Ixchell Reyes
The DIESOL podcast

Brent Warner
Digital Integration in English as a Second or Other Language.

Ixchell Reyes
Episode 28 understanding tech standards for ELLs.

Brent Warner
Hello and welcome to DIESOL This is episode number 28. We are your hosts I am Brent Warner.

Ixchell Reyes
And I’m Ixchell Reyes. Hey Brent.

Brent Warner
Ixchell, how are you?

Ixchell Reyes
I’m pretty good. It is. While we recording it is November 1.

Brent Warner
I know. Can you believe it? We made it through Halloween. I’m so sad to say goodbye. I didn’t really get to celebrate Halloween except for watching movies. But you know, here we are.

Ixchell Reyes
It was like March 2020. And then now November 2020

Brent Warner
Don’t worry that feelings gonna keep on going for a while yet. So if you’ve been enjoying that time warp we’ve been going through Don’t worry. We’re still right in the middle of it all. So Ixchell anything new with you.

Ixchell Reyes
No, not not nothing new. Yeah. Stuck in the time warp.

Brent Warner
Well, last time? Well, okay, we have the interview episode. But the last time we recorded just the two of us you were here. And now you’re back home.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, back home. Hopefully we’ll, maybe we’ll get another episode from California before 2021? I don’t know.

Brent Warner
Oh, you might be visiting again.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, I think I am. Since I’m allowed to telework from another location. I am thinking since we’re in a time warp. I might as well be in a time warp in California.

Brent Warner
All right. So awesome.

Ixchell Reyes
You’ve been busy.

Brent Warner
Yeah, it was a pretty crazy October. Lots of lots of conferences, digital online conferences, all of those types of things. I presented a couple of times at CUE, the fall CUE sessions. Those went really well. I got some pretty positive feedback. And so yeah, I hope I can re present those a couple more times. As we step into the future. I did 10 tools to promote autonomy for lls. And I also did one that was the Pedagogy of Podcasting. And yeah, like I said, pretty positive feedback. And looking forward to now. Oh, if anybody wants to apply, Spring CUE is accepting until November 11. So that’ll be a good one, too.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, and I guess I might as well as also mentioned that TexTESOL 5 is accepting till November 22. So again, you don’t have to leave and live in Texas. But if there’s something you want to present, it’s a really great way to get to know other audiences and then bring your knowledge to another state.

Brent Warner
Very cool. All right. So Ixchell, today we are going to be talking about standards are kind of our second part in the three part series, we started off in the beginning of October with our using kind of using the teasle standards for teachers, the teasle technology standards for teachers as our starting point there. And then today, we kind of explained why the standards are important and what we want to look for with all of those things. So I think today, we can just kind of jump into it and really start talking about the teasle technology standards for students. Mm hmm. Okay, so let’s jump over there and take a look.

Okay, so here we are, we’re looking at standards for students. And these are, instead of last time when we said, hey, these are the things that teachers need to have or kind of want to want to put in place so that they can do lessons well, and all of these types of things. Now they’re like, what do we want students to be able to have to be able to function with technology? Right off the bat, you saw when you looked at this, did you have any thoughts straight away?

Ixchell Reyes
Well, just as we looked at technology standards for teachers and talking about needing a framework, it’s also important that we have a framework for students because we we’re not just going to deploy something and sit and think that when we tell the students, hey, you’re going to need a login and a password that they’ll know, all of that, especially if you’re deploying several tools at once, or several platforms at once. So I think creating that consistency across anytime you come upon a new tool, well, we’ll help our students so we do need a framework also. So we don’t drive ourselves crazy trying to start up something every time with a new group of students. I think it’s really important that we look at it from an approach that’s organized and that best suits the needs of our students.

Brent Warner
Yeah, I think one of the things that I struggle with here is that some of my students have the basic standards totally down and others have absolutely none of these down or you know, very, very few of them. And this is especially hard for teachers right now, as we’re all online, or most of us are online and continue to be online. So it’s like, one student might be really tech savvy, and one student might, you know, not really be comfortable even clicking on the X button on their browser, right, like not not even knowing how to open another tab. And so this is, if we’re not starting to think about this carefully, it can be really frustrating for, for us as teachers, but also for classmates, too. And for the student who’s struggling, right?

Ixchell Reyes
Right. And I think, Brent, it’s important to, I think maybe we’re also learning this as we’re going along, and all stuck inside having to only use technology. But when we think of our students, I think there’s a there’s a false sense of security that some of us have, when we know that maybe he saw her students have more than one cell phone. And we think, oh, they’re tech savvy, you know, these millennials, and Generation Z and all of that. And they’re going to know how to figure it out. And that’s maybe true for some of them. But the reality is that there’s a lot of things that are not the same on a phone as they are on a browser, and also the different types of phones that they have. And also it’s kind of unfair to expect someone that simply because they know how to check their email on a phone that they’ll know how to submit a file, select the file with a mobile device. And I think that’s sometimes and I think I’m finding it now more with some of my colleagues that think well, do my students have to make an account? Do my students have to? How do they copy and paste from there, you know, copying and pasting is very different on a phone. And so I find it also sometimes, maybe, I know that we can say, well just put, you know, if you’re tech savvy student with the less tech savvy students on then they’ll teach each other and that’s okay every once in a while. But that’s also putting an enormous amount of pressure on the student who has to now communicate all of these instructions, and it’s not always fair. And I’ll tell you as a as someone who always got placed in charge of, of teaching the rest of my group, guess what ended up doing it for them? Because it was just more it was less frustrating to have to continue to repeat, repeat, repeat, maybe?

