 OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network. Apps for mobile devices in the Adult Ed class. OTAN Technology and Distance Learning Symposium 2020. So again, my name is Francisco Pineda. I'm the lead instructor for Solid Data Adult School and also the OTAN Subject Matter Expert Trainer. So today's session is going to be on implementing apps and mobile devices for your mobile devices in and out of the classroom. Now, you have a handout that is going around, okay? In that handout, I have listed all the apps and websites that I will be covering. And then on the backside, you have the correlation to the civic objectives that you could use it to if you're doing one of these civic objectives. Most of mine relate to job readiness skills, job preparation skills. So you'll see that next to the app's name. It's going to say what co-ops they could relate to that you could use it. It's not to do that civics task, but is that you could use it as a compliment, as I call it, okay? OTAN, a little bit about me. I've been an ESL instructor at Solid Data Adult School since 2004 up until 2000. Well, presently, I still am. Also, I'm the lead instructor as of last year. And a lot of people say, well, what is the lead instructor technically director to? Just with another title. I've also been a subject matter expert from since 2010 for OTAN and also have been a CalPro trainer since 2017. So thanks to Suri. About OTAN, again, our vision is to lead California's adult instructors into the implementation of technology in your classroom. And that's the goal that we have in OTAN is for you to use all these devices that some of your students have already, mobile phones, tablets in the classroom. And again, most of these apps work for any type of tablet. It doesn't have to be a high expensive one or even a cell phone. Some of my students use their phones that they get for free if they qualify, you know, outside of the grocery store and things like that. I mean, or some of the tablets, we have a lot of nonprofit organizations in our area that do drives where you could do purchase a Chromebook or even a iPad at a very low cost. So you don't need the expensive technology to do this. Why technology? Because of our adult students are very tech savvy. So we're getting a lot of those 20 to mid 30s that are very tech savvy and they're the ones also helping our seasoned students come up to date with their technology. Also, the cost of technology is a lot cheaper than not even a decade ago, just a few years ago. Technology prices have gone down and jobs related to technology are expected to increase by 23% by this year. So this is information from the California Workforce Development Board. Their strategic plan from 2016 to 2020 where it says that most of the jobs are going to be really are going to be using technology by this year. And I asked my students, a lot of them are seasonal farm workers and they're like, yeah, we use the tablet now to program what time the sprinklers are going to go off in the fields instead of going at two in the morning to turn on the pump and at six a.m. to turn off the pump and go to another field. Now they control it with a tablet, but they need to know exactly what field they're going to be irrigating because if they select the wrong field and the seedlings are this big and it gets a lot of water. That's a whole crop damage right there. So they have to use they're using this technology in jobs like that. Kim. So how to use technology in your classroom? So you use tablets, mobile devices, bring your own device. That's how I started doing mine. I would have the students bring in their own mobile device. We would connect to the school's student Wi-Fi or sometimes I would have a hotspot and they would pair share because not everybody had a phone back in 2013-14. Now, usually in the whole class of 20, I might have one that might not have a smartphone. I still pair them up with someone at our offsite location. Also, we encourage students to take computer literacy classes either at our site or somewhere else. So we have a lot of community organizations that go out and do trainings for people. The city of Soledad also has done that. The city of Gonzales. So if we're full, we recommend them to go somewhere else to get these literacy digital literacy skills. So some of the free apps that I use and we use as educators and also as students, the students could use at home. They use at school and we're also starting to use it for blended instruction because we only have classes Monday through Thursday. So Friday is when we tell the students, okay, we want you to go at least an hour, hour and a half on whatever app they're using and then that way on Monday, we talk about what lesson did you do? How did you, is anybody else in the class doing the same lesson? They would kind of talk and be like, oh, I like this. I needed help with that. So they kind of help each other and the teacher facilitates that as well. The first app that I use for student communication is Remind. So first I'm going to go through the PowerPoint and then I'm going to show you the actual app so you could see how they work. So with Remind is a great way to send information with students. It's a good way to connect with them because sometimes they get students who are absent the whole week and our policy is after a certain amount of hours they get dropped and I don't want to drop them and then they come back and have to go on a waiting list. So sometimes I just send a simple text message. Hey, how are you? We miss you in class. Hope everything's going okay. Oh, I've been sick and this and but I'll come back Monday and then they come back Monday and everybody knows they're happy. Sending announcements. So instead of having to do copies for flyers for meetings next week is this week upcoming week is parent conference in our district instead of printing out and making copies of flyers. Remember, these are the questions to ask your teacher. We just send it automatically through Remind. It also fosters student communication. I send sometimes for the two classes I teach a good morning