 Clinic patients and health-related technology training projects, Drew has been lucky to see firsthand the positive impact that learning to use technology can have on adult lives. He believes that as technology becomes increasingly embedded in everyday tasks, the importance of creating opportunities for everyone to have access and training only grows. So with that, let's all welcome Drew Pizzolato. Are we going to start with the video or are we going to leave that in? We are, okay. So we're going to start here with a short video from Saha. Working three jobs is very hectic, especially when you have three kids. It's like you're trying to work to support your kids to give them a better life, but at the same time working three jobs is hard to see them, hard to spend time with them. I wouldn't even take my son to school in the morning because it's like I was way too tired. I'd get home, sleep for an hour and a half to get ready to go to my next job. I was on my couch with my boys and I was falling asleep. And Katarina knocked on my door and she was like, hi, how are you? And she told me we're actually looking to bring in a program called Connect Home, working with community members with like learning about different computers. And then she was like, and at the end of the course, we're looking at possibly giving some laptops and different things to the people who take the courses and finish the course. And I was like, that's really great. She's like, we're going to have this computer class. I know you told me a little bit about computers. I want you to come in and see if maybe you'd like to be a digital ambassador. I became a digital ambassador to help other people like me. So I actually taught people from our community to learn different computers. I like it because the people who are taking this class are doing it to better themselves. Having me be a digital ambassador and that she gave me that opportunity. And I feel that going through the digital ambassador program is what got me to where I am today. I went from making 750 to making way more than that and I have full-time hours. I have benefits. So it's just a lot better. It's a blessing. Local resident, if you're looking for something to share. My name is David Tabacca. I'm the Interim President CEO of the San Antonio Housing Authority. I'm excited to announce the launch of the Connect Home San Antonio campaign. Plenty of videos you can share. Emma said I am the campaign manager at the Digital Inclusion Campaign Manager at N10. The Digital Inclusion Fellowship Program which was created in partnership with Google Library in 2015 supports full-time staff at 26 non-profits in 11 cities around the country. And I want to acknowledge participating partners who are present. San Antonio Public Library, San Antonio Housing Authority, skill point. I think we have Housing Authority of the City of Austin in the house here as well as Literacy KC. Special thanks to Emma and Mooney for organizing this event. So the Digital Inclusion Fellowship seeks to support a diverse array of locally-responsive digital literacy programs by partnering with community institutions and supporting emerging community leaders. These Digital Inclusion Fellows receive training resources and support to expand existing programs and to create new ones. Our vision is a world where everyone has the tools and skills to access the Internet at home to reach their goals. We share best practices, curriculum and other resources in our Digital Inclusion Toolkit which is available on our website. The toolkit has several case studies, tips from the first-year fellows and tons of links to freely available activities and lesson plans. So I want to kick off this panel discussion by telling you about a learner that I worked with once named Norma. Norma was an adult learner who participated in the Digital Literacy Program offered at a rural workforce center. It was her first time learning to use computers. When I met her, she had brought the laptop that she'd recently bought herself for her 80th birthday. Norma has family scattered across the globe and has an ailing husband who requires constant care. She had a lot to say about what it meant for her to learn how to use technology. At one point during the interview when we asked her how learning to use technology had changed her life, she said, Imagine living in an apartment with no windows and then somebody comes and puts windows in. It's about that different. She said, even if I'm at home, I can look out. I don't like to be enclosed. I like to look out. I love sharing that story for the same reason I think we love sharing this video because it really illustrates how transformative learning these skills can be. In order to bring all of our communities online, we need opportunities for lifelong learning that meet a diverse array of needs. When it comes to training new to computer users, there's certainly no one-size-fits-all. However, there are ingredients to successful programs that we could combine in various ways to fit the needs of our communities. We know that all new to computer users benefit from in-person face-to-face support. We cannot do this work without the teachers, tutors, lab assistants, librarians, and others who patiently guide people who may be using a mouse or creating an email for the first time. We also know that we need variety in our class schedules, curriculum, languages of instruction, rigor, and teaching styles in order to support the adult learners in our communities. Another key component for successful trainings is celebrating and incorporating the great wealth of experience that learners and adult learners in particular bring to our training programs. I think as Bill was saying, we're all enriched when our online communities reflect the diverse, rich diversity of our cities in our country. So our panelists for this session are going to share with us how