Ixchell Reyes 0:00
What do teachers and students need to bring project based learning into the English language learning process? Jesus Huerta joins us to share some of his approaches. You

Brent Warner 0:10
Brent, welcome to the DIESOL podcast, where we focus on developing innovation in English as a second or other language. I’m Brent Warner, Professor of ESL, and I guess I gotta start saying author of upcoming is the book as we as we go. More information on that later. And of course, I’m here, as always, with the wonderful Ixchell Reyes, award winning educator in innovation and professional development, specializing in teacher training with an ed tech focus. Ixchell, how are you?

Ixchell Reyes 0:55
I’m great. I’m doing great. Good, good, good. So now, November,

Brent Warner 1:00
I know. Can you believe it? Right. Here we go. So we are here today with Jesus Huerta, Jesus, how are you?

Jesus Huerta 1:10
I am good. We were just talking about daylight savings time. I didn’t realize it was and I’m like, I’m so refreshed. I don’t need that much sleep for me.

Brent Warner 1:21
Welcome to the new time zone here. So, so Jesus, you’ve been an educator for over a decade, and in recent years, for anyone listening, Jesus has taken on roles as an education technology coach for Calexico Unified School District. That’s way. When I say I’m in Southern California, that’s real Southern California right right down there on the border, and adjunct faculty at the Krause center for innovation. You’ve been an instructor for any of Berkeley, Upward Bound Imperial Valley and other organizations. Jesus specializes in Makerspace development, professional development, with a focus on technology integration and project based learning. So if we’re talking about tech related stuff in the classroom, Jesus is the man to talk to. So Jesus, thank you so much for coming and joining us on the show.

Jesus Huerta 2:10
Awesome. Thank you for inviting me on. I’m looking forward to this.

Brent Warner 2:13
Yeah, part of the reason that we wanted to talk today was because you did an awesome presentation at Fall cue. So we both drove, or somehow got all the way up to Sacramento and and then you did an excellent presentation where you’re talking about all this project based learning that you’re doing with your students. Can you, I guess, I guess, before we get into the weeds, can you give us a broad overview of your school set up what’s happening with your students, and kind of the things that you’re thinking about as you step into that class.

Jesus Huerta 2:48
So right now, this is my second like, this is my third year as a technology coach, but my first year there was like a hiccup with the hiring process to find my replacement, so I was splitting my time with my sixth graders. So right now that we have 12 schools, we’re K 12, and in our elementaries, we have seven of them, and we’re we develop maker spaces for them. There’s a lot of support from after school program for that. But really, I don’t have students per se. But it’s funny, I go in there, I’ll do the first maybe one or two lessons of a project, and the teacher’s gonna request an activity. But I go back and the kids remember, hey, Mr. Muerta, hey. And so I still get that, you know, cup of mine filled, you know, interacting with students. But really, what I do is to prep for that. I’ll talk to the teacher I do. The coaching process lets me it can be, you know, they’re super busy, but it could be via email, via text. I don’t mind if they have my cell phone, and really ask them the Pro I give them the approach that I take when I do project based learning. It’s what tech Do you want to learn? And I know that sounds wrong or weird, but John Carrillo, him and since and Reyes, he’s another teacher from down here, they told me one thing that was like, You know what? Dang, that’s that’s the way I would love to learn and I’d like to learn, which is, how do we get the kids engaged? Now, yeah, there’s, you know, oh, look little shiny object. But for me, I always tell my I would always tell my students, you know what, they would seed printers and this and that, and I would tell them, I’m going to trick you guys. I’m going to get you guys to learn history with that 3d printer. Ah, you can’t do that. And I’m going to. And when it would happen, they would look at me kind of like, hey. So with these teachers, I tell them, Look, what’s the thing that catches your attention? Because if you’re not hip to it, if you’re not excited to teach the lesson, the kids are not going to get excited. And so that’s kind of my approach. And I go, Okay, so what’s the content you want it to fit there? And I think teachers still have. That mentality of, okay, he’s going to teach me how to use the equipment, but I have to develop the lesson, and I’ll tell them, No, no, let me help you with that, because it is a skill, just like we ask them to build their capacity with tech, whether it’s, you know, using AI effectively, you know, how do I implement coding and programming? I want to use drones. They do have to learn the equipment, but they have to get comfortable enough with it, I think, to be able to look at it and say, Now I use that as a teaching tool. Let me turn on my teacher vision. That’s that’s in Joan Reyes, his little phrase. So for me, that’s how I approach it. And I feel like I’m kind of rambling now, sorry – I feel like I talked a lot.