Brent Warner
Yeah, I get that, I think, yeah, I totally do. But at the same time, I really do love the idea of having students teaching each other because, you know, when that happens, then you get collaborative communication too, right? If it’s working properly, and so I get mixed between the two right. So, on the other hand, Ixchell we can say that, you know, you are a fluent and native English speaker through having been put through those ordeals. So

Ixchell Reyes
Oh, no, I see that. This is why it’s also like we talked before the teacher standards are important, because –, I absolutely agree with you, giving that one student who is more able to do certain things, giving them that chance to do the problem solving in English, and collaborate, absolutely, that has so much value. It’s where maybe the teachers standards are not being met. And you’re trying to implement students standards. And again, we talk about these all working together, so that you’ve got your teacher who is able that maybe may not be able to do it for 30 students at once, where this works really well. And you know, they don’t you need the teacher standards, and you need the student standards.

Brent Warner
Okay, so let’s get into it. Same structure as before, now we’re talking about goals and then a number of standards underneath these ones, we can kind of punch in on a couple of the standards a little bit more directly to make sure that they’re clear. But let’s start off with Goal number one. Goal number one language learners demonstrate foundational knowledge and skills in technology for a multilingual world. Okay, now, I will say that these are pretty basic, the starting the starting ones, the standards that they talk about in here are like, really, truly, if you’re listening to the show, you’re probably going to go like, you know, really, do we really need to teach these things. And I told him tell the truth, I totally feel this way. At the same time. There are absolutely true beginners, right. And in fact, one of our, one of our listeners, Susan, aka Vaughn, has developed has developed a course basically hitting these standards, which is, you know, true beginners, like, don’t know what the word click means. Don’t know what it means to drag, right, like some of these really basics. And so I’m just gonna kind of zip through them, but then we can talk about them in a moment. Demonstrating basic operational, so standard one has been been demonstrating basic operational skills in various technology tools and internet browsers. So basically being able to like resize your browser being able to open a browser understanding the difference between double clicking In single clicking and those types of things, the second standard is using input and output devices like keyboards, mouse printers, headsets, etc. The third one is using appropriate caution when using online sources. And then the fourth one is demonstrating a basic competence as users of technology. So like I said, when I’m like, really like, how to turn on a computer is that that’s really a standard that we’re looking at. But I have to be, I have to kind of take my own. You know, my own knowledge, the things that I take for granted and recognize, you know, we do have students that are, you know, refugees from countries, and they’ve never touched a computer before, they don’t know, you know, they’ve seen it on a TV before, but they’ve never actually interacted, right. And so. So a lot of these things can be really a challenge for some of our students. And then and then they don’t know the language to be able to interact with those as well.

Ixchell Reyes
Right, right. And I think one of the things that happens to us who get called, you know, the tech gurus or the the tech savvy people or the techies, you know, if you’ve been listening to this podcast, someone was probably calling you that. And we grow blinders, I think, and our expectations are much higher, because we’re so in this all the time. But you’re right. We have community members that have been in the community for a long time, and they just haven’t had the access to this information we have, you know, our adult learners, we have, like you said, are refugees, a lot of immigrant populations, or just, it may be that a student is missing a block of something. So they may know how to copy and paste because they’ve grown up with their cell phone. But now you tell them minimize the window, but don’t close it or Max, exit fullscreen, but don’t you know, resize it, those kind of things, they may be missing a little step there. There’s also a difference between what’s a window versus a tab versus an application window versus you know, so there are different things that maybe we don’t think about. So it’s important that we’re all using the same terms, and that all of our students understand when we’re trying to communicate something in that day with each other. Also have that understanding so that they can later maybe teach someone else. And I want it. I don’t know if you wanted to mention anything here.

Brent Warner
Oh, well, yeah, you sure you shared a really cool tool that a lot of the that I guess you’ve been using for a long time. And yeah, just open it up and look at I’m like, Oh, this is great. So

Ixchell Reyes
yeah, so your you mentioned Susan’s Susan’s course, and that immediately brought to mind something that I’ve used, and I think I even wrote about it, sometime I go for a CATESOL. But this is a tool by Northstar it The website is digital literacy assessment.org. And it’ll be in the show notes. But it it’s a, it’s a wonderful website, it’s all of the assessments are free. And it takes you through different levels of assessment in terms of computer literacy, knowing how to use the mouse, knowing how to upload a file knowing knowing how to add an attachment. And then if you want to move more into digital devices, or sorry, a touchscreen devices, they’ve added those they’ve added tablets now, which wasn’t there maybe a few years ago when I was using it. But it even now has a section on social media, especially because now you know, we’re surrounded by social media as our information or places or hub of information, but it is free. And if you’ve if you’re teaching adult basic education, or if you’re teaching, you know, if you’ve got to give these kind of courses to your students, it’s a great tool for students either to access within your course or outside of your course. And then they also have like places where they can go in and test the students to get their, you know, to get a certificate certified as being able to use just a standard technology, but it’s excellent.

