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[AUDIO LOGO]

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A logo of a human silhouette, one arm lifted. Text appears.

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SPEAKER 1: Outreach and Technical Assistance Network.

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Text, Leading adult education through support for and the effective application of technology. A graphic displays OTAN's services-- professional development, news and social media, teaching with technology, annual technology and distance learning symposium, OTAN digests and newsletters, online resources and video presentations. OTAN dot U.S.. 916 228 2580.

OTAN Online, Introducing Learners to Northstar Digital Literacy. Presenters: Theresa Sladek, Strategic Partnerships and Northstar Business Development Manager, Literacy Minnesota. Anthony Burik, OTAN Coordinator, Distance Learning Projects.

A video conference screen sits in the upper-right corner of a slideshow. A title slide: Introducing Learners to Northstar Digital Literacy, Theresa Sladek, Literacy Minnesota.

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THERESA SLADEK:

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Slide: Agenda, with bulleted text. Example work flow; Guiding learners through assessments; explaining the student dashboard; orienting learners to Northstar self-directed Online Learning; Instructor led curricula example lesson.

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Well, I'm going to give you first just a sample workflow. Northstar is great because there's so many components to it, but sometimes programs who are starting out with Northstar, that seems daunting. So you can customize Northstar to use it in whatever way works for you and your agency and the people you're working with. And that's kind of me saying here you go.

So I wanted to give you an example of how many organizations use it and kind of a sample workflow just so you have that in your mind as you think about what you want to do with your program.

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Slide: Features, with bulleted text. Assessments, Self Directed Online Learning, Instructor-led Curricula, Learner Management System with Multiple Reports.

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So as a reminder, we have 16 different assessments and then two types of educational materials, the self-directed online learning practice lessons and the instructor led curriculum.

Both can be used either independently or together. And all in Northstar are connected by the Northstar standards, so the assessments and the two types of educational materials. Kind of tying everything together is the learner management system.

And if you remember from last week, adding your learners, adding the learners, the learner management system allows them to access the practice lessons and also makes your data cleaner in terms of the assessments on the reports. And there are multiple reports both for individuals and for your agency as a whole to see how you're using Northstar.

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Slide: Assess Skills. A Northstar screenshot depicts an open email titled "Job Opening at City Hall."

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So a typical way that many organizations use Northstar is they will give an assessment first as a pre-assessment. If there are ideally in an ideal world, we would proctor every assessment because if someone passes, they could get a certificate then, but that's not always the way staffing works. So if you have to choose to proctor some and not proctor others, I would usually advocate for a not proctoring the pre-assessment.

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Slide: Get Results. A Northstar screenshot displays text, "Good try, 37.9%," and two columns-- mastered skills and skills to improve.

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Give that to each person so that you can then see and they can see what they already know and where there's an opportunity to learn more. So you're really focusing their time and energy on those topics that they don't know yet.

And you can see that on this example, one of the standards to work on was number four, log into email. Now, if the person wanted to go right from this results page to the practice lessons, they could, and they could just work on standard. Let's say this was a higher score and the only one they had missed was standard four, they could click on the bar bell next to where it says Practice and go just to that standard and the practice lessons.

Because the score is fairly low-- remember that Northstar says you have to have 85% or higher to pass-- then they could go to underneath the orangey bar it says go to NSOL. And NSOL is our acronym for Northstar Online Learning. And if they clicked there, they'd go right to the beginning of the practice lessons.

You don't have to get to the practice lessons from the results page, we just noticed that a lot of times people are kind of excited or want to learn more or show that they can pass these assessments and so they're excited to get started.

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Slide: Practice Online, Learn. The Email client fills the screen. A dialog box is circled, which reads: Hover over each highlighted icon to learn what it will do to the selected email message.

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So in the practice lessons-- which we will look at more today-- there are three types of screens, basically. One is instructional where people have to read something to learn it. Another is-- or there's audio-- another is instructional, and it's a video. And then the third would look like this

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Slide: Practice Online, Do. An email is titled "You Have Won." A text alert is circled: This message in from an unknown sender, and looks very suspicious. Click on the correct button to report it as spam.

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where they are actually practicing the skill. And that will be identified by what I've circled in red there, the try it with the barbells. So that instructs them to practice the skill.

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Slide: Or provide a Northstar Class. A photo depicts learners in a computer lab.

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All right. You can also provide a Northstar class.

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Slide: Instructor uses N.S. curriculum. A document is labeled "Using Email, Lesson 7."

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And we have a curriculum that's very detailed. It even gives you the words to say, which we'll look at later. And it's nice because every lesson plan-- every lesson, actually, looks the same, so you as instructors will kind of know what to expect from the curriculum.

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Slide: Retake Assessment. A Northstar screenshot displays text, "You passed, 97.4%," and two columns-- mastered skills and skills to improve.

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So you can do, again, just have people do the practice lessons, just do instructor led curriculum or do a combination of both. Once people have gotten that instruction-- is that a word? Then they would retake the assessment. And this time if you do have the staffing capacity, I would proctor it just in case someone passes, they can then get a certificate.

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Slide: Earn Certificate. A certificate of completion appears, for Theresa Sladek.

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So that's a common way that programs use Northstar. And, again, you're going to tailor it to whatever your needs and your organization's needs and the learner's needs are. So if you have any questions, please let me know.

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Slide: Assessments. Under the header Essential Computer Skills: Basic Computer, Internet basics, Using Email, Windows 10, Windows 11, Mac OS. Under Essential Software: Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Google Docs. Under Using Technology in Daily Life: Social Media, Information Literacy, Career Search Skills, Accessing Telehealth Appointments, listed in blue, Your Digital Footprint, Supporting K-12 Distance Learning. Under coming up: Cyber Security, end of year. Internet Basics being made mobile friendly. Text: those listed in blue are also Mobile Friendly.

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So we have the 16 different assessments. And I want to first talk about how to present the idea of taking an assessment to learners that you're working with.

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Slide: Why take an Assessment? Determine learning needs, Time savings, View Progress, Resume/Interview builder, Practice computer-based test taking, Test Anxiety - a real issue.

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Oftentimes people who have not always-- but oftentimes people who have low digital literacy skills have maybe had a bad experience-- either no experience in formal education, sometimes a bad experience in formal education. Not always, of course, but there's often a resistance or a-- I would even say fear of taking an assessment because people are worried that it will be used against them.

And so sometimes it-- well, almost always it matters how we present this idea to learners. And so when you propose giving an assessment, it's best to talk about it from the perspective of the learner and how it will actually help them.

So what we know is that by taking an assessment, it really helps the person and the program see where they already have skills and knowledge and where there's an opportunity to learn more. So that is going to make sure that-- one instructor that I was talking to said she always tells the learners that this will help make sure she does her job well so that she knows what she needs to teach. And usually that goes over pretty well with learners.

It helps save time because then they don't have to go over material they already know, and it also helps people view their progress. There's a lot of literature out there that says that adults are often hard on themselves and don't see the progress they're making. And this is can especially be true in longer term educational pursuits like learning English or studying for a high school equivalency.

In a nice way Northstar lets you see your progress on much-- in a much quicker way. So, for example, someone might take a pre-assessment and get a 20%. And then they do some learning and then they take it again and they get a 60%.

They haven't passed, they haven't earned a certificate, but they've tripled their knowledge. And this can be really exciting. I've had people write to me-- actually, a woman in California who went to her local library and learned Northstar wrote to-- had the librarian write to me and say that Despite? The fact that she-- she did go from a 23% to, I think, it was 67% or something like that-- that she was so excited and this is changing her life.

So it can be very impactful to be able to track that progress. Of course, if you're working with someone who's looking to get a job, it's great to take an assessment and pass it so they can put that on their resume or talk about it in an interview.

We've also seen that if someone's going to be taking a computer-based test, let's say the GED, that is more of a high stakes test, costly, time consuming, you don't want that to be their first experience taking a computer-based test.

Northstar is much less intense and is a great way to just practice those test taking skills on a computer so that when someone does get to that, let's say, GED test, they're not having to having that additional barrier of having encountering a computer-based test for the first time.

And so many programs do use it just to practice these skills. We also see many people have test anxiety. And in general, a lot of people who have lower digital literacy skills or no digital literacy skills are kind of afraid of the computer. But just in the regular population or in the general population, there are a lot of people who have test anxiety, and this is a real issue.

My background is I have a bachelor's in biology and a master's in counseling psychology. And so we know that what happens when you're experiencing anxiety is that you're going to be-- you have neurotransmitters that are kind of flooding your brain and effectively blocking a lot of the information from your memory to the working part of your brain.

And so if you can reduce anxiety, people will do better on assessments and on tests. And we actually-- I was part of a study, it was a small study, but that took a class. And everyone took the same assessment, wasn't a Northstar assessment. And then half the class got training on how to reduce anxiety and half the class didn't.

The part of the class that got the training, they all-- everybody took the test again and that half did much better just by reducing their anxiety. So now, of course, I'm not expecting that you're going to be counselors, but there are a few fairly easy things that you can do to help learners feel more comfortable and reduce their anxiety when they're going to take an assessment.

And one of those is just to make sure that someone is kind of breathing. And you might have heard of-- sometimes it's called square breathing or foresighted breathing. But it's basically you take-- and we're going to do this together so follow me but I'll tell you first-- you take two breaths in, you hold it for two and then you let it out for two. And that calms down the nervous system. So let's practice.

So breathe in for two, hold for two, breathe out for two. Breathe in for two, hold for two, breathe out for two. And you should feel yourself relaxing if you weren't already. So this is an easy thing we can do with learners.

Another thing that often happens when people are anxious is that they are inside their heads-- and sometimes you'll hear it out loud-- they're doing what we call negative self-talk. And that is where they're saying things to themselves like, I'll never be able to do this, I'm so stupid, I don't know anything. And so when you present the idea of the assessment, it's good to say it's OK if you don't know anything. That is really good information so that I can be sure to teach you what you need to know.

