TIMAC March Regional Meeting for Northern California

The TIMAC March Regional meeting for Northern California was held in Fairfield on Wednesday, March 20^th, one day after the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Education and Finance voted unanimously against Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal to shift responsibility for adult education programs from K-12 districts to community colleges. This was welcome news for TIMAC Mentors Diane Wilson of Fairfield-Suisun Adult School and Leticia Hernandez of Castro Valley Adult & Career Education whose adult education programs are offered through their local K-12 districts.   

The news was particularly meaningful to Diane and the 37 U.S. Government students of hers who had recently sent letters to and visited their local assemblyman, Jim Frazier, to share with him the importance of adult education in their lives. This activity brought the democratic process to life for these high school students in a way few, if any of them, had ever experienced.

In other exciting news, both Northern California TIMAC mentors have been asked to present to their district school boards the technology integration efforts they have implemented as TIMAC mentors.  Diane’s presentation will include a demonstration of Moodle. These presentations will take place before the end of the 2012-2013 school year.

Both mentors continue to make tremendous progress on their TIMAC projects. Just last week, Leticia trained 18 Adults with Disabilities (AWD) teachers on the use of Mimio Vote and the morning of our meeting, took a video of this technology engaging AWD students in a lesson on money.  She is currently developing Mimio training for Medical Academy teachers and continues to share the lessons she develops with Mimio’s interactive teaching community. Leticia will begin teaching an iPad course in July with a classroom set of iPads set to arrive soon.

Diane continues to improve the quality and interactivity of the Moodle courses currently used by all the High School and Parent Education teachers. She is also learning about the various reporting tools available in Moodle and generating data needed for WASC accreditation.  The leadership at Fairfield-Suisun Adult School will be receiving iPads soon, a move strongly supported by the district's head of IT who seeks to outfit classrooms with iPads and Apple TV, replacing overhead projectors with their costly bulbs and aging SMARTboards.

Susan's Visit with Debbie at Baldwin Park Adult

     Recently I had the privilege of visiting with Debbie Jensen at Baldwin Park Adult & Community Education (BPACE). We first stopped by the Cosmetology building to meet one of Debbie’s mentees, Judy Christopher. While we were there, Judy and another teacher asked about having a SmartBoard in their classrooms and learning more. The interest was sparked by a recent OTAN workshop earlier in the month.

     Then it was on to meet Director Dr. John Kerr, who is very supportive of Debbie’s TIMAC project. He invited us to visit the new culinary arts building, which has its grand opening in a couple of weeks.

     We went back to Debbie’s classroom where we met another mentee, Mark Steimle. Mark wants help in creating video podcasts of his lectures and then posting them to a Web site.

     Debbie then gave me a tour of their main campus and several computer labs. Afterwards, it was off to the Automotive Center where we met another mentee, Alma Rodriguez, who shared the Web site she has been working on with Debbie. She gave us a tour of the Automotive Center and introduced us to instructor David Grier who demonstrated some of the new equipment with the help of a couple of students.

     Our final destination was the new BPACE Culinary Arts building next door. In the first kitchen, we were overwhelmed with the spread of food dishes students had been creating in class. They were very proud of their creations and even invited us to stay for dinner. In the next kitchen, we found students working on a gingerbread display, which included the Eiffel Tower.

     The day ended with a short discussion of Debbie’s TIMAC Project Plans. It was exciting to see the progress Debbie has made on her project and the enthusiasm of her mentees. It is always thrilling to see a project evolve and the enthusiasm snowball throughout the group.

Barry's visit to Martha Platt at Culver City Adult School

I visited Martha Platt at Culver City Adult School on November 20th as well. There have been some changes there since my last visit for a different OTAN project.  One of the changes is that all of the ESL classes are not located in the main building. Moving so many classes into one building has definitely impacted the space. Martha  is moving forward with her project, which basically involves getting her participating teachers to use previously purchased software that goes along with the textbook series that is being used in all of the ESL classes.  This software is an electronic version of the book and is meant to be used as a presentation/instructional aid for teachers as they work with the textbook in the classroom.  The program allows each page of the textbook to be displayed using an LCD projector, but it has added functionality in that the teacher can make annotations on pages, access the media such as any audio directly from within the program (you don't have to use a separate audio CD for example), and save any notes or changes from lesson to lesson for use in a future instance of instruction. For Martha's project, she'll be working to create an optimal physical set up for utilizing the technology (making sure teachers can access a laptop, work the LCD, etc) and also training teachers in the software itself.

