 Hi everyone! Thank you so much for coming to this webinar. It's on digital resources for beginning students and their teachers. My name is Alisa Takayuchi. I am an ESL instructor at Garden Grove Adult Education. I'm also a subject matter expert also known as a SME for OTAN. I've been with OTAN for about three years now and as of three weeks ago I am a remote instructor in Sacramento. So here's our agenda for today. We'll do a little bit of an introduction and then we'll talk about some teaching strategies. We'll go over some resources for students and then we'll take a closer look at some of those resources and then hopefully we'll leave time for questions and answers at the end. So in the classroom for beginning level teachers, this is not new news, when we're in the classroom if we were teaching technology at all we had what was called managed devices. That means that for me I had a Chromebook cart and all my students had Chromebooks and we all opened them at the same time and we were all in the same place at the same time. I could troubleshoot for them instantly. I'd walk around the classroom, I'd see if they were where we were supposed to be at, if anybody could log in or it wasn't at the web page, I could help them instantly. We would have direct instruction and if anybody's been to my presentations before you know that I pre-teach everything at least three or four times before the students even open their Chromebooks. So when they do actually open their Chromebooks they know what to expect. It's not going to be flawless, there are going to be some complications but at least the students understand of somewhat where they need to be and how to get there. And also in the classroom we have the classroom and time management. What that means is that I dictate how long or when we are using technology in the classroom. So for example I would say oh we are going to be on the Chromebooks from 1030 to 11 or let's do Chromebooks for 25 minutes today. So there is a managed amount of time and when they would be using them. Always especially for our level the language is a barrier. I have to be very specific in the things that I say to them in very basic vocabulary and always make sure that you speak the instructions and have them written down. When we talk about computer literacy we all know that it's different for teachers and for students. You might have a beginning level English student but high computer literacy skills or the opposite you might have an advanced English student with low literacy skills and same goes with teachers. Some teachers are very tech savvy and then other teachers are you know it's a challenge for them so those are all things to consider even while we're in the classroom. Now when we're talking about remotely things have changed now all of a sudden we have multiple devices and I mean lots of different devices and so I can only teach what I am familiar with or I can only troubleshoot what I'm familiar with so maybe a student is on a desktop maybe the students on a PC versus a Mac or they're on a iPad or a Kindle or their phone maybe they're on an Android versus an iPhone. I mean there's so many variables all at the same time and so that makes it very limited troubleshooting. I really can only help students with devices that I'm familiar with. Direct instruction I put a question mark out there because it's very limited I can teach them I can pre-teach still sort of and I'm hoping that they're understanding I can't I can't look in their faces I can't I can't do comprehension questions I can't do all those things where I get instant feedback to know if I can move on or not so that's very difficult as well and then the time oh my gosh that first week that we were off I was probably on my computer about 16 hours every day every single day because I was so desperate to get my students connected with me that any time they replied or responded to me via text or email I responded right back and that's not you know your classroom that's not 8 30 to 11 and I'm 11 o'clock by Elisa see tomorrow I'm like bye students this is like two o'clock in the afternoon they're responding to me five o'clock in the afternoon 7 30 10 o'clock at night so it was really maddening for me that very first week and I had to really step back so that's what I mean by unlimited time they're responding and they're they're doing their homework or they're doing their assignments at any given time during the day because it depends on their situation at home whether they're they have access to their devices or their wi-fi or some of them are still many of my students are still working um of course so of course the language is still a problem and then their access to wi-fi the one good thing though that I have asterisk at the bottom is that I am desperately I am desperately um relying that the family can help them now they're at home they're with their children they're with other people that you know speak English well or maybe are more computer literate than them I'm desperate that they're going to help them I can only do so much and I'm just relying that the the children are helping most likely it's going to be like their children or their grandchildren or nieces and nephews that are going to say here let me show you how to do it or this is what she's saying you know blah blah blah so that's been really helpful as well so these are just the two slides back to the last two slides and in a matter of days for me um I was at school I don't I teach Monday through Thursday I don't teach on Fridays but I happen to be at school on that Friday and we got an email over the weekend saying that school was closed on Monday so I didn't even get to say goodbye to my students I mean I didn't even get to say like you know we're not coming back I had to like reach out to them um as as well as I could and my mind was scrambling now how am I going to get hold of my students and I'm sure that was the same for you and Alisa there's a question that came up in the chat um I'm just going to remind everybody please submit your questions to the presenter on the q&a but I am going to read this one because it's important sure what are the options for teachers with no internet access what can they do oh for the teachers themselves that don't have internet um okay so reading it yeah um okay so at the beginning of this whole thing what I had heard but I don't know for a fact is that many um internet service providers were providing internet services to teachers and students either at a very low cost or free for us you know like x amount of time so I believe like Comcast was one of them that was what I heard um spectrum um I'm not too sure about others but you might want to check if you don't have any internet at all right now or you don't have a cable or something like that check with some just call around with some service providers and ask them if they you know say I'm a teacher I need internet access and see what they can offer you um I've heard that um that people are just being really generous right now especially to teachers because they understand and you know of course that is a business standpoint also you know we're they're hoping that you know once the this is all over that you're you'll remain with them you know blah blah blah but but that's that's the best I can do otherwise um I don't really know I mean unless other