Brent Warner 0:02
This is the higher ed tech podcast season four, Episode 20. Season four highlights and summer considerations

Tim Van Norman 0:21
welcome to today’s higher ed tech Podcast. I’m Tim Van Norman, the instructional technologist here at Irvine Valley College.

Brent Warner 0:27
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 0:35
Welcome. We’re glad you’re here with us today. So finals

Brent Warner 0:40
finals today. Today, as of the release of this episode, is hectic. Last week schedule here, Tim, as always a fine, you know, finals week and then commencement coming right after that. Are you super busy during commencement? Or? Or do you get a little the day itself

Tim Van Norman 0:57
the day? The day itself? Yeah. And then then I have a day off Friday. And then we get back into it on Tuesday after the holiday. And summer starts. And so I only have, I think five classes I’m supposed to develop and two applications I’m supposed to learn only in summer, nothing to do. I usually get one thing done over the summer. So I’m trying this is really going to be a stretch, if I can make it work.

Brent Warner 1:30
Good luck. Stepping into all that. So that’s going to be a lot. And I guess we should make a quick announcement here. I didn’t we didn’t talk about this pre show, Tim. But but we have mentioned it before on the show, which is the I’m going on sabbatical starting kind of in the summer, at the end of the summer. So technically the fall semester, and it’ll be a year. But we are keeping the show going. We’re going to plan Yeah, we’re gonna figure out our schedules so that we can meet up and make it work and get episodes going. You’ll have to keep a closer eye on what’s happening at IVC. And then that, of course, is the representation for the community colleges in general, because we know a lot of people were listening outside of IVC. But yeah, so I’ll have to find out different perspectives that I can bring when I’m not on campus. I can’t really talk Oh, my students are doing but I think it should be fun.

Tim Van Norman 2:27
Yeah. And, you know, a little updates on what’s going on in your sabbatical.

Brent Warner 2:31
Yeah,

Tim Van Norman 2:32
you know, what you’re learning because I’m sure you’re not going to sit there and just stay by your visit people and just not do anything. That doesn’t seem like the type of thing you do much.

Brent Warner 2:45
I know, people compliment me on like that stuff. And I’m like, no, it’s not – I should probably be doing trying to sign up for less stuff, but… And that’s gonna be our advice to everybody sign up for lesson you to Tim and your five courses and your three programs and your 100 motorcycles you’re going to fix over the summer.

Tim Van Norman 3:04
So unfortunately, no motorcycles, but you know, yeah, so we’ll see. In the end, it’s about accomplishing things and setting myself up for success next year. Yeah, absolutely.

Brent Warner 3:15
So. So today we’re keeping things fairly brief, I think, right. We’re looking at covering some of the things that we really liked about this last season. By the way, Tim, I’m just gonna give you and me a Bravo. For getting through for four seasons of the show. That’s pretty good. Right? That is really good. Yeah, I’m proud of us for for getting this all done. And then we’ll talk a little bit about just a couple of things to consider over the summer. Oh, and guess what? I had a Jeff Johnson sighting so Oh, excellent. Hello, Professor Johnson. Still alive. And he told me, he told me he is still hearing my voice every every two weeks as he keeps listening to the show. Though I never hear His voice. I like giving him a hard time about it. Alright, so we’re gonna start with the highlights. Shall we jump in?

Tim Van Norman 4:08
Let’s do it. So we thought this, we’d start this episode with just some highlights from past episodes. And, you know, I found it interesting. As I went back, I’m like, wait a minute. I really liked the last several we did. So, Episode 18 was on the canvas trust. Yeah. That I’ve gotten more and more questions lately and stuff from all over on how that campus Trust works. So that was kind of a neat episode that I enjoyed. And you know, I got to talk a lot so maybe that’s part of why.

