Facebook offers free private online groups that adult basic skills (including ESOL/ESL) teachers can use with their students. Why, you may wonder, are adult basic skills teachers interested in doing this? Because many or all their students already use Facebook for social purposes, and are comfortable with this online platform. For some students, Facebook (FB) is on all the time, so the best way for a teacher to reach them is through their FB accounts, not by phone or email. Teachers who might be uncomfortable with the idea that anyone could join their classes’ FB group pages are relieved to know that these can be private, where the only participants are those that the teacher invites. Teachers are amazed to see how students can build community and camaraderie using a FB group for education, and to see students showcase their skills and talents in ways that might not have been evident in class. FB is free and ubiquitous, of course, and that makes it especially attractive.

Here are some examples of what adult basic skills teachers are doing with FB groups:

Susan Gaer, co-author of this article, is a professor at Santa Anna College in Southern California. With her pre-college level English language learner class she starts her Facebook group at the beginning of the semester. At first, most all the posts are from her. However, as the semester progresses and students’ comfort level with both the class and the teacher increases, they take more ownership of the posting. Usually by the end of the semester, Susan is no longer posting at all. The group is entirely run by the class.

​Ed Latham is an adult basic skills teacher, and teacher educator, in Maine. He says that Messenger, a Facebook chat program, is one of the most powerful features of FB for his students. He writes, “I get much more mileage out of sending a group chat or individual message through FB than I do from using texting or email. Students share that it is just easier to respond to a FB message because they are usually hanging out in FB.” ​

Paul Rogers is the founder of Pumarosa.com, a free English language website for native speakers of Spanish. He also uses several other online tools together such as What’sApp and FB Groups. He writes, “I use the group feature of Facebook a lot. I created nine groups, which I started a year or so ago to store lessons and articles for EFL students from about ten Latin American countries and the US.” ​

FB group for adult basic skills teachers:

In a FB group for adult basic skills teachers that we host (to join it, email one of us), teachers and teacher educators such as Ed and Paul have said that FB groups are a better choice than other platforms for discussion, especially for: ELLs who need to practice English writing; teachers’ reminders to students about assignments due, and upcoming events; and scheduling posts in advance. For example, teacher Kathy Olesen Tracey writes, “I like that I can plan a week or more posts and have them scheduled to go out. This helps me create a theme and then organize my time on FB, separating work time from home time and for sharing individual files with students as a group or individually.”

Here are some useful resources for learning more about how adult basic skills teachers use FB groups:

• 99 Ways to Use Facebook in Your Classroom 
• From the FB Help Center How are Pages different from groups? Which one should I create?
• Short OTAN videos showing how California adult basic skills teachers use FB groups. David especially liked this one because the teachers mentioned many different ways that their students benefit from FB groups, that they: build community, increase learning persistence, are a way to support -- and track outcomes of -- students after they have left their ESL classes, provide peer support and peer communication, are a place students can share their successes, and provide a way to advise on career pathways.
• David Rosen’s interview with Susan Gaer about how she uses FB groups with her English language students. 

​
David J. Rosen, President, Newsome Associates djrosen@newsomeassociates.com 

Susan Gaer, Professor, Santa Ana College susangaer@gmail.com 

By Becky Shiring

It’s time to review the worksheet from yesterday and one of your students pulls a crumpled worksheet from the bottom of her bag. Three more students can’t even find theirs. Two minutes before class starts, you have a great idea for a last minute change to a worksheet, but it’s too late, the copies have already been made and students are walking through the door. It’s the last day of class and as your students are walking out of the classroom, they dump their notebooks and worksheets in the trash can. 
 
It would be hard to find a teacher who hasn’t experienced one of these scenarios. But by creating digital worksheets in Google Drive, these challenges can be overcome. Digital assignments provide students not only with a way to practice target skills but also to learn and refine technology skills that include things like typing, digital organization, and website navigation. And let’s not forget about the added environmental benefit that digital worksheets provide. 
 
This post will show you how to create a digital assignment in Google Drive that can easily be shared with students in your class. To begin, the teacher and all students will need a Google account. Doing so is easy and free. Instructions can be found here. 
 
