Adult Education Panel: Empowering Lifelong Learning Through Mobile Technology

Experts from the National Center for Families Learning, Thorn Hill Education Center, and Cowley Community College for a 30-minute discussion on using mobile technology for adult, family, and community education. Find the transcript and time stamps below.

[00:00:00] Casey Loewenthal: Thank you everybody for joining. My name is Casey Lowenthal. I'm the customer success manager here at Engage Buy, sell. My role is to work with our clients to find value in the platform along with the rest of our team. And today we have three great speakers. Kami, Ana and Kay have joined us from a few different organizations.

We'll do a little introductions of themselves and then we can dive right in. So we'll start out with Kami.

[00:00:35] Kami Moore: Hi. Thanks guys for coming today and listening. My program, I'm an adult ed program and I'm located on the Oklahoma, Kansas border in Kansas. And our program has about average, about a hundred and seventy five, a hundred ninety five students per year. We have part of our education program in the correctional facility in Winfield, Kansas.

And then our other students are either in Arc City online or in Winfield, Kansas. We're not a big program, but it this app definitely makes for good communication.

[00:01:17] Casey Loewenthal: Perfect. Thanks Kami. Ana, you wanna go next?

[00:01:20] Anna Kaiper-Marquez: Sure. Hi everyone. It's so nice that you all have joined us today. My name is Ana Kiper Marquez.

I am the director of Family Literacy at the National Center for Families Learning. And we in family literacy in the family literacy team specifically. Focus on the role of multiple literacies in intergenerational literacy. And so a key piece of that is digital literacy, and that is why this app has been so important in kind of increasing digital literacy skills nationwide for our programs.

So I'm really excited to be here and I'm also excited to pass the baton. Casey, I'm doing your job for a second. Great. To kay, Dr. Kay Combs because she's a partner with National Health Center for Families Learning and has been a huge advocate in this the creation of this app.

[00:02:13] Kay Combs: Hi, I'm Kay Holmes and I am very excited to meet with everybody today.

I actually have a family literacy program at Thornhill Education Center in Frankfurt, Kentucky. And when I was introduced to this app after all the. Years that I have worked, I have realized that my job has been made easier, so I can't wait to share that. We have a program of around 200 individuals. We serve families.

We have over 40 or 50 families that we also serve in our program. And we also have an incarcerated program for our students. So we do have family lit literacy in our local, I'll say incarceration centers, but we also have in our recovery program. So this app has been so helpful with those transitions as well.

So can't wait to talk to everyone about that.

[00:03:06] Casey Loewenthal: Awesome. Perfect. Thank you Ana and Kay. Great introductions. We're gonna do a little brief dive into a little bit about. Engage by cell as a whole, and then we'll dive into the use cases for the three of these ladies. All engage by Cell has been around for 17 years.

We started out in the museum space doing audio tours and as. Cell phones expanded and the technology became a personal computer in our pockets, not just something to make a call. We have built out apps focused on text messaging, engagement and you'll see some of our sample clients here.

We today we're focusing on the adult ed sector but we also work with workforce organizations, goodwill and then as I mentioned, museums, art galleries, nonprofits for a variety of different mobile use cases.

There's two main technologies. We have quite a few other technologies, but the focus of today's is text messaging and mobile web apps. The text messaging is pretty much the primary form of communication for everybody these days. We all know it's tough to reach someone when you call. It's tough to reach someone via email.

But 98% of text messages. Are opened and read within the first couple minutes, so you're not gonna get that with most emails, and you're lucky if someone answers your call at all. It allows for a quick targeted message for reminders, for updates, for changes to schedules, to a link to click for more information.

And then our second services mobile web apps where the two services work well, but can be standalone platforms as well. Kami will discuss her use of the texting but the mobile web apps is a do no download. No code process. Your users do not have to go to the app store and download anything, which is a huge barrier to entry when it comes to adoption of software.

And then as employees, you all did not get into the adult space because you know how to code or build out websites. So we've tried to create a version of that allows you to get the benefits of a website. Without having to have the background knowledge to build that content. So it's a drag and drop system and everything updates in real time and users can save the device to the homepage of their phone.

So it looks like an app, feels like an app is really just a fancy bookmark to to give them quick access to that site. For the sake of the demo today we're gonna do a little proof of concept. If you all have your cell phone free open up the camera on your device, or if you don't have a QR code scanner in your phone you can just open up a new text message and the phone number you'll send it to is 5 6 5 1 2.

And then the body of the text, you'll put the word demo space webinar. If you are doing the QR code, which is a great feature of everything within our system, QR codes make everything faster, easier. You can scan it, it'll open up your text application. You simply just send it and you should get back a response.

Maybe few of you in the chat box can send that. You got the response back. So we, we are effectively working.