And there is I don't know button, so people can always use that, but just kind of saying just do what you can and let's see, we'll go from there in terms of what we need to teach you. So kind of countering that negative self-talk with just positive explanations of the assessment.

Now, all of you I know work with learners and have in the past so I'd love to hear of any tips or techniques that you use to help people feel more comfortable when they're taking an assessment. So feel free to unmute or put it in the chat. Any comments?

JAMIE: Hi. This is Jamie from Tamar School. Thanks for-- I was doing the breathing and going, wow, I really appreciate that breathing right now during this crazy busy time. And we will often do that with students too. We'll just belly breathing and just sort of visualize yourself doing well, shut out that negative self-talk.

And sometimes just looking at the room where they're going to take that assessment, usually for us it's in a GED high stakes exam or something like that. But just visualizing the room, looking at the room, just familiarizing yourself.

THERESA SLADEK: That's a great suggestion. I love that. Also, I know one of the things we did in the study was we had people let them know what they would need-- in a case of Northstar assessment, not much-- but what they would need and let them sort of settle in, or if it was a timed thing, get there ahead of time.

Just so they had a chance to relax instead of rushing in and, like you said, not being maybe used to what the room looks like or the setup looks like. So thank you for sharing that idea. That's great. Yeah, the slow breathing, I can feel myself, as I'm doing it, being like, OK. Even when you're driving it's a good thing to do if you're frustrated in traffic.

JAMIE: Can I just say that breathing exercise, our district decided to do it at all our return to school meeting, our first meeting of the year. There was probably 400 people in the room that were doing that breathing, and it was pretty cool.

THERESA SLADEK: That is pretty cool. Wow, I would like to see that. That's very cool. Good community building too, it seems. Great, all right. So-- whoops--

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Slide: Language Level. Intermediate Language Reading Level, Grade 4 Reading Level, CASAS Reading Level 211 or Higher, NRS Level 11, TABE 11/12 Reading Score of 501 or higher.

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as a reminder, Northstar is written at about a grade four reading level. You can see classes 211 or higher.

As we have probably have mentioned, you can definitely use it for people who are lower level, but sometimes the assessments might be too difficult, especially if you're working for a beginning language learners.

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Slide: Alternatives to Assessment. When not to assess: English/Spanish Language level very low, Digital Literacy level very low. Options-- Screeners w/translation if necessary.

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And so in those situations I probably would not use the assessment especially as a pre-assessment if someone's language level is very low or if their digital literacy level is very low.

If they don't know how to turn on a computer, if they don't really use a smartphone for very much other than texting, it might be frustrating for someone to try and do the assessment. However, you might want to get some kind of idea of what they could know something about, email or searching on the internet.

And so we do have some screeners that are paper and pencil that are much easier to translate into another language if you have someone on staff who can do that, and just get a very basic idea of what someone might know and where to place them.

And I think it's important to note-- you probably all know this-- but it's important to note that just because someone's literacy level in English or Spanish is not high, that does not mean their digital literacy level is not high. So they might speak another language, come from a different country where they have used computers extensively and they just don't know the terminology, but they know how to use them. So just keep that in mind that the two are not necessarily correlated.

But let me show you the screeners. These are in your Northstar admin portal, so let's take a look. My mouse is jumpy today.

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In an internet browser, a Northstar log-in page briefly flashes by.

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So we're in-- well, soon we will be in the Northstar admin portal.

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A home page appears with menus, ribbons, and buttons.

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And if you recall from last week, we're looking at our blue navigation bar up on top. And I'm in the Resources tab toward the middle here.

And you're going to find the screeners in the hodgepodge collection of other resources here in the middle column and the bottom row.

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The cursor hovers over a button, View Other Resources.

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So if I click on that and then scroll to the very bottom, you can see there are two screeners here.

And the first one-- and they're both-- one is-- we have them both in English and in Spanish.

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The cursor selects Basic Screener PDF. A two-page document opens, with several labeled graphics.

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The first one is just, again, much easier to translate into other languages than a Northstar assessment, let's say. And it just lets you see, do they know what these things are? Are they familiar with the icons that are regularly used in digital literacy? How often do they use a computer and why do they use it?

So this can give you an idea of what someone knows. This can also be really great if you are, let's say, tabling at an event. Where you maybe don't have a internet connection or you don't have a laptop, you can still advertise your services and get people engaged by having them go through one of these little paper assessments, screeners, and then say, hey, we have this class that might meet your needs, for example. So I know many organizations do do that.

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On the "Other Resources" page, the cursor selects Interactive Screener PDF. A one-page document appears, with bulleted text.

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The other screener I like better personally but it's more interactive, so, again, much easier to translate into different languages if you have that capacity. But it's asking someone to show you how to do these things and see if they know how to use a mouse and how to open the internet and use headphones. And so it can just give you an idea, is this a person a really, really beginner or do they have some knowledge of digital skills. All right. So those are there for you to use.

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The slideshow fills the screen. A new slide briefly flashes before returning to the previous "Alternatives to assessment" slide.

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So I'm going to go back actually. So we talked last time about proctoring, but, again, if you are going to be giving an assessment to a person who's coming into your agency, who's-- let's say they're sitting right next to you and you're going to have them take an assessment, what are some of the basic things, thinking three stools of digital literacy or digital equity, what are some of the basic things that they're going to need to take a Northstar assessment Northstar online assessment? Basic, basic things.

AUDIENCE: Have a computer.

THERESA SLADEK: Yep, they're going to need some kind of device and the internet, exactly. We also say that because Northstar has audio, you're probably going to want to have headphones there too if they're going to use the audio.

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Slide: In Person Assessment Set-Up. Add Learner to Learner Management System; Computer, laptop or Chromebook; Internet Connection, Headphones highly recommended if using audio. Bookmark site specific launch page.

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I would also-- as we spoke about last week, I would recommend adding the learner to the learner management system first just to keep your scores really clean, your stats really clean. Sometimes that's not possible, and that's fine too.

The next thing, once the person's kind of all set up with-- at the device, you have internet connection, the headphones are there is you are going to have them click on the link that takes them to the Northstar assessment.

Now, you can either-- I would bookmark this on the computers or have the link embedded somewhere on your website or go to the Northstar website. It's not as easy for the learner. But each of your organizations has a site specific launch page, that's how you get into your admin portal and that's how learners are tracked to your what we call site.

So that is what you're going to want to bookmark or link to. And in order to do that, you need to know what that URL is. And you're going to find that in your Northstar admin portal. It's in two places in the admin portal.

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In an internet browser, the Northstar home page appears.

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So the first place is on our blue navigation bar. If we go to where the Northstar logo is-- and on mine it says demo, on yours it would say the name of your school--

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The cursor selects the logo. A new launch page appears.

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here next to the teal location pin-- which is in this teal square-- you'll see there's two bullet points. And the second one says, bookmark the page it takes you to. So that whole long-- you can see why you wouldn't want someone to type it in-- but that whole long URL is what you're going to want to bookmark or link to.

You can also-- if it helps you because you're thinking I'm proctoring-- or I'm not proctoring-- you're giving an assessment, you can go to the Assessment tab in the blue navigation bar

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The cursor selects "Assessment" on the navigation bar. A new page opens.

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and it's also here in the middle where it says Assessment Launch Page. And, again, it's a link here at the bottom.

So you can go either place. And when someone clicks on it, what it looks like to them

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Address text fills the header of the screen. A red warning box fills the bottom.

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is it says the name of your organization, your address, no proctor is available. And then if they scroll down, all the assessments are here.

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The slideshow fills the screen. Slide: Remote Assessment Set-Up. Add Learner to Learner Management System, Provide learner with email and password log in if using; Computer, laptop or Chromebook; Internet Connection; Share site specific launch page in the chat.

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So you're going to have the person click on that link. If they're doing it remotely, same kind of thing, you add them to the learner management system if you have the capacity. And if you do so, then you want to make sure they know the email and password to log in. They need to have a device, they need to have internet connection. And then it's easiest to share that site specific launch page in the chat when you're connecting through some video conferencing platform like Zoom.

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Slide: Accessing Assessments. Site Specific launch page. Bookmarked on computers, Sent in chat. "Take an Assessment" on Learner Dashboard. Choose language.

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So learners can access that site specific launch page. If you have a bookmarked on your computers at your organization, you can send it in the chat. They can also-- let's say they're working in their learner dashboard on the practice lessons and they're ready to take an assessment, they can do that from the learner dashboard. And so they would have logged into the practice lessons and-- whoops.

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In an internet browser, the Northstar dashboard opens. Three windows under "Essential Computer Skills" have partially completed status bars.

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Then here you can see, let's look at internet basics. On the bottom left there's the Take an Assessment button.

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The cursor selects the Assessment button. Address text fills the header of the screen. A red warning box fills the bottom.

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You click on that and it again goes to the correct assessment page. And if you scroll down, there are all the assessments.

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The slideshow fills the screen. Slide: Accessing Assessments.

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So we're going to go through the assessment a little bit and-- actually I should go back to that page.

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In an internet browser, the assessment page fills the screen.

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I want to show you where you can choose to look at the assessment in Spanish or English, so you can choose your language. So, Hugh, I am now on-- I clicked that site specific URL. Underneath where it says-- on the right hand side where it says validate computer via pin, you'll see the globe. It says language. And my default happens to be English.

You would click on that down arrow and then click Latin American Spanish and wait a little bit. And then you can see everything turns to Spanish. And all the assessments will now be in Spanish. To go back to English you would just do the opposite, or really the same thing, I guess.

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The cursor hovers over the first item in the leftmost of three columns, labeled "Essential Computer Skills."