people have ideas also please um it's quite a few ideas going in the chat now Lisa thank you oh thanks so much that was good question very good question because that is difficult all right too much is too much please I can't emphasize this enough in the past three weeks I've probably been to more webinars than I have been in 10 years I mean there's just in a good way there have been so many people stepping up OTAN, Catesil um you know other people that are coming up with these like on the spot webinars for us these sessions to come to just like this one to help us because we're desperate we're asking for anything but please please please pick and choose pick and choose what you want I mean it's it's you can't do it all and and you can't just for the benefit of your students too it's too much for them they're just trying to get online one and then they're just trying to connect with you too yeah and everything else is bonus so I mean this is like one tenth of some of the things that are available out there um that that I've just you know that have been produced recently with webinars and such um it goes on and on and on but with that said let me show you even more choose tools that enhance your life if you've been to any of my presentations I tell you this all the time it all these resources any resource it needs to enhance your life not suffocate it you need to make sure that you understand it so when it says it's easy that's relative what's easy for me may not be easy for you you have to pick and choose what is going to be easy quote-unquote for you and your students make sure that it's fun and I'm not talking about like it's always fun all the time like gamification which are fun but you can't do gamification like kahoo and quizzes and things like that all the time it's it gets boring after a while um but it gets the job done make sure that you know whatever it is that you're choosing gets the job done don't do it just to do it um because students will show lack of interest and um they'll stop they'll you know it's like it's like kind of the class if they're not interested in the class they'll stop coming all right here's a break time for us so please everybody take a deep breath two times me too there's just too much stuff the last three weeks have been a swirl a whirlwind of things um melinda is there anything pressing or questions a question again in the chat it would have been good in the q&a what platform are you guys using to conduct your classes we are being asked to use canvas which is a bit complicated i can't imagine my students using it to connect with me so do you have a platform at garden grove um we have several okay so at in garden grove um we've been very fortunate that our director has been very open with us in that she is allowing us individually to decide what is best for our class there are other agencies where the director the principal has been very managed in the fact that they tell the teachers you must use this and that's you know there's no ifs and buts about it uh good or bad it depends um like the one for canvas if you're not familiar with canvas then that's extra difficult because now you are going to have to learn how that's the whole thing with this whole thing too is that teachers need to learn how to use the resources before they can show their students that's doubly you know um difficult or challenging for us as beginning he has self teachers because we're not only learning it for ourselves but now how do we communicate that to our teach our students so with canvas or school at g google classroom moodle um you know they are managed you know they're learning management systems and so they're very organized but again if you're not familiar with it you it's it's a lot of work because you have to familiarize yourself with it and then you have to find a way to communicate that now with that said thank goodness throughout this whole thing even before there are tons of resources out there on how to learn canvas how to learn moodle how to learn um google classroom otan has done a tremendous job of getting all of those um tech talks and videos out there and it's on the otan web page um please use it use those um tutorials to help you help your students that was a good question anything else there's a few uh comments just people chiming in on the the type of uh lms's that they use uh google classroom has come up a quite a few times some people love canvas so and somebody made a good point use something that um that your students are already familiar with if you can yeah don't put them in a new pool if they're already used to the pool that you've been using in class i guess yeah i mean if you can help it i mean you know like i said some agencies um have uh are under directorship that you know that they must use a certain platform and um hopefully it's just it's one that you've been using already at your school but um but it's not always the case great thank you so much those are good okay so where to begin let me take you on my journey about what happened so i told you that i was i just happened to be at school on friday i don't work on fridays but i just happened to be at school and i found out that our school wouldn't be open on monday and i didn't know what to do so fortunately for me i had already started using google voice now if you don't know what google voice is it's a phone it's a google phone number that runs through email and for me um i used it with my students because they needed to tell me whether they were if they were going to be absent or if they had to leave you know earlier come late or something and it's texting for them it goes to their phone their cell phone they text it to me but it goes to my gmail account so they don't have my personal cell phone number but they they're typing they're texting as if they are and for me that worked out really really well because i used to give my cell phone number and i didn't have a problem with that that was not a big deal for me but i sometimes i got texts at five o'clock in the morning sometimes i got texts at 11 o'clock p.m and that was a little bit too much so i decided to get the google voice number and um and for me i type faster than i text so to get their texts and such on email was a lot better because then i just respond to an email and i'm going to show you all this later if you're not familiar with it alisa we have a question are there any privacy issues we should consider before using texts phones zoom yes and i don't know like legality i don't know what tech you know like the the yes there's always going to be privacy issues and it might come to the point where um you may just have to connect with your student you know maybe via text and just say our is it okay if i text you or is it okay if i use your phone number or you know and things and maybe just asking the permission and and again that's a little bit difficult because of our the level of our students the English level but hopefully they can use either google translate or have somebody at their home explain what it is that you're asking them and if anybody's not comfortable you know using text or you know they don't want their phone number or such you're going to have to maybe talk to your administrator about that because um you know otherwise everything's so up in the air it's like i'm trying to think of like how we would handle