 OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network. So we made it to the final day here of the NAO. I hope all of you have found these sessions useful to give you a foundation of what is involved with administering the WIOA grants, and I want to just take a minute to thank all of the presenters from the AEO, Rhonda and her support staff, the other consultants who helped out. I know Diane and Neil were real quick to post links for additional information in the chat, so I know people found that helpful and useful. And I also want to thank our OTAN partners. They do just as much work as we do to get this up and running each year, all the technical aspects and things that come up, they really have to be quick on their feet to deal with things. And I want to thank my Melinda, Neda, Anthony, Renee, Marjorie, Angela, I hope I got everybody. And without any other delay here, I want to introduce OTAN, and they have a team presentation this morning, so I will turn things back over to them. Good morning, everybody. It's nice to have everyone here and to see so many joining our WIOA family. My name is Renee Collins, and I'm the director for OTAN. And I'm here this morning representing OTAN with Angela Steele, our lead application developer, Neda Anasari, our coordinator of technology projects, and Anthony Burek, coordinator of distance learning projects. So, together, we'll share all about what OTAN does this morning. I wanted to point out in this picture, this slide, first of all, 34 years, that's pretty, you know, we're very proud of being a state leadership project for the last 34 years. And this particular picture is our team. So we have 15 full-time staff that work with OTAN out of the Sacramento County Office of Education. And then we also have many essential subject matter experts who are living throughout the state, providing professional development in your communities around the state. So this is us. Let's go ahead to the next slide, please. So what is OTAN? OTAN is one of the three state adult leadership projects you have already met. I know CalPro and CASIS, so you're being introduced to us at this point. We really differ from the other state leadership projects in that we are supporting educators, administrators, and staff, support staff statewide in the application of technology in their classrooms and across their adult education programs. So we're hoping that what you learn today about OTAN, you'll take back to your agencies and staff and really share what it is that we have to offer because there are many high quality, no-cost resources and professional development available to you. And we'll get much more into that. Go ahead, please. All right, here's our agenda for today. So we'll talk a little bit more about who we are and how you can become a member of OTAN. Becoming a member allows you to have some direct mailings, direct connections with us. We do a monthly newsletter out to the state as well as a quarterly newsletter. We also do, you know, we might do some direct mailings about professional development coming up or adult-ed news items that are kind of hot off the press. And these could be, you could choose, you could elect to get direct emails about that with your membership. Today, you'll also be introduced to, we essentially have two teams that we work with. We have our development team and we have our staff who do a lot of our training. So we call them our training team. And today you'll hear more from them. We'll also be exploring some of the teaching tools and the resources that you can see on the OTAN website and talk more about the training opportunities that are available to you and your staff, both face-to-face and online trainings, as well as the Digital Leadership Academy and our OTAN tech talks. So so much more to come. And then hopefully by the time that you leave, you'll really have a clear understanding of how to stay connected with OTAN past the point of this presentation because we really do want to have you part of our OTAN family as well. So with that, I'm going to pass it off to Angela Steele. Hi, my name is Angela Steele and I'm the lead application developer for OTAN. And on this side, we'll talk about OTAN membership. Renee mentioned that's a way that you can be connected and stay in contact with OTAN and connect with us. You can become an OTAN member from our website, OTAN.US. It's very short and simple to remember. There is a link in text in the upper left corner of our web page that says join OTAN slash membership. And if you select that link, you'll be able to fill out a form, choose which mailings you want to receive from us, enter your information and submit it. And that's all it takes to become a member. And from that point, you'll be able to receive regular communications from us about professional development and other activities and programs that are of interest to adult education agencies. Next slide. This is a screenshot of our OTAN homepage. The OTAN homepage is really the hub for all of information about all of the resources that we'll be sharing with you today. So I know we'll be going through a lot of things, but if you have additional questions, please come back to our website and visit it. It's pretty simple. Our website has our mission statement right across the top, leading adult education through support for and the effective application of technology. So on our website, you can access information about all of the professional development resources that we offer. You can access our resources, which are teaching and learning resources and websites and tools about accessibility, creating lesson plans, and a lot more. The Stay Connected tab on our website is how you access more information about our news articles that we post. That's where you can access