Brent Warner
Yeah, I went in and clicked on just a few of the things and it was really cool, because it’s like, you know, it just did a zoom in on the side of the computer and it says, you know, click the USB port, right? And then it’s like a hot spot looking for you to click the right spot, right or, you know, click the bottom of a cell phone the bottom of a modern cell phone, right? It says, look, the charging port, right. And so it’s like even even just real real basic level things, but starting that literacy, starting that understanding of being able to talk about what’s going on with your devices, right. So digital literacy, assessment.org really outstanding resource, and worth checking into especially if you have students that are struggling a lot. You can kind of send them over there and work with them maybe during you know, office hours or something like that.

Ixchell Reyes
So let’s go to Goal number two. And Goal number two is language learners use technology and socially culturally appropriate legal and ethical ways. And of course, this is just, you know, understanding that wherever you are, there’s just two standards, I’m going to go ahead and read them like you did, Brent, but I think these are very important. Standard one is language learners understand that communication conventions differ across cultures, communities and contexts. And standard number two language learners demonstrate respect for others and their use of private and public information. And we know that certain things may be legal or illegal, depending on where you are, where you are, what organization you’re posting, through, what kind of information is allowed to be posted in a certain on a certain platform, how it’s posted, all of that really matters, right. And this is where we, again, we’re talking about legal and ethical ways and culturally appropriate. So I, you may have students that maybe hesitant on posting information, because they may not be, they may not want to be identified by others. And so we’ve got to create that environment and expectation that it’s a safe, it’s a safe environment, and that information is not going to go outside of it. Also, knowing that anything you post within your school account, it’s also not truly it’s not truly private, right? It belongs to the school, and the school can at any time, go in there and read whatever it is. So comments on that, Brent?

Brent Warner
Yeah, I mean, Well, one thing that I always tell my students, especially I tell my male students, this is that the LMS is not a dating site. And it kind of brings up laughs, but at the same time, it’s, you know, I’m kind of serious, because like, I’ll have, I’ll have women that will not want to post their pictures. And they might have different reasons for doing this. But a lot of times, they say, like, Hey, I don’t want to post my picture. But perhaps I’m trying to talk about, you know, a proper, you know, digital citizenship idea. And hey, seeing your face makes us more connected to your writing. And oh, yeah, I remember I was talking to her, I was talking to him. But then I say like, hey, the picture is for us to identify you and to talk to you. And to feel like we’re having this communication, instead of, you know, the black screen, or just, you know, the blink character. So I do talk to my students about how, hey, this is not a dating site, this is not an opportunity for you to like to like look for a boyfriend or girlfriend is for us to talk with each other. And to really recognize how important it is to interact with each other as people, right. And then a few of these other parts inside of here. You might be dealing with things that are differently understood in different cultures, right? And so hey, it’s okay to do this thing and my culture. But here it’s considered plagiarism, for example, like we often deal with, you know, hey, we’re kind of sharing our ideas and working on this together. And so since we worked on this together, both of us put these same words into a document, and this is what came out some cultures, they might say, hey, that is collaboration. Whereas in American culture, we might call that plagiarism, right? And then, and that would be also kind of tied into this. So that students need to understand those differences and how, you know what our expectations are in our classrooms here as well. So

Ixchell Reyes
sure, and you bring up plagiarism. And that brings another point that is, often I have to discuss with my students file sharing the types of files you’ve shared, and also how you’ve downloaded them. Because it could be as simple as Hey, teacher, you don’t have to pay for that film, I’ve got the file, and let me just send it to you. It’s like, Hey, wait a minute, how did you get that file? And then also, why are you sending it, you don’t want it because now that constitutes illegal file sharing. And we and the students may not know all of the all of the expectations of your organization, but that could put you and your organization at risk, and of course, the student and it may be totally innocent, that student may have been trying to just help you out and and again, talking about those things and making sure they understand. Yeah, if you’re using the bandwidth at your dorm, to download what you normally would download back home, that’s gonna fly to someone and they’re gonna send you a stop downloading Kotler notes, because I’ve seen students like teacher, I got this and they’re just freaking out, and I gotta go to jail. Teachers like it. That’s a warning. But yes, it’s a crime. So, yes, and then those are, sometimes we dismiss it and make fun of, you know, joke about this, but it can get someone in trouble and just understanding that, again, different different rules, different expectations, socially and culturally appropriate, legal and ethical.