it at my school but you know honestly i really just don't know i mean is it a matter of they won't continue as a student in the fall well you know that's not really fair but that might be the way or you know the you know does it press upon registration things like that i you know everything's so up in the air but i think for the most part um everybody's trying to give each other a little slack you know um we want the best for our students and for right now for me you know communicating with me via text or emails the best thing i can think of but if they're just not comfortable with it you can't push it so i hope that helped a little bit um as far as security yeah i'm not too sure i haven't had an issue yet so you know not bored um google voice is a free app um i don't use my personal cell phone number um i email instead of text um they can actually call me they can call that phone number it's an actual phone number it's a seven for me it's a seven one four number and they can actually call it and leave me a voicemail and the voicemail will get transcribed now if i have time i'm going to i'm going to show you what one of those looks like because of course you know with our students and their accents and their low level english you know the transcribing is not you know 100 but it's very cute and you know because we know our students so you know we all speak esl so we can kind of decipher what they're saying um in general not even just with your students it is free um you can make phone calls and texts for free so this is another alternative kind of like um whatsapp or you know things like that where you can make phone calls for free um and then students can send pictures through their texting as if they're texting me a picture but it's going to go to my gmail and not my phone which is a good thing for me because i don't want a lot of that memory in my phone um stored okay so that's what i did i so i okay our school gave me my roster and on the roster i'd had all the phone numbers of my students and um so what i did was i i google voiced them and i sent them a text a quote-unquote text saying please email me at alisateacherj2 at gmail.com so i created a whole new gmail just for this situation where i wanted students to contact me via email um at this particular address and i said if you don't have gmail try to create one that's all i could say because i can't i i was literally going to on monday when we were going to come back to school we were going to start to learn how to create a gmail i had the stack of papers on my on my desk and because that was now not available i had to just i just had to give it up i had to give up the control of of trying to do this with them and just say please have somebody help you and it worked um i the students who had gmail already emailed or email not even just gmail i preferred gmail but if they even just had email i was fine yahoo or hotmail or whatever it was they started emailing me at that new address and i'll tell you why that's important um some of them were sending me in the text their email address and i said please i wrote them right back and i said please email me at that address because i didn't want to go through and have to type an email every single time so if they sent me an email that means i had their email address already in my um context list and we'll talk about that too so here's what um a response was so um i had i gave them a test which is like oh my god i said how could you do that but yes so i gave them a test and um on youtube and um one of the he wrote back and he said i did the test and then this is his picture of the test so he was able to take a photo of his paper and then text it to me and i got it in my email so that was pretty interesting i mean it was kind of an experiment because i didn't know how it was going to work but it worked out pretty well so i was i was pretty happy with that all right email so i'm literally so it's going to be very quick before gmail what email did you use i'm just curious and this should go in the chat yahu yahu igc.org yahu school.email yahu yahu yahu come here oh my god it's going so fast 18 t a i did not see aol did i um first link uh uh before gmail exactly uh rocket mail yes mail i still use it yahu still hot mail aol district email hot mail hot mail okay i just literally i just wanted to see what some of the answers were but just because i thought it was so funny i've asked this at another agency one time and somebody said juneau and i went oh my gosh i haven't heard that in such a long time and some of you are probably just laughing going oh yeah i had a juneau account all right so the reason why oopsie sorry the reason why i like gmail so much is because um it's very user-friendly and and it's of course it's free i have multiple i mean wanda can can attest to this also i have multiple gmail accounts um for various things and um it's not difficult to connect to each of my gmails at the same time so that's kind of why i like it now for this purpose for what we're going through right now it has been absolutely um so helpful and and i you know i'm sorry i can't speak on hotmail and i can't speak on other email services because i don't know if they do this but i would assume there's something pretty close to it in gmail i have created a contact list i made a group so that's why it was important for for my students to send me an email first so that i had a list of all of their email addresses in one place and then i can just click click click click click click create a group and now when i want to send an email i send one email to everybody at the same time and that has been super helpful i mean it's kind of you know it's the same theory as remind and what's happened things where you just have a group of people and you just do one thing at one time and send it to everybody it really really saves a lot of time and sanity you can extend the send time i've done this in other presentations where in the settings when you hit send it the default is five seconds it will give you five seconds to undo you can actually go through and change that to 30 seconds which can really help if you send something and you're like oh i didn't mean to send it or there was something else you can undo the send and it won't it won't send it anywhere it'll come back so that's really helpful in just in life in general i could save your job you can label emails so that all my emails that are coming from my students in my morning class i can label it a certain color and my night students i can label different colors when i can kind of keep track it's just kind of organization skills you can snooze emails so sometimes students have emailed me back with their homework or or whatever just to say hi and i don't have time to reply to them right then and there but i really want to because it's really important that if somebody sends you something you've got to reply and so what i could do is i can hit a snooze and after a certain amount of time it'll go back to the top of my list because you know when you get emails it just gets buried at the bottom and then you forget about it what this will do is it'll put it back to the top of the list so that i go oh yes i need to reply to this person and then with gmail we also have hangouts and we hangouts excuse me is chatting and also video conferencing and then meet hangouts