Got the response. Thank you, William, Corey, Jimmy. Awesome. All right, we will move on to the next slide now. How mobile helps. So we're gonna dive in, in a moment into the use cases of each of these organizations, but in general mobile technology is available to everyone. There's a lot of different jobs where you're not sitting at a desk, you're not around, but we all have phones in our pockets.

With mobile you can use it to help. Users fill out forms, submit documents have one-on-one communication back and forth. Schedule appointments, reschedule appointments, sign up for reminders. Resource access is a big one within the adult ed along with the workforce sector is having all of those important documents available to your clients when they need it.

And then being able to, really just have access to specific pertinent information as quickly as they can.

All right, so we're gonna start the conversation now. So Ana, you are first, can you give a little bit of a background of NCFL?

[00:07:43] Anna Kaiper-Marquez: Absolutely Casey. Thank you. So National Center for Families Learning or NCFL is a nonprofit organization that works to eradicate poverty through education solutions for families.

So we actually were founded in 1989 and we are headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky. But we have a national staff, for example, I live in. Central Pennsylvania and many of the other staff live around the country. We have worked with over 150 plus communities in over 39 states and have served over 4.5 million families.

And so we do work with family engagement, family leadership and family literacy. And so our founder Sharon Darlene was really one of the first. To think about what we call the four component model of family literacy that focuses on intergenerational literacy practices for adult learners, but it recognize and children, but it recognizes adults as both.

Learners and caregivers. It recognizes the role of, the vital role of a caregiver having time with their child and doing those interactive experiences. And it also recognizes how vital it is for adults and caregivers to understand the school system and for the school system to understand adult learners.

So one of the main reasons why, we are part of this today is that we have found that. Access. To all forms of literacy, including digital literacy is so vital. And so with the partnership with Dr. Combs, there was this realization that an app that an app could be really beneficial and expanding community partnerships and all of our family literacy programs.

So that is why we're here. And I would recommend you looking more into National Center for Families Learning to see ways that we can partner together. Perfect.

[00:09:47] Casey Loewenthal: Yeah. That's amazing. 4.5 million families. That's commendable for sure. That's a perfect transition to, Kay. Kay, you are at Thornhill Education Center.

Can you give a bit of a description of what you do and maybe a little bit of how you are different from Ana's position at NCFL and how Thornhill is a partner of theirs.

[00:10:10] Kay Combs: Sure. We are a part of NCFL in that they provide a lot of support. We actually, Thornhill Education Center was one of the first family learning communities across the United States under NCFL.

And what that means is that we part with all of our four component model of family literacy within the community. So it's not just one entity. So we partner with our schools, it the library. County extension office. And not only that, we are located in the community center, which is really an adult education center that provides many services for our parents in the adult education realm.

So this app if you can en envision that I just shared communication and, the use of this app was, it has been very successful in allowing us to not only have the resources that parents can look at on the app that are within the community events that are happening right now, how to track all of their activities, their time in the four components.

It's just been phenomenal.

[00:11:16] Casey Loewenthal: Perfect Phenomen. Yeah, then, and if you wanna scan that QR code, this is, gives you access. It won't be another text message. This will be access to the site that Kay's team she works on. And this was created by them. All the content, details, everything. And then as Ana mentioned, digital literacy.

The act of building this out of getting access to it using it is digital literacy. So it kinda works hand in hand with both the creation and usage of it. Thank you, Kay, very much. Alright, and Cammie, back to you, Cali College Dual Education in Arkansas City.

[00:11:57] Kami Moore: So we're an education center that we are partnered with Cali College.

It's a community college here in Kansas. And we offer ESL classes. We have adult education classes, the GED testing. And we really came about this because we needed a way to communicate with our students. We live in Kansas, so the weather is never the same two days in a row. So weather is an issue sometimes.

And just reminders to our students. 'cause if you've, you're in adult education, you know that our students just need reminders sometimes because life gets busy and classes get put on the back burner sometimes. So we use just the texting service at this point.

[00:12:44] Casey Loewenthal: Perfect. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. And you're gonna be able to describe that pretty well today.

You have a great use case. All right, so we're gonna dive into a little bit of a discussion now. I'll throw these out to each of you. So we'll start with you, Kami, you were just on there. How did you first get the idea to look into texting and and why?

[00:13:07] Kami Moore: We really needed a way to be able to communicate with our students.

I didn't like the idea of our teachers having to give out their personal cell phone numbers, and some of them still do, but this is a way to prevent those late night texts, hopefully from the students. And we can just send out reminders, just the basic generic thing we can. Do lots of different things with individual classes also, we can break it down and I think we're gonna show you that later.

But really this was just an, we needed something to communicate and we actually found this app in program at the coa conference a couple years ago.

