Auto news on Youtube Apr 27 2018

So this is Aniya this is my little girl. She was born, hi.

She was born seven weeks ago now and this is her second module with the avatar.

My name is Neeta Lakhani, I'm a doctor that

works in Leicester but in addition to that I am doing this Master's with the

University of Cambridge.

I decided to advance my knowledge on genetics

and genomic medicine so I did some research and we found this Master's and applied

and got a place so, I did a almost a whole year

and then realised I was

pregnant and the MST is a two-year course so then it created the

dilemma of what we were going to do for the latter year.

When we found out that I was pregnant, there was some decisions to be made about what we were going to do

and obviously for your everyday job you take mat leave and that's how it works,

but for the for the Master's I really had a strong passion to

finish it in the time allocated, so I approached

Gemma who's our lead,

and we had a bit of a discussion about what possibly could be done

So we have been

working with some avatars this week, some avatar robots and we're using those

robots to enable a couple of our female students who've just recently had babies

we're using these avatar robots to enable them to virtually attend our

teaching sessions without having to come in person.

The way we sort of do it is that we all we get up as we normally do and I get her set up and I

get the the avatar set up on this end and she just she goes through the module

with me every day and then whenever she needs some attention I'm able to give it

to her without disrupting the class by putting the avatar on silent from my end

but still being able to hear

but also I'm able to sort of see to her needs

for those moments and and then when she's sort of settled I'm able to go back to the avatar.

You know thinking about it how could you get that class experience by

being at home with a newborn

but actually I found that being at home with

her is less distracting than it would have been being there without her

so I've actually found that I've concentrated more being being here

because it's given me the opportunity to be able to do the two things that I

needed to do in the environment that I can do it in, obviously the alternative

would have been to to be there and her not be there and that I think would have been very distracting.

I mean having two robot avatars was

you know nothing special really, what I did was I concentrated on

the audience and then sometimes flick to the robot avatars

make sure that it was still on and looked like they were they should be

virtually engaged but otherwise, yeah, it was just like a normal audience really.

It's absolutely fantastic that they can come up to the avatar in the break and

we can just have a chat like we did when we were there and I love that component

of it I love that and that they still feel that we're present and because I

certainly feel like we're present so it's really rewarding,

and it's one of the biggest reasons why I think having an avatar like this

is much better than having a system where the lecture is recorded or you know

you're simply on Skype it's we're actually there present there is a

physical entity there that represents us and who have been

named so and you know in due course I hope get costumes, so we'll see how that pans out.

Its coincidental that this is

celebrating 100 years since the suffragettes for the Equality of women

in politics but I believe that today we're celebrating you know the Equality

of women in academia and I feel really privileged to be part of that.

For more infomation >> Meet the robot avatars helping Cambridge students combine education and motherhood - Duration: 3:41.

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A great education, with less debt - Duration: 0:31.

You can't change the whole country,

but you can always make a difference in where you're at.

The University of Southern Maine gave me a big opportunity.

I found my classes challenging, but at the end of the day, there's always a take-back.

That's what strives me to learn more.

This is the University of everyone.

Find yourself here.

For more infomation >> A great education, with less debt - Duration: 0:31.

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A great education, with less debt - Duration: 1:47.

I came to the University of Southern Maine due to my financial status.

I had to take loans, which in my culture was considered forbidden.

I transferred to the University of Southern Maine, where I knew a lot of friends that

I went to high school with, so that made it a lot easier, even though I wasn't

living on campus. I still chose to stay at home and be close to my family.

I chose social behavioral science because of the negative impact on

mental issues and smaller culture. Social behavioral science helps me

understand what trauma is. By the end of the day, when I go home,

I feel like I can relate to whatever I learned in classes

and just take it out into the real world, and help out a friend or somebody.

While I was in high school, I started to volunteer at Tree Street.

Tree Street is a nonprofit youth organization right down in downtown Lewiston.

We normally serve about two to three hundred kids, probably, a day,

through academics, through just their personal lives,

and just guiding them in the right places and stuff.

I built a lot of close connections with these kids when I was a high school student.

As I got out of high school, I've known kids who, now that they've grown older,

I still mentor, and they still see me like somebody they can look up to.

One day I would like to join the United Nations, and

be as more of a helping hand, as they were when I first lived in Kenya.

That's what got me to mentor a lot

and just view people differently than anybody else would.

The University of Southern Maine gave me a big opportunity where I can continue my education.

For more infomation >> A great education, with less debt - Duration: 1:47.

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Speech Recognition as AT for Writing: A Guide for K 12 Education - Duration: 51:49.

Well, thank you all this is Kelly, and thank you so much for joining our session

It is titled speech recognition as eighty-four writing a guide for k-12 education

And we are just so thrilled to spend the next hour sharing with you our tips and tools for considering teaching

assessing and implementing speech recognition with students

These are our learning objectives that we step forward here, so you can

Breathe through those really quick just so we can move forward

And before we get to introducing ourselves, which we are going to do in just a second

I want to clear up why we're calling it speech recognition

So some people call it speech to text. I hear that a lot some people call it voice recognition

The teacher I used to work with and system and always in calling it dragon speak even though that was actually

Really the old old name of the program

And then so speech recognition is the the word we stick with and the one I prefer

Because I feel like speech to text gets easily mixed up with text-to-speech people are inversing them all the time

And more than just recognizing a voice like a sound it's recognizing our speech

Awesome okay. Now. Who are we as I mentioned?

My name is Kelly key, and I my primary role is the assistive technology coordinator

And I work for Barrington School District in Barrington, Illinois. This is my 14th year in this current role

This is actually my first year full-time assistive technology in the past

I've been the one at the sub tech coordinator, and I've also been an administrator the past 13 years

so I was an assistant principal as well as a special services facilitator and the assistive technology coordinator and

Prior to that my background is a special education teacher, and I'm just so passionate about sharing what works in our districts with others

And I'm Dan Cochran I'm also an assistive technology specialist and coordinator for

My district which is only about

How far is it from yours Kelly about an hour drive south or 45 minutes something like that?