is with gmail and meet is with your g suite so if you're using your work email then you can actually have a zoom like experience with meet so that's been you know that's just another alternative to zoom at least so we have some questions on email would you like them now or no let's do it now okay um what percentage of your literacy students have been able to use email with you that's a really good question i've had to be pretty patient with it but it's it's turned out so between my two classes i have a morning class on it a night class and they're both beginning literacy i have 67 students right now i have 38 sending okay 38 that have sent me an email so that means i have their email address and from those 38 i probably correspond regularly um to about 27 or so so there are some that have sent me an email but then i've never heard from them again so i'm not sure what happened with that but either like somebody set them set it up for them and they're just not able to go back to opening their email or they just you know nobody's giving them space you know or a device to open it so um yeah for me five would have been fine you know any amount would have been fine but yeah i'm pretty happy with what i have right now there are still a few that i haven't heard from either oh i'm sorry and then also through a google voice i have three students three students who haven't made an email but they still communicate with me via google i mean via texting so i have some that makes it about 30 so a little bit less than half 50 um so you know for me that's that's okay i'm okay with that um there are some agencies that i've heard that are very that are being pressured about making sure that they get attendance and again like i say you can only do so much you know you can only reach out so much and if they aren't responding back to you you know you can keep trying to just telling them i care about you and i hope that you're okay to or just to like well if i haven't heard from you then you know i hope you're okay and and let it go um so these are my contact lists so as you can see i have 39 students or i have 39 people in this particular contact list and this is what it looks like so when i'm sending a new message all i have to do is type lecj2 and all of these names appear and um i always make sure that you keep put yourself in your contact list so that you always get a an email to yourself what the students are looking at too um for me it just keeps it's a nice uh trap sheet for me um and then i'll tell you another thing too i didn't the screen shows a little deceiving because this is not how it how i did it but um i'll show you in a minute all right so student resources um we have two mindsets going on let me check my timer book okay so we have two mindsets um is it a resource or is it managed instruction and we'll talk about that so these are some of the um resources that i personally use with my students except for putting english to work this is a new one and i'm thinking about doing it in the future but i'm not i haven't started it yet but these are other ones that i've used with my students now what i mean by resource is is it just something i'm going to show my students how to do and they're going to do it on their own they can choose what activity they do they choose what when to do it you know for how long or is it managed instruction where i say okay on monday i want you to finish i want you to go to learning chocolate and finish colors and um you know let me know that you finished by tuesday so you know again it's not like classroom time where it's 8 30 11 but it's like i give them time because i never know when they're able to get on the on the computer or on the device so um but that's just managed like i'm telling them which which um uh what's it called what which section to go to which you know um what to study and then when to study it so that's those are things that you're going to have to keep in mind about what you want from your students um so let's talk about learningchocolate.com it is by far the easiest user-friendly website that i could give my students and i was late on the bandwagon with this um we have a couple of teachers at my school that were using it and kept going on and on and on about it and i was like i don't know it's just one more thing da da da and then all of a sudden i i just said okay i'm just going to try it and it worked like a charm it is so so easy i literally told the students go to okay so in the classroom it was go to chrome because we were using chromebooks now you cannot say go to chrome you have to say go to the internet because we don't know what device they're using whether it's safari or you know um if it's um chrome or you know all the other ones um so i just say go to the internet they understand that and then i say learningchocolate.com now i have learned please learn from my mistakes if you're typing out instructions for your students do not write the word type type learningchocolate.com because they will literally type type if that makes sense they will put t-y-p-e-l-e-a-r-n-i-n-g and so that's a problem so i've learned not to do that anymore i just tell them what the website is and i i just take it for granted that they understand to type that in there lisa is this um is this site available on uh mobile is it mobile friendly yes that's a great question it is and we tested it in my classroom and my classroom has i mean my school has limited wi-fi um we don't have we don't even have wi-fi for guests and for whatever reason the powers would be some of my students were able to get on in my classroom so i know that they'll be able to get on at home if they have wi-fi um so they they type learningchocolate.com um sometimes it will tell it will um it'll show them like the list of websites and then just tell them to go to the home and then so here's here's what here's what it is so they can um choose any there's i only cut the picture is cut off there's a there's a lot of resources in there or you can tell them to go to category and choose a category and you know depending on what it is so if they want if you want them to do classroom um whatever it is they want you want them to study or whatever they want to study so it is a resource or is it a managed instruction okay there are five components this is what's nice about learning chocolate to every single um lesson is the same so it has a matching one a matching two a matching three a fill in which is listening and then dictation which is the listening and typing so um so first off the students will listen yellow orange red and then they'll do the matching you know and it's the the hard part about this is that you you would have to teach them the word drag because they have to drag from one to another so they have to drag um the you know the answer to the question and that's how it is with all of these and I'll show you that when we get to the the website. USA Learns there's been plenty of webinars and talk about USA Learns it's a really good resource for for all of for beginning through intermediate so they have a one two and a three level they also have the new citizenship so if any of your students are are still studying to be citizens then they can practice their citizenship and then they're also coming up with a new program maybe by the end of the year or it depends on now with all this going