Brent Warner 5:38
No, that’s great!

Ixchell Reyes 5:39
No, I’m hanging on to every word,

Jesus Huerta 5:42
So, but yeah, that’s, that’s how I approach it. And the unique thing that we have, and you mentioned, you know, you’re, where are you at Brent?

Brent Warner 5:52
I’m in Irvine, in Orange County.

Jesus Huerta 5:54
Okay, so, yeah, you’re, you’re SoCal, you’re, you’re still..

Brent Warner 5:57
it’s still SoCal, it’s not SO SoCal (laughter)

Jesus Huerta 6:02
Yeah, Imperial County is, it’s, it’s a border County. But really, it’s not really a phrase, more border towns. So you have San Diego, but I think it’s San Isidro. I think that’s the section of San Diego that’s right connected to Tijuana. So here the only town that’s connected to Mexicali, Mexico is Calexico. That’s where I teach right now. But you do have in the county, you know, a large population of English language learners, so, but there, you know, we have a huge population of students that either cross over daily, because they might go, you know, they might live with their aunt and uncle here, but then they go back to visit mom in the evening, mom and dad. So it’s, it’s a different approach for us. And so a lot of these kids, they don’t have exposure to Tech because we don’t really have. And I mean, I, I wrote up a what is that one Donors Choose one time, and this was in a different district, and they got a little offended because the way I phrased it, but I used students words, they felt like there’s nothing here. And they said, Well, what career can I have here if I don’t want to be a teacher, if I don’t want to work at the prison, or I don’t want to work for the city? And I was like, that’s true. There’s no industry here. So in a way, I do, yeah, I look at the population we have. We don’t have a lot of industry here. We have a lot of fields here. And so that’s the other thing I try to get teachers to understand, like you’re going to get them excited, and as they get older, they’ll hopefully approach and try to, you know, tackle that, that that kind of career, hopefully in the sciences and tech. So, but, yeah, that’s, that’s my big thing about what’s the tech that you want to use to get the kids excited, and then we’ll build around it.

Brent Warner 7:51
So, all right, so let’s look at that then. So you’re kind of, you’re building these, you’re you’re creating project based learning opportunities for students with tech, but how? So let’s get into a little bit of the practicality or the reality of it on day to day. How can it enhance language learning for ELLs?

