Ixchell Reyes 0:00
The DIESOL podcast

Brent Warner 0:02
Developing Innovation in English as a Second or other Language,

Ixchell Reyes 0:06
Episode 95: Interview with Greg Foreman EdTech Trainer

Brent Warner 0:25
Welcome to DIESOL we are your hosts. I’m Brent Warner.

Ixchell Reyes 0:28
And I’m Ixchell Reyes. Hey Brent.

Brent Warner 0:31
How’s it going?

Ixchell Reyes 0:32
Yeah, nothing’s changing. Still chugging. Still chugging

Brent Warner 0:38
Still chugging, All right. So you feel you found us a wonderful guest today. So let’s jump in, I think.

Ixchell Reyes 0:47
So today, I’m really excited to have a colleague of mine, Greg Foreman, he was born and raised in Huntsville, Alabama, ice hockey capital of the South. He bought his first computer and Apple, two E is that how you original Apple, two e in 1982. He’s got a BS in math and MA in psychology, a TESOL Certificate, over 10 years as a high school math teacher. So automatic respect right there. For the math and the high school, and then I guess triple because over 10 years, six years in IT technical training and support 10 years and professional development concentrating in technology training. And now he focuses on educational technology. And that is how we met. And so I just didn’t ever think he would say yes to the show. And I don’t know why. But, Greg, welcome to the show.

Greg Foreman 1:47
Thank you very much. And thank you for inviting me.

Brent Warner 1:51
Yeah, we’re excited to have you, Greg. So. So lots of different sections to your background here. You know, you still kind of gave this overview. But can you kind of share a little bit about how this all melts together? Because they’re cool combinations, right? When you’re talking about like psychology and math and TESOL, and training and all these things? How do you think they’ve all kind of melted together for you to kind of bring you to where you are now.

Greg Foreman 2:21
Yeah, it’s been a long journey. Of course, it started, you know, with my first computer learning to code way back in the early 80s. And then I decided to be a math major was in college and did some programming there was always interested. And, you know, technology was fun to play with, it was fun to do things with it. But there wasn’t much wasn’t used as much extensively as it is now in education. So it was more of a toy I was doing. But then once I started teaching high school math, and you know, the ti 84, when that came out, and I was actually using technology to teach that was kind of a revolution. And I actually taught a course one time where I taught them to program on their TA for their writing little programs. And they were little games and stuff. So I, that’s when I started really realizing that the revolution was coming. And that we were going to be using more and more technology. And then later on when I was teaching high school, the other math teachers are jealous. They were looking at my test going, how do you draw this? How do you do this? Where did you get this? How do you make these beautiful, you know, graphs and stuff and everything. And now I was like, well, there’s this add on here. Don’t you have this? Don’t you use this to draw the symbols and everything? And they’re like, no, why don’t you teach us how so I would give little training sessions to the other math teachers to help them learn how to make pretty math tests, have handgrip hand drawn stuff on there. So that was kind of my beginning. And some Well, I’ve actually already done some tech training before. But it was pretty it was pretty dry. Pretty straightforward. This is how the software is this is the manual, go through it. But when I started doing that, and teaching people how to create stuff and doing more of a that’s when I realized the workshop format is what I love the most is sitting down. Everyone’s got their own computer and say, Hey, let’s do this. Let’s play with this. You try this. You try that. And that’s when I really realized how much I enjoy helping people use technology.

Ixchell Reyes 4:41
That sounds like a couple of people I know. (laughter)

Brent Warner 4:46
Yeah, yeah. That’s a great, a great way. I love that when when teachers start coming to you, right? And they start saying, Wait, hold on a second. I need a little help with this. I need a little help with that. And then you’re like, Oh, hold on, you know, there we have that kind of techy teachers have the curse of knowledge, right? And the assumption that everybody else already knows kind of what you’re talking about. And even to this day, I still have to remind myself that like, we need to step it back, step it way back, way back. Because my, my, my first thought is always to go, like more advanced, it’s like, oh, you probably already know this, and this and this. So let’s start here. And it’s like, no, wait, let’s take it back about five steps or so or, or even more. So. So Greg, when you’re working with teachers, and kind of doing the tech training, how do you figure out where you want to start with them?

