We highly encourage everybody to take some down time to decompress over the winter break, but that doesn’t mean you have to turn your brain off. Tim & Brent discuss some ways to keep your thoughts stimulated without worrying about the pressures of school life.
This is the HigherEdTech podcast Season Five Episode 10: BrainFood for Winter Break.
Tim Van Norman 0:20
Welcome to today’s HigherEdTech Podcast. I’m Tim Van Norman, the Instructional Technologist at Irvine Valley College.
Brent Warner 0:26
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 0:34
Welcome. We’re glad you’re here with us. So as of this release, classes are over at IVC.
Brent Warner 0:42
So all three people who are downloading this episode, and listening, really appreciate it. (Laughter)
Tim Van Norman 0:52
Yeah,
Brent Warner 0:53
How are you? Are you sure you’re gonna be glad to be done? I assume get a little breathing time for yourself.
Tim Van Norman 0:59
Yep, preparation time for Professional Development Week. You know, you know how that goes. But yeah, I’m staying staying home this winter, just like I usually do. My grandson is turning a year old.
Brent Warner 1:13
Oh, cool.
Tim Van Norman 1:14
That’s like a really weird one to me.
Brent Warner 1:17
But is he coming to visit you during during the break? Or?
Tim Van Norman 1:20
No, no, unfortunately, we’ll go in February. Okay, we’re going to winter breaks a bad time for me to go places, because it’s long enough. But short? Yeah. And so plus, I have a lot of stuff to do. And how about you, you’re not having a winter break?
Brent Warner 1:39
Not really, I mean, this is, I kind of am. So we’ve got some friends coming to visit. And family. So my son’s gonna come and visit too. And so we’re just gonna take some time, you know, to relax a little bit. I’m working on my project quite a bit now. And so, so I’ll be taking some break time for that. And then I don’t know exactly how the timing is gonna work, I think I’m gonna take a little time off and then work for a few more days, and then take a little time off and then work for three more days and kind of spread it out. So it’s not, it’s not going to be a holistic winter break for me, but, but that’s okay. It’ll be good. Okay, so Tim, today, we talked a little bit about what we said, you know, I think when we get into these kind of last episodes before winter, as Winter’s coming in, it’s like, well, what do we talk about, like, people aren’t gonna want to apply a bunch of stuff necessarily to, to fixing their classroom or update, they’re just like, I wanted to want to take a break. But I kinda want to keep my brain going. So we thought about this idea of brain food for winter break, just some things that people can do. Little little nuggets, you don’t have to get too crazy. You don’t have to take a whole course or anything like that. But just some ways to kind of keep your brain going and not totally veg out on the sofa all day long for four to two weeks or a month or however long your break is. Although a little bit of edging, I was okay as we’ll start off with that, right. So let’s jump in.
Tim Van Norman 3:12
So our first one we wanted to talk about. For brain food is tune out. It really is important to take a little bit of time and just tune out, chill out, go for a walk on the beach, go for a walk in the mountains, go do something hike. Be with your family, but chill. You’ve just gotten through finals. You’ve just gotten through a semester of a whole lot of stuff happening. Give yourself the permission to breathe a little bit.
Brent Warner 3:44
Yeah. And I think we talked about this one, at least once a year, maybe twice a year, it just kind of mentioned it’s just like, hey, it is okay. You don’t need to be working on a project all the time, every minute of every day, right? Like, and I’d say you know, give yourself a fair amount of time like if you know if you can a few days or how come you know even though even you know if it needs to be but like, but just say like, Hey, I’m not thinking about work stuff. I’m not thinking about my classes, I’m not thinking about the grades or all the other pressures and like and just allow yourself to live in that minute. And in that moment, and it is worth it. So tuning out. For sure. I think the rest of them we’re going to be a little bit more brain active but but it’s worth starting off with a little bit of breathing room.
Tim Van Norman 4:27
And the second one we wanted to talk about is travel, visit your loved ones. Be around those people that you care about. This is a good time. A lot of times they’re trying to relax too. And so yes, holidays can be stressful. Hopefully it’s not going to be this year for you. And you can just be around those people that you care about.
Brent Warner 4:47
Yeah. And you know, this is very easy for me to say because my family is pretty mellow. But like I think what the other the other thing with visiting the loved ones is like not setting up too many expectations. It’s like, Yeah, we’re gonna eat it this time. Other than that, don’t worry about it or, you know, whatever else it is, it’s not not all the stuff you see where it’s like, Okay, we have to do this first, then we have to do that. And then we’re, it’s like, try not to set too many activities up and you’re visiting with the loved ones and just sit together. That’s good, too.
Tim Van Norman 5:17
Absolutely. So once you’re done with that, (laughter
Brent Warner 5:21
Now we’re getting to the real stuff.