I did take some pictures of Martha with her colleagues and onsite, but a technology failure of my own has resulted in the loss of the images. But really, you can trust me on this, Martha is hard at work implementing her project and is on track to achieve her stated goals.

Barry's visit to Ami Takanashi at Rowland Adult and Community Education

I took advantage of my "furlough" days immediately before the Thanksgiving holiday (November 20) to visit Ami at RACE. It was a good day to visit as I was invited to join Ami and several other teachers at their pre-holiday Thanksgiving potluck! Here you can see the very nice lunch spread. (And the very nice Ami too!)

Ami is making great progress having identified several teachers to participate in her mentoring project this year. Her school has several teachers who are quite adept at using technology. As part of her project, Ami will leverage their existing skills by working with them to train teachers who aren't using technology much at the current time.

During my visit Ami brought me into one room just as the teacher was using the very nice "short throw" LCD projector to screen an educational video for the whole class.  Somehow, the conversation turned to the incredibly popular international YouTube hit "Gangnam Style." The teacher found the video and played it for the class. We all got up and danced (see the photo) "Gangnam Style" but even more importantly, the video triggered an extensive discussion on whether or not the international exposure of this particular singer and video was a good thing or a bad thing for Korea.  There was a very lively discussion with the Korean students in the class giving their own personal opinions in addition to a general translation of the Korean words to the song for the rest of the students.  I felt that I had just witnessed a wonderful example of how the integration of technology into the classroom sparked a motivational impromptu learning experience that gave all of the students the opportunity to speak and practice English on a topic of interest for an extended period of time.

I am sure that Ami will be able to easily move forward with her project and encourage even greater use of technology at Rowland Adult and Community Education in the future.

Bethany's Visit with Diane at Fairfield-Suisun Adult School

Today, I visited Fairfield-Suisun Adult School where I met with TIMAC mentor Diane Wilson, Principal Kay Hartley, and mentee-teachers Michelle and Yvonne.  We met in Diane’s classroom and discussed her TIMAC project which aims to improve and expand the more than 20 courses that she and Yvonne developed and posted on OTAN’s Moodle site this past summer. Diane’s project goal for this year is to refine a few of the courses and make them more engaging and interactive through the use of online videos, discussion boards, and web-based curriculum by Shmoop and Aztec Learning.

The initial interest in Moodle came from Principal Kay Hartley’s desire to have quizzes for the various High School subjects available online.  Her vision grew to include complete Moodle courses as she realized the tremendous potential the technology offered for students' academic progress as well as the development of their technology and workforce readiness skills.  While she has embraced the use of technology in the classroom, Principal Hartley values direct instruction and requires that her teachers continue to provide it in each of their courses. Mentee-teacher Michelle allocates one half of each class period to teacher-led instruction and the other half to individual computer-based study.

The move to Moodle did not happen without its challenges. A district-wide network change from Novell to Linux this year caused a number of headaches and issues with blocked websites continue to plague the school. Fortunately, with her background in systems administration, Diane has been able to find ways to work around these problems and continue to improve the Moodle courses.

It was apparent that Diane and her colleagues have worked tremendously hard in the development of these Moodle courses. I'm excited to follow Diane's progress in TIMAC this year!

Susan's Visit with Elaine at Escondido Adult School

 

This week I had the privilege of visiting with Elaine Moore from Escondido Adult School. Since Elaine works at a satellite site, I first stopped by the main site to look around and found the site a little unique.  There was a stream running down the interior walkway. After a quick visit, I was on to Orange Glen High School where Elaine teaches Intermediate-Low ESL.

We spent a long time talking about her TIMAC project and brainstorming ways to integrate her administrator’s goals into her project. Later we met with her administrator, Assistant Principal Allison Pickering. As we talked and once again brainstormed, Elaine’s TIMAC project came into focus. She is going to mentor other teachers in setting up their own Web sites using Google Sites. She was so excited about her project. 

