the question in the table and a pop-up window opens displaying the assessment question. It has pictures of four types of mouse pointers. (SPEECH) So maybe it's that people are getting confused about which mouse pointer does what and I want to spend more time really going over that so people understand it. It just gives you, again, some idea of what might be difficult for the people or what people are having problems with that the agency can decide to spend more time on teaching. Those are some of the big picture reports in Northstar. (DESCRIPTION) Slide: Administrative Features. Text: Each site has 2-3 Administrators. Add and delete staff/volunteers in Admin Portal. Set organization wide parameters for Northstar. Staff, Proctors, and Learners. Free advertising on Northstar homepage. Online help desk (support@digital literacy assessment.org). Can be integrated into Canvas, Blackboard, and other platforms using LTI 1.3. (SPEECH) As far as administrative features, if you are part of that, if you have a subscription to Northstar through the pilot or else otherwise, your organization would have on as part of your staff two to three Northstar administrators and administrators. And you for sure want to have two in case someone gets sick or someone leaves the agency. You want to make sure someone else kind of knows what's going on. But their main role is to add or delete staff and volunteers into the Northstar admin portal. So giving people access. There's also a few organization wide parameters that they alone can set. So there are basically four different roles in Northstar. There's the Northstar administrator, which I just spoke about. Then there's what we call staff. And that's really anyone on your staff or volunteers who wants to access the instructor-led curriculum to teach it, wants to run the reports, wants to add learners to the learner management system. All of those people would be considered staff. Then the third category are the proctors. So proctors can see and do everything that staff can. But they have also gone through Proctor training, which is a 15-minute video. And then a couple of questions you answer. And once you get those questions right, you get your own unique alphanumeric code. That's how we identify that someone's proctoring and then you would use that to Proctor. And then of course, the fourth category are the learners. You're welcome. We also have free advertising on the Northstar home page. If someone came to the Northstar home page, like, let's say a learner and they wanted to find a place near them that taught digital literacy, they could put they could or they could have someone help them put their zip code into North Star and it would show them all the organizations near them that offer digital literacy through Northstar. You never have to take people who don't fit into the population that you're taking. I'm sure you have rules that your agency who can come and who can't or what if you do. You don't have to take someone outside those boundaries, but it just lets people see who might be available, what agencies are available. And it also I have seen with the states looking for the Digital Equity Act funding, many looking at those at that map to see who already is teaching digital literacy and thinking about those agencies as perhaps being the ones that money is going to be sent to. Good to have your agency advertise that way. We have an online help desk so if something isn't working or if you can't figure something out, you can always contact us. And also if you have just suggestions on how Northstar could be better, we love getting those. We we're a small staff. We're probably five or six full-time equivalent people. But we, honestly, do write down. We have a spreadsheet where we write down all the suggestions we get. And the more times we hear something, the higher up the list it goes until it gets to the top. And then we as a nonprofit, we seek outside funding to make that possible. That's actually how Spanish translation came about, because we were hearing from so many organizations that would be helpful. We went out and we're able to get the funding and do that. I'm not going to talk about that last part at the moment. Any questions for me? And if not, I do want to show you just where that zip code locator is just so you can see it better. All right. I will show you where that is. (DESCRIPTION) Slide: Contact Information. Text: Theresa Sladek. -- Strategic Partnerships and Northstar Business Development. T.S.L.A.D.E.K. @literacy M.N. dot org. Northstar Digital Literacy Website: https://www.digital literacy assessment.org slash. She clicks the link and the Northstar homepage opens. At the very top right there is a menu bar. (SPEECH) Again, on the Northstar home page, if someone were to come here and go to build your skills, I'm in the top black navigation bar on top. (DESCRIPTION) She clicks Build Your Skills and a page opens with links. She clicks the first one, and a map of the United States opens with red, yellow, and orange icons. (SPEECH) This first one, find a Northstar location, if you put in a zip code, anyone have a zip code there they want to me to check on? (DESCRIPTION) She types a zip code into the top search bar. (SPEECH) ANTHONY BURIK: 94131. THERESA SLADEK: Let me do Search. (DESCRIPTION) The map zooms in to San Francisco. She mouses over the map icons and pop-up windows display information. She scrolls down to a list of the same information in a table below the map. (SPEECH) It shows all the places nearby and it will tell who they are, what they offer. You can see that there's little check marks, how to get in contact with them. And then if I were to scroll down, it actually lists more in a list here and you can view their profile to get that contact information. So kind of a cool feature to see who's near you. Also really good, if there are people that you don't serve but do need digital literacy help, so maybe they have no literacy needs, but they need digital literacy, you can refer them to your local library who might have Northstar or something. Again, think about who might be good partners in your area. And they, in turn, if they don't have an adult literacy program, people who have maybe lower literacy needs would be better served at your organization and they can refer them to you. So good partnership. (DESCRIPTION) Slide: OTAN Online. Text: Overview of Northstar Features. Presenters: Theresa Sladeck, Strategic Partnerships & Northstar Business Development Manager, Literacy Minnesota. Anthony Burik, OTAN Coordinator, Distance Learning Projects. September 3, 2024. Slide: OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network. Text: Follow Us. Twitter, slash O.T.A.N. LinkedIn, slash company slash O.T.A.N. underscore 2. Like Us, Facebook, slash O.T.A.N. Serves Adult Education. Subscribe, YouTube, slash O.T.A.N. Serves Adult Education. Professional Development, News, Teach with Technology, Videos, TDLS, Online Resources. Website, O.T.A.N. dot U.S. -- Phone, 916-228-2580.