Tim Van Norman 5:22
And it’s the day after, you – know, I have to admit, I say that jokingly, but to me a lot of times, it’s like, okay, I rushed it for an hour. Now, what do I do? Yeah.
Brent Warner 5:34
It’s Boxing Day, you got to figure out something that.
Tim Van Norman 5:37
You know exactly, exactly. So we, we put together a whole bunch of several different places to find these online courses. Now, some of these are going to be real specific to California up to community colleges, some of them are free for some people and paid for others. We’re not going outrageously expensive on any of it. But just understand that there’s a lot of things that are available. Yeah, to do in this time.
Brent Warner 6:06
Yeah. And so I would say also, you know, reach out to some of your, your resource center, whatever you have on your campus, right, because I think a lot of people or a lot of teachers don’t know what’s available to them. And a lot of, you know, staff don’t know that either. They’re like, Oh, I get access to this for free, right, like I didn’t know is like a benefit of working here. And it’s not necessarily a huge deal. But it’s sometimes it’s hidden. And so. So let’s start with LinkedIn learning.
Tim Van Norman 6:35
LinkedIn learning is an amazing tool that LinkedIn bought, bought a company, that lynda.com That was doing a great a great job. And then they just expounded, expanded, exploded all of it. And they have just created a really great environment for learning. And it can be anything from a single video to a whole class or series of classes. And, and so how to give feedback people can actually use as a 24 Minute. Class. Yeah, great. Like, it’d be something really nice for, you know, your career and as well as your class or not?
Brent Warner 7:26
Well, I, when I saw that one, I’m like, oh, thinking of not just for like, career career, but like as teachers, right? Sometimes we go, okay, well, maybe I can get a little bit of benefit. It’s literally the exact same length as the sitcom that your kids might be watching in the background, right. So they start the sitcom you start that, like, you’ll both be done at the same time. That’s pretty good. A couple other ones I saw in there, Tim, I saw Excel and chat GPT. So it’s called data analysis, power tips. So it’s an hour and 41 minutes a little bit longer. But that one’s super interesting to me, because I’m like, Okay, well, how do I bring these together? Like, I’ve always wanted to be better at data and, but I’ve always been like, I’m not going to fully learn Excel at this point in my life, but to be able to bring it into the AI and just be able to say, Okay, I want it to help me extrapolate the information that I’m looking for. That’s really powerful, because I’ve always had to go to you for that. But now, it’s like, I don’t have to, you know, it’s whatever it is, right? Like I can, I can kind of go and get some of the parts at least and I’m not sure I’m interested to watch this over the break. But but you know, some ideas on things like this, that can really help you be a little bit more productive and figure out things, maybe in a bit of a quicker way in the future. Absolutely.
Tim Van Norman 8:45
Along the lines of the AI also how to boost your productivity with AI tools. There’s all kinds of stuff that that’s an hour long class as well. There’s a ton of stuff on AI, there’s a ton of stuff on all kinds of new technologies. So if you’re interested in it, take a look LinkedIn learning. For us anyway, it’s in the apps portal that we’ve got access to. I don’t know how much it’s available to everybody else. But it’s definitely you know, you might want to sign up for a trial if you can’t get it for free. Yeah, because it’s a good tool. For
Brent Warner 9:25
sure. Now, the next one here, Tim, remind remind me about what the vision Resource Center is because a lot of people in California Community Colleges have I think everybody does right but don’t exactly know what it is. Yeah,
Tim Van Norman 9:37
all employees of California community colleges do. So vision Resource Centers put together by the California community colleges, and it’s got a lot of training there. They’re kind of thinking that they might compete, which they don’t with LinkedIn learning, but they’ve got a lot of different tools and stuff like that. They’ve got a lot stuff on California community colleges, specifically, ads that suit. So there’s, it’s a great place to learn teams Excel, Word SharePoint, those types of tools, that you just have to make sure that you’re getting the current version of those. But you can find lots and lots and lots of classes on each of those different things. Yeah, very quickly, and you know, just search and boom, there’s 20 of them.
Brent Warner 10:29
The other thing I kind of liked about this is that it does a lot of these are built with more of the college teacher or college, you know, employee in mind. And so there’s one in there called, playing behind us screen, the implicit bias in our colleges, right. So kind of understanding some things like that, which I think is great to kind of really focus in where it’s not so broad for kind of everybody, it’s really like, Okay, this is our setting. And that was like an hour and 15 minutes, but then I also saw just a five minute video, right? It’s called stay productive while working remotely. And just some simple tips on that. It’s not a big deal, just like watching YouTube video, but it’s a little bit more focused. And I like that you can get access to simple quick little tips as well.
Tim Van Norman 11:14
Absolutely. It it’s do take the time, don’t stress out over finding things do take the time to look at them. And like I said, it’s available to all employees of California Community Colleges. Yeah,
Brent Warner 11:28
yeah. Yeah, the user interface is you know, maybe we could ask Santa for a an improved user. But, but there is stuff in there. Absolutely.
