Ixchell Reyes
The DIESOL podcast

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

Ixchell Reyes
Episode 36 Digital Portfolios for English Language Learners.

Brent Warner
Welcome to DIESOL. This is Episode 36. We are your hosts, I am Brent Warner.

Ixchell Reyes
And I’m Ixchell Reyes.

Brent Warner
Hey Ixchell. Hey, recording from Colombia!

Ixchell Reyes
Colombia. I am currently in Bogota. And I just finished a month of language training for students. So I want to send them a shout out if they’re listening.

Brent Warner
Awesome. So how was everything?

Ixchell Reyes
So it was wonderful, I really don’t– I wish I had more time with with them. They’re wonderful people. They’re very hospitable. The food was great as just the climate was perfect. And it’s — I successfully avoided the blizzard.

Brent Warner
You avoided the Texas snow storm. It’s like, you left, it came and then you — then it goes away right as you’re coming back, right?

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I was in like 90 degree weather. Nice and warm. It was — it’s summer here. So I lucked out.

Brent Warner
Yeah. You’ll be back–

Ixchell Reyes
I’ll be back.

Brent Warner
You’ll be back by the time this episode comes out. But but yeah, that’s uh… safe travels, I guess we’ll say. I have been up to well… we just had our CATESOL Orange County chapter workshop. And so if you remember the episode with Savyonne Steindler we did. I can’t remember what number that was, but it was a little a little while back at the end of last year. And she ran the workshop. And it was great. People loved it, just like getting back into some of those things on like, how to engage students with zoom and all of those, those ideas. She presented a lot of really great and applicable ideas. So so that just wrapped up today. And we’re recording that just afterwards. And and then for me, I guess I’m prepping. I’m, I’m a featured speaker for CUE this year. So that’s cool.

Ixchell Reyes
Right now, that’s exciting.

Brent Warner
Yeah, I think that’ll be out that I’ll be doing that just after the next episode. So maybe we could talk about a little bit more than that, yeah, things are going pretty well. Semesters moving all that type of good stuff. So today, we’re gonna talk a little bit about something you are much more experienced with than I am. So you’re going to be leading a lot of this. But let’s move over and start talking about digital portfolios for English language learners.

Ixchell Reyes
So I wanted to talk about digital portfolios as a more accurate assessment of our students language skills, because I know that oftentimes, our students have to take multiple choice tests and all sorts of other language assessment tests. And that doesn’t always really show you what students can do, especially if they are not necessarily good test takers, or, you know, they happen to, you know, have a bad day on the day, they take the test. And I just sometimes, you know, it’s disappointing to see like, hey, but I know you can do this. I’ve seen you do it in class. And so that’s one of the reasons that motivated me to use or to incorporate digital portfolios.

Brent Warner
Yeah, I think this is a really good time to talk about this, because there’s such a big pushback right now on like, proctored testing and like, standardized testing, and that whole conversation is massive right now. I mean, it’s just blowing up. And I am, I am in favor of getting rid of those plot, proctored tests. I mean, we were hearing about it, they are invasive. They make students anxious. And I think with this hot this conversation about portfolios, it’s more of this collective work, right. And so they’re showing what they’ve done over time and what they’ve been able to do, instead of what they can do under a artificial high pressure situation. And again, particularly online, but but also in real life, too. Like it’s like, that is, you know, we always have those moments where it’s like, we know you can do this, like I’ve seen you do it before. And then we just choke because of, you know, outside pressures, which I do appreciate the certain certain value of like doing something under pressure and being able to show that you can do it and getting through that, but also, I don’t think it’s the most accurate way to measure someone’s ability. So I’m glad we’re talking about this.

Ixchell Reyes
So we’ve got a couple of articles. Brent, can you introduce the first one?

Brent Warner
Yeah. So the first one that we looked at was from Alawdat, and that was 2013 in the US China Education Review, and it was called using e portfolios and E learners.

Ixchell Reyes
ESL.

