Ixchell Reyes
The DIESOL podcast

Brent Warner
Developing Innovation in English as a Second or Other Language,

Ixchell Reyes
Episode 66 Working with beginners with Winnie Dinh

Brent Warner
Welcome to DIESOL! This is episode 66. We are your hosts. I’m Brent Warner.

Ixchell Reyes
And I’m Ixchell Reyes. Hello Mr. Pool Boy!

Brent Warner
Hey, how’s it going?

Ixchell Reyes
How’s your tan?

Brent Warner
it’s it’s Bronzin’. It’s really nice.

Ixchell Reyes
You don’t look bronze though (laughter)

Brent Warner
Ah, that’s the camera on here. I’m wearing. I’m wearing that hat, which was one of my fun finds from several months ago. And that’s keeping my face nice and pink. How are you?

Ixchell Reyes
I’m pretty good. I’m pretty good. I’m pretty good.

Brent Warner
Good. Okay, so we’re gonna jump right into things. So today, we have –

Ixchell Reyes
We’re not gonna dive right in as a pool boy would?

Brent Warner
Oh. Yeah…

Ixchell Reyes
We could dive right in,

Brent Warner
You know, splash right into this. So today, we have on a colleague of mine Winnie Dinh, and Winnie is a full time teacher at Irvine Valley College. She has also spent 10 years teaching at other schools in the Orange County area. Winnie has a specialty in working with beginners. And so that’s kind of a lot of what we’re wanting to talk about today. Because I think that’s that one’s the one that gets –

Ixchell Reyes
That’s a challenging area for for many of us.

Brent Warner
And you know what the weird thing about it is too is like people are just like, oh, yeah, beginners, it’s so easy. And like once you’re in the field, you’re like “mmm… Nope!” Beginners is real hard (laughter)

Ixchell Reyes
Beginners is the foundation. Yeah, it’s like foundation and

Brent Warner
You have to set up everything. It’s like building the whole block from the beginning. And then and then when he also has a an awesome YouTube channel and tick tock channel, we need teacher and so we’ll also be talking about utilization of social media and building videos and all of those types of things as well. So Winnie, welcome to the show!

Winnie Dinh
Hi, Ixchell. Hi, Brent, thank you so much for having me. I’m a big fan of your podcast. So I’m very honored to be on on your podcast.

Brent Warner
Oh, well, it is awesome to have you

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, yeah, happy to have you.

Brent Warner
I told Ixchell, you know, I’ve observed one or two of your classes, Winnie, and I think I told Ixchell afterwards, I’m like, Oh my God, this stuff that she’s doing is so cool. In the classes, and this was all the online stuff I know, we’re kind of parts of us are transitioning back to in person and all of these types of things. And so we can also talk about that as well as it comes up, but you know, you’re doing so much work with beginners, and, you know, really helping out a lot of our students on campus and getting them, you know, getting them comfortable with those first steps of like, surviving and living in English. And of course, at the college level, we’re talking about working with adults. And I don’t know, you know, we can talk about kids and other things later, too, we can go all over the place if we want to, but I guess we just wanted to kind of start with this idea of, you know, the beginners and the true beginners. And so and when he I’ve never taught the levels classes that you’re teaching at our school, and so even for me a lot of it’s kind of like, theoretical, you know, I’m just like, okay, like, it’s going on over there, but I don’t really, you know, I’ve never done, you know, feet on the ground and working with, with those levels at our school. And so, I guess we’re just kind of want to start off with this idea of beginners and like, how, how do you view or even just define beginners, like, and in your classes, you know, we even have a range of beginners, right? Like true beginners, here’s, like, hello. And they’re like, looking at you. And they don’t know what you’re saying. They say hello, versus like, Okay, I’ve already learned ABCs. And I’ve already learned basic, you know, some greetings and I can do a few things. And so, I’m just interested to start off with like, how, what do you think of is your experience when you when you start thinking about beginners? How do you? How do you process that?

Winnie Dinh
Sure. Well, there are so many different levels in a beginners class, because I usually teach 501 It is beginning No, but I think there should be like a 500 for true beginners because I think level one at most schools are for students with some English, but I do have a few students that show up where their true beginners that they don’t know how to actually write in English, or they cannot read in English. And I always feel very bad because I think the current class the way that the school sets up, is not designed to help those like true true beginners succeed. So I think I teach beginners but I don’t teach. I don’t think my car As actually teachers like English literacy students, and I do think that there should be a stronger push in most schools for beginning literacy, English students.