We took a quick tour of the campus visiting their new computer lab, which is used by ESL teachers and their students. 

While I was getting ready to leave, we ran into Georgette, another ESL teacher. Elaine shared her excitement with Georgette who, on the spot, wanted to be one of her mentees. Elaine is now off to a good start on her TIMAC project.

Bethany's Visit with Leticia at Castro Valley Adult School

I had a great site visit with TIMAC mentor, Leticia Hernandez at Castro Valley Adult School (CVAS) on a beautiful sunny day in November. During my visit, I met with Leticia and her director to discuss her TIMAC project, toured the adult school campus, and had the opportunity to meet a few of Leticia's mentees. 

In a meeting with her director, Susie Passeggi, we discussed Leticia's mentoring project and the tremendous progress she has made in a few short months. Leticia's project involves training teachers on the use of the Mimio Interactive WhiteBoards (IWBs) that were recently installed in each classroom. Leticia has recruited ten mentee teachers from a variety of program areas including ESL, GED, CTE and AWD (Adults with Disabilities), has already conducted a number of face-to-face trainings, and is currently helping teachers use the IWBs in their classrooms.

Following our meeting with Susie, Leticia gave me a tour of the CVAS campus.  

Upper Campus

Lower Campus

In all of the classrooms, Leticia has posted detailed instructions on how to use the ceiling-mounted digital projector and Mimio Interactive WhiteBoard.

Overhead Projector Instructions

Mimio IWB Instructions

               

In one of the classrooms, Leticia showed me the website she created with Weebly after the TIMAC Training in October. She created the website to document her TIMAC project and provide a place for her mentees to access the lessons and training materials she's developed. The website includes an overview of her project, links to the lessons she's developed, information about her mentees, and a form for contacting her.

Leticia's Weebly Site

We wrapped up the site visit with a meeting with one of Leticia's GED teacher mentees, Megan G. Megan currently uses the Mimio IWB to record mini-lessons for her GED students and plans to post these lessons online for her students' reference. She also plans to use the Mimio Student Response System (aka "clickers") for informal assessment of her students. 

While meeting with Megan, I met AWD teacher, Mindy C. who recently used the Mimio IWB for the first time with her students. Leticia captured this lesson on video and posted it to YouTube and her Weebly page (below Mindy C.).

I was incredibly impressed by Leticia's progress on her TIMAC project and look forward to tracking her progress on the Weebly site!

Susan’s Visit with Diana at National City Adult Education Center

When I arrived, Diana Vera-Alba and her principal Bernard Balanay greeted me. We spent some time going over her project plan and TIMAC deliverables. While working on her TESOL certificate, Diana was introduced to Voxopop, which she loves. Her principal played a lesson Diana had created for her class. 

Diana’s project involves training teachers to use voxopop.com. The Website allows teachers to record lessons. Students can then practice their pronunciation and record their voices. She wants to create lessons using dialog from their textbooks and then have students record the dialog while in the computer lab. Diana has been working with two mentees, Laura Canche and Eileen Pesa. I was delighted when Laura stopped by and expressed her excitement about the project. Diana has already set up free administrator accounts on Voxopop for her mentees and also has helped their classes set up email accounts.

Diana and Mr. Balanay, then took me on a grand tour of their campus, pausing as we left his office to point out one of their computer carts using in classrooms. Our first stop was the newly renovated Cisco Networking classroom.  Under each student desk was a computer. Monitors are conveniently stored beneath the desktop and flipped up when needed. Mr. Balanay was excited about the new Culinary Arts facility and the photos of students’ work impressed us.

Next it was on to the Multimedia and Introduction to the Computer Lab and the Medical Assistant Clinical classroom. We paused briefly to watch ESL instructor Vince Ortiz using music to help his students learn. We then stopped by the Parent Education classroom and the adjoining indoor playground. 

We passed quietly through the Distance Learning and Computer Applications Labs. They have many computer labs. The last one was the Media Center. This is the lab used by ESL teachers and where Diana and her mentees will be helping students log into Voxopop. Our final destination was Diana’s ESL classroom. 

It was an amazing visit. Diana has a great start on her TIMAC project and the enthusiasm to support and inspire her mentees.