Brent Warner
This is the Higher EdTech Podcast, Season Two Episode Nine: Podcasting possibilities and end of semester parties.

Tim Van Norman
Welcome to today’s higher ed tech podcast. I’m Tim van Norman, the instructional technologist here at Irvine Valley College.

Brent Warner
And I’m Brent Warner, professor of ESL here at IBC. We both enjoy integrating technology into the classroom, which is what this show is all about.

Tim Van Norman
Welcome. We’re glad you’re here with us. So Brent, anything new going on?

Brent Warner
Uh.. this might be the end of the semester for us as far as episodes go.

Tim Van Norman
Yes, it could.

Brent Warner
Yeah, we’re here at the first week of December. Right. And and this is, our first episode will be out on December 3, right? This is when this will come out. But the the third week would be the 17th, which is after our semester is already over. Right. So I think our last classes are on the 16th. And so you and I just kind of have to decide if we want to do kind of a send-off Christmas episode. I don’t know. My guess is we probably won’t I think we’re just gonna probably be like, yeah, we’re done for this for the rest of the year.

Tim Van Norman
Yeah, and come back in January.

Brent Warner
Yeah, probably. So I guess, you know, keep your keep your podcast pod catchers on and you’ll see if there’s another episode, but my guess is, you know, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and all the other things right.

Tim Van Norman
And enjoy the end of your semester.

Brent Warner
Yeah, yeah. So. So speaking of that, today, we’re going to be talking a little bit about some podcasting possibilities and end of the semester parties. So Tim, we kind of pre show debated, like, what to call this? And we said podcasting possibilities, right? Yes, because we didn’t really want people to go like, oh, how to start a podcast. And they’re like, I don’t want to start a podcast, right. But we want to kind of share some ideas about what podcasting might have to offer. And there’s a few different ways to look at like podcasting possibilities. And, and what people might be thinking about over the the winter break, there are some potentials for some projects, or if people want to kind of dig into it. I was excited because Alison Dillard was on the show. And she’s doing a podcast, right. And that’s totally independent of us nothing to do, you know, with us, but I like the idea of more professors doing like super niche podcasts that are, you know, things that they’re passionate about, and things that are going to, you know, be helpful to other people. And so, so I thought we might share just some thoughts on this.

Tim Van Norman
Well, as well, you’ve mentioned a number of times your students doing podcasts? That’s right. And at this, we’re not talking professional level or anything like that, necessarily. Maybe it is but people having fun with audio, and getting in and, and sharing ideas with other people? Because I think that’s kind of a lot of basis for podcasts.

Brent Warner
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It’s, it’s, it’s totally nerdy. And like, that’s, that’s the great thing about it. So you can either be, hey, maybe I want to do something for myself and just kind of create a podcast. Or you might be thinking about how to deal with your students and say, Hey, oh, right now that I’m recognizing that they are going to be talking to each other, they’re going to be sharing ideas, they’re going to be recording their voices, and talking through ideas. All of those things are great ways for students to display their critical thinking and their abilities in whatever subject area you’re talking about. So so you might be saying, well, maybe over the winter break, I’ll think about how to build podcasting projects for my students as you know, some activities in the class. And so, so we wanted to share a little bit about that. And, and maybe, you know, just toss around a couple of potential ideas.

Tim Van Norman
So Brian, as we think about that, I hear a lot of people call all kinds of different things. podcasts. Yeah. When you think about that, what what distinguishes somebody putting up a YouTube video one time YouTube video versus a podcast, what is the distinction or are they want in the same?