on but it's called Access America and what it's going to be is it'll be a series of um how tos basically for students or new immigrants to the country like how to um apply for college how to uh get a bank account how to you know things like that so it's going to be a series of of of instructions on that and that's going to that's coming up soon and that'll be on USA Learns now the thing with USA Learns is that there's an email that needs to be required so that's tough you know if you're still having the problem of I you know my students don't have email or I can't get my students to have an email or get an email that's that's one of the difficulties so I've been talking with Andrea Willis who's the director of USA Learns and we've been trying to figure out alternative ways to get them signed up but still be able to track and so we're in the works of that but that won't happen for quite a while um there is a teacher management system again you can also just introduce your students to USA Learns and they're they're on their own they can do it as much or as little as they like and you know whatever lessons or you can put them in a classroom um a USA Learns classroom and then you can manage you can you know tell them do lesson one today or do lesson five and um you can track them and see how long they've been on it typing club so this is just out of just I'm just giving you this only because it's so student friendly typing club is a typing uh website and it is literally as easy as typing club.com get started boom they're in lessons to start typing there's no account there's no um tracking necessary they can if you see up here there is a login they can sign up you can sign up also you can also do a classroom and again if you want to manage them a little bit more put them in a classroom and track their progress and blah blah blah but um for for my students I just showed them this and I just let it up to them um because I wanted to know if typing was still a necessary skill and I found out it is it really is a necessary skill still and but I just let them do it on their own um ESL America one of the teachers that I work with Donna Barr um and um OTAN's own Blair Roy created this website called ESL America and I'm telling you it is one of the best websites out there everything in it has sound which is very um rare you don't find something that has everything every component in the website has the sound has sound in one form of another whether it's just a listening or whether it's dictation um it's incredible and there are so many elements to it I had to cut the screen off but I mean this is just part of the things that are offered to the students and um some of them are links to other websites but again everything has sound and then some of them are teacher created and um she has dictation in there she's got tons of stuff so um please I urge you to check out this it's very user friendly um many of the teachers at my school um have their students use it a lot put in English to work this is the so I used this a long long long time ago when it was in VHS and if you're like if you don't understand what VHS is then I'm a little bit upset but that's okay that's that's neither here nor there but I used to use the VHS tapes um for this series and I haven't used it a very very long time but um LA um LA Unified their their DACE program the department they have put all of the English to work series online with the worksheets and so if you go to keeplearning.weardace.org you will find the put in English to work series on there there's no um accounts there's no setups um you know you can your students to do lesson one unit one lesson one or you could just say here's the here here it is practice on your own um it if you don't know putting English to work it's it's there it's a video series and I follow some ESL students in the US and how they're coping with you know being in the US about getting a job and making friends and this and that and it it's a it's a teacher Ms. Marquez and then her students and then all of them have worksheets that they can practice and so you know it's a it's a really good program it's very inclusive all right it's stretch time oh everybody needs to take a stretch if you can do what she's doing on the screen 10 points to you okay any questions Melinda your comments I'm still looking at the picture I would have to get a an ambulance if I did that um yes uh there's a question can you post the last url into the chat it I think it was two slides back is what we're talking okay um was it putting English to work or ESL America ESL America probably there we go so ESL america.us yeah or if it was this one it's uh keep learning dot we are dace.org there you go and I would type all of the links in the chat for all of you but I'm busy answering the questions in the Q&A so all of the the links will be in the um the handout that we'll get from from Elisa and it will be posted on the OTAN website and I'm just gonna while you're stretching and taking a break there's been quite a few questions to that please understand that I'm answering questions as much as I can and I will miss a few but um all of the handouts for every webinar that we've done we have to make them accessible and then they are posted on the OTAN website on that COVID-19 button that's on the website you just click that and then you're taken there okay so and thank you Kyle um he just posted a link okay I can't see the chat right now because I have my screen full but but I mean are we doing okay are you guys I'm hanging with you we do have one request to go a little slower but I don't think we can do that because we do have some time constraints we have to end this so that we can open up the next webinar this afternoon so we can't go too slow so but we will put up the recording so that you can rewind it and watch things as many times as you can want okay yeah and I hear you totally I mean if if I could I'd really tried hard not to too too many but then as I was working on this I thought oh that's a good one or that's a good one and so again I don't want to overwhelm you please you know watch the recording again or you know get the get the handouts and look at the slides and pick and choose one or two if that to use don't think that you have to use all of these I'm just giving you my experience from my experience I'm not doing all of these with all my students right now I have done them with my students but I'm not doing them all at the same time because they would be crying and it's just too much okay and Elisa we do have some questions in the Q&A but keep learning website where what how where's that okay so keeplearning.weardace.org is the LA unified it's the department of adult and career education that's the putting English to work series okay uh is using regular email an option sending lessons by mail including letters of encouragement and resources during this time um I think that was a two-part question I didn't quite understand it one more time is using the regular mail an option regular mail sending lessons by mail including letters of encouragement I mean of course it's always an option but I mean that's it depends on your school whether that's um an expense you're gonna have to put up yourself or if your school is willing to do that there was a small discussion when we first had our first staff meeting that was