Jesus Huerta 8:14
So you mentioned ELLs English language learners. For those that don’t know, it’s, I guess, because they like a system where, how do we get them to where they’re at a level of English, where they’re not going to need extra services, extra help, certain curriculum, you know, made available to them, and so on. So when they register in our district, and I think a lot of districts down here do the same thing. You know, we parents have a questionnaire. Sometimes a teacher will identify them. If the parents, you know, put something different, for whatever reason, they thought, Oh, well, they’re at a two. Or I’d speak English at home, but maybe they don’t really speak that much English the child. So you’ll have a newcomer, which is one. And what we do is we give them the l pack test that’s to test their understanding of the English language, and depending on what they score on it, they’ll move up, and eventually they’ll test out, and they’re no longer, no longer labeled, you know, ELS English learners, English language learners. And so for me with project based learning, I feel kind of like it’s like math, because numbers, it’s its own language. But I think instinctively, kids will learn how to count, they learn how to add. You know, if they come over and they already have some math skills, they can find some success there. And so if I tell them, alright, guys, I want you to, and I mean, I use a lot of tools like Google Translate, and it does add, you know, it does add more work to the teacher, and that’s the hard part. How do I translate this? Well, great thing is, now we have AI, you know, let me translate these complicated instructions, and I’ll have someone like my sister read some of these instructions. She goes, Yeah, that’s perfect Spanish, because she’s fluent, fluent Spanish, like high level academic and so for me, if I can get them to understand, look, take this image, convert it into a 3d model, and then turn it into a key chain, instead of just using what Tinker guy’s great, you know, they have a lot of cool little you know, they have a heart. They have this. They have different symbols. But if they can get a silhouette of, say, you know, Spider Man, there’s a way for them to convert it into a BD model. And so then they can make a custom key chain that’s, like, totally unique. And it’s like, well, I saw one like this, and I want to, you know, make it for my brother or for myself. I think that success of making something there, flying a drone, programming a robot to go through a maze. They’re gonna have struggles, like getting the understanding, but if they just watch what I do on Tinkercad, they’ll find success. And if you’ve ever been somewhere where you don’t speak the language, if you’ve traveled internationally, you’ve been around people, and you’re like, you know what? They’re speaking language, I don’t get it. Or you’re learning about something, and you’re like, Well, I think I jumped into the deep end. You know, it’s intimidating. So now imagine you’re 10 years old, your first day of school, you’re like, I don’t know anybody, and I don’t know the language, and everybody is speaking a different language. So I think that builds up their confidence, but also tells them, You know what, I’m not dumb, because what’s the first thing a child’s going to can’t speak the language, they’re going to think, I’m not successful? I saw my grades. I saw this. I saw that. So for me, it’s another way for them to have a voice. And I think, you know, one of the things you mentioned the presentation, shout out to Robert Stone. He’s a academic coach for us. He was able to pull all this data because he uses project based learning, and this is his third year doing this. And I told him, Okay, now you got to move to a new tool, because he’s been using Ozobots. And he jumped into printing. He right away got an idea for it. He wants to make little hats. And the kids designed the little hats that go on top of the ozobot. And the ozobot, and it moves around. But he mentioned the same thing. He’s like, some of these kids, you know, it builds our confidence. And they’re like, I can, I can do that part. Why? Because I did this thing, or I can do that now, because I can do this. And I would use the same thing with my students, even if they weren’t English language learners, if they were struggling with a math concept, I’m like, really? I’m like, Well, you built, you know, this, or you program that accurately, you were the first one to do it. I think you could do it. And I’ll just walk away and just leave that little nugget in their head, like, Hey, you can do this. And yeah, it just builds our confidence. And so I think these tools, especially the ones where they’re making things, there’s no language barrier for them to for you as the instructor or anybody else to understand. Look, I was successful. It’s like they did this. And I think again, it lends itself to building their confidence. And I think that’s really what these students need at first. Because when you’re eight years old, nine years old, you have certain ways of thinking about yourself. If you’re a teenager, you’re thinking about other things. And when you’re in high school, you’re like, Well, my future is around the corner, and this is my, you know, junior year, but it’s my first year in this country. What do you tell that student? Well, we got to get them to feel comfortable and we got to get them to feel a little confidence in something.

Ixchell Reyes 13:23
So Jesus, throughout all of these projects, how do you ensure that the students are learning or are using English?

Jesus Huerta 13:32
So we have support a lot of the ones you might hear about, they’re traditional, and I ran into someone there, and they’re like, you know, it’s my first year with ELLs. And they’re like, I have no resources. And they said, I like what you mentioned, you know. And made sure that they got the presentation. Give them my card and everything. One of the things that another teacher Miss, Ortiz Francisco, Ortiz, that he does, he tells students recorded me. Turn go to, you know, open a doc for today. Turn on the mic. It might pick up background audio. You come sit near me, you know, so those some of the students, are right in front of him. He goes and he goes. It makes them feel safer. First of all, they’re right in front of me, but it’s translating in real time, so they can go back and go away. What did he say? So that’s one powerful tool. He will translate it. He uses, you know, chat GPT. So if he has a certain set of instructions that are very academic, he’ll change it over, and then he’ll also ask for it to be simplified in that language. And which I think, really we only, I don’t think we have anybody else who speaks a different language in Spanish. And the reason for that is so you have academic Spanish, and then you have Spanish. That’s it’s funny, you have border town Spanish, and sometimes the kids will have a certain level of Spanish, but we translate academic English into academic Spanish, and they’re still lost. And he’s the first one to really tell me, You know what? When I translate it. He. Was asked for two different ways. He goes, cus, I want them to see that academic Spanish. He goes, but I want it broke it down in a way where they’ll pick it up in their language. And he goes, hopefully, when they start to understand English a little bit more, they’ll they’ll get it, you know, sitting them next to someone that speaks Spanish, that can help them, just having that person again, they feel safer. They’re going to learn. So they a the student. Now we’re friends, because now we both, you know, they they were helping me, and they speak Spanish. Lot of visuals around the classroom in the presentations, if there there’s a very technical word, he’ll put a explanation in Spanish, and also the academic word in Spanish. We don’t have anything like a curriculum per se. And I know we had talked about before we started recording. We used to have a newcomers class. And Brent, when you said ESL, I remember my sister mentioning, I think she was an ESL class when she was younger. If not, I’m thinking about somebody else. But yeah, in the 80s and 90s, you had a classroom, and you were there all day. And I don’t know if that went away, but it was just called the newcomers class now, and the one that we had was two years and then you go into the regular classroom. Now, you know, Ix-ell, right? That’s how you pronounce it.