Brent Warner
(laugh) Yeah, Using e portfolios and ESL learners. I’m not totally sure about that title. But okay, let’s go for it. So it was interesting, though, because what is that inside of it, one of the things that stood out to me was, they said, these findings showed that using e portfolios motivated and enhance student writing, language learning, assessment and technical skills, using e portfolios is a lifelong learning that accompanies the individual for many years, right. So that’s a good kind of a good starting point to look at it and get started with.

Ixchell Reyes
Right. And so in the very same article, They cite Chau and Chung, a 2010 team that conducted a study on E portfolios to see how it enhanced independent learning, and also to look at some of the challenges. So they did find that there were some barriers, especially for students who didn’t have any experience with E portfolios. However, they also found quite a few benefits. And these were that a sense of ownership had increased among the learners, that using e portfolios, supported independent learning through commitment, purpose and strategies, and finally, that using the portfolios made students have control over their own learning goals and personal planning. So I would say that the benefits outweighed obviously, if the students don’t know, or there’s a learning curve, when you’re when you’re teaching students how to put together an E portfolio,

Brent Warner
Right, right. And I think that’s part of what in the past I was a little bit resistant to because, you know, in my, in my older thinking was like, Well, I don’t I want them spending time working on language stuff, not putting everything into a folder, right, or whatever that is. And so, I my thinking has changed, but, but I think it’s good to recognize this, that it’s like, Hey, there are Yes, there are challenges in building and some of these things are technical, and depending on those conversations, but there is a lot of benefit here. And I think the other article really stood out to me, but Ixchell, let’s talk about the the second article that we looked at.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, so the second article was by Zulfikar 2016. In English. It’s called benefits of web based or electronic portfolio assessment in the ESL classroom. And this was basically research that has shown using e portfolios for assessments can encourage the learners autonomy and learning and we know, you know, Brent, you and I know that the more connection a student has to their work, the more likely they’re going to be proud of it, and the more likely they’re going to take it seriously. So organizing e portfolios, learners are actually taking charge of creating and organizing their materials. And that’s what the article says that they’re creating and organizing their materials for a particular purpose, they’re assessing their own work, especially if they have to select the items that will go in the portfolio, and also making a reflection on their own learning, you know, their experiences and their progress. And so that, you know, those are skills that we want to instill in our students. The fact that students can control every face in developing a portfolio presenting, you know, presenting their material in a more personalized way that’s going to help students be motivated. And so that’s what that study found. In addition, it again, promotes learning autonomy, because the learners are the direct, or the main directors of their own, of their own portfolio of their own learning. So I would say that that one hit everything that I would would have said as to why we should incorporate digital portfolios,

Brent Warner
Right, and this and this for me is also the big one here where it’s like autonomy, autonomy, autonomy, right? How do we get students really recognizing and learning to love what they’re doing? And then personally feeling an attachment to that. So I like this quote out of that same article, which was, tests rarely reveal students strategies, attitudes, interests, or explicit understandings of processes. They reveal control over language and content matter. Okay, so that second part is great, right? They reveal control over language and content matter, but look at all those other parts that are in there. Again, I want to read that one more time. Tests rarely reveal students strategies, attitudes, interest or explicit understandings of processes, right. That is like so much other parts to this that are missing when We just give them a, you know, a cold test, right? And then it continues on it says, because of student’s performance on a test, so often has nothing to do with his competence in the subject matter, we believe it is not a good idea to use tests as a sole measure of learning, or the only resource for making educational decisions as like, wow, yeah. Yeah. That hits right like that’s, that’s what we’re looking for, as modern educators, really understanding that and looking at the, the depth and breadth of what a student’s real abilities and skill sets are

Ixchell Reyes
And how they’re thinking and processing, because not only will you be able to identify areas of weakness or strength, but also how maybe your own teaching, how you’ll inform approaches and strategies to help them reach those goals, help them to strengthen the areas they need to strengthen and and also connected to their attitudes, attitudes and interests, you’ll never know that from a test, you’ll just know that they were good at answering the test.