their work is helping to bridge the digital skills divide. First we'll hear from Jen Vanek, a nationally recognized researcher, lead developer of the North Star Digital Literacy Assessments and the director of the Ideal Consortium of the Ed Tech Center at World Education Inc. Jen's going to share some of her current research around adult learners and digital skills. Then we'll hear from each of our three practitioner panelists, Katerina Velazquez, Michelle Rickman, and Ernesto Resto, each of whom brings a unique perspective from their work managing digital literacy programs, training tutors, and providing instruction themselves. Collectively these three panelists have served many hundreds if not thousands of learners in their communities so we have a lot to thank them for. Each panelist will tell us about the program they work within and we'll share with us what the biggest digital literacy need in their communities is and they will share an inspiring story. So I'll first hand it over to Jen. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for inviting me to speak to you about something that I care deeply about and have made my life's work for about two decades. I think, as Drew said, my job here today is to give sort of lay of the land with respect to research. What research says about the issue of how training figures into digital inclusion and then to share some suggestions that have bubbled up from the research and my own practitioner work over the years. So I want to talk about inclusion from a slightly different perspective than we've been talking about it already today. And I'm going to say a phrase that is going to maybe sink in by the time I say it like the fifth time. Has anybody heard problem-solving in technology-rich environments? Can you raise your hand if you're familiar with that concept? Okay, so essentially think information literacy. Okay, now think information literacy that you tap into every single day as you move through your day. Fewer things are habitualized tasks for you. Fewer things are done analog or by hand. And instead, we're turning to technologies to solve problems like who balances their checkbook with a pen and paper anymore? Okay, when I talk to my kids' teachers, I do it through this thing on my phone called Remind, right? Met their countless other examples of the ways that technology is more and more becoming an integral part of our lives. Now, we are in that included group right now who's making use of these resources. The people who are hoping to bring into the we, as we talked about this morning, aren't maybe able to accomplish things as efficiently, okay? Things can still get done, but maybe not quite as efficiently because they're not on board yet. So PSTRE is extremely relevant, so relevant that the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development commissioned a massive study in 2012 of 166,000 participants in 24 countries to measure the capacity of adults to PSTRE to problem-solve in technology-rich environments. And what they found is not encouraging, I'll tell you, particularly with the results from the U.S. I'm actually just going to read these things so I get them right. So 5,000 adults in the U.S. took the test, okay? 13% of the people included in the survey, which also included literacy and numeracy, couldn't even take the problem-solving assessment because it was offered on a computer and they had never been on a computer before, alright? Of the people who could take the computerized assessment, the U.S. had the highest percentage of participants scoring at the lowest proficiency level. 58% of millennials tested at the low-skill level despite reporting they spent 35 hours a week with digital media. And that these scores for millennials were among the lowest reported for all participating countries. So these are OECD countries. These are wealthy income countries that we're being compared to. 30% of those who did not take the assessment are who I think we've been thinking about today. They didn't take, of those folks, 30% are unemployed and 40% don't have a high school diploma. So this is a problem because, as we've acknowledged, success in learning and workplace, the rate of adoption has a lot to do with your fluency with ICTs and the relevance that you view adoption of ICTs, information commuter technologies. So how are we going to respond to this issue? So based on my reading and work as a researcher, an adult ESL teacher, that was how I got my start because nobody's wondering. I became that person who could fix the things in the school and so then I became the person who made the first Moodle course. How did I become tech support? It's interesting. Yeah, so I am beginning to think that just access to training is insufficient. In fact, this might sound a little harsh, okay, and I don't mean to make anybody nervous. I'm beginning to think that access to poor training is actually worse than access to no training. And let me explain what I mean by that. When a learner decides that they're going to embrace the challenge of becoming a digital citizen, right, have agency, full agency in our communities and take the personal investment, make the personal investments of time, away from kids, away from that third job, to go into programs to learn. If they are not, if they don't view themselves as the target of the instruction they receive in these places, it has a very damaging, lasting impact on future investments in learning. So quality educational opportunities are very important. Now, we're going to hear about three quality examples in detail. But what I want to do is give a quick overview of some key components to what I think quality instruction might look like. So I have a couple of websites actually switching it over. Won't have to rate down website URLs from very small places. You can just leave it there, thanks. I have taken my comments from this panel