 OTAN Outreach and Technical Assistance Network. Here we go. Use your phone to the QR code. This is a nice little app called Classroom Screen. You can either go to join CRS at the QR code CRS.com. You have to put in this phone number. If you use the QR code, it sets up there. You can see choices. It's where you are in your school. Simultaneous instruction. You do that. You go to the website so you can see the results. Okay. So of the people who respond, it looks like we had 10 people respond. The question was where are you or your school at in terms of implementing some form of simultaneous. In person instruction. Online and in person instruction. And so it looks like six people. Or six participants stated. That you have been offering high flex fiber. And blended. Simultaneous instruction in any form. Two of you have said that you're in the process of planning. That now. We've been talking about it. And also we've tried some form. The last one was we've tried some form of sign. Simultaneous. Online and in person instruction. It got a little bit cut off there, but it's supposed to say, but we gave up. Okay. And then the last one was some other. Option. But anyway. This is called classroom screen. If you want to use it in the future is a really great online. Am I okay? Am I talking. Yes, you're hearing. Okay. For doing this type of thing. Notice also I've got the nice little clock up there. Because they're sometimes you're presenting in rooms where they're. You don't have a part. So in any case, that's, that's that. But it gives me a good idea about where you are. Okay. It's important for me to sort of. Give a definition of what it is that I mean. By simultaneous instruction, because it's still relatively new and a lot of the terms. Haven't solidified yet. And people are calling all sorts of things. You know, the same thing, different names and. Using names for different acts, different things that are different. So this is what I mean. I mean, North Valley Occupational Center is doing simultaneous instruction. Turn that sort of you'll probably heard it here a few times this during this symposium is high flex. So to me, high flex has three components. There's the in person in the classroom component. Synchronous online instruction. Which would be like a zoom meeting. And then the third part is an asynchronous online instruction and my understanding of the, you know, the way that people are talking about high flexes. The student can pick at any time. Any of those. Or none of those will not have to pick one. But they don't even have to participate in the other two at any time. So you could be in a course and just go to the learning management department. Read the, you know, all the assignments, watch videos. And you would have completed all the requirements for that class. You don't have to attend. Or you could be sitting in the classroom and do nothing online. Okay. Or any combination one day you could come to class another day you can work online. So that's my understanding of high flex. Is that pretty much what you guys have. High flex includes one, two and three, one, two and three simultaneous. And so what I'm saying is we're not doing this. We're only doing in person. And synchronous online instruction. Not unlike this presentation. In that, you know, there are people here in the room. And then there are also people online. Okay. So that's, that's what we're taking to, to mean in our, the way we're using it. So before we get to the actual, how, how we do that. There is a, what I call a big picture issue that's happening in our adult division. And that is basically the division has opened up 100% online school and maybe some, maybe some of you attended the presentation earlier in the, in the day about that. So we have 10 major sites up until this past year. And now they've opened up. What they're calling the adult education virtual Academy, which is supposed to be 100% online. And so it's sort of, as I say here begs the question. If they're trying, if basically what they're doing is like previously up until now, every side. Well, first of all, during the, you know, the 100% online instruction. We were all online. And then of course, you know, our schools reopened to a certain extent. And there was a combination of in person classes and then 100% online classes. Okay, I'm sure that's familiar to all of you. And then some of those teachers who were teaching the online courses, of course they're teaching them because they themselves needed special accommodations. And so they were not coming back to campus. They were still working 100% online. So this is for the teachers and for the, for the students. And then they opened up this 100% online virtual Academy. So now it's sort of the idea is they're going to sort of concentrate. They're going to start moving 100% online courses from our individual branches and consolidating them under the umbrella of this online Academy. Okay. Schools will still have the option of offering the blended type class if they want. And there may even be some special circumstances where there may be an online class will remain at a campus depending on whatever special circumstances there are. But it does sort of even, you know, bring up the question. If you have this whole effort to do 100% online here, you know, at this website or this school and moving the courses that are still on campus back to totally in person. So we need this blended instruction. And I think so what I'm trying to say is, by listening to the students, students, you know, would like to have at least that as an option. Because, you know, like sometimes I want to go to class. And then other times they can. So that's really where I'm going for, but, you know, we don't know. It may, it may turn out to be that the teachers themselves don't have the ability to do that. But