our digests and our newsletters with information. And then the last tab on our website, video presentations, allows you to access all of our remediated videos. And one thing to note here is that all of the videos and content that we post on our website are fully accessible. They include transcripts that can be downloaded. And all the documents are also accessible. So the video presentations cover TDLS presentations, our OTN tech talks, and a bunch of other videos that we end up remediating. One other note from the front page of our OTN website, on the right-hand side, there are buttons to access a lot of our most popular or most popular resources, our important resources, or things that we're promoting. For example, there's a button for the digital learning guidance at the top. That button will allow you to download the PDF of the guidance as well as access videos and additional other training materials. You can learn more about OTN. We have a bunch of accessibility resources on our webpage. So not only is all of our own content accessible, we provide information to help guide you and your staff to create accessible resources on your own. I won't go through all of these, but one other big one is the green button, California Adult Education Online Application and Reporting. That's a way to get to the OAR online reporting site where adult education staff can submit information about deliverables, grant award notifications, expenditure claim reports, and so now we'll talk a little bit more about that online application and reporting website. So this is where your agency staff will go to submit information about your WIOA yearly activities. This is where applications will be filled out, grant award notifications will be submitted, budget information will be entered, expenditure claim reports will be submitted, information is available there all the time about which WIO deliverables are due and which ones have been submitted. There's information on the OAR site about course approvals, which is required for K-12 districts and COEs and information and communication about the WIOA grant for agencies is available there in an archive of information. So we periodically send out information from CDE related to WIOA deliverables and other information and that archive is available on the website at all times and there's a link to that right now in the chat here. And now we'll switch back a little bit to an overview of the OTAN development team. So we are responsible for managing many resources. So the top one, the OTAN website that we've been talking about. Another piece of the OTAN website is the Adult Education Provider Directory. This allows people to find an adult school near them. You can search by zip code, city name or school name and it allows people to find resources near them. And this is one of the biggest tools on our website. There is the Yale Civics Exchange, which allows educators to share resources. And then there's the California Adult Education Professional Development Calendar. This training calendar allows users to access information about trainings from not only OTAN, but the other state leadership projects. So CalPro, CASAS and Cape Tap Professional Development Events are available on this calendar as well. And then we have the lesson plan builder, which allows instructors to create lesson plan outlines. And we also have the Adult Ed Student Succeed website, which provides annual recognition of students who are, have excelled, have overcome a lot of challenges and really taking advantage of all of the resources that their agencies have to offer. And again, we offer so many tools on the OTAN website and I encourage everyone to just explore and access everything that we have. And if you have any questions also on all of our websites, there are links to contact us at our support box and forms that you can fill out to request more information from us at any time. So information for the resources tab, I'll just go through a few of these, the digital learning guidance, which I mentioned briefly before, the California Distance Learning Cooperative Canvas. OTAN facilitates a lot of Canvas instances being set up for agencies. You can contact us for more information about that. We provide accessibility resources to help staff and users create accessible documents and web content. We have the Teaching with Technology resource, which provides lesson plans and information that can be easily accessed and downloaded and shared with other users. Our web-based class activities provide in-depth information about tools that are relevant to instructors and adult education agencies, curriculum offers, students succeed again, the online application and reporting site. We have links to all of those from the resources tab of the OTAN website. And now I will pass it off to Neda Anna Sari. So, Angela, thanks so much. Actually, I'm going to jump in here before Neda. But Neda, would you mind just actually going back to the previous slide just for one second? So, hi everyone, Anthony Burick. I'm the coordinator for Distance Learning Projects with OTAN. Angela has already given us a lot of information about the OTAN website. We're going to dig into the content here a little bit more. If you do have questions as we're going along, please feel free to put those in the Q&A and we'll take those as we proceed through the presentation here. I just wanted to make a little mention of the Digital Learning Guidance resource. That's the first resource that's listed at the top there. So, hopefully many of you have had a chance to take a look at that Digital Learning Guidance document. We published it on the OTAN website about a year ago or so. And it's really meant to be a broad overview of digital learning across the education field in California. It