Brent Warner 0:00
As we step into the summer, what can we look forward to, and what do we know we can plan for? We’re discussing the possibilities for the last episode of the season. This is the Higher Ed Tech Podcast, Season Seven, Episode 20.

Tim Van Norman 0:13
Tim, welcome to today’s Higher Ed Tech Podcast. I’m Tim Van Norman, the Interim Assistant Director of Technology Services at Irvine Valley College, an adjunct professor of business at Cypress College,

Brent Warner 0:36
and I’m Brent Warner, Professor of ESL here at IVC. We both enjoy integrating technology into the classroom, which is what this show is all about.

Tim Van Norman 0:44
Welcome, we’re glad you’re here with us. So, we got a couple of fun things to talk about, really quick. First of all, we didn’t realize how pertinent our last episode would be. It released on the day that Canvas got hacked, yeah, or it showed up anyway. Not planned in any way.

Brent Warner 1:07
So, Tim, you, you did not coordinate this with the hackers, right? That’s the accusation going around campus mainly by me, but (laughter)

Tim Van Norman 1:20
That was a surprise to everybody that that happened when all of a sudden in the middle of days, like, oh, what, oh yeah, so rough day,

Brent Warner 1:31
A rough few days, actually, for us on our campus. I know people dealt with it in different times, there’s lots of different communication stuff going on with that. I think we did a pretty good job talking about, like, actually planning for that conversation, but we’ll, I will say one thing that really came up afterwards that we didn’t really talk about is how to plan ahead to back up your data on Canvas, which I don’t think currently Canvas actually does, right, or doesn’t, doesn’t really allow.

Tim Van Norman 1:58
So, only parts, so you can back up your grade book, and that at least gets you all of the grades. And by the way, your research department can go into Canvas and pull out that as well. We did it ourselves, just to make sure that in case something happened, we could at least get everybody back to what their grades were when it happened, so Rees, that’s one thing you can do. You can also back up your course content, but right now Canvas has no way of backing up your student submissions and stuff like that. So, yeah, which means that we’ve been investigating opportunities and possibilities, and we’ve also heard that Canvas is hearing from a lot of their customers that they need to come up with an ability to do that,

Brent Warner 2:48
So, so we, we kind of learned this was something that came up after really going through it, I mean, like, okay, here’s a quick couple lessons learned, most of the things I think we covered on the on the show, but this one was one that’s like one, because it doesn’t really exist from Canvas aside, that like we didn’t really, you know, think to make the recommendation, but now we know, and it’s like, okay, for sure, like we need some way to have our own backup of our own content and that stuff, so hopefully Canvas works towards that in the future, but I hope everybody survived, and kind of took it as a chance to breathe on that weekend, if you had the weekend off, or whatever else it was, but I know it was stressful for many people, so hopefully you’re back on track. We got to move on from that, though, Tim. So, yeah, so we always..

Tim Van Norman 3:37
another fun one, though.

Brent Warner 3:38
Yeah, well, we did have Dr. Bertram Gallant on campus, so as listeners of the show may know, we had her on season seven, episode 12, earlier in the semester, and then we kind of said, “Hey, we’re doing a book club with her book, The Opposite of Cheating, and then she, you know, very kindly and graciously agreed to drive up from San Diego to visit us and present to our faculty staff, even our president was there in the presentation. It was great, so she had a just, you know, people were really appreciative of her presentation or conversation, getting some ideas really going, and so I keep getting comments, people stopping me every day, going, ‘Oh, thank you for having her come. And so that worked out really well, and I’m glad, glad she was able to come.

Tim Van Norman 4:28
Yeah, it was amazing. Some of my staff got to go, and they were actually complaining that they couldn’t stick around for the teacher part afterwards.

Brent Warner 4:38
Sorry!