Brent Warner
Yeah. And we’ve seen that too. Like, we’ve seen that in our classes where it’s like students blossom, when they can talk about or write about what they actually care about. Instead of just like, okay, the professor says, I have to talk about x, right? Like, I have to talk again, about shopping or whatever it is, and not not to, you know, disparage shopping but like, you know, they get used to it, and they’re like, okay, whatever. But like if you can say, Well, hey, why don’t you write or talk about, you know, this thing that you have a deep passion for, and it’s like, then they’re, they’re committed to it right? And so, right, that, to me, makes all the difference. And it will show them what they what they need to learn and what they want to focus on. But Ixchell, moving forward a little bit, I did want to talk about this term of portfolio because part of the part of my resistance to it is as a student myself, when we when we had portfolios, it was like, okay, collect all your work, put it into a binder, three ring binder, click, and then turn it

Ixchell Reyes
Oh man. I can tell you…

Brent Warner
You know, this, right? I mean,

Ixchell Reyes
I know this as a student!

Brent Warner
Yeah! Like, I never opened it again. You know, like, I, maybe I stuck it in a shelf. And every 10 years, I might have peeked at it again. And like whatever. But I specifically remember going through like a cleaning thing. And just throwing a bunch of those things in a trashcan.

Ixchell Reyes
I did the same thing. And the only thing that kept me hoarding no for a while is that man, I was so stressed out trying to put everything together last minute for that score, right? And we know that the score, I mean, you’re basically everyone already scored all those individual assignments, why do you need a second score that adds all of them up? That just seems unfair to me. And so

Brent Warner
Yeah, and so I, to me, that portfolio still feels like that. You know, that three ring binder, you had to go buy for $6 at CVS or whatever it is. And so I, I also kind of want to just throw out the idea of like, calling it something different. And I don’t have a great answer. But I, I don’t totally want to call them portfolios, somehow.

Ixchell Reyes
I think and you know, I think and I think oftentimes when I think of a portfolio, and I’ve seen colleagues of mine, you know, and many other schools or you know, just colleagues who have just adopted the whole, it’s like a rite of passage, well, I had to do a portfolio and the previous teacher asked you guys to do a portfolio, but then the purpose of it is never really questioned again, if it’s something that we’ve been doing for a long time, and it’s just to give students another score, then you’re, it’s basically a waste of time. And I’d like to mention that in one of our episodes, with wainer Li Chen, she called her students, what we would call the portfolio, a digital space, their own digital space. And so that’s Yeah, and so that just gives it a I mean, it’s not a portfolio and then you know, students immediately think, oh, I’ve got to fulfill all these categories and, but a digital space is your space, you can make that space, whatever it is, you want it to represent of who you are in terms of your work, or assignments.

Brent Warner
Yeah, yeah, I like that. So so something like a digital space or you know, some sort of other term that makes it feel like some somewhere that you live and that you produce, right. Almost like you know, I’m also thinking of like a studio right like, my Digital Studio or something, you know, I don’t know just or even like gallery like my language gallery or so I don’t know something I like that I

Ixchell Reyes
like what because you’re showcasing your showcasing. And that’s what you want, you don’t want to have just a binder with things that go in there, right. And that we don’t want to create the same thing online, we want it to be something that the students will find it will feel connected to. And that will inspire their creativity. So To this end, if anybody’s interested in getting an overall picture of how to go about a starting a digital portfolio, integrating into the class, and then what maybe should drive the purpose in the digital portfolio, there is a website, the Complete Guide to student digital portfolios. And this is by Ronnie Burt and Kathleen Morris. And we’ll link this in the show notes. But it’s a really nice comprehensive, well put together guide for those people who are maybe wanting to, to think about it more seriously and incorporate them.

Brent Warner
Right. And when we come back, we’ll talk about some, you know, some digital techniques for doing this. This one’s kind of more like structuring and figuring all those things out. So there’s a lot of good resources. But let’s talk a little bit more about that after the break.