Brent Warner
They are not the same? So this kind of debate has not debate but like a coming to an understanding of podcasting has has been going on for a while. Now that they’re more popular. It’s a little bit more settled, where people tend to think of audio as podcasts right? There’s still like the the little small ripples of the world called vodcasts. You know, the VOD podcasting, the video podcasting. But for the most part, people kind of consider that to be like, I’m a YouTuber, right versus I’m a podcaster. And sometimes people record their podcasts as videos at the same time and put them up on YouTube too. But still, in general, we consider a podcast to be an audio file that is distributed through podcast services. So whether that be Apple podcasts, or Google podcasts, or Stitcher or Spotify, or all of these different things. So audio distributed out, and then part of the reason that the audio for itself has caught on is because it allows people to kind of multitask. So hey, I can be on my commute and listening to the podcast while I’m driving to work. I know that’s not happening for all of us right now. But But you know, it could be like during a walk or washing dishes or something like that, right, where it’s, it’s just an audio consumption, product, and then it can be created by anybody. And those are, that’s really what it’s about. And then having them be available through those services means that people can subscribe to it, right. And then they expect that the show is somewhat regular. That doesn’t always happen. We we have a pretty good schedule first and third Thursday of the month. And so people know hate that episodes basically going to be coming out at that time. Some people are less structured, and it’s just like, oh, there we had time and recorded an episode. And some people are like, every week, or there’s even daily podcasts. And so there’s a whole variety of them. But there tends to be a show host a show structure. And then sometimes you’ll also see ones that are like, like a set up set number of episodes, hey, this is just going to be a thematic one, there’s going to be 10 different episodes, and then it’s going to be done after that. But yeah, that tends to be how we think of podcasts. So not so much a recording that goes into my canvas class, and is just me talking, that would not be considered a podcast, putting into a you know, a recording of me going onto YouTube is also not considered a podcast. But you know, an audio show that has a purpose. And most podcasts just tend to kind of go on with no end date in sight, although they don’t last that long.

Tim Van Norman
Well, and it may be that you do have an end end date in sight when you have a semester, right, and you’ve got your students for a semester. So we’re going to do this for this semester or something like that. So that’s great. Now, as we look at it, there are certain tools that you need. And granted, if people have been listening over the last several months, you’ve heard me go through several different microphones, as an example. Yeah. I and yes, I’m now at a much better microphone that I was six months ago. But we’re not at the level of microphone that we were a year ago when we were on campus and able to use the really high end mics that we have there. But that said, what did we find as minimums for equipment? What if I want my students to go ahead and do record a podcast for episode or something like that? What would they need to have? What kind of equipment would they actually need to make that happen?

Brent Warner
So straight up minimum need I would say would be a smartphone or a tablet of some device and a headset with a microphone inside of that. And and you wouldn’t even necessarily need the headset, you could talk right into the phone, although it’s gonna sound like you’re talking into a phone. But if you’re talking bare minimums, Hey, I just want to get going on this. You need. You just need basically some sort of device that connects to the internet. And that can record you which is a smartphone or a tablet. If it’s if it’s a, you know, $100 tablet, you could probably do with that too. Then, you know, we could talk about moving up and we could have long, long conversations about all the all the moving up and better, better gear and higher computer processing powers and all those things. But I think just to start, let’s keep it super simple. I don’t I think people are wanting to look at this. Consider your investment to be your time not your money into a bunch of equipment.

Tim Van Norman
Absolutely agree and, and as you had said, you could use your your smartphone, if you’ve got a laptop or a desktop computer, plugging in a headset. It can be very, very simple. You don’t need to spend a lot of money to get started to see what it’s going to be like. And almost every podcast I’ve listened to If I hear it from the beginning, the first episode always sounds like it’s a first episode. Okay, and and over time they improve both the quality even if it’s two people who have independently done podcasts before and you you’ve got two people doing the podcast, their podcasts Quality, everything improves. So if you’re going to keep on going, you’re going to want to put the money into it. If you’re not going to keep on going, then you can try it out for basically nothing. Right? or very close.