Tim Van Norman 4:38
Like- wow, that’s actually, that’s actually tells you a lot, that’s great feedback and stuff like that, but no, they, they really did appreciate the opportunity. So, when you’re talking about things like cheating and academic integrity and stuff like that, and people who are not involved in that are loving. The presentation, and wishing they could stick around longer, that’s a positive.

Brent Warner 5:04
So, and you know, it’s interesting, like in the book, she talks a lot about how the whole academic integrity thing is not just on the faculty, it’s on the entire, you know, community, and so you saying that kind of reinforces it, right? It’s like every, and especially at a school like ours, where, like, we’re kind of encouraged to really embrace that everybody on campus is an educator, everybody’s involved in the whole process, and so when people at our school take that seriously, then it also has a big impact on the way conversations like this go, too. Absolutely. So glad to have those things. Well, not glad to have the Canvas hack. Great to have Dr. Bre on campus, but we are kind of talking about though today. We just said, “Hey, let’s, you know, moving into the summer, we sometimes do different topics, but we thought we’d do a little conversation on maybe some things we might be doing, or might be thinking about, or hoping that’s going to come out, maybe in the summer, maybe beyond, and a little bit of planning for these things, and then we’ll wrap it up with a little bit of just, just a few conferences that people might consider going to during the summer if they wanted to keep up their, their techie chops for for the fall semester. So, Tim, are you ready to get into it?

Tim Van Norman 6:21
Let’s do it. I know the first one here is a topic that I will be more familiar with than ever:

Brent Warner 6:31
Accessibility!!

Tim Van Norman 6:33
Yes, so yes, we’ve got that April 26 2027 date, but the reality is there’s so much stuff that has to happen, and and as I was pointing out to somebody today, a couple people, faculty, I’m not trying to minimize the effort it’s going to take for faculty, but I think a lot of people look at faculty and go, oh, they’re the ones who have to solve the problem, the reality is it’s a bigger deal for everybody else. Faculty, realistically, I can not use a document that I used last semester, and I’m good. I don’t have to do anything with it. Okay, but if I’ve got – if I’m six months into a job and I’ve got a 20 year old document, I don’t know if I can get rid of it or not. Yeah, and so there’s some of that going on, and so there’s a lot of stuff we’re going to learn as we get into all the different aspects of accessibility.

Brent Warner 7:32
Yeah, and so I know it’s like it kind of is it to me, it feels like it’s looming over your head. It’s like, okay, I know I have to do all this stuff, but like, I will say one bite at a time, right? Like, just do little, little bits. We talked about this, I think, on episode 16. We did a whole episode on accessibility and all of these, these rules and things, but especially during the summer, is like, take a little bit of time to, you know, take little chunks out of the work, try to figure out how it’s going, as much as you can. Anyone listening individually, like what you can do, because it will make your life easier, you know. As the next year rolls around, next april 26 comes around, like whatever those expectations are. If you can say, ‘Hey, I’m well on my way, you know. Of course, the government’s saying 100% no matter what, and that’s not a reality of the world we live in, but, but you can get pretty good and a lot better for people who need accessible documents, you know. We can, we can do a lot to support those people as well, and, and, you know, and it makes it better for everybody, right? There’s all sorts of options when you have properly accessible documents, so one thing that I’m going to make a prediction on here, Tim. I know we have to do a lot of work on the back end, but I actually predict that there will be a point not too far. Hopefully, this is my kind of fingers crossed prediction, I guess, is that AI will be able to do a lot of the work, just figuring it out by looking at the the front face of a document, right? Like, hey, let me see. Oh, it’s bolded. I can tell that that’s trying to separate out a category. Oh, it’s, you know, it’s in a table. I can understand it seems to be alphabetical in three rows, you know, a a through g on the first row, like, instead of weirdly separated out by columns, right, all the things that you have to think about when you’re imagining how a screen reader might look, or you know, process the information, even blank cells on a table, right, it could kind of understand that, and then my further prediction, so that’s just the reading side, but my further prediction is that it will also be able to go in and say, you know, click, you know, you can click in on this, and it will just tell you that one part, right? Or it will help you be able to figure out the ways through the document when you’re not able to see it, or when you have, you know, other issues that are blocking your access to it, and so, so I am hoping. Hoping that there’s going to be some clever creative entrepreneur figuring out how to, you know, I know we, we currently do not trust in this, right, because I haven’t seen anything that exists, but I am making a prediction and a guess that someone’s going to figure out, because it’s so much easier for AI to do that kind of work than it is for all of us to basically lift every single document that we ever used or might use in the future, and you know, figure out how that’s going to work. I know we’ve got other ways to deal with that, and you’ll talk about that in a second, but you know, the real this is like one of the great promises of AI, right, taking away that hard work for the people and making it, you know, a quick and easy solution that helps everybody,