Brent Warner
Yeah, for sure. And this is something we’ve discussed. And but the trick is we don’t see it too much, right? Like, there’s not a lot of programs that do that. But it seems like I agree with you like, that absolutely should exist, right? Because there are those?

Ixchell Reyes
Well, we just had a case at my institution where a student came in in country had tested, had received a specific score in their country when they arrived to us couldn’t speak a word of English. So now, unfortunately, that student, of course, is placed with a group of similar level students, but there’s a huge gap. So he’s the outlier, he’s the one that’s not going to receive the highly individualized instruction that he needs to get him up to speed. So I mean, I know that that’s probably the case for many teachers that have like a beginning class, they’re all different levels within that beginning class. So when he How do you support those new students that are joining the class?

Unknown Speaker
Sure. So when the students come, I try to give them a lot of different worksheets every day for most of my students. But if they just come, I have to make sure that they’re learning the very basic of the beaver simple present tense. And I always tell them, are you we they know, as he she, it s, it sounds very simple. And I draw it and I go like, and you just have to really give a lot of attention to just the basic rules, because I think that’s what beginning level is just simple present tense. And then I always do like picture dictionary. So I try to give them something that they can do that they can succeed by themselves. So I feel like if they see a picture, and a word list, they can at least copy the word. So then that way, they feel like they can succeed a little bit in the class, I think, if I give them something that is just really difficult for them level every day, they’re not going to show up to show up. Another thing that I do is I try to like sit them next to hopefully a speaker of the same language. So that way they can make friends and talk. In my class, I also set up a WeChat group chat, because most of my students are Chinese speakers. So at least for the new students, they already have a community of learners that they can integrate into. And I’m, I’m a part of the group chat too. So then, sometimes, if a student asks a question in that group, and I wait for other students who help them, before I help them just to reinforce the sense that it’s not your teacher that’s helping you there are other people that want to help you too. And for students that are not Chinese speakers, so they’re actually in the minority of my class, I try to talk to them on their preferred platform. So I have a bunch of accounts in like, a cow WhatsApp line. I know that students the low level, don’t really check that canvas. And I tell them, I give them my Google Voice number. So I really try to be accessible to them in their preferred mode of communication, because I think that really encourages them to talk to me, I also utilize the A ESL, the adult ESL center. So then I tell them, oh, please reach out to the student, she speaks Farsi, please ask her if she needs help on using Canvas. So I think just using different all the resources to help the students so then they feel like they’re not alone, and that they’re not failing in the class. I also use Google Translate. And I tell them that the first day is always difficult. And there are different students in the class with different levels. Some students have taken this class three times, this is your first time. So give yourself some patience, and you will progress a little each day.

Brent Warner
Yeah, there’s a couple of things in there that are really fascinating to me, because I think higher levels we often want to separate the language is out, right? And so you when you’re like, Oh, I put the same languages together, I’m like, oh, yeah, of course, like, you know, but, but it kind of in terms of my own practice, when I’m working with students that are, you know, ready, college ready, or like taking the first steps into that I’m always like, as much as possible. I want to split them up and get them into different language groups, but like, you know, there’s gonna have to be some sort of transition time from when you’re a beginner and then like, slowly pulling people away from their own languages over time, right. But that’s a really entry Interesting thing. And I love it, it makes total sense. The second thing that I will note is actually quite a few things inside of here. But the the one thing that I was thinking is like you’re on all these different platforms, right? So you’re like on, you know, WeChat, all of all of the platforms. I think you’re, you’re on more platforms than I am at this point. I’m like, trying to back off,

Ixchell Reyes
Brent, are you on TikTok?

Brent Warner
I’m not on TikTok. You know that. (laughter).

Ixchell Reyes
OK, She’s definitely on all the platforms that you’re not.

Brent Warner
Yeah.But I will say that. This could be if anyone else is is kind of like looking at setting up that same thing. One tool that I have found recently is called Ferdi. Did I talk about this before Ixchell? Do you remember this? Ferdi?

Ixchell Reyes
No, no, no, no, it’s cool to me. Who have you been talking to? I thought I was your tech BFF. (laughter)

Brent Warner
Ferdi is basically like, it connects all of your taught your like chat accounts into like one app. Right?

Ixchell Reyes
And this is like, friendly. Have you ever heard of friendly?

Brent Warner
No, but it might be the same type of thing.

Ixchell Reyes
So yeah, go ahead.