um one of the things that somebody had asked and um our director encouraged us to just use um uh digital resources um but again if you're I mean so but the exception with that was our high school diploma students um some of them just can't get on and they're really struggling to to graduate and so we made packets for them okay with that said what I do which I've been doing for years and years and years and it's totally on my own volition this is nothing to do with my school at all is I make postcards for my students and um for whatever it is whether so I just sent some out yesterday for Easter and it says you know like happy Easter I hope you're healthy da da da and I do postcards because it's cheaper obviously this the stamps are cheaper but and they're easier because I just you know I just make I create them myself and I just print them and stuff and I cut them up and I send them off but that's totally up to me and because I have some students that have not connected with me and I want them to know that I'm still thinking about them so um I have done I do snail mail with my students okay regardless so we have uh let's see she said we should all know phs what is that sorry never heard of it related to esl phs so it might have been oh phs phs okay everybody knows phs I'm so happy okay so it was yeah I'm misunderstanding so it's phs does elisa need to use other apps or does she use google voice plus email is her only ways to communicate with her literacy classes yes only google voice and email okay I I have tried I tried to remind at the beginning of the school year and it was great for those students that were there that day and then I kind of like forgot about it the rest of the time and so I don't have a lot of students on the line so I just I skipped it I mean literally there are tons of ways you can do a couple of our teachers are total remind freaks they love remind it's very easy for them but for me it was one more thing to do if I looking back if I were to go back again I would have probably done things differently but because I was so desperate to try to communicate with my students any way I could these were the two things that I already knew I could do with them but but yeah remind or what's app you know those are great resources also and you can learn about those in other sessions okay last last question what do you think of flip grid to create audio video lessons and receive audio answers from students is that too advanced no I don't think I don't think so to a point if you're comfortable with flip grid that's one thing because then you know the ins and outs of it and then how do you communicate with your students how to get to the flip grid you know I mean so there's so many elements to things so again it's just like our in class everything has to be step by step and so once they it's going to be trial and error once they do it and it's a little difficult keep doing it again and it'll get easier and easier and easier that's that's true for all of this it's going to be difficult for some of the students two or three times but you just have to keep giving it to them and eventually they'll start getting to it just like in our classrooms I would not give up on something the first time if it didn't if you know it was quote unquote a flop all right so now those are like resources that they could do on their own or again like I said managed instruction and then these are kind of activities that we can do with our students that might make it fun maps or Google Earth Google Maps and Google Earth what I've done with my students is that I've had them look up a city in their native country maybe they're you know where they're from where are they from and look it up in Google Maps you will not you will not believe how amazed they are to see like the little picture of their house or their town or whatever it is or even if you do it in this then the house their address today you know they have to show a little picture of their house they're like they just get so excited about that a lot of them have used Google Maps you know for directions and things but not really to look up things and I'm going to show you an email that I would send to my students on how to do these little activities in Google Earth I haven't used that yet but I was playing around with it yesterday and it looks so amazing I think maybe I'll try to do that in the future YouTube so one of the ways that I communicate with my students and it totally took me out of my comfort zone because I'm a selfie girl where I like to take photos of myself but I'm not a video person and I didn't ever really I mean even like on YouTube I mean even on zoom and stuff I don't usually have my video up and just because I don't know I just kind of felt uncomfortable but I thought you know the students love you okay please don't forget that your students love you and they miss you and they want to see you and they want to hear you especially they miss that interaction with you and so what I started doing was I started making YouTube videos because most of your students who are on the internet know YouTube in one shape or form and they're not professional at all in fact like the first ones I look back on it go oh my gosh but you know what it is what it is and as it's going as time has been going on I've learned a little bit more and they've gotten a little bit better I guess but still it doesn't matter to me I just wanted to make a video that the students can see me and and hear my voice and know that I'm caring about them and things like that and it's gone crazy they absolutely love it and that's how I gave my vocabulary test to them was on YouTube um okay infinite resources we all we all use YouTube for one for one thing or another and your students do too I did some interviews with some higher for some advanced students and I said how did you learn you know how did you learn English and 90% of them said YouTube I I don't know if there's certain YouTube you know channels or subscribers that they're watching but their English was so good and a lot of them said in their country they watch YouTube videos on you know practicing English this is my way to connect with students students can create their own YouTube's if you want you know but that's all in you know advanced and subtitles that was the one thing that was important for me too is that that the YouTube videos have subtitles or closed captioning so that they could read what I was saying all right so those are all the resources that I have so let's go ahead and take a closer look at what I'm talking about I'm going to get out of full screen all right so this is what I'm talking about when I was talking about Google voice this is what it looks like they're sending me so this is a student's phone number this is their actual phone number and they're sending it to me and it comes in like an email but it tells me it's a text message this is a voicemail that a student has sent to me and if I click on it okay it looks like an email and here's the transcribing may I speak to open phone thank you goodbye thank you of course the transcription is not exact um I'm going to play it I don't know if you're going to be able to hear it but let's let's check so this is what the Google voice uh fake you know the face looks like anybody call that number yeah I know I'm serious please don't call that number