Brent Warner
Yeah. And I think we do need to tie this in all the time. It’s not just like, Hey, I’m going to talk about this once at the beginning of class, and you’re You’re going to understand it right? That, to me, this is part of our training, you know, like the full course this kind of goes through. And we talk about these things all the time. And so it’s not just like, you know, a one and done deal, it takes time. And it takes a real processing for people to understand that, hey, you know, this stuff, the way that we’re dealing with these things is actually can be a cultural thing as well. So there’s a lot to consider there. Let’s jump to Goal number three, which is the last goal because they only had three, but they did have five standards underneath here. So the goal is, language learners effectively use and critically evaluate technology based tools as aids in the development of their language learning competence, as part of formal instruction, and for further learning. So it’s kind of a little bit a little bit wordy here. But I think basically, it’s talking about the ability to, you know, use something appropriately, effectively, and then also evaluate its use, right? So the five standards, I’m gonna, they’re kind of all start with the same thing, which is the ability to effectively, effectively or appropriately use and evaluate. And then here’s number one, which is technology based productivity tools. Number two, technology based language skill, building tools, number three, technology based tools for communication and collaboration. Number four, technology based research tools. And number five, is a little bit difference, recognizing the value of technology to support autonomy, lifelong learning, creativity, metacognition, collaboration, personal pursuits, and productivity. So basically, this is like, yeah, I mean, that’s a little long, a little heavy, but I think it’s worth looking back crucial. Yeah, it’s a big deal. Right? So you had some real thoughts on this one show? Oh, I’ll let you get started with it.

Ixchell Reyes
I’m sure. And I think this is a one where, okay, so if we were looking at a triangle, and looking at the different layers of culture, you know, you see or that iceberg model, you see, like the top the visible things above the water, and that to me represents like the whole, okay, clicking the mouse, making sure you know, where your USB port is, making sure you know, the legal ramifications of downloading and sending something. And then this goal number three, with all those standards is are the hard ones, they’re not the hard ones, the lifelong ones that it’s not just Well, we’re going to cover it today. And you’re done. And we’ve checked the box, this is the lifelong skill. And as the different types of texts change, due to the necessity of information type, or the way that our tools are developing, we’re also having to grow with that and change with that, we have to be cognizant that our evaluation skills are going to have to shift in order to accommodate the type of media or tools that we’re using to either consume or produce information. And what I mean by that is, the kinds of texts that we were reading 10 years ago, and the way that whatever tool we were using to read that text or evaluate that media is so different than what we’re using in 2020, right. And back then back then 10 years ago, the whole decade ago, and the times of my space, before we had the iPhone and touchscreen media available everywhere. We didn’t have as many pictures floating around, or emojis floating around or meme is, for example, right now music spreads so much more than what we could ever Express and sometimes send a text. And so as that material or motive information is changing, then we also now have to look at it with a critical eye because it is so easy to have something doctored. And To the untrained eye, it will look real. And To the untrained mind, you may not even critically evaluate that before you pass it on. And how many times have we heard stories of here’s an article on what you know, on all of these things that are actually, you know, false. And you think, wait a minute, wait a minute, did you look at it with a critical eye and not just a critical eye? The critical mind? And how did you approach that before you just accepted that information? And that this is not something that happens once in a class, not even in a semester? This is something that is lifelong, because I’ve had to shift the way that I look at images. Yeah, because it is so difficult now to tell whether something’s been doctored voices, for example, all the changes you deep fake things,

Brent Warner
like they’re its own its own whole crazy thing. And also, I want to kind of jump in on this show, because there’s a lot of different points that we could go into, but Oh, yeah, but some of these are also not even that it’s like fake and wrong, but it’s just a matter of interpretation. And it doesn’t even have to be a language learning thing. So when you talk about the emoji I’ve one that came to mind for me is, I have a friend and she would, she was like all these, you know, people were like really misunderstanding what I’m saying about a lot and, and she like always send the emoji with the heart eyes, you know, the little hearts for the two eyes? And I’m like, Yeah, a man is going to interpret that as like, you’re kind of flirting with them. Right? And, and she’s like, No, I’m just like, I love that idea type of thing. Or like, you know, some and I’m like, okay, both, both native English speakers, both from Southern California both have a total same understanding of like, hey, what we can see what this thing is, but totally different interpretation of what this thing means, right? And so for you, these are like the interpretation skills that we’re talking about here that we have to help our students to be able to evaluate, right? What does that actually mean? Do I clearly understand? Can I ask that person directly what they’re trying to say? Or is that a problem for me? And should I be taking it absolutely, as a sense, a set meaning? Or should I be considering that more?

Ixchell Reyes
Right? And I think you mentioned that emojis and another one comes to mind, it’s the common all caps message that you receive. And sometimes I know that in some cultures, when you are typing something in all caps, it just means you’re being formal, you’re formal, and that’s the message you don’t you want to show respect that way. Whereas in many cultures, that is a generational thing, where if you’re typing in all caps, you’re yelling and screaming, and you’re angry. And so

you’re just understanding and again, they’re different registers, it’s no, it’s no different than when we use slang or informal language and who we’re speaking with, and it’s another way of looking at language critically, and helping our students to understand that, oh, maybe that one student from another country where you know that one other student is not yelling at you and angry, or when you send that to your instructor, Your instructor may may find that you’re yelling at them and angry, and so you’ve got to know you’ve got to be, you’ve got to know those. Yeah, those differences? Yeah, absolutely. They’re not misunderstood, right? Because that could quickly lead to a misunderstanding.