Alright, Ixchell, so we’re still grateful for our Patreon. So we started that up a little while ago. And thank you so much, because it was really hard to talk to you and get hold of you in Colombia. So we’ve gone off on our on our DIESOL qualifiers, but we’ll get back to it. We’ll be back into it in in March. And we’re going to shift a little bit because again, like we said, we’re, we’re small, we’re just trying things out. But I always did feel like I wanted a $1 tier. So you know, some people are like $3. And sure, but $1. That’s cool, easy, easy entry into it. So we’re going to shift a little bit here, we’re going to make a $1 tier, that’s just the thank you tier, right. Appreciate the show, it helps me out whatever. And that’s only $1 a month, and then we’ll have the $3 tier, we will be doing some swag mailers. So like, you know, special stickers, I got an idea for some Halloween stickers. I know that’s always away. But I’ve got some I’ve got an idea for Halloween, stickers,

Ixchell Reyes
Collectibles, I’m all for collectibles!

Brent Warner
Just little things, I don’t know we’ll we’ll be sending things every once in a while. Every few months, we’ll just send out some things to $3 tier. And then the $6 tier will be the $3 tier plus the qualifiers. So the Explorations with us the access to that on the YouTube channel, and any other kind of extras that we come up with which we do have a couple of other ideas on top of things. So we just haven’t totally consolidated that yet. So if you like the show, if it helps you out if it’s value to you, we would appreciate any support on the Patreon. You know, we’re I don’t think we’re trying to make money. But paying paying the hosting goals would be cool. And yeah, and thanks so much for listening. Yeah.

Ixchell Reyes
All right. So let’s, let’s talk a little bit about ideas and tools that we can use when implementing digital portfolios. This is kind of I guess, it’s kind of an oldie but goodie, this is classdojo. It is used a lot by K through 12 schools.

Brent Warner
That is an oldie! An oldie but a goodie, but I just remember, one of the first kind of like, yeah, accessible edtech tools. That was really a lot of people started using

Ixchell Reyes
Mmhmm, and so I actually still use it with my adult learners, because it’s got such a well rounded suite of tools, and it is free. But the thing that I like about it is number one, of course there’s privacy controls, but one of the features that it has is the ability to have digital portfolios. And so students can showcase assignments. Teachers can push out certain assignments to all or individual students, which means you can now personalize really personalize something or let’s say a student has to demonstrate a skill. But not everybody is demonstrating it in that format, then you can really tailor it to that student’s needs. In addition, it because it is mostly for K through 12 or used by K through 12 instructors, you can share those with the organization that you’re working with, you can share the portfolios with parents and with other teachers. So I actually like that idea because as a let’s say you’re teaching fifth grade and you really want we really want to keep the material for the sixth grade teacher to see where the student has, where their strengths are and what the teacher might need to modify the following year. So that’s a great way to keep the information moving as the students progress through the grades. So Class Dojo is still, yeah, oldie but goodie!

Brent Warner
Yeah, don’t let the — well I mean, if you’re k-12, awesome. And if you’re, if you’re a little older, if you’re working with older adults, don’t let the children on the homepage dissuade you from, from checking it out. Yeah, there, there’s definitely some cool stuff in there. So I want to talk a little bit about Google Sites. So Google Sites is, you know, that That, to me is like, especially with adults, or higher ed, that’s the place to go because it’s easy free to set up, it’s pretty well organized, there’s some good templates in there. And it’s all kind of like block based. And so and you can easily embed any Google assignments into it. So if you’re doing, you know, if your students have written something up, they can just simply make a page and then click a button and link directly to their Google Doc that they had written right there, or to their slides, whatever their presentation was, they can put their slides right in there as well. So really, really easy and manageable. One thing that’s a little weird is the blogging feature, is not really there. It’s there’s like kind of ways around it, but it’s not just built right into it. So they do have to build every or click to create every page. But I think that Google Sites is probably a good way. Because if you tell a student, hey, you should put like all of your assignments on this thing, right? And then that’s what you’re gonna show or like your amb assignments, or something like that, or your final revisions, or you know, you can do whatever you like. But that’s a good way for them to have it and have quick access to it. And you can just go to sites google.com. If you’re already doing other Google stuff, your your site, you don’t have to worry very much about it.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, you know, what I really love about Google Sites, too, is that it’s fairly easy for students to start learning if they don’t have a lot of skills with it. And I’ve had a wide range of abilities within my classroom in terms of their tech skills. And I used to use Google sites for assessing my students. Yeah, it was a portfolio but I’d tell them, basically, to include one of these assignments one of these and one of those, and I would not tell them, this is I may specify an order just to help them move along, like let’s say page one is this page two is just to help them out if they need it. But I got a wide range of very simple type type of portfolios to like really elaborate ones. And you could see the ones where the students personality was just like, Wow, you really took time to do this. And they were proud of it. And as soon as we would showcase one of those, the other students would now would now get ideas on how to personalize theirs. And again, they’re learning from each other. And

Brent Warner
One of the things that’s like, the students is totally updated to look at a lot.