covers many, many different topics starting with equity and access in adult education programs. We also talk about how you design flexible learning experiences at your agency. So, this includes not only the distance learning that we've been up against the last couple of years, but really thinking about how to transition from distance to blended learning, hybrid learning, high flex learning. So talking about those models that we encourage folks across the field to take a look at and think about starting to implement across their programs. We also talk about data-driven instruction, digital assessments. We also talk about how we foster digital communities online. So really, this is a great opportunity and a great resource for you to dig into. And along those lines over the past year, we've been working with one of our partners, Isti, to develop some supplemental resources that go along with the guidance. So these include Reader's Guides, Facilitator Guides. We also are developing a Canvas course. And I think maybe we'll talk about that a little bit later as a training opportunity. But really, we really want educators across the state to take a look at this guidance document and please reach out to us. If you have questions, if you'd like training back at your agency, if you need help getting oriented to the new resources that we're pushing out on the guidance website. So, yeah, we again, we all of us at OTAN hope you'll take take some time to take a look at that guidance document and really think about how to share that with folks back at your agency and in your community. So next slide, please. So we'll go through some of the resources that you can find on the OTAN website, and these are really instructional resources. So first, we have this Teaching with Technology resource. It's really a big database of lesson plans and lesson ideas that teachers can easily access and download and customize for their classrooms. So our focus has been on the WIO or program areas, but we're also taking a look at CTE and adults with disabilities as well. So the way, again, many, many resources that you can take a look at, you can access them by program, depending on the levels of your program, levels of your classrooms. You might be able to also access resources in that way, the different subject areas. Also, we take a look at standards as well. So again, for example, like the CCNRs. So again, it's sort of a big repository of resources that teachers can take advantage of in terms of introducing technology into their classroom, into their lessons. All right, next slide now. Web-based class activities. So on a monthly basis, we ask folks from the field to write a long-ish article on a technology topic or tool to really kind of dive into that. So it's really meant to be kind of a practical guide to implementing a tool or technology topic in the classroom. We're trying to keep up with the times. You'll note here in the screenshot here, we have a recent article about chat GPT, but we also cover a wide variety of topics throughout the year. So web-based class activities. Next slide. Curriculum offers. So one of the things that we organize for the adult education field are what we call curriculum offers. Sometimes these are pilot programs that we invite adult education agencies to be a part of. So, for example, we have a couple of pilot programs going on right now. One is with North Star Digital Literacy Assessment, which you may be familiar with. The other is with a vendor called Learning Upgrade, which has a mobile learning app that covers a wide variety of program areas. So again, these would be opportunities for adult educators to sign up to be a part of a pilot program. But we also have other curriculum resources on our website that we like to make available to the field. So, for example, in partnership with Essential Education, we have a self-paced blended learning course. So for teachers who are wanting to get started with blended learning, this is a great resource that they can take advantage of. It's free to... All the curriculum offers are free to the field. So you can go to our curriculum offers page and learn more and see what we have available for the field. Next slide, now. As we mentioned previously, we've talked about the California Distance Learning Cooperative. So this is really an initiative organized by OTAN to bring Canvas to the field, to adult education agencies across the field. As you can see here in the bullet, so there's a no-cost instance that we can help you get set up. We also offer the first 50 Canvas licenses for free. And then if you're interested in having more licenses at your agency, we have negotiated a rate with Instructure to be able to provide more licenses at a low cost to the agency. And we also have a lot of training opportunities that come up. We also provide some services if you need help with getting your instance set up or getting teachers with into training opportunities. That's one of the things that we help manage through the CDLC. So we encourage you and your agency to consider becoming a part of the CDLC. And we have some information on our website about that. Next slide, now. We've talked about the Student Succeed Program. So this is really a great way for your agency to honor an outstanding... Of course, all of our adult students are outstanding, but really maybe one or two students who stand out at your agency on an annual basis. This is really a way to bring recognition to them and your agency for the great work that you're doing back at your agency. Our Student Succeed Program, the application for that opens on January 1st, and we will... If you become a member on the OTAN website, you will receive communication about that. That application process is open for, I think, three