Ixchell Reyes 16:22
(E-shell) Ixchell

Jesus Huerta 16:23
Ixchell – Ixchell, If you come day one, you’re and I’m a sixth grade teacher, sixth grade student come into my classroom, and that’s one of the very, very stressful things for teachers right now, especially in our district and in our county, it’s I got to get kids ready for state testing. I got to get them engaged. I don’t want to go crazy. You know, the math scores last year were great. How do I keep it up? But the English scores were low. How do I raise them up? Because, you know, they’re up here in math, I got to get them up at least at the same level, and then keep pushing. Oh, and now I have a student that, guess what, they don’t speak a lick of English. And guess what, imagine you’re, you’re a teacher that also doesn’t speak Spanish, because we do have some don’t speak Spanish. So I think, you know, you you hear monkey wrench. It’s like throwing 10 monkey wrenches per cues.

Ixchell Reyes 17:18
It’s like every curve ball you could possibly imagine at the at the poor teacher and the poor student.

Brent Warner 17:24
Yeah, so this is, this is, you know, a very complicated setup for me, where you’re kind of trying to, trying to sort out how to support all the students. And then he says, some of you know, you’ve got these really interesting projects, all sorts of different kind of setups. And I think we’ll try and talk about a few of them specifically with what you do in the class. So the first one I remember in your presentation you, and I can’t remember what this story was, so you’ll have to, you’ll have to back, backtrack the story on this. But you had like, these different 3d printed you mentioned the key chains. I’m not sure if they’re all key chains, like, some of them look like Dungeons and Dragons characters, or like a Sasquatch, or, you know, like a, you know, print. There’s just all these different, you know, things that students are printing out. And so let’s just imagine that you walk into a classroom for an ESL teacher and the or a language teacher, right? And they have a 3d printer in there, what are you going to tell them to do? Like, if they’re if they’re going, I got a printer, I don’t know what to do with it. I want to work with my students. What kind of setups, or what kind of situations might be a good way for them to use those in the class?