Greg Foreman 5:41
Well, basically, one of the things I’ve learned on the journey is, if possible, once a small group, and you kind of go around each one, but when I’ve had larger groups, I would break them up into different sections. But I tried, I would create surveys, one based on ability, so much based on their comfort level, how they felt about technology, I would do little surveys, about how they felt how comfortable they were get an idea of there was someone that could just go with it. And you could go on, and try to group those people on one side. And then the people are just like, I’m afraid I’m gonna break it. I don’t want to touch it. What do I do? How do I start? Where is it? What is this? What are you talking about? And those kind of people grouped together and that focusing on like I said, it’s more than their comfort level, how they feel about technology, not about how good they are, what they think or how they use this before. Now, it’s how they think how they felt about it, how comfortable they were, because the other group are the ones who will play with it. Because that was one of my biggest revolutions are on the way I thought everyone loved to play with technology and discovered, no, there’s this large group of people that don’t even understand what that means. Greg,

Ixchell Reyes 7:04
I like what you’re mentioning, because I recently I was telling Brent, that I’m training teachers right now. And I had them, I taught them how to enter prompts into ChatGPT, to build a lesson plan for a particular model. And one of the students raised his hand, he said, I have a question, Miss, how did you become like this? This is gonna sound bad, but you are so cool. You’re the kind of teacher that I want to be. And I said, well, and I actually he was dead serious. He was dead serious. This this gentleman hasn’t taught before. So he’s going to be he’s a pre service teachers sort of new to the teaching world. Definitely embraces technology, because I can see like little sparks, you know, happening every time I do something. And I started thinking, why did like how did I become this way? And I said, maybe it was always that I was constantly asking why why do we have to do this? Why do I have to give homework? Why are my students still failing? Even though I gave them work, they did the homework, they did well on the homework. And then I realized that I’m doing what everyone else is doing. And I wanted to break some of those rules. And so I said, let me try this. And nobody’s saying no. So let me push all the buttons and find out what they have missed. And you said that people are afraid that they’re going to break something. And I remember, oftentimes, I tell my students push all the buttons, you can’t break, push all the buttons. So how do you I guess, how do you dispel some of them? The myths about are the common misconceptions of technology when it comes to people who have a hard time embracing it. And I realized that’s a big question. But in your experience, what works?

Greg Foreman 8:51
Well, I think you’ve already mentioned part of it is getting, you know, telling them, they can touch anything, because I read an article years ago, and they said the first rule of tech training, don’t touch the mouse. Okay, I get it. And like, if I’m teaching someone to use an interactive whiteboard, I’m like, here it is. And then I go sit in the back of the room and say, Get up and go touch it. Touch this touch that do this. And that way, forcing an app to do it. And there’ll be there’ll be scared at first, but you tell them exactly because I think that’s part of the key that people just giving very clear direct instructions for these kinds of people to do simple things. And after they realize the simple things didn’t break it. They might start exploring a little bit and push a button. I didn’t tell them to just to see what happens.

Ixchell Reyes 9:50
It’s funny because – you know, Brent is right when he says he, we’ve always had this conversation of we’ve already done that, you know, are we gonna repeat that again? Are we giving this workshop again, but it’s like, there’s so many people new to the very basic concept of documents in the cloud, for example. And to this day, I still have teachers who have taught in a while who have not used documents in the cloud, but they’re so paranoid that their document is not going to save. And I don’t know where that where that trauma came from, maybe from computers that would crash in the middle.