it's a lot of extra work. To do this blended type of instruction. And you have to have some extra skills and you have to, you know, pay attention to what the people in the chat are doing. And of course, like right now I have the added advantage of having somebody to keep an eye on the chat. But do you necessarily have that. In your own class. Look at look at the face there. Yeah. So. So unfortunately you couldn't see his face for those of you who were offline, but that was like. A tremendous look of like scorn and rejection. And it's like. We want days and everything. So. Virtual. Our teachers wherever they want to be. This slide here. Oh, the site. Are the teachers. Centered in a location or they wherever they want to be when they're given. This is new. Okay. The idea. Is. They actually don't have us a physical location. So the way it works right now is if you're hired to teach. In this online academy, you have to show up. At a actual physical school. And teach from that school. So you may be like sitting at the desk in a classroom somewhere. Hopefully in a school site near. In a classroom. In a classroom. In a classroom. In a classroom. In a classroom. Is to you. And then no others. Nobody else is in the room. It's just you. That's the way it works. We have some of the teachers who are teaching in that program. And it's built some of the teachers with a company that combinations. So as long as they can do that, there's, there can still work from home. But as soon as the whole thing ends up. Or finishes or the district has no more accommodations. They're necessary. There's no more pandemic. There's no more nothing. So we have to come back. From school site. Yeah. Okay. So. In any case, it's an interesting. Question about this whole idea of whether or not it's even necessary. So right now at North Valley. The school where I work. Who is actually teaching simultaneously. Not a lot. Only. Only three courses. Okay. Yeah. And mostly it's because of, you know, maybe the teachers themselves were interested. In doing it that way to maybe boost their enrollment. And, and then one. Our professional development series, which is what I manage. So we've got one ESL course, one citizenship course. And one ASL English bilingual education for the depth course. I want what I want to explain here. Is the teacher is deaf. Okay. And the students are all deaf, but not native born typically. These are immigrant students who arrive being deaf. Many times are not. You know, they don't know their own language very well either because of the being deaf when they grew up. So they're actually teaching American sign language. So that those deaf immigrants can communicate to deaf people who are here who only speak American sign language. And he's also teaching English standard English grammar and English language because they also need to know about English. And just to make sure it's very clear, English and American sign language are not equivalent. So that's a really interesting course. And it seems to be working out well. At this point, there's a teacher. We had a hard time finding a native self teacher. Our teachers are rather special individual. Okay. So anyway, how are we actually doing it? So very basic. Minimal equipment. We don't really have the fancy. Microphones and the owls and the really, we don't have one of these. Oh my God. You guys like this campus. Some of the equipment that you see in these rooms here. Really, really nice. So here's our teach. One of this is our ESL teacher, Mr. Jones. And you can see there are some of his in-person students. And he's just got a regular screen and a, we do have a ceiling mounted LCD projectors. And that's how he's managing. And this is a Mr. Hilterman. He is our deaf. And language. Instructor. So in this case, you can see, he's just got a standard monitor. He's in front of it. He's got a little webcam up on top. Okay. And there's a deaf student there in the background. Just kind of, just like in this room, you have stations along the wall. And so the student is also in the zoom. From that. Station. Well, there are other people that are virtual. Right. Also. The call. Okay. And actually because, you know, the program itself is sort of rare. We do get people from quite a distance. But they've heard about, oh, we actually haven't ASL. Okay. And there's a deaf student there in the background. Just kind of just like in this room, we actually have an ASL for the program here where the students can learn American sign language. And it's taught by a deaf. Instructor. Northridge. Gallaudet has on the East Coast. That's the most like the biggest batch school. And then Cal State University of the North. It's the second thing. Right. Yeah. So we are fortunate. And it's fine because every time we do anything like, you know, is the only, I know that person. Our instructor. Is quite, you know, quite familiar with the community. But of course, and then the thing is about the microphones. Audio is not necessary. You know, so they don't, you don't have to worry about having a very nice mic. Cause it's sort of irrelevant. How many of his students are outside of a unified geographically? I really don't know, but I do know that we have some work that are quite a distance. I don't know. That's absolutely fine with your district as far as funding and allowing those students to come in. It seems to be now, everybody still has to be within California, at least for sure. California. Yeah. I think that's like the basic. But, and also several of the students used to come to the class in person. From long, long distances, because it was the only class around. And now they can, you know, they, they can stay home. But it only wrenched out because of the pandemic. Yeah. He was not teaching online until the pandemic. Thank you. Yeah. So anyway, like I said, about the