After the accounts have been created, take the following steps:

These are the basic steps for creating digital assignments. There are endless ideas for types of content you can create. Some teachers choose to create presentations that can be shared and students can take notes in the presentation while the teacher is going through it. I have created multimedia text sets for students to learn about special events happening in the school. Assignments can be shared between pairs or groups of students to collaborate on one document. Examples of several types of digital worksheets can be found below.

However you choose to use them, digital assignments are valuable because students don’t throw them away, they aren’t crumpled at the bottom of a bag, the teacher can easily track progress and provide individualized feedback, and students have the opportunity to revisit and revise their work with ease.
 
Examples

• Multimedia Text Set—The Latino Vote  
• Work and Career Resource Packet
• Critical Moments in the Civil Rights Movement 
• Google Searching—Team Assignment
• Adjective ABC’s

Interested in learning more about using Google in the classroom?

​Sign up for Using Google Tools for Teaching and Learning with the EdTech Center at World Education. This series of virtual hour-long workshops will cover Google Docs, Slides, and Forms, all in one afternoon, June 28, 1:00-5:00 pm EDT. Attend one or try them all. Experiment with new techniques and learn new tricks to enhance instruction. Unlike in a typical webinar setting, participants will have the opportunity to dive in and try out the tools during the workshop. Learning is better with friends! Gather together your colleagues and turn it into an in-service afternoon. Our Google expert facilitator, Ed Latham, will share techniques for different levels and interests. The cost is $30 per person if you register by May 15. This covers all three sessions. Register today!

By Becky Shiring

How often have you spent your Sunday night grading stacks of student papers?  Flubaroo makes that a thing of the past. Flubaroo is an add-on to Google Forms that allows teachers to grade quizzes and provide students with feedback in less than two minutes.  

The value in Flubaroo lies not only in the fact that it saves teachers massive amounts of time, but also in that it allows the user to clearly see student misconceptions without a lot of number crunching and deep data diving. Flubaroo automatically flags students that perform below 70 percent and identifies questions that more than 60 percent of the class answered incorrectly. The sample data above was compiled using Flubaroo after students completed a short grammar quiz created using Google Forms. We can see that around 73 percent of the class answered question number 3 incorrectly. This indicates to the teacher that he or she should probably spend more time in class around this grammar point. On an individual level, we can see that there are two students who scored 100 percent and four students who scored 80 percent.  The next time this topic is addressed in class, the teacher might plan to give these students a more challenging task. On the other hand, we have six students who scored a 40 percent. This data tells a teacher that he or she may need to plan for small group, teacher led instruction with this group of students. 

In addition to helping teachers to identify problem areas, the program also allows students to receive immediate feedback. While timing of feedback is an oft-debated topic, there is research that suggests providing low-level learners with access to immediate, correct response feedback is preferable to delayed response feedback (Gaynor, 1981; Roper, 1977; Clariana, 1990). It can be difficult as a teacher to provide students with immediate feedback on quiz and test performance. By utilizing Flubaroo, the teacher is able to provide students with feedback almost immediately after the assessment has been completed. For a tutorial on using the program, please see the screencast below.  

If you work in an adult basic skills program (including ESOL) and want to develop an online presence for your students, there are so many resources -- free and commercial, individual apps and completely integrated learning systems -- how do you get started? This step-by-step article explains how. It is based on a new, free, online guide, Blended Learning for the Adult Education Classroom of which I am lead author. Throughout this article, I will reference particular pages in the guide where, if you wish, you can learn more.

Before you start, however, here are three questions that you might have: 

1. What is blended (or hybrid) learning?

Blended learning refers to a teaching and learning model that has a face-to-face class or tutorial component integrated with an online learning component. (pp. 3-5)

2. How could blended learning help my students and school or program?

Here are seven ways blended Learning could help. It:

• May be more effective for adult learners than only face-to-face learning or only online learning. (pp. 5-6)
• Can extend learning time so students can reach the new state College and Career Readiness standards. (pp. 6)
• Can help your students to acquire digital literacy/digital readiness, and online learning skills. (pp. 7)
• Enables students to “make up” missed classes (pp. 8)
• Can make homework more convenient and appealing (pp. 8)
• Enables you to more easily monitor student progress (pp. 9)
• Fits well with competency-based (performance-based or mastery) learning models, and with workplace basic skills, including workplace English language learning. (pp. 9)

3. What does Blended Learning Look like?

There are many different successful ways to develop blended learning. Section Two of the guide has several vignettes of adult education blended learning classes and tutoring programs. (Pages 10-30)

HOW TO BEGIN

Below are four steps, in a reasonable but not rigidly prescriptive order. Adapt them to meet your students’ and your program’s needs.