Tim Van Norman 10:41
and before people go, wait, I know one, I know one, I know one. Hold on a second. All right, so there are a lot of AI tools that will go through, and they promise to read your document and remediate it, or help you remediate it, but my, the information I’m getting told is there 30% at best.

Brent Warner 11:03
Yeah, that’s not good enough. Okay,

Tim Van Norman 11:04
so we’re not talking about that low percentage, we’re talking about, you know, 99% is the prediction, and stuff. We’ve, I’ve used a number of them, in fact, I’m in the middle of a project using a lot of testing a lot of these things, even this week I’ve been doing it, and there they help, they can identify things, but it really takes a human to say, “Oh no, this picture is not important. This table, this is actually the header row. Yes, it’s the first row, but is that really what it’s meant? All of those things, it still takes a human, and I agree. I think that the reality is for a lot of that it could be done by AI without a human intervention. Yes, so

Brent Warner 11:49
let’s, so again, half prediction, half wish, I guess, on this one, but, but for sure. But Tim, you’ve also, like, I know you’ve been building and kind of trying to figure out ways to support people as well. So, a

Tim Van Norman 12:00
couple episodes ago we talked about vibe coding, and so I’ve been having some fun with it, and I’ve got to teach a lot of people how to do things with regard to making documents accessible, so I looked at it and I vibe coded – it’s not perfect in any way, it’s vibe coded, but I basically a trainer that walks you through and gamifies fixing, remediating Word documents and Excel, or and PowerPoint, and Google Docs. Nice, and you, you can just go through and just see what it is, type in what it should be, and if okay, yep, you move around to the next one, and and it kind of gamifies it, and I was actually very surprised in the amount of time it took under an hour to have something workable, gave it to some other people, they played it, played with it a little bit, and oh, you know, be really neat if it did this too. 15 minutes later, they tried it again. It would be really neat if it didn’t, and the 15 minutes was because I was playing with it to try to see if it worked right, you know. But it was really, it wasn’t hard to do, and I think that type of thing can actually make it a little bit fun to learn, yeah, what it is you’re really supposed

Brent Warner 13:24
to do. So, is that sorry, Tim, I didn’t check with you pre show, but is that shareable with people listening, or is it not ready for that?

Tim Van Norman 13:32
Or I don’t know, I did it in AI Studio, which is a Google, which is in Google, and so for people who are on their personal account, yes, it’s available for people that are not on a personal account. If they’re on an education account, they may or may not have access to AI Studio.

Brent Warner 13:55
Okay, so, so can we, can we try and put a link in the show notes? Maybe we’ll put

Tim Van Norman 14:01
a link in the show notes, and like I said, try it. I would love to know what doesn’t work, and all that stuff. Again, you figure for an hour and a half worth of work, that was pretty cool.