We had to go to a CAA to meet each other. That's our joke about getting together and doing this

We're putting together this guide in presentation

I've been the full-time IT specialist for ten years

And I'm part time before that one day way for five years while I was a special educator as a an elementary building

I'm also currently an adjunct faculty member at

University of Illinois in Chicago for our online aichi certificate program

And I'm also quite involved with resna

I was immediate past chair of the resident Professional Standards Board that governs the ATP and ATP

sms credentials

So onto the presentation the first thing we want to address is the question of why we think a guide is needed at all

speech recognition is

universally available

And students can use it whenever they want

they don't need to have an IEP or a 504 plan or even ask their teacher permission, so

Between the voice taping feature in Google Docs and the speech recognition, that's built into mobile devices microphones tablets

It's freely available to many students

If they have those devices so it's the ultimate in universal access we could just say well

Why not let just students discover it and use their use this tool on their own

Well and yes the reason for that is because you really don't want this to happen

When putting together one of our presentations I saw this and I couldn't pass up putting it in its

the gentleman using speech recognition

And he says hey come here check out my new speech recognition program and up on the screen type pay

severe chicken manure peach recognition grow him

so even though our technology really has come a long way and between that and

after you the key is really learning to teach students to use speech recognition so between the improved technology and

After seeing how to really teach students to use speech recognition and assess whether or not, it's working for them

Hopefully this will not happen to you or your students

Well in another reason we wrote the guide is that speech recognition is still assistive technology for some students

So just because any technology whether it's text-to-speech or word prediction or speech recognition is universal doesn't mean it's not also

Assistive technology legally it needs to be documented as a T

If it improves the functional capability of a person with a disability as you know from the definition

And speech recognition if it's effective would be a type of accommodation that you would AK document on an IEP

potentially an accommodation that can be used on high-stakes testing -

Currently we're part of the PARCC Coalition in Illinois

first state the high-stakes testing although

That's apparently changing next year so stay tuned but speech recognition is allowed at this point

it may also be allowed on your

State tests I'm not sure you'd have to check with your state to determine, but either way for high-stakes testing

Or as an everyday accommodation in the classroom

We think the team needs data to determine whether speech recognition really is effective for a student, and we're going to talk about that today

So I'm assuming you're familiar with the federal ID ei mandates for guiding 80 just want to point out here that legally 80 is not

Just a device but also a service, and that's also what we're focusing on today in this webinar

We're going to talk about how to fit speech recognition to the student in a sense how to train the student and the adults who

Support them whether we're talking about the professionals in the school

Where there are family members?

Okay, so

Now we have mentioned our guide

So this is something that you can have access to for free if you have not already

Accessed it you can type in this Bentley link in the top it is case sensitive

and

You can print out a copy of it as well

There's a little button on there that you can click on it and print the PDF. It is a live

Version so any changes we make are automatically updated, so it's definitely something to check every once in a while

But it's a great thing to have in front of you if you happen to have a copy

Keep it open while we go through this

But if you haven't had a chance to download it we highly recommend to do it after the session

All right, so we have screenshots all the way through here that come from that guide so you can kind of stay with us

So as you open the guide one of the first things we put in is this page called tool belt theory

And this is just a reminder that speech recognition would never be the only writing tool well almost never

I've always liked the metaphor of a tool belt and the blogger I

think he does other things too nowadays iris Sokol calls this his tool belt theory I

Have the link on the slide and on in the in the guy to to his blog

It's simply the idea that what we need to do is prepare students to have a range of tools the tool belts of tools

that they can pick and choose from

So this chart in the guide is meant to just illustrate

The tool belts have 80 features and other accommodations that might be needed for writing

And so just because we're focusing on speech recognition in today's webinar. It doesn't mean that it's the end-all be-all of 80 tools for writing

Kelly can you give any quick example of a combination of tools?

sure, so let's say a student has to do a quiz that is available on a Google Form and

You know the first question is multiple choice well

They may use a text-to-speech program to listen to the choices out loud the question and the choices out loud

So that's one tool in their tools out there using for that one assignment. Maybe the next question

Then is a fill in the blank, but a short answer, and the student has a difficult time spelling

But they don't necessarily need to speak

You know their short answer or the single answer so they can pull a co-writer or word any word prediction program

And they can use that as a tool to help support them

Then maybe the next question is more of something that's looking for a paragraph or more

That may be a point where you're going to then use your speech recognition

Another thing I teach students is I always want backup tools because a speech recognition isn't available

We've been creative with finding a good place for them to use it or even in the classroom with a really good microphone

But if it is in a situation, maybe they're taking a test and there's no alternative place to go

And they can't use it at the time. They always want a backup tool, so I have students you know

They're very well versed in word prediction as well as speech recognition

So just depending on the student obviously it would depend on what tools are in their tool belt

Okay, so our guide is divided up into four sections consider it try

It assess it and implement it and today. We're primarily going to focus on that blue section the Tri eight section

Also assess it what we've done is we've built in into our session

so you'll get a good taste for how to assess each one of the areas as we go through as well and

We will share information from the other sections, but primarily targeting to try and assess it

And a little bit of considerate

So I think you're probably all familiar with the fact that the AAT process and the k-12 setting begins with

consideration because of the legal the legal mandates who consider a chi in the development of all IEP s

But here we're talking about considering speech recognition now. You know the rule is not to consider a tool first, but in real life

It's pretty common with speech recognition

Everyone knows about it. They may have seen commercials on TV. Well. This is a few years ago selling dragon software around Christmas time

And you know I think it's becoming more known that it's in the Google Docs, so it's not uncommon for someone to say hey

What about speech recognition when a student's struggling with writing?

So the task is already driving the a to consideration process as I think it should the problem here is writing

What you may need to do at this point is steer the consideration toward an analysis of the task demands of writing

What writing tasks are expected of a student? What outcome level? What are the specific task demands of these assignments, or assessments?

So we want to know if speech recognition is a really good match

And we don't have time in today's webinar to break this down further

But if you look on page 17 of the guide in the assessment section

We've provided a list of speech

Specific task demands that are related to writing they include things like the fine motor demands of visual motor demands encoding proofreading

organizational demands etc

So those need to be considered first, and it's interesting when you start digging into that to figure out

What is really going on with a student sometimes that information is not available so it's kind of part of the assessment

The next step is to consider the students performance

on each of those task demands so you can identify the gap so again you want to know if

Speech recognition is the right feature to close the gap because sometimes it's not

And then finally you want to consider the context or the environment in which the task is done, so you'll recognize

These are elements of the set framework of course

so with speech recognition match the the environment

it's not a great fit for taking notes during a lecture and it may be hard to implement in a noisy or a

Very quiet classroom either extreme actually although both Kelley, and I have done some whole class implementation

But it's probably a better match if the student can work in a separate space or at the back of the classroom and a study

Carol or a resource room or just use it at home

So one question that pops up

Often when considering speech recognition as a match is what sort of performance profile is ideal

So in a nutshell the ideal profile is a student who has difficulty with the output demands of writing in other words the transcription demands

And some of the mechanical demands, but has good expressive language skills who can verbally express their thoughts and ideas

And it does help us. They have lots of ideas, right?

