Hello and welcome to In the Classroom an educational podcast
making teaching and learning more transparent.
My name is Benjamin Steward. Today is August 22nd 2020
and I wanted to put together some ideas about what I'm thinking as we get into
the fall 2020 semester, and I want to share with you a video,
audio explanation of some of the technologies that I am going
to be presenting to my learners, the first day of class this Monday August 24th.
Before I get into that, I'm going to go and share my screen
and open up Microsoft Teams, which is the platform I'm using,
to conduct this podcast and I want to go into a little bit first,
about this space, this Microsoft Teams that I have created,
It's called, In the Classroom, as you know and you probably will notice
if you go through prior posts that I've posted a lot of short videos,
short explanations., a lot of information has come and gone
and basically just trying to experiment a little bit with Microsoft Teams,
to see exactly, to what degree I can use this,
or some of the information that I share, in my class, in my preparation,
in my own reflections. And I'm going to be posting more
in the future, in terms of sharing some of the thought processes
that have been going through, in my own practice.
But, I think that, the idea here for me to create the sapces to offer a way
to share with some of the professors here at the university,
since this is a Microsoft Teams, it's part of our Office,
or Microsoft 365 Service. But, also know that, the information
that I'm sharing, is also being posted publicly,
via my YouTube channel. So I'm currently sharing and basically
publishing this in real time, through my YouTube channel
and this uncut version will include all the mistakes and errors
that I both check during this broadcast and correct on the spot.
And others that I will miss. So if you're watching this recording
and what to provide information or corrections, feel free to do so.
And obviously, those professors that are teaching here at the university,
and want to reach out to me and share something, whether it is part
of this broadcast or if its of a more private nature, feel free
to reach out to me. I think the best way is just to send
me messages via Chat, within Microsoft teams
since I'm going to be spending most of my time both in my class,
and other responsibilities that I'm currently taking part in.
I will be spending most of my time within this platform.
One of the main things that I have been thinking about
as I get into this semester, is how I will be interacting
with the students that I have, is trying to simplify, trying to find
the technologies that are currently available to us and really find ways,
for students to take advantage of these same technologies that we have
here at the university. Primarily Office 365.
So, most of what we do here is going to be basically, using Office 365
or Microsoft 365 and also any apps that are easily adapted
and can be easily integrated into the same platform.
And I will get into the details here in a moment. But again,
if you have any feedback about today's broadcast, feel free to respond
within this post. I will be posting the video recording of this in Stream,
and will also be sharing it in this space . So feel free to reach out to me
if you have any questions, or comments, or insights about this topic.
Of course, feel free to share this space with any of your colleagues
as this again, is intended to really extend the dialogue
of how we can integrate English into the classroom.
i've had the pleasure of working with many professors here at the university,
talking about different ways that we can integrate English
into our curriculum. So, the idea here is to think about ways
that we can, not only adapt our own teaching practice
but also maybe reach out to our Academy and our colleagues within
our own departments to see to what degree English can be brought into the curriculum
in terms of the syllabus, in terms of the actual written curriculum.
To what degree does that need to be made explicit,
and how can we work together as an Academy to reach that objective.
Every department and every Major is going to be different, in terms of,
to what degree and how important English might be to their curriculum.
So it's going to be very much dependent on the goals of the program,
the goals of the teachers, the students, the student profile,
the history with English, and really, at the end of the day,
the importance of being able to communicate in English,
as your students get into the workforce. So a lot of considerations,
a lot of variables, a lot of things to talk about and to think about, and again,
this is one of the purposes of having these spaces, to having this conversation.
Again, whether you choose to have it here, in this space or more privately within
your own colleagues and department. So, what I'd like to do today is,
I want to share with you, some ideas that I had about the technologies
that I'm going to be currently using with my students this fall semester 2020.
Now the course I'm going to be teaching, Listening and Speaking,
this is a communicative class, basically helping on focusing
English language learners at an A1 to A2 English proficiency level, become better
at both listening and speaking. And so, I'm going to share with you today
some of the technologies that I am going to plan on using and I'm going to begin
by speaking to my students. Right. So I'm creating this Podcast
and its going to be a recorded version of what I'm saying here.