Ixchell Reyes
And, and yeah, no, but it really, really sparked there, it really woke up their creativity. So in addition to Google Sites, I actually found there that some people are doing portfolios with Google Slides. And that way, yeah, so it’s, I think it’s images of work. It may not be an actual digital assignment. But let’s say that a student has to work out a math problem, and you have to see the work, or they are grading their own work, they’re marking up mistakes are something they would take a picture of it and then they, they with a little box of text they’re writing in there or recording, so students can narrate what they’re showcasing. So I found that to be maybe like a more amateur version of Google Sites, I guess.

Brent Warner
Yeah, it sounds to me like, that’s a little bit more tracking along what the traditional portfolio has been. But for, you know, lower tech situations where it’s like, hey, students don’t really have access to all these things. But if they’re going to have a paper, one, the teacher can go snap a picture, real quick walk around the room, again, back in back in person, or whatever the students can do that. And the nice thing about Google Slides and taking a photo, this is something I used to love to do when we did like poster presentations, you can snap a photo, and it will automatically fit your photo right into the right spot on the slides that you’re working on. So So yeah, I could absolutely see that as being like, Hey, we don’t have a lot of technology, but we want to have we want to keep this record digitally for you, and have it accessible. So that makes sense to me.

Ixchell Reyes
Or even as an introductory, like I would say, you know, if you’re, I would say if you’re working with students who will eventually get to like a major project. That would be a great way to get them started. Because a lot of those skills will just carry over into another set of tools. And another one that I love is spark page. I know that you’ve used spark page before, correct Oh, yeah. Spark, the whole spark suite, the Adobe Spark suite is great but spark page is, I would like to call it foolproof because you basically choose a style and then you you’re uploading pictures or you’re taking photos. And you can do this on a mobile device or on an actual laptop, and they type into text and you’ll get this beautiful layout, transitional layout that look, it just will make it into a little website.

Brent Warner
It’s really, the thing about beautiful thing that my students always like about doing spark is like, they trick people into thinking that their total per

Unknown Speaker
day like

Ixchell Reyes
that’s how I use it. Yeah, it’s

Brent Warner
like, Whoa, what is that whole? Like? That is a fancy looking page with like, overlapping, you know, like the text slides across the image. And then like all these things, and it’s like, and you don’t do anything? Beautiful. Yeah.

Ixchell Reyes
Right. And the thing is that this is again, there’s is it takes about three steps to to add something, and you’re not clicking and dragging and moving things around. It’s just a very, like, take a picture, touch at the text magics at the end, so sparkpage Yeah,

Brent Warner
so. So those are kind of some of the basic ones that you can use, if you want to introduce your students. Some of them, you can just let them go for it and try to say, hey, go use this, and they can figure it out. Some of them, you might have to kind of show them how to do it. But it’s worth playing around with choosing one. But I did want to talk about this other section to it, which I think is really the most powerful part of doing a digital portfolio, which is embedding work from outside resources. Right, right. So we can start with flipgrid. I think flipgrid is a really good one. So we obviously we had the episode with and and Louis about flipgrid, and all the different things. One of the features inside of flipgrid is the flipgrid shorts, right, where it’s just like, Hey, this is just a single video, right? Nothing else to it, it’s you know, you still record it in all the same ways. And you can do your talk through and record yourself talking or whatever it is. But then, if you put that into your portfolio, well now you’ve got like, videos of yourself explaining things, right. It’s not just a collection of text or, and not to, you know, not to slam on text. But like, I think that this is where the portfolio can start to come to life, right. And being able to see yourself talking through the work, being able to share that with your, with your classmates, maybe if you have a written, you know, an essay, and then a little video of yourself on the side, that explains why you chose to write that thing, right? There’s just the multimedia aspect of it could really allow for a lot of fun and interesting engagement for the students.