Brent Warner
So I’ve got like my telegram, I’ve got my Microsoft Teams, I’ve got slack, I’ve got Voxer. I’ve got LinkedIn, you know, all these different chat chat platforms, right. And I think it does, these ones too. Like it’s open source. And so like, if you’re on 10 different things, and you’re trying to make yourself accessible, then, you know, for me, the biggest problem would be logging into every single like, Okay, well, then I gotta go check in login on this one. And so, so I like having that as a kind of a central place on my computer, where I can just jump in with those things. So that might be might be useful for some people as well. But one of the things I was interested in here is, you know, when you bring in the new students, and now we’re switching back and forth, right, and you say, you said, Okay, well, hey, I need to use these things, like picture dictionaries, and all these things. And, and when you I’m sure, like, I’ve had a hard time explaining what you do in the class myself, but I’m gonna, I’m gonna preface preface it with the best explanation that I can, which is, most of the time your screen sharing if you’re online, and when I’ve seen your classes, most of the time, you’re just kind of screen sharing, like a Microsoft Word, document, right? And can you kind of walk through that process of like, what you’re doing with your students and how you’re how you’re building the class by sharing a Microsoft Word document?

Winnie Dinh
Okay, so picture and online zoom class, as a teacher, I always screen share just a blank word, Doc, I start with a blank document every day, because to me is like a learning journey that I take with my students. I don’t like to prepare like long PowerPoint, that’s just not my style, because I think it’s boring. So for me,

Ixchell Reyes
I just gonna say that, again. PowerPoints are not the solution.

Winnie Dinh
Yeah, so I just start with a white document. Sorry, I start with the Microsoft document, I put the date, I put the class schedule. And then I always try to make my notes accessible and interesting. And by interesting, I mean that because I think the way that I teach is very vibrant. So when I take notes, I want students to be able to see all the different things that they need to pay attention to. So first, I always put the heading, for example, vocabulary or page, and then I have to bold it, and make it like a bigger size. And then I use a lot of images. So if I’m talking to students, and they asked me Teacher, what is the difference between wake up and get up. So I automatically insert a table into two columns. And then I write, get up, wake up, and I find a picture. So right there, and then I go to Google search for image, and I put in Wake Up clipart. I alternate between using real life pictures and clipart, depending on the content of the picture, and then I just like, drag it into my Word document. So then that way, students can see the picture. And then I write out the meaning of the word, and I use images a lot. I don’t know how to do this image thing on like, my school computers, for example, because I’m using a Mac at home. So for me, I use Command Shift four. To do screenshot. I would say that if you want to take quick notes, my biggest tip would be to get to know your computer shortcuts. So for example, I do a lot of bold italic, so I do like command B for bold command I for italic, Shift H Phase four bullet. So then I’m very quit with the computer because I’m used to the shortcuts. And I, as a beginning teacher, I always write out everything that I say. So then students can really understand and I make sure to use low lower level language appropriate vocabulary as

Brent Warner
well. Yeah, this process, I mean, when you see this action, because it’s super cool, and it’s on Zoom, too, because all the stuff you’re doing in the background, like getting the Google search and screenshots and all those things, they’re like, we don’t see those happening. So when you’re, when you’re projecting to the class, like, they just see the clean document, and you’re kind of talking through things. But it’s amazing, because what happens is that like, instantly, it’s just like, boom, and then there’s the picture of something is up inside, you know, in the document all of a sudden, and so it’s it has, every time I’ve watched, it feels like you’re totally prepared for these random questions that the students come up with. And it’s just, and I think that’s a great point, too, is that, that knowing the keyboard shortcuts, like can make such a huge difference and can make things so fast. Because I hear, you know, it happens to me too. Like, it’s like, oh, wait, hold on, let me get let me go get this thing or let me go. Give me just a second while I go find this thing for you or something like that. And it’s never happened, when I’ve seen you do it. It’s like, boom, you’re ready, boom, boom, boom, the next thing comes up, which is really powerful for the students.

Ixchell Reyes
Such good advice is to get to know your computer, because I know I struggle between I know my Mac, I know all my Mac shortcuts. But then I go to another computer. It’s like, wait a minute, what do you mean, I have to go to start menu applications and find whatever. So if your computer doesn’t already have shortcuts, you can set them up so that the ones that you’re using the most often are the ones that you have there. And then pretty soon it becomes second nature. And then you don’t know how you ever existed with outcome.