discussion and put them in a blog post on my website. So if you go to moreliteracy.com and go to the blog, then you can see basically everything I've just said and all the links to the resources that I'm about to show you. So don't panic. It's all there. So the first thing I'm going to say, I'm going to go over here. Quality instruction requires embedding digital literacy instruction into a context that's already relevant for students. We heard about how relevance is so important to convincing people into broadband adoption. And I think that means that in schools, study ESL or GED, you embed digital literacy training into those classes. If you work at a workforce development agency or one stop, you embed digital literacy instruction into career development or somebody who wants to come in to write a resume or look for a job. Interestingly, in Portland, there's a program that has digital literacy skill training available to patients who go into particular HMO's offices. And the skill development is embedded within a portal that shows them how to use the medical information that they would find there and help them communicate with their doctors. So there are many interesting places where this can happen. We just have to think creatively and expansively about where people are going to do this work. The other thing I think is that making on... You have to make sure that it's delivered using digital technologies. It's a huge challenge, but I think that it's really important because then it reinforces the relevance. But that those online environments need to be very clearly laid out and easy to navigate. This is an example of one that I think matches those requirements. This is actually a tool that was created by myself and a team of AmeriCorps volunteers after seven months of focus group work and watching each other teach. We came up with a tool that they thought would help them provide digital literacy training to the participants coming to their community-based organizations. So again, this is linked to on my site, but it's free. You guys can use it. It's community commons licensed. So we hope it's a resource that you will take advantage of. Now, this is stocked with linked resources, many of which I am sure you guys might talk about like GCF Learn Free. Goodwill, that's the Goodwill site. It's amazing. And many others that are also linked to on my blog posts that you can get to. They're laid out, formatted well, easy to navigate. Next, it's really important to have an idea of where learners are before you start teaching them. And there is a very interesting tool that can help you with that. This is the North Star Digital Literacy Assessment. I am one of the educational coordinator of this resource. It too is free. And you can just throw learners into one of these assessments. At the end, it will show them skills they've mastered, skills they need to work on. And that will give you an idea of where to start instruction for them. So I highly recommend this too. Great. Research is showing me the importance of human contact and support when you're working with learners new to technology. Drew talked about it a little bit earlier. And so I don't think it's enough to just have learners in a computer lab working in isolation. Nor do I think it's a really good idea to throw 30 learners at 30 computers with one AmeriCorps volunteer at the front of the room. That's really not a great idea. You need humans in the space with people, reinforcing the lessons, holding, you know, literally holding hands as you're mousing. And so I encourage you to tap into your AmeriCorps programs, tap into all the volunteer organizations in your area. Go to the colleges and say, what are your requirements for your graduates? And get as many humans as you can in the door to support learners. So this model, this is like the ideal model. I think it's a lab. It's open. It's flexible. It's got clear and easy to use materials. It's got volunteers to support. This is the model that a lot of research is suggesting is the one that works. Drew has been involved in some research at Portland State University, which shows the stuff to work really well. The Benton Foundation has also done a survey of open access labs and learning opportunities. Both the literature from both Drew's work at Portland State and the Benton Foundation are also linked in this blog post, so I encourage you to read more deeply into that if you're interested. And so I guess I'm about out of time. So what I just want to say is, we all understand that digital literacy and digital inclusion is a moving target. So I think the idea about education in this field is not to teach someone to do one thing. It's to create opportunities for them to become resilient learners. Because I guarantee you guys will use a new technology in the next month yourselves and you're just maybe going to figure it out. Because you're used to figuring out how to operate in the online world and the world of digital technology. So that's the goal. It's to train this resilience and this problem solving that is so important for everybody to get to be digital citizens. So thank you so much for your time and I can't wait to hear about these programs. As the educational consultant for SAHA, with SAHA I was working for the Bibliotech, the all-digital public library of Bear County, not the same territory but the libraries are wonderful because I love it. But with that, obviously see that in order for people to use a digital library, they had to be somewhat digital literate. So if we didn't have a population that could log on and create their own library card and then be able to download an app, they couldn't use our resources. So what's the point of having a digital library if we don't have citizens that could actually access it? So then I was originally the branch manager and was pushing this idea of teaching outside of our walls. So we actually