months. We do a review process, and then we go ahead and notify agencies in May, hopefully in time for your graduation and end of year ceremonies to be able to honor those students. So again, adult education students succeed, a great way to bring recognition to your students and your program. Next slide, Neda. I think I'm going to hand it over to you, Neda. Yeah, you are. Okay, perfect. Good morning, everybody. Neda Anasari, I'm the Technology Projects Coordinator. I'm happy to be here with you. I'm going to do a quick, you know, blink a couple of times. You've been staring at that screen, you've been listening, blink your ears a couple of times, too. So we are going through all of our resources and what's available to you. And so, you know, Renee and Angela and Anthony have been kind of sharing what resources are available to you. I'm going to transition over to training. And so some of the training opportunities that you have at your agency that you can bring us in, we can arrange an online workshop. We can arrange a face-to-face workshop. One of your favorite people that's on the line that's been hosting us at the NAO Ms. Melinda Halt arranges all of your training and is also one of your great trainers as well. And so I'm actually going to ask a question and I'm going to ask you to answer it in the chat, please. How long have you been in adult education? Tell me, five years, 10 years, five months, one month. Tell me a little bit more of how long you've been in adult education. Six years, eight months, three months, 14 months, 40 years. Wow, we have some long timers here. Hey, those short termers, the ones that just joined us, you may want to make a friend today. You may want to make a couple of friends today. So for those of you that have been with us a long time know that there is no cost to the training. For those of you that are new, yeah, you heard it. We will come to you for free. So guess what? Today you want a free workshop. So if you would like to arrange a free workshop at your agency or want to learn what that means, go ahead and put... I'm going to ask Melinda, Melinda, can you do me a favor? Yes, free, free, free, free. Support at otn.us is who you're going to write. Absolutely, yay, a free workshop. Everybody's a winner today. I'm just like imagining Oprah's gift, you know, where she's just putting her hands up, giving everybody a free car. But unfortunately, I mean, fortunately, it's a workshop. So we will come to you. A workshop could be three to four hours, depending on the topic and what you would like us to present on. And there's no limit. We give you a couple of ideas as far as like Google productivity tools, Microsoft tools, anything like that. We will arrange for you. But sometimes you just want to kind of talk to us and say, hey, you know what? I've been doing a lot of different things on online learning, but I don't have quite the greatest grasp on some technology tools. And so I want to introduce three new tools from our teachers. Can you come and deliver that training for us? We absolutely can. We can also design long-term professional development opportunities. So let's say you want to introduce those three tools, but within a certain amount of time. So let's say for the fall semester, we can arrange that as well. And so not only will our staff, our very own staff, be able to come out and deliver those trainings, but Renee also introduced you to many of our subject matter experts that are located throughout the state of California and will come to you and deliver those. They're actually experts in some of those tools as well. So we will come to you if we can't come to you and you just need an hour of our time or maybe we need to set up a special kind of arrangement. We have so many other options. We have a technical coaching opportunity and it's kind of like an office hours, but you're there with an expert talking about a topic that you want to implement. You can ask for an online workshop. Maybe you're doing more hybrid things. Maybe you want to bring us in online because some of your teachers are going to be online and some are going to be in person. Anything you need, we can arrange it. No problem at all. We also have on demand webinars that are always going to be on our calendar. One of them are OTN Tech Talks. So we offer you a Tech Talk once a month. It's the second Friday of every month where we introduce you to a tool, a resource that you can implement in your classrooms with your teachers. So I will show you where that calendar is so that you have a better idea of where to find that information. You'll find us at your favorite conferences will be there. Not only will we sometimes have a table or a booth. So come check us out, get the best kind of swag. Wait, did I say that? I mean, materials that will be helpful at your desks and your classrooms. And then attend our sessions. You'll come learn those same workshops and webinars that we're going to do for you. We might do a version of those at the conferences. So be sure to look for your favorite folks at OTN at their booth and in their sessions as well. Not only that, we're at your favorite conferences, but we are the host of your favorite conference. And that's Technology and Distance Learning Symposium. We offer that once a year. We try to accommodate the state where we offer it in the north once in the north one year and the next year we offer it in the south because we want to make sure that we're getting everybody in the state. One day we'll get to Central, but some of our central folks end up joining us in the south. And then some of the ones that are closer to the north join us in the north. This year, or I should say 2024, March 1st and 2nd, we'll be at Fremont Adult School. And so we'll be in the north at Fremont Adult