Brent Warner
Yeah. And so I think that’s a great way to approach it. And that’s also why when people tell me Hey, check out this podcast, I either make sure I’m listening to a few first episodes, or I jump in somewhere later on, like around Episode 1012, or 20, where it’s a little bit more established. So

Tim Van Norman
yeah, absolutely. So the next part is, is a struggle. The next question I’ve got for you, Brent, how to choose a focus. But because one of the things that I have found, when I’ve listened to podcasts, is if there’s some sort of a focus to the podcast, it really does help me enjoy it. And I know what I’m coming to the next time. Yeah, for us, it’s it’s higher ed and technology, that combination. Now, not everything we talked about is higher ed, not everything we talked about is technology. But there’s always a theme that’s related to that that’s going on, sorry, um, I’ve, I’ve heard single episodes that I couldn’t figure out what their theme was. And you know, I probably am not going to listen to the next episode or two. It just, it doesn’t engage me. And you think about it, even if you watch a TV show, there’s always something that ties the shows together. Otherwise, it’s just the same people doing random events is what it feels like. So when you think about it, you’ve done a number of different podcasts. How do you choose a focus? What helps you figure that out? and understand that obviously, it’s going to be different for each person? Yeah, and exactly how they choose that.

Brent Warner
Yeah. So I do agree, I think that a lot of people just kind of, maybe just want to, like, have their voice out there. Right? And like, Oh, my ideas about whatever. And it’s like, oh, okay, but that can kind of fade pretty quickly. Because it’s like, Well, today, I’m talking about baking. And tomorrow, I’m talking about, you know, traveling to San Diego. And it’s like, well, you know, unless you’re like a celebrity people probably aren’t particularly interested in your daily life, right. You know, or I mean, some people have amazing lives. And so maybe, but, but I would say, for me, the way that I choose, my focus is based on my personal interests, okay, which is one, of course, so technology is going to be in there. But really what I’m looking at, I think the big value for me of a podcast is that it helps me with professional development on a personal level, as we’re going through this. So as a teacher, hey, I’m interested in technology. I’m interested, of course, in college. For my other show, I’m interested in ESL, and so. So those are things that I want to talk about, because hopefully, it makes me a better teacher, hopefully, it makes me a better more informed colleague, to be able to help out my, my, my own colleagues. And so there, it turns into a reflection for me, and to be able to kind of talk through ideas, and really think about them so that I know what I am talking about when I am sharing or when I’m making decisions for my classroom. And so if we’re talking about teachers, I think, you know, something around your content area of what you teach is a great choice, right? Because we’re, you know, for a professor at the college, hopefully, you’re an expert in your field, that doesn’t mean you know, everything, of course, like there’s so much more of it for all of us to learn about our own fields. And with technology in particular, it just kind of endlessly grows. But I think that’s one good way to choose a focus doesn’t have to be about what you’re teaching about, you know, if you have another hobby or something that you’re interested in. But it’s basically it gives you the opportunity to deep dive into something that you find fascinating, and hopefully, you know, lifelong, or at least long term interest.

Tim Van Norman
Well, and focus also helps you pick topics and look at like guest speakers and stuff like that, and people that come in. And so even if your topic might be something that is a fairly niche, there’s probably other people who are interested in it as well. And you could bring them in and as you said, hopefully well, you might be an expert, you don’t know everything. This is a great way to learn. I’ve learned a ton just in this last year and a half doing this.

Brent Warner
Yeah, I mean, and that’s the whole thing is it’s like, I don’t know everything. We’re just trying, we’re trying to figure him out but like once we’re talking about it, once you and I are talking about it, we can bounce ideas off of each other and say, okay, that might be a good way to think about it or, you know, in not might come into effect down the line for us too, but it does help out. So,

Tim Van Norman
yeah, absolutely. So what different formats Do you find for podcasting?

Brent Warner
I think this I mean, their standards, right. So, like us co hosts, right? talking and sharing ideas with each other. There’s a single host format, which is, you know, just one person talking, and just explaining whatever it is that they’re talking about their interview formats, their round table formats, there’s all sorts of different ways. There’s, there’s segments, you know, like, we do segments, we most of our episodes are, half of the episode is on one topic. So this one right now, podcasting possibilities, the second half of the, the show is another segment, which for us will be the end of game or end of semester parties. So that, you know, doing things in different segments could be a possibility. I would listen, my advice is listening to different shows and seeing what you like and seeing how people interact and how they put together their shows, and then using that as a basis for what you might be interested in putting together.