And dan and I and the guide we have outlined some helpful pre-existing skills that we've listed here

So certainly you know if the students has clear enunciation

Is has the ability to problem-solve and self monitor?

You know these are some of the things that certainly are helpful for them to have but

We always say that students can be taught many of these skills so don't

Don't not try it with a student. Just because they don't have these prerequisite skills

So Kelly how would you know if speech recognition would work for a student?

Well, Dan you know I always say you just don't know until you try it so on to our try a portion of the guide

as I mentioned you know when I first started with

teaching student speech recognition

I would have them fill out all these different

surveys and I'd interview the staff and

even as the parents spell out something and you know we just don't have time for that so I

Feel like any student is a candidate especially because it's universally available

So on to this section like I mentioned many of these options many are free

universally available for free

But the key was to our guide is regardless of what tool you're these are just examples of many that are out there

But regardless of the tool you're using it's really all about

Teaching the students to use that tool so this guide will cover

Regardless of what tool you're using it will work

You do want to mention. I want to mention one new extension

I learned about recently right cuz we all like actual or dissention things awesome that recently it leverages the Google's

Voice typing feature so you can use it in other apps it's called voice in voice typing. It's an extension

I think it's in beta form, but it seems to work fine

and it was recently a really nice fine for a student who wanted to use speech recognition to make flashcards and a special website and

Not inside the dock

And he I try to actually co-writer Universal with him, and it didn't he didn't like it

It was difficult for him to use so now he's using this other extension

But like Kelley said we're not going to focus on the tools so much

Yeah, the process the key is really again

We're probably meseta syrup, but the key is to teach the students that speech recognition process you can't assess whether or not

it's working for a student and put it on their IEP or 504 or the

accommodation if you truly don't teach them the process first so that's what we're gonna walk through no

And so just a couple things before you begin

The first thing I have on here is planned to work with a student individually versus whole group although dan

And I both have said we have done in a few situations where we've taught a whole class I've had a student that was

Completely resistant to trying it

But when I walked in and I said we're I'm just teaching it to the whole class

Then he was open to using it

And it was like a miracle like lightbulb went off for him was fantastic

So you know the guy is really designed to work one-to-one with a student

But absolutely you can do this with a small group or a whole class as well

The next one is to invite someone to attend the sessions

Anytime that I am teaching a student

I always try to make sure that there are somebody that can help follow through or works with a student regularly

that will join us and

Part of this is really

Not only just for the follow through, but also the comfort level for students because sometimes using speech recognition

Isn't that comfortable at first around a stranger?

So I always have somebody join us why there is an occupational therapist that students teacher case manager

And if they're not available a lot of times they'll even have the parent comes

Again a lot of the times the students are using this at home

And then decide what tool to try first. I you know we're very fortunate. We have a one-to-one

IPad in our district it's lower levels and one-to-one neckla cares about upper level, so I use the tools that I have readily available

that all the students have and then the next one is if you need to set up the

Technology go ahead and do that you know the student has a speech impairment and needs to use something like Dragon NaturallySpeaking

we have a lot of tips and the appendix of the guide on how to set up Dragon NaturallySpeaking and

use that as well and then understand the speech recognition process, so that's using this guide and

You will see through our eight sessions that the students we will teach them how to do that

All right the choice of which technology to try first is usually easy as Kelly was alluding you try the tool

That's most readily available so in my district

That's the Google Voice typing in a Chromebook since we have more Chromebooks in Kelly's district

It might be the built-in speech recognition on a MacBook or iPad since they're more of an apple district

But there are a few variables to consider when it comes to the hardware that delivers the speech recognition feature so we put this chart

As sort of a thing to think about I guess in the guide

There's pros and cons to using a smartphone or a tablet versus a laptop or a desktop

I'll let you read the details on this chart, so I'm page seven and the guide

Sometimes it comes down to personal preference though

I had a student who would only use speech recognition on his iPhone even though. It was available to him on desktops and laptops

and actually he's a junior in high school, and he's still just using it on his iPhone although, I'm

Trying to get him to move toward a Chromebook now

But because editing is harder on a small screen, so I usually start with a Chromebook in my district

So

Before you begin I do think it's important to understand the speech recognition writing process yourself

When we do live workshops on this topic which we've done several times the closing the gap in Atia

I usually as participants here to raise their hand if they have used speech recognition

so

most of the hands go up because almost everyone has sent a text message on their phone while driving I

Mean when they're in a rush of course you wouldn't text and drive

But then I asked how many people have used speech recognition to write a paper or even an email of some length

And most of the hands go down so if you don't have to use it chances

Are you don't I know that I would prefer to type a paper or a long email rather than use speech recognition

Because I'm able to type fairly quickly

But I'm also used to being able to think about my sentences as like as I composed them when you use speech recognition

the cognitive load

Shifts to the front end you have to think about what you want to write and mentally compose your sentence before you say it which?

is a different process and

You have to hold on to your sentence in memory while you turn on the mic

And then it works best if you can speak with clear enunciation in the natural speaking manner

Which means you have to remember your sentence the whole way through speaking it

So this is not hard for some people, but it can be a real challenge for others

I'm currently working with a sophomore in high school

Who's on the spectrum and it's very high-functioning, but it affects his expressive language

And I've basically been doing one-week sessions all year with him - it's work on just that part of it

So finally the way we teach that you turn off the mic

And then check the recognition of each sentence for accuracy and fix any errors before you move on

Someone more fluent could dictate several sentences in a row

But it does become sort of an editing nightmare if you let speech recognition

Transcribe too much text before you check the outcome because it's not a hundred percent perfect as we know

So taking all these steps into consideration. We've boiled them down to an easy four-step version

And I am all about visuals you know being a special education teacher

And so I what we did was we created this visual and this is both for the staff and for students. We made

poster-size that will put like in that classroom and then over on the right you'll see these little mini cards and what I've done with

these as we've cut them out, and we've put them on the students MacBook or

on their desk

And it's just a nice reminder about you know the four step process that we've taken that narrowed it down to four steps sink it

Say it check it fix it and it's a great reminder too as we go through and teach them the process and use it

I've also even on the back of the little mini cards

I've been made like a little editors checklist for speech recognition for the students to flip over so

The steps of the process are one thing underlying them is really the integration of a lot of different skills

And these are the tool demands of using speech recognition they include the expressive language

I was talking about with my sophomore in high school the generation of ideas the short term memory oral education

Some might some fine motor skills operate the mic

Decoding skills to review the accuracy editing and revising skills to fix the fix the errors and a general

computer operation skills of course to kind of deal with the device and whatever platform you're using

But we think a lot of these skills can be developed as we talked about before so what we're going to

Do next is really the heart of things we want to talk about

The teaching process we use to develop these skills

Because we believe you have to teach the skills to some degree before you can assess whether or not speech recognition

Is effective for a student?

