 OTAN Outreach and Technical Assistance Network. Hi everyone. Again, we are still getting a lot of noise from the live sessions, so it makes it hard for people that are online and for us to be able to hear. So please, if you could try to keep talking to minimum, we will give you opportunities to speak because we would love for you to have a chance to interact as well. So we are going to start. Again, our session is intentional incorporation of technology skills for everyday skills. And my name is Marsha Luptak. I am the associate dean of adult education at Elgin Community College. Hello, I'm Heather Martin. I am the assistant dean for the Center for the enhancement of teaching assessment and learning also at Elgin Community College, which is outside of Chicago. So it's probably a lot warmer where all of you are live. I hope you're enjoying the weather. Alright, so the reason we're kind of presenting on this is we all kind of experienced this massive thing together with COVID, right, where when everyone went remote. We were just in survival mode. I know a lot of our instructors here were doing things like phone calls and emails and like texting assignments and I mean dropping things in mailboxes if necessary, and during that time of kind of the, you know, spring of the fall of 2020 and sometimes even into spring of 21. The priorities we had with our technology in the classroom was first of all, is it available, right, can I as an instructor access it, can I access it for free even better. Can my students access it can my students access it for free, right ease of access so basically, can I get it, can I access it, is it free is it there. The focus of those technology choices was all based on content delivery and activity, because especially when we were first sent home, we had our curriculum. We had our assignments, and then all of a sudden we were in this different setting, and you know we were kind of stuff figuring out how to do what we had originally intended to do. So our choices on technology tools, they were based on a, can I get it, and be, can I give this assignment this way. So that's kind of a background of kind of where this came from and the first thing we want to do is ask you what technology tools you use in your classroom. So to answer, you can type in the chat and people that are live we can unmute and get some answers over there if you'd like. Those of you online, you're free to unmute as well. So in the chat, we see we have computers, smart boards calculators. What else, what other tech tools, phones. TVs projectors canvas right a lot of people are using different learning management systems whether it's canvas, or blackboard Google classroom. How about as anyone using like Google suite or Microsoft Office suite. Maybe some videos. Yep, Google Docs like habit Kahoot. Yes, zoom. Hi guys see your question it seems like we're getting a lot of both the tools and the platforms. So, yeah, lots of zoom lots of phones Burlington English Rosetta stone. Good Google suite. Yep. Okay. Yes. All right so thank you everyone for sharing so we found that we were using very similar tools in our classrooms our teachers were using many of the things that you have mentioned in the chat and in the classroom. So, one of the things that we realized after the return to the classroom that we realized that we needed a new approach, because we were using a lot of tools that were practice tools that were not those types of tools, but those aren't the tools that our students need to use in their everyday settings. So, we started looking at it and we said, you know, we had several societal changes. You know everything went digital during during the pandemic. You know, things that used to do in person things that used to do over the phone. You now had to either do with your computer on the computer or with your phone. This was a major change for everyone and we found that a lot of our students were being left behind because of this. We also found that just everyday context for technology changed more forms more applications. Everything are now delivered via technology. You know you don't get your newspaper on your doorstep very often anymore you don't get as much news from the TV people are going to the internet to get this information and to get it. So that was another change that we saw. So, I want you to think for a moment just give you about 30 seconds and you can put this in the chat again or you can talk aloud in the room if you're in the room. What are the contexts where your students use technology. What do they need it for to get by every day. Again, put it in the chat or put it or go ahead and say hello we can't hear the room right now because we've got John mute but please share if you're in the room. So how, what are the context, your students use technology need to use technology. And I see most communications information training and using technology learning job. Okay. Another couple of second job applications, social learning to get a job writing documents. Okay, all of these are news absolutely email jobs application registration appointments translating Oh yes now they're coming in they're flying in watching YouTube absolutely or tick tock nowadays, depending on the age of your students so yes. They are using it every day all over the place and they need to know how to do that. In part, you know, in order to be functioning members of our society. So think about it. It's important that we think about contextualizing digital literacy, because we can't function without being able to navigate an online form anymore if you want to put your kids in school you want to apply for a job. You don't have to go out and online form. If you need to find things we don't use white pages and yellow pages anymore. You have to be able to search for your information on the internet. And when you search for information on internet you need to be able to read a web page and find the information you need it's not just finding the site, but where on the site can you find it. We're going to see we're going to use some of them today. QR codes. What again during the pandemic these exploded. Do your students know how to use a QR code. These are some of the practical situations where your students need technology. And if they don't know how to use it. We need to show them