message. Reminders see you at six o'clock today and I'm able to see their responses and see how they're communicating with me. I tell my students don't use emojis. Don't use LOL. Don't use abbreviations. Use a complete sentence. And I am starting to see how they're improving in their when they're writing something. So instead of just a yes, no or happy face now they're able to elaborate a little bit more. USA Learns are other and again the app is free now as if I believe the fall of 2019. There are some mistaken four or five levels. I need to double check on that for the you and this is again is the app and there's also the website. So I'm going to be covering both. So the app is really nice because the students could download them on their mobile device and use them in class, outside of class, any time. It's also available on the computer at USAlearns.org and it incorporates video, audio and speaking. So this one is nice because it's again it's free for the students and the app is you know just a certain percent of the actual website. So I always encourage my students, you know, we'll use the website one so you could compare both of them. For our low beginning literacy students we use this free app called phonics genius. With phonics genius it's like flashcards of word families that they use. They listen to the native I call it the native voice or you know the English speaker and then they could also record and compare their voice to the native to the native speaker. So this one is nice because it starts introducing them with the short sounds, the long sounds and then word family. So a lot of the times at the beginning level this is the type of help the students need and then we encourage them get the free app and practice it at home and you know you start hearing their pronunciation improve after after a while. A story I like to share is a student that we have who speaks only Pashto but she is not literate in her native language so for her using this she's picking up a lot of the English pronunciation very well and you know we're very surprised how she is her pronunciation has improved in about a four month time period and she uses phonics genius and also some other apps that we use in the classroom. Of course US citizenship podcast the app teacher Jennifer we use this one in our citizenship prep program but we also do it when we talk about things like constitution day and we also talk about well in June we talk about independence day things like that because we don't have classes in July but right here it's very nice because it's updated like on a daily base I always said I don't know how teacher Jennifer does that she updates every day does she sleep does she know what sleep is and the reason why my students like it is because they could hear a lot of the mock interviews and because like it was like said yesterday at your session a lot of times the store I think it was your session some of the students think that the USCIS person is going to speak like the teacher does but when they hear different accents they're like oh wait a minute it's I don't have to speak perfect English and they're able to hear that on the actual website there's actual videos and the students really really like those there's also civics and history lessons again it is free. This app is only available on iOS tablets iPads okay it used to be available on Android devices I guess with the new version it's not so this is the new version of a whiteboard so when I started teaching elementary each student I was doing a second grade they had their little whiteboard and I would put a math problem on the board and okay they would write on the marker and then they would raise it up and show it to me right I'll be like show me so this is the new techie way of doing that so it's an app it turns your mobile device into a whiteboard so for this one we use it with the iPad students can use it for math problems and show their answers so instead of having the student come up to the board we have you know in our district we have Apple so we have the TV with the Apple Apple TV so they're able to airplay and show us and give us step by step how to do that and they're actually writing it out and you could see it on the TV screens we also use it for sentence math problems things like that you could choose different backgrounds for graphing as well so for our high set instructors and doing coordinates and also writing we have a lot of Arabic speaking students who are used to writing from right to left and with this one we teach them how to write from left to right so instead of wasting and wasting and wasting and wasting paper they could just go on here and start practicing with it here to career this is the one that we use a lot for our high school equivalency and our high school diploma students so now this app is great it's sometimes it is a little bit glitchy so what I found out is just to delete the app and then reinstall it again so what it does it provides information on local community colleges so this one here provides information on courses they offer and degrees it offers career pathways a career quiz and they've also added an interest quiz where you kind of answer those questions and it tells you based on your responses these are the jobs that are good match for you and then you click on it and these are the resources so it's very very good for career exploration but we do have a lot of our high school diploma students actually go on here and see we only have one local community college so they're able to see what is offered there and what degrees they could get and what would be the average pay with that degree so this one's really good and we'll look at it as well job readiness simulation games here to career and it's on your handout as well I believe all of the apps that I have on the side it says the free apps that one should be okay so the names right there so again it's really good a lot of the students really use it and then it could the students click on it sometimes it takes them to the actual website of the school for their financial aid the contact person so it has