created a position where I went to the schools and taught students how to use our resources and download the apps and get a library card and then I had a team of people that went out and did this. And then when I heard about Connect Home, I thought, well, that would be the perfect next step for me. And so that's what I'm doing now. So the number one was to create this community of digital learners. I wasn't going to be there every single day. And once we finished a class, we needed to have some kind of support system. So within our first class, we talked about first creating this environment of learning and sharing, like candy on the table and get to know your neighbor and pass your email address to your neighbor. And so it was a lot of let's talk together and get to know these things together. Because when I leave, you're going to have to have a neighbor to talk to if you've got a problem. Develop a basic understanding of computers. I mean, we just need to understand how do they work, how do I access it. And then cultivate this level of confidence and self-sufficiency. I mean, once we leave, we want them to be able to Google a problem on their own. So this is some of our student demographics able to work with 97 adults, which is the 18 and over. Our youth, we have worked with 219 youth so far and they've gone through our program. And older adults, we've done about 54 older adults. Now the older adults take a little bit more time and some of them are a lot more reluctant. We had one lady who came in and we were running a couple minutes late because we were setting up our projection and she's like, it's taken too long. I'm going to go. She's like, okay. And we provided training on-site in six different Sahap properties and then we had another class for summer youth employment students and we did that at one location and brought the students in for that. So I created the curriculum using a lot of the tools from Northstar. I had a lot of assistance from Austin City FreeNets. They gave me a lot of tools. Clarissa from Google gave me a lot of online tools. I used a lot of GCF LearnFree.org and we created this ourselves because we use Linux as the operating system and most users have never heard of Linux and let alone ever used it before. So we get the computers out to the property and they're using them the entire time. Number one, it creates this ownership to their own device and then they get really excited. Well, this is the computer I'm taking home. Put your picture on the background, do whatever you want and they get really excited about that. We have six classes, two hours per class. They end up with 12 hours of digital literacy training. We added this prerequisite class after we realized after the first couple of sessions that we were getting residents that weren't familiar with keyboard and mouse use at all and that took up a lot of time. So now we put those residents aside and I do a separate class of just keyboard and mouse use to get them up to the point of being able to join us in the rest of the classes. So we do a welcome to a boot operating system, get to know Google because then we share, we email each other and we share Google Docs on every class. Understanding the internet, hardware and software, online safety and security and then we have a whole class on online resources, safe resources that they can use. Instructors and then one of our digital ambassadors, Mr. Lampkins wasn't able to make it today but he is actually a resident at one of our properties and received a degree in networking from SAC and has been a tremendous resource. He's been my tech support the entire time because when a computer goes down, I don't have time to stop and work on that computer, I have to continue the class. And so he's been a tremendous support and he also teaches our safety and security class. And so he's been a wonderful, wonderful support. So greatest digital literacy need, I think is number one confidence, that they feel confident to get onto a computer. A lot of them feel like they're going to break it if they click a wrong button. But I think confidence is one of the most important things that they need in order to continue and they're not going to get that confidence if I'm not encouraging and if I'm not at the level that they are at. And so it really takes us coming in and saying, this is your class, you tell us where you're at and we go as fast as you need us to go. And that's how we do it. And if I need to come back for makeup classes then for that particular person then we do that. Success, this is one of our classes with both seniors and some adults. And I think, I mean we have successes every day. Tanaidi was one of those successes. But one of the successes that I like to remember is this one resident at Springview who came to the class, she had a young child. So she wasn't, I mean she was just a little older than I am which I don't think I'm very old at all. And she was not familiar with the keyboard and mouse at all. Did not know how to type, had heard about email before and in six weeks, and I was so surprised because I would sit next to her the whole time and I would say, okay this is where we go and you need to practice on a weekly basis on typing.com and by the sixth week I was just telling them, okay now open up your email and open up your Gmail and she was doing it on her own. I had forgotten to go and sit next to her and she was doing it on her own. And that was probably the best experience that I've had so far because she went from knowing nothing at all to being able to open up her email, send an email, navigate a website, know what a browser is, open up that browser. It was a tremendous success. It was really great to experience that. But we've had, just to talk about a few numbers we've given over 350 devices to residents. How many Wi-Fi hotspots have we given? Yeah, about 150 Wi-Fi hotspots so they