that's it too they open phone thank you and goodbye thank you all right so that's literally one of my students and um uh oops and um you know so I just was so happy that he even just texted me because he's one of the very very low students and for him to do it himself and not have somebody else do it for him I was thrilled so I texted him back saying thank you for your message you know uh I I miss you I love you stay healthy and that was it I don't really even know what he said but it was nice um we were talking about um the contact lists and such um so this is my email that the students are responding me to so I send them my I send them my emails to them and then they're responding back um it depends on what it is so these are all so I started to be very good about um you know managing organizing them and then of course I haven't so that's why I have so many emails in my inbox right now um are you tracking students work for attendance um I am now I didn't at the very beginning um because I was a little bit overwhelmed because they're coming in so fast and so it erratically but now I do I have a sheet of paper with all of my students names and then I just check if they checked in with me that day or did their homework or and such and such because um in my district our director has kind of indicated that that that's going to be a thing for us and I didn't want to have to go back you know a month's worth of work so I I've started doing it excuse me just recently um I just want to show you one of the emails real quick that I sent so this was I think before I did videos I sent them a picture of me with with the fruit and I said I like fruits do you like fruits and then what fruit do you see in the picture okay and that was it it was literally me sitting on a chair eating my snack and um and I said take a selfie with the fruit you have I love you stay healthy so then here's one of the responses I see a strawberry and so my student has him with bananas so I didn't know if students were going to do it or not but they started doing it it was really good um this student I I didn't hear from him for a really long time and then all of a sudden he started doing it and there was a picture with an apple I also like apples and so you know I read the sentences and I know he did not write the sentence because I know him and I know his level of English but you know what at this point I just don't care um I any response and that he did it and he checked the homework and he checked my email I'm okay with you know at this point right now it's not about instruction and it's not about you know um uh-oh see and I replied to him thanks Brooke I love the picture so I don't have to write lengthy emails back to them either it's just hey I see it great job thank you for doing it um all right sorry my internet okay so here's learning chocolate so like I was telling you there are plenty of um options for them very basics okay the one thing I will tell you to make sure I I wrote this in an email when I did the learning chocolate is I told the students okay see how there's so many ads okay that could be a disaster so I just told them only the blue links like only the blue click on only the blue and I said anything that says start now or install I said do not you know I had to keep like reinforcing that so you might want to do that with your students also so here's that one with basic colors so they just listen yellow orange very you know natural natural sounding and then here's the matching so again luckily for me I did this in the classroom we had started this in the classroom first so they understood how to do it but if you're just going to start doing this right now you're going to have to take screenshots of this and show students how to do it because or or have them have somebody at home help them do this because they listen blue and then they have to click and drag blue and then when they finish they can check it they check their answers okay so what app do you use to record your videos or to make a tutorial on this let's say you you decide to create a video how do you do that oh okay so if I wanted to make a video of me using this right now like I'm doing right now I would use screencastify which I haven't even talked about but but and there are plenty of OTAN trainers who have done what webinars and workshops on screencastify or what's the other one there's a bunch of them so yeah what she said there's a there's a lot of information just type in screencastify on the OTAN website and you'll probably come up with a tutorial one more question here and it's come up a couple times I see ventures in the files how is ventures used okay press that later he had yeah ventures real quick so our school is using ventures the whole school all the levels are using ventures and that's the main text that our director wants us to concentrate on and I hope she's not in here because I'm going to tell you a secret and so please don't tell anybody else I haven't been as good as I could have been getting my students to do ventures because not a lot of them have bought the book and so I have done some things with it as far as I just told them like unit eight is on jobs so we will be studying about jobs and if they had the book you know it was pages blah blah blah and then we as a as a program have a website and the website has the ventures some ventures worksheets and stuff like that and so I directed them to that but that's pretty much all I've done as far as the ventures go but I have access to e-source if you're familiar with ventures I have we have access to e-source at home and if I'm able to get my students on zoom or hangouts which I have not yet I could probably do some lessons on ventures with the e-source and the presentation tool so that's that's my my secret please don't tell my director USA learns I'm not going to go too much into it a lot of you have seen it already um but again email required that's the one that's the one pit sorry my screen is I can't get to my here's ESL America the one I was telling you that was created by one of the teachers that I work with and here are all the different options I mean there's so many there's so many so some of them like I said are links to other websites and some of them are things that our teacher created so I mean it's such a plethora a resource that is incredible typing club.com so here typing club.com get started and it's easy as that click here to begin that's it I mean they start they can just start typing practicing typing it's not going to save anything obviously but yeah it's pretty good it is a freemium where you know they want you to have a subscription and stuff but there's plenty of plenty of things for them to do that are free so that's kind of nice here is the base the putting English to work so here are the videos and the worksheets and then they also included Newzella Newzella if you don't know what Newzella is it's a it's a website that has authentic articles in many different levels so the same one article from authentic sources like Time or the New York Times or the Washington Post will have the article for advanced students intermediate students and beginning students the same article and they also have lesson plans that go with them and tests now it is it was a subscription based website but I heard that Newzella is offering their premium what their