1. Describe what kinds of technology and web access you have in your school or program and classroom. Your description might be a “worst case,” “typical” or “better/best case” scenario. Blended learning is possible, but may look different, with each. (pp. 34-36)

2. Find out and describe what kinds of technology and web access your students have available at home, work, at their public library, community computing center, or elsewhere. (pp. 31-33)

3. Decide on and implement an online learning platform that meets your needs, the needs of your students and the needs of your program or school. There are two very different approaches: an (often purchased, but sometimes free) turnkey program or a build-it-yourself approach. The advantages of the turnkey model are that the content is in place, it usually combines an instructional and assessment system, and that it may take less time to implement. The advantages of a build-it-yourself approach are that all the content is created or chosen by you (and your teaching colleagues) so it may more easily align with what you do face-to-face in class. (pp. 41- 50) 

A quick assessment is available to help you determine if the best choice for you, in starting out, is a turnkey or a build-it-yourself approach. (pp. 43-44) 

Student Internet and Computer Skills Survey

Your name _________________________________________

1. Do you ever use the Internet (the Web)?   Yes/No    If “No,” please do not continue.

Access to the Internet
2. How do you get to the Internet (the Web)? (Circle all the ways you actually use.)

• Computer at home
  
• Computer at your school or program
  
• Computer at work
  
• Computer at a library
  
• Computer someplace else (Where?) 
  
• Cell phone (Please list your cell phone brand and model)                                    
  
• Electronic tablet
  
• E-reader
  
• Other (What?) 

Email
3 a. Do you have an email address? Yes/No
3 b. If you have an email address, what is it?
3 c. If you have email, how often do you use it? (Circle one choice)
      Many times each day/Many times each week/Never or Not often
3 d. Can you attach a document to your email? (Circle one choice)
     Yes, easily/Yes but this is difficult/No
3 e. Can you attach a photo to your email? (Circle one choice)
     Yes, easily/Yes but this is difficult/No

Computer Skills (For each of the computer skills below, circle only one choice.)
4 a. Can you create a document on your computer?  Yes/No/I don’t know
4 b. If yes, can you save a document? Yes/No/I don’t know
4 c. Can you find documents you have saved? Yes, easily/Sometimes/No
4 d. Do you know what a web browser is such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Chrome? Yes/No
4 e. If yes, do you use a web browser? Yes/No
4 f. Do you know what a search engine is? Yes/No
4 g. If yes, can you use a search engine to find information on the Internet?
      Yes, easily/Yes, sometimes/No
4 h. If yes, what kinds of information have you searched for? Circle all that apply to you.

• Maps or directions
  
• Weather
  
• News
  
• Movie times
  
• Products to buy
  
• Health or medical information
  
• Job information
  
• Recipes
  
• Sports information
  
• Other (please describe)
  

4 i. Have you watched videos on the web? Yes, a lot/Yes, sometimes/No
4 j. Have you used the Internet for learning? Yes, a lot/Yes, sometimes/No
4.k. If you have used the Internet for learning, please describe this.
4 l. Have you used Skype? Yes/No/I don’t know
4 m. Have you used a spreadsheet (such as Excel)? Yes/No/I don’t know

Developed by David J. Rosen on 1.27.15, Revised on 2.18.15

Student Cell Phone Survey
Directions: Circle “Yes”, “No”,  “I don’t know,” or write your answer to the question.