Winnie Dinh
Yeah, and another tip that I would like to share is, I set up my computer where if I click on the globe button on the keyboard, then it sets up to emoji. That way, it’s a lot easier for me to find a picture of the emoji. While I’m teaching,

Brent Warner
I did the same thing a while back. So

Ixchell Reyes
I’m trying to figure out where’s my globe? My Computer? My MacBook is so old, there isn’t one

Brent Warner
you can you can just choose. So like you can you can set your own hotkey to whatever button you like, right? And so I’ve got, I have functions, just the regular function. But yeah, top that then the, the emoji menu pops up. And it’s like, it’s been a lifesaver, especially since I started using emoji for a lot of feedback and trying, you know, because those are. We’ve talked about icons a lot Ixchell like, iconography, and how important that is for students. But it’s like, they’re so universal, even though we don’t always know exactly what they mean. We all we’ve all at least seen them right. So, but it can also be fun to have. And I would imagine this would be really fun with the beginners is like, okay, let’s make sure we understand what Americans think when you send this emoji. We’ve talked about that one with like, the, the two hearts for the eyes, right? And like, the two hearts for the eyes could be mistaken. Like if a if a if a woman sends it to a man, then it could be like, Oh, is this romantic? Or it’s like, Could just be expressing joy for the situation, right. And so it’s that’s also fun to get into those conversations as well. Because culturally, they can be different too.

Winnie Dinh
Yeah, I found that my beginning students really like emojis. A lot with emoji. And I know that sometimes it’s really difficult to find the right images. So for certain things, I do find the images ahead of time. So my other tip would be if you cannot think on the fly, I would say that before class, just spend like 10 minutes, look at the vocabulary list or whatever Are you trying to teach, and then find the images first, just save them to your desktop. And then as you’re teaching, you can just pop it in. And at the end of the class, I just saved the document that I’ve created with my students into a PDF. And then I put it up in Canvas. And for the first few weeks of class, I also emailed them the notes too. And then I always try to tell them, make sure to go into the class Canvas. So then you can see the notes that maybe you need to reveal more because I know some of my students they write very slow. So even though I give them time to copy down the notes, they just need more time. So I always tell them, please check the canvas and for beginning students, you have to repeat that a lot for all of them to get into know how to access that

Ixchell Reyes
document. Yeah, but I mean as a Teacher of beginners that again, we’re we’re you know, we’re saying that it’s the foundation for the next level or the next course are going to take where they’re expected to be more independent. And if they’ve already had that solid repetition of look, here’s how you’re how you’re going to access your LMS. Here’s why you might have to do that your teacher might not remind you then, and the next course this, there may be a new student who doesn’t know how to do those things. But the other ones will become like the experts that teach them how to do it. So that’s excellent. So Winnie, how do you approach? How do you plan your lessons? What’s your age to the planning lessons?

Winnie Dinh
I plan it based on the textbook. So I would go into the textbook and then I say, Okay, what am I going to do today, the way that I try to structure each day is I always do correct homework, and then textbook, then some sort of conversation. And then like some fun activity at the end, the maximum hour that I would spend on a textbook would be like 45 minutes, because for beginners, I feel like after that, it just gets too heavy for them. And I try to do conversation events online, then we can do zoom breakouts. But my favorite would be in person. And I do sort of like a bingo activity, where it’s just like, let’s say 20 questions in bingo grid, and I tell them, It’s time to get your exercise, walk around the room, talk to different students, if they say yes to the question, you write Yes, and you have five in a row, say bingo and yell your and write your name on the board. So I feel like it’s silly, but then students have fun, and it encourages them to talk to different students of different languages. And then just to make friends, because I really try to establish like a community of learners with all the students so nobody feels left out.

Ixchell Reyes
I love that. I love that. I think that no matter I mean, even I work with students that are my I get new students every every week almost. But to have the bingo call out, I think that that’s a great way to lower their affective filter, and start, you know, having a little bit more fun during class, but I like that.

Winnie Dinh
Yeah. And it forces them just to like, get out of their comfort zone, like literally because I feel like you can hide in your seat. But then when you stand up, and I think you know, it’s just a nice exercise because it is boring to sit in your seat for so long. Like for someone I’m teaching a four hour class, it’s so long, so I really tried to four hours.

Ixchell Reyes
For beginners. I mean, that’s that’s hard. That’s hard on the brain period. But for language learners at that stage, yeah, yeah.