how. Okay. So just briefly our objectives for today. Our objectives are that you will be able to identify why it is important to contextualize digital literacy. Not just use literacy as a tool to teach language, but actually teach the skills that they need to use the tools. We're going to identify tools for specific context and skills. And we're going to have you think about create some classroom activities using these tools. Right Heather. Yeah, I forgot to unmute myself. Sorry, that's like the third time that's happened today, ironically enough on our technology presentation. Okay. Like Marsha said there's a shift in kind of how we approach this now because technology is so different than it was even just three years ago prior to the pandemic. So now when incorporating technology technology should serve a purpose. It should be associated with the process and not the product. So previously a lot of times we'd be like oh I'm just going to, you know, incorporate this tool for the sake of incorporating it but not really embedded throughout the entire learning process for our students. But now the technology is embedded throughout their everyday lives and throughout their kind of real world context that's important that we mirror that in the class. And there should be a relationship between the technology and the activity the students are doing. So if you're learning an activity using technology, you should ask yourself first is this activity aligned with the curriculum and the content, which is something you'd ask yourself regardless of technology corporation. And then are the technology skills used increasing digital literacy in a transferable way. Okay, so we're going to look at some examples of what that might look like. So, for example, a lot of us that teach maybe lower ESL classes do a lot with personal information so activities that we often incorporate with personal information is something like completing forms, either like intake forms at a doctor or registration form for a class or for a child school. To do this in a digital format we can incorporate an online form, Google forms, jot forms, things like that. So you'll see the digital tool first of all is aligned with the activity and the content are aligned. And also that digital tool the online form is a transferable skill because as we said as Marshall said earlier, the students need those forms as you all brought up in your contributions in the chat. So the students need those forms to register their kids for school to register for like to new doctors appointments things like that. Most of these things are done online now. So then with money and shopping of another potential content area. The activity of frequent activity is making a grocery list. Oh, I am sorry. Making a grocery list, or putting together a budget. Gosh. My phone never rings and here we are so making a grocery list or putting together a budget. Right I've seen this done a lot pre pandemic, where an instructor might bring in like circular fires that you get in the mail or that you can get at the grocery store and then have the students look through and say okay like you're going grocery shopping for the week, you have this much money, what can you buy. But now instead of doing it that way with our little circular is we can do it with the grocery store website or app. Right, I don't know about a lot of you I can tell you my mother has not stepped foot in a grocery store since the pandemic she does all of that through apps now. And I don't think she's ever going to step foot in a grocery store again. So this is a way that we can mirror that kind of societal evolution in the classroom. So is it aligned with the content. Yes it is. And is that skill transferable. Yes it is because the students access, or usually will access this material digitally in real life now. And then, for a final example, whether. Okay, the activity can be reviewing whether vocabulary, cloudy, partly cloudy humid things like that. The final tool would be Quizlet or Kahoot. Okay, so is this aligned with the content of whether 100%. Right, the students need to know this vocabulary it's aligned with the curriculum. It's an activity that's, you know, making sure they reach their objectives. Is it a transferable skill. It is not. Okay, now the thing with these quiz tools like Quizlet Kahoot things like that. They're great tools for review. I know I use them a lot for like gamification because students get really excited they get that competitive drive going. And it's a great motivating factor and it's fun to incorporate in class it gets them excited, especially if some of you teach really long classes. However, this is not a tool that they're going to be using in the outside world in most cases. Now that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be included in your class 100% there's a place for it like I said it's fun it's gamifying. But it's different than something like filling out an online form because they're not gaining a digital skill that's going to serve them outside of your classroom. Okay, now a possible exception to that is some of the Quizlet type tools students can make digital flashcards and study from them on their own. And that is a transferable skill that's an academic skill that'll serve them in other settings. And there is a comment in the chat about how the grocery store offers ESL students the opportunity to practice English, definitely. I'm not saying we should encourage our students not to go into grocery stores and practice every opportunity they get that's very important. And the more settings in which they can practice those real life interactions the better and the more comfortable they get. But just to make sure they have the tools if they choose to navigate real life that way, we're giving it to them in the classroom as well and allowing them to practice there too. Yep. Okay, so to continue the conversation about looking at context and skills when choosing. Sorry, when choosing technology. It's really important for us to consider so we want to teach our students something, for example, sorry, you know how to go to the doctor's office how to do get their medicine, how to do wellness checks. You know, we talk about insurance. These are all common topics in the ESL classroom, and they're great topics, but we really have to think