Tim Van Norman
And I absolutely agree with that. That’s kind of what we did, as I was getting learning how to do this myself, once you talk to me about it. The other part is you don’t have to keep it to one format the whole time. You know, we sometimes have people on interview and stuff like that. So it’s good to have a little bit of variety, too. But you do need to have a basic format that you’re going to do.

Brent Warner
Yeah. And so once you decide that, it kind of goes back to what you had mentioned before, which is like, if the show seems to know what it’s doing, then you can deal with some variety, if the show is just random and all over the place. And every time is totally different, then you’re like, well, how am I going to get, you know, hooked into this thing? Or, you know, what am I? What am I committing myself to with this? And that’s a question you might want to ask when you’re thinking about your potential listeners.

Tim Van Norman
So you had one product that you suggested people use to get started.

Brent Warner
Yeah, so I usually recommend anchor, this is what I use with my students too, which is free, basically, that’s the beauty of it is it’s free, free free. And we could do a whole episode on kind of getting into it in the future. But basically, anchor is takes care of all the hard work that used to exist. And then that does, some exists still on some levels for like show like we’re doing. But basically, you can go right into the app, you can record what you’re wanting to say, you can go record with another person to and send send them a link and they can record it together with you. But then you can also rearrange your recorded segments. And you can put in little music like bumper music and all sorts of little things. And then you just click a button, and it will, it will publish it to Apple podcasts and all the different distribution systems. So that used to be a ton of work getting, you know, accepted to Apple and all of those different things. And now it’s just like, nope, push the button, then you’re gonna be on there in an hour or two. And so if you’re interested in starting with this, I would really recommend starting off with anchor, do it again, straight from your smartphone. And you can play around with it. There’s tutorials online, all sorts of things, but it’s just anchor A and C h o r.fm. Great place to get started with it. Excellent. So we hope some of those things helped you out. If you’re interested in maybe thinking about podcasting, either for yourself or for your students. You know, mull it over over the winter break and see what you think about and if you’d end up doing a show, definitely let us know because we would love to hear about it.

Tim Van Norman
So we’ve got a Zippy tip for today. It’s a little different than typical, but I think I find it very important. In fact, I did that just this past weekend with thanksgiving. The tip is get away from the technology you use for teaching, take a break. And the important part there is just not necessarily getting away from all technology but get away from what you do every day. Every once in a while and especially as we’re coming up with this winter holiday, Thanksgiving, just past etc. Just at least take a little bit of a break for you. So, we were at the end of the semester, we’re looking at what’s happening and I know a year ago looked completely different than this past May or June depending on when your semester ended. And things are different. Now that you’ve had a little bit of time I’ve heard a lot of people brought straited with how the semester ended last time, all the sudden, up classes over students gone. Hope we get to see you sometime in the future. We’d like to do something maybe a little bit different this time. And Brent, I know you’ve done a lot of different things in the past. So what we wanted to talk about, what can you do it? We’re still virtual? Yeah. The chances of actually meeting together like a lot of classes used to do, probably not going to happen. So definitely not going to happen

Brent Warner
for us on our campus. Right. Yeah. So this really struck me at the end of the spring semester, because I was like, oh, we’re just done. Right. And, and it was like, over and it was kind of a sad goodbye. And nobody was, you know, people were just kind of feeling uncomfortable. And even in the summer, too, it was still kind of like, okay, we’re wrapped up, but I, I never felt satisfied. And so this semester, I’m really trying to think of ways to kind of make a fun, like, Hey, we spent time together, we still have been working, I’m doing synchronous classes. And so like, how are we going to talk to each other? How are we going to, you know, kind of send off the end of the semester. And I know, this is different for different people. But you know, in, in ESL, we normally do things like, people do a potluck, and everybody brings in food from their different countries. And, you know, we have a chance to share with each other and like, you know, say goodbye, all of those types of things. Because these are people, we’ve spent six months with trying to, you know, improve and get better at all of these things. And so, so this semester, I am trying to think of a few different ways. I’m not going to be able to do all of these by any means, but we, you know, I was I was brainstorming just some things that might be possibilities, because I hope other teachers are thinking about this as well. And I think a lot of us are just like, I don’t know what I’m gonna do. And then the last day comes, and it’s like, okay, we’re, I guess, right. And so I think our timing, hopefully is good here that it’s a few weeks ahead of time, people can still go, maybe I can get that going, maybe I can set that up and make it work. So kind of a way to have have some party have some fun at the end of the semester with your students. And so I came up with a little list here, 10, if you want to kind of add to them, or if you have any of your own ideas. That’s great. But I’ll, I’ll get started. And you can tell me, you can tell me what you think.