Speaker 1 18:36
I mean, if you have a 3D printer, and I know I get this question a lot, what’s the best one? And I don’t work for them. It’s just, I see, I mean, I had to, I have fifth graders measure a prosthetic hand accurately for the smallest student in my classes. You like, four foot, nothing. I mean, she was tiny, and they did it accurately. It can do just about anything. So if anybody’s asked the bamboo lab brand, they have one right now, $300 and you basically send it. It measures everything itself and just prints. There’s my little spiel. But if they had a 3d printer, I would say, just ask the students to write a story and then have them either through Tinkercad model that that character, how they visualize it, and they could even use the design process say, alright, you know, I want you to do a sketch first, and that’s going to go with your story. And then we’re going to do a 3d model, and we’ll make two copies, one for you to take home, and we’ll, we’re going to post it here in the classroom, or, you know, you get to take it later. You’re going to use your your strategies, you know? How can I support Okay, I got, you know, I got to get these kids to learn Spanish. Okay, they’re in an ESL classroom. Say, you know, they’re in a district where they do have a specialized classroom. I’m hoping there’s some kind of curriculum there, and, you know, they’re using their strategies. But the thing is that I’ll use analogy. I use, I saw a meme. It’s like, you know somebody with meal prepping, and it’s like, does you know salt and pepper ruin your your you know your workouts? Like, why do these people cook like a piece of chicken breast, and it’s the plainest looking breast and all that. The thing is, we can deliver that learning situation. You know, whether it’s math, writing, history, social science, Steam, we can deliver it. Well, Steam, you do have to have, well, no, I’ve met some teachers that didn’t have any resources, but we can deliver that chicken breast. And here you go. I boiled. It doesn’t taste like anything, just tastes like chicken. Yeah. Well, you’re, getting the protein, you’re getting the good stuff. Or I can go, okay, you know, how can I? And my son got me into cooking better. He’s awesome, awesome. Best, best hot wings ever I’ve had is him, even though I mentioned we’re gonna get hot wings in a couple weeks. So we can spice it up. We can add, you know, what spices? Cat, what sauces do I have? You know what? You know, what starch can add to it? Let me, let me throw it, you know. Let me get this, this broccoli, and throw in some butter and add some salt to it, or spice it up with some chili flakes or something. They’re going to get those nutrients, but they’re going to enjoy it more, and they’re going to ask for more. So if I can say, You know what? You know what, Brent, I’m gonna have you go to we’re working on this. You’re gonna write, you know, give me, you know, right now that I need them to start writing their third paragraph. You know, they’re doing two paragraph stories. I’m getting them towards their third one. Okay, you know, you have your sentence chargers over here on the wall, so make sure you use those to help you. I have the English one and then the Spanish one right next to us. You know what it’s saying. Hopefully that’s that’s helping you, but you’re going to add a new component to it. We’re going to learn this program, and you’re going to make a 3d model. What is that? Oh, well, look, I have examples here. So of course, having the examples out there, you could have them design it or find it somewhere. The Sasquatch, you mentioned, somebody got a silhouette of a Sasquatch and they changed it into a 3d model that right there, that component of here’s robotics going with your writing. Here’s drones. You know, coding and programming, you know, you’re gonna write this story. You’re gonna animate it in Scratch. That second part, they’re like, oh, that sounds good. Wait. You want me to just, yeah, yeah. But when do I get to this? One advice to teachers is, let them choose. Do you want to draw? Do you have an idea in your head for the story? Why don’t you draw the character or start modeling it already, and then when you’re ready, come back and start doing the story, but you know, it’s due by Friday, so I might check on you, and if I see you’ve been modeling for a couple days, I might kind of push you to write. But you know, you want to write at home, you can maybe get some support from, you know, somebody at home, and you’ll see kids go, You know what? I’m going to write it here, but I want to do this at home, or I’m going to switch here. I’m going to do a little both. I had kids put timers. I’m going to do 10 minutes each. Okay? I’m like, wow, they’re learning time management better than I did. That’s awesome. So I think when, and you don’t know how many teachers I hear. I have a 3d printer. Let me guess I go to in the box. How did you know I’m like, because you already look like you’re nervous to add talk about it. So that means out of sight, out of mind. And the first thing I tell them, take it out of the box. You know, you have drones. Take it out of the box and put it to charge, and then just turn it on. You know that?

Brent Warner 23:20
Yeah, I love this. It’s super interesting, because so basically, what’s happening is students are out there writing a story of some level, and then they’re printing elements to accommodate the story, right? So they have like little tangibles to interact with that match up with the stories that they’re writing or that they’re creating. So, you know, I mean, in another way of thinking about this is like, how involved we got as kids, or and kids today too, with, like, Dolls, Toys, action figures that were of things that we were familiar with, right? So it’s like, Oh, we got the he man toy, or whatever else it is. And so here we’re, we’re, they’re getting the option to, you know, it might not be totally, you know, joints and rubber bands and all those things, but they’re still getting their little figures that connect them to their own stories, instead of something that’s just provided to them. And so that, to me, I see a lot of room for, you know, the the power of making connections and being more involved with the language that they’re producing as they go through that as well, right? So that’s, like, super cool,

Jesus Huerta 24:28
Right now, you mentioned Brent – Oh, I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Ixchell Reyes 24:30
No, it’s going to say it just reminds me of, like, I’m a big board game fan, and so when you’re playing tabletop games, you start, if you get really into them, we start collecting little characters or things to go with the game. And so you have, like, this really strong personal connection. And so I am reminded of that.