everything right there so the student doesn't have to go out and search additionally it could just do from a click okay job simulations again these mainly are we use it for some of the co-ops that we do for job readiness don't learners they're very interesting this year well my group is well our group is because they really are not into games so when we did the the co-op and we're like okay we're gonna play this game they're a little bit hesitant so I ended up doing it as a whole class and then once they saw how it was done they were playing with it but we do use this one again with our high school diploma students so we want them to prepare to get a job and it's just a job simulation one of them is get a job pro get hired job pro get dressed job pro get prepared so with get hired it's a mock interview and a lot of things go on like this person's cell phone rings and you're not making eye contact so you have to quickly fix those errors and you're getting points get dressed is it tells you you have a job interview in an amusement park how are you gonna dress up you have a job interview at a hotel as a receptionist how are you gonna dress and based on how you dress it scores you and then it'll tell you the possibilities of getting hired or not and then why or what are some of the problems with it this one here is more of a productivity genius scan sometimes you run out of handouts if you do use handouts or you need to scan something and you don't have a scanner this one turns in your tablet or even your smartphone into a scanner and you could scan the picture and email it to yourself to your students put it on your Google Drive or email it directly to the students or I send it on remind so sometimes if there's a handout or something that they really want a copy of I just click it scan it and send it to them so then that's why I kind of chose one that will work with both because in our class it's about a 50 50 so I don't want to have the students feel that oh I need to go buy you know spend this money so this app works great and I'm pretty sure there is a Google or Android alternative or something similar because now I'm starting to see a lot of the features from iOS being incorporated into oh it is oh okay good so in Android it's okay some of the websites that we use at home at home at school that the students could use at school they could use at home and we use it for blended learning is again USAlearns.org so this one we use it mainly for our intermediate advanced students because some of the and I mean I could use it with the beginning students but for that one we do use a paid subscription app that is only for beginning students this one for intermediate students we use USAlearns their interactive lessons and now we are also incorporated into our citizenship class because it has video it has audio it's very very well developed and again the citizenship prep is only available it's not available as an app it's only the actual website with USAlearns you could set up the teacher set up a teacher account add your students and monitor your students and that's how we know so Monday morning Ms. Falls to the teacher she'll be like oh half of the class was on Friday the other half what happened and then of course you hear every excuse in the book but then the teachers are like this is part of your class assignment is at least an hour hour and a half over the weekend go on this side with yourself with your family with you know some and some it's the whole mom and the children doing it together or dad and the children doing it together as a family so we always encourage that as well and we do check typing.com typing is such an important skill for our students to know because many times something as simple as applying for a job or we had just recently a student who opened up for their social security they retired so they need to have the typing skills needed to do these tasks so on the computer again this one is a website on the computer you would use typing of course you could have the keyboard for the tablet but I still feel it for this you still need to use a computer and also it teaches typing skills to students it's interactive lessons and activities again you sign up as a teacher free account and add your students and you could keep track of their typing our goal at the beginning of the year in August is for the student that by June they're typing at least 40 words per minute because in Soledad our largest employer besides the County of Monterey is the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Salinos Valley State Prison and they're always hiring office technicians their minimum requirement of typing is 40 words per minute the city of Soledad is also 40 words per minute Soledad Unified School District is also 40 words per minute so by then at the end of the year they have something and we print out a certificate once they reach that benchmark and say here's something that you could use in your when you're applying for a job that you have these typing skills needed and again it's free this one again is only for Spanish and I always follow up emails and be like we went to the site but it's only in Spanish not in English this is only a Spanish site for high school equivalency preparation estoy aprendiendo estoy haifendaprendiendo.com and on this one here it has the students could select the subjects they could select the test that they're using high set Pearson view GED or task again here in California it's only the first two but in other states also a task so the student will go on there and if they're learning for example mathematics and fractions they would go math and it's broken down by sections and it has I always call it the it's kind of like Khan Academy but in Spanish and then sometimes because it is in Spanish you hear the Spanish from other countries not only from Mexico but from South America or for or from Spain so sometimes the students are like wait a minute why does this sound different why are they saying these words like oh it's because it's they you know they collect all that information from Spanish it might not be Spanish