But, I'm going to go back and actually edit the video and remove all the mistakes
and clean it up a little bit so I can present this same video to my students.
So, I'm going to be addressing my students in this portion of the video
with this intention, with this idea of being able to have this available
to them, so they not only have access to the video at the beginning of the class,
but so they can refer back to it as they progress throughout the semester.
So this is the context with which I am creating today's episode,
and again, if you have any insights, feel free to let me know.
Right, so I'm going to go ahead and change here, the team.
So this is the team I'm going to be using for my course. All right?
So, let's dive into it.
For those of you who are taking Listening, Speaking,
I want to spend a few minutes talking about some of the technologies
we're going to be using this semester,
and so, I want to present some of the technologies we are going
to be using from day one. We will be talking about these
in the live classes as well but I think it's a good idea to have this video
so you can refer back to it whenever you need to.
It's common for many students to feel overwhelmed as we get into
this semester, as we begin the semester thinking about some of the technologies
maybe some of these you're familiar with, maybe some of these are new.
In this particular case, this course, Listening and Speaking,
this is also the first course of the semester. So there may be
a lot of new things going on we're going to be teaching this semester,
teaching and learning, as far as we know, 100% online, so this also might
pose some additional challenges, or some new ways of interacting.
So, the main thing is that you don't feel overwhelmed, I don't want
you to feel overwhelmed with all of the technologies because really
the intention is to use these tools, to make our interactions
and our learning experience this semester, as productive and efficient as possible.
Don't worry if all of these technologies are not really clear on how we are
going to be using it from the beginning, as we get into it and as we start
working with these technologies on nearly a daily basis,
I think it will become easier, and clearer for you as to not only,
how we are using it, but why we are using these technologies.
So, the first technology that I want to talk about here,
and this is really the main space that we are going to be working at.
This is going to be our home for pretty much for the rest of the course ,
for the 16 weeks that we are going to have for this course, Listening and Speaking,
is Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams is part of the Microsoft Suite and,
I'm going to go and open up here, the main page to Microsoft 365.
Now, sometimes I will refer to this page as Office 365 and sometimes
I will refer to it as Microsoft 365. They are currently going through
a name change and they are going to be changing this eventually to Microsoft 365,
up here in the title. But again, if I go back and forth its basically
the same page. But, as students of this university,
you are going to have access to all of these apps as they appear here.
There are additional apps if you click here. there may be some additional apps
that you may be interested in. Certainly, we are not going to talk about
all of these and we are not going to be using all of these apps in our class
this semester. But you might find that other courses you are taking this semester
you might be using some of these apps more than others.
So, the first thing I want to talk about is Microsoft Teams, you can find
Microsoft Teams here, but I have found that depending on the browser,
you may or may not be able to open that Microsoft Teams using this link.
Most of the other apps, you can click on these icons here to open up
the service directly without a problem. But Microsoft Teams,
it seems, it is best to install an app. Now, I'm on a computer here, at this time,
I'm on a computer, and we will be switching back and forth
between showing you apps on a cellphone versus showing you apps on the desktop
computer but today I'm going to stick to mainly apps on the desktop computer.
So, here you see that this is Onedrive, we will be using Onedrive a liitle bit
in our class this semester but I think it's good to become familiar with this
so you can begin saving some of the work that you do in the BA program.
Setting it up, in Onedrive, so you can save some of the files you create.
It's really important to find a system for organizing your ideas.
I particularly like to have a folder set up for each letter,
and keep most of my course content within one of those folders.
As you see here, there are some exceptions,
but for the most part, most of my files, reside in one of these folders.
But the key here is to find a system that works for you.
Find a way to organize your content, your assets here,
that you're going to be using throughout your time here, in the Major.
Another important app here is Outlook, so any of the information that I share
here with you is, you know, if I send you an email, I'm going to be using
your Office365 email account. So your email is going to be AL and then
your Student ID@ [inaudible]. So this is going to be your email
and this is where you can access the incoming emails that are sent to you
from other teachers or other students or classmates.
So, I'm not going to go into all of these but you also see here, you have
Word, Excel, Powerpoint. You have OneNote.
But let's get into Teams. Teams is going to be our main space for the class
and as you notice here, I have the app installed on my computer.