very basic minimal equipment. Okay. So this is our. We call, we typically call it the ESL lab. So that's where the teachers at our campus would bring students to the lab just to do their regular ESL work. But I use that lab to do my professional development trains. And this whole started actually because of Mr. Hilterman. So typically whenever he does anything, he's followed by an entourage of interpreters. You know, because of that. So if he wants to talk to anybody or communicate with anybody on the campus, he needs pretty much to have the interpreters with them. So they're district paid employees. Who, you know, that's their job. And one day he came to one of my professional development workshops without them because he forgot to arrange, you know, that they accompany him. And so I'm doing the workshop just like now. And I'm realizing he's like totally lost. We can't hear anything I'm saying. And I had this like little brain inspiration moment. And I was just after we learned that zoom does transcription. So I said, Oh, you know what, I can start a zoom meeting right now. And then he can sit at one of the computers in the zoom meeting and read the transcription. I said, but where am I going to get a microphone? And so we actually have this sort of like those mics over there. We have. We had obtained from people at Burlington English. Headsets. Quite a few years ago. Barry, can we go to slide show mode? The viewers online are requesting. Okay. Well, I'm hoping so. And usually that gets me really confused, but sure we can do it. We'll try it from current slide. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to, we use Google mates for the chat. Yeah. But so if you notice, you know, they, they used to provide Burlington used to provide. Headsets, but I guess they didn't provide like headsets with two ears. I guess they only have budgets for one ear. But they're okay. Okay, but, and they, so they had, yeah, they have one earpiece and then this mic. And so what I did was, you know, I didn't have any fancy. I just stuck this mic up into the air. And you know what? The transcription was almost perfect. Even way in the back of the room. So let's give the Burlington. Yeah. And that worked very well. But then it occurred to me, you know, why am I not doing this for all of our trains? Okay. So ever since that first time, every workshop that I do in the room, we set it up the zoom and then it became this hybrid experience. And interestingly enough, I'm getting more people, more teachers. I typically do them Friday afternoon. But we, our school site does have some branch location. You know, so not, you know, before people would have to drive to the branch location. Now they don't have to do it. We get some people who are like on their way home. You know, they're not going to come in. So our overall attendance has risen. Our in-person attendance has sort of dwindled. We still have a cadre of, you know, teachers that, you know, maybe they're already on campus or still teaching on campus Friday and they may come in. And that's pretty analogous, I think, to what's happening in a lot of the classes that are doing blended learning anyway. And part of the issues that some of our teachers have is that, you know, the students are in the classroom and they start out with a nice little numbers, six or seven. And then, but they're realizing, you know, these other people are just, they're at home. And unless they have the other reason to be in the classroom that they really like it or like the social aspect of it, you know, a lot of them are saying, you know, we're going to, oh, attend from home too. And then the next week, maybe instead of seven, maybe you only have six. And then the next week, maybe you only have five. And of course, you know, part of being a classroom teacher is that energy you get, you know, from within the classroom, like a boy, I'm much rather would teach a class with 40 students or 50 students than one with two students. We've all been there, right? You know, it just makes the day very different. So in any case, that's, that's what happened with that. So some things to consider before trying this at your site. Are the teachers interested even, right? Are you going to really have to, you know, coerce people into doing it? Okay. So you have to sort of gauge that. And again, it doesn't have to be all of the teachers. You know, you have to find enough of them, you know, who might be interested. And, you know, do you have teachers who are up for the extra work of teaching simultaneously? Because it does, you know, you have to have more eyes. You have to be all the time paying attention to the chat, you know, seeing what's going on. And then definitely a little bit more, but we have to develop materials, you know, that are available online as well. And then, you know, are the teachers well versed in your LMS and zoom also, because these are skills, you know, that are required. You want to try it with your existing technology like I did, or spend big money like the school did, you know, or other schools. And move this out of the way about one too. And then if you're going to buy new what's your budget, you know, for doing that, because obviously, you know, this is high end stuff. And what devices are available to your student. Also, because if your students are only working from their phones, then, you know, you're going to have some issues. Fortunately, in LA unified for the last year, they invested large amounts of money in buying from books for adult students. And we've been distributing those throughout the year. So I don't know how long that will continue. But at least for this past year, quite a few students have been able to get devices. So, again, if you have money to spend, you know, there's the owl. They do tend to be very, very helpful. But even in