Brent Warner
Yeah. And you know, if you send it to the wrong professor, if you’re out of your he, if you’re if you’re out of your yellow setting, or if you’re not, if you’re not with your teacher, and you’re going to your history professor or something, I gotta be real, real upset real quick. And that could do some damage, right? So. So I think that we definitely want to make sure that our students aware of this are aware of continuing to ask and ask and answer for themselves, like, what what’s going on with this? Right? So all of these ideas of evaluating the different tools, and you know, we just talked about some parts of them, you could look at all sorts of these different things. But I love the way you talked about it, you know, being the iceberg, right? where it’s like, Hey, we see the clicking thing, but really, you know, the next one down, we talked about, like, those are something you might teach throughout the semester or throughout a couple of semesters, but they eventually would get those cultural points, right. But these ones are really like, we, you and I have to, like, right.

Ixchell Reyes
And they’re and they’re the larger layers that hold what’s at the top right. It’s a if it’s an iceberg, or a structure really, these are just a really crucial points beyond the clicking beyond the sending something beyond the understanding that you’re sharing a picture. And you’ve got to give credit to the person who posted it first. But yeah,

Brent Warner
you’re right. Yeah. And I was thinking of a presentation I saw by Jennifer Nygaard and Darren Hudgens and they wrote a book called The fact versus fiction and it’s like a teaching critical thinking skills in the New Age of fake news. We’ll put a link in the show notes here, it’s it’s a, it’s a really good book for kind of understanding a lot of these skills. But when I went to one of their presentations, they were kind of moving on from this and into the second part of it, and I totally got duped by some of the like, the fakie examples that they showed this like, you know, like, hey, you’re you’re a supposedly an intelligent person who can who can evaluate basic ideas right? So let’s look at this and this and this. And what do you guys think about it and then they ended up saying, Hey, this is actually like, kind of the next level of misunderstanding right? So it was a it was like real news put out by a police department. Basically, like the police department said stop calling us about your toilet paper. Like when you run out of toilet paper, it is not that is not constituted an emergency. What an up happening was like that was somehow like I wish I could remember exactly what it was but basically, the the police department kind of put it out as like A joke on Facebook saying, Hey, you know, we understand that our problems, but don’t call us about this. But then that was interpreted by other people to mean that they were actually getting calls, too, because they ran out of toilet paper. And then it was spread out all over the internet, right? And so this is kind of one of the more hidden ways of evaluation that students might not catch, right? where it kind of is put out by an official source. This is real in a certain way, but it’s not actually real real, right? So I think this evaluation, all of these skills are things like you’re saying, we start, we start in our classes, and we can’t we kind of try to encourage the openness to understanding these better. But all of these are hard. And they’re required of all of us, not not only students, I would say that this is for all of us.

All right, so iTunes reviews the show, we don’t have any reviews. Right now, it’s been a little while since we’ve gotten a review. So somebody drop us a review, but I didn’t notice this is one thing I was noticing is like we kept saying, Oh, well give us a review. And we actually do have a number of reviews that are coming in. They’re just the star reviews and people aren’t leaving any, any messages on comments. Yeah. And so the comments, guys, well, we Yeah, we need the comments, we got to get those comments, tell us why you’re giving us the review or what the what the reason for it is because also we can’t see who you are, we can’t call you out and just say, hey, you gave us a five star review. It has to have Yeah, it has to have a comment for us to be able to, to call you out and to send you our one of a kind, beautiful, gorgeous, never to be printed again, after they’re gone. DIESOL pin so but we are grateful. As always, as all podcasts on all of all this little podcasts out there are real grateful for any positive feedback that you can give to us. Thank you. Yes.

Ixchell Reyes
Okay, so we talked about the standards, we talked about the importance of a framework. But now how do we implement that in our own classes? And we looked at an article by Melanie Zoellner, hopefully I’m pronouncing that right. The article is meaningful onboarding, when using tech in the classroom. And that’s for November 2017. It’s not that long ago, and it was posted in Edutopia. That’s where I first found it. And she had a really beautiful list of what kind of digital environment to create for our students. And also, she defined them really well. So we’ve got that section directly from there.

Brent Warner
Yeah, that’s right. So I really liked how she put this together. She’s basically saying, like, you know, how do you onboard your students into technology, right. And this is really, I think, kind of the ultimate goal of all of those standards that we’re talking about, because we can have these general broad ideas, but getting specific and, and working that through with what your class needs and the technology that you’re trying to use in your class with your students. I really liked how she she put this together. So the first one she pointed out was how to access the environment, right, setting up a setting up an understanding or defining how to access the environment. So a couple things like, how do they log in? What do they know their username and password? Can they access this resource from home, right? And all these are great things, you know, things that you want to know beforehand, and things that you want to make sure that you understand how to show your students. So one of the things that I do for this, for example, with logging into any technology, my school is a Google school. And so I insist, I insist that everybody uses our IVC email address and the IVC email address links through their Google IVC, drive, whatever. And so no matter where they go, you can always log in to any kind of like ed tech or service, you can always log in with an A either Google like login with Google, and they can use their school address, or it just says just login, and use their school address. So 100% of the time, every time no matter what they’re doing, I say always, always, always make sure that you are logging in with your IVC account, or with your school account. And if you set that up as a standard, then they’re not going to get lost. Like you’re gonna I don’t know where I found. How did I set this up? Or Where did I go do this or teacher I didn’t connect it to your classroom or whatever. And I say, Hey, I know because it’s going to be this address, and it’s going to be that same password every time. It’s really easy for them to get standard, standardized and structured for that information. For something like can they access it from home, you know, that’s pretty well now they have to