can access the internet at home. We've done over 250 classes, spoke into at least over 350 residents. Some of them don't finish the class, which is fine. They can always come back and if they finish two classes they can come back and finish the last four at any time. So it's just been a great experience and I'm glad to hear some of the things that Jan said because I'm like, that's what I've been thinking. I'm so glad it's true. But anyway, that's about it. Great, thank you. I'm with the San Antonio Public Library with the Learn program. So I think you heard about the Learn program earlier but if you haven't, I'm here to plug it again. We're in four library locations currently and basically what it is, it's your adult basic education services in the library. So we're kind of hidden in the back corner of four branches. We try to serve all parts of the city so we have north, south, east and west and my fellow training officers are here and we're ready to help our audience, the people we serve, it's whoever walks in the door. So that's a pretty diverse population in the library. We see a lot of seniors. We see a lot of middle-aged, mid-level job seekers that maybe were in the same career for a long time and now have to switch careers for whatever reason and learn a new digital skill to get that new job. We also see people right out of high school maybe making their first resume, getting ready to take their first interview, do their first job and we also see a lot of people who English is not their first language. So we try to cover a lot of different bases, workforce, technology, education development, GED, all that good stuff. So we try to wear a lot of hats. So yes, the Learn Program. There's brochures in the lobby. I hope you take one with you. It has our location in hours on the back. It is a drop-in service. So when the library is open, the learning center is open and people can drop in, we're here for any of your career or education goals and so a lot of that ends up being one-on-one, which is pretty unique. So people will come in, they'll have a specific need they need addressed that day and whatever it is, we try to jump in and teach them how to do that. So again, that could be resume creation, job applications are a really big one. So that's a little bit about what we do. So we have one-on-one. That could be anything on a daily basis. We also have small group instruction. So at my location, I offer a beginning computer and Internet 101, Technology Q&A, ESL, Microsoft Office, and we've done a lot of other things in the past. I think, yes, this is a really great, great picture of me. Not really. So at my location, we're in the corner, as you can see. We have something called a MondoPad. I don't know if anyone's heard of that. It's a beautiful giant computer and so everything that I'm teaching, I'm demonstrating on this giant screen it starts to click when you see someone else do it and what you can't see the rest of the learned space is computers themselves. My location is eight. I think that's pretty standard. So people can practice the skills that we're teaching them. The biggest... Okay, that's our curriculum. The biggest challenge or digital literacy challenge, I think, goes back to what you said, Heather, you know, about confidence. One thing we haven't touched on a lot here is the human element of actually learning all this stuff. Once you have the access and you have the place to go, you have to become very vulnerable to learn this new skill. And so I think the Learn Center is really good at meeting people where they are and doing things one-on-one. And the message we receive is that technology is easy. It makes your life so much easier. But for someone who never got on board in the first place, it's the exact opposite. So we have to show them that yes, for others it's easy and if we start at square one, it's going to be easy for you too. So it's a lot of overcoming being scared to even touch the computer. So that's a big challenge. The other big challenge is Internet fluency. Is that a word, a thing? Okay, thanks. I'm going to call it Internet fluency. The idea that when someone's in a job application, you can't hit the back button on the browser. Okay, good. Yes, Terry, when you, anything you do online, any account you make, you make a unique username and password. And no, that's not the same as your email and password. And that's not the same as your ATV username and password. And that's not the same as your target username and password. It's very difficult to enforce that kind of learning if you don't start at square one. If you don't even understand how the browser works or what a web page is. So that's what we try to do at the Learn Center. And then I guess I'm supposed to share an inspiring story. Which, we have a lot of really inspiring stories. I feel like every, I'm going to say almost every week someone comes and tells me that, thank you so much, I got a job this week. And that's just really gratifying because that was their goal. Truly, they probably couldn't have done it without the extra support that we gave them. One really great story from one of my computer classes. As I said, we serve some seniors who are not necessarily looking for a job. But they want to jump on the technology train. And I had a woman named Rita who went through Beginning Computer, Internet 101, Tech Q&A. So this is like a whole year of instruction. And I told her about Skype. And she's very excited about it because her grandkids live in Wisconsin. And so she brought in her laptop and she was able to download Skype. And we tested it with her son in San Antonio. And she, because we wrote down the steps, we practiced together. I made her show me how she was going to do it when she got home. She came back the next week and said, I talked to my grandkids. I got to see their faces, which was incredible. I wish I had that when I was