Brent Warner 14:13
Yeah, cool, cool. Okay, so I know we’re going to do a lot of accessibility stuff. There’s going to be a lot of things coming down the line during the summer. We might be checked out, but try to stay tuned in, because you know that’s, you know, it’s going to be important, and it’s going to help you out a lot if you can spend a little time. But let’s also talk a bit, Tim, about prepping for fall courses and work, you know, for everybody who might be taking a couple months off. I know you’re not doing that, but, but a lot of faculty, of course, who are listening and might be taking some time off, so I know you have a few things that you’re interested in doing. I have a, you know, one or two things that I’m kind of interested in looking at too. So, let’s continue with the vibe coding conversation. You mentioned this, I think, before, but. Been you’ve been doing a little bit of work with this, yeah. So I

Tim Van Norman 15:02
created a business simulator that walks students through they’re running a business, and it’s an old-time mining supply company, and and so they’ve gotta figure out how to ship the equipment, how to, how much to buy, what to sell it for, make profit, all of those things. And for a business class, I think it’s a great idea to have something like that, and I want to, I want to give it in such a way that my students can play it and get extra credit, you know, maybe a point for every day they survive, or something, or week they survive, or at all.

Brent Warner 15:44
You could also make it like the end of the game could be that they struck gold, right? Or something, you know, like I mean, if they’re doing a mine supply or something, right? So some sort of fun prize at the end.

Tim Van Norman 15:53
Well, and that’s it’s that’s the beauty of it is you can actually do stuff like that, and and it looks like it looks like something, and so I really, I enjoyed doing that particular one. Another, I spent literally hours today, a couple hours today, just creating presentations. If you feel stuck in your presentations, in your class, create new Google Slides. There’s so many different ways you can do it right now with AI. Take and get an idea and go with it, and make changes, and just really make it useful for you, and it will really spruce up your presentation, and frankly, it creates an environment that’s really interesting.

Brent Warner 16:45
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, well, we’ve talked about gamma in the past too, right? So, so if you’re wanting to build slides, I still think we, and for me, I haven’t seen anything that does it quite as well as gamma. Notebook LM does have their slide deck builder thing with some editing things, but it’s not – hasn’t quite built it in the way that I’ve been expecting, which is essentially gamma for Google Slides, and I was kind of surprised that that has not come out yet, but again, that’s future prediction. But yeah, lots of different ways to build presentations, maybe if you feel like your presentations are a little bit stale, or you kind of, or you know, even if you just like, hey, I admit that I’m not a designer, and I want you to know the same exact content, but I want it to look a lot better, you can do that, and gamma, for sure, like gamma has an option for preserve exact text, right, so it could just redesign it for just, just to look better, right? So, there are some options in there as well, but yeah, I think that, you know, some prep around your presentations and kind of recognizing, you know, your students have new expectations, right? You need to, you need to refresh your cycle every once in a while, and so making things look nice, making things accessible, maybe going into your canvas and updating links to new presentations, right, making you know all those kinds of things that you might spend, spend a little bit of time doing, if you pace it out a little bit over the summer, it won’t be

Tim Van Norman 18:17
too hard, absolutely, and while you’re putting those presentations together, why not take the presentation, especially if you’ve recorded it, and pop it into a, a, an AI tool that will create a quiz bank from it. Yeah, and you’ve already got quizzes, maybe go ahead and add 12 more questions to chapter one into a question bank, and now you’ve got 25 questions, and you know there’s just so many different things you can do easily once you get started on creating your presentations, and then moving it through. I think it’s a great idea without having to spend a whole ton of time redesigning your whole class,

Brent Warner 19:01
For sure, just building out extra quiz questions. I know that the first response is like, well, students can use AI to answer the quiz questions, but, like, you know, it depends on how you’re running your class, right? You could do in-class, you know, quizzes where you can watch the students working on their things, right? There’s low-stakes assessments where it’s not about points for them, right? So I know it’s easy to kind of be pessimistic if you’re saying, “Hey, AI is ruining everything, but it’s also, well, hold on a second, we can, we can use these in different ways that don’t necessarily create the problems that we’re always worried about, or you know, if you’re only looking at it from one perspective, maybe think about different ways that it might come in as well, so for sure sometime in there quiz expansion activities expansion, and I’m going to add mine. One of the things that I’m going to want to do over the summer is spend a little bit more time learning Libre Tex.