Ixchell Reyes
can or can’t Better? Well, yeah. So Brent, you know, I think, again, we go back to why it’s important to have this list is because sometimes it can be daunting to as a teacher, where do I start? Where do I start? So having these things, it’s sort of like a checklist. And so do check out the, the article, we’re gonna link it in our, in our show notes. But, um, if teachers and I wanted to say what makes it a lot easier for students to sort of spiral through the same information, when they go to another teachers, if on your syllabus or on your class objectives, or whatever you’re writing on the board that they see all the time or digital board, that your, your website that you’re sharing with them right now is instructions for logins and just having like, expected your school account. So that way, if my students and move on to another teacher, for example, mine move on every two weeks, every every week, sometimes every three weeks, so they’re not with me an entire semester, or they’re not with a teacher an entire semester. So to help them to layer, that same kind of pattern will in the end benefit everyone else. Because then a new come, a new new student comes in and they may be lost. And the students will say, Oh, this is what we normally use. And now that takes care of itself. The next point that she lists his digital citizenship expectations, and I know we talked a little bit about that with the standards. Are the students free to comment and express themselves and the environment? And how you’re going to do that? What are the expectations for interacting with peers? And we talked about that, like it’s not a dating site, it’s also not where you’re posting, like on a Twitter feed, I’m in the bathroom, I’ll be right back. I mean, I have had instances of that now in zoom in the zoom chat, teacher, I’m going to the bathroom, but it’s sent to the whole class and the whole class is like, you know where you are. When digital media is created, how are the images found in use, and how are citations displayed. And this is one that I mentioned, even to teachers, this one’s hard when you find an image, it doesn’t mean you’re free to copy and paste, it means you have to it’s you’ve got to look up the permissions. And I know that it seems tedious and to just, you know, get rid of that make sure it’s like Creative Commons used to filter on the Google

Brent Warner
Image pixabay or something like that.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah. And just, that’s a habit to develop, right? It doesn’t come from telling one someone, once it’s a habit, and then what external sites are okay, for the use in the digital environment, you may not be wanting them to use certain places, or you may have a limited number that your organization has come up with. So those are, you know, expectations that should be clear, and should be reaffirmed and often referred to.

Brent Warner
So the next is the workflow. And it says how do students access assignments? Right? Try to make this consistent in the same way, right? If you’re using an LMS, like we use Canvas, don’t put one in Canvas, and then send another one out by email, and then tell them in the zoom meeting one time Oh, yeah, by the way, also remember to do this, right. So you always want to have a, a consistent way for them to access assignments. And then how do students turn in their assignments to write like that process of turning in assignments is quite different. So one example that I have from my own classes that my students, you know, deal with sometimes is when we use Google assignments, and is called the Google course kit, which is an integration inside of Canvas, there’s a button that they have to click to submit, and they get the little confetti, which I think is pretty common these days when you’ve submitted your work. But we also use Newsela. And Newsela, is also integrated in through Canvas. And when they go to Newsela, they just do the work. And then it’s done. That automatically processes back to me as the teacher, but they don’t have any kind of like satisfaction of saying I’m finished, right? And so I often get emails saying, hey, how do I submit my Newsela assignment? So you don’t have to submit it right? Which is a little annoying, because I would like to have a standard structure for them. I mean, one, it’s good for me that they are recognizing that they should be submitting somehow. Right. So that is hitting the standards for them. But they’re not always the same. And so you might need to spend the time to teach them how to go through that how to submit an assignment, how to unsubmitted an assignment, what the expectations are, what is that workflow every time, right? And can you set that up as a standard from one assignment to the next, if you can, that’s great. Because it really helps them to feel more at ease when they’re when they’re finishing their work or something like that. So and then also feedback too. And we’ll we’ll talk about this in the next section as well. But when you’re when you’re called it says when you’re collaborating and giving feedback on student work before it reaches the final form, how will that workflow be managed? So for example, if you’re annotating and leaving notes on their document, what are they supposed to be Looking for what are your expectations for that collaboration work? A lot of times I’ll have students working together on a Google doc and they’ll say, hey, go give go give grammar feedback to your classmate or something, right. But then I want them to clear that those those annotations, clear those comments before they submit it to me, right. And so that would also be part of the process that I would want them to understand.