Ixchell Reyes
And you know, Brent, this just leads me to think that what a great opportunity for students to start sort of a rehearsal for interviews, job interviews, because you’re learning how to pitch your work, right. And if you’re recording something and explaining it, then you’re internalizing the ownership you have where that work. And that’s just a skill that unless you’ve gone through interviews, you probably won’t learn until it happens to you. But if you’ve got this already, then you know how to sound confident and you know what your selling points are?

Brent Warner
You wouldn’t even necessarily have to say that. But you literally when you when you apply for a job, half the jobs Yeah, well, I mean, depending but like, you pull out your portfolio, you’re worth You know, you’re working so. So that ability right there to tie in and show what you’ve been doing and talk it through. Yeah, absolutely. That’s huge. And you don’t even necessarily have to be explicit with your student, but they might realize later Oh, wait a second, I do know how to talk about these things right? at a meta level there. Another one I thought that might be good for embedding would be podcasts, of course, get away with without talking about. If you’re gonna do like an anchor podcast, right? If you’re getting your students onto anchor, they’re recording the show, then there’s a click button right in there for embeds. And you can just put the show directly inside of it. So then it can be you actually creating a show talking it through having guests, all of those types of things. That people you know, once students start recognizing what they can do with podcasts, they put in a lot of effort and my students have in the past, right. And so I think that embedding a podcast right into your portfolio, it seems like a great way to take advantage of more multimedia.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, absolutely. I also want to add another one of our Adobe Spark tools and that’s Adobe Spark video. I know that you use Adobe Spark video a lot. Having your students make presentations and narrate things explain things and you can also embed those right onto your digital portfolio. I think you could probably even use a spark video as a mini portfolio. Or, yeah, I mean, if you if you didn’t have a lot of time to do it, but you can always embed and so and over time, we were talking about, you know, the portfolios being something that follows students through their growth process. And so if you know, if students are adding to it every year, or every semester or every quarter, whatever it is, you could have, you know, the, you know, the early stages of their language, their path through language, all the way up till they’re finished or, and, and beyond. Yeah, which I think is great. The other thing now that you’re talking about spark video is because you can record those in little segments, right? Like you can record this is by talking about this one thing, you can plug those in as you keep going, right. And so you can save it there on,

Brent Warner
you know, on the Adobe Spark page. And then as you want to show more and add more, right there into the into the videos, you can keep doing that pretty easily, just with the click of a record button. So right, yeah, that makes sense. And the last one, again, this one’s just like could be different. But I have had students I think I mentioned this I’ve definitely posted about it in the past is RPG playground.com.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, this is a favorite. Yeah,

Brent Warner
where the students have like, straight up made little video games like RPG video games, where they walk their characters around and like, explain what’s going on. And so that could be an interact like full on interactive portfolio where like, maybe you could say, hey, walk the character to this place, and then they’ll be able to talk about this thing, or walk the character over to that person. And they’ll be able to have a conversation and what is their conversation look like? So, again, it could just be an embed, but it could be a full part of the portfolio that shows your understanding and thinking about, you know, whatever topic it is that you’re supposed to be showing mastery of. Right. So, there’s a few things in there. Ixchell, do you have any other ideas to wrap up here?

Ixchell Reyes
No, I think that’s that’s a good place to start. And that’s we’ve got a lot of tools for you to play with and and resources to check out. So

Brent Warner
yeah, and if you if you listening, have more ideas or other ways that you’ve been doing portfolios and working with your students, definitely feel free to reach out and let us know because we’d love to hear more about it.

Ixchell Reyes
All right, it is time for fun fines. And today I have something really cool that I learned about in Colombia. It’s called ATA keep it, keep it. And it is it. Yeah, it is good for enunciation, Brent, I’m proud. It is a type of the best I can describe it is it’s a type of Carmel spread that tastes very similar to Carmel. And they have I think the one I tried was a coffee kind one of my students brought it to me and I just love I love it. So I keep it you probably can I’m sure you can find it online somewhere because you probably can.