So, again, I would recommend that you do this.
I'm currently running a Linux machine, but its the same idea,
if you're on a Windows or Mac. When you go into Microsoft teams
because all of you have been added to this team, you will have here,
Let me move this, lets see if I can move this. Whoops. Try again.
I'm not able to move this for some reason. but, here you will will see that
i'm going to go to all my teams right. So you'll have here a team called
Listening and Speaking, right. So if you go into your team,
you'll notice, just beneath the title, Listening and Speaking,
you have two channels.
Actually, you have a channel called General and then you have a link,
it says Hidden Channels. We will go into these different groups,
or these different channels a bit later as we get into the class.
For now we're going to stick with this channel, general channel
and, we will look across the top here, you'll see Posts, Files and so on,
different options. So Post, is basically a forum where I can make announcements
I can send you messages and you can reply. The main thing to consider when you're using
this section, Post, is that everyone in the team, all of you,
that have been added to this team, can see the messages.
Okay, so don't share anything, in this space that you're not comfortable
with anyone else in the class seeing. So, if it's something private,
that you want to send me or any of your classmates
a private message, the best thing to do is to go to Chat and send the person
a one to one chat. So, this is very much like an E-Mail service,
if you want to send me a private message you can send it through Chat.
And I suggest that everyone do that. I would ask that you send me messages
via chat, as I'm going to be spending most of my day, in this space,
you're likely to get a faster reply if you send me a message via Chat.
All right, so here in Post, you can send, as well as in Chat, you can send
text messages, you can upload images, video, you can embed YouTube video.
There are many different options here. You can send attachments, emojis,
okay, you can actually upload streamed videos as well.
So, many different options, many different ways you can share
information here in this Post section. Here in Files, Files, these are going
to be files and folders that we are going to use for the purposes of this class.
We will go into that later. But, for the most part, any files
that you share here, everyone can see. If you post a file or if you attach a file
here, then Post it will also appear here in Files. Right, so its important to note
that the files that appear here different from the files and folders that you create
in your OneDrive. This is basically using SharePoint. Sharepoint is the global space,
the global drive, of the entire institution.
So, it resides there, it does not reside again in your private space
within OneDrive. So Class Notebook, Assignments and Grades,
we're not going to use. When I created this team,
I created it as a class and by default it included Class Notebook,
which is OneNote, Assignments and Grades. We're going to use other services
instead of using these three. So again, I was not able to remove these
and that's why they appear, but again just ignore these three,
we are not going to be using these three parts of the service.
We are going to be using FlipGrid, Wake up, and we will talk a little about
the Video Archive. So FlipGrid is an app that you can add and integrate into
Microsoft 365. And that's what I've done here with Microsoft Teams,
is basically just added the FlipGrid and whats good about FlipGrid
is because FlipGrid is owned by Microsoft you can use your University email
as your username and use the same password as you use for Microsoft 365.
And that is what I would recommend doing. The topic here, let me go to the page,
so this is the Group and FlipGrid and within Group we are going to have many
topics and the topics really basically are going to be different assignments that we
are going to be using the service. But agin, use your Microsofr 365 username,
your Email and your password to enter into FlipGrid. That is going to be the
easiest way to do this. The first day of class, we are going to be working
in this first topic and I will go into the details here.
The main thing here is that, FlipGrid, this service, you can access this oviously
with your browser as it appears here and also you can access FlipGrid
directly within Microsoft Teams, as it appears, here.
The final thin I will say, is, I think it is going to be the best if you install
FlipGrid on your cellphone or mobile device because probably most
of the recordings that you create, its best to do it on your cellphone.
So, I want to limit today's discussion primarily to the Desktop but you'll want
to install FlipGrid on your cellphone and go ahead and enter in to FlipGrid
from your phone, using your Microsoft 365 signing in information.
Your username and password. Okay, so this is FlipGrid. The next thing here
is ClickUp. Now ClickUp is a way to organize information and they way that
I am going to use ClickUp, again this is an integration with Microsoft Teams,
They way that I am going to use ClickUp is so that everything that we do,
the activities that we do, you can follow what we do, what we're planning
on doing in the future and what we've done in the past, using ClickUp.