Speaker 1 24:48
And it’s funny that you mentioned that so and I was going to tell you something, Brent, hopefully I can come back. Um, in my class we do three games. They do Caine’s Arcade, um. Have you ever seen that video?

Brent Warner 24:48
I don’t think so.

Jesus Huerta 25:03
Oh, it’s great. I’ll send it to you guys in a bit. It’s this little kid that his dad has an auto shop part store kind of thing in LA used to LA. And he tells Dad, I want to go to the arcade. I should get put an arcade machine in here. And he goes, Why don’t you make your own? He just said it some kind of like in passing. And the kid started grabbing the guy has a bunch of parts. Where does all the cardboard go? Oh, the kids started making his own little crane game and this and that. So my kids do that. At the end, they use Bloxels scratch to make their own video game. Scratch is free. Bloxels isn’t but Blox requires no coding, and it’s amazing. But right in the middle it’s all the kids make their own board game, but there’s a lot of writing to it, because they have to write a mechanic, yeah, well, I want it to be like, not that the level of like, say, Warhammer, where basically the instruction manual is like a novel, but maybe like settlers, like Catan, something like that, like something like a boutique, high end type of board game that has more to it than just here’s the instruction. Hey, there’s a story to this. But what I tell teachers is they don’t understand. The kids understand the level of, like, critical thinking, higher order thinking and logic needed for the rule set. Because for a couple of years so I’ve been teaching you said was, yeah, this is my 11th year. I’m feeling old now, but I started later in life. But I started off in college wanting to be a teacher, and then I left it to go work and this and that, and I studied game design for a couple years right up to where I was gonna start learning the coding and programming. So I learned a lot of theory design and all that. Like, how do you approach making a game. And so that’s what I want the kids to understand, like, this is how you make a game. And so I told them, I’m going to break your game. And some kids get like, what you’re going to like, no. And I asked, What do I mean by break it? And they’re like, you’re going to do something that’s not meant to happen. And I said, Yes. And what do kids want to do? They want to be first. So they’ll go, Oh, my game’s ready. Okay? And I go on the toe. I know the I know the direction I’m supposed to go. I go the opposite direction, or I jump across the board. I’m like, Well, you didn’t say anything. I was not on the board. We’re looking at the prototype. But yeah, that right now, you mentioned board again. So that’s something. And, I mean, the people are listening, if you’re like, is that where I’m supposed to start? No, start with just implementing, like a little piece of tech, like, you know what? Just do, Tinkercad. Don’t even get a printer yet. You have to build that capacity for yourself. And then do a small project, like a two day one, when they do these, sometimes I would have two or three projects go at the same time, but that’s just because I was like, okay, here they can grab some math. We can grab some more math, some history, some, you know, writing and all that. Brent, you you said something earlier. I’m trying not to, you know, talk too much, but when you said earlier, you know your age, you’re, I’m 45 How old are you? 45 Hey, we go, alright, oh yeah, we hadn’t talked about that. 79 Imagine if, when we were younger, you said action figures. Imagine a teacher had come in and said, Alright, guys, you’re going to write a story, but then I want you to act it out. And I made like a special shadow box, and you can bring in your own action figures, and you act out your your story. How much more would you have been like, oh, man, I’m going to make this the best story ever, right, right? And that’s what I’m hoping teachers will see if they implement something like project based learning, or just like project based learning, like, like a little activity, something, you know, just something different, something innovative, that the kids will be excited about.

Ixchell Reyes 28:39
So, Jesus, you mentioned also bots, and I’m just wondering if you could tell tell our audience a little bit about what you do with the Ozobots.