from Mexico it might be Spanish from from Spain so they hear all these different accents but again it covers all of the subjects that are in these high school equivalency exams okay we were running into a little bit of trouble at our district with Khan Academy because they updated the firewalls and everything so that was one of the reasons why we went to this one and then in Khan Academy there had to be a lot of navigation you click here then you go here then you go here then you click here to get here to get here to get here to get here with this one it's very easy I want math it has all the things they still have to click but it's easier and my Spanish high-set instructor she's here and actually I like to brag about her because she's getting the state award for CCA this year because the students are using this in addition to her her classroom instruction and come this past January she's all like hey I have a problem like oh god what happened it's the first day of school I don't have students now look that I'm like why? she's all like they all pass they're high set so that was a good problem to have now again we've built up we're at we're at bursting at the seams again with her but that's one of the reasons why she's getting a state award next month because using this using other material that she develops and just in the classroom instruction she's able to have her students pass I always like to thank our technology department at Soledad Unified School District they are awesome without them I couldn't implement all my crazy ideas that I come up sometimes at two in the morning I literally do and they're always there to support us they're always there so I always like to thank them because without them none of this we could do for us and then teach to our students and yesterday one of the sessions they were talking about that well how do you build that connection offer what you know the skills that you know with technology saying hey I know how to do this this and this for a district PD I'm a resource available and you don't have to pay me thousands of dollars like they do for other people to come in and teach them how to use basic things that we might know how to do so with that you got them you got them and whatever crazy idea you might have the most recent one is the district now blocks YouTube so they actually created a network solid that adult school S. U. S. D. with a login that allows our students to watch YouTube video from because a lot of the I'm learning videos are also YouTube so that with that we we're able to do it on the handout you do have my contact information if you want to email me please feel free to do so so I'm going to run by the app so on this one remind here I haven't set up by classes so usually for our computer class the computer class so every Monday I would send and then I also send information like recently I was in Greece as Jennifer said she wanted to see pictures in Greece and then on Monday I don't I don't know if you could really see it but it says good morning see you in class at six tonight something like that I always have a full class because I take that two three seconds of my time to to reach out to them and then sometimes let's see they respond okay have a good day and then sometimes they put if they're gonna be absent so for example this is a student who was coming to class and now she can't but she's still using the apps and everything and she's always checking in with us she said good morning teacher how are you how is work I hope you are all fine how is teacher Vanessa is everybody okay bye have a nice evening so I actually follow up with a phone call with that one because I'm like I had a text message for something that sweet I can't I can't be the show me app I'm not going in order I'm just kind of so it's not in order as as in your app the show me app one of the things that I always and I like it because you could add a picture okay great so pretend there's a picture of the door here and then I could easily put door so we're imagining I took a picture of that and then over here if I got that little corner I would put the school map so having the picture here you see this beautiful picture right here because I see it I hope you all see it too so you could easily identify and then with our low beginning students they use the iPad there's a garden outside our classroom they take pictures and then they label the color of the plant or what they actually know the name of the plant so that's one of them and then you could easily erase choose a background again this is what I'm talking about you could choose this type of paper there was one year where I had to show the students how to write notes so I would use this one a lot and then of course this thing has a stylist but you could still use your finger let's see here and then you're also when you're teaching about math and coordinates graph paper so again it could be used for a lot of different different things this is an activity that we did is why if your goal is to speak English give us ideas of what you could do at home or in the classroom to reach that goal and they're like listen to English audio so as they're saying I'm writing it with my finger or with the if your device has a stylist so again and then the students could do this one as well in a group if they don't want to each have again you could create an account for my students I don't I just have them go on the default one this is let's see here the genius scan again so we all kind of know how to do it so for example this one was a I needed a copy of what a you know I got a new student in class I only had 15 books well I need to give them a book I'm not going to order more but I just you know made a a copy because I'm using it for educational purposes I'm not selling it to them and then I could also annotate on it so that's another benefit if it was an actual handout whoops do that okay phonics genius so for example the this one here so then you will hear like anchor and then the student would repeat so it's emphasizing all alligator ambulance alphabet so they're hearing that ass sound