younger. And another on-the-job subject, we do get people that come in every week saying that they did succeed because of us. But last month, I had someone come in that I hadn't seen in a year. And I recognized him instantly. His name is Sean. And I said, what are you doing here? How are you? And he said, I'm great. I have a place to stay. I have a car. I have a job for one year. He had reached his one year mark. And it was nice that he was able to come back and tell us that. So it is what we're doing is sustainable, I think because we start from a very human one-on-one level. And it carries out throughout people's lives. I'm a student fellow for Skill Points Alliance at Austin, Texas. So my goal was about... I came here from Texas from Chicago four years ago, unemployed for 14 years. I came in, signed up for a housing authority over there in Austin. And then I took a first computer class. So I took a computer class with my wife. Then after that I just became and started doing about learning computers. But I actually knew about computers. My wife was shy. Then after that I took the class and I started talking to people saying what the instructor was saying and I would just keep going. An instructor calls me once and says, I need to speak to you. I said, oh, what did I do now? And then she came and says, would you like to be my volunteer as a helper with the communities? For that part I would say thanks for Austin Free Nets for giving me that opportunity as a volunteer. Then after that Catherine Craigle was there and she calls and tells me, I need to speak to you too. I was like, oh boy, now I'm in real trouble. After that she told me, you have potential. You know how to communicate with people. You know how to make them feel comfortable while they're teaching and learning. And I said, oh, thank you for the comment. She said, would you like to be my first digital ambassador for the program? We'd give you a statement if you go outside. All right, I'm a volunteer. Then after that, like the story says about the video, I did became a digital ambassador for a year and a half. I started to do that for a very long time. I became president for one of the housing authority where I live at. So I'm just giving props for all the digital ambassadors here. Can you guys please stand up to give you guys some applause. We're also going to give and bridge that digital divide on their own communities and the whole apartments area. Then after that I became a digital ambassador. And then one of the instructors there asked me to go ahead and try to fill up for digital inclusion fellow. I was like, I think that's a little over my limit. You know, I'm not that kind of position yet. So I just filled it up and now I'm here helping out now what I enjoy doing. Teaching people how to use technology, not just computers but tablets and anything that's digital they get in touch to it anyway. So I have two programs that I'm running in Austin. One of them is the lab apprentices. Mark Lee, you're working with them with the housing authority. We have five locations on the properties. Mark Lee, what I do is I give them courage that they can go ahead and succeed in their own life and help other residents in their apartments to do that achievement also. Then after that I started, I probably say I can borrow Emma, Moni, and Tanya that was here that they started doing a passport program for their device. And then I said, hmm, I can use that also in my property, same as in that. So I did use the passport program. I have at least 47 participants in the passport program for the housing authority. And automatically it's a little longer than 12 hours to get half an hour. Mine's actually 60. Why I have it so much is because I have them to feel when they want to get learned they'll go to their classes. I'm not forcing them to go and do it the whole entire week or every time. If they feel comfortable they'll go to the class and take two hours. Now remember I have five properties that I have the labs. We have 18 properties total. So if they travel from their properties to one of those labs they get two hour training for the travel and then two hours for the training. So that might be what they do for only for two hours. And then also thanks for the Austin Pathways they're the one donated to computers when they complete their training on that. So that's one of my projects. The second project that I have is with the public school. I have a total of six schools five elementaries and one middle school. I'm teaching parents to be the digital ambassadors on their communities. I have now about 37 participants in those schools. I teach them once a week because their parents you know they have kids they've got to cook they've got to do a lot of things so they don't have the time that they can do it. So the classes about an hour and a half they just keep learning about basic computer I might think how to navigate properly in the web how to do their own financial online and those are those kinds of activities. Plus the major thing that I'm trying to focus is more with the parent cloud. They don't have time to be in school they don't have time to find out what's going on with the class you know the kids classes. So getting them involved with the parent clouding they can communicate with them at any time. They can do it on the smartphone they can tablet or home on the computer. You know they can find out their scores the grades any assignments they haven't completed so they're always on top of their education. So that's what I'm focusing on right now with my program and I'm very proud of what I'm doing. So thanks. Success story. This one I'll say my wife she's in here I'm not going to point her out. So like I said she took the class computer classes and she was shy you know she took it she understood what was there after the I said six weeks of training for the computer she decided to go and get