Brent Warner 19:55
That’s a great program,

Brent Warner 19:56
Great system. Yeah, it’s wonderful, and I’ve been using it for. The last year or two, I’ve been using the core Libra text, right, the conductor, and building, building out texts, and all these things, but I really want to learn and understand, adapt the homework system better. I want to understand the Forge a little bit better, so all of these things that I’m kind of trying to figure out with my, for how I’m kind of moving forward with my classes, so Libre Tex is kind of the area where I want to be, maybe stepping away from some of the major publishers or maybe major platforms, and kind of into these ones that are a little bit more student focused, and so whether it’s Libre Text for you listening out there or you know some other platform, if you just find a platform that you’re saying, “Hey, I think I want to work with this for a while, let me see if I can do some ins and outs training and figure out what’s going on with it.

Tim Van Norman 20:49
Absolutely, and those are.. it’s a great way to expand your knowledge, try new things, and during the summer, if you choose not to do it, you can always go back to your last class. That’s right. Yep, you know, you’ll hopefully have learned something though, as you do it. Yeah, absolutely.

Brent Warner 21:07
And Tim, I know you kind of had one last one, like a kind of a big goal, big-ish goal, or maybe like stepping into it, testing a little bit. So we’ll kind of have to see what it is now, and then in the future we’ll kind of do a follow-up and see how, like, how, how you know, but you can encourage people to move along with you as you try this idea.

Tim Van Norman 21:26
Absolutely, so something came up this week, and somebody brought me an idea for something else, a different class, but developing case studies for the different aspects of your class, but in doing so, having an overall case study, so that everything fits together into one big story arc, and I’m thinking about this, and I don’t teach a writing class, I don’t teach a history class, I don’t teach, you know, I, for those, I, oh, okay, I can come up with something that’s not what this is, this is like for a business class or a class on some other topic, and remember, people remember stories, they don’t remember facts. So, how can I get that fact across? How can I make this interesting for my students? And so I’m trying to figure out how to develop a case study that will go all the way across all of my, my whole class in some way. I’ve tried to do it where they’re doing the work, and that’s successful. It works, but I want to engage them and have them actually thinking in a different way, and so that’s hopefully this summer I’m going to be able to set aside some time and just develop a major case study and then individual little case studies inside of it.

Brent Warner 22:50
I like it. Yeah, so and I think the challenge to people listening is like, can you find a way to get more creative, right, like a way, a way to update your curriculum that is maybe not following the same thing that all the publishers are giving you, right? Maybe, maybe things that are meant to engage students locally, right? Like we talk about these, you know, project-based learning and all these kinds of things. Well, what we do with information around things that they know that are nearby your school, right? I think things like that, and this is what I’ve been trying to do more in my classes, as well as, like, you know, for me, with teaching language learners, and who are learning about American cultures, like talking about, you know, life in Orange County, the hidden cultural aspects, right, like trying to, trying to build those types of things as a cohesive theme, and so I like that idea for you too, Tim, is like, you’re like, okay, well, what could be my one big cohesive theme, and then how can I do little offshoots of that, but keep them all coherent, so that they link together

Tim Van Norman 23:48
Yeah, and using AI?

Brent Warner 23:51
Oh, 100%

Tim Van Norman 23:52
yeah. You know, I don’t have to come up, I don’t have to make it all up myself. Yeah, and I’ve been.. I was doing some of this stuff earlier today, and I was amazed at how quickly I was able to come up with some things, not for my class, but for something else, and it really was stimulating. Wait, can I do this for me, for my class, for my students? And so I’m hoping I can. It’s going to be something I’m going to try, and you know, we’ll see. Awesome, very cool.