Brent Warner 4:45
Yeah. Yeah. So it shut me up for a while. You know, I don’t know anything about that. But it was super, super insightful and useful to really talk it through and so I hope you’re also able to You know, when people ask you that you can you can give your explanation but also send a link to the episode right and say, Okay, here’s a deep dive talk through what we’re doing. Because yeah, right now, we did talk about how that was kind of, you know, in the weeds in certain ways, but, but I think that that’s going to continue to be something, you know, over the next year, two years and three years, as people are really like, having that become an issue for them at their schools and their campuses and their districts, it’s going to become really important to start to understand and so it’s actually pretty cool. IVC has been, you know, or South Orange County, I guess, has been kind of paving the way for that conversation. So absolutely, yeah, lots lots to look out there. So if you’re, you know, again, the canvas trust is how Canvas interacts between different we call instances, right, the different instances and how they, how they can know what’s going on at different schools and how those are set up in a way that’s as smooth as possible that we did talk about, there are still hiccups as they, as the process continues to be built. Exactly. So Tim, I’m gonna blast like a big chunk of mine, all at once, because they’re all kind of around the same theme, which is chat, GPT and AI. Obviously, that is, by far the biggest conversation happening in all of education at any patch right now. And so everybody’s giving their hot takes on it, everybody’s trying to figure out how to do this stuff. So we did a handful of episodes, we did Episode 12, I believe was the first time that we talked about it, right. And that was kind of the opening, understanding chat GPT and the future of writing, we kind of tried to start figuring things out, that was our very first conversation. And it just started growing from there. So right after that, we did the conversation with Professor Rebecca Beck, who I keep quoting her, so I’m doing all these workshops, about Chachi Beatty and about AI. And one of the things that she said was, you know, you know, we’re not teaching for the student I was but but for the, for this for the students they are or the world that they’re going to go into. And so I keep using that quote, because I just think it’s so right on to really understand the the most important thing about all of this AI stuff, and it’s like, there’s still so many and fairly, don’t, don’t get me wrong, but there’s still a lot of fear around this conversation. And I really appreciated her approach to it, which is to say, okay, we can be scared, but that does not really give us the excuse to, to hide from it, right. And so I think that kind of attitude is the appropriate one, it doesn’t mean you have to like it, it doesn’t mean that you have to incorporate it, it just means that you can’t sit here and say I’m going to continue to be an educator, and not understand what this technology is and what it does. And, and in addition to Yeah, how it might harm how it might help to right and exactly all those parts are really key to to, to continue to be a well rounded educator as we step forward, you know, like, it’s just a different world from here. And then the last one here, Tim, was the last one about chat GPT and AI was episode 17, with Austin Wagner and I really liked having that one too, because Austin was really thoughtful. He’s a student, right, and so like getting that real student perspective on it, how how he’s looking at it, how his friends are maybe looking at it. He’s also you know, a developer and pretty, you know, into it and understands a lot more than maybe the average person who’s just peeked at it the first time. And so I thought his insights about prompting were really useful and, you know, kind of opened my eyes to ways to think about, you know, how to use charge GPT and how students might be using it too.

Tim Van Norman 9:04
Yeah, and I’ve thought about that a number of times as I’ve had discussions with faculty about Chat GPT AI that type of thing is those free episodes have helped guide my understanding such that I could feel like I was intelligently talking about it. And, and by keeping to my limits, the limits of my knowledge and stuff, so it was good. I enjoyed those three as well. Yeah, absolutely. So right in the middle of those, we had one physical accessories and the digital world. Yeah, we talked about. Yeah, I was looking back and I’m like, oh, yeah, that one was kind of neat. We talked about conferences, what do you take to a conference? What do you what should you leave at home? Vacations, especially there? What should you leave at home? What do I not leave at home but I should you know, that type of thing. And then also teaching remotely? What type of setup do you need? What What can you use to be successful in that environment? It’s just one of those things where I think a lot of people feel like they need the world and other people just don’t want to buy that next gadget, do I really need it? And that was a neat, neat episode to just dig through and see, what are your options that are reasonable without going outrageously priced?