Tim Van Norman 11:40
Absolutely. The next group we wanted to talk about is masterclass. Okay, Have you have you? You haven’t looked at masterclass before really Brent’s you’ve heard of it, obviously heard
Brent Warner 11:53
of it. So this is the one where, for example, it’s like if I want to learn guitar from Steam, right, it’s like the actual like the top of the top people who are actually like, famous in the area for what they’re doing. These these are like super high level. People teaching you how to do their, their craft or their work, right.
Tim Van Norman 12:13
Yeah. So they it isn’t sting. It’s Carlos Santana.
Brent Warner 12:17
Oh, well, geez.
Tim Van Norman 12:20
But yes, exactly. That’s, that’s exactly it. So they’ve got, for instance, Bill Clinton teaches inclusive leadership. And George W. Bush teaches authentic leadership. So, you know, you get a choice of both sides, right. James Patterson. So this one is one class that I took. James Patterson teaches writing. That’s Wow. I mean, I literally was amazed I rewrote rewound a number of the videos. It was superb. And then another one that I took, Asscher teaches the art of performance. Oh, awesome. Tell me about that. That was I, I’ll put it this way beforehand. I’m like, Okay, sure. Yeah. Okay. Because I’m not a big Usher fan, man. After that, wow. The guy, he talks about what it takes to prepare, and what it takes to actually perform and all of the different things. He tells his story, but he also really engages you. So your game. When you walk into the classroom, your game when you are going to present in front of people, whatever that is. You start thinking about the things that he said, and it really makes you better. And that was an amazing one. I would recommend it literally to everybody. I don’t care what you do. That was a really, really good masterclass. And when they say masterclass, when you get done, you feel like you learned
Brent Warner 13:55
Yeah, okay. So, so masterclass, we, we at IVC do not have there’s no subscription, you know, no institutional subscription to this is just a suggestion on the side. But how much is how much does masterclass cost? So,
Tim Van Norman 14:12
I believe they’ve got it for either 10 or $20 a month. Okay.
Brent Warner 14:17
Yeah. 2020 Sounded like what an employee is, but sometimes there’s deals going on so. Okay, so masterclass, I think I might look into that in the next, you know, as we’re coming into things, because I do want to check some of those ones out. And
Tim Van Norman 14:30
they may have depending on when you do it, they may have a deal, but they might have even have a trial. A lot of these places will do like a 15 day trial, which you know, corresponds with how long break is right? Yeah, perfect. So, okay,
Brent Warner 14:44
so, if you don’t get that though, it’s good to remember that your library probably has access to tons of information, right. There’s all sorts of things that can I mean, one, just their databases alone, Tim, I think you’re gonna jump into those a little bit, but there’s so much in our library page alone that’s like, it could take me my whole lifetime to work her way through there.
Tim Van Norman 15:08
Oh, absolutely. And, and it can be if you’re really into a particular topic, you can dig into that there’s scholarly articles, there’s books that you can ebooks and stuff like that you can download. There’s just a ton of resources at the library. And then you’re the one that brought that up. Brent I’ve never actually been in the application that you’re talking about right now. Oh, okay, so
Brent Warner 15:33
canopy so we have access to one called canopy which is K and o p y and check with your school or if you have it, but canopy is essentially it’s a Netflix for like, it’s it’s really a Netflix for someone like me, right. So these are not like the blockbuster well, that some of them are blockbuster films. But that but it’s a it’s a streaming video database. So it’s, it’s it’s a database, but it’s basically Netflix, right. And so all of these movies and films that are in here, they’re kind of like when you were in college, and you’re trying to like expand your mind a little bit and think about different things. And so you’re going to the art houses, and you’re going to documentaries, and all those. This is like a full collection of all of those things all at once, right. And so some are a little bit more major or Oscar winning movies, but they’re more of the ones that are like the sneaker hits that nobody really saw. So if you’re like, well, everything everywhere, all at once is in there right now, which was really big. And that one everybody did see. But like back, you know, several years ago, they had the squid in the whale, they have like these old movies that were like criterion movies inside of there. And so huge selection inside of there. And I liked the way that they do it. They have them based on categories that are way different than what we would normally look at. So instead of being like action, drama, whatever movies, they’re like, the subjects are things like business education, film studies, Global Studies, and language medicine. And so they have all these documentaries, that tie in there to those as well. Some of them are actually movies, but some of them are documentaries. So they have things like HBOs telemarketers Putin versus the press and then living with Chucky, which is the child’s play, like a documentary about the child’s play horror series, right? So it’s like not all, it’s not all serious and heavy, like there can be lots of fun, cool, or interesting things. And so canopy is really, really outstanding and excellent access to a lot of the movies that you kind of be like, Oh, I have to rent that separately online or whatever. But you can actually go in here and checking it, it might be available. There’s a lot of these that didn’t hear that I’ve I’ve either rented in the past or contemplated renting, but then decided not to because I didn’t want to pay six bucks or something. So it’s worth looking at.