about what skills. Sorry. What skills the students will need in order to do things in these contexts. Again, yes, we can do these often in person, but I'm finding that more and more that we don't even have that option we don't have the option to come in person. We don't have the chance to come in, you know, call by phone. And many of our students are nervous about doing things in person still because the COVID hasn't gone away people, especially in certain sectors are still having large outbreaks. So they don't even want to necessarily go in person so we need to think about what's digital skills they need in order to do these activities to do these activities so for example, for the doctor's office and pharmacies. They may have to be able to complete forms they need to make appointments. They have to communicate, you know about appointments. They may have to navigate the health site to find the information for medicine they may have to put in their medication prescription orders online. I know that many of the companies are now having them do that. They may want to monitor and track their wellness they may want to monitor and track their health conditions. For example, they want to make sure that their heart is working right or they're they have diabetes they need to track that. All of those are digital skills tracking exercise, eating habits or digital skills. And for insurance, you know shopping online is how most of us do that nowadays because we want to find the best deal we want to be able to compare insurance plans we don't necessarily go in person. anymore we do this online. So, these are the context and the skills that just a few, not all of them that the students might have in this area of health and wellness. So what does this mean regard as far as tools. So for completing forms, you might have the students do Google forms you might have them do jot forms for making appointments you might use calendar apps so that they can see how to use calendar apps. Texting apps because I know, for example, my mom has me on her appointments and I get texts all the time about her appointments and you know where to check for information where to check in what to do. Navigating online health sites, you might have to get your health information online. I know again, if I get my reports for my doctor. He no longer says hey I want to meet to meet with you to give you the basic information unless there's something to be worried about. He says oh just check on your record online. You know, again, medication might be Google forms. I talked about health apps, especially phone apps a lot of people are using those to track their health health websites insurance website so these are some of the tools that we would want to consider introducing to our students, because these are the types of activities and skills that they need to do that they have to do in order to function. So let's look at another topic. So how about just everyday activities things you do every day. You know these are very useful especially for our beginning level students. Now these are things that we talk about so for example we talk about the weather, we talk about the calendar, we talk about basic communication. So what skills do students need to be able to do this. Well, yes, they can look out the door they can say the weather is this. But quite often at the beginning of the day before I get dressed before I go to school. I will look at my weather app and say okay is it could be hot or cold today I live in the Chicago area. It could have been 60 degrees yesterday and it's 20 degrees today. And I can't tell that by looking out my window and I don't know. Maybe it's 60 degrees this morning it could be 20 degrees tonight. You know when I leave work so again, look at the weather look at weather predictions also very important know what's coming, because we have a possible snowstorm coming through. I need to be able to do that weather warnings. If there's tornadoes an area again. These are very common things in our area. You get the tornado warnings what do those mean. What are the calendars you know how do you keep track of appointments we used to have students do on paper like do your weekly schedule what are you going to do. Now they can do that with their calendars and many of them are, but they're doing it in their home languages let's let's help them to use these in English because people might want to share their calendar. I need to know what they what they're doing using a daily planner maintaining a task list. Education reading writing and sending texts and emails. These are all skills that are that our students need. So we look at the skills they need the context we say, what are some tools that we could use and these are some things that we could use for example a weather app a weather website from here. A calendar app. Yeah. You can use the calendar and learning management system for text you could use remind what's up Google boys, those types of things. So let's look at what this might look like. So I've got my webpage here for weather for Elgin today if you can see it's a whopping 38 degrees right now. Cloudy and we are anticipating snow later today after two o'clock. So as an ESL teacher, I would have my students go on to their phones or go on to the webpage and we could use real live information to tell the weather. There are things on here for them to learn like 38 degrees 38 degrees is a system we use in the United States. I know when I came from Canada I had to make the switch from Celsius and most of our students do. It's a different way of indicating whether so 38 would be too hot to go out in their countries if you're talking about Celsius and killer weather 38 here you're putting on your sweater you're putting on your jacket you're getting warm. So very important for them to learn. If you look here it says no possible after 2pm we have the possibility of snow tonight. Again you're talking about the weather instead of just looking out every day and say what's the weather like. And again here, it's cold and cloudy most of the winter so that's all the students get to practice. You can go on to your weather app and say okay, let's switch to somewhere that's even better than here maybe I'm going to go to Venice for example maybe one of my students is from Venice and we can say what