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When someone is going to take an assessment, what happens is-- let's say they're going to take basic computer skills, when they click on it, they're given the option to check their audio-- which they can either do or skip. They are then given the option to watch an orientation, a very short orientation video. Which, again, they can choose to do that or not.

So many people who take the assessments will skip that orientation video and just go right to the assessment and be able to do it. Some people will want to watch that orientation video and then be able to do the assessments.

Many people, especially those who have low digital skills or low literacy in English or Spanish skills, will need some hand-holding. And that may be many of the learners that you are all working with. So I want to take this opportunity for us to go through the-- we're not going to take the assessment, but I want to go through it with you. And from the point of view that I'm going to be a learner who has never seen this before and I have lower level digital literacy.

Even though when you're doing this you could point to the screen, I want us to practice how we talk about the-- we're going to talk about today the navigation, how you navigate through the Northstar assessment, but use this as an example of how you might talk about digital literacy in general when you're talking to-- when you're teaching classes or you're teaching-- working one on one with someone.

Because people who have low or no digital literacy are often very afraid and doubtful that they're going to be able to learn the information. And so we want to make sure, especially sure, that we are supporting them in learning the material. And it's so easy to assume that people know thing or forget all the small steps that it takes that we all know and have known for a long time, or maybe we'll use jargon without realizing it.

So we want to practice getting down to the really basic way of talking about some of these things. And that's what we're going to do now. So I'm going to click on the Basic Computer Skills Assessment. I'll skip the audio, I'll skip the orientation video and we'll take a look at the assessment.

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The cursor skips through a screen that reads "Do you hear the Music?" A screen appears, Basic Computer Skills, Number of questions, 30, with a button, Start Now.

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All right. So you can see that the assessment starts by saying what the assessment is and how many questions there will be. And then here's you click on the rectangle that says Start Now to start the assessment. We'll probably-- actually think I-- I don't know if I've shared my sound with you, which is OK.

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When the "Start" button is clicked, several images of computers appear.

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SPEAKER 2: Click on the desktop.

THERESA SLADEK: So if you didn't hear it, there's audio that reads the words that are on the screen. What we find is that many times people get very anxious at this point because they hear the audio without realizing that the words are printed on the screen.

And so people will say, wait a minute, I didn't hear-- I need to get-- I need to write this or I didn't understand. So it's helpful to let people know before they start the assessment that what the person in the audio is saying is written in this top left hand corner under the Northstar's symbol. So that helps mitigate some of that anxiety.

Now, when you're new to a screen, and especially if you are new to digital literacy, there's a lot going on this screen. For those of us who are more used to digital literacy, we can hone in on the places that we know we're supposed to look, but that's not the case for someone who's new to digital literacy.

And I don't know if you've ever been working with someone like on a help desk who's trying to explain to you how to use a new system that you've never seen before, but sometimes it's hard to even know where to look. So what we want to practice is basically giving directions and helping people find things on the computer screen because that's going to just help them feel more at ease.

Remembering that even if you spend the time going through the navigation buttons on here and never get to the assessment-- or at least in this first lesson, let's say-- you're still teaching digital literacy. So this is time well spent, it's valuable, and it's going to also improve that connection that you have with the learner to feel-- they are going to feel that you're patient and that you're going to help them through this journey. Which I know all of you are well acquainted with that in your roles in adult basic education.

So if I'm new to this screen, the thing that grabs my attention first to where my eyes go is the pictures here in the middle. And also this gold where it says Not Proctored stands out as well. But let's say that you want to--

(DESCRIPTION)
A red circle is drawn around the five images of computers.

(SPEECH)
so what I'm seeing are these pictures right here, but let's say you are going to teach me about the navigation buttons on this screen.

And when we talk about where things are on a screen, it's very helpful to think about it almost like giving direction, driving directions. So you can talk about, is it on top or-- on the top or up? Is it on the bottom or down? Is it left? Is it right?

(DESCRIPTION)
Arrows are drawn in the four cardinal directions in the margin, beside the browser window.

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What color is it? What shape is it? What does it look like. So really getting descriptive in how you describe things can be really helpful.

So the first thing-- so knowing that I'm looking at these pictures, the first place that I want you to direct my gaze to is where my arrow is pointing.

(DESCRIPTION)
An arrow is drawn to the footer bar of the browser window, to a button in the center labeled "I Don't Know."

(SPEECH)
So what words could you use-- and you can either chat or unmute, whatever you prefer-- to get me to move my gaze down to that point?

I shouldn't really-- where on the screen is it? What does it look like? Where should my eyes be looking? Go ahead and give me your thoughts. Where is it on the screen? Let's see. I do see something in the chat. Borrow the screen, that's right, in the center. Yeah. What color is it? Color, shape.

AUDIENCE: Black, the words are white.

THERESA SLADEK: That's right. So it's a black rectangle, right. I don't know if you can see that on your screen. It's a black rectangle with white words. Black ribbon with white text, great. And the more different ways you can describe it, the better, because different people are different and they might notice different things. All right, great. So now this is the I don't know button. Why do we want people to use it? Was it good?

AUDIENCE: To get an actual accurate reflection of what they know and what they do not know instead of guessing.

THERESA SLADEK: Yes, exactly. Because if they guessed that, they might get it correct and then we wouldn't know that we needed to focus learning time on that skill. So I always say to learners, it's much better to choose I don't know if you really don't than to try and guess because that's going to help them in the long run.

All right, great. So now-- let me get rid of my drawings here--

(DESCRIPTION)
The drawings vanish.

(SPEECH)
so now we've been talking about the I don't know button, and now you want to direct my gaze to this.

(DESCRIPTION)
A new arrow appears to a grayed-out C.C. icon on the right side of the footer.

(SPEECH)
So I'm looking here. Here's my little face.

(DESCRIPTION)
A smiley face appears above the I Don't Know button.

(SPEECH)
How do you direct me to look where you want me to look?

And, again, of course, if you're next to someone, you can point to the screen, but I want us to practice just describing things in digital literacy to novices. Let's see, the bottom right corner. OK, right. Gray square with two C's, perfect. So here it is. And I'm glad you said with the two C's because that's what we see.

If you had said what they stand for, I as a new to digital literacy wouldn't know what that meant. So it's very good to describe it as it actually looks. So thank you for that. What do the two C stand for? Anybody know?

AUDIENCE: Closed caption?

THERESA SLADEK: Yep, closed caption. Now, you might say to me, well, Theresa, why do you need closed caption if the words are written up here anyway?

(DESCRIPTION)
"Click on the desktop computer" is underlined.

(SPEECH)
And it's a very valid question. In the basic assessments, the first couple of assessments, all the words that the audio says are written on the screen. in some of the more advanced assessments there'll be more audio and then the words on the screen are really encapsulating that information.

So if someone wants to see every single word that the audio is saying, then they would use closed captioning. All right, great. So next we want to--

(DESCRIPTION)
The drawings vanish.

(SPEECH)
I want you to get me to look at this symbol.

(DESCRIPTION)
A drawn arrow indicates a Sound icon to the right of the C.C. icon.

(SPEECH)
And so we've been looking at the CC button, how would you get me to look at that? And what would you-- how would you describe it? Where is it? What direction is it from CC?

AUDIENCE: To the right of the CC.

THERESA SLADEK: To the right of the CC, very good. Now, what does this look like? White speaker to the right. It is white. What if I didn't know what a speaker was, what else-- how else could you describe it? It's a hard shape to describe, but how else could you describe it? Here I'm drawing it.

(DESCRIPTION)
A drawing of the Sound icon appears.

(SPEECH)
What else does it look like if someone didn't know the icon for speaker? A bell, great.

And this is where you can get creative. I've heard a lot of good answers as to what this might look like. So a bell that it does, I agree with that. Anyone see anything else there, this is kind of your chance. A bullhorn? Megaphone, yeah.

AUDIENCE: Megaphone, yeah.

THERESA SLADEK: Sound button, they might not know that this stands for sound if they're not familiar with digital literacy. We will teach them that but that might not be something that someone instinctively could guess initially. Anyone else see-- I always think it looks kind of like a hat on its side or maybe a triangle, I guess.

It's a hard one to-- it's one of the harder ones to describe, but it sounds like you all know basically what it's used for.

(DESCRIPTION)
The drawings vanish.

(SPEECH)
Someone said, I would put my hand on my ear. That's great. So it's kind of like that would help them understand what it does, and maybe with the waves coming out, what they're looking for.

So you all have indicated that it has something to do with audio, and, in fact, it does. This button, the only thing it does is it turns on the audio or turns it off. So right now the audio is on. I will share my audio with you so you can hear this. There you go. So right now it's on. And if I played it, it would sound like this.

(DESCRIPTION)
The cursor clicks a replay icon.

(SPEECH)
SPEAKER 2: Click on the desktop computer.

THERESA SLADEK: And then if you want to turn the audio off, you click on this button, and there's an x by it and then the audio is off. That's all this does, off and on.

SPEAKER 2: Click on the desktop computer.

THERESA SLADEK: But to all of the comments that you had, this is-- for those of us who are used to digital literacy-- a very common symbol. And that brings up the concept of digital resiliency, which is something that we want to explicitly be teaching.

And so digital resiliency talks to the fact that many things that we learned in one platform can be transferred to another platform. So you knew that was audio because you have seen it in many other situations and it's basically the same symbol.

That's really important for us to tell learners outright that that's the case. Because oftentimes what we encounter is that someone will say, well, I learned how to do-- to use Word but no one ever taught me how to use Google Docs, or something like that. But they're essentially the same kind of program and then we would expect that they could do similar things in similar ways.

So it's taking that knowledge that we have of one platform and transforming it to-- transferring it, I guess, to another platform. So great to talk about-- to get them to find this shape and then say-- tell them what it does and then say this is a symbol that you're going to encounter all the time in many different digital situations. And that's really, really important to learning digital literacy.