Brent Warner
Because we live in that world.

Ixchell Reyes
We live in that world. So you ready?

Brent Warner
Yeah. Well, hold on. I want to know about this is this. What do you spread it on on toast? Or do you spread it around? Well,

Ixchell Reyes
I was given this with either like a like a donut ball type. pastry. Okay, so it was filled with beer. And then I had other types where it just came in a little container and you take a little spoon and you spread it on something or you can just eat it like that. So

Brent Warner
there’s like, dressing right out of the jar. Right? Okay, so I may keep it Excellent. So mine is a foam roller. Pretty straightforward. We’ve had a couple of our houses actually now full of foam rollers. You know, stretching out your back and all those things. And yeah, my wife found one at Target. Pretty straightforward, just like a pretty strong plastic core. And then and then some thick bumpy rollers on top of it. And so and Oh man, just like you do. Yeah,

Ixchell Reyes
I think it’s the wall. I don’t know. There’s so many of them. But I had to get one because I was just getting cramps and your lower back takes a hit with all of this sitting in front of a screen. Yeah, so you really need to be Yeah, putting some pressure there so that you don’t later you know feel a lot of pain.

Brent Warner
Yeah, so I’m, I’m it’s funny. I feel like my my dad when I was a kid, like, always, like, rolling around and stretching out his back on the carpet. And I’m like, now that’s totally me. I’m like,

Ixchell Reyes
Hey, runners do that too. Yeah, it’s a it’s not it’s not necessarily an age thing.

Brent Warner
Oh, no, no, no.

Ixchell Reyes
Okay, yeah. We need to be stretching from

Brent Warner
No, but I’m talking about my dad when he was my age, and I was a kid, you know, like he would do all these things. I was kind of like, you know, when I was a kid, I was like, whatever, I didn’t care, or anything. But But anyways, just a good foam roller, I’ll try to find the exact one that we got to link to on the show notes. But there’s tons of these things online, all sorts of different sizes and shapes and whatever. And the smaller they are, the more like they are for like deep tissue. And then the the, the bigger and wider they are, the more they are for like full body stretch. So getting a foam roller, I think now when we’re also at home, maybe sitting too much is a good worthwhile investment.

Ixchell Reyes
All right, thank you so much for listening to the show. As always, you could win a one of a kind DIESOL pin by leaving us a review on Apple podcasts. We don’t have any for 2021 yet.

Brent Warner
And actually, we got a point. Yeah, we know you’re supposed to be kind with these like requests for reviews. But we get like, you know, hundreds and hundreds of downloads on all of these episodes. And total if you’re listening, you can absolutely win, right?

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah. Yeah. And if you’re giving us a shout out any other way, just tag us on social media, and we’ll be sure to find you.

Brent Warner
Cool. So of course, you can find the show notes and other episodes. We are for this show. It’s at DIESOL.org/36. And you can listen to us at voice said.ca. That’s vo ic ed.ca. And of course you can find us on Twitter. The show is at DIESOLpod and shell I feel like we just crossed over like a pretty big number. Didn’t we get like 1500 followers on DIESOLpod?

Ixchell Reyes
I think were 1500. And

Brent Warner
it ended in the zero recently. Maybe not quite. Yeah, you can help us

Ixchell Reyes
get we’re getting there, though. We’re getting there. And little did I imagine this I first started. We’re halfway there. It’s 1455. So 1455. Well, yeah, I mean, we need

Brent Warner
from the time we were at 1400. Maybe? Yeah. Yeah. And again, you know, we’d love it if you follow the show. That’s also where we make announcements like for things like drinks with DIESOL, which I think are we doing a giveaway this month? Is that right? We do. Yeah, March, the end of the month, we’re gonna have a drink with DIESOL. So if you’re on Twitter, we’ll make the announcements about that. And you can find me at @BrentGWarner.

Ixchell Reyes
And I’m Ixchell, @Ixy_Pixy. That’s I x y underscore p i x y

Brent Warner
In Danish. Thank you Is TAK. So TAK for tuning into the DIESOL podcast. Thanks everyone.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, thank you. See you soon.