is the weather like in Venice. I'm going to do comparisons so there's a lot of language that you can use with students when you use a weather lap, a weather app, and you're teaching them a practical skill that will benefit them day today. So to go back to our presentation, I want to give you the chance to think about this. So what you're going to do is you're going to pick one of the context or the skills that I presented because we're going to talk about other ones later. So stick to the ones that I presented and talk about how would it look like in the classroom so I gave an example of the weather. Let's take another topic. Go to the Jamboard that you can either go with the QR code if you've got your phones in front of you if you're in person, or we put the link if you are here virtually so that everybody can answer. And you're going to go to the first Jamboard, and I see that many people are joining wonderful. So, I want you to think about how this looks in the classroom. So I'm going to put down some of your ideas if you're doing this live you can talk about it in person but let's talk about how this looks live. And Heather, were you going to put everybody into the breakout room so we can have them talk in groups. Yes, so I'm going to put you in breakout room so if you are able to show your face great. If that's fine too you can use the chat to communicate or just talk amongst yourselves by unmuting. And then as a group if you can put some of your ideas on the Jamboard that would be great so I'm going to put you in groups now. Okay, and to add things to the Jamboard. You can just use sticky notes type what you want in the sticky note and then save it. It will allow you to put it on to the Jamboard so that's how you will add any types of questions you want so sticking out. Help save. And then you can just move it on to the Jamboard so that's how you're going to add things to the Jamboard. And you can do this either via your phone, or again if you're online you can use the link that we gave you and you can type directly directly into it with a sticky. So if the Jamboard gets too crowded, you'll see at the top of the Jamboard there's also a little one of five kind of note card with an arrow. There are other pages you can just click on that arrow. And that'll take you to the next page which is exactly like the same this one. So I'm going to go ahead and throw you in breakout room now. You'll just have to click join when given the opportunity to do so. Can you put the QR code back up for the people here. Please. Yep. Sorry about that. We need to close the. Okay, so it does everybody have it in the room that is live. Again, please feel free to talk in groups in the room that you are in and think about ideas talk about ideas. And when you're done talking, we're going to give you about five, seven minutes to do this. Then you can add your comments to the Jamboard. So we'd love to have people talking. Everybody should go back up to the QR code and then you can talk amongst yourselves. You're still valid. Okay. Yeah, the first time you go into Jamboard if you don't have it on your phone it does take a minute so we'll give you some extra time for this first activity to do that download. No, I just. The directions are for you to look at the context and the skills that are listed there and the tools that are listed there. Pick one with your group, or whoever you're talking to. And then post what your group comes up with as far as how this would look like in the classroom. So for example, I gave you the example of what the weather app might look in the classroom. We just want you to think about how would this look in your classroom how could you use any of these tools to teach these skills to your students. So I'm going to ask for the people that are in the live room if you can unmute the people there so that they can share some of the ideas that they came up with what they might want to do. I see a lot of things on our Jamboard here. What I'm going to do Heather, can you maybe leave. Okay. All right, perfect. You also make me a co host again because I just hop right out of this meeting. Thank you. Yeah, Marcia, were you going to. So if you could read some of the things on the board. Yes, absolutely. All right. Give it a minute. Okay, I'm going to get rid of that. It looks like people are still in some breakout rooms. So I'll give it one minute. I think everybody's back Heather. Okay, thank you. For those of you in the live room. Can you make me a co host again whoever's controlling that on your beautifully large smart board. That would be wonderful. I'm sure my face is like four feet tall right now. Okay, so thank you everyone welcome back to the main room. I have a lot of different answers here we've got. Let's see. Google forms short reading comprehension assignments or even pronunciation tasks. So just taking, you know, taking activities you already do, like short reading comprehension, and putting them in a digital form. And see there are lots of free fitness tracker apps and sites. Classroom walking challenge that's fun. You can also probably embed some math in there which would be pretty cool. Project based learning health and wellness, being okay and being vulnerable and safe during the learning process. So this was something in my group we talked about just like familiarity like giving students the opportunity to get familiar with things and in our group it was specifically in reference to high school equivalency tests that are now online but giving students the opportunity to practice. So that way, that doesn't kind of cause anxiety when they go into their testing setting. So let's see. Again, Google form surveys for everyday activities, allowing students to practice and still in confidence. Transferring the skills of what students use in programs on their phones to use and other online applications on a computer. This is something else that came up in my group as well. We talked about how students even our students that are very familiar with technology comfortable with technology, some of them are lacking keyboarding skills because most of their comfort comes in the form of devices that require you to type with your thumbs. So, yeah, just taking things you already do or taking things that they already do on their phones and they're already comfortable