these presentations, you know, we're told, yeah, you've got to get close to the mic still, and it does limit the movement. So then there's, you know, put another owl, the second out. Not necessarily. So if Barry walks down that way as long as his voice is projecting that way towards. And I don't know if the majority, obviously the majority of us that are in here are not inside the Zoom, but if you open it, everyone that is virtual can see all of us hearing the clap, by the way, your own camera. So if Barry, if you were to walk to that corner. And we can do that. Let's see, is it following me all the way down here? It is. Yeah. I mean, how about my voice? I lowered my voice a little bit. See, Jose says, I can hear you guys. Well, I have attended other sessions where there are issues. Yeah. And again, there are issues, but maybe in this room, it's set up a little bit better than another room. That's another factor to. To consider. And you can chain these like there's like an extension. They can put one here and there's like an extension. So if they have, if they have an extension, they can put one here and there's like an extension, but if they have an extension, it's like super expensive, you know, multi-directional mic. And some, sometimes they're putting them up in the ceilings and another location. You get all that. But that, again, that's if you have the budget. Yeah. And Kay is asking us a question online. If there have been any issues with teacher unions. Regarding high flex instruction. I don't know if there have been any issues with teacher unions, but I can certainly predict that probably they'd want to get involved. You know, it depends. I know that in our K-12 teachers, there are certainly have been. Issues. About. They have agreed to it. And then some of them wanted to just go. Asing someone involved. Can you speak up to the people? Oh yeah. So class or union high school districts up in class or county, and say, yeah, teachers want to do it. It's fine. Because we have one high school that's 180 students. I don't know if it's a hundred and fifteen hundred. So how do you offer calculus? It's how do you name it? That was the principle of that for a while. We had to do the virtual classes the way we'd have the classes. We've been doing it for like nine years. So the teacher at the other school had to agree to it. But that's the only way we could have about a third of our classes. So yeah, I'm sure that. I mean. Every time you introduce something new, then there's issues of equity about workload. Right. You know, and also not just the workload during the class, but setting things up, you know, are you compensated in any way for all the effort it takes to set things up? So yes, I'm sure that there are issues. Right now we don't seem to have them. I think it's very similar. You know. But you don't get paid any extra for doing this. Yeah. So I'm at the school with all this wonderful equipment. And. Our director said, you, you opt in or you don't opt in. It doesn't make any difference, right? I decided not to. I want all the bugs worked out before I do that with my class. I don't feel comfortable enough with, with the equipment or the training. So how long have you guys had these? It's here. Oh, so this is all really relatively new. Yeah. I see. Okay. As we have many teachers who are, who are, you know, doing this, but I said, yeah. And so that's, so then that's the flip side of the coin. And a teacher opt out of being forced. Yeah. Yeah, very interesting. There's an additional comment on the chat. Yes. Okay. I'm not allowed to do distance learning. We are allowed only to do distance learning. Simultaneous is not allowed except as a. Okay. So let me ask not allowed by whom by the administration or by the union. And it says union contract does not include simultaneous. Not allowed. Interesting. Yeah. We went back as quick as we can. Oh, so during COVID we had that for almost a whole year was half and half. At students wouldn't come after there with the plastic because we got back as quick as we can in the classroom, but our poor teachers. Oh my gosh. That was like learning curves. But no owls. I mean, we have to use sonics, which are great, but you're talking 35 kids at home have there. Yeah. They did a good job. And do you still practice that? Do you still allow for that? We have a few classes that are. In the district. So anyway, this is sort of back to the spending money part. So this was a garden grow. Adult education. And Melissa Patterson and Alisa. To tell you what. I love the fact that what you have been here and maybe you've seen some of her presentations. This comes from a. A presentation they did at TD LS last year. But I mean, you can look at the cost. Perhaps rolling that out. 32 new laptops 30,000 right there, boy. New Dell screens more how old cameras. I don't know. Yeah. So, you know, so they spent like 90 grand. And you can learn more about that. I got to touch that again. You can find their whole presentation from that year from, if you go to the OTAN website. The easiest way to find it is just search high flex equipment. In the search bar. And then that will pop up pretty quickly. They did a very extensive presentation last year. When this was really new for everybody. I mean, now a lot of, for a year later, there's a lot more accumulated experience, but that's a nice presentation. They had, you know, I think it was four different adult schools talk about how they implemented it. And to answer your question, Barry, about who did not allow them. Our virtual viewers said it was district administration. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. And of course to end up, you know, there may be some other issues that everybody has to contend with, depending on where they are, what type of school district they're in, or who's the student population that you may have to contend before you get started with both. Again, I only can speak with, you know, for North Valley Occupational Center and some of the other schools in our division. You know, if you're thinking about doing this, or, you know, you're, you've already started to do it, you know, like check with your administrators and union reps to see what the situation is. And also I'm in a K-12 system. And it's a very whole different world, you know, in universities. Do we have anybody here who's in the university? No, we attended one earlier that was a university. And it was interesting, but a lot of things were, you know, because they have a professional in the classroom, they have a lot more budget to make high-flex happen. So it's really nice to see kind of like a different, like if you want to spend money, aren't willing to spend as much money or you can't, right? And like kind of the realistic. Right. And in terms of full disclosure, one of the teachers who had started this and was using our one-hour camera, he had the one-hour camera, you know, in the whole school, he has been opted to discontinue it. But mostly for that reason that he found himself sitting in the classroom with like one student after a time. And he said, you know, it's not working. I'd rather do it all online or all in the classroom. These things are still in the state of flux. Oh, that's it. Let's take some questions. Yeah. So I had a teacher mention that they were concerned that if they use the owl, the students would opt out of coming to class. So one of your examples that I prefer in person, which is what I would have expected that students would want to come unless they couldn't. Besides these examples, do you have data about larger numbers? You may remember from the beginning, I said, we don't, we had three classes and then my train. You talked about your site. Yeah. Right now it's just my site. That's what we have. I'm not sure what's happening in other schools in our division. It's just that, you know, I think there's a place for it, but you really have to examine like the why is like some of our students do come from quite a distance. We're in the north part of the San Fernando Valley that speak to any of you know, those area and, you know, think about some of our students come from Lancaster, Palmdale. That's a good hour drive from where we are, you know, come to school, you know, and so because, you know, they like a lot. I can't believe this. I had a student in one of the classes coming. He comes from, he works in Oxnard and lives in Lancaster. And so like he drives from Lancaster to Oxnard, you know, Southern California in the morning. And then on the way back, like where the halfway points. So he's come to class like on his way home. Well, I don't know because he's still going to be driving to Oxnard. That's where it works. We're looking at taking over some of the trucking programs because they don't have a budget for it. We're working on an hour and a half snow and edley and it just makes sense to do it. So there will always be some students who cannot really come. And so that's like a whole population that is underserved now. And so they will benefit tremendously by online instruction. But again in our district, maybe they won't be coming to an online class sponsored by our school, but they'll be going to this new entity called, you know, Adult Education Virtual Academy. See, and then there's a whole nother group, which is this, well, sometimes I can come to class. I really liked being in class, but I can't all the time. And so I'd like to do it online. So that's, it's really two separate populations. And you have to figure out, is there enough of that? I mean, think about what you've been doing for the last 20, 30 years. You've had those students in your class, they just don't come. When they're, when they can't, they stay home. And then sometimes if that staying home is a little bit too long, then they drop out until the next semester. But with this, this method, there's a greater chance, I think that they can stay together with the class and finish the semester. So I think that's really where the population, that's what teachers may want to do this for the benefit of their students. And you're an ITTA. Right. Is there one at each of the 10 sites? Yes. And in fact, we had a great presentation earlier today where we talked about the way our school district, you know, to, you know, I'm very grateful to have this job, which is basically helping teachers use all of this. But we do have one at each of the 10 sites. They think they'll, we keep hearing they may post that position for this virtual Academy as well. I keep looking at the job postings on a regular basis, you know, to see if they've done that. Yeah, but we're fortunate that we have this position. It's an out of classroom position. But it's not necessarily full-time. Some of the school have more hours, some have less hours. Anything else? Yeah. We have an extra comment and it may have been regarding your data request. Classes have been doing cases. Kata has, pardon me, classes has been doing a small action research project on high bloods. One of the agencies is Merced. Merced said they have very full in class sessions and have up to 20 online students, I believe. Teacher was very successful with student learning games. So it might be a program you're interested in. But again, my first question is, how did they define that? What are they actually doing? But how do they define the high flex? Yeah, because they, they use that word high flex, but what does it actually mean? And then again, geographically, I can believe up in Merced County, right? You may have a lot of people who can't make it to the adult school and just because of the distances involved. Right. Well, that's it for me. Thank you.