Brent Warner 10:27
Yeah, yeah. And I’m also as I am stuff, I should go back and check that episode. Because as I’m stepping into my sabbatical, I’m like, Okay, I’m gonna have to have a different work set up and, you know, a few different things. So. So certainly that is, you know, we did have a lot of good conversations there. So I like that. Okay, so, the other one that I wanted to mention, was our last episode, the building the high flex classrooms. You know, I mean, I think we mentioned it that show, which was like, I started off, and I’m not gonna say I’m not, but I started off a very much a naysayer on the high flex system, because of a number of problems that I still think partly exist. But I think that you and Dr. Bugay and John Rousseau and the other people who are doing work around this stuff, have figured out some pretty cool solutions that are not as they’re demanding in a certain way, but not as demanding all the time, as I was kind of one of my big issues with five Flex is that, you know, you’re, the teacher is basically doing double the workload, right? A lot of the time. So I think I really appreciated how this conversation said, Hey, this is a way that, you know, perhaps a more of a lecture based class, I’m still kind of leaning towards, like a, this is more lecture based, but how that can be interactive, and how that can work for students, I still don’t feel super confident with, you know, group work and all of those things. I’m not going to get into my issue my individual issues right now, but But you know, like, but even to say, like, you push me a big, big way down the road in that conversation, saying, okay, here are some places for it. And then I think one of the other things that stood out to me about that conversation with the high flex is actually, I don’t even remember, this is a pre show conversation or not, but the idea that, you know, I am in an enviable position, which is the art department is huge and growing, all right, despite all the the, you know, all the other colleges and community colleges and departments have been struggling to build back and everything. And we’re just like, we cannot even hold what were, you know, the students that are coming in, that’s not true of every class in every department. And so, this also gives teachers who are struggling for enrollment, or who and I don’t mean to say in the wrong way of struggling, right, like not that the students don’t want it, but you know, it’s like, they’re a little bit more limited classes, or they’re, they’re more focused on whatever. And so, so it does give those teachers a chance to keep their classes open, especially for the students who really need it. Right. And I do appreciate that a lot. Because I don’t want to see classes just disappear, because, hey, we didn’t get the enrollment, because students wanted to be online. But some of them were still hoping to be in pert, you know, like, there’s just different parts. And so if you’re just able to fill a class, and you say, hey, there’s just enough students to get a class filled. You do whatever you takes to get that, because that’s an education that those students need. Right. And so I do, I do appreciate how that folds out for it to

Tim Van Norman 13:39
well, and to your point, the things that you’ve seen that you’re still questioning and all that stuff. That’s exactly the purpose of something like this, is to figure those things out, test things, try things. There’s a lot of failure going on in it. Yeah. But the nice part is, it’s really mistakes. It’s not failure yet, because we’re learning and we’re moving to the next step and trying and interacting with the students. I’m seeing students so much more involved than they have been in other classes. Part of it, as Dr. Bugay pointed out, when you make a change, students get involved. It’s a natural reaction. But that said, they are engaging. They’re seeing that yes, we’re trying, we’re looking, hey, this faculty members, they’re doing something to try to engage me. And I walked into a class just a little bit ago, and nine people who had signed up to be online, were sitting in the classroom, because they wanted to be in the classroom. Everybody else was online. And they were engaging with me Hey, oh, so this time we got a new camera and oh, this is this is what we like, this is what we don’t like. I’m a stranger to them other than the fact that I Hall Little equipment, but they’re seeing stuff and they’re trying stuff and, and they see their teacher trying things. Well, that’s amazing. Yeah. So

Brent Warner 15:10
yeah. And when students see see that their teachers are trying, then they’re also more motivated to try and make things work for themselves too. So yeah, I appreciate all of that.

Tim Van Norman 15:19
Absolutely. So my last one goes back to episode two, building the training center and recording studios. I love that. I’m physically there. And I get people almost daily stopping in. And I have I have sometimes when I’m double booked, or something like that, which is a great feeling, because I hear that a lot of training centers aren’t being booked, aren’t being used right now. And so I don’t, I’m hoping that this is something that we’re building the right thing and people are coming. But I love the fact that I’m there. People feel very comfortable literally just walking in setting up appointments, not setting appointments, and just being there and working on stuff. Had somebody just say, hey, I need to set up a whole new class, I’m just going to come and do that here in the training center. So anytime I’ve got a question, all I have to do is just turn it around. Yeah. I agree. Perfect. You know, let’s do it. So, yeah,

Brent Warner 16:26
I liked that episode, too, because it also talked about how how you went through the process of getting it going. And so if there are other, you know, instructional technologists or IT people listening in that are, you know, or, you know, even, you know, if you’re, if you’re doing whatever the PD related section of your school is called, you know, this, this is something to look at and say like, Okay, how do we do something like that? Or, you know, maybe we have, you know, a Center for Teaching and Learning or Center for Teaching Excellence or something like that. And then the question is, okay, like, is does this, how does this fit in with the model? Or are there parts of this that we can take? And so I think there’s a lot of really good stuff going on there. Yeah, some excellent episodes. There’s more, but we’re, we don’t need to review every single one. But yeah, lots to look at. And I hope, you know, if you missed a couple of those episodes, as you’re listening now, and you’re going oh, yeah, I want to check that out, please do over the summer. They’re, they’re evergreen, they’re there for you to check out at your own leisure and to share if you think that other people might value them as well.