with that and transferring it to a computer which they're more likely to see in a work setting, or an academic setting. There is a question in the chat about Google forms. Does everyone have to have a Google account to use a form. So you have to have a Google account to make a form but anyone can take the form. Using the zoom group chat for typing and writing practice absolutely padlet for getting to know you introductions. Yep. Google calendar for students to share study schedules for the week. That's like two transferable skills right there once with the calendar use, and once was just getting those academic skills and practices in place, teaching them time management. On the next page we have students writing an email to their landlord to report a household problem student states the problem, and what they want the landlord to do identify self and address perfect. Yeah, when when teaching those like a lot of those intermediate ESL classes a lot of I remember and a lot of the textbook it was a letter to the landlord, you know my life is broken or you know my whatever is not working. And I not a lot of not a lot of tenants communicate with their landlords and written form anymore email yes text yes written letters with a stamp and put in a mailbox typically not anymore. So yeah, Marsha did you want to jump in on any of those or you know I think we have some great ideas I think we're getting kind of to the idea of what we're thinking about as far as using technology and teaching students how to use the technology that they encounter every day, which is, which is what we're trying to get everybody to think about. What is the technology they encounter every day and how can we incorporate that into our lessons so let's look at another example. So, this time I'm not going to put tools I'm just going to talk about some of the possible skills. And if you're in the live session, if you could think of other skills that are possibly should be on this list, or if you're online you can also just unmute yourself on the microphone. So I have some ideas, such as registration communication, finding schools, locating resources. What are some skills that students need to be able to do online. In order to function within our school system. So I have a couple of examples here like filling out registration forms again navigating websites to find who to contact. What are the schools in the area, comparing schools, because a lot of students aren't aware of the difference between public and private schools in the United States, which is a big deal when they're talking about their children and what where there's a children are going to go to school, and also finding resources. So for example, what if my students failing, what if my student is having difficulties with bowling what what are the resources available to my students, or if they're going to college or their children are thinking about getting to college. Where do I get financial assistance where do I go so these are all skills again that they need. What are some other skills. Do you think and again you can just say it you don't have to write it you can just say it that students need technical skills they need to navigate our US school system. So we're good. And then you want to say, and you activated email activating an email. I can get your website. Your website. Username and password protocols. We're always trying to find ways to avoid usernames and passwords, but our students need to know how to do those. They need to know how to use a password manager because they're going to have a lot of passwords for everything they do. And also security, you know, talk about security of those passwords. Any other ideas. I have an understanding of the terminology that's used on websites and understanding dropdowns and and where to even go because that by itself can be very, very daunting with a lot of dropdowns and what direction do you even go in and what is what is the terminology even mean on those selections. Exactly. So you've got all these things going on where it's like, well I have to go to this page. Do I find this page this dropdown how many choices do I have, even just looking at a web page and finding, knowing where to go. Oh, the headings are all at the top. These are all skills that our students need to know to be able to navigate the school system. In reference to dropdowns that's something that also comes up with high school equivalency tests with the different types of responses, whether it's a dropdown or whether they have to drag something or type something. So not only are those coming up in real life, like you stated but also further down their academic career potentially. And we also touched on this a little bit we talked about shopping very briefly, but think about it, all the things that our students again are limited by if they don't have the skills the technical skills to do these. Searching for items in a store purchasing goods comparing prices we talked about that a little bit with shopping. But think about banking banking has changed dramatically. You know you don't write checks very often anymore you do a lot of things electronically. How do our students find out what these services are. How do they figure out how to pay online. How do they figure out how to do you know budgeting a lot of these things are digital skills they need. I've got a few here what are some other things again, just shout out what are some other things with consumer economics that they need digital skills for secure websites I think understanding what secure site. So you have a little bit of the financial protection down there but just a secure versus a non secure fishing, you know, all of these identity theft. All kinds of those security issues. Very good. Yes, absolutely. Because it's a big problem identity theft right now you know people lose their lose their information all the time when we're talking about those secure passwords how to keep track of them. Also knowing the difference between HTTP and HTTPS is significant for our students. Any other ideas with consumer economics. I put some in the chat car shopping mortgage credit checks. I like credit checks, and that kind of ties in with with something Martian said earlier, like, you know, not necessarily maybe you don't want to pay your credit card bill online but