so and then they could record for example attic attic attic so they could hear it now with this one I would recommend you know if they have headphones on because and it gets a little loud this one here let's see the get hired so for example if you're starting to slouch it says sit up straight this is the how you would do that swipe to make eye contact and then it's telling you so there's a cell phone so you want it off you want to ignore so it's giving you the commands so for example what is your favorite color and then you would choose the correct answer and then it will assign you points so again it's you do have to be a little bit quick as some I tell my students but again this one I incorporated when we're doing the job readiness preparation for the civics task in our ESL class another one that because students don't realize the importance of getting dressed even for coming to class so sometimes when we have a presenter or so we've had workforce development board come to our class I don't even tell the students but that day they all come up dressed very nice okay and you could see their attitude in class is very different it's much more focused it's I'm here to do something so now we're implementing a address to work day and that day I just see the type of productivity just skyrocket because they take it more serious than if they're coming in casual clothing and a lot of our students say oh I feel so good like dressing up and I feel so important I'm like well first of all you are important and second of all it helps them build their self-esteem as well and then also for our citizen that's an interview and I always tell him it doesn't have to be for a job it could be like for your citizenship it could be interview for example our consortium did a consortium survey and they were interviewing students and even for something like that they would get all you know dressed up and some of them were nervous and we would tell them like what to expect in an interview so for example on this one if I'm going to work at a hotel again it limits you sometimes to options because I'm using the free version so I'm going to apply as a housekeeper so then I could select the gender and then I could select the type of hairdo you can't really see it that well so yeah pretty much and then type of shirt that you would wear type of pants then the shoes so always go to the extreme for something then earrings and a necklace so then we would be like okay if they're applying for a hotel receptionist or any receptionist is this the appropriate how to be dressed for that interview some might say yes but the majority would say no and then we would say why what could we change how could we change all while teacher you need to say mass elegante some like what what's your definition of elegant because for him this might be his definition of dressing up elegant so then that starts a whole other conversation and again this is what I want with my students is to be able to give me ideas and give the class ideas of how should you dress for an interview or how should you dress for for so this week is parent conference so we just did this about two weeks three weeks ago and one of the students said so for the teacher conference do we have to dress up too because that's an interview of like I mean you don't have to but it's a good practice and then at our site the teachers know which students go to class and so they purposely ask them more things and try to get more information and then they actually do tell me with USA learns the app okay we heard that it's and then here the topic is is first starts with the video and then the new words cafe and if I want to hear it again I press on the little microphone speaker cafe house and if I don't know the word I could start it that way I review it later market and what I like about the app is on the actual site you do have some ads and that's how they get paid I always get that group of students who clicks on the ad and they're like why am I seeing coupons because you click somewhere else same thing here I always tell them try to avoid this area because it'll direct you to their Facebook which is good but then you always have to let them know a lot of these apps that are free are maintained free by having ads so that's another skill you could teach them so once we go through the whole words park school street happens see that's the one I had start and then here it's going to show you the picture and the student selects which one it is so this one here if I say oh that's the actual name of the grocery store in solid that so I would say it's a incorrect and then this one here would be a okay so this is how USA learns works and then it has it continues so the students could really do a lot with it on their mobile device but again I always encourage using the actual website one of them that I didn't talk about but I really like to use is Google Docs because as part of the civic task there are students how to do a resume so for this one here each of the students created a Gmail account because of course they always forget what it was to activate their phones so we create one and I kind of give them how they should create it and how their password should be like initial either your phone number or something that's easy to remember and then an exclamation mark and then here they could actually do their own resume so here on your name you would just tap on it and we could even do it on the iPad so and again students have done typing typing dot com so they're able to do this fairly quickly so they could develop their own resume cover letter once they're done they could email it to themselves email it to me so I could print it out in class and so forth so again show this one in my presentation because I always seem to run out of time the here to career app this way now so because I barely installed it on this iPad it's going to ask me to take a quiz but I could say find a community college find a career explore hundreds of careers and degrees discover what you can do here so if I want to find a community college usually it's able to find it by location