Tim Van Norman
And by the way, if for everybody that’s listening, remember, we’re looking at things that can be done in this virtual environment. Now, you might need to be creative to make a couple of these work. But in almost every case, I can come up with really easy ways to make it work in a virtual environment. Yeah, so.

Brent Warner
Okay, so let’s get started. The first one, I’m not sure that I would do this to tell the truth, but that’s why I put it first but a themed party of some sort. So like, if you did a costume party, if you ask your students to come like, hey, let’s do dressed up as the 80s, like 80s style dress up, or let’s you know, do like a crazy hair thing, or I don’t know, you know, some something like that, where everybody wants to come in, and just show off a little

Tim Van Norman
bit. In zoom, I’ve heard of this, this type of thing happening several different times people doing stuff like that. So and it can be fun. You know, and people get to see their own creative side in their house. So they don’t have to worry about getting outside and other people seeing them or whatever. But yeah, absolutely. That’s a good one. Yeah, the next one karaoke. First of all, nobody is going to sound good, because you’re going across zoom or something like that. So some will sound better than others. But it, it can be a lot of fun having something like that going on.

Brent Warner
And you know what you can do Tim though is with the share screen, you can share the audio only. So if you’re the host, you can just be playing, you know, you could you don’t have to go get a karaoke subscription without the audio, like, you could just play a YouTube song and have someone sing over it. And you could just drop the volume down a little bit. I think that’s plenty. You can also search for YouTube karaoke versions of famous songs. But you know, if people are willing to do that, if your students are brave enough to sing and to belt out a song, I would probably promise not to record it. But But you know, something like that would be a lot of fun.

Tim Van Norman
You could also ask the students to bring their own karaoke. That’s right, yeah, go out. They go out and go to YouTube and look up a karaoke song that they want, and they bring it and they share their screen while doing it. You know, there’s a lot of different possibilities to be creative when doing something like that.

Brent Warner
Yeah. You could do something like an award ceremony. So you know, this could be fairly straightforward. I don’t think you could do it for a large class. So for some of our colleagues who are doing, you know, large lectures with like 80 people or 100 people or whatever, that’d be hard. But if you’re in a smaller class, and you know your students well, you can kind of build up their individual strengths and kind of make a fun ceremony for them and just kind of, you know, maybe you pass them a virtual trophy or send them a sticker or like a PDF Certificate of some sort, and email it to them. I think something like that could be a lot of fun and just validating for the students at the end.

Tim Van Norman
Absolutely. Um, the next one we’ve got here is jackpot schemes. My daughter got into this a little while ago, it can be a blast. Yes, it can be really frustrating. But the beautiful part is everybody can participate, no matter where they are. They just need to go to a website, on their computer or on their phone. And everybody is simultaneous, and stuff like that. So you’ve got a couple of them in here. Some of them, most of them I haven’t heard of, but jackbox games, a caveat to put in place at the beginning. Some of them are fairly irreverent, irreverent. Yeah,

