OTAN Digest

Digest #4
April 2021

Message From The Director

The OTAN Advisory Committee (OAC) convenes biannually to provide relevant and purposeful feedback and guidance to OTAN from the adult education field. The team of technology-affiliated partners, administrators, and teachers from California and beyond met most recently in mid-March. This year, OTAN has used OAC feedback to launch curriculum pilots for Achieve 3000, New Readers Press pre-HSE and Hi-SET courses, and Voxy EnGen.  OTAN has also launched a Canvas learning management pilot including Canvas instances for 24 agencies and 5,000 student licenses. Monitoring this pilot closely, OTAN hopes that early outcomes will lead to expanded instances and licensing.

Some upcoming goals for OTAN and discussed with OAC include the development of an adult education-focused distance learning guidance document, expanded curriculum offers and training for administrators and teachers on the Canvas LMS, and development of web articles or videos highlighting accessibility features for websites and documents. OAC has also recommended expanding the number of teachers and inviting students or recent alumni to sit on the advisory committee. With that in mind, for the teachers reading this, I'd like you to consider whether serving on the OAC is something that you or perhaps one of your students feels called to do. If so, email support@otan.us and one of our staff will be in touch soon.

As always, I invite you to stay engaged with OTAN to meet all your ed tech, distance, and blended learning needs!  Be safe and well!

-Renee Collins

Spotlight On...

Curriculum Offers!

As Renee mentioned in her Message from the Director, Curriculum Offers are free or reduced-cost special offers for online curriculum licenses and professional development resources that OTAN has negotiated on behalf of the state. The curriculum offers cover ESL, ABE, ASE, and HSE program areas, as well as resources for online teaching. We invite you to visit the Curriculum Offers page on the OTAN website. (Curriculum Offers are generally available to those California adult educators who work at WIOA-funded agencies, but contact us with your questions.)

Here are some of the Curriculum Offers you can take advantage of:

• Essential Education Blended Learning course - OTAN is offering a self-paced Blended Learning course from Essential Education that covers topics such as, What is Blended Learning, Choosing a Model, and Teaching and Assessment Tools.
• CK-12 - The CK-12 Foundation and OTAN have recently partnered to create an Adult Education space on the CK-12 platform. Materials, including customizable FlexBooks®, interactives, and adaptive practice, are available in ABE and ASE, with more to come.
• Learn360 - Teachers and students can access more than 148,000 multimedia resources—including high-quality full-length videos, video clips, images, audio files, articles, activities, worksheets, interactives, and more—on any Internet-enabled device, anytime, anywhere.
• The NROC Project - The NROC Project partners with educators to create open and low-cost courses and tools designed to improve how college and career readiness is approached and supported.

 If you would like more information about our Curriculum Offers, please contact us at support@otan.us or call us at 916-228-2580.

Stay connected to OTAN! We're here to help with online course ideas and more!

OTAN MAY EVENTS

OTAN training events are OPEN to Adult Education staff.
★ = CLOSED, In-Service Training

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT - PLAN AHEAD!

Did you know OTAN provides FREE professional development workshops to help Adult Educators integrate technology?

Think about scheduling OTAN Professional Development in the 2020-2021 school year. With a wide variety of technology topics from which to choose, OTAN training staff will present for any WIOA-funded adult education program in California either online or face-to-face with a computer lab or devices connected to the Internet. (Note that face-to-face trainings will be scheduled when it is safe and OTAN staff are free to travel.)

All OTAN's workshops are provided at no cost!

Each session is hands-on - everyone will learn new skills related to technology or using technology that they can use in their adult education class or program. And all OTAN online or face-to-face workshops can be tailored to fit the needs of the requesting program. Select the links to see a list of the current online or face-to-face workshops and descriptions. If you don't see a workshop that is exactly what you need, contact OTAN - we'll work together to create a training that's best for you and your staff!

• OTAN Online Workshops
• OTAN Face-to-Face Workshops (tailored for the virtual environment!)

Need more information? Contact OTAN training staff anytime by phone at 916-228-2580 or by email at support@otan.us

To view workshops already scheduled, visit the California Adult Education Professional Development Calendar and search for workshops sponsored by OTAN. Don't miss out!