Jesus Huerta 28:49
So for those that haven’t heard of Ozobots, they’re tiny, tiny robots. It’s like a jumble sized thimble. They’re they’re tiny, and they use color coding to be programmed. They have a new one that looks incredible, but we have the older ones, and it just looks like, it almost looks like a little bug. And depending on the colors that the kids draw, it uses those colors to move faster. It senses a combination and quick succession. It’s a code for it to dance. It can turn on light like a cop, different things. And so what Mr. Stone was doing, he was having the kids take the instructions on how to use it and rewrite it, but using a lot of support. So they were using a lot of academic language, like, I’m going to code it properly. The word properly? What does it mean for us? It’s like, oh yeah. I mean, it means to do it the right way. But they don’t know that. But if I tell them, you need to code it the right way, they go, okay, but now let me take the right way, and let’s use one word to say those. You know, three words. And so what he noticed by implementing it as a way for them to kind of say, hey, well, teach me how to use it. Or, you know, let’s write the instructions. You know what? Here’s the code that you guys did. Could you guys write what each one does for me? Those little things built their language. But they were like, well, I know how to use this. I know how to use this. I can write the instructions. Oh, we’re going to share those instructions with, you know, younger kids, things like that. Get some thinking. Okay, so I want those kids to use it, so I better write it, you know, well. And so the kids really focus on maybe make sure I say it right. And again, it’s, you know, you can’t see, I don’t know if they’ll see the video this. It’s literally like in the palm of my hand, tiny little robot. It’s not intimidating, it’s cute. So again, the kids feel safe. There’s it’s not a high cost item. And what I mean by high cost, the kid’s not going to be embarrassed if they make a mistake. They’re not going to go and say, Well, you know, there’s only one of them. We got several of them for the kids to use, and if they make a mistake, oh, well, here. Just get another sheet. It’s, it becomes something where they’re like, Oh, let me just grab it and use it. And I think that’s what we want to have kids understand. Like, you know what you’re going to use this. Your print didn’t come out right? Okay, let’s try it again. Okay, you need to land that drone there. Okay, we’ll adjust the code and so on. So I think what we talked about earlier, like getting kids engaged, getting them interested. Mr. Stone did that beautifully, but in a way where I wouldn’t have thought about it like that, because he’s working a lot with, like the lower level kids, because that’s one of the things that has to do as a coach. He’s supporting teachers, but the other half for him, his role changed throughout the district. All the coaches changed. They have to work with, like students that are struggling, at risk, but also ELLs and so he thought, you know, what? If they can rewrite the instructions are something they love. They’re gonna use this high level language. And the data shows, you know, some of these kids went from, you know, two to almost four. I spoke to him Friday, and he’s like, Oh, I got it hot off the press. It’s hilarious. Where he talks about it is, I got it hot off the press. Check this out. He goes, I have a kid already at this level. And he goes, and we’re not even in the new year yet. He goes, this kid is going to go from two and and and get out of the program. I’m like, so you’re going to jump from two to they don’t need this. He goes, No. He goes, the kid is doing it. I’m like, has a good way of saying it. So, yeah, it’s, it’s something again, that he thought about the group, and he goes, I don’t want to scare him. He goes, we have he has a maker space, his door, he has two doors, one of these right into the maker space. He’s like, I’m afraid. To take him in there. Don’t be afraid. I said they’re going to not be afraid. You’re afraid. I said, you have to kind of get comfortable and say, Okay, I’m going to make that mistake. Probably I’m gonna fall on my face. Guess what? The kids are gonna pick you up and go, oh, you should do this to fix that. Oh, you forgot to hit the switch. Or, you know, is your Wi Fi connected to the printer. That’s why I didn’t print Mr. Stone. And he’s like, Okay, so there’s things like that, you know. So, yeah,

Brent Warner 33:15
I love it. So I’m here in the you know. I mean, when you’re doing these things, make sure students are starting to build a sense of comfort right where they they can kind of figure out that this is a safe space for them to start working on things, to start building up everything, and then any of the projects you can get Chris creative as you like, right? So there, there far more ways to integrate these things into language learning than you might think at first glance, all of which are just amazing ideas. I would love to keep talking about this. We’re gonna have to wrap up and kind of shift gears here, but, but hey, so thank you so much for sharing these ideas, because I think there’s a lot of ways to start opening our minds, different possibilities of using the tools that maybe we have available to us, or maybe we’ve gotten a grant but haven’t thought about before, and so really want to encourage people to get creative with that out there.

Jesus Huerta 34:08
Awesome. Yeah, definitely.