All right. So how about then-- checking our time-- how about this-- where's my annotation? How about this. Where is this located? How would you describe what it looks like?

(DESCRIPTION)
A red arrow indicates a full-screen icon to the right of the Sound icon.

(SPEECH)
And it's great you're practicing with me because I'm a accomplished learner rather than someone who's new to digital literacy. So this is your chance to practice. Where is it? What does it look like? You don't have to know what it does.

AUDIENCE: So we're going to go to the right of the sound button that we just identified. You're going to see two arrows. And we'll want to click on those two arrows.

THERESA SLADEK: Great, perfect. All right. And let's see in the chat we have two arrows at the bottom left-- at the bottom right. Sorry, I misread that. Yes, exactly. So two arrows pointing in the opposite directions in the bottom left-- bottom right. I need to get my direction straight. And what happens? What these arrows do is they expand the screen, which you probably knew.

(DESCRIPTION)
When the icon is clicked, the browser tabs vanish.

(SPEECH)
You can see that when I-- I'll do that again.

(DESCRIPTION)
The browser tabs return.

(SPEECH)
So when they're not expanded, you can see on my screen I've got a lot of extra chatter going on. Which those of us, again, who are used to computers and are familiar with digital literacy, you know what to ignore and what to pay attention to. Just like if you are hearing multiple conversations, you kind of know what words to listen to, the person you're talking to and what you can ignore.

Not as easy for someone who's new to this. So if you do the expand screen,

(DESCRIPTION)
The browser tabs vanish.

(SPEECH)
it gets rid of a lot of that noise. And I would say this is much easier for people to look at, especially those who are new to digital literacy, so you might consider that.

OK, so now we have a couple more navigation buttons to look at. And the first one is where the arrow is pointing.

(DESCRIPTION)
An arrow indicates a Navigation button on the far right of the header ribbon.

(SPEECH)
So we've been looking at these icons down here. How do I get someone to look at where my arrow is pointing? Where is it? What does it look like?

AUDIENCE: So now we're going to go to the top on the right hand side to where we see three lines in the far right.

THERESA SLADEK: Great. So we see the three lines. I don't know if you can see them on my screen, but three lines, three dots. You can also say it's underneath this kind of yellow, orange, half oval because that stands out.

And this button-- so thank you for that-- this button is the navigation button.

(DESCRIPTION)
When clicked, a table of contents appears, with mostly grayed-out topics, except for 1, desktop computer.

(SPEECH)
And what it does is it lets us see what the question topics are. And the nice thing about the assessment is that although you can't skip ahead-- so if I'm on question one, I can't click to question six-- I can go back.

So, again, if I had clicked I don't know on question one and then I got to question four I'm like, you know what, actually, I do know the answer to question one. I can always go back and change my answer. In fact, you can change your answer up until you submit your assessment. So that's also helpful for learners to know that maybe it will come back to them and they can change the answer.

All right, so our last navigation button then is right here.

(DESCRIPTION)
An arrow indicates a Replay icon just to the right of the Navigation button.

(SPEECH)
And so how would you describe that knowing that we've talked about this symbol with the student, where it is, what it looks like. And you can either chat or unmute. Where is it? Do I see something in the chat? Top right corner, yes.

And what does it look like? What shape is it? What color is it? Let's see. Sound icon with a backwards arrow, great. And remember, unless you've taught the Word icon already, they may not know that word. So, again, you can say the square with the sound picture or-- and it's a good opportunity to teach the Word icon. So we are going to click on that. And what this does is it does to-- this button has two functions. One, if I click on it, it just replays the audio.

SPEAKER 2: Click on the desktop computer.

THERESA SLADEK: As it does so, you can see it brings up this rectangle that in the far right has 1x. That means it's playing the recording at the speed it was recorded at. If I want to speed this up, I can click on that one X and it will go a little bit faster, 1.25 times as fast. I can click on that again and it will go 1 and 1/2 times as fast. And if I click on it a third time, it will go twice as fast.

You can also play the audio slower, but imagine it's on a wheel, so you have to go through faster first before you get to slower. So if I click the 2x, then I find they get to the audio being slower at 0.75 of what it was originally recorded. So just remember it's on that wheel.

All right, great. So, again, not every learner will need to go through this long orientation, but this is really helpful for people who are learning digital literacy, who might be a little nervous about digital literacy and/or who are learning just even what the symbols are or the language of digital literacy. This is a great place to just start even with a class, if you want to just show this screen to get people kind of used to it.

When someone does come to take the assessment, you'll often-- you've been working with them, they're starting to develop a connection to you, they're trusting you, they see you as helpful, they'll often ask you for the answers. Not trying to cheat but just, again, seeing you as someone who's been helping them.

This is an assessment so you can't help with the answers. And how it usually happens is someone will say, do you think I should choose this one or this one? Or, what does desktop mean? Or, I don't know, which one of these would you choose? And so, again, it's no-- there's no value in helping them choose the answer because then it's not really reflecting what they actually know and they aren't going to learn the material that they need to learn.

But what you can say is, I can't help you with the assessment, but it's great for you to choose the I don't know button and to click on that. I was going to say something but I forgot. So any questions about the navigation buttons or-- well, I'll stop there. Any questions about the navigation buttons or what they do? OK.

So, again, just remember this exercise, the point of it was mostly to get you thinking about when you're teaching digital literacy, you really want to make sure you're meeting people where they're at and how you describe things. And you think about all the little tiny things that we just talked about that many of us take for granted in knowing that someone new to this doesn't know.

So just keeping that in the back of your mind and knowing that, again, even if you're teaching people what CC stands for, you are teaching digital literacy. So don't feel like it's a waste of time. It's really actually very essential and a good solid foundation.

(DESCRIPTION)
The slideshow fills the screen. Slide: Results page. Text fills the screen: You passed, 85.8%. Two columns of text are labeled Correct and Incorrect.

(SPEECH)
So after someone takes an assessment, they will get the results page. And anyone remember what the passing score is?

AUDIENCE: 80%.

THERESA SLADEK: A little bit higher, 85%, yes. So 85% is our passing score. There are a few things that I want to make sure you know that I sometimes hear from learners these questions not very often. So, again, I probably won't explain this to someone unless they ask me for the-- ask me the question, but I want you to know in case they do ask.

So one of the questions that we get asked is, you can see in the green column it tells me that I got 29 correct. And someone may say to you, well, I got 29 correct on this internet basics assessment and passed, but I got 29 correct on using email assessment and didn't pass. Why not?

The answer is a mathematical answer. Why would it be that I could get 29 on internet basics and pass and 29 correct on using email and not pass? It's the percent. So it could be that there's 34 questions here on internet basics, maybe there's 40% on using email. So the number of total questions isn't the same from assessment to assessment Yes, thank you.

All right. Another question that occasionally we'll get is someone will say, this is internet basics and I got 29 out of 34 and I passed, but on Word I got 29 out of 34 and didn't pass. Why not? And again, it's a mathematical answer. Anyone know what it might be. So I got 29 out of 34 on internet basics and passed, but got 29 out of 34 out of 34, the same number, on Word and didn't pass. Why would that be?

AUDIENCE: Questions are weighted differently.

THERESA SLADEK: Exactly, the questions are weighted. So some questions have multiple components to them and so a person might get it partially right. All right, great. The other question-- the last question that sometimes we'll get is you can see on this results page that standard five was missed. And sometimes people will say-- in the gray column there. Sometimes people will say, well, question five, I know I got question five right. And they probably did.

It's important to know that the question numbers and the standard numbers are not one to one correlated. So question five may have a totally different standard in it or multiple standards in it, and standard five might be in multiple questions. So just so you know that the question numbers and the standard numbers don't match.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide: Student Log In Instructions. 1. Go to Northstar homepage. 2. Click on "Log In" in Upper right hand corner. 3. Enter email address and password and click "Log In." 4. Under "Where Are You" Click "Yes" if you are in class or at school. Click "No" if you are practicing outside of class or school. 5. Choose language.

(SPEECH)
So I said when-- oopsie-- when someone, after they take their pre-assessment, they may want to do the practice lessons. And so I want to show you just, again, give you an introduction on how to talk to students about the learner dashboard and the practice lessons.

All right. So we're going to look at the practice lessons and how to talk to learners about that. So people can either go to that URL that you have and then log in or if they're from at home and they don't have access to that URL, they can go to the Northstar home page and the login looks the same from each of them.

So let's go to the home page. Whether they go to your URL or just the Northstar home page,

(DESCRIPTION)
A browser window fills the screen, with the Northstar log-in page.

(SPEECH)
you will see-- I'm going to log out so you can see this.

(DESCRIPTION)
The Home page appears.

(SPEECH)
And my computer really likes me to be logged into Northstar so this is what it would look like. So here I am at the Northstar home page. But, again, if they had taken an assessment with you, it'd be-- they'd be down here

(DESCRIPTION)
The cursor scrolls down, then back up again.

(SPEECH)
and they could just go up to the top of the home page. So they wouldn't even have to scroll up. It's on the black navigation bar here.

So if they're taking an assessment or if they're down here, if they click to your URL, in this black navigation bar you see the Northstar logo on the left and over on the far right you see the gray oval with the words log in. They'd click on that and they'd enter their email address and their password that they had created or you had created for them, and then click on the blue login oval.

(DESCRIPTION)
A screen appears, Admin Portal.

(SPEECH)
Where they will end up is not here because I am playing various roles here, but they will end up on their learner dashboard. What we're going to get to in a second.

(DESCRIPTION)
A page of two questions appears with a header, Where Are You?

(SPEECH)
Now, this first question they won't have. That's because I belong to several different sites. But they will have the second question where it says, right now are you physically at the Northstar location?