Now, you will notice her, this is going to be a little bit confusing,
if you're not familiar with ClickUp, but basically, what ClickUp is, is a way
to organize tasks, and, along the top here there are many different types
of views. I think the easiest view, getting started, with ClickUp
is going to be the Calendar view. Because from here, you will be able to see
on a day to day basis, what we are doing. So here we have a calendar view
where we are looking at the monthly view. Probably, I could change this to the
weekly view to get a better idea here of what we are doing.
But, her you will see August 24th, You'll notice we have two different
entries. These are two different tasks that we have scheduled for Monday.
And if you click on these, this will open up the task and you will be able to see
in greater detail, what each task entails. In this case I have a checklist of things
we are going to be doing. It is called orientation and this is how
I typically begin a class and begin a semester.
You will notice here we have a list of all the things we are going to accomplish
that first day. And this is something you can refer to just to have an idea
about what we are doing. So this is how I'm going to be using
ClickUp to schedule, what we are doing and what we are going to do in the future.
When you go into your mobile app you will be able to see a calendar view
of this same information. Obviously as we get into the class there are going
to be ore tasks that are going to be populated throughout here.
The intention with ClickUp is for you to see what we are doing
and if there are any assignments, those are going to be listed very clearly
here. For example, our first assignment , we will open up this, Introductions.
This is going to be our first assignment. you will see here, that we had
the instructions, and then you will have link to the assignment itself.
We will talk more about this the first day of class and we will actually do this
in class so that I will be able to assist you if you have any questions about
how to do it. But what I want to show you here is, everything that we are going
to be doing, whether its for a grade or not, all of the tasks that are related
to this class, can be found here in ClickUp. You can access it here in the
browser as I have done here, you can access it in Microsoft Teams,
as I have done here by clicking ClickUp, here at the top.
Sometimes you have to scroll down because it may not show up.
You can change the view as well, as I am doing here, just to make
it a little bit easier to read, if you want to just deal on a week to week basis
you can change the view by clicking this drop down menu.
Finally, you can install ClickUp on your phone.
Its a little bit easier to follow as well, there.
Depends on what kind of phone you have and how many apps you want to install.
For sure, I would install Microsoft Teams, if you have space and you want to also
upload FlipGrid. I think this is going to be very useful, so that you can record
the assignments, using your phone. And ClickUp would be another app.
that I would install. on your phone. Some of the other services I talked about
earlier, under Microsoft 365, Outlook, OneDrive, even Microsoft Word,
you might also want to install some of these apps. Especially OneDrive
if you are going to be using your phone to upload audio and video.
Then, you are also going to want to install on your phone OneDrive.
I will create a separate video later to describe and show you what that looks like
on your phone, but those are some other apps that you might find useful.
The last thing I want to talk about today, is TeacherEase. Now today,, again today is
August 22nd, 2020, I invited everyone to get into TeacherEase. I basically
created a class grade book for the semester
and all of you should have received, in your Microsoft 365 email account,
an invitation to TeacherEase. If you did not receive this email,
let me know right away so that i can resend the invitation.
But here iw where you will be able to access your grandes and your attendance
for this class.. Its very important that you are checking at least once a week,
that you are aware of your current grade and that you're aware of your absences.
So this is the service I am going to be using to maintain your grades
and your attendance, but do make sure that you are checking each week.
Don't wait until the end of the semester where its going to be too late to go back
and check grades for the entire semester. Be checking continually throughout so that
you can send me emails and ask me questions, if you have any doubts
or concerns or even even if I have made some mistake with your grades
or attendance, so that we can resolve those issues in a timely fashion.
Right. So, TeacherEase. We have FlipGrid, we have ClickUp. Okay. Again, these are
going to be our main technologies we are going to be using in addition to,
obviously, Microsoft Teams. Now, the last thing I talked about here, is a view,
its called VideoArchive. Every class that we have, in fact, this class
is scheduled to meet from 8 in the morning, until 10,.
We are going to meet every day, Monday to Friday. During that time we are going
to have a live class. All of the classes are going to be recorded and all of those
recordings are going to be, in this space, this video archive. Right so, in YouTube
you can access it directly through