Ixchell Reyes
The next point, which is her last item in the list is communication. And again, depending on who you’re working with, you may be working in K through 12. Or you may be working with adult learners. And she lists three points here. One is let the students and parents if you have them know how you’ll communicate with them digitally. Will you be using the announcement feature in classroom or Schoology? Will you be using an app like remind again, and this is important, because sometimes, some teachers may be doing something through email first, and then go to the app. And so that creates inconsistency in the way students expect those important, important announcements. So if you just say, hey, all announcements are going to be made through the main feed on whatever LMS you’re using are all announcements, all important announcements are going to be made through text, like with remind that just again, we’re talking a lot about consistency.

Brent Warner
I know that there are some students who have not been taught this because sometimes including I have not necessarily taught it well myself, because I’ve seen sometimes they do a live share screen on like Canvas, and I see their inbox has like 40 messages in there, they’ve never gone in and looked at what those

Ixchell Reyes
messages. This is why I think I don’t, again, I don’t, I don’t like email these days, or in the last five or whatever years, because it’s so slow. And if it’s something important, you know, as a student, you may not have 10 accounts. But as a teacher, you’re going to get all sorts of stuff from your organization from outside the organization, from you know, from other places, even if it’s your work account, I may be gone for 15 minutes, and I come back to I’m not kidding, it could be 15 messages, and they’re all different. And you’ve got to be able to prioritize. So if it is something that students need to see. And they know that there is the app that will send them that the app or whatever notification the way that the notification is set up, then that just leaves less room for someone to miss something important. And along with that, with, you know, letting them know how you’re going to communicate, letting them know how feedback is going to be delivered to them for different assignments. So are they going to be looking into private comments and classroom comments within a Google doc or a slide? Is it a video link? Is it handwritten non sticky notes? And we know right now, we’re doing everything digitally. But again, how is that feedback going to be communicated? Sometimes it may be a final draft, and many students don’t know that. A final draft typically you don’t get the same kind of feedback, because it is a final draft, you may get more general, like overall evaluative comments. Or they may not know that at the beginning, there are layers of different type of feedback that you’re giving. So a draft, one might look at content, while address two might look at grammar. Is the feedback going to be on the assignment itself? Is it going to be? Oh, I’m sorry? Yes. I’m in itself. Or and also, um, you know, if the if the students know what they’re looking for, it’ll be easier for them to interact with the feedback and actually meet that feedback and find the usefulness of that, and that these are all directly from from that list. So

Brent Warner
they’re all different ways that those like you’re saying, It’s kind of crazy, right? Because you might think, Oh, I’m, I’m leaving them feedback. And then a student comes back and they say, why didn’t I get this grade? And I said, Well, what do you think, from your feedback? And they’re like, Oh, I didn’t go back and look at it. I just looked at my grade. And I was like, Well, hold on a second, right? Because I highly suspect that a lot of students are not going back. And, you know, I mean, it depends on the students and what’s going on. But like, you know, it’s like, they’re just like, what’s the grade, okay, the grade was good, or the grade was bad. I’m just gonna leave it at that point, right. But if you say, like, Hey, there is so much more to be gleaned out of this when you can, when you can build that skill of checking your feedback and recognizing it and using it to, to move forward. You know, but they need to know where to go to find that. Because sometimes, again, going back to these Google assignments, there might be feedback in the annotations, there might be feedback on the notes on the side, there might be feedback in the final comments. And then also, there might be feedback in like the canvas Speed Grader to depending on what teachers are doing. So there’s all these different places for one possible assignment with lots of different, you know, choices for feedback.

Ixchell Reyes
And you know, Brett, I think this is really important because you could also have students that have never had specific or they may never have been in a situation where feedback and what that is and how it works. I explained to them because I can think of a moment when I was in college, my first year of college, my first English class where I had to write an expository essay. And I remember getting my draft back. And it had all sorts of read comments on it. And the initial grade was a C, and I wasn’t a student in high school so that I was so shocked, because I thought that I didn’t know.

Brent Warner
You right back in all caps.

Ixchell Reyes
But I did go back to the instructor because again, the instructor, we did have time to do conferencing. But I didn’t know from my previous experience in high school that a comment written as a question meant for you to figure out the answer, and answer it within your essay. So what I had done was, Well, I’m not sure what to do, because I wasn’t told to fix this letter, fix that spelling, you know, I wasn’t given those concrete things to quote unquote, fix those directives to fix. So I went back and I rewrote the whole thing thinking hopefully, this time, I’ll get it. And of course, I still hadn’t answered the question. It was a hard pill to swallow. But that I remember that was the year that I learned, oh, teachers just want us to think about that question and answer it. And but it was hard, it was very hard to learn that without having had that kind of critical explanation or that explanation of what feedback is. And I think that that’s where I was missing a block. And our students could be also missing that. Right. So understanding what feedback means. But finally, the last thing is also, you know, when you’re giving grades, when you’re giving scores, where will the students see these grades? Are they going to be on the assignment? Are they going to be in your LMS? In Schoology? in the gradebook on a progress book? Are they going to be written on the top of a paper? Are you going to be submit giving, hiding the grades and giving it to them individually? How is that going to be communicated to them? So that also, again, leaves a lot of room for if you know, if they don’t know where their grades are, they’re going to be asking is submitted, where’s my grade? Where’s my grade? past? past? I don’t see my grade. And so because it’s, it’s, um, that can be a lot that can bring a lot of anxiety for a student if they don’t know where their score is.