The reason this is asked is so that if someone is doing the practice lessons while they're at your school, at your organization, you're probably tracking that time anyway, but you will probably want to track time where they're not at your organization. And that's often able-- you're often able to use that for funding purposes as well, that time.

So this allows you to separate out those two. And then there's a report that you can run that shows how much time when they're with you in the school versus when they're somewhere else. So I'm going to choose no because I'm at home at the moment, and then we click on Save.

(DESCRIPTION)
A screen appears with text, buttons, links, and progress wheels under a header, Essential Computer Skills.

(SPEECH)
So we will next come to the learner dashboard. Just like the assessments, some people will understand how to use the practice lessons, some people will want a little video orientation, and some people will need more hand-holding.

If they are someone who wants a video orientation, underneath the Northstar logo that you see at the top left it says need help getting started. If they click there, there are two videos, one that explains two short videos, one that explains the learner dashboard and one that explains the practice lessons. They can also get this information. If you look at the Help button in the middle of my screen-- it looks sort of like a soccer ball or maybe a nuclear symbol-- those two videos are there as well.

The other important thing to know-- I mean, we'll talk about the learner dashboard-- but the other important thing to know is that if someone would like to have this in Spanish, maybe they initially chose English and they want something-- to see something in Spanish, they can go to the profile or you can help them go to their profile next to the Help button, to the left of it, click on it.

(DESCRIPTION)
Text bars appear above a Language Preference section.

(SPEECH)
And then you can see that the language preference right now is set to English.

We can click on the toggle switch that goes to Spanish and then click on Update, and then you need to wait. So it looks like nothing's happening but then wait, and everything will be in Spanish.

(DESCRIPTION)
The screen flashes and reappears in Spanish text.

(SPEECH)
At that point, you can click on the Northstar logo, and that takes you back to the dashboard. It's a little shortcut. And you can see it's all in Spanish now.

(DESCRIPTION)
The dashboard appears.

(SPEECH)
And then I'm going to go switch us back to English for the purposes of this demonstration. And, again, you wait till it's all in English, and then you can click on the Northstar logo that takes you back. So you can see on my screen that there are-- all 16 different topic areas are here. And one of them, we do not have the practice lessons for.

So let's look at the bottom six,

(DESCRIPTION)
The cursor scrolls down to reveal six sections, three with progress wheels. One of the sections, K-12 Distance Learning, has a button labeled "Details" in the spot where the other sections have a "Lessons" button.

(SPEECH)
which one don't we have practice lessons for in these six? I see someone in the chat. Question, when you switch to Spanish, are all the lessons and activities also in Spanish? Yes, good question. They are.

You can switch right on the screen of the practice lessons or you can make it so that all of them are. And Will is right, it's k-12 distance learning that does not have lessons. And we know that because why? How do we know that-- that's true but how do we know that that is true?

AUDIENCE: If I compare it to the other ones where the bottom of the square said take assessment, the right said lessons, k-12 says take assessment details.

THERESA SLADEK: Exactly. And if I clicked on the details, it says there are no practice lessons available for this topic yet. Also, you can see that there in bold it says lessons are not yet developed, so hopefully letting learners know which ones don't have lessons-- which one doesn't have lessons.

So let's go back to the top here, a few things I want to point out to you. I'm going to make this bigger for you.

(DESCRIPTION)
The top three progress wheels are enlarged.

(SPEECH)
You'll notice that all of these have two rings. And let's focus on internet basics at the moment. The outer-- that darker purple ring, this is showing me visually how well I did on the assessment.

So if we look at the first three there, the basic computer skills, internet basics and using email, which one did I do the best on? Email, exactly. All right. Because why? Because it's a full circle. So I've got 100%.

The inner ring looking again at internet basics-- yes, that's right-- is this lavender ring, this is showing me, again, visually how much of the practice lessons I've completed. So, again, looking at these three, which one did I do the least on? Let's see. Internet basics, exactly. So internet basics I did about half, I did half the lessons. I did a little more than half on basic computer, and almost 90% on using email. Great, OK.

You'll also notice that two of these internet basics and using email have a hexagon in the middle, with an icon in the middle of that. Whenever you see the hexagon it means that you've-- this assessment has been passed, this topic, the assessment has been passed.

I don't have an example, but if the hexagon was gray, it would mean that it was passed in an unproctored environment. And if it's in color, it means it was passed in a proctored environment. So that's a quick way for someone just to see what assessments they have passed. They could quickly look. So the other thing that you'll notice on here--

AUDIENCE: --With a question on that. So if we had a student who took that assessment, had received a passing score but it wasn't proctored, they could come back, take that assessment again while proctored and the color would change on it?

THERESA SLADEK: Yes, exactly. And that's a good point because sometimes that's-- many programs that's what they do. And so if someone passes and it just wasn't proctored, you can go back and proctor it and it will change the color. Yeah, good question.

All right. So the other thing you see on here are these little circles. And I will say I find them kind of visually confusing, actually, because to me they look like they're at specific points on this-- the ring underneath them, but they're actually not. They happen to be floating above the ring, but they're not on specific points of the ring, just so you know.

But what these stand for, in the practice lessons there are different sections. And each section will have an instructional component and practice components. And then there'll be a little quiz, like a three question quiz. And these circles are identifying those different sections.

So on internet basic-- well, on basic computers you can see there's three sections, internet basics has three sections and using email has four sections.

(DESCRIPTION)
The cursor hovers over each section.

(SPEECH)
If you hover over the circle, it tells you what the section name is. So there's one on staying safe online, there's one on connecting to the internet, and there's one on using the internet.

What the symbols mean is if you see-- let's look at using email-- if you see the locked symbol, that means that the person hasn't looked at this entire section yet, hasn't gone through the entire section. If you see the unlocked symbol, that means they have gone through the entire section, and they either haven't taken the quiz yet or they did not pass the quiz.

And then the check mark means they look through the entire section, they took the quiz and they passed it. So I don't typically go over that with learners unless they would ask because I think it's just a little bit much for new learners. But I want to make sure you know what they stand for so you can answer questions if you get them.

So now if we click on any of the lessons in the bottom right hand corner, we get to the second page of the learner dashboard.

(DESCRIPTION)
A page appears with only the Internet Basics progress wheel beside text and buttons. Below is a table, with three tabs.

(SPEECH)
And here you see the rings. And to the right of them, you see the barrel that says Start Practice. This will start at the beginning of the lesson. Or if someone's done, let's say, 10 minutes and then they come back a few days later, it will pick up where they left off. So you don't have to do the entire lesson at one go, you can really just do it at your own speed.

Underneath that, there are these three tabs, and the one that's in darker gray is the one that's active at the moment. And so the first one you can see is this it says Practice. On it you see that there are some words in uppercase, bold. And those are sections we were talking about before. So, again, connecting to the internet is one, using the internet is the second, and staying safe online is the third.

Within those where you see these bullet points, these are the standards. So you could say-- let's say you taught a class and someone missed the class, and it was on identify-- fill out an online form. You could have them go through this material on their own to catch up to the class with what they missed.

Or it could be that last week you taught about identifying common browser tools and icons, and you start out the class by saying, OK everyone, let's take five minutes to review that material in the practice lessons. So you can connect these to the curriculum or use them separately.

Sometimes people will maybe pass this assessment and then six months later have to fill out a job application online, kind of forget how that was done and they'll come back and go through-- fill out an online form to refresh their memory. So as long as you have a subscription to Northstar and they are still a learner and you're in the learner management system, they can access this.

The next tab over is the standards tab.

(DESCRIPTION)
When the tab is clicked, the table fills with a list of standards, each with a check mark and an X and a button.

(SPEECH)
And if someone's taken the assessment, this will tell them what standards they've missed. And then over on the right they could click where-- if it hadn't been completed, it would say it would be the practice with the barbell-- they could click that and go right to that standard in the practice lessons.

So if they only had a few to work on, they don't have to go through the entire 90 minute practice lesson. They can just hone in on what they have to learn. And then the last tab, the Assessment History tab,

(DESCRIPTION)
When the tab is clicked, the table fills with a row of data.

(SPEECH)
this will tell them when they took the assessment, what their-- or assessments-- what their score was, if it was proctored.

And then a little hidden gem here is if you were to click on the date, it takes you back to that results page.

(DESCRIPTION)
A results page fills the screen with text, You Passed, 85.8%.

(SPEECH)
So sometimes learners will want to see the results page again, it is here and it's here in its entirety. So that is a way that they can see the results page. You also have access to the results page in the learner-- in your admin portal.

So the question was, I don't see the option to take non-proctored assessments, and as the default is not proctored, you would have to actually choose proctoring to make it proctored. So all the default assessments would be not proctored unless you had someone proctoring them and turn that on. So you're already there.

(DESCRIPTION)
The history tab reappears.

(SPEECH)
OK, so then the other kind of thing that I mentioned but want to make sure you know another little cool trick is if you click on the Northstar logo, you'll always go back to the dashboard.

(DESCRIPTION)
The dashboard appears.

(SPEECH)
So any questions about the kind of dashboard before we look at the practice lessons? OK, feel free to write something in the chat if you are. I know it takes-- it takes me a long time to write so I'll keep talking but I'll look out for the chat.

All right. So if we want to do-- and then the question, how do we turn on taking assessments? So, again, you would have someone just go through that site specific URL that we talked about and they would then be at the assessments, and they could take the assessments through your organization.

So in your-- once you log in to your Northstar admin portal, you would find that site specific URL, and then that's what you'd have on the computers that you're offering to people or have them log, click on that somehow and then the assessments will be there. And if they were to come to this page, they could go right to it from here as well.

All right. And I would encourage you all, if you are new to Northstar, gee, to play around in Northstar. You're not going to break anything. I come in here as a learner and click on Take an Assessment and click on the lessons. And actually take the assessment and then kind of fill any gaps that you might have. So it's a really great way for you to see it from the learner's perspective and also be able to talk about it when you're working with a learner.