Brent Warner 10:28
(Laughter) That’s exactly where that came from. I’ve been through that trauma! (laughter)

Greg Foreman 10:35
I have heard that recently. Very recently, I’ve heard that many a time. And I’ve had enough experience with CDs and DVDs that have been corrupted, and and gone unreadable. And I tried to explain it’s on the cloud, but it’s not just in one place. Your backup clouds are backed up and backed up, as well. No, is it safe as a you know, is one drive it was it you know, like, it’s, it’s not going to go away. That’s that they are actually very safe and backed up many times. But, but if you want to make a copy of the DVD, go ahead. Feel free.

Ixchell Reyes 11:12
If we can find a DVD writer these days, right.

Greg Foreman 11:17
That’s the hard part.

Brent Warner 11:19
So Greg, I want to go back to you were talking about this, you know, this idea of like, hey, just go ahead and touch the touch the board, touch the computer, get it going? Right. I think one of the big things that so many teachers need here is just the permission to do it, right? It’s not so much like there’s so many other parts to it that like, oh, I don’t know if I’m going to do this, right? Or I’m gonna do that wrong. But it’s just being told by someone, Hey, it’s okay. Just try it and see what happens. Right? That, to me, like, releases a lot of the shackles, I guess, of the concern and just being told that you can do it, and that it’s not not going to make a problem. Like, it’s significantly difficult to break a computer or, you know, like, by typing or by pushing buttons or anything like that, right. It’s almost can’t be done. And then usually a quick flip fix to bring it all back. But what’s your experience in that that area where it’s like, you’re like, how you’re focused in on how people feel about it, how they’re like, you know, how they’re concerned? And do you get that same type of impression?

Greg Foreman 12:29
Yes, definitely. I Interesting enough, I had an experience years ago while getting like T cell certification. And I was doing a seminar right before it’s finishing up. And we would go in and one of us would teach the ESL class and the rest would observe when we come back and discuss it and everything. And only two of us had actually taught in the classroom before. So I went in and taught and they came back. Oh, good job, fine. And then one of the other people. You know, I was a math major, they were English majors, they were gonna go to teach English. And they got in front of the class. And I was like, well, let’s something’s not right. Something’s not right. And I realized they were doing pure sage on the stage. They were ignoring the students. You were there for the students. And I’ve taken that same thing to the tech training, how are they reacting? What are they doing? What do they need? And, you know, anytime any good teacher is going to adapt to their classes and see their needs. And like I said earlier, you know, I think just that clear, direct questions saying, do this this way, and just keep working on see how well they do. Sometimes you can let them go pretty soon and go, I’ll try this, just try drawing on there, try doing this and see where they’re go. And, but sometimes you have to keep giving the direct instructions to some of them. But they’ve always come back to me later and asked me more questions who I’ve found, and they’ve, they say thank you, and they really appreciate it. So I’ve actually, I actually enjoy the lower level, the ones that have the biggest fears are the ones I’ve enjoyed the most. And I get them as satisfaction and gratification from working with that level.

Brent Warner 14:25
Yeah, and I I want to bring us all back because now to modern times. Today’s day, we’re having a lot of these conversations around AI Of course, right? And I’m not sure if the teachers you’re working with or embrace are questioning that or where they’re at and we could talk about that in a minute too. But, but because you said that you were one of the first ones or early adopters or bringing in the the TI 82 Or it was a ti 84 ti 84 into your class or into your work. And a lot of people still are drawing parallels Between that and the AI conversation are saying, well, math classes had to figure out how to deal with having computer or having, you know, calculators inside of their classes when those came out. And they did that 20 years ago, and math classes still exist. And now so now the AI being able to talk and you know, do all the language production, all these things is the same for, you know, English classes. Do you find that parallel to be apt? Or is it missing anything? Or, you know, cuz you’ve been through both of those stages, or you’re in I guess we’re all in this second stage right now. But I’m, I’m interested, because not a lot of people who say that we’re actually teaching math or taught math with calculators at the time.