Tim Van Norman 17:30
Excellent. With that said, let’s think we wanted to just talk about a couple things to consider over the summer. So one of them. My first one was taking classes, but I’m going to add in, listen to old podcasts, just try to do stuff, try to learn things that maybe you didn’t know, before. Maybe you kind of had an idea, or whatever, but just take in some additional information, it always helps to gain that additional knowledge that you didn’t have before. So taking classes of some kind, there’s free classes all over the place, you know, you don’t have to pay a fortune to do it. But there’s a lot of different things that are available.

Brent Warner 18:15
Yeah. And some of them aren’t even that big. You know, they’re not that long, like, a lot of those LinkedIn learning classes if your school has access to those, right, those are great. And some of them are only a few hours, right? So, so yeah, absolutely, I’m with you there. I’m going to kind of piggyback on that one, Tim. And I’m gonna say, over the summer, try to find one tool that you’d like to try next year. Now, this is our constant advice. It’s like, it’s like the higher ed tech podcast mantras, like, one tool, just one tool. But I think that the summer is a great time to find that right and go, Okay, maybe I’m going to use this, maybe this is going to fit in with my class. And then looking at it, understanding how it works on the back end, understanding how and if it integrates with Canvas, or, you know, whatever systems you’re using, just really kind of taking the time to do a deep dive on a tool that you can use and, and then dedicating yourself to trying it out for one semester in that fall semester. So, you know, we’ve talked about lots of different tools, you know, throughout the show, and everything. So there’s plenty of options. And, you know, you can find things that are related to whatever you’re interested in. It’s not about what tool it is. It’s about the fact that you’re saying, Hey, I’m ready to try one more thing. I want to find a better way to engage my students or a different way to engage my students. And that’s going to be my one tool, suggestion. Hashtag one, two, I

Tim Van Norman 19:40
love that. So my my second point I wanted to make is something that I find very, very difficult and that is relax. Take some time, be away. Go to a conference, go a day early so that you can go visit some beach or a mountain or so Applying just go stay a day late, whatever it is just relax, learn to not have to be teaching and developing and designing and all of that stuff all the time. Take a moment to chill. And you’ll find that a lot of times when you come back, you’re more productive. And you’re do a much better job. Just simply because you took some time

Brent Warner 20:26
away. Yeah. 100%. Excellent. Okay. And my final one is, I don’t think it’s contrary to yours. But I’m going to explore right, so you chose the word, relax, I chose the word explore. And what I mean by that is, when you’re on a break, it’s very, it’s very tempting to just kind of couch potato, right. And I’m totally fine for the relaxing. So what I’m not I’m not saying what you’re saying is wrong. But I also think that there, the way that we experience things is, they feel more full when you know, when we have different types of experiences. And so this could be as simple as saying, every week, during the summer, I’m going to try one new restaurant with my family. Right. And that’s it, right? One restaurant we haven’t been to, and there are tons just down the street from you, wherever you’re listening from, like, there’s always places that you haven’t explored, you’ve driven by 100 times, it’s like just drop drop in and see what happens right or, or maybe it’s, you know, going to see a local tourist spot that you’re not a tourist, so you never thought about going to write, but maybe actually going and experiencing that a little bit more, or whatever it is. So So My word is going to be explore, try something new, if even if it’s just once a week, one thing new that you haven’t done, that it could be local, it could be you know, out there, whatever it is, but I am going to encourage you after you’re done relaxing to explore.

Tim Van Norman 21:54
And we’d love to hear back from you. If you do. What did you find? What was it like? is, you know, that’d be great to hear back from people and say, you know, I explored and whatever, by mosquitoes, whatever it is, yeah, you guys, let

Brent Warner 22:13
us know. We want to hear that. That’d be a great way to come back into the into the fall semester.

Tim Van Norman 22:18
Absolutely. Awesome. Thank you for listening today. In this episode, we talked about our season four highlights and summer considerations. For more information about this show, please visit our website at higher ed tech podcast.com. There you’ll find our podcasts and links to the information we’ve covered.

Brent Warner 22:37
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, there’s a link over there where you can give us your topic ideas for everyone

Tim Van Norman 22:48
at IVC. That’s listening. If you need help with technology questions, please contact IVC technical support. If you have questions about technology in your classroom, please stop by the IVC Training Center in a 322 or contact me to Ben Norman AT T van norman@ivc.edu.

Brent Warner 23:03
And if you want to reach out to me about the show, you can find me on LinkedIn at Brent G Warner.

Tim Van Norman 23:09
I’m Tim Van Norman,

Brent Warner 23:10
and I’m Brent Warner and we hope this episode and the season has helped you on the road from possibility to actuality. Have a good summer, everybody. Happy Season Four ending and we’ll see you in season five bye