And then remember in the admin portal-- I'm not there at the moment but I'll show you in a second-- in the admin portal there is that resources tab that does tell you how to do a lot of the tasks in Northstar. So it's a great place to look too.

All right. So if we're going to go to the lessons, I'm going to click on whatever lesson I want. Let's say-- I don't know-- I am going to choose something new if I can get my screen to move.

(DESCRIPTION)
The cursor scrolls down the dashboard to a section labeled Your Digital Footprint.

(SPEECH)
Let's look at your digital footprint. So I'm going to click on the lower left lessons box.

(DESCRIPTION)
A list of lessons appears on the table below the empty progress wheel.

(SPEECH)
And I could either start at the very beginning or I can choose one of these bullet points here, which are the standards.

Let's go here.

(DESCRIPTION)
Under the heading Unintentional Digital Footprints, the cursor selects Demonstrate Ability to Manage Privacy Settings.

(SPEECH)
So what we're going to see-- I'm going to turn off the audio.

(DESCRIPTION)
An informative video fills the screen and plays.

(SPEECH)
So we can have videos, we can have the, like I said, something for people to read, or we can have something for them to do. When you look at the navigation screen, though, you'll see that it's very, very similar to the assessments.

So if you've gone over the navigation buttons in the assessments or if you start with the practice lessons and go over the navigation buttons, they're very similar. The main difference is instead of I don't know, you have the next button which advances the screen. And then on our bottom right, we still have the closed caption, the CC button, we still have the audio which turns it on and off, and we still have the two arrows that makes the screen expand.

We also have this box that says EN, meaning that this particular slide is being shown in English. But if I would like to see it in Spanish in the rest of the lesson, I can also click here in the box and it would give me that option. So you can even do it slide by slide, or maybe someone's trying to learn English and they aren't quite feeling comfortable that they've grasped the content, they can switch to Spanish and then back to English right on the slide.

The other difference is in our upper right, we still have the audio that will replay the audio and which you can slow down the audio and speed it up.

(DESCRIPTION)
The 90-second video ends.

(SPEECH)
But in our menu button, in the practice lessons, you can jump ahead.

(DESCRIPTION)
The cursor selects the Navigation button and selects the next topic in sequence, Cookies.

(SPEECH)
So if I decided I want to go to the next topic, I can jump ahead.

(DESCRIPTION)
A new video fills the screen and plays.

(SPEECH)
Where as in the assessment, you couldn't do that. So it lets you go back and forth between the two.

So those are the main different-- the main orientation buttons in the practice lessons. As I said, you can stop and start so you could do five minutes one day, come back a week later, do 15 more minutes, it would remember where you left off.

People ask me this, if someone leaves this on and there's no movement on the screen for 10 minutes, it stops time tracking. So the idea is someone could get up, go to the bathroom, get a drink of water, but they couldn't leave it on and go walk their dog for half an hour and come back. It wouldn't be recording all that time.

(DESCRIPTION)
The slideshow fills the screen.

(SPEECH)
Any other questions about the practice lessons? We talked about this. I will talk about the questions in a second.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide: Review Questions, with bulleted text. A green checkmark means the lesson is complete. When you've completed all the lessons in a section, the Review Questions are unlocked. A red exclamation point indicates an incorrect answer, review the lesson, and try again. Examples are listed below the bulleted text.

(SPEECH)
So in those different sections in the practice lessons, there are the three question quizzes. And if you look at the bottom left of my screen, within each section there might be different parts to it. So when you see a green arrow, that means they've completed that part. And once all the various parts are open, the questions show up on the screen.

On the bottom right hand side of my screen, it tells you-- the green check would say got that quiz question right or the red, orange exclamation point would say that you'd got it wrong. In the practice lessons, these little quizzes, if someone gets the answer incorrect the first time, it will recommend that they go back and review the material. If they take the little quiz again and they get it wrong again, then there'll be some prompts or even the answer to help them learn the material.

In this case, if people ask you how to answer a practice question, it's fine for you to answer-- help them with this little quiz. The purpose here is to teach them the topic. And if by helping them get the right answer or guiding them to the answer on the quiz that helps them learn the topic, go for it. Different than the assessment.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide: Returning to Dashboard. Click the Northstar Online Learning Logo at the top of the page to return to the dashboard.

(SPEECH)
And we talked about this.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide: Curriculum Example. Using Email, Lesson 7: Spam and Phishing. Next two slides are examples of the Teacher Guide. Print out Teacher Guide to refer to during Lesson.

(SPEECH)
So unless there are any questions, I would like to switch our focus to looking at the instructor led curriculum. And the one we're going to look at today is from using email. And it's a portion of lesson seven on spam and phishing.

So what I would recommend when you're teaching this, whether in-person or remotely, is that you're going to want to have a version of it. You're going to want to have a printout of the teacher guide or another laptop with the teacher guide on it because that's what you're going to be referring to throughout the lesson.

So I currently have something printed out on my desk. If you had another monitor, you could have it up here, if you're doing it remotely, if you're doing it in-person, you might have it printed out or on your laptop.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide: Teacher Guide, Top. A document full of boxes of text fills the screen, labeled Using Email, Lesson 7: Spam and Phishing.

(SPEECH)
What the teacher guide looks like-- I've blown it up so it's easier to read-- this is what the first page of all the lesson plans look like. So it will tell you in the blue bar what topic it is and what lesson it is and what it's on.

And then in the left hand side you see the standards that are being taught in this lesson. And when we go into the curriculum, I will show you that each topic has what we call a scope and sequence that shows you all the standards in a particular topic and then what lessons each standard is in. So if you aren't going to teach the whole-- every single standard, that lets you quickly find what lesson you want to look at.

On the right hand side it tells you the vocabulary that we're explicitly going to be teaching in this lesson, and that I would go over this vocabulary to start off the lesson. And then technology concepts, this kind of tells you in instructor language what the objectives of this lesson are and then gives you any teaching tips that you might not know.

So in this case it's saying, you're going to want to have examples of spam or phishing emails. You can check your own junk folder or you can look online for spam, phishing examples, but you want to make sure that they're appropriate for a class before you would show them. And then it's also saying that spam folders in some email providers are called junk folders. So just so you know whatever-- the students you're working with, whatever email provider they're using, what it's called.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide: Teacher Guide, Bottom. A table of text appears.

(SPEECH)
The bottom portion of that first page is a prep guide. And really just tells you what you're going to need to have ready, what's you're going to be projecting, what you're going to want to have handouts of. And if you're doing this remotely, you can just click on any of those links and it will take you right to those documents. It will take you right there also if you were going to just print them out.

(DESCRIPTION)
The slideshow returns to the Curriculum Example slide. The cursor clicks the "Teacher Guide" link.

(SPEECH)
So let's take a look at a little bit, I want to show you, what the curriculum looks like in the admin portal. And then we're going to go through a piece of the curriculum as though I'm the teacher and you are the learners. So you can see what that's like.

(DESCRIPTION)
A browser window displays the Admin portal.

(SPEECH)
So here we are in our Northstar admin portal. In the blue navigation bar you can see curriculum is a tab sort of in the middle. And when I click on that,

(DESCRIPTION)
A Curriculum page opens up with text. The cursor hovers over the first link in a list of five.

(SPEECH)
a lot of good things are in here. We do have a teacher guide so if you want to know about the various components in the curriculum and how-- why we included them and how to best utilize them, that is there.

We also have two bullet points on-- if you're going to be teaching a remote class, how-- best practices for remote teaching. And then the second one, that sample agenda, if you love a checklist, this is for you

(DESCRIPTION)
The cursor selects it, and a three-page checklist appears.

(SPEECH)
because it tells you everything you need to do to get ready, how to teach about the various components of a virtual platform so that people are ready for that first lesson.

(DESCRIPTION)
The Curriculum window reappears.

(SPEECH)
Below that are some bullet points that look at some really almost pre Northstar skills. So we do have these video. It's not part of the curriculum, it's kind of mini curriculum. But there are these, I don't know, seven minute videos

(DESCRIPTION)
The "Video Tutorials" link is clicked. A three-page document appears with a table of links.

(SPEECH)
that will teach on some of the popular topics that we get asked about that we didn't feel were enough material for a full blown topic. Things like using Zoom, smartphone apps, Gmail, WhatsApp.

And so here's there links to the videos, and then there are student worksheets and you get an answer key. So this is a great way to start if you want to be talking about these mini topics.

(DESCRIPTION)
The Curriculum window reappears.

(SPEECH)
And then, lastly, we won't go into this too much today, but this last bullet point, for those of you who are working with lower level English language learners or if you want to build digital literacy into your regular ESL classroom, these are some routines that help you do that.

So they are-- the language is even simpler than in the North Star curriculum, they are slides with a lot of pictures and very few words to start teaching some of the language of digital literacy and some of the concepts of digital literacy.

And it's nice because they are PowerPoint slides so you can edit those. The curriculum you can't physically edit but these routines you can, so you can make them applicable to the people that you're working with. So that's kind of just some extras here in the curriculum. You can see over on the far right that, again, the curriculum is in English and it's also in Spanish.

We are in the process of translating it into Spanish, so I think about-- well, let's take a look, maybe 2/3 of it is in Spanish now,

(DESCRIPTION)
The page refreshes with Spanish text.

(SPEECH)
yeah. So all of these are now in Spanish. The plan is to translate it all the lessons into Spanish, and right now they're working on social media. And it seems like it takes about three weeks to do one, so I would expect social media to come out pretty soon and then probably the rest by the end of the year, maybe into the spring.

So this makes it great. If you do speak Spanish and you want to teach in Spanish, you don't have to translate yourself. It's already translated for you.