like, can you check your credit card like can you check your credit online can you check your balance online for your bank account for your credit card. Yes. Again, we want this to be very interactive we want you to have the chance to talk to your colleagues so we're going to do the same activity that we just did within these new contacts. The difference is, I want you to think about what tools would you use to teach these skills. And again, how will the students apply in the classroom what will you have them be doing, because that's that's very important to be able to think about. Okay, what they need to know how to do all this, but what tools and what does it look like. So I've given you the QR code to the Jamboard so that you can access the Jamboard. I'll leave it up here for a minute. How did you put the, you put it in the chat already. Okay. And how there's put it in the chat. So that you have access to it there. And then we are going to break everybody up into breakout room so that our online people can talk in the breakout room and people that are in the live session. So again, talk to your, the people in your room I'm going to show you the page so that you can share it and think of ideas of what tools what sites what what things could you use what have you used, and how would you use it with your students. All right, so it looks like we have everybody back I'm going to look at some of the posts that we have from our breakout rooms. The FDIC money matters curriculum is something that would be really good for our students navigation of websites practical with a scavenger hunt activity. I love scavenger hunt activities for websites I used to do this quite frequently with both my ESL and my ABE students because they need to learn how to find things. I have to look for specific things I would call it. If you ever look online it's called a web quest. And web quest is where the students are supposed to find specific information and do something with it. Another suggestion is to review LMS on laptops and phones, filling up forms with Google forms or Adobe fill in or drop down forms absolutely practice searching different websites to find information. Again, that's that scavenger hunt or web quest idea. I'm creating budgets where students can discuss and advise each other. And again, teaching them how to use an Excel spreadsheet is a good thing. Because because that is a practical skill that they may have to use in the workplace. Save and print phishing emails to demonstrate clues students can use excellent idea so they can see if it's a phishing attempt. I get several of them every year and saving them would be a good idea so I could show examples also have students bring in examples would be a good idea. And then offer Google classroom orientation that also would be a great idea. So thank you. I did anybody in the live session want to add to any of these. Do you want it. They want me to stand. All right. Oh, we'll move on. I didn't have anybody so we'll move on. Heather, I'll let you take over. Well, before we move on, I just someone in my group said something I'm not going to put them on the spot but they made analogy that was really interesting and talked about remembering. Learning how to use the yellow pages and white pages and like learning how to navigate that and that being an intentional lesson on how to kind of, you know, find certain resources and kind of like ending that to what we're doing here with the technology and the need for that and technology. So, yes, that was an interesting, an interesting thing that was that was brought up in my group that I wanted to repeat because I thought it was valuable. All right. So, the next one we have is employment. So, like the last few contacts we have and I think this was brought up in the chat originally at the beginning of the meeting as well with employment we have things like finding a job what skills are necessary with finding a job. Right, they have to where, where do you even look for a job when I graduated college I literally emailed one of my professors and said how do I find a job, because that information was not given to me in my undergraduate experience. So, what tools you need to find a job now, where do you even look, and then applying for a job what goes into that. Right, we have resumes we have cover letters, we, any type of form or added. And then the last part is once the students are in that job, there needs to be right they're going to have to collaborate they're going to have to communicate. They're going to have to have these different types of interactions with their coworkers with their supervisors with any subordinates. What does that look like what is an appropriate way to communicate what is appropriate tone for communication things like that. So what we're going to do is what we've, well we're going to move on actually to the next one which is community resources and I know this came up in the chat a little bit previously as far as different communication or different community resources. So, the first one is libraries. Right, are like local resources libraries are a wealth of information for our students. I know I've taken students on like library field trips but we've gone to the public library and like what do you need to get a library card, what do you have to provide in order to do it what does a library card get you, like how do you find out what's at the library, where do you get access to this, what information can the library give you what information do you have to give them. I'm signing up for resources. I know when I, when I signed my kids actually just last night at a swim lesson and there was a QR code on the wall that was like if you want to check your child's progress scan the QR code, which is amazing to me. And then forms right where do I go to look for these resources what type of activities are offered in my area. How do I find the schedules who do I contact if I have a question. How do I register for these where is the physical location of this thing if I'm looking for it on the internet. And then speaking of physical location transportation, right, public transportation. When does the bus come where can I get the bus how close is the bus stop. If your city have an app for public transportation a lot of them do ride share apps or if the students driving