Interview with Janie Chavers

A 20-year veteran of the Division of Adult and Career Education, Janie Chavers talks about her concurrent students with the excitement of a high school football coach leading a winning team. Her enthusiasm comes from personally witnessing her students improve their self-esteem, refocus their goals and better manage peer pressure after taking distance learning parent education courses. Janie recently dropped by the distance learning main office to share her experience using DLTV (www.distancelearningtv.net) with her students.

Tell us about your current assignments.

My distance learning assignments at Manual Arts-Crenshaw, Fremont-Washington and South Gate CAS send me to six different high schools. Basically, I run around all week with a trunk load of The Now and Future Parent and Surviving the Teen Years DVDs and workbooks. (laughs)

How many of your students watch The Now and Future Parent and Surviving the Teen Years online at DLTV?

Right now, a little over a hundred, which is about 35% of all the students I have on my rosters.

How do you introduce the website to your students?

I distribute flyers at the schools promoting all the benefits of distance learning parent education classes: high school credits, at your own pace and convenience, DVDs, internet, etc. When a student enrolls, I explain that there are two ways to watch the videos, on DVD with a deposit or online for free.

If a student is interested in watching online, do you demonstrate the website to the student?

Not usually. I give the students some simple written instructions, the web address, the username and password and they figure it out because it’s not hard. I will show how the website works if a student comes back and says that she can’t figure it out, which has happened but not very often.

How do your students access DLTV?

Some students have internet at home. Those that don’t might log on at their friend’s house, use the computer lab at school, or go to the library.

What has the response been?

The concurrent students really like it. They love going online to chat with their friends, play games, listen to music, update their facebook pages and this is a natural extension of their online activities.

In the student surveys you’ve done, we notice that a few students have said that the website is slow.

Video on the web, as everyone knows, can be slow at times. I tell my students, “If on any given day the connection is slow, just queue up the video and go to the kitchen to get something to eat or drink. By the time you get back 2 minutes later, enough of the video will have gotten a head start loading that it’ll play all the way through.”

Even with high-tech sometimes you need a simple home remedy when the connection is slow!

Sometimes that’s what you have to do. Nothing’s perfect. Not even DVDs. Sometimes you hand a student a DVD and they get home and it won’t play because the disc is damaged. Or it plays but it’s the wrong episode because it got mislabeled back at the office. Or you don’t have the episode that the student needs in the trunk of your car. (laughs) Personally, I haven’t had any problems with the website when I access it at the schools.

We recommend a high-speed connection like DSL or cable. We built the website knowing that the videos needed to be in high quality in order for someone to be able to sit in front of their computer and pay attention to an entire video episode.

The videos look great. They’re sharp. The colors come through. The sound is clear. And they play full screen!

What do you as a teacher like about it?

I like the fact that the students are learning online because that’s the future. The kids know that when they get to college there’s going to be an online component to their college courses. They’re happy to be getting that experience now.

How has DLTV impacted the way you work?

For me, the benefits have been huge. It has saved me so much work. I no longer have to copy and carry around as many DVDs. I don’t have to manage as many deposits, receipts and refunds. Like most teachers, working with the students is what I enjoy most. Now I have more time to grade papers and talk with my students.

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Need some tips on how to get started using DLTV today? Contact us at the distance learning main office. Janie Chavers may be reached at jchavers@mailcity.com.