Brent Warner
yeah. So I make sure you check family friendly. Yeah, for sure. There’s see you’re not always, you know, something that you would want to share with your students. So there is an option, when you look through the games, I think it’s jackbox, games calm, and there’s all these different games, you do have to buy them. Sometimes they’re on sale, I didn’t check during like Black Friday, Cyber Monday to see I should have but But anyways, you can go get a game, and then you can play together with your students. So I’ll just throw out some examples of like what they are because I think people who haven’t played with them are a little unclear sometimes. Typically, what happens is, the game will throw up, then there’s all sorts of different games, but they follow a similar pattern, which is the game throws up a prompt, and then the players add on to that prompt. And then everybody who’s watching either the players or or and or audience members can vote on their best choices for that. Right. So, so one of the games, the popular game is called fib edge. And that’s a little game where it gives you like a little, a little trivia with a missing word. Right? And so it says, you know, uh, you know, President Nixon was kicked out of office for blank, right. And you could choose, of course, if you happen to know, they’re usually not so obvious is that they’re kind of obscure ideas, but, you know, then people throw in their ideas, and they say, you know, you know, eating too much pizza or you know, whatever just kind of crazy things you do, you have to be a little careful with your students, they might get a little crazy themselves, but, but you can throw some ideas in there. And then those all show up on the screen, and everybody votes on their favorite choices. And then you get more points based on how many people voted for yours. And also, you get more choices, you get points based on if you voted for the correct one versus the incorrect one. And so then it kind of cycles through, you kind of make things up like that. There’s different variations of that. So guess espionage is one and they say like, what’s the percentage of this thing? The likeliness of this thing happening? And you put so it says like, how many people I think one of the examples is how many people have mistaken a mannequin for a human being right. So you go, Okay, I think that’s 35%. Right? And then you would guess that and then the rest of the people watching, say, hate you’re under or you’re over? And then that’s kind of how the game works. And as close as you are, you get more points for being closer to the correct answer as well. So there’s a few different variations on these. And they’re a lot of fun. Like you said, Tim, that you know, they’re they’re perfect for online, really, because it’s just like, Hey, we can kind of see each other, we can make a quick joke, we can, we can play this game, and they last about 15 or 20 minutes. And then you could also rotate out the players. And so I say, hey, you’re going to be just voting as an audience member, or you’re going to be one of the people participating in on this as well. So lots of different things. Many, many choices with Jack’s jackbox and worth looking into as a fun way to kind of wrap up the semester there.

Tim Van Norman
Absolutely. The next one we had was scavenger hunt. Having people go out and find things, maybe in their neighborhood. And then have classmates vote on the best find or the what best can be defined in many different ways. It can be the kookiest find the most accurate find, you know, whatever it is, and you can make it be part of your class. So if it’s sociology, it could be you know, places to places to be together in COVID. Where could you actually be there and everybody goes out and they take a picture and they bring it back Things like that can get interactive. And that’s the whole point is be fun. On top of that, usually, I find that those people who are rule followers may not like that game so much, because they’re gonna get one or two votes, the people who are very creative and might not have been as happy with the rest of your class, because you have to follow certain rules. They’re gonna love games like this, because people are gonna go off Oh, yeah, that guy with a horn sticking out of his head, that was a great one, you know, of whatever it is. So, scavenger hunt is a really neat thing to do. And in fact, you might have even done that in your class. Yeah, I think there’s all people go out and find something and come back and bring it back and stuff like that.

Brent Warner
Well, I also like the idea that you can do this right in your home, right? So you can say, hey, in your room, find something. So let’s say you’re teaching a business class, right? Find the thing that you think will, you could sell for the most money, right? Like as as a product, not not as a not like this one individual thing. But like, if you are going to be marketing this what how, you know, what do you think you could sell the most of, and then the class could kind of look at all the different objects that people bring up. And, you know, here’s my headsets, I think I can really sell a lot of headsets because of the pandemic. And people need, you know, whatever those things are, so there’ll be lots of different possibilities. And then they could kind of challenge against each other. So there’s all sorts of different ways that you could do that, using, you know, what we call realia, like real things in that are going to help you understand and you and you could, like you said, tie it directly to your class lessons. A couple other ones, I’m just gonna zip through these. But you know, charades is always a classic fun, right? super great for zoom, because just, Hey, I’m gonna mute you, and you have to act out what this is, and the rest of the class is gonna scream out their hands. That’s right. You could get them to type it and then they could you know, the first person to type the right answer or whatever, you could easily see that too

Tim Van Norman
well, and hey, in charades, you can actually mute them so they can’t talk.