(DESCRIPTION)
The page refreshes in English, and scrolls down. Below the list of links are three tables of topics.

(SPEECH)
All right. So now here are all our 16 topics. And I'm going to click on using email because that's what we're going to look at. Actually, I'm going to click on internet basics just to show you this.

(DESCRIPTION)
When "Internet Basics" is clicked, a list of links appears.

(SPEECH)
So I mentioned that every topic has a scope and sequence, and that's this first bullet point.

(DESCRIPTION)
The "Scope and Sequence" link is clicked. A document appears with a table of text.

(SPEECH)
And this will show you, if you look in the third column over, the standards. Here are all the standards for internet basics, all in one place. And then let's say you want to teach standard seven, identify ways to protect your devices, you can go over to the last column where it says lesson outline and look for standard seven, which we see is here in lesson eight.

So then you know I want to go to lesson eight to teach if that's the only standard you want to teach or that's one of the standards you want to teach. So it helps you pinpoint things really quickly.

(DESCRIPTION)
The list of links reappears.

(SPEECH)
We do show how Northstar is aligned with the college and career readiness standards.

We also show how it's aligned with-- this is a Minnesota thing. It's a very long name. the aces transitions integration framework-- alignment framework. What it is what you'd call soft skills or office skills. And so it can show you when you're teaching this topic in Northstar, you are also teaching these soft skills.

Then you have all the lessons. Toward the bottom you see this unit project lesson. Every topic has this academic lesson that takes all the digital skills that were learned in this topic, and then provides a couple paragraphs of reading and really looking at it from an academic standpoint. So looking for a topic sentences, looking for a main topics, kind of doing some pre reading and repetitive reading.

And ultimately there's a project that would have you take the skills and what was read to complete a project that is listed there. So if you're looking for some academic work here, you can use that or sometimes I'll work with learners who they passed all the assessments and they still want to do work in digital literacy. They really like this because it's kind of a more practical application.

And then the next bullet point is just broken out the text that's part of that project. And then lastly, if you're teaching remotely, all of the handouts and worksheets that you'd be using are kind of conveniently placed right here.

So let's take a look. So we'll look more at a lesson, but I want to take you through it teaching you.

(DESCRIPTION)
The slideshow reappears. Slide: Using Email, Lesson 7. Three boxes of text appear. The top box is labeled "Vocabulary" with a list of terms.

(SPEECH)
So we're going to start here. And I'm going to pretend that you are all English language learners, and I'll be the instructor. And we're going to go through this.

So the first thing that I like to start a lesson with is-- well, I have found that learners tend-- with digital literacy, maybe with other topics as well, but especially with digital literacy, they really like to have a notebook where they can write things down-- or paper-- they can write things down and they can put the handouts in it and refer back to the handouts. The handouts have a lot of pictures and vocabulary on them.

So I usually have people start out by writing the name of the lesson. So in this case using email lesson seven. You might even put the name of the lesson there too. And then we go over the vocabulary words. So I would write the vocabulary words on the board or on the screen or wherever, and then have the learners write them down too.

And then we would practice saying them because you often hear-- I mean, you know this but you often hear that a word and you think it's spelled one way or you may not know how it's spelled, and when you see it you don't realize it's the same word. So we want to practice saying the words as well as seeing the words.

And, again, all of you are in this field so you probably know this, but Literacy Minnesota, we provide training to all of our teachers and volunteers across the state of Minnesota, and so we have a lot of resources on these different topics-- on many different topics. But one of the best practices, when you're teaching people, especially multisyllabic words in a different language, is it's very helpful to clap out the syllables.

So I'm going to ask you all to unmute. And if you can't unmute because of where you're at, you're going to have to say this to yourself, but go ahead and unmute if you can. I'll wait while you do that. I can see who's muted and who's not.

Well, I think you have the ability to unmute so I'm still waiting to see a lot of you have unmuted. Let's see. It looks like many of you have, great. So I want you now-- I'm going to say the word, I'm going to clap it out, and I want you to repeat after me.

(DESCRIPTION)
The word "hover" at the top of the list is crossed out.

(SPEECH)
So the first-- I've crossed out one, but the first word we're going to look at is fishing. Fishing, let's hear you say it.

AUDIENCE: Fishing.

THERESA SLADEK: All right. The second word is reputable, reputable.

AUDIENCE: Reputable.

THERESA SLADEK: Great. Let's hear it again, reputable.

AUDIENCE: Reputable.

THERESA SLADEK: Very good. The third word that starts with the S here is spam.

AUDIENCE: Spam.

THERESA SLADEK: And then the fourth word is suspicious, suspicious.

AUDIENCE: Suspicious.

THERESA SLADEK: And the last word that we're going to learn today is virus, virus.

AUDIENCE: Virus.

THERESA SLADEK: Great. All right, thank you for doing that.

(DESCRIPTION)
The next box down is labeled Warm-Up, with bulleted text.

(SPEECH)
Now, the way the lessons start talking to you as educators, again, the lessons always start with a warm up. And the purpose of this is not only to get able talking in the group, but also it allows you as an instructor to hear what people already know and what they might not know.

So you can see that it gives you instructions on how to do this, but we're going to just go-- I'm going to give you the instructions. So I want you to imagine that we're in a world where there are no computers. So before computers existed, that's the world we're in.

And in that world, how do you keep information like your credit card number or your Social Security number safe? You can either chat or unmute. How would you keep those numbers safe? And now we're talking about a world with no computers. How do I prevent people who shouldn't have those numbers from having them? Any ideas?

AUDIENCE: Do not share it.

THERESA SLADEK: Yeah, not share it. You could hide it, yeah, under your mattress. Yeah, hide your Social Security card, maybe hide your credit card. If someone asks for that number that you don't know and that you're not purchasing anything, should you give it to them? Let's see, I'm trying to catch up with the chat. Yeah, no, never. Exactly, right. You don't want to give someone that shouldn't have a reason to have at that number.

What if you wrote down, let's say, your credit card number on a piece of paper and you no longer needed that piece of paper. What could you do to make sure that someone didn't get that piece of paper with a number on it? Shred it? What if don't have a shredder? Burn it, tear it. Yes, great. Soak it in the water, good one. I could eat it, cut it up. All right.

So, again, in this same world where there's no computers, let's say you moved to a new town and you needed to do some shopping. How do you decide if a business is reputable? And reputable means that you can trust them and give them your credit card number and they're not going to misuse it. What is some ways-- again, in a before computers, what are some ways that you, in your new community, can find out if a business is reputable? Let's see. Ask your neighbors and your new friends, great.

Any other places you could go for reliable information on what businesses are reputable? Think back to olden times, meaning like 1970s, 1980s. Where did you find-- Penny Saver would be a magazine that came in the mail, word of mouth. Chamber of Commerce is a great place to go, Better Business Bureau, the newspaper. I think the Better Business Bureau, yeah.

How about, does anyone remember how you used to be able to find phone numbers in the past, before the internet? Yellow Pages, yes. Or you could go to your local library. They are usually a good source of information. Well, thank you for those answers.

So the reason-- I'm talking to you as educators, again, the reason that I asked the question in that way-- I want ask learners-- I want to put those parameters around learners about being without computers. But if people are answering like you were just answering, that means they're not using their credit card number online. And so this is really good information for you as an instructor to have because you know what-- where they're at and how they might be interacting with the internet.

And it helps you then draw a bridge, figuratively, between what they do know and what you're going to teach them. So you can say, just like you have to keep your credit card number safe by maybe hiding your card or shredding it, you want to make sure that online you're keeping your credit card number safe too by doing things to prevent people from seeing that number who shouldn't. So the warm up can get people talking and give you an idea of where they're at.

(DESCRIPTION)
The next box down is labeled We Will Learn, with bulleted text.

(SPEECH)
All right. The next section is the we will learn section. And these are the objectives of the lesson. And adults really like to know what they're going to learn and how it relates-- how it's important to what they are doing in their life. I will admit that the first time I taught this I thought, I'll just write these on the board and we'll go over them. It will take 30 seconds. Totally not the case.

The learners wanted to write down everything in their notebooks again, and then they wanted to go through the sentences, practice-- they were intermediate English language learners. They wanted to practice saying all the words, and they wanted to talk about any of the words they didn't know. So it kind of became-- even though this was just a digital literacy class, it kind of became a mini English language learning lesson as well. And people were really, really excited. There was a lot of energy around it.

So it was a great way to start off the lesson. So another tip that you probably all know is that when you're hearing a different language, it's often-- that you don't know very well-- it's often very difficult to tell where one word ends and another word begins.

And so what is helpful in any language when learning that language is to break sentences down when you're saying them into phrases. That not only helps you hear where one word stops and one word begins, but also there's been much research done that shows that it helps-- it actually helps with comprehension.

Because when you read in phrases and then you emphasize the words that you would normally emphasize slightly overemphasize them or kind of downplay words that aren't as important, people can hear that and they can say, OK, this word is an important word in the sentence and this word is more of a filler word. So we'll just practice with one of these in the sake of time. I would normally do with all three objectives.

So I'd have people write it in their notebooks. And then, again, if you all unmute really quickly we'll be the first one. And it would be-- so in this objective we will learn to recognize signs, recognize signs. Let's hear you say that if you're not maybe unmuted. Recognize signs--

AUDIENCE: Recognize signs--

THERESA SLADEK: --of suspicious, suspicious--

AUDIENCE: --of suspicious--

THERESA SLADEK: --or untrustworthy, untrustworthy--

AUDIENCE: --untrustworthy--

THERESA SLADEK: --emails--

AUDIENCE: --emails--

THERESA SLADEK: --that could be trying--

AUDIENCE: --that could be trying--

THERESA SLADEK: --to steal--

AUDIENCE: --to steal--

THERESA SLADEK: --personal information.