or carpooling any type of navigation or parking where do I find out how to park where do I find out to get there how long is it going to take me to get there. It's a different if I leave at 7am if I leave at 2pm what does that look like. So, we are going to break you up into groups yet again. We're going to look at tools for both employment and community resources. The QR code is up there and Marsha has put the Jamboard in the chat. So, please go into your groups and we will be looking at tools for both community resources and employment. So some really, really good discussion going on in person I loved listening to some of the ideas I heard people talking about using zoom for interviews and for different pieces. Anybody else want to share some of the things you talked about in the live rooms first. Anybody want to share something. Anybody want to jump up and share with the group. Okay, I teach some high level students, they're foreign medical doctors actually, but I have to teach them how to communicate with doctors at one level of English on email, and then another level with patients. Yeah, that's a very good point. So I'm going to jump to some of the things from our people that are online they were talking about phone etiquette that's kind of what you're talking about with the emails is that we have to be careful that we don't have to act as etiquette and what the etiquette rules are in this country, because things differ from culture to culture, even within our country, some people communicate differently forms sometimes a place of resumes for jobs. I see that more and more that people are having just to fill out a form rather than attaching a resume, but they also need to know how to attach a resume when they're doing an application. So finding locate, you know, finding free library resources and classes on library sites there are some great resources at our local libraries that we don't even know about I know there's programs for learning that the students can be involved in either in person or online, finding a job or career assessment to do a job search for a future career activity I think that's an excellent idea again. I try students with zoom because there are a lot of virtual interviews I know I interviewed virtually so yes zoom etiquette and how to use it. Very important lesson on using keywords to reflect the job posting. This helps with any AI components involved in hiring. Very, very good idea. We have a bulletin board for weight weightlet or padlet use the local city site to see what resources the city has to offer. A lot of our students don't realize that there are so many activities and events parks in their area that they could be taking advantage of practice appropriate tone for communications. We talked about that. Look for a plan be in case your transportation isn't running on time. Yes, excellent idea. Always always need a plan be. All right, so Heather I'll let you take the next one. I unmuted myself this time. All right. So, the next subject we have is housing. How do you learn to jobs like how do you find a house right real estate websites apps local realtors, social media perhaps. I see a lot of postings on local social media pages, applying for housing any forms, communicating we talked about, basically communicating with references, right if you need a reference for your landlord or something. Make sure you tell the reference who is that reference ask them first you know make sure you have those conversations, provide necessary information or documentation. If you need tax forms if you need proof of whatever where do you find that do you have to download it, what source do you go to. Again, communicating with the landlord we talked about a little bit earlier email. Again, formal and professional tone. And then make sure that tone can also transfer to any like text or messaging app for communication with landlord. And then finally utilities similar to shopping. Compare prices right. A lot of times now we have different options we don't all have Comcast. Some of us just renew it every six months so that we can get the new deal again, but right compare those compare those utilities. Once you've chosen a utility company setting up the utilities, interpreting your bills. When you get your utility bill. What does that mean, right, how much do you owe, where does that number come from. And then paying your bills which kind of ties back into banking, you can go paperless, you can automatically withdraw, there are a lot of options there, or you can continue to do it paper based with a check, but then making sure that that's. First of all, supported and the students know how to do that and also that is properly communicated with the utility company. And then the democratic process. Right, and first of all voting. How do you register for to vote. Who can register to vote when you register for vote to vote what type of documentation do you need. Where do you vote, where's your polling place and that ties back into transportation how do you get there. So voting practices rules and procedures when you go into vote what does that look like. Right, nobody until you go in and do that a lot of people don't know when you walk into a room what's going to happen. And then researching candidates what websites are there to research candidates what local political organizations are there local news sources access to any candidate forums. And then beyond just doing the research understanding your own political alignment right looking for any type of assessment so that you know what your priorities are, and just defining the issues and understanding where you stand on them before you can kind of decide what you're going to be you align with. Marsha instead of doing the breakout you want to just have a head since we've only got about 10 minutes left. And then we can always come back to this afterwards. Okay. So we're going to move ahead. You again it's been lovely I'm sorry. Yeah we wanted to give everybody a chance to have lots of time to talk because we think that as teachers we learn more from each other than we can from somebody just talking to us. So we appreciate everybody being so active in their breakout rooms and in the in person room talking about these topics. We want to kind of touch on some of the lessons that we have learned over the