Brent Warner
You don’t get them mixed up. Pictionary, too, right? There’s lots of fun things you can do with Pictionary, you can just use the whiteboard application directly inside of zoom or, or whatever it is. So just take send that one person a private message with the prompt, and they’re going to try and draw it out somehow, I think there’s there could be some fun things with that. I thought about this one, Tim, I don’t know, like, depending on what you’re doing a virtual field trip. So one of my favorite courses when I was in college was a, it was a biology class. And it was, you know, we just went out to look at the trees and to look at, we went out to a park, you know, down in San Diego, and we went, you know, looked at the trees and like to the shrubbery and looked at all, you know all those things. I was thinking, well, we can’t really do that. But a teacher could still walk around and take us through a place that she knows and says like, hey, let’s check out you know, I’m going to be walking through these places. And I’m just going to show you all the cool plants and animals that I find in this, you know, 30 minutes of walking around. I think that could be a lot of fun. and engaging for students as well.

Tim Van Norman
Absolutely. And it could be that the students create their own PowerPoint and do the same thing. It could be done with video, it could be done with PowerPoint, there’s a lot of different fun things with that. The one I liked the best. And that’s because of the food aspect here. Right, you talked about earlier, you talked about how you have a potluck in your class. And so you put this topic on and I love this concept of virtual potluck. Have the students send each other recipes, and have people try to make them?

Brent Warner
Yeah, this this stood out

Tim Van Norman
to me, that would be really a neat concept. Yeah,

Brent Warner
I’m going to try it this semester with my with one of my classes, because I think, you know, they really do love it, you know, again, ESL people from all over the world, they always like trying each other’s foods. And so I thought maybe this time, like if I give them the weekend beforehand and just say, Hey, everybody go put up your recipes onto a Google slide or something like that. But then I’m going to say like, just go choose one that you want to try to make or choose to write, it could be super simple. It could just be like, you know, yogurt and honey, and that’s fine. Or it could be a more complicated recipe, right? But then going on, trying to make it and then like actually trying to eat it together. So obviously, we can’t have samples of 30 different people’s foods. But we can say, Hey, I tried to make this one didn’t turn out any good or not. And I think I’m going to try that just to see. You know, failures are fun, too. I think if we take it lightly and try to do our best to respect each other, but that’s a great, you know, cultural opportunity. People who don’t want to cook have don’t have to worry about it, right? They can just log in, you know, they can bring a snack to class and whatever it can be. It can be light and not too not too serious. But I think I’m going to try something like that this semester.

Tim Van Norman
It’s a great idea.

Brent Warner
So we hope that these ideas, at least something stands out to you. Maybe a way that you can plan a little Little bit ahead of time and have some fun with your students at the end of the semester. I think that everybody deserves a little chance for some fun and levity in the class. And if any of these work for you, or if you have your own great ideas, please let us know about it. We’d love to hear.

Tim Van Norman
Thank you for listening today. In this episode, we talked about podcasting possibilities, and end of semester parties. For more information about the show, please visit our website at the higher ed tech podcast.com. There you will find our podcasts and links to the information we’ve covered.

Brent Warner
As always, we do want your feedback. So please go to the higher ed tech podcast.com. And let us know your thoughts and if you have ideas for future shows, starting in the New Year 2021, where everything will magically be perfect. And Ben

Tim Van Norman
will say yeah,

Brent Warner
there’s a link at the higher ed tech podcast.com to let us know more about what you’re thinking.

Tim Van Norman
For everyone at IVC that’s listening. If you need help with technology questions, please contact IVC technical support at 949-451-5696 or by emailing IVC tech@ivc.edu. If you have questions about technology in your classroom, please contact me Tim van Norman at t van Norman te va en and LR ma n@ivc.edu.

Brent Warner
And if you want to reach out to me about the show, you can find me on Twitter or Instagram at Brent Warner.

Tim Van Norman
I’m Tim van Norman,

Brent Warner
and I’m Brent Warner. And we hope this episode has helped you on the road from possibility to actuality. Have a good one, everybody happy everything whatever you’re celebrating and we’ll see you in the new year if we don’t decide to drop another random episode. Alright, bye.

Tim Van Norman
Thanks, everyone.