Ed. And we're looking forward to hosting you. We will be offering it hybrid again. So if you haven't already learned about the teaching, the Technology and Distance Learning Symposium, it's teachers teaching teachers. You have teachers that are using the tech tools, the online. They're offering online alternatives for their students like high flex education and so on. And so we want to highlight those teachers. So they're going to come and train you at this conference. So I love this conference even before I was an OTN person because this is where I was able to get together with my geeky ed tech friends and learn from them. And it's specific to adult education. So if you are interested in attending and we make it super affordable and we offer it on a Friday, Saturday because we know you're super busy during the week. So hopefully you will join us. We'll get to see you in Northern California. Send your teachers super, super affordable. Send them, send them. All right, need more information? Support at otn.us. We'll be happy to answer your questions. In addition to that, we offer a digital leadership academy. This is a two year academy. We used to have a technology mentoring academy. We used to have an online teaching academy. They got married, they had a baby. And now it's a digital leadership academy and emphasis on the digital, emphasis on the leadership. So you're with us for two years. We provide you training on leadership. We provide you training on digital pieces that you can implement at your agency. So hopefully you're looking at your teacher survey results. Hopefully you're looking at your student survey results and you're understanding kind of the gap and the need for your region, for your consortia, for your agency. And then you're joining this academy to be able to address some of those gaps and those needs. So I hope that you are going to be looking for that application, which always opens in April. So lucky for you, April, 2024, we're gonna have a new application for the digital leadership academy. We announce who was accepted in the summer and then you'll be joining us for two years so that we can not only enjoy the courses and the training from the academy but also implement a site plan so that you can address those gaps and those needs. We want you to stay connected to us. So please become those members. The membership is absolutely free. You're just gonna get a bunch of information from us and you know, that doesn't hurt at all. So be sure to become a member. Angela kind of showed you how to do that today. Join us on Twitter if you're on social media. We're active on, oh wait, that's not Twitter anymore. It's X, sorry. On Facebook, on LinkedIn, on YouTube, we are happy to help you. So I know that we said that we're the ed tech people and we can't be the ed tech people if we don't show you a brand new tool. Before I go do that, Anthony, I want to just go and show everybody the website live and then I promise I'm gonna hand it to you. This is what it looks so pretty. I love it. Thank you, Angela and team. We talked about accessibility. Look at that great, that little tool right there on the corner, the left-hand corner. This can kind of help you address your needs as far as what your comfort level is when it comes to contrast is. And then what I want to show you, I'll go ahead and close that is the, all the information that I told you about today and Anthony told you about Renee and Angela, but this California professional development calendar, everything from CASAS, everything from CalPro, everything from anyone is going to be on this calendar. Now I'm gonna change it over to my favorite state leadership project, OTAN, I wonder why. So here is all the things that we're gonna be offering. And I wanna bring your attention to this one. We are addressing the need when it comes to AI. We have the AI prompt mastery session that's coming up on the 10th. Be sure to send your teachers, be sure to also submit your registration for it. Where we're joined by professionals from Q, the organization Q computers and educators, they're gonna teach us how to become prompt genius as using AI tools. There's so much other things that OTAN provides as far as courses, we have a building a tech strategy toolkit course, we have a triple E course where it teaches your teachers how to engage, enhance and extend learning in the classroom. Again, all the information we shared with you today is just not explaining all the things that we offer here at OTAN. But again, I promised you where we're gonna play with a tech tool and Anthony is going to teach us how, Anthony. Okay, thanks Neda. So if you can grab your phones, we're gonna give you sort of a little taste of an OTAN training here. So one of the tools, if you go ahead and grab your phone or your favorite digital device and you have a couple of different ways to connect to the Slido activity. So you can use the QR code that you see on the screen here to connect to the activity. You can also go to slido.com and then you'll go ahead and type in that code number to 815-923. I'll give you a second to do that. But one of the things that we do is we try to help folks bring technology to their agencies. And of course, we always emphasize good teaching first and technology second, right? Technology is meant to be a support but really the focus is on good teaching, good instruction, things like that. So folks are joining, that's great. So hopefully, actually the way to connect will always be on the left-hand side with Slido. So I'm gonna go ahead and get started with the activities. So on your device or on your screen, you should be able to go ahead and submit your answer to this question. The first word that comes to mind when you hear the term educational technology. Okay, very good. So