So the approach that

We take to the teaching process is the common metaphor of a scaffold so to scaffold the teaming a teaching approach

And educators will know right away that this means slowly

Increasing the cognitive load by starting off with a lot of scaffolding or support and then slowly removing the scaffolding as you build

Independence which of course is the end goal?

Just so you know where we're going over the course of the next 25 slides or so

This is the outline of the scaffold the teaching approach, so we have in the guide. This is on page 9

we start with modeling as all good teaching does and

Kelly who does a lot of work in AC had to remind me of this and the importance of this step because I wasn't always

Doing it, but I do do it all the time now Kelly

Next we have the student get their feet wet with a single sentence that we provide so that's a lot of scaffolding

And then this moves quickly to having them compose several sentences on their own done simple paragraphs

then and number five we practice using

Academic vocabulary in a sentence they generate and from here you want to move as soon as you can to whatever grade level

Expectation it is for writing depending what the grade is usually something formal and more academic

The end goal is independent use on grade level writing assignments

In a minute we're going to go through each one of those steps with you, but first

I just wanted to mention this nice handy guide

This is in the appendix of our guide or handy sheet it's in the appendix of our guide

it's just a one sheet two-sided reference guide that shows each of the eight steps and a little bit of detail for each so I

Originally designed this just as a visual guide for myself just to remind myself that eight steps that we put together

But now that's all my staff has been trained

It's a nice

Hand out for them to just have with them in handy to remind them each of the steps when they're teaching the students of speech

recognition process

And we say even though you have this nice two-sided sheet with some of the details

We definitely highly recommend to go ahead and read through the full guide

Because we have so many more tips and specific information in the guide itself

I also want to mention before we move forward to step one

That the guide was it really is designed for anyone to pick up and use to teach with students

We are we really follow the building capacity models not the expert model, but a lot of these examples

You will see Dan and I in there, but again. It really is for you to show and teach

Anyone to teach the students to use speech recognition process

Okay so on to step one as Dan mentioned

It's modeling the speech recognition process and just like you would you know model an?

academic writing or model using an AAC device

We like to model what we're expecting from the student and so what I like to do is

Right from the start. I model the process

I model it think it say it check it fix it

And I also up model some of those operational skills like turning on the mic

speaking the punctuation and the command it's so amazing that if

After doing this stuff you realize a lot less teaching the students because they pick it up right from watching your model

I might start out with a student. I always model. I'm giving them tips as I'm modeling as well

Just kind of like when you when you're using dragon

And they're you're going through the tutorial and you're treating your voice and it teaches you about it

So that's basically what I do

I like how you embed embed those tips as you house your modeling that so now on to step two

After we model the whole process for the students

You know quickly we turn it over to them by starting with a single sentence that we provide this eliminates the test amount of

composition so that they can focus on the tool operation

So I came up with this fill in the blank sentence years ago, and it just seems to have stuck it works

Well because it allows the student to personalize the sentence and it's a medium length sentence that tests how well the student can hold

Memory as a whole sentence in memory

Remember, that's an important tool demand of speech recognition

I usually just ask the student for

Information like what color house will they live in and whether it's annoying or quiet street?

And then I tell them your sentence is you know I live in a blue house on a noisy street whichever variables they gave me

I usually ask the younger sentence to repeat the sentence to me before they turn on the mic to check their memory skills so that

were

You know just rehearsing the sentence a little bit, then I have them turn on the mic

Which I modeled for them before or in some cases. I've done this

I actually control the mic for noun so that the student can stay focused on holding a sentence in memory

It just depends on the students skills worked with a sixth grader

That was pretty strongly on the spectrum, and we just needed to keep him focused so I controlled the mic at first

You just have to decide in the moment how much scaffolding they need or don't and then after they dictate the sentence I asked them

To check the accuracy as you saw Kelly demonstrate in the videos either by reading. It carefully or by using text-to-speech to listen to it

So then why don't you just go ahead and you know while you're teaching

I'm why don't you just have them read out of a book?

Well, you know you could have them just read from a book as a practice sentence because that takes away the composition

But I have found that reading from a book totally changes the equation it makes the task demands that are

That are part of using speech recognition

Into the test demands of reading, and they aren't composing the sentence mentally anymore

But you're going to be running into possibly difficulties with them

Not speaking fluently or reading fluently especially if they have reading decoding difficulties

So what you want to see right away is their ability to hold a sentence in memory not?

Visually see it in the page. You know and be able to hold it there while they

Before they turn on the mic and then say the whole thing so that's why I don't have them read from a book

Okay the next one next part is what's still with number two is so let's say

They say that first sentence, and it comes up

You know it's supposed to be I live in a blue house on a quiet street and comes up

I live in a new mouth on a riot street, and I always teach students that never going to spell anything wrong

But it may have an incorrect

You know it may put the word wrong word so we look at that

And I tell the students not to change it right now

We're just going to UM you know hit enter and we're gonna try again. This is where I

Go ahead, and I coach the student if there was something during that first sentence that I saw

maybe they did incorrect like they set it too fast or

They didn't have enough breath support, so I would kind of talk to them as we go through

Maybe we weren't using a mic we might pop a mic in so I have them then try it again

I live in a blue house on a riot street. It's getting closer

again

It's kind of nice to when you have someone with you sometimes when I have the occasional therapist next to me

They'll be like oooh. Let's try and put you know a wedge, and they're back have them sit up a little bit more

to help them with their breath support

So just problem solving in between each sentence and then going ahead and trying it again

I live in a blue house, and I'm quiet Street third time's the charm

Now I actually have a video example of

Me doing this so I as I mentioned

I've trained quite a bit of our staff on this especially our occupational therapists are all very well-versed in

Teaching speech recognition, and this is an example during an Institute a few years ago where I was teaching so T's

how to use speech recognition so that's why I'm here with an adult and

This is demonstrating step 2

Okay, so the next thing we're going to do is I'm gonna actually have you now try it out and

Before we do I just want to find out what color is your house

gray gray

Live in a great house and these are Street really noisy, or is it kind of quiet

really quiet really quiet, so

Um let's put together the sentence

I live in a great house on a quiet street period can you say that out loud to me I?

live in a gray house on a very quiet street

period

Beautiful okay, I'm gonna turn the mic on do you feel comfortable saying that out loud to the computer, okay great?