Brent Warner
Well, let’s briefly talk about that when he because I know you’re, you’re switching back be between kind of online and in person, right. And so, you know, we all made that transition to online. And then for some of us, I don’t know how you fell. It’s like, oh, wait, now. Now I’m going back to in person, what am I going to take with me? What am I going? What am I not going to take? What what do I need to start thinking about differently? So have you made changes? Or are you? What are you? What are your differences I guess, between online and in person? Sure.

Winnie Dinh
Something that has brought with me from online is just a note taking because I still take notes on the computer in the classroom, not as much of course, but I saved them and I still put it in Canvas for the students. In person I get to use like all the meanie boards, which I think is really fun. I think after the pandemic using like mini board for each student feels very like prehistoric. No way you’re

Brent Warner
talking about the the little like, paper size whiteboards that you can write on. Yeah,

Winnie Dinh
yeah, so I feel like I have missed doing those stuff. You know, and it’s so simple for beginners to so then I use those little boards and we practice listening and spelling. So I think the students really like it because I think it’s important to have a change in how you study. So then they write their note in the note in the notebook, and then they get up, walk around exercise a little bit and then they have the meaning boards. I also teach in the class in the smart classroom so they can get up in groups and go to a corner to do something. I also bring in like the large butcher tape. I don’t

Ixchell Reyes
know the name of the giant posters, the BUTCHER Yeah.

Winnie Dinh
Yeah. So then we also do things on that too. So I feel like switching modality of writing and learning just makes classrooms more interesting and more fun. I found that for online, it just takes me so much time outside of class, to contact students and make sure that they are connected. So I have really enjoyed seeing students every day because it is so much easier.

Brent Warner
Just grab someone right there to go search for who you are and where yeah, that totally makes sense. Yeah, so there’s a lot. I mean, when you even given us a ton of tips already, like tons of ways for people to make approaches here. I love all this stuff. And again, kind of seeing it in action, especially. And I’ll say that part of the magic is the the Zoom share screen when you share just the one app, right. And so it’s like, there can totally be stuff going on in the background. But it all looks like it’s just one thing. And again, that presentation, you know, it’s cool, like seeing it as an observer, but just imagining it as a student where I’m not distracted by like, Oh, now let’s go watch her do the Google search or now let’s go like watch her drag stuff off of the desktop or whatever. It’s just kind of, and it’s there. Magically, that really does make a powerful difference, I think, I think for learners at that beginning level as well. So I love all this, I think we’re going to take a quick jump, and then we’re going to go talk a lot more about videos, and YouTube and Tiktok, and all that good stuff. So let’s jump over. Alright, so we need another project. Another big project that you’ve been working on, besides being a full time teacher and working with all of these students is you have an awesome YouTube channel, and you’ve got a tick tock channel, and you’re supporting people learning. And I know this works for both your own students, but also for anybody else out there who wants to look at things. So first, let’s just talk about, we can talk about both sides of it. But I think your YouTube channel has been around longer. How did that get started? Well, first, what is your channel? And how did it get started?

Winnie Dinh
Sure. So my youtube channel name is Winnie teacher. And I just started it at the beginning of the pandemic. So back in March 2020, I was teaching beginning students and I knew that they didn’t know a lot about technology, they had never tried canvas before. So I wasn’t going to approach it that during the beginning of the pandemic, I decided to make YouTube videos because I feel like everybody knows YouTube. So if I just give them a link, they know how to click on that link, because they probably have watched a lot of videos on YouTube. And then I just decided that if I was going to create videos, I’m just going to make the videos public in case other students anywhere can can watch it. So I decided to make more YouTube videos. So back then I used to make like a video each week. And I also made sure to caption it. I know that we can do the transcript, sorry, not transcript the caption request through the score. But I found that it’s not always accurate. So then I usually write my own transcript. Sorry, caption. And I made my YouTube videos just based on the lessons in the textbook. So sometimes I would focus on the grammar. And if it’s like pronunciation, for example, I made like a pronunciation series about vowel sounds or consonant sounds, and make videos about idioms. And sometimes I make videos based on students questions. So I was teaching a class and then my student was like, Teacher, what’s the difference between take off and take on? And I was like, wow, that’s a really good question that will take like, another hour to explain. So then I said, That’s a good question. I want to make a video for you and everybody else. And I just had a lot of fun with YouTube because I think it’s just fun for students to watch. I try to keep them between like five to 10 minutes, not too long, because I think it’s tiring to watch a learning video for longer than that. And I think YouTube is a good bridge for students because they know that platform. And I, the way that I assigned you to videos back then when the class was like hybrid, I would tell them please watch this video. And then here’s a follow up activity that you can do and then I’ll talk more about the content in the video when we meet next in class. But now, now that I see my students every day in class, the YouTube thing has become two things. One is just optional for students and then I tell them okay, so last week we studied about Present Continuous so if you want to reveal, you can just watch This video, and if you have questions, message me or ask me in class. And the second thing that I, that I found that YouTube is still really beneficial is it helps establish a teacher presence for me, because I email my students like two to three times before the semester begins. And I’ll tell them a little bit about my class. And then I say, if you want to know more about me, here’s my teacher introduction video in YouTube and check out my videos, because then students can really see how is my teacher? How does she teach me, I think now in the age of social media, everybody wants to know who they will meet right before they actually meet that person. So then I tried to give them like, all my information, because I think that now, especially with online classes, students have a lot of choices. They don’t need to take your class or even your school. So then in a way, you have to show them that, hey, my class is pretty awesome. So here’s why you should, you know, show up on the first day.