things are happening here. What we're doing here is we're building a word cloud. So if you're familiar with the word cloud, the words that are repeated become more prominent and end up in the center of the cloud. But the other answers are included in the word cloud as well. So again, when we do these kinds of activities in our training, we always ask teachers to think about, okay, so when you do this activity in your class with your students, what do you do in terms of teaching? Like what is the instruction that comes from this technology activity, this use of a technology tool? Okay, so I know that we're short on time. We're gonna move on to the next question here. Next question is, what are the three state leadership projects? What are the three state leadership projects? Not sure why innovation is showing up there, but basically we're building sort of like an open, sort of like a waterfall type of activity here. Well, that's the way it should work. We'll see it. Ah, okay, very good. All right, so again, I'm thinking about the right answers, the correct answers that are coming in, but sometimes with the incorrect answers, what do you do about that as the teacher? Oh, awesome, OTAN is the number one correct answer. So thank you for whoever submitted that. Okay, we're gonna move on to the next question here. Fast and furious here because we need to get you to your regional consultants. So we're gonna go to the next question. Okay, next question is, which is not true about OTAN training? Which is not true about OTAN training? I'll give you a second to respond to that. Which one is not true about OTAN training? Again, thinking about this from the instructor's point of view, you're getting these results if you're doing this kind of a formative assessment or kind of a quick check here, comprehension check, you're getting these answers in as a teacher in real time. So again, how do you think about as a teacher, how do you, what do you do with this information as a teacher, depending on what you're trying to teach in your classrooms? What do you do with the correct answers? What do you do with the incorrect answers? So let me show you the correct answer. The correct answer is, oh, you're all very smart. Anyone at the agency can request an OTAN training. So while we know that our folks, our teachers are very excited to get OTAN training, probably the request should not come from them first. Make sure to check back at your agency with your principal, your director, your program coordinators, and have that request for training come from that level and then we'll start from there. All right, we're gonna move on to the next question here. How many free licenses does an agency receive as a CDLC participant? Give you a second to check those answers. You may notice just one thing about Slido. So at OTAN, we like to be tool agnostic. That's what I say anyway. However, with Slido, you may notice up here at the top, you can see that 43 of you are participating in this particular poll question. So again, this is a nice way to check what's going on in your classroom, depending on the number of students you have versus the number of folks participating in the poll. So I think we're a little, we're about a third participation, but no matter. Okay, correct answer, 50 free licenses. All right, next question. When does the period begin to nominate a deserving adult education student for student succeed program? Give you a second to check in with that. Again, answers coming in a real time. Think about yourself in the teacher role. What do you do with this information? We also encourage administrators out there to think about maybe using technology tools and their trainings with their staff. So just a thought. And again, OTAN can help you if you need some ideas about how to organize those trainings. We are more than happy to work with you on that. Okay, when does it begin? January 1st. So January 1st is the beginning. April 1st is the deadline. Unfortunately, it's not ongoing. We do have a very distinct period of time to do that. So again, if you're an OTAN member, you'll get those communications when adult ed students succeed and opens up at the beginning of the year. All right, last question. I'm gonna interrupt real quick. Everyone, if you have your video open, if you have your video on, we see you. Go ahead, Anthony. Okay, all right, last question. Which of these is an OTAN project? Which of these is an OTAN project? Which of these is an OTAN project? You've actually heard about all of these things over the last three days, but which one of these is the OTAN project? All right, I'm gonna reveal the answer. It is the Digital Leadership Academy, yes. We heard about the EL Civics Network meetings from our friends at CASAS yesterday, and then the virtual workrooms and the IET implementation clinic are projects organized by our other leadership project, CalPro. So we heard about those on Tuesday. All right, with that, I'm going to stop sharing. And again, if you have questions about OTAN resources, OTAN activities, OTAN training, please reach out to us. We really want to support you and the use of technology back at your agencies in all different kinds of ways. And we're happy to also hear about projects that you're involved with, your goals, technology goals at your agencies and how we can support those. So with that, I'm gonna turn it back over to Jim and to get us going on the next activity. Thanks, everyone. All right, well, great. Thank you, Anthony and team OTAN. That was a great presentation and I would just encourage all of you to take advantage of all the great services our state leadership partners, CalPro, CASAS and OTAN offer. There's a lot of great things out there, so please work with them in the future if you're not already.