AUDIENCE: --personal information.

THERESA SLADEK: Great. So we're trying to recognize signs of suspicious or untrustworthy emails that could be trying to steal personal information. Now, I would go through the rest but just in interest of our own time, I want to move on to the next piece.

So when you have an email account, you may get a lot of emails from advertisers. Just like with the regular mail, you'll get a lot of advertisements, same happens in email. And these advertisements in email are called spam. And if you remember, that's one of our vocabulary words here, the S P A M.

Many of these emails, these spam emails, come from sources that are not reputable. And reputable means that the email is from a person or business you can trust. So it's very important to recognize spam emails because the spam emails can have viruses. And just like COVID, the virus COVID makes people sick-- well, the coronavirus makes people sick, so too viruses can make your computer not work.

And a virus is a kind of software that can hurt your computer. So some spam emails might try to give your computer a virus or try to steal your money. So it's very important that we can recognize when an email might be spam.

Luckily, spam emails often sell similar products.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide: Spam Examples. A box of text is labeled "Common Clues to Help you Identify Spam Emails." Below the box, Spam examples are listed.

(SPEECH)
And so if we look at our next screen here, there are often common clues that help you identify spam emails. So some of the things that spam emails will try to sell you are medicines. So what's another word for medicine? What are other words for medicine?

AUDIENCE: Drugs.

THERESA SLADEK: Drugs, yeah. What else?

AUDIENCE: Prescriptions.

THERESA SLADEK: Prescriptions. Can you think of any other ones? Pills maybe. Sometimes supplements would be a word. I'm trying to think, tablets. It's good, especially if you're working with people who are not English language speakers, to make sure that people know it doesn't have to be the word medicine, but that it can be something that is-- could be a different word. So it's good practice to go over some of the other options.

Another type of spam often has to do with dating. They may talk about amazing jobs with high pay. So earn $4,000 in a week for being at home, doing something online. They could be about college degrees, especially college degrees earned online really quickly. They're often about weight loss or diets, again, especially if it's a very quick weight loss that doesn't seem plausible.

They might be about money, rewards. We've all heard the one about the Nigerian Prince who wants to give you millions of dollars. In fact, I just got one like that the other day. And they are sometimes about gambling. So now I want to take this opportunity-- I think we have time-- to-- I want you all to be able to annotate on my screen.

So in order to do that, at the top of the screen you should see it says you are looking at Theresa's screen. And to the right of that it should say view options or maybe have three dots. And one of those options would be annotate. It's a little pencil. So go ahead and find that. And once you do, just scribble on my screen any color, any shape, whatever you want, just so I know that you are able to do it.

And if you can't find it, let me know.

(DESCRIPTION)
Scribble appear on the screen.

(SPEECH)
OK, there we go. Denise found it. Anyone else? OK, I see some more. So, again, there you go. Great. So it looks like people are finding it. Anyone not able to do it? Sometimes, depending on your device-- all right. OK, all right.

So now that you have found that-- I'm going to clear all your lovely drawings-- we're going to look at these spam examples down below in blue purple.

(DESCRIPTION)
The Spam Examples. KETO MIRACLE: Lose 20 pounds in one week! - This amazing new diet will... 50% all Microsoft Office Products - Word, Powerpoint, Excel, other software... Get College Degrees at HOME! - get your BA, BS. PHD, Masters from home... YOU JUST WON $1 MILLION! - Click here now to retreive your reward... 60% of prescription drugs TODAY ONLY - get Lipitor, Zoloft, Ambien...

(SPEECH)
And I want you to underline, star, circle, whatever anyone that you see that talks about medicines in these below here.

(DESCRIPTION)
Annotations appear.

(SPEECH)
Yes, prescription drugs, that's right. All right, great.

How about any that talk about college degrees.

(DESCRIPTION)
Annotations appear.

(SPEECH)
Yep, there you go. Get your college degrees at home, perfect. How about weight loss or diets.

(DESCRIPTION)
Annotations appear.

(SPEECH)
Keto miracle, lose 20 pounds in one week, exactly. Money rewards,

(DESCRIPTION)
Annotations appear.

(SPEECH)
all right, you just won one million.

I'm going to jump a little to the actual curriculum so you can see it, but you can see that in the exercises, This is something that you do all together. And it can let-- gives people practice of what you're teaching them, but it also can let you make sure that people are understanding and maybe who isn't understanding or who isn't participating.

In Northstar, as you'll see, there are multiple, multiple times to practice a skill both in the group setting and one on one-- each person doing their own paper. I want to say it's using their own worksheet.

I will say that when I first taught it, I thought people are going to get so bored with doing this over and over again, and actually that was totally not the case. People love doing it many times because then they felt competent. And one woman said, we don't learn a lot in one lesson but what we do learn sticks like concrete.

So of course go with your learners, if they seem to be ready to move on, move on, but there is a lot of practice and that's good. With digital literacy we feel like you actually have to practice the skill rather than just learning about it in order to learn it, instead of just hearing about it in order to learn it.

(DESCRIPTION)
The List of Links appears.

(SPEECH)
So I quickly want to show you what I was looking at and encourage you to take a look at this yourself. But we were looking at lesson seven spam and phishing and using email.

(DESCRIPTION)
A PDF document opens. The thumbnails scroll down through a teacher guide.

(SPEECH)
And I told you what the first page looks like. It gives me instructions on how to do that warm up, it gives me the objectives and then it even gives me the words to say.

So I don't have to think about what I'm going to say when I teach this, the words are there. It tells me when to show the reference I showed you, it tells me how to use it. If there are any worksheets, it would give me the answers to the worksheets. So it's very comprehensive and very easy to use. You'll see that one of the topics was identifying spam, then it went to managing spam. These do it together that's what we did where the whole class does it and learns the skill.

Then you might have another model and explain where you're showing more reference materials. And, ultimately, if you have people who are maybe getting it and people who aren't, you can pair them up so that those who are getting it can be the teachers and give the people who haven't yet learned it another chance to learn it.

And then ultimately-- [COUGHING] excuse me-- everyone has their own task to do. In this case I think they're pairing up, but oftentimes they're on their own. The lessons will also always include vocabulary work explicitly taught, and then a wrap up so that you're going over doing a check for comprehension and making sure you've covered all the objectives in the lesson.

If I scroll down further then, like I said, all the reference material is here in the lesson. And you can see that there's a lot of practice about how to detect phishing and spam in this. And then as we scroll down, we get to the pair when the people are paired up. More practice on individuals practicing on their own, and then the answer sheets, another handout.

And I know I'm scrolling quickly through this but here is the vocabulary piece. So all of this is in there for you so you don't have to recreate the wheel. And, of course, I've been asked, well, can I jump around or can I maybe not include parts that I don't think-- that I think everybody knows? Or can I change the wording to be more applicable to the students I'm working with?

And, of course. These are a roadmap. They're not set in stone. You know the people that you're working with better than we do who wrote this curriculum for a lot of different situations. So you can change-- you can't physically change what it looks like in Northstar, but you can change how you say a sentence or how you-- what you might talk about or in the internet searching part, what they search for. Definitely make it useful to you and the learners that you work with.

(DESCRIPTION)
The thumbnails of the slideshow scroll down.

(SPEECH)
I want to show you some good resources too. And let's see.

(DESCRIPTION)
Slide: Instructor View and Resources. Text. Inside look at the Lesson Plan. Promoting Digital Literacy for Adult Learners: A free resource guide by Barbara Bush Foundation and Digital Promise. https colon slash slash www dot barbara bush dot org slash wp dash content slash uploads slash 2022 slash 04 slash Digital dash Literacy dash Resource dash Guide dash for dash Adult dash Learners dash dot pdf. Digital Access and Resilience in Texas (DART), Digital Literacy ELL Curriculum.

(SPEECH)
So Barbara Bush and digital-- and promote-- sorry, Digital Promise created this handbook that is really good. It's free. And it talks all about how to teach digital literacy to adults. Northstar does have a piece in there, and mostly about examples of how to do this.

But what it looks like is a very comprehensive document, which means that it's also long.

(DESCRIPTION)
A document opens.

(SPEECH)
So you can see, as I scroll down, that-- let me get to the table of contents-- it's over 54 pages. If you don't feel like you need to read all the theoretical stuff but really want to get into the strategies, then chapter five that starts on page 33, that's the section that you would be most interested in.

(DESCRIPTION)
The slideshow reappears.

(SPEECH)
The other resource that we find really valuable at our learning centers here in Literacy Minnesota is the DART curriculum, which was developed in Texas. And it's really pre Northstar, so it's how to create a password. Many people who come to this country, they may not have experience with the English alphabet. So it's looking at even things of what is the difference between an uppercase letter and a lowercase letter, what is a number versus a letter.

So, it's really, really basic digital literacy, very comprehensive curriculum that I would recommend. And Anthony put those both in the chat. I know we are done with our time. Is there any last questions that you have before we wrap up?

AUDIENCE: I have a last question, maybe I missed it. Most likely I missed it. The question is, is there a way to upload or made a whole list of class or staff members or something?

THERESA SLADEK: Maybe say that again. You cut out a little bit for me.

AUDIENCE: Sorry. I want to upload a list of teachers or the classified staff, their names and their emails and all. I need to import it. So is there a way to do or not?

THERESA SLADEK: Yeah, good question. Unfortunately, no. You have to add each staff person one at a time into the system.

AUDIENCE: OK. Because I was doing it while you were doing it.

THERESA SLADEK: But a good thing for me to bring back to the team because it would be very useful.

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OTAN Online, Introducing Learners to Northstar Digital Literacy. Presenters: Theresa Sladek, Strategic Partnerships and Northstar Business Development Manager, Literacy Minnesota. Anthony Burik, OTAN Coordinator, Distance Learning Projects.

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