Greg Foreman 15:41
Right? No, I haven’t thought of it that way before. But I agree completely. Funny thing happened one time, a student, she was in my math class and said, Guess what, Mr. Foreman, I went up 30 points on the math part of my LSAT. I was like, Oh, great. And she’s she says, you know, what I think it was I was, it was what I was late getting there. And I left my calculator in the car. Really, and it made me realize that, and I’ve seen it in my classes, because there’s because they would keep begging us to calculate so you don’t need it’s not going to help but no, I needed, it was a crutch. You know, they’re using it as a crutch. And I kept telling them, if you don’t know how to use it, if you don’t know the order of operations, you don’t know how you can’t use a calculator, you don’t know how it’s not going to be useful at all. It’s a very, very useful tool, if you know how to use it. And AI is something similar, it can be wonderful, useful. But if you don’t understand how it works, and you’re not aware of hallucinations, and things like that, you’re going to be in big trouble. So as you probably said, You’ve may have said it on one of yours, I’m not sure. But basically, AI is not replacing humans, humans who use AI. Humans who don’t use AI, don’t be replaced by people, humans who do use AI, you know, it’s a tool, it’s the same way, if you’re just trying to do all your calculations by hand like we did to put man on the moon, instead of using the computers, they could do it and a fraction of the time, you’re just not going to be able to keep up, it’s the same, same kind of thing. And that you have to, it takes a while to understand how the technology works. That’s what we’re going through. A lot of people are getting good at the prompt engineering, there’s courses out there now you can take online Coursera and stuff like that, for prompt engineering. But any of those to me, it always reminds me of how you can Google, I’d always tell people, I’ll just Google it. And there’s I couldn’t find it. I’m like, I’ll put one, you know, one couple of words in and it’ll pop up at the top of the list. And we’re like, oh, I didn’t think about using those words.

Ixchell Reyes 17:53
That brings me to something that happened this week. Again, in my in my training teachers class. Student happened to walk in while I was explaining, I had this slide on the board that had the the content that the students needed to input in order to get that chat UBT output the way that we wanted it. And then at the bottom, it said revise, you’re gonna have multiple revisions, because at first, something like that, and another another teacher walked in and said, you’re teaching them chat GPT. I said, Yes. I’m helping them know how to, you know, know how to cut down on the amount of revision time that it’s going to take and, and he said, Well, what’s going to happen when they don’t have that? What if it crashes? And I said it does. It’s not it doesn’t replace the knowledge of what a lesson plan the, the, the parts that a lesson plan should include your warmup, your materials, etc, they still have to do it. But this is going to help them to be more efficient and have more energy, because teachers usually don’t have a lot of time. So spend more energy developing the materials that you’re going to use. But I left feeling that that was a skeptic. And I feel like they’ll come back. They might have more questions. But I felt like, again, repeating the fact that if, if, if we don’t know how to use these tools, you run the risk of what we saw during the pandemic, where it’s that gap that was created of the people that didn’t know how to use technology, and they were so afraid. And it was just hard. It was a I mean, it was hard for everyone. But it was just hard at the beginning. And so again, here’s a new tool and much more powerful tool. And if the gap gets big enough, and because this beat this is advancing so fast that the gap already was yesterday. Right? So, yeah, interesting. I think it’s important to remind everyone that it’s a tool and those of us who know how to use a tool or say From whatever is coming, but elimination, I guess when you know how to use a tool?

Greg Foreman 20:08
Yeah, for sure thing. Yeah, the thing I’m most concerned about right now, it’s not I’m not worried about Chad GPT JK in the world, of course. But what I’m just seeing what’s been coming. And I think this is the beginning of just the speed at which things are going to change. It’s just picked up and being agile and adapt beyond adapt to this. And there’s just said, the tech training is going to have to be just as agile and adapt, and you come along to help people adapt every couple of months, it could be once a quarter, we might be really having to help people understand some new parts of technology vs AI or whatever, just because of the rate of which things I just see it, how quickly is going to be changing now, due to this revolution. And I think that’s where training in general tech training, Educational Technology Training has to be ready and adapt the way it’s, it’s doing what it’s doing, and we can’t look, you don’t know what’s going to be there in the long run. So you have to be able to focus on the how you’re going to get your training, get a good agile framework ready. So you’re just able to do it on the run and be ready for whatever comes your way.