but that sometimes doesn't seem to work so for example let's say I live in San Francisco and I'm at city of San Francisco city college of San Francisco it's going to give me the information there's twenty six thousand five hundred and sixty students enrolled applied to this college it takes me to the to the website so it's all right there some of the schools do have an actual and then you could see all the degrees that are earned accounting administration of justice aircraft electronics avionics alcohol and substance control automotive collision repair and then it tells you for the field you selected what is the average salary in that field and then what are careers related to that so in this activity where we're doing on career exploration the student not only identified what career they wanted to choose but also what are other areas that feed into that career and how much money they could make and this is a real eye-opener for students because they start seeing different types of jobs and then they always go to teacher and they're like really this is what a teacher earns they're like you mean auto technician or an auto mechanic earns more than a teacher I'm like yeah yeah because all their goal is to be a teacher but they have to support their family they have to this and then what once they start seeing what degrees are available and how much they could possibly earn that is a good you know a good eye-opener for a lot of them that they always think that teachers earn you know way up here when we know what the reality is let's see so we have about 10 9 minutes right so any questions on any apps or any other apps or websites that you know of that from but even again for low literacy skills most of them you know and of course for for one student in particular it takes me having to be working with the student while the rest of them are working together but I don't think to that level these three ones know some of the paid ones might yes I could so epic is one that I would talk about a few years ago so what epic is it's an app so think of it as Netflix but for books okay this one here I would use with my low literacy even in the family literacy program I wouldn't use this with my advanced students now for history it's great because you could find a lot of nice books about history for example last week for for teach I'm not teacher for Dr. Seuss day I went to go read at one of the local elementary schools and because I had just been back from my trip I decided to read a book about about grease so it has books about different countries oops and things like that so I was able to actually to read this book to the students so with that one if you're studying about history the presidents it would have books like this some of them it has books that are you read to and then it has what I like about epic is they're starting to include not only the accelerated reader level a r if you have students but also the lexile level so you could email me and I could send you a handout if you deal with causes testing what their causes score is and how it relates to their lexile level so with that we have this one installing our in our iPad so the student if they want to read books at their lexile level they could actually search books at their lexile level or at the public library as well to check out books like that so with epic it's like Netflix but with books so if you have children we're starting to incorporate into our family lit program as well it is free you would have to create a teacher account but now it's only students could only use it in the classroom I don't know how it determines when you're outside the classroom but sometimes I want to use it at home and it says oh you need to buy the for 99 a month subscription within our district server it's free I don't know how I don't know how they probably but yeah epics really nice because you could set it up by class and then the student could download the app but again I would recommend something like this and then you get the actual feel of swiping a a page we're so glad you watch what this one does have books in Spanish Chinese and French so hopefully as time goes by they would add more languages and maybe it could be a resource that would fit with with your I know there are some libraries I can't exactly remember where but a lot of libraries and maybe you could speak to this of the resources the libraries have I know somewhere and I want to see was down south they actually had this as one of their subscriptions that was available through the library I think the reason is because in they're moving more to less free and more subscription like Netflix like Netflix so I always say it's the book version of Netflix for kids but I know check with your public library they also have a lot of like learning express a lot of sites that you would pay for they're free with your with your library and some of them also have resources on apps and some counties also have resources I know up in app in that area their county office of it has a lot of apps that they use for family literacy and beginning literacy well what I did is we were having a lot of trouble with our network last year so I requested hotspots and they were able to from school so this one connects 15 devices again it's not going to be the fastest thing in the world but at least for basic web browsing or things like that another thing because we do run into this issue quite often sometimes the students have the unlimited data account and I tell them oh if you hotspot you could use it as your hotspot then I kind of show them how to use it and they're like okay I could hotspot this group right here and another one yeah I could hotspot this group so a lot of times all it takes is asking your students and of course you're not going to be on it the whole class time maybe just for something yeah and if they have unlimited data or the unlimited data plans so please yeah for this session you do have my contact information please feel free to contact me at any time um email me and I'll get back to you have any suggestions or something that you need more help with