last three years as far as instructor proficiency. One of the things that we have discovered is that a lot of times we have instructors say the students can't do that. And when we first started in the fall of 2020 with online classes, all of my instructors were like oh the students can't do this they can't do that they can't do the other, because we're using an LMS they said oh they can't use an LMS they can't. What we found out is, yeah the students can. And that the student proficiency and comfort was directly linked to the teacher the instructor proficiency and come comfort. We found that people teaching, even very beginning level one ESL students who were really comfortable with the technology and the different tools. Their students did really well in those classes. And so of our higher levels the teachers weren't so comfortable. The students didn't do so well because and this teacher said that they struggled. So, that was a really important lesson for us to think about that it was like, we need to make sure that we support our instructors. We need to make sure that teachers are supported. If we're going to ask them to teach either online, or to teach digital tools. So that's a really important it's a really important factor, especially for anybody who manages a program, or if you're in a program to remind your managers that you need training. You need time for training, you need to be paid for training. I don't believe most of my teachers are part timers and I'm always like, no, if they're going to attend training sessions we need to give them something. We need to give them support so Heather was actually in our department during this time, and Heather was our tech support person and teachers would reach out to her. All hours, all hours of day, and say, Hey, Heather, how do you do this. And if they didn't get a response from Heather they reached out to me and they said, Hey, I haven't heard back from Heather. So how do I do this. So, you know that support is really important for our instructors so that they can feel comfortable with the tools. The other thing that is also important that we learned was that teachers need access to resources. We created a whole new faculty web page with all sorts of resources, videos, etc, to support our teachers during this time. And you know what, these have been wonderful since we've come back because when new teachers come on, we have all the support some place and I can't tell you how excited they are coming into our program are and they say, you do such a nice job of giving your teachers access to resources. So again, really important these are some lessons that we learned during the pandemic about encouraging teaching digital literacy. And most of the, a lot of the tools that we use through the pandemic also did a good job of making sure they had their kind of help pages and how to pages significantly more accessible than they might have been in 2019. So that's another good place to start. So thanks to consider when you're incorporating technology into your lessons. First of all, is it worth using right am I using this technology tool just to use it, or am I using it for a specific purpose and the students are going to benefit from that purpose. I'm second of all is the tool user friendly, how accessible is it is it mobile friendly, a lot of students once they leave your classroom will access these things primarily on their phones, and not on a laptop or desktop like they might in your room. And then also is it transferable. Is it something they're just going to be using in the walls of the classroom, or is it something that they'll be using out outside in the real world as well. And then just some reminders, first of all, don't use too many tools at once. I know we talked about a lot of different tools but also I think forums came up in every single Jamboard. I think email came up in every single Jamboard. So start with a few really transferable tools that you can teach the students they can get comfortable with it, and then you can expand it to different contexts. I always talk about cognitive energy when you're doing something with students and thinking about where that cognitive energy is. If the students are putting their cognitive energy into learning how to use a tool, then they're not going to be able to put as much of it into the content. So really familiarize them first with a tool and support them through that, and then you'll be able to apply that tool to various contexts. And then also make sure the students are proficient before adding more tools, or going deeper into the content. Okay, so you've got a few tools going and a little bit of content going then once they master those tools. We talked a lot about searching for different resources, things like that, but that's like the internet's a really big place. Right, so give them little pieces of it and then as they become more familiar with those pieces, you can deepen and broaden the scope. All right, so just like any good teacher we want to go back and look at our objectives. Hopefully you can say that we achieved our objectives with this. So, can you identify why it is important to contextualize digital literacy. Can you identify tools for specific context and skills. And can you create classroom activities using these tools. So if you just want to give us a thumb up thumbs up you can put something in the chat. Just if you're in the live version you can just again raise your hands. Do you think you can do all of these things better now. How are we doing. Are we getting lots of thumbs up. Awesome. Awesome. So, before we leave we have just a couple of minutes but we wanted to give some time in case anybody had any questions. We'll give you some time for questions and we're also going to post our contact information while you're asking questions just in case you want to reach out to us. Both of us are available anytime to respond. We may not respond anytime, but you can email us anytime. All of us have you know we don't have the same work hours and we get to people as soon as we can. So any questions or comments. Somebody say something. No quiet no questions were just perfect. No, not possible. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for attending everybody. Thank you for your participation and the groups we really appreciate it. Yes.