Tell me when you're ready

Ready I?

Live in a gray house, okay? Let's just read it out loud

First option escape

Living a great house something very white

hmm, okay

I know let's think about a couple things that maybe we could do to change

Okay, let's read this one this time. I want you to put your finger under each one in say each word I

live in a grey house on a very quiet

Period let's see if we get a hundred percent this time you can do it or do it amazing look

How well it picked it up already? I?

Live in a grey house

let's read back that last sentence with the computer this time home all on your own I

Live in a great house on a very wide street

Okay

So let's talk about some data collection for this step

These are embedded in the assessment section in the guide

But we don't have time to cover that section in detail so I'm going to weave in the data collection tips after we talk about

each of the steps so

Obviously you can't collect data on the modeling step, so we're starting with the second step

Which is when the student starts using the tool what I'm doing observational. Ii during this step is assessing

The student's ability to remember the whole sentence if they need to chunk it into two parts. That's fine. I

Provide the scaffolding on the fly you know breaking it into two parts

But I'll take note of that holding that holding a sentence in memory is a skill that they need to work on

Second I'm observing their ability to change their enunciation based on the feedback that we provide as the sentence is repeated two or three times

you can see immediately that some students adjust to the tool demands and speak more clearly I

Was working with the student on the spectrum my son he was in sixth grade

And we had to tell him it's to talk in his

Sixth grade voice instead of a silly squeaky little kid voice if you like to do

He could do it and was

Reinforced when it made a difference in the recognition accuracy which was much better when he when he didn't use his squeaky voice

I was just working with a kid today on this high school kid and it wasn't that the his enunciation was really bad

but he saw the difference that it made when he repeated the sentence and did the you know without changing each one as we just

Showed you so finally. I'm watching to see if they remember to put the period in at the end of the sentence

This is a new skill, so I'm not expecting mastery yet

But it's interesting to see whether a student learns the skill quickly or needs constant reminders in terms of quantitative data

You could count the recognition accuracy of the sentences the goal is at least eighty percent accuracy

I would say lower than that and the students going to become too frustrated

Okay, so I'm just at number three

this is where we're gonna have the student write a three to four sentences on a personal topic and

Whenever I sit down and first work with a student especially if I'm meeting them for the first time I always do a little interview

With them I get to know them I asked them about their pet what they like to do at home

some of their

You know about their family personal interest so I gathered that information one to help build just a comfort level and then also

I've now I put content to write about this personal to them

so then I go ahead and I review the speech recognition process that think it's say it check it fix it and

Then we apply it to the speech recognition process and we write

sentence by sentence on a personal topic

So I'm going to show you an example of what that looks like just real quick

So this is an occupational therapist that I work with

Oftentimes as I mentioned. I have somebody with me that knows the students and that can follow through

but often if I especially if they've been taught how to use the speech recognition process I

Have them lead and I step back and I kind of coach them teach the editing process after each sentence

On the video she did say just to keep going

He was doing a great job

So I guess at that point she didn't necessarily have to stop him and check for accuracy in between

But we do recommend at this early on stage that we do teach the editing process after each sentence

So like I did in that one video where I was teaching the occupational therapist and step to

Having them visually check the sentence for record recognition accuracy one of the times

I had her girl with her finger under each one another time. I had her use of Texas each speech built into the map

Whatever the student prefers, but then you would go ahead sentence my sentence and make the changes as needed

And then we put in here using the keyboard it's so funny

How many times a student will try and turn on the speech recognition just for like that one word?

Correction or to say a comma when they could if they physically can do it with their hands

We tell them that could be faster to put a comma or period in with their hands

And then teaching that punctuation again that step one of modeling

It's amazing how the students pick up the punctuation so quickly when they see me modeling it

Often we don't even have to teach them, but if you noticed too in that video what they ot that

I just kind of like pushed my finger forward

That's my visual cue or visual reminder for putting a period I'll do the same thing with a comma sometimes

I'll even have a visual of the command that the students having a hard time, and I'll point to them as a reminder

and

Teach a limited number of voice commands at this time

Usually some of the ones that I'm teaching the student at this time and again that I modeled at the beginning

things like new line new paragraph some of those very basics

But they do kind of want to learn those and get off track. I just the high school

I was working with today got very interested when I when I when you asked whether there's commands and like yes

You couldn't google and see where you know, but I'm like we're not gonna focus on that right now

so

let's move on to the data collection for this third step what we're primarily doing is observing the students ability to generate ideas and

Form them into grammatically correct sentences we want to see if they can use a variety of vocab words

maybe not limiting themselves to the small words that they know how to spell as they might do when they're hand writing or typing if

That's the issue, but really using grade-level vocabulary

So you'll see in video in a little while a sixth grader who demonstrates us

We want to see - if the student can create longer

Sentences in response to coaching and you'll see the sixth grader that I work with in a video in a few minutes

Doing that doing responding very nicely actually when I asked her to extend the sentence

Finally we're watching to see if the student can develop the skill of dictating the punctuation or if they still need reminders and of course

We're still building that skill so it's not a deal breaker if they don't have those steps here

But we're heading towards the independent use as quickly as possible so we can

Mentally sort of take notes of that or write it down

For chronic quantitative data you could count recognition accuracy again

But now you also want to start measuring productivity using words per minute as seen in the de Coast writing protocol

You could also try applying a readability score to get a sense of how word and sentence lengths factors into the overall product

It's easy to get this score from online websites

And they're embedded in older word processors like ms. Microsoft where it was not older, but now that we're using Google Docs

I don't have that in it so you can go online to a website for that

Okay, and to step four which is write and edit one to two paragraphs from motivating pictures or personal topics so

again the idea here is to

Provide some extra practice while keeping that cognitive load low

Being in something that they're interested in

For our youngest students they may need a little more time at step four for older students this might not even be a step that

You need to provide

And so this is where also that interview comes in handy

So I'm going to show you an example a minute of a student

he just recently told me he went on a beach vacation and so we looked up images of the beach and

So I'll show you that in one moment, but really here. Just remember

This is where you're going to continue to coach

The think it say it check it fix it process you're gonna gradually figure coaching

Is where you're gonna start stepping back a little bit and again Dan is going to talk about the collecting data on

Independence and writing quality, so here's a video clip of one of my students

And he's writing about a picture that we googled that he chose

about the beach

Alright, so for data collection on this stuff, which is really sort of an extension of the last step

It's so so basically the same the same kind of data collection

The point of course is here to give them more practice

so we're continuing to observe the students ability to verbally create grammatically correct sentences and use speech recognition to transcribe them I