her GED after that because she didn't finish high school because nature called we have a baby on the way and this and that but she completed her GED she completed it in June last year after that she decided to go with skill points alliance for workforce development and she decided to go for CNA classes so they gave her more encouragement to do what she wanted to do so she took the class to complete now all right but she did fill the test and everything but she's going to retake it but for that opportunity she's now decided to be one of the digital ambassadors she also tried to do one of the lab apprentice and now she's doing also a mobility ambassador with the Austin Authority so I gave her props for continuing up the ladder she's on. Thank you so much to all of our panelists do you folks have any questions? Questions? So you all talked about the educational component trying to empower people to engage with the internet I would kind of turn the question on Ted a little bit and ask if you could talk to the software engineers and software designers out there making the stuff that either you're teaching them teaching the skills or the tools that they intend to use beyond that what would you tell them what consideration should be made to help people project that? So there are two initiatives that I think a developer might look to for information about that an organization called Triton Partners did a T-R-Y-T-O-N did sort of a survey of the market for developing software for the field of adult basic education and part of that included descriptions about specifications or affordances that would work for teaching people with low computer skills how to learn online so that's one place I would look another place I would look in coming up in the very near future the Barbara Bush Foundation has this enterprise competition and the awardees are going to be announced very soon in fact half they've been announced and I just missed it I don't know what I think there will be a lot of interesting apps that are released and then placed into competition to see how well they work and the communities that they were designed for you know I would also say that if you look to the affordances of universal design you'll find what you need for supporting adult learners yeah that's a good start when we're learning about a new app or a new program one thing that I always look for is the help section because it's always a new skill that they're learning and the help section always stinks so make the help section better please and just make it more user friendly I think that would just beef up that help section question in the back first of all thank you all for your information and your inspiration this question really has to do with one of the factors that one of the speakers mentioned as importance an important skill to have and that was confidence I don't remember which speaker it was if you remember please identify yourself confidence and so I'm curious either from the providers or those that have benefited from the training what motivates folks how can we get them to be more confident whether they're a small child a middle age returning back to work or an active senior citizen that might be curious how can we spark that confidence and creativity I liked what was said earlier about it's not one size fit all and we talked about this a lot in education you know some people are going to learn really rapidly and really fast in an environment like this like a big classroom full of people and full of energy and ideas and some people are going to learn best in a little hole in the library with their heads set on and some people are going to learn best through books so I think as far as inspiring confidence asking people and being like I said that human component trying to make people feel comfortable because I think when we're talking about digital literacy we are asking people to take on a new language sometimes that's an involuntary people don't want to it's more of a necessity than something they're really excited about doing so trying to raise the comfort level and experimenting with the delivery of that whether it's in the small groups or one-on-one or workshops or big things or little things and trying to raise the comfort level yeah for me monthly I do have a first conversation with them I put the computer away I want to know about what they have to do what they would like to learn so I always throw these questions how do you feel what would you like to learn today or what is your vision in two or three months from now what would you expect to do so I always have those kind of questions before I throw them in the computer danger zone or the ocean or and that so just trying to make them feel like they're unique somebody would potential for themselves they would like to drive their vision of what they want to do so when that's already open and they feel comfortable then I'll throw them in the ocean okay here we go so let's swim together let's try to navigate the web and things of that to make them feel like they're there not just students they want to learn just make them feel like they want to I think it's really important for people to be able to articulate the skills that they possess especially when we're talking about workforce development skills so I think it's incredibly important in programs to provide an opportunity for learners to practice describing what they can do so that when they go into an interview they're able to tell people maybe if they have a program that uses North Star Digital Literacy assessment they could show a badge or a certificate and say this is what this represents that means you could give me this kind of task and I can do it for you great thank you so much join me in thanking our panelists please send coffee in the back so take a quick break come back in 10 minutes we have one more panel that's going to start in 10 minutes