Brent Warner 21:32
It’s funny, you mentioned that I was I was thinking earlier today about how fast things are moving, right. And it’s thinking that this idea that, you know, now it’s exponential, right. And so the average person might make a guess about when something’s gonna come out, right? And it’s like, okay, it’s gonna be, I think it’ll be about five years until this thing comes out. I think it’ll be about, you know, eight months or something until that comes out. Right. And so, and people are just guessing. So this is not a scientific backed thing. It’s just something that was floating in my head earlier, but, but I think that pretty much anything that the average person is guessing you need to just switch the, the timeframe from down one. So if you think it’s going to be five years, it’s going to be five months, if you think it’s going to be eight months, it’s going to be eight weeks, if you think it’s gonna be, you know, 10 weeks, it’s going to be 10 days, right. And so like, it’s just moving so fast and so crazy. Like, just, just today, I saw that Samsung made an announcement that their new Galaxy phones built into the phones are going to do live translation spoke live spoken translation as you talk on the phone. So, you know, I have so many students that say, I’m fine. I’m okay with like my regular speaking English if I’m in front of someone, but I always see when I get on the phone, it’s so much harder for me. And I don’t see any reason why those students wouldn’t choose to just go okay, click the button. And now I don’t have to worry about it. I can just speak in, you know, Farsi, or I can speak in whatever language and then just speak in English to the person that I’m calling on the phone. You know, that’s a reality that’s being put into the this next generation and is announced today, I guess, and so fascinating to see how fast things are moving and I think none of us are really prepared for it.

Ixchell Reyes 23:26
I’m not all the all the way. And again, that’s going to come with fears and unfound well, maybe both founded unfounded fears. I think it’s been a year since chat GPT but AI has been around for a while. It just now became a mainstream household term right now. My mom knows what chat GPT she doesn’t know how to use it, but she knows what it is. And it’s been a year. So where are we going to be in the new year? I mean, one more year yeah, I can’t even I can’t even think that a year is just so much growth.

Brent Warner 24:08
Yeah, why wildly different? And so Greg, since we’re talking about some of these tools and things and it doesn’t have to be aI it can be anything but I think it’s always fun just to get into it a little bit with with the teachers and with the trainers about like when you’re working with with other teachers what tools what are the actual things that you’re that you’re sharing, especially for teaching you know, language teachers like what are the things that you’re seeing that are fun that are engaging that people are liking that you’re you’re wanting to play with more or you’re wanting to have students play with more on a regular basis?

Greg Foreman 24:43
Wow, there’s such a broad I mean, he shall knows there’s so many different things and I think this gets back to the we want to be able to enter Reduce everyone to all these different tools. But we want the instructors or users to have the choice of which ones they prefer. When you talk about the tool belt, you mentioned toolbox, and I’ve always been interested in that, you know, metaphor using about the toolbox. If you as I get more tools in the toolbox, but I’ve always been, I just see people putting tools in their toolbox. I’m like, you got that? You put that in there? Do you even know what that’s for? Do you know how to use it? When do you use it?

A hoarder – a digital hoarder! (laughter)

Yeah, people go to trainings and learn. That’s why I like I like having demos, workshops, you know, things like that I prefer when dealing with educational technologies, as opposed to a course class and doing that just say, hey, here’s something you look at. And then and that helps me kind of gauge there seems to be a lot of interest in this one, I think I will, you know, offer some workshops, and then see how those grew and stuff like that. You know, the I think some of the things they’ve gotten good as like, the things based on like a corpus, like you glish kind of thing, the power that we’re able to bring in. I mean, of course, the large language models are that to just have vast amounts of data, which we have at our fingertips now. But and we’re learning how to harness and use that. And the way you glish works, I think is the really interesting and be able to find, you know, context, the best context for learning a particular vocabulary word, you know, here is a YouTube video that uses it in context, and it is the most likely context based on what we have found. It’s used in this context for law, those kind of things. And I think that’s, it’s kind of a, because the AI is doing something similar. It’s just as vast amounts of data, and they’re building these transformers. And it’s figuring all this stuff out. And I think that’s the tools a lot of people seem to be excited about is the ones that are able to just because that’s what computers are good about. Doing a repetitive task very quickly over and over. And, you know, analyzing terabytes of data is not that hard for it anymore. And I think those are the ones I see people being more interested in right now. But there’s a whole gamut here that people are that but they have the ones that just want to figure out how do you use Microsoft Teams?