Your name _________________________________________

1. Do you have a cell phone? Yes/No  If “No” please do not continue.
   
2. What is your cell phone brand  & model?
   
3. Do you have an Internet Service Provider for your phone? If yes, which one? Yes/No/I don't know
   
4. What is your cell phone number, beginning with the area code?
   
5. Does your cell phone have a camera? Yes/No/I don't know
   
6. If you answered yes, have you taken a picture using it? Yes/No/I don’t know
   
7. If yes, have you sent the picture to an email address or web page? Yes/No/I don’t know
   
8. Can you send and receive SMS text Messages on your cell phone? Yes/No/I don’t know
   
9. If yes, have you sent an SMS text message? Yes/No/I don’t know
   
10. If yes, have you received an SMS text message? Yes/No/I don’t know
    
11. Does your cell phone have an MP3 (audio) player? Yes/No/I don’t know
    
12. If yes, can you record audio? Yes/No/I don’t know
    
13. Does your cell phone have a calculator? Yes/No/I don’t know
    
14. Can your cell phone record video? Yes/No/I don’t know
    
15. Does your cell phone have an address book (or contacts) feature? Yes/No/I don’t know
    
16. Can you access the Internet (Web) from your cell phone? Yes/No/I don’t know
    
17. If you can access the Web from your cell phone, have you: 
    

• Sent an email? Yes/No 
  
• Found a map or directions? Yes/No 
  
• Other (Please describe.)

Based on a cell phone survey developed by Susan Gaer, ESL Professor, Santa Ana College, CA 
and revised by David J. Rosen on 3.24.10, and updated 2.18.15



Tech Tips for Teachers

It also allows them to see the breadth of practice available, which can be motivational. For example, a beginner student in the computer class saw what intermediate students were studying - health vocabulary- and challenged himself; he renewed his focus on both learning new vocabulary and his next career steps.

One of 2014's newly created words, webmix, is defined by Symbaloo as “a collection of tiles for a specific subject. There are two types of webmixes:

1. Webmix that contains tiles (links, bookmarks, widgets, embedded content)
   
2. Webmix that contains RSS tiles (larger, 3x3 tiles with RSS feed shown inside) Web clipping made beautiful.” 

Citation: What is a webmix? (n.d.). Retrieved October 21, 2014.  

Before I get to specific handy tips, I want to point out that one can select the tiles' background color, icons, and text. Here's my method: I keep the tiles in areas by subject or level. I see others fill in every tile, but I prefer the blank space to indicate the different levels with the highest at the right bottom. You'll know what fits you and your class. For more rows, click Options, Change webmix. Also, I want to keep some flexibility as my assignments change week to week. I don't want students literally all over the map, so I can control the options by having fewer tiles.

• As in all website creation, remember to click Save and also Update to publish. The option to have a rotating wallpaper was a bit much for us, hence the all white background. I tried to upload a class photo but the images max at 1 MB, so it didn't even load.
• Each time you go to log in, they may be featuring a different company. You have no control over which ones are shown as the log in options, but you can hit the "show more" to get Gmail, Edmodo, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yahoo, or whatever you originally signed in with. 
• How to get the students there? A link on your website would be ideal, maybe under Quick Links or Student Work. Other possibilities include bookmarking the site or creating a tiny url at http://tinyurl.com/.
  
• My URL went from 48 to 24 characters. I made an in-class assignment for students to email me (after previous instruction on email and checking that they were doing so in English). Then I send the link in my reply.
• Don't fret if your display in Gallery looks different than what you just edited. It must take awhile to catch up because the webmix appears with your changes.
• Make sure to try out their tutorials. They are really helpful. I couldn't figure out how to update my webmix, and found out I had to stop the updates first.
  

Maybe in the future we can all use Symbaloo as a teacher resource to see the many websites available in a subject area in the Gallery. A lot of k-12 practitioners have webmixes, and almost no one puts a description that you can sort by, so let's work towards this in our field. I put Adult ESOL in mine. What will you use Symbaloo for?


Have you tried Symbaloo? Share a link to your page in the comments!




Tech Tips for Teachers

Today's post comes to us from Sharon Hennessy. Sharon has been teaching ESOL for 26 years and EL Civics for 10. She currently teaches at Portland Community College, Southeast Campus in an 8-level intensive academic program where she is a technology early adopter. She holds a B.A. in Liberal Arts with TESOL Certificate from Portland State University and an MAEd in Adult Education from Oregon State University.