Ixchell Reyes
So we need that’s an you know, Brett, and I go back and forth on this topic about, you know, students don’t really make me feel like they need to be in the class anymore, because there’s just so much out there. So my question is, how, why is it? You mentioned teacher presents, but why is making your own channel valuable, as opposed to picking and making, for example, a playlist of other existing media out there and adding and having students watch that?

Winnie Dinh
Yeah, I think on YouTube, you know, there are a lot of great videos, but it does take time to look through all of that. So for me, it just makes more sense, because I feel like I can really teach and tailored to my students interests and needs, and just exactly how I want them to learn the grammar. And I think there are a lot of grammar videos that are more for like intermediate level, but for like true beginners, there aren’t that many videos on YouTube. So I like being able to provide that for my students. And the other value is you can continue to use it, you know, for your future classes. I always think about working smart and not too hard. So then whatever that I make, I want to be able to reuse it for

Brent Warner
Yeah, I think that part about like them knowing your voice and kind of knowing knowing what they’re getting into with you, it really does make a big difference. And then, as you’re saying, like, you know, oh, well, instead of going out and searching for something, I’ll just spend that same amount of time basically building my own video, because it really is hard to find quality content. I’ve found myself doing that before where I’ve like spent hours and hours and hours for searching, some searching for something. And I’m like, Oh, I probably could have just made that myself in 30 minutes, you know, and just done it more simply. And I you know, sometimes it’s just kind of a matter of recognizing how easy the technology is these days to create a lot of those things. When you when you make those videos, how are you making them? What are you What are you making them with?

Winnie Dinh
Sure, so I use a camera. And then so then I just like sit at my desk, and then I put the camera. And after that with the video file, I use Adobe Premiere rush to edit the video, I use that program because it’s really good at reducing background noise. And then like now I tried to be like a little fancy. So then I like a little introduction slide with a little music just make it sound professional. Yeah. And then also add in like visuals or captions directly into my video just to keep students attention, because I think it’s really boring just to look at one person on a screen for even five minutes. So you have to be really interactive now because I think that’s just the age of social media.

Ixchell Reyes
Right? Or there’s just so much to compete with, especially, you know, when there’s other things other channels up ads that you can’t control anymore. Absolutely. Yeah, definitely.

Brent Warner
And then recently, you’ve also been shifting into tic tock right. And so tell us a little bit about that.

Winnie Dinh
Sure. So just two months ago, I decided to make a tic tock just for fun because I think tic tock is like a new learning platform,

Ixchell Reyes
not just for dancing. Brett Brett said, oh people just dance on there.

Brent Warner
Yeah, I’ve learned that there’s more to it than just just dancing but

Winnie Dinh
huge, like teachers of tick tock movement, but I just decided to make the Tick Tock but the direction is very different because I’m ticked off. I really liked that. It’s like you can literally just make a video for 15 second, and I found that you know you can really teach stuff with 15 seconds So my tic tock channel is based more on like, Easy English phrases. So I get the inspiration because I was teaching my conversation class. And my students were asked me Teacher, how do you show surprise, you know, so then I made a video, how useful English phrases to show a surprise, wow, I can’t believe that. And you know, that just takes 15 seconds. And I like tick tock because it’s so much faster than YouTube. And to me it’s more authentic because I feel like I’m YouTube and how to like just set up everything. And on tick tock, I just use my phone I do in my house or in the office or just anywhere. And then I also use tick tock to, again, create a stronger teacher presence with my students. So for example, I just went to the bookstore, to buy Scantron with my students. So then I like made a 15 second video of my of myself in the bookstore, and I said, Hey, this is me, behind me is the Scantron. This is $1. So then, and then I just sent it to my students. And I feel like when students see that, they see that, oh, wow, my teacher cares about me. And it’s just really fast. And I liked that there’s a platform just to keep all of that, so then it’s just easier to keep track.