premium service for free for teachers I think for three months or until August or something like that so you might want to check that out too I don't use it with my students but it's a little bit too hard for my students but but if you have beginning high beginning maybe beginning low might be a little too hard still but beginning high and above it would be a really good resource so this is the google maps that I was telling about talking to you about um this is how we did we use we actually use this for the EL civics banking where they had to find two banks that were close to their home and so you can actually do that with with anything you can find have and find a supermarket or a library or Google Earth again I haven't used it I just started playing with it yesterday but it looks really really good and it's so beautiful I mean I like looking at this I mean I'm sure my students would like looking at this too and when you get actually get into it when you launch it there's a whole toolbar on the side yeah come up yeah there's a whole toolbar on the side and they can do lots of things on it I'm gonna see if I have that yes so here's it here okay oh this is what I wanted to tell you when I send emails a group email like this I don't put it in the two box I put it in the bcc because I here's one of the things you guys were asking somebody asked about the privacy the privacy I don't share the other email addresses with all the other students so I blind cc everybody so they don't know they're only getting it for themselves they don't see who else gets the email and so um that's probably one of the ways that I kind of control maybe a little security or a little privacy but this would be an email that I would send my students I haven't sent it yet just because I want to fine-tune it a little bit but um if I were to send them this email if I can get it up so I would you know good morning I give them instructions okay just as if I were in the classroom and then I say go to the internet again I don't say chrome because they may not necessarily have chrome they might have safari or something else I don't write the word type here I did do this one because I didn't know how else to say it I screenshot where I wanted them to write it choose nearby I circled it so a lot of the stuff is screenshots type bank in the box look for the red dollar sign tap or click so before we when we were using chromebooks we did how mice and so it was always tap tap tap if we're in the computer lab it's click well I don't know which what device they're using so I do both and then this is what information I want them to look for take out a piece of paper copy the questions so it's very specific on what I want them to do step by step by step by step by step and they can take as much time as they want on this because we're not in the classroom I give them an example of what it could look like and then I say find one or two banks nearby your home answer the questions and then take a photo okay so that would be like a typical email that I would send if I want to give instructions that's kind of like that thing at the very very beginning when I was talking about direct instruction with a question mark you know I am giving them direct instructions here but I'm not I can't tell whether they understand or how well they'll understand or you know if they're with me or not so all I can do is send it off and then I wait for them to reply or not reply and see how it goes um so then the last part is youtube excuse me so here's my teacher page for the most part it's pretty user friendly to create a youtube page it goes with your google account so this this is all connected with my google account and then these are my videos you know I okay please please please I'm not trying to be an influencer I'm not trying to go viral I'm just trying to communicate with my students excuse me with some videos so some of them have not turned out well and that's okay and then because we're learning about jobs you know this inventures I asked a few of my friends to make a video of their job and I gave them a little script and they kept some you know they could keep doing or not keep to it and and explain it so I'm just gonna I'll do one real quick um save this little and you can see the close captioning also good morning my name is Larry Myers I'm an engineer and electrical engineer and I designed the electrical systems for buildings including schools hospitals fire stations supermarkets and apartment buildings pretty much anything that needs electricity is what I can design I like my job because every day is different every project is different so I get to work on new things every single day I usually work in an office with other engineers but now we all have to work from home so I'm by myself and I only communicate with people on the telephone or on the computer but our office is pretty advanced and that's not that there but um yeah I mean yes um what are the privacy settings on your YouTube videos okay so um right now the videos that I make myself are public I that's why you can see them on my line the ones that are of other people I have asked them I tell them up front I say I'm going to put this on my YouTube channel if that's not and I'm going to put this on my YouTube channel if you're not comfortable with that I can set the privates I can set the settings to private so that only the people the only my students can watch it with the link and so far everybody's been okay with with um it's being on my YouTube channel and like I said you know pretty much the only people looking at my YouTube channel are my students but again you have to ask for that permission how do people find your YouTube channel how do people find mine so if you go into YouTube and you type alisa teacher esl I think or so like those are like kind of tags that you can put on your channel and then if people type that stuff in my YouTube channel comes up um so I did that with a few with a few so I was giving one a day and I emailed I emailed my students and I gave them a link to the to the YouTube and I had them answer questions you know what is Larry's job um where does he work what does he do you know and I did it the same for all the people who did it for me now the one I did just the other day was I got a YouTube video from the mayor of Garden Grove I I reached out to the mayor of our city and I asked him if he would do this for us and he he did it right away I mean it was amazing I was so excited and um so uh you know that was really exciting for for for me I don't know so much for my students but um so that's how that's how I've been using the YouTube the YouTube um I am um so the very very last thing is um OTAN I like I told you at the very beginning I can't emphasize this enough I please I urge you to go to the YouTube channel join YouTube you'll get all the you'll get resources beyond like um you'll get emails telling you when new things are coming up or the webinars every week um so the top stories are always going to be about the webinars for the upcoming week okay the OTAN also has office hours if you have individual questions or you need some help with something there are times where you can reach out to OTAN and somebody will get hold of you here is the the tab for the COVID-19 field support it is a plethora of lessons uh or sorry resources that you can utilize