I use many of the technology applications found in the Tech Tips for Teachers blog. We have access to ten classroom ipads in addition to individual student smart phones and tablets, so I don’t hesitate to use text apps such as Socrative, Poll Everywhere (see previous post), and TodaysMeet to get student input up front where we can work with their ideas. I like TodaysMeet because it is so easy to set up and it accepts long strings of text.

TodaysMeet is an easy-to-use app. A chat room can be set up instantly. Students just need the web address of the "room" and a task to get going. Recently, I used TodaysMeet to get students thinking about sentence fragments as presented in our textbook. I asked questions students could find the answer to in their reading and then waited for pairs to come up with answers.  

Students often race to input their answers so they can see them in front of the class. Sometimes I will specify which student pair should answer a particular question and other times I let everyone input their answers and we compare them.

To review homework, I ask each pair to write an answer to one of the exercise questions. That puts all exercise answers up front so we can discuss misunderstandings or elements of each exercise one question at a time.  

TodaysMeet can be used to gather and share student ideas when brainstorming.  The transcript of the meeting room can be captured and shared. I’m sure there are many creative ways this tool can be used for writing.  I’d love to hear what other teachers can think up.

An interesting link came up this morning in the LINCS Community. If you aren't familiar with the Community, it's a free online social learning space for adult educators. Members join groups of interest to engage in discussions in the field of adult education. Groups are available on 16 different topics. The following resource came from a discussion in the Assessment group, but make sure to check out the Technology and Learning group as well!

Meryl Becker-Prezocki notes in this morning's post that: "Combining the Common Core Readiness Standards for Adult Education along with formative assessment provides the instructor and learners with feedback on the lesson. It allows the teacher to determine where the students are in their learning and make the appropriate adjustments in order to meet the learning targets of the day." She offers the following two-minute video that shows a quick way that you can use technology to assess student learning and give the instructor instant feedback.

In the video, the teacher is using Poll Everywhere, which you can read about in one of our earlier posts. She also references word clouds. If you aren't familiar with word clouds, they're a quick way to take a selection of text and drop it into a website, which will then spit out a picture in which the words are enlarged based on frequency of use. The best known site for this is probably Wordle, but there are others as well. All you have to do is paste in the text, but if you want to, you can adjust colors, fonts and orientation. Here's a quick word cloud based on this post.  

If you're worried that your students don't all have phones - check with them first, you may be surprised. If some do, but not all, see if they'd be willing to share their phones so that all can post. As with any new tech activity, the first time you do it, you'll want to leave extra time to make sure that everyone knows how to send a text message. 

What do you think? Join the LINCS Community and respond to Meryl's post or leave us a note in the comments!

Leah Peterson

: : Tech skills: web navigation, texting, emailing

My guess is that many of you have heard of Remind 101 (renamed Remind), a very helpful tool for teachers who want to use texting (or email for those without cell phones or unlimited plans) to contact their classes to tell them important information. Most teachers use it to warn learners about a school closure due to snow or remind them not to forget to bring something to class. To get a sense of how it works watch this video.

Lesson ideas:

As with many technologies, the intended use is not always the ultimate use or at least not limited to it. (I’ll bet you know where I am going with this…) It is not exactly ideal that this uses only one way, “top-down” 
communication, but I can see ESOL and ABE teachers using this easy-to-use technology to send small bites of information that might help accelerate learning outside the classroom. 

• Messages can only be 140 characters in length but the key points or a brief summary of a lesson could provide some (albeit limited) help in the retention of material. 
• Since the teacher can set when messages can be sent they could send a vocabulary word a day. 
• And perhaps a question to ponder, received by students before class, might help with getting their minds wrapped around a concept or at least get them coming to class looking forward to what they will be learning. 

So what do you think? Am I pushing it and stretching the boundaries of this technology or can it be used for educational purposes? Tell us what you think or if you have used Remind 101 or other technologies in this way. 


Steve Quann

Share any comments, your experience using this activity or any suggested variations you have (particularly using other technologies).