Brent Warner
Yeah, totally well, and also teaching them the difference between an auto graded assignment and something that the teacher has to go back and grade, right? So sure, so a lot of the times, we’ll do like an assignment that is kind of auto graded inside of Canvas, but I have to go back and double check it. Because the way Canvas auto grades, things can be kind of like confusing sometimes. And so I’ll say, don’t worry about the grade until I come in. And I actually say that this is your grade, right? Because they will click on it and it’ll say, Hey, you got a 40%. They’re like, what? And I’m like, remember, between the half a second that you clicked on this, and you turned around and asked me I did not have time to grade your entire paper, right, or whatever it is. So. So that’s another thing too, is like recognizing for them, like recognizing what that means and what to expect in terms of getting the work done there. So yeah, so there’s a lot of things here, a really great article, just great questions in there. And again, this will be in the show notes for people to check out.

Ixchell Reyes
And it is time for our fun finds. And this November, I have yet another app, but because it’s been a rough year for everyone everywhere. I think one of the points we’ve mentioned time and time again, is being mindful and being good to our mental health. And one of the things that I found was this app called insight timer, insight timer app. And it’s got several kind of meditations or music that you can listen to before you go to sleep or at a moment when you’re feeling anxious or, you know, especially with being isolated. One moment, is that not

Brent Warner
these days.

Ixchell Reyes
I know I know. And again, this is why I you know, I think it’s helped me I’m an insomniac already I’m a night person and I hate going to sleep early waking up early. And now with work you know working from home schedule that’s also thrown in another loop and I know that a lot of people are going to be suffering from that odd schedule right now as the time has changed. So you know, when you’ve listened to this episode, that timing will have changed, but it is really good to just take a moment and let our mind just kind of drift in and listen to music or listen to some affirmations and just know that things are going to be okay will be okay and so that’s something that’s helped me to calm down if I needed or right before bed to sort of let go of all those thoughts that are just like you know, throughout the day and with an election you know and loom all of that It is really important to take time and take care of that. So insight timer app, it’s free, most of the things are free, but it’s enough that you can get started and see if you like it.

Brent Warner
Awesome. So mine is a movie called Frank & Zed. It’s a, I just found I don’t even know how I found it. I’ve only found a few days ago, but it’s a puppet monster movie. So if you like puppets, and if you like horror movies, it was pretty amazing. Like the amount of work that must have gone into this it well, they made it quite clear that it was a lot of work. It’s like a six year long project of this like kind of cool puppet story. really intense. well designed puppets kind of doing this whole like monster story in a castle type of thing. But it was just outstanding. Unfortunately, I don’t think anybody’s gonna have an opportunity to see it. I don’t know exactly what’s happening with it. But it’s, it was like a this weekend only type of thing to be able to see it until they get the proper release going. So if you want to sign yourself up for there, you can go watch the preview of it on. It was called puppetcore.com is the name of the website, so puppetcore.com. And you can go see a preview of the movie, if you’re into these kind of things. It is it was amazing. It was it was something else, it’s something I’ve never really seen before. So definitely worth checking out if you’re into that type of thing.

Cool.

Thanks so much for listening to the show in December, we’re gonna finish up this three part series. So we’re gonna be looking a little different here Ixchell, we’re going to be looking at ISTE standards, so not not so much the TESOL standards, but we’re gonna be looking at the ISTE standards and kind of seeing how they fit in with everything.

Ixchell Reyes
Mm hmm. And then again, leave us a review. If you’re leaving us a five stars, go ahead and leave us a comment because that’s how we can identify who the winner is. And then you could win one of a kind DIESOL pin. If you are giving us a shout out any other way. And any other social media platform, make sure you tag us so that we can find it.

Brent Warner
That’s right. And if you are interested in the next drinks with DIESOL, in theory, this one The timing is a little weird on this one is scheduled, would theoretically be on November 30. But that would mean that we would have to record on November 27, which is Black Friday. And so we just don’t know if people are going to be available or if we’re going to be available to tell the truth. We’re still it’s still a little early for us. But if people are really interested, we can make it work. And so you can still go sign up at DIESOL.org/drinks and we’ll put up a little survey saying Hey, are you available on this day? And if we don’t do it this time, I think there’s another one in January or February but but we are kind of in limbo right now about whether or not we’re going to do the November drinks with DIESOL right? Or shownotes and other episodes, please go check out DIESOL.org and you can of course listen to us at voice ed.ca You can find us on Twitter. The show is available @DIESOLpod and I am available @BrentGWarner

Ixchell Reyes
and I’m available at Ixy underscore Pixy that’s I x y underscore pi x y. In Hawaiian Thank you Is Mahalo, Mahalo for tuning in to the DIESOL podcast.

Brent Warner
Thanks everybody. Go Vote!

Ixchell Reyes
See you soon!