High School and GED, Adult Basic Education

The CASAS STEPS Reading test has been approved as the primary tool to measure progress and ensure accountability for adult English as a Second Language (ESL) students in California. This shift has left many teachers wondering about the most effective strategies to prepare their students for this important test.

Career Technical Education, High School and GED, Older Adults, Adult Basic Education

The Adult Learner Variability Navigator (ALVN) is a one of the only tools for adult educators that links learner factors, and strategies to research. The project was funded through Digital Promise, a global nonprofit working to expand opportunity for every learner.

Career Technical Education, ESL and Citizenship, High School and GED, Older Adults, Adult Basic Education

The HyFlex (Hybrid-Flexible) model of instruction has gained significant traction in adult education, especially in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. This instructional approach allows students to choose between attending classes in person, participating online in real-time, (simultaneous instruction) or engaging with course materials asynchronously. (Only some agencies do the asynchronous option) As adult education continues to evolve, the HyFlex model offers a promising alternative to traditional and fully online instructional methods, but its effectiveness and implementation challenges must be carefully considered.

Career Technical Education, High School and GED, Older Adults, Adult Basic Education

Adult educators who are early adopters have embraced the power of generative AI tools to create customized lesson materials, differentiate instruction, and save time. Using Large Language Models such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, Microsoft Copilot, and others effectively requires an understanding of how to prompt the tools, but sometimes the output just does not give us what we are hoping for. Other times, the generative AI tool may “hallucinate” – give inaccurate information. In these cases, iterative prompting (conversing with the AI to give or request more clarity or by providing examples) can help, but by that point, how much time has truly been saved?

Career Technical Education, High School and GED, Older Adults, Adult Basic Education

What is Accessibility? According to Wikipedia, Accessibility is “the design of products, devices, services, vehicles, or environments so as to be usable by people with disabilities.” . I like a more personable definition ( it mirrors the graphic above), “Educational materials and technologies are “accessible” to people with disabilities if they are able to “acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions, and enjoy the same services” as people who do not have disabilities”

Career Technical Education, ESL and Citizenship, High School and GED, Older Adults, Adult Basic Education

Whether you teach Economics or ESL, Citizenship or Math, including video content in lessons has numerous potential benefits, including alignment with adult education standards. Videos that support lesson content can build students’ background knowledge, a key shift of the College and Career Readiness Standards. One principle of the adult education standards for English language learners, the English Language Proficiency Standards, is integration of multimedia technology into curriculum, instruction, and assessment. The standards’ 21st Century definition of literacy includes visual and digital literacies. Video is a means to boost these literacies, building students’ college and career readiness.

Career Technical Education, ESL and Citizenship, High School and GED, Older Adults, Adult Basic Education

As large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT and Gemini are being utilized more and more in education, we, as adult educators, need to become prompt engineering aficionados, finessing prompts to get the results we want. But really, who has time for that? Here is where the rays of light come from the heavens and illuminates MagicSchool.AI. MagicSchool was created to alleviate teacher burn-out by creating easy to use AI (Artificial Intelligence) tools for lesson planning, differentiation, assessments, and more.

ESL and Citizenship

Civics and citizenship education is vital for fostering active participation and informed decision-making in democratic societies. However, engaging adult learners in this field can pose significant challenges. Enter generative artificial intelligence (AI), offering innovative solutions to revitalize civics education for adult students. Let's explore into how generative AI is reshaping the landscape of adult civics education with practical classroom activities.

Career Technical Education, ESL and Citizenship, High School and GED, Adult Basic Education

In the last ten years, Distance Education has evolved into various modes of instructional delivery that have increased our students' Digital Literacy skills and provided thousands upon thousands of adult students the opportunity to attend classes in flexible modalities that have addressed their changing needs. Educators and students benefit from the flexibility of the various learning modalities that are now available for adult education programs to adopt. Preparation is key to the success of these innovative and engaging learning environments. In this article, you will learn about the characteristics that differentiate the Hybrid, HyFlex, and Online Live learning modalities and some tips to assist you in preparing for, planning, and implementing these innovative modes of instruction.

Career Technical Education, ESL and Citizenship, High School and GED, Holidays, Older Adults, Adult Basic Education

Introduction: In the January article, "Streamline Planning with AI: Craft Custom Lessons," Susan Coulter detailed how teachers can harness the power of AI through platforms like Chat GPT and Google Bard to streamline their lesson planning. However, the transformative potential of AI in education extends beyond the classroom. In this article, we will explore how adult education students can ethically and responsibly leverage AI to enhance their language and content development.

Career Technical Education, ESL and Citizenship, High School and GED, Holidays, Older Adults, Adult Basic Education

Every district has their own format for writing lesson plans, and I remember it being a manual and time-intensive process. Typically, this involves crafting lesson objectives, carefully choosing, arranging, and presenting different activities to address a particular learning goal.

High School and GED

HyFlex combines the terms hybrid and flexibility. While in hybrid learning, the instructor makes all the decisions about the format, in HyFlex learning is based on students deciding how they would like to be taught. Some choices of a HyFlex environment can include the following as well as a mix of them:

Career Technical Education, ESL and Citizenship, High School and GED, Older Adults, Adult Basic Education

Collaboration. Collaboration Tools. Collaboration Activities. All good terms for working in groups to move learning forward and enhance the learning experience.

Adult Basic Education

We live in a fast-paced digital age, where technology has become an integral part of our daily lives. In education, technology has revolutionized the way we access information and communicate with each other. As adult educators, we have witnessed firsthand the transformative power of technology in enhancing learning experiences in our classrooms. Now more than ever, it is crucial to become leaders who can effectively integrate technology into our teaching practices.

Adult Basic Education

In this article, I will go over many ways to engage all levels of online learners. I teach adult learners with varied learning abilities. Since COVID-19 began, I have been working online learning new ways to involve my learners. Many of my learners live under guardianship, conservatorship, in a group home, and/or with their parents, so learning must be adapted and differentiated to make all learning accessible.

Adult Basic Education

English language learners are students who are learning English as a second language (ESL). They come from a variety of backgrounds and cultures, and they may have different levels of English proficiency. Despite these differences, ESL students have the same potential as any other student to succeed in career and technical education (CTE) pathways.

Adult Basic Education

Over the past years I have focused on what we as educators must do to make our documents/presentations etc. accessible to our learners with disabilities. Along the way I discovered that as I made needed changes to my materials, I also increased the usability for my able-bodied learners. On this journey, I discovered that some of those accessibility features helped me as well. This article is to inform and motivate us all to know about accessibility features that will help our learners.

Adult Basic Education

How many different technology tools do you use? Are you looking for a way to consolidate your online teaching and learning activities? Genially is a free web tool that combines the functions of tools like PowerPoint and Google Slides or Prezi, Quizizz, Quizlet, Thinglink, Adobe Express, and more. Think Canva but with 1000 templates for more interactive learning activities specifically for education.

ESL and Citizenship, Adult Basic Education

Many people think that AI (Artificial Intelligence) is new, but translation services, speech recognition, personalized learning with language learning apps, and grammar/spelling checkers are all forms of AI that we have become accustomed to.

ESL and Citizenship

Seven new online civics education and citizenship resources from USCIS, LINCS, and more.