Ixchell Reyes 34:16
All right, it is time for our fun finds and seeing as I’m in Saudi Arabia at the moment, I have the Arabic essentials playlist on Apple Music. If you need something to keep you going at the gym, if you need something playing in the background that’s like upbeat, but also it transports you to another world, then I really recommend it

Brent Warner 34:42
Arabic essentials. When I saw you post this, I thought you meant oils at first, but this is music.

Ixchell Reyes 34:48
Oh, no, music.

Brent Warner 34:50
Okay, so, like the must know Arabic music, I guess

Ixchell Reyes 34:53
absolutely Yes,

Brent Warner 34:55
Awesome. That’s an exciting idea. Because, yeah, I think about that too. With my with my own students, is like. Don’t know which, which are. Like, the always talked about American songs or whatever, or TV shows. So having a playlist like that’s actually…

Ixchell Reyes 35:08
Oh yeah – then your students will love you if you recognize a song.

Brent Warner 35:13
Cool. Alright. So mine is, you’ve probably seen this guy on YouTube before his Veritasium. He does these, like, kind of, you know, educational videos on different things, but he did one recently, called, How do QR codes work? And so if you most of us kind of have a lot a little sense of how QR codes work, but he went in interviewed the Japanese inventor of these who made the patent open. Talked about how the blocks individually work, and like, how you kind of run through it, and how it how it’s built, to catch redundancies. So even if, like, catch up is spilled on it, you could still read it, scan it and read it. And then there’s a secret in there, which I have not been able to unsee since, which is, we all know that there are the three squares on a QR code right in the in the bottom left, top left and the top right, there’s a secret fourth square that I had never really noticed before, and now I cannot unsee it on any QR code. So that’s my little teaser. You have to watch the video where it is and where it will always be, but it would really interesting video. It’s about 20 minutes or so. So how do QR codes work? From Veritasium. Jesus, what do you have for a fun find?

Speaker 1 36:26
Wow, you – I want to look at a QR code right now.

Ixchell Reyes 36:31
Me too!! (laughter) It’s like, wait, wait, wait, I’ve got to show this…

Speaker 1 36:36
For me, it’s something I’m going to go do with my son right here in El Cajon, right here in San Diego, there’s a jazz band that’s going to do a tribute to Cowboy Bebop. It’s my favorite anime of all time. It’s one of his favorite we watched it over the summer, and it’s just, it’s so cool that it’s just about them, and they have like a little media show going at the same time. The lead singer dress is like the main character from it, Spike, you know? And so my son, I saw it, and I said, Hey, do you want to go check this out? Because he wanted to go see a different band. I think it was smashing pumpkins. He’s getting into, you know, Heidi’s rock. He has, he has a good guitar. That’s a whole other story I could talk about…

Ixchell Reyes 37:16
It’s the generation…

Speaker 1 37:17
Yeah, so I said “Hey, let’s go to this one,” and it’s in a small theater. It’s in El Cajon, so we don’t have to go deep in San Diego. And right nearby is one of his favorite place for, uh, hot wings, epic wings. He loves hot wings. So that’s, that’s what we’re going to do in a couple weeks. That was my find. And now he wants to see if there’s other kind of, like, bands like that. So, like,

Ixchell Reyes 37:36
that’s cool. Yeah, very cool.

All right, for the show notes and other episodes, check out DIESOL.org/112 that’s for Episode 112 you can find us on threads or on Facebook at DIESOL Pad. – DIESOLpod. Sorry, my Arabic – My Arabic pronunciation got in the way. (laughter)

Brent Warner 38:05
Alright, so if you want to find me, I’m on most of the socials at Brent G Warner, and Ixchell where are you?

Ixchell Reyes 38:14
You can find me at @Ixy_Pixy. That’s I x y underscore p, i x, y, and if our audience would like to get in touch with you, Jesus, is there a place you prefer for them to find you?

Speaker 1 38:26
I use Instagram a lot and Tiktok. It’s either JesusH1979 or MrHuertasClass. Or if you just look up, you probably find me, either one of those. I use and also LinkedIn, but a lot of it is, you know, I post like videos and stuff like that on Instagram and Tiktok

Ixchell Reyes 38:46
Very cool. So hit him up. Go see everything cool that he is doing

Brent Warner 38:50
Awesome. Thanks everybody. So much for listening. We will see you next time on Episode 113 – Here we go!