 Preparing educators for digital learning. How can professional development prepare educators for implementing digital learning? I am Oscar Medinaen with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. And there I am a supervisor of correctional education programs with the Office of Correctional Education. The approach is fairly similar across all of the different tools. We work very closely with our partner vendors and prep some trainings specifically for our academic coaches. So they become the first line experts of any of our tools. Afterwards we work again with the vendor for them to provide training in a larger scale throughout the state. Some of those will be in person, some of them will be virtual as you know access allows. And from that point on we continue working with the vendors to look at metrics for usage. And then we work with site administrators to support them in the implementation of the different tools. So we give them training specifically to understand how to use the monitoring aspects of data analytics for the various programs. And the academic coaches also provide direct on-site professional development to teachers. And more than anything one-on-one support on how to log into the tool, how to set up student accounts, how to integrate the tool into daily instruction. With a lot of support and very planned training we're able to provide almost a seamless professional development experience for teachers. Albeit that there needs to be that buy-in and support from the site administrator to make it happen. We try to be very proactive in how we plan and deliver our professional development. My name is Yesenia Delgado Lorenzo and I am a counselor and instructor at Hacienda la Puente Adult School. The most impactful professional development is going to be working with OTAN through the Digital Learning Academy. I had the opportunity to collaborate with two other teachers and we were able to take a whole course on how to bring technology into our classrooms. And I think the support of the administrators through that process and allowing us to try the new ideas in the classroom was definitely impactful because we saw the growth. We saw the growth from using no Chromebooks in the classroom. Teachers being scared of using the Chromebooks themselves to fully engage classrooms where the teacher was at the front of the class teaching and the students were following along with their Chromebooks. So that has been one of the most rewarding and most impactful experiences because we saw the growth as we kind of went through the Leadership Academy. So it was a two-year program. So we saw it from zero and then it kind of went into the pandemic. So by the time we pandemic started, we were ready. We saw the difference in how quickly our classes moved to Zoom, how quickly we moved everything online. And I think a lot of it had to do with us being really well-prepared and having that action plan ready to move forward with digital technology in the classrooms. My name is Dr. Ref Gonzalez. I'm the lead teacher for the Almoni Rosebead Adult School Adult Secondary Education Program. I joined D-LAC, OTAN's Digital Learning Academy. And I joined right before the pandemic. And what happened, our project for D-LAC was to create a blended course. That was the first blended course that was going to be used in our school. So then COVID hits and our department was most prepared to deal with all of the educational repercussions that COVID brought. So what happened was in our school, summer comes, our principal canceled summer school and recruited our D-LAC team to teach the entire staff how to, number one, how to use a learning management system, how to design a blended course and how to run a blended class. My name is Alisa Takayuchi. I am an ESL instructor for Gardening Grove Adult Education. I am also a remote ESL teacher for Tamil Pais Adult School and I'm a subject matter expert for OTAN. Professional Development has been key for the last couple of years because you're trying to teach teachers who are professionals, but yet they have instantly become students as well. And so the challenges of when I'm teaching my own students, you know, scaffolding and really stepping back, slowing it down, not giving them too much, really felt through for those teachers. And for me, you know, for me as a teacher, just learning about so many other tools, I thought I knew a lot and apparently there are so many other tools out there and really not being overwhelmed with all of it that was out there, but picking and choosing things that I thought would be really relevant for my class and that things that I thought were going to be useful and easy and user friendly for my students in particular. And then I would use it and do it and then I would go back and I would train other people about how great this tool was. And so it was this never-ending process of professional development that the teachers were gobbling up. My name is Ryan De La Vega. My title is ESL Resource Teacher. So I'm the lead of the department and I work at Torrance Adult School in Torrance, California. As far as professional development, I think the most impactful are where we're learning how to be more human, where we're learning to see things from the students' perspective and we're learning to empower them. It's kind of a shift from the old school talking head teacher at the front of the class and just I'm regurgitating the information and you shall absorb it through osmosis or whatever. It's making our students become critical thinkers and independent so that they're not just parrots repeating what we're saying but they actually know how to do on their own. So once they have that empowerment and that confidence, that's when they can really learn by doing. So I think that was probably the best professional development that teachers can get is to learn how to better empower your students. Development of the guidance was made possible by the California Department of Education Adult Education Office through Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act Title II funds. The videos were produced by the Outreach and Technical Assistance Network at Sacramento County Office of Education in partnership with the International Society for Technology and Education. To find more resources for implementing digital learning in adult education please visit the Outreach and Technical Assistance Network website at otan.us.