Tim Van Norman 17:53
Absolutely. And as I mentioned, ebooks, and it’s a great place to find electronic books that just read, you know, maybe you are sitting at the beach, it’s a nice time to, to pull out that your Kindle or your, your iPhone or, or iPad and just read for a little bit. No, yeah.
Brent Warner 18:15
And if if I can, I’m going to throw out in connection with ebooks is just another shout out for Libby, which is the app you can get which is connects to your local library. And then you can download ebooks from your library as well. So really, really great app, and then all you need is a membership to your library. Okay, so we got a few other things, Tim, but we’ll we’re getting closer to the end here. But a few other things people could do if they wanted to.
Tim Van Norman 18:41
So at IVC, we’ve got some classes that are available. So for instance, there’s the AI in the classroom class, take it at your own pace, learn a little bit about AI. See how other people feel about AI? And how do you feel about AI? It’s, and so that’s available. We’ve got the winter lab that’s coming up?
Brent Warner 19:04
Well, what’s the widget lab.
Tim Van Norman 19:05
So for our online teaching certificate class, you can get the whole certificate in three days. So it’s a little bit of a little bit of lecture, but it’s you working on your class with Cheryl and ice right there to to help to guide to whatever you need in the training center. Only in person. But yeah,
Brent Warner 19:33
And what days are those?
Tim Van Norman 19:36
January third, fourth and fifth. So…Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, of that first week. So think about that in your college as well. There may be other classes that are available and stuff like that, that just let you get that more knowledge that you’re looking for. Perfect. Yeah.
Brent Warner 19:56
So and and then to wrap things up, you know This is just a general suggestion. But you know, there’s lots of things that you might want to be looking at, I would say my first part of this is set aside a time to say, Hey, I’m gonna do one hour of this thing today, right? It’s gonna be from 10 o’clock to 11 o’clock or whatever else it is, right. But if you set aside a time, and then just go do some research on one of the things that you’ve been saying that you’ve been wanting to do some research on, you don’t have to go totally crazy, you don’t have to get like, but if you just set aside that one hour, there’s a lot of things I know that we’ve talked about over the past 10 episodes, and beyond that, I know a lot of people are like, Oh, I know, I’m gonna get to that I’m gonna get to that it’s really hard to get to it right. And so if you just give yourself an hour, I would say to do that there’s a ton of AI stuff in here. Tim, I know, there’s a few that you wanting to look at inside of AI as well.
Tim Van Norman 20:49
Yep. I’m getting into video dubbing. So translation from English to other languages, in video, and stuff like that. And even translation in general. It’s just the whole concept is really intriguing to me. Just like we all know AI is. So it’s one of those things. This is that next, that seems to be one of the next steps. And so think about that type of thing. What is interesting to you find it and start looking. Google itself can give you lots of information.
Brent Warner 21:26
For sure. For sure. And then and then, you know, there might be anything else out there. There’s there’s plenty to look at. But I think there’s just a few things, hey, just get your brain sparked for not to let it all go not to let you not to let yourself totally deflate over over the break and just kind of keep one or two things that might, you know, fulfill you mentally, maybe come come back with something interesting. I think I’m really interested. Well, one, I’m definitely going to go thanks for telling me that canopy is available to me overseas. And that, that helps because I’m going to watch one or two there. But also, I think I’m going to go look at masterclass too, because I’d like to watch a couple of those and kind of see what’s going on with them. So. So get your get your brain on, don’t get too heavy, but get your brain on a little bit during winter break so that you come back. You’re gonna you get that kind of weird exhaustion if you don’t do anything and then you can totally have to turn it on right away. So keep a light a light training over the winter break.
Tim Van Norman 22:30
Thank you for listening today. In this episode, we took a look at brain food for winter break. For more information about the show, please visit our website at the higheredtechpodcast.com. There you’ll find our podcasts and links to the information we’ve covered.
Brent Warner 22:45
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, please give us some information there. There’s a link where you can give us your topic ideas.
Tim Van Norman 22:57
For everyone 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 Tim Van Norman at tvannorman@ivc.edu.
Brent Warner 23:13
And if you want to reach out to me about the show, you can find me on LinkedIn at @BrentGWarner.
Tim Van Norman 23:19
I’m Tim VanNorman
Brent Warner 23:20
and I’m Brent Warner and we hope this episode has helped you on the road from possibility to actuality. Happy Holidays and Happy New Year everybody.
Tim Van Norman 23:28
Happy New Year.
Selected Resources Discussed