Brent Warner 27:44
Yeah, well, I’m still stuck on that one. Geez, it’s, Microsoft is still, actually Microsoft is making some really interesting products these days. And so a lot of their accelerated learners, and those types of things are really, really cool. But they’re still have a lot of bloat in their older, more traditional software. And it’s just so hard to figure out some of those things. But I want to go back to Youglish for a second, just because I find Youglish is such a great example of what teachers really, really want, which is a single purpose, easy to use, no frills tool, and it’s like an everybody.

Ixchell Reyes 28:23
And it’s foolproof, that one.

Brent Warner 28:25
It’s amazing.

Ixchell Reyes 28:26
It’s foolproof, you can check all the accents on – all the America the English accents. It’s like,

Brent Warner 28:32
Yeah, and it’s been basically the same for the last 10-15 years, however long it’s been around, right, there hasn’t been a lot of major, major changes to it. But it’s so reliable, and it’s like, the opposite of what all the EdTech companies are doing, which is we need to have the everything tool though, you know, Canva, we, you can do everything and you know, throw the kitchen sink at it too. And we’ll add more to it, right? And it’s like, okay, or Flipgrid, or and Flip. And it’s like, okay, we’re adding this and this and this, and this and 100 different possible things that you can do. And it’s like, you glish it’s like, you can do this one thing. And you can do it really, really well all the time without ever guessing about what it’s going to look like the next time you use it. And I think that’s something I wish that more EdTech companies would take a lesson from that, because it’s a really, you know, it’s just so great and so reliable. And I don’t have any qualms about saying, Oh, well, I don’t know what it’s like now. But like, you know, four months ago, when I checked, you were able to do this or that, you know, those types of conversations that really come along with training teachers a lot, because it’s hard for us to keep on top of every single thing all the time. But in that case, like I love that reliability, and I wish that more the more of the edtech companies kind of were a little bit more singular instead of trying to be the everythings

Greg Foreman 29:57
Yeah, that’s a good point because you your toolbars gets filled up with these, you know, these multifunction tools. And it makes it harder to figure out what’s best in this situation, because you’re like, should I go in there and use their tool or in this one and use their similar tools, you know, and like you said, when is one function, one thing, you know, this is when I need to use a tool, it’s more obvious and do it. But what happens, of course, someone has their set of tools, and they say, I are ones using that one. So I’m gonna make something like that, put it in my mind what I’m offering. And that just confuses people. And you know, I think my hardest thing I can get people to use something different, new, brand new or whatever, but the hardest thing to do is when someone has a tool that will do what they need to do. But there is a tool is another one that’s come around has been around for 10 years, that’s actually a lot better when they’re currently using, you know, my be able to do five times is things that they’re one can retool the current tool they’re using, and getting him to let go of that old screwdriver that’s all worn out, and really not working well. But they just love it. And there’s a brand new screwdriver that they could use, that would work so much better. But convincing them to do that is is the hardest thing to getting this resistors to actually let go. And that’s where you just, you got to offer it. That’s the thing, you know, not being mandatory offers a hey, come look at this, try this out and do a demo, you know, look at this, and let them see their colleagues use it and go you know what? I mean? That’s, that’s all you can do. And unfortunately, now we’re just talking about things changing so quickly that they missed the boat, and then another tool comes along even better before they even adapt that one.