Would probably focus more on actually measuring the countable variables at this stage

at this point you could probably collect enough data to compare the writing quality and

quantity by using speech recognition with the students baseline writing output from before when they were either hand writing or

Typing if there's a significant difference you would probably already have enough data to recommend

implementation with progress monitoring a positive difference and recommend continued training so the student can become

Independent on grade level writing assignments in other words if you're in kind of a rush

This is a step where you can already have enough data to recommend implementation, but more training will need to go with that

In addition to just measuring the students writing product though an important factor to collect data on in any 80 assessment is this

Personal preferences so you ask the student what they think about using speech recognition whether they like it or not

And why they think it's useful or not the Likert scale from the de Coast protocols

It's in both the writing protocol and the protocol for accommodations in reading is a great tool for this if your student needs a visual

We have a little image of that on the slide other

Older students could simply be verbally asked to rate their preference on a scale of one to five

And a lot of times what I do for step four is I will actually

The topic that we'll choose to write about is

What do you think about speech recognition so far often if I'm you know a lot of times?

We're restrained by time so I have one class period to go over this with a student

Sometimes my first session will end it step four and I'll ask I'll end by asking them could you write a paragraph about

What you think about speech recognition, so here's an example of that just a real quick side note about the student

This is one of those students that the staff all along said the student has such a difficult time writing

He has so many great ideas

But he's definitely not a candidate for speech recognition because he has a diagnosis of cluttering

So he stutters his full sentences, so if you have a conversation with him

It is sometimes very difficult to understand him, and he does stutter his full sentences

But it's amazing when I use a speech recognition how clear it comes out, so you just don't know until you try

So let's move on to step five

This is one of my favorite ones to use especially when the student needs some extra practice

And you don't have much time

Or when you want to move the student beyond writing about simple topics to something a little more complex a little more grade level

So this step just uses the age-old activity of writing vocabulary sentences first find a list of academic vocabulary words

And it would be ideal if you could get a list from the classroom teacher of the words of the students been working on in

class

but I often just look up a grade-level list of vocab words from an online site on my iPad at

Moment I pick a word that the student knows make sure they know it and then say make a sentence with the word

you know

fabulous or

Fantastic or whatever the word is continue doing this with five or ten different words

Observing the syntax and the structure of the sentence is that the student creates and then coaching the students to create

lengthier in more complex sentences

The ability to create grade-level sentences is a good indicator that speech recognition will work as a tea that

brings the student up to grade level so

That's that's kind of what we're looking for in this step here

So I have a video of this as well of the sixth grader. I mentioned earlier

You'll see her create some easier sentences at first

But then really respond beautifully when I coach her to create longer sentences and when I give her more demanding words

You'll see and you can see in the picture here that I have the little thing could say a check it fix it

Reminder at the top of the screen

how to do the data collection for this obviously we're watching the students ability to create those sentences

and hopefully grammatically correct complex sentences and

stretching the sentences out what you could measure quantitative quantitative ly at this point would be the recognition accuracy and the readability I

Might take data on crack Ward sequences, which is a measurement technique used for curriculum based measurements of writing?

I probably would not count productivity though about words per minute because the writing activity is not

continuous

Alright, and on to number six, which is write multiple paragraphs after completing graphic organizer using keywords and phrases

So the purpose of this step is really now to integrate speech recognition into the whole writing process

and

At times I will really model this and step one as well so again

It's something they see right from the start other times it really depends on the student

And if they're using graphic to organize there's quite a bit in the class then of course I do

So in a student who really demonstrates good operational and functional skills in step three

May move right to this step

So what we do is we help the student identify the topic of interest and then we help them fill this out

They're prewriting organizer the key is to teach them to coach them through

Using key words versus full sentences here

And and then what we teach them to do was after they fill it out

We coached them to take those key words and turn them into full sentences, so just like Dan did in the last

And the last number five it's a really nice way to practice doing that

Okay, we don't have a video for this step because we're moving on to longer types of writing that would I'm not really video very

well

But I just want to talk about the data collection you would do at this point

You're obviously looking at their ability to generate ideas and organize those ideas into the graphic organizer

You know that's prewriting skills that really are sort of separate from using speech recognition

But you really want to emphasize can they do one to two keywords on the graphic organizer

Which which is a summary kind of skill and it can be difficult for students?

What you could count here would be their level of Independence?

How many of these steps are they doing on their own without you coaching so step back keep your mouth shut and let them do

It for a while and see what happens the recognition accuracy as it comes out

You could do a readability score on the overall product and now we might want to start introducing a writing rubric score because we're actually

Writing a more complex. You know multiple or a pretty

good single paragraph

great and on to number seven and this is where

We save the student semi independently completes of writing assignment using speech recognition

And we say semi independently because you know we want to see what the student can do independently

But we want someone there stand by to help troubleshoot with them and again

This is another great reason to have somebody with you while you're doing

The training because it's another great person that can help follow through and give the students support

so this is where we would use an academic assignment if the student is ready or

We can still give them a topic of choice if they're not

They would then complete the assignment at school or at home with just that standby support is needed

And I often do this as their homework in between sessions

So I'll say ok your homework is to complete this assignment and then

And then we get back

And then data collection on this did they complete the assignment or not especially if you were giving it sort of as homework

and then again recognition accuracy and again a writing rubric score on the product and

Then student preferences especially important if they were completing it not with you or with on their own or at home or something

How did it go did they like using it did it help them?

I usually ask them quite a few questions to dig into that part

All right

And I'm for the last one which is number eight where the student independently completes an academic writing assignment using speech recognition

And the purpose of this step is then to collect data i'm effective effectiveness of speech recognition

So some students may jump directly to the step from step number

Three i'm finding a lot of my older students like my high school students. They're ready just to jump right from three to eight

if you want observational data

You can watch the student without any coaching at all the teacher then would grade this assignment

just like they would any other classroom assignment using their writing rubric and

They collect data on effectiveness of it and implement and monitor effective use over time

So the data collection for this is the typical final outcome of the product which is a writing rubric so just a

sample writing rubric on the screen here

sometimes what I love to do if I can do it is ask the classroom teacher to score the

assignment

So that they are using the same rubric for the pre

Speech recognition product that they have been doing in class

and the post speech recognition writing sample that they just

Created and that helps the teacher to see the difference that it makes as well and give you a little more objective

View on what's happening

Alright, so those were all eight steps again. They're all summarized on a two-sided handout in the appendix

We've mentioned a couple times. You can skip to this step

You really will know the student best and you'll know whether or not you need to go through each of these eight steps and maybe

You need to spend more time on a certain step it all depends on the student

Whether you can you know what you're going to do as far as the time you will take for each step

And what we have done, are you know?