Brent Warner 24:22
Well, last bit here, Tim, we’re running out of time, but you know, there are a couple of, or there are many, many upcoming conferences and trainings for PD over the summer. Of course, you can just go on LinkedIn, or you can go on to any of your school’s websites, and you’re going to get tons of emails about, hey, this thing, this thing, this thing, but we’ve got a few of the major ones that we’re just going to mention, in case you have a little bit of time, you want to kind of stay on top of the tech. So I will start with ISTE. So ISTE Live ISTE, which is now.. I’m not sure if they rebranded the whole naming, but ISTE and ASCD are both kind of combined to come. Conferences together, and so that’s going to be in Orlando, june 28 to july 1, so if you’re like that’s the the big ed tech conference that one in FETC, FETC is all I think always in Florida, but ISTE moves around all over the country, and so, if you’re interested in kind of keeping up with what’s going on, like these are massive conferences, I mean, they are exhausting, because they’re, you know, the multi, you know, multi layers on the conference centers, like these huge ones, and so lots of fun, lots of really interesting presentations and ideas going on, but if you have the time and the flexibility and want to take a trip off to Orlando, ISTE is happening in end of June and early July.

Tim Van Norman 25:49
Nice. Just before that, literally the week before that is the online teaching online teaching conference in Anaheim, June 23 through 25th So this is that conference that we always joke about. It’s California Community Colleges online teaching conference that does not have an online component, but it’s a really good conference, especially if you’re in California. It’s a great conference for getting to know about teaching pedagogy, teaching resources, anything having to do with with higher ed, and specifically California community colleges, but it’s just a really, really good conference, and it’s in Anaheim

Brent Warner 26:33
Yeah, this year will be particularly valuable as more and more people are having, you know, really these AI concerns conversations, especially with online courses, right. And so, like, a lot of people are going to be talking about how they’re dealing with it. I’m sure I still have never been. It’s just right down the street, and the timing, or whatever it is, I still haven’t made it so. And it’s not going to work out for me this year either. Sadly, I’m going to be out of town, but, but I promise to get there one of these conference, yeah. Everybody I know that goes to it says they really like it a lot, they have a great time. So online teaching conference, and then Tim, this one is the one I haven’t been to, but you have, and so this is, they’ll have a messy year this year for sure, but

Tim Van Norman 27:19
Instructure Con 2026 july 21 through 23rd in Louisville, Kentucky. Hey, so cool, that’d be cool. Yeah, it’s beautiful country. Been through Louisville a couple of times now recently on my way to other places as I go on vacation, but it’s beautiful area. 23rd 21st first through 23rd Do be careful flying in, because their airport is really small. So, like, I’m flying into Nashville, okay? And driving the two hours, so.. but it’s.. it’s a really Instructure Con is just an amazing conference. It’s Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and you will want to take Monday and travel. You don’t want to try to get there on Tuesday morning. That’s just gonna, you’re gonna miss a major part of the conference. Yeah, there’s unconference on Friday, so that is also a really great opportunity to get to know other people, and just a completely different vibe to that part, but huge conference. Anything going on in Canvas, from the API, the LTI is to anything, it’s going to be there.

Brent Warner 28:40
Great, so there you go. Those are some of our predictions and plans and things coming up. So we hope you all have a great summer. This is it for us for the semester, and we’ll wrap up here.

Tim Van Norman 28:56
Thank you for listening today. For more information about this show, please visit our website at The Higher Ed Tech podcast.com

Brent Warner 29:04
As always, we do want your feedback, so please go to The Higher Ed Tech podcast.com and let us know your thoughts.

Tim Van Norman 29:10
For everyone at IVC that’s listening, if you need help with technology questions, please contact IVC technical support. You have questions about technology in your classroom, please contact me, Tim Van Norman, at tvannorman@ivc.edu

Brent Warner 29:22
and if you want to reach out to me about the show, you can find me on LinkedIn at @BrentGWarner.

Tim Van Norman 29:27
I’m Tim Van Norman,

Brent Warner 29:29
and I’m Brent Warner, and we hope this episode has helped you on the road from possibility to actuality. We’ll see you in August. Bye, everybody.