Ixchell Reyes 31:56
Greg, I hear you describing those kinds of tools. And it reminds me of you and I were talking about, you know, the tipping point. And Malcolm Gladwell is tipping point and how if something has stickiness, the teacher is gonna go back to that right. And I’m wondering what other what other thoughts you have related to that in the in the tech training world?

Greg Foreman 32:23
Yeah. Cuz he taught him a tipping point, he has the salesman, the connectors, and the Maven. So I realized I was a Maven, I love gathering information and sharing the information. I’m not a salesman, not even close. So I have to find someone to sell the stuff for me, I can’t sell this technology, I don’t think it’s something important realizing when you’re trying to, you know, get people to adopt technology, just understanding what you’re good at. And I know, that’s not what I’m good at. I’m not good at making flyers or you know, making like, interesting title, my training or my workshop to draw people. So I have to get home to do that. And I think that’s, you know, that’s one of the points of what Malcolm Gladwell is trying to do in the book, realize he’s just not one thing. It’s not just one person that it takes, you know, it takes a village. And the other part of that is really being self aware of what you’re good at and what your expertise is. And work on that. Because that’s one of the things I’ve learned in professional development is, you get much more bang for the buck, but bang for the buck. If someone’s good at something, help them get even better. If someone’s just can’t do something, don’t worry about it just minimal, they need to get by the don’t worry about trying to bring them up to a better lace is not going to work. But if they’re really good at something, work on that and help them improve that. So you can find that sometimes that tool, a lot of those tools are pretty versatile. And you might be able to do a lot more than you realize. And that’s something that people are using some kind of technology tool might be something simple and don’t realize that there’s other uses to it. And that’s where you try to get in. And that’s the kind of thing, I’m just so interested in all this different stuff and looking for different uses. And I’m good at that. But I’m not good at selling it. So yeah, to be I have to have help. And I think that, you know, this is more like it’s a it takes a village I can’t just, I can’t do everything. And as part of when I’ve been working, I’ve always had a team around and people to help me and I happen to bounce off ideas and everything. And I think that’s really important to helping, you know, get people to adopt things as you got people talking to them in different ways for different reasons. And, you know, because you have the connectors going, hey, you know, you should really try this, you know, to go into the different people and the salesmen that just make it sound like it’s wonderful. It’s great. Everyone has to have Have it, everybody’s gonna do it. And then when they have questions that come to me and say, Okay, could you explain this? You know, the person that really has no knowledge?

Brent Warner 35:11
With you, they’re right. Like, yeah, I’m thinking of the show. I’m like, oh, yeah, we put out like one social media posts when the show comes out. And then we’re like, we’re good. We’re done. We’ve talked that we, we sold it, that it’s out there that it’s available for people and like, probably somebody who really knows what they’re doing would probably promote the show in a much different way.

Ixchell Reyes 35:35
All right, it is time for our fun finds. And this time, I have a goose goose duck, which I found on Steam. But then I also found that you could download from the Apple Store. It’s a free game. And if you’re familiar with among us, it’s similar to among us, but you play in a group and you have to find out you have to find people from the other team and you have geese and you have ducks. And you have to find the duck and kill the desk. It’s a it’s a fun group game of elimination. And, you know, we need a little bit of distraction these days. Okay,

Brent Warner 36:15
so this this is different than the what was that one called? I think I did a couple years ago, the goose game where you’re just like a wild goose messing around with people in town. This is a newer game.

Ixchell Reyes 36:27
No, this is like an elimination. I guess if you’ve played mafia before, like with cards? Yeah, yeah. It’s kind of like this kind of game was like oh, this is fun!

Brent Warner 36:37
Awesome. Okay, so goose goose duck, great!

Ixchell Reyes 36:40
Free to play. So try it.