I'm really big into having again a visual for myself for staff and for the students

So it created the students guide to speech recognition and what it does on one side it summarizes

You know the four steps that we go over

It in here. I have a list of all different tips for

Speech using speech recognition that I go over before we even try it with the students

Which I'll show you on the next slide after that on the back of it

Though is the student speech recognition plan so what I do is I walk through what the students

Who did you work with today? If it was myself. You know we write down mrs.. Key, and how to get ahold of me

How did you access speech recognition they would then you know if it is in Google Docs? I want them to write down

Tools voice typing you know Google Docs tools voice typing how they accessed it, so they remember how to get go back there

Then we talked about what is the type of assignment you're going to use this for and?

If they don't have anything right now that they're going to use it for I give them tips on other things

They can use it for to practice then we talked about that tool about theory if if this isn't available

What are other tools in your tool about for different writing assignments? We talked about we're quiet places both at school at home and

I'm who to contact if they have questions

So it's just a nice little follow-up will either fill this out online and share it via Google Docs or write out a hard copy

And then these are some of those tools

Additional tips that we mentioned that that I go over

Some of the things that I go over with a student you saw that student mentioned

Don't look at the screen when you're composing a lot of times student so that hung up

I'm what's getting typed up on the screen

And it really distracts their writing process and holding those ideas in their head before they get them out

We also talked about don't chew gum

using that earbuds

Trying to speak in a lower pace and sometimes even a lower tone will help

Recognition a little bit so you can read those here, and that's also in the guide

So finally just remember that speech recognition in terms of speech recognition

Oral language is different from written language, so that's the whole point of teaching the process to the student

and then it's a good reminder for

The classroom teacher that speech recognition is not going to change the student's ability to write or to compose. It's just

Substituting for the transcription demands and the spelling demands so it's not cheating

Yeah, as we mentioned we have an entire section for implement in the guide

And we just have one slide here for our presentation, but just a reminder to build in that practice time

I tell students that they don't have anything to write about having a daily journal that you can write about it

Even if it's just one paragraph three sentences a day that you're gonna write about or some students really like to write plays or stories

Even just answering your emails or your text messages with your voice and remembering to put that punctuation into

That's often a great way to help

practice and then we talked about just making sure you're integrating it into the writing process and having those prewriting steps and

in accommodate their writing

There's a whole section. They'll check it out and feel free to share this with your colleagues. That's like I said earlier

This is our goal is capacity building so

You don't have to ask us permission you can make copies of guide and share it with other people

Yes, please do let us know if you have any questions. You can send us an email

For more infomation >> Speech Recognition as AT for Writing: A Guide for K 12 Education - Duration: 51:49.

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Education Matters: Fresno State School of Nursing - Duration: 5:40.

>> Stefani Booroojian: Fresno State has one of the top nursing programs in the country

providing students with the latest in technology. In tonight's Education

Matters, Juanita Stevenson joins us with how instructors are giving students the

opportunity to connect with the community and patients. Juanita.

>> Juanita Stevenson: The mobile health unit takes nursing students out into the community where

they are not only getting hands-on training with the diversity of patients.

They're learning something technology cannot teach - compassion.

>> Student 1: Hi Christine. I'm Amy.

>> Student 2: I'm Cynthia.

Juanita: Nursing students at Fresno State are benefiting from some of

the latest in technology to help them learn their skills.

[Simulation mannequin speaks: I don't feel like I can quite catch my breath either.]

Juanita: We are in the simulation lab where students work on state-of-the-art mannequins -

patients that are designed to simulate real symptoms, real health issues.

>> Shauna Miller: The simulation lab in nursing is an educational tool and because much of

what we're doing is high-risk we want to make sure that our students have the

opportunity to practice and practice before they actually start working on a patient.

Juanita: Nursing students, like 21-year-old Amy Baldwin, spend time in the sim lab

This semester, she also spends two days a week at a local hospital. Amy says

being able to make her mistakes in the lab and learn from them are invaluable experiences.

>> Amy Baldwin: When we're at the hospital we don't have the time to get our

mistakes or even ways we can improve broken down for us, whereas where we're

in here in the simulation lab and we have the patient that talks to us and

our instructors here with us we get the experience and the nerves out by feeling

like we're performing with a real patient.

Juanita: It is all excellent training for these nursing students, but both are in controlled settings,

either in the classroom or hospital. Fresno State professor Kathleen Rindahl has led the effort to get

students out into the community.

>> Kathleen Rindahl: When a patient is in the hospital they're in the nursing environment.

so the student nurse and the nurses have control over the patient.

When a student goes out into the community, the patient

has control over their environment, so the student has to adjust how they're

going to work with that patient to provide care for them.

Juanita: Since 2013 Rindahl has been running the mobile health unit - a clinic on wheels owned by the

Fresno County Office of Education. She uses it to go out into the community to serve patients and teach students.

>> Student 3: What are your normal blood pressures?

>> Patient: Uh, it could be anything. I did take my medicine today.

Juanita: Nursing students provide the medical care doing basic preventative exams like taking

blood pressure, screening for diabetes, high cholesterol,

conditions that have go unchecked can lead to serious health problems.

>> Abigail Igot: It's actually really eye-opening because it's a lot different from, you

know, in the hospital setting where you see patients all the time and they, some

of them are really into their health and they keep it up, whereas in the mobile

health we see patients that don't even know that they have like diabetes or high cholesterol.

Juanita: Sixty-five year old Nina Meyer says the benefits of having the mobile unit

out into the community are helping her better take care of herself.

>> Nina Meyers: One, it is easily accessible. Two, when you're low-income it's very difficult

to afford all the medical costs so this helps me out greatly.

Juanita: Rindahl says in some of the rural communities,

the mobile health unit may be the only way some residents receive

preventative care. Traveling to places like Orange Cove or Cantua Creek, students

see a different kind of patient.

>> Anna Bella Galindo: We actually get to see the struggle that

the patients are going through. Some don't have health insurance, some of them

don't speak English and they have a harder time communicating with doctors

when they're at a clinic and any classroom is just reading, but here we're

actually interacting with the patient and experiencing more of what they're going through.

Juanita: Students from different health disciplines now travel with the

mobile unit. Anna Bella Galindo is studying Dietetics, she can help with

nutrition, physical therapy students can check for muscle issues.

It teaches those in the medical professions the importance of working together.