Ixchell Reyes
That’s awesome. I love that because at some point students might have to on their own later as it progressed, they’re gonna have to go by their own Scantrons. And if you’re that student that doesn’t know what were even go, having seen someone else do it already helps that, you know, that shy student to go and do it. I know, that’s, that’s another skill.

Brent Warner
Yeah, and I really like winning because like, we saw this, like we were looking at, I think you’ve kind of moved some of those Tiktok videos over to the YouTube shorts, you know, like as experimenting or something like that. But we saw the, you know, the, this is the buffet in the hotel room, or something like that. Here’s a waffle maker. All right. And I was like, Oh, that’s so like, it’s just really thoughtful, because it’s totally a practical place that like a student might show up in America somewhere in a coffee or sorry, at a hotel, while they’re doing some traveling or just landing or whatever else it is, and just being able to see it quickly. And like, oh, yeah, there’s a couple of basic words I need to know, I always find that like, you know, just as I was looking at that, but the other examples you’re giving, it’s like, oh, I’m really thinking about my students that what those students actually need. And that part, I think, conveys directly back to them. Right? Like, they understand that you’re making it for them. And it’s not like, Hey, this is even though like anybody else can watch it. But it really does feel like, hey, this teacher is actually making this for me or for our you know, our little group or like having those conversations as well. So I really liked that approach to make it kind of quick, simple. And, and yeah, authentic. I think too.

Ixchell Reyes
And then we need what is your tick tock candle? Are you also any teacher on there

Winnie Dinh
is the same we need teacher.

Brent Warner
Awesome. So there’s a ton of stuff to look at here. I think anybody can go check out those channels on YouTube, but when you teacher on Tiktok when you teacher, but I feel like there’s a whole nother side of this conversation that we can have in the future. But I think for now we’re gonna kind of we’re gonna jump out now and kind of see what we can say for the next time around. Yeah, oh,

Winnie Dinh
but may I add that you know, for YouTube or Tik Tok for or for anything else, just remember that it’s a learning journey. So you don’t have to be an expert to create a channel, just start make a video, see how you feel is only 15 Second, or even if you make it on YouTube, the YouTube shorts is also very short. So just try, I always feel like you know, with my students, sometimes they feel uncomfortable and try new things. And I feel like as teacher we also feel uncomfortable with so we don’t know that I don’t know. But it’s a learning experience, even from even for me, after two years of you know, doing YouTube, I still feel that there are so many things to learn about each platform. And I think as long as you’re learning a little bit making progress, that’s the important

Ixchell Reyes
part, or any that’s such a great message to leave us with. Because oftentimes teachers feel like, well, I don’t want to be an influencer, I don’t want to do this. It’s like, it’s not about that. Don’t put that extra pressure on yourself. It’s just about sharing what you already do in the classroom. But preserving it for posterity. You don’t need to have this full thing going on in the background. It’s just you as you would demonstrate in a class if you brought those items. And so I like that you are leaving us with that. So hopefully we’ll get to have some of our listeners share what channels they have on any of those platforms because it would be great to have us start following each other.

Brent Warner
Oh yeah. If people are out there listening stuff, share it out. Please let us know for sure.

Ixchell Reyes
All right, it is time for our fun finds. And I kind of have like a two part fun find. Brent, you had introduced me to Nick peachy. But I recently found that he has a telegram channel. And so I just cried because I don’t really use Instagram for I haven’t I sort of left Twitter for a while. I don’t use Instagram as much for my teacher stuff. I like to be sort of that be like my personal space. I don’t want it to be work. But the telegram channel, he posts all of his tools and finds on there. And he has little short videos like less than one minute videos on things. And it’s just awesome. So I found several tools. But the one that I was like, Hey, this is so cool. Is an app called depict. And it’s a transcriber, so you can transcribe what you’re speaking of voice notes, short, short snippets. So if you’re on the going, you need to you don’t have time to type things out. That is a great way to transcribe and I feel like you’ve probably mentioned depict at some point. But I like I love that I found this through telegram because I’m using telegram to get my news to you know, I don’t I’m not looking at Twitter for news anymore. I’m just describing to people I want to hear from. So it’s not just a messaging platform. So I like to say that explored NIC PTS channel, we’ll have to put it in the show notes. And then I’ll we’ll put depict on there.