Brent Warner 36:42
All right. So mine is a bar actually here in Kobe. It’s called the Kazan Room. And it’s a tiki bar. So there are only three Tiki bars in Japan, I guess. And this, this is one of the three and it’s, it’s pretty new. And it’s pretty cool. Because the people who built it are Americans. And so they they brought in the whole Tiki culture, and they’re good. They’re doing the whole, like custom drinks and everything. And it’s just nice. It’s like a mellow place. But, but I’ve learned a little bit more. And I knew this to some degree. But you know, Tiki bars have their own whole massive culture about like,

Ixchell Reyes 37:23
I don’t think I’ve been to a Tiki Bar.

Brent Warner 37:25
Okay, so So you know, it’s, it’s interesting, there’s like a whole different way of doing things in a tiki bar. And so they have all their mixed drinks, or tiki drinks, you know, like, often rum based or whatever drinks. But then they like, have memberships into the bars. So like, once you’ve had all the drinks, then you become a member of the bar. And then like, you know, they’ve got and they try and teach people about what that culture looks like and what it means. And so it’s a, it’s a pretty cool place, and it’s very mellow. And so if you happen to be traveling through Kobe, you can look up the Kazan Room, K-A-Z-A-N and just have, you know, one or two nice mellow tropical drinks, even if it’s not tropical weather, even if it’s in the middle of winter. So the Kazan Room is my recommendation.

Ixchell Reyes 38:13
Oh, great. What’s, what’s your fun find?

Greg Foreman 38:19
Well, once upon a time, a friend and I were on the Black Sea, in the Republic of Georgia. And they have like these tents on the beach to kind of backup their restaurants, that they’re just like tents. They have on there and do that. And one time we walked into one was oh, let’s try this. We go on there and we sit down. And I started looking around. I was going hold it. It was everything in there was about Frida Kahlo. And it was such a culture. I was going to Mexico I’m in the Republic of Georgia, what is going on? And I actually asked the waiter What’s this? Oh, yeah, the owners. They weren’t there. The owner. Yeah, she’s she was Frida Kahlo, and there was just like, everything around was all about Frida Kahlo. And it just, and the funny thing that happened to that same place was my friend and I, we started talking to a couple. And I said, No, I’m from Alabama. And there was a group of young kids every year. One of them had a guitar. And a little while later, all of a sudden, the guy gets a guitar and starts playing Sweet Home Alabama. Needless to say, that was a very fun night, not a lot of fun people and everyday and had a great time at that little restaurant on this tent with Frida Kahlo all over. It just turned out to be that kind of magical evening you did not expect.

Brent Warner 39:56
Awesome. So, the cross cultural, Frida Kahlo tent restaurant in Georgia, for anybody who happens to be swinging by, we’ve got we’ve got a wide, everybody’s gonna have to do a lot of traveling to get to all of our things this time around. So, Georgia, Japan and well, I guess you could play the goose game anywhere so that you can play it on the flight between countries. Awesome. Thanks so much, Greg.

Ixchell Reyes 40:26
All right. We are on YouTube, share this show, buy us a coffee, support us through Patreon. leave a review or give us a shout out you could still win one of our kind diesel pin.

Brent Warner 40:38
Yeah. as we as we change things around, we have to figure out how we’re going to talk. So yeah, great. The show notes and everything else is available DIESOL.org. You can find us at voice head Canada. We’re on all the podcasting platforms. And YouTube’s going pretty well. I think you shall we’re getting some some responses. Yeah. Yeah. And I’ve been putting up some videos also for the AI and ESL website as well, a little bit. And so sharing some interesting things over there that I’m trying to explore.

Ixchell Reyes 41:14
Maybe we’ll be on Twitch one day

Brent Warner 41:15
Maybe! On most platforms, you can find me at @BrentGWarner.

Ixchell Reyes 41:23
I’m @Ixy_Pixy. That’s I X, Y underscore p i x, y. And great, great. So good place where our listeners can find you.

Greg Foreman 41:35
You can reach me my Gmail account is GForman64r@gmail.com. That’s G f o r e m a n six four.

In Spanish thank you as Gracias, gracias for tuning into the DIESOL podcast

Ixchell Reyes 41:53
And Gracias for joining!