Anna Bella: I have a better understanding of what they do and how we can all bring our

knowledge together to better help patients.

Juanita: Rindahl says it is important for nursing students to have

a better understanding of the community

they serve. The different cultural backgrounds of patients, she wants them

to know giving back to the community is important.

Kathleen: I just feel it's so important to give back to individuals. I mean everybody has a right to

feel healthy in my mind, and I don't know,

it just makes me feel good being able to help somebody have access to care.

Juanita: Dr. Rindahl says the number of times

she can take the mobile unit out in the community is totally dependent upon

funding she gets from grants and private donations.

Stefani: So important that hands-on experience is really invaluable.

Juanita: Right. Labor of love for her.

Stefanie: Yeah, it sure sounds like it. Juanita, thank you.

For more infomation >> Education Matters: Fresno State School of Nursing - Duration: 5:40.

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Education Inequality: How We Systematically Fail Our Children - Duration: 3:56.

Our government hates us, if you haven't noticed. Educational inequality boils

down to the systemic oppression of the lower-class. Our society thrives off of a

classist system. Schools are primarily funded by local property taxes. The issue

with this is obvious, we are the only developed country in the world to fund

education this way, public education. Hold on because what I'm about to explain to you

makes absolutely no sense. Poor parents create poor child and after they're born

they go home to a poor neighborhood. This poor neighborhood has high vacancy rates

and low property taxes, which creates the low tax collection and this low tax

collection funds public schools. Doesn't make any sense. This low funding

correlates to unequal distribution of academic resources. Coming from a

primarily white area in Boston, when I thought academic resources I thought of

whiteboards, and iPads, and my really cool nike jerseys somatic lacrosse team. But what

I was forgetting were the most important pieces: a building

that can be inhabited by human beings, teachers, pencils,

textbooks, and a mode of transportation. Poorly funded schools create poorly educated

children, and this boils down to the teachers. The highest level schools with

the highest amount of funding are attracting these teachers. What really

needs to happen is the opposite. The quality goes down the lower you go with

the amount of property taxes collected. If knowledge is power set by our good

friend Sir Francis Bacon, what are we doing to these people? They're already

minorities, minority communities and lower areas. By stripping them of their

educational inequality, we're killing the American dream. The American dream, as

we all know, you work hard no matter where you start, you get an education,

you get a degree, you provide for your family. But what does this mean for these

people that we're not given equal education to? The start line is so much

farther behind. The shoes I'm standing in right now should be available to any

child, not just one in an upper-middle class area of Boston. So what is wrong

with the government? How is this possible? Nothing. Nothing is going on with the

government. 21 years ago, the Ohio public school system was found unconstitutional.

That's right, unconstitutional and there has been little to no movement. So we

must begin top-down. What's happening? Federally? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

These politicians are depending on huge grants from suburban people. These

suburban people are okay with the school system because they're winning. Like

myself, I got a fantastic education and I was worrying about Nike jerseys. State-

wise there's a little more recognition of the issue, just because of the amount

of grants are much smaller. More than 3/4 of states have challenged the legality

of unequal funding and these suits have been upheld or are still pending in 31

states. What can you do about this? What can you do? It's hard. That was the

biggest issue for me. As a 19 year old girl, sitting in a classroom, what can I

do to change this? And all I could say is talk about it. Talk about it, talk to your

children and understand. And check yourself, because my shoes, my fantastic,

beautiful heels should be available to absolutely everybody.

For more infomation >> Education Inequality: How We Systematically Fail Our Children - Duration: 3:56.

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Charlie Walker sworn in as Richmond County Board of Education District 7 representative - Duration: 2:19.

For more infomation >> Charlie Walker sworn in as Richmond County Board of Education District 7 representative - Duration: 2:19.

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Special Report Preview: The Value of Education - Duration: 0:49.

For more infomation >> Special Report Preview: The Value of Education - Duration: 0:49.

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Students at Southfield special education school excited for prom - Duration: 3:08.

For more infomation >> Students at Southfield special education school excited for prom - Duration: 3:08.

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Ismael Studies in Dublin, Ireland (Business and Marketing Education major) - Duration: 3:33.

My name is Ismael Hassan.

I'm a business and marketing education major and I studied abroad in Dublin, Ireland.

I interned there at Design Enterprise Skillnet, which was a consulting firm for design companies.

It was pretty cool to see how they do business because we worked in an environment with other

small companies—it was like a big office.

Seeing how a lot of them interact and communicate with each other and how they do business;

a lot of people own a small business on the side, so that was pretty interesting to see.

I was in business classes so the format was the same. The teacher has a presentation;

people talk and do group work and things like that.

Some of the differences, I'd say: 1. they only have class once a week so you have

to make sure you stay on top of your readings.

But they don't have assignments weekly; they only have big assignments at the end so it

kind of builds stress, for me at least.

I liked that I was able to do group work with other students.

We were at Dublin City University so we were able to interact with local students.

Just getting their interactions and how they feel about America and things like that was

pretty cool.

My favorite moment was probably going to the west of Ireland.

It had great scenery, it was outside the city.

We were able to see the Cliffs of Moher, the biggest seaside cliffs.

Just being out there in the open—the weather was nice.

It was sunny.

My biggest fear, I'd say, was getting homesick because you don't really know anyone there.

But once I got there, as soon as I got adjusted to the time and my daily schedule, it was

very easy to get into it.

You see so many new things and you kind of get distracted from the homesickness.

I was able to meet more people straight from Africa.

I was born in Africa and I came here when I was a young child, but I was able to meet

people that just came from there for school.

That was pretty interesting to learn more about African culture.

I was in a student group.

It was called the Africa Society.

Seeing how they interact as well was pretty nice.

My professor, he was our historian professor, so he talked about the history of Ireland

and how they went through colonization as well.

I knew about it but I didn't know it to the extent he informed us about.

We were tying it back to the struggles black people faced here and also colonization in Africa.

So we were able to tie that in and see all the similarities and differences and things

like that.

I learned that I'm very adaptable.

I went to multiple cities in Europe.

I went to ten.

I was able to easily adapt to the schedule.

Also, they have a more laid-back approach than America so it was easy to interact with people.

They definitely interact with tourists because they want to know where you're from.

Try to meet new people and try to go to as many places as you can on your budget.

Going to different cities helps a lot; it gives you a different spin.

In Minnesota, it's so big.

You can go to one city here and go to Chicago and it's similar but if you do that in Europe,

you go to Germany and France and it's two different places.

I think it's very easy to stay in your own shell.

I think being willing to meet people and willing to have fun and enjoy your experience.