Brent Warner
Yeah, depict I think if I remember this correctly, oh, this is? This is the iOS one. Is this done right inside of the phone? Is that right? It’s an app. It’s an app. Okay. Yeah, so there’s a lot of these transcription things these automated automated transcription and things are getting super cool, like, time to

Ixchell Reyes
go. I just thought, Oh, this is one that I could tell my students like, hey, sometimes I tell them to use Siri or you know, whatever they’re using as their assistant their voice assistant on their phone. But if I want them to copy and paste like what their what they’re speaking, this is something that they could do easy easily and just install on their phone and it’s free. So

Brent Warner
nice. So mine is socks.

Ixchell Reyes
That you gave us bombas a long time ago. Have you moved on? Or did we I know we mentioned bombas in some episode.

Brent Warner
No wonder did you talk about that with your other ed tech BFF I don’t know what

Ixchell Reyes
no know you told us bombas give socks to the homeless didn’t you?

Brent Warner
Oh no, I don’t know about that.

Ixchell Reyes
About that must have been Instagram you know getting into

Brent Warner
or some other super famous my

Ixchell Reyes
tech BFF

Brent Warner
No, these are stamps so I stances a sock company and I really liked the quality of their socks by themselves but but particularly you know, when you’re out when I’m cleaning pools, I’ve got you know, like these low cut socks and they always slide under my heel and then I get a blister right and so and this is actually like super like I’ve had some like real pain from from having the wrong socks on. And so these ones are they’re kind of cool, they’re still low they go under the ankle, but they have a little tab like with a just like some grip on the back of them and so like you can pull the tab up behind the heel and they stay perfectly on without moving all day long. And so if you’re a runner if you’re you know just moving around a lot and you have shoes that might robber chief like and you know if you want to have you know, low cut not you know, low cut socks like I was looking and looking like it’s worth investing in something like this compared to you know, compared to getting the pain or having an all the you know, like having to take your shoes off and pull your socks back on and all those types of things. So So these ones are stamps Run tab socks, and I’ve been really happy they’ve they’ve made my life a lot easier. Are these bougie socks. I mean stance is kind of a little bit more of an expensive company, but they’re they’re super high quality and they’re like they’re all you can you can just feel the towel as soon as you touch them like they’re their quality you’re

Ixchell Reyes
gonna last Okay, cool. That’s cool. You don’t know how valuable your ankles are. So you have blisters there.

Brent Warner
When you What do you got?

Winnie Dinh
Yeah, I recently went blueberry picking with my family. So that was fine. I think it’s really fun just to go out there and like pick blueberries I want to Temecula blueberry company and I think blueberry season is May and early June. So Oh, I think tried to go now before the blueberries are all gone. Very fun.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah. Okay. Got it to my company. Company. Okay. Cool.

Brent Warner
And if they’re out of season if the season has passed, there’s the other fruits can be done too, right? Yeah.

Winnie Dinh
Going cherry picking?

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah. Cherry Picking likes to do that. Yeah.

All right. So always thank you for listening to the show, you could win one of a kind DIESOL pin by leaving us a review on Apple podcasts. And we don’t have any for 2022. So we’re still waiting or almost halfway through.

Brent Warner
We’ll see what we’re recording. We’re pre recording this. So so maybe between between the time this one comes in that?

Ixchell Reyes
Yes, maybe. But if you’re giving us a shout out any other way, be sure to tag us on social media. We are on all the platforms.

Brent Warner
Yes. We’re also on Patreon and buy us a coffee if you want to support the show, financially, but of course, there’s no obligation towards that at all. You can find the show notes for this episode with all of the resources that when he is talked about and that we’ve added on at DIESOL.org/66 That’s the number six six and of course you can listen to us at Boise in Canada. That’s a vo ice d.ca You can also find us on Twitter. The show is at @DIESOLpod and I am at Brent G Warner.

Ixchell Reyes
I’m Ixchell at Ixy underscore pixy that’s I x y underscore p i x y and Winnie where is the best place for people to find you?

Winnie Dinh
Yes, you can find me on YouTube and Tik Tok at WinnieTeacher.

Ixchell Reyes
Cool. Check her out guys.

Brent Warner
Aweso

Winnie Dinh
In Vietnamese thank you is Cảm ơn, Cảm ơn for tuning in to the DIESOL podcast.

Brent Warner
Thanks everybody.

Ixchell Reyes
Thank you