[00:13:49] Casey Loewenthal: Perfect. What what was the biggest challenge you were looking to solve with text messaging outside of the sharing of employee phone numbers?

[00:13:58] Kami Moore: Really just reminding students about classes. That's a big one. Just don't forget about class. Or if we don't have class. Those reminders, how were you? And then we also used it in a way to get the follow-up survey information back. We can send the link to the Google Drive that we have and they can fill out the information for those follow ups.

[00:14:25] Casey Loewenthal: Perfect. How before texting, how was, what was your primary form of communication to try and let them know about class changes, weather updates, resources,

[00:14:37] Kami Moore: Facebook. But not everybody has Facebook emails and then the good old phone call, but not everybody picks up the phone.

[00:14:46] Casey Loewenthal: Yep. They don't pick up the phone and the bandwidth to make all those calls requires some staffing.

Yes. Yeah. No, absolutely. Exactly. Yeah. Thank you. Anna, we'll pass it to you for this same series of questions. How did you guys first get the idea to look into apps and texting?

[00:15:02] Anna Kaiper-Marquez: Yeah. I think we've known for a long time that digital literacy is vital, and once covid hit, we realized just how important it was and also just how many people were perhaps lacking digital literacy skills.

Because in CFL's mission is to eradicate poverty, but also try to find ways to. Promote equity. We felt as though, we can't do that without also promoting digital literacy, in order to work towards jobs, in order to work towards more access for understanding schools in order to even understand, how to.

Access a teacher's comments online, you need to understand digital literacy. So we've had this as a, primary focus of trying to, be part of our programming for a while. But one of the things that we really focus on at NCFL is co-design. And so part of that is working with partners to. To get an understanding of what is happening on the ground and what is actually needed.

And when we started working with Kay Dr. Combs at thorn Hill, her and her colleague Kelly Anderson had this idea for an app. So we were introducing family literacy to them introducing, the evaluation piece that was required of their grant and programming. And they had this amazing idea of creating an app.

And so that's where this got started. And it's fascinating. We, similar to Cami, we also were introduced to, to engage by cell at Cowa. I always tell the story of we were just walking around. A colleague of mine who's actually on the call right now, Lisa Craiger and I were walking around the tables trying to find some swag for our ch my children and her grandchildren, and we saw these blinky rings.

That were on the table. And so we said, okay, let's get some linky rings. Okay. Maybe we'll just ask about what this is. That's when we met the folks at Engage Visa and we were so impressed with what they were offering. And it's been incredible. It has been incredible. So I'm excited to talk more about how that process has worked.

But I will say that in terms of communication. I was a former adult education teacher and family literacy instructor. A lot of the programs that I have seen do use maybe WhatsApp or Facebook or, sometimes texting. But not everyone has access to those different apps. Not everyone uses them. And so this is really a way to streamline communication but not only streamline communication to.

To learners, but also as Kate has always pointed out to community partners as well and really create a larger vision of adult education and family literacy, throughout the community. So I think that this app has provided access for that. Okay. Perfect. Yes, Lisa? As Lisa notes, the grandkids really do love the blinky rings, as do my kids.

So thank you for that.

[00:18:07] Casey Loewenthal: They do all ages love blinky rings. It's not just children you'd think it would be, but. It's not. Kay. Do you have any other additions to what Anna said about what you guys were looking to solve when you met with us?

[00:18:20] Kay Combs: I was just looking at the audience on here, and I just wanna speak to the audience because if you're looking for the vision for the app was a fact.

How can we communicate to parents and staff, but how can our community partners also have a voice or a face on the app? And there was a lot of what I call record keeping pieces that I was like we could do it through a journal. There was a lot of different things that we came up with and I'm like, gosh, wish there had been an app.

Also, as we all shared about the texting I can't, I. Share enough about how the texting has been phenomenal. Now people know we have this texting ability so we can make different groups even for our other organizations, which is phenomenal. And as you well know, we've had this wonderful humongous flood.

In Frankfurt and just today there is the community coming together to put activities together for these 60 homeless families in a hotel. Just because we texted our families very quickly what their needs are because we work with a population that have needs. What can we do? And like it, it all came together.

And I'm not saying it's because of the app, but we were able to communicate in such a quick way versus looking up people's phone numbers. And I wanted to share what was the big challenge. So in all of this as we all know, it's the rollout and for understanding of folks that you have this app that can be used in such this great way and, help everyone in the community solve many problems. So that's the one thing we're working on because, but now, there's this need and it's happening, so it's pretty cool.

[00:20:05] Casey Loewenthal: Perfect. Yeah, that's a great use case for this. And we've had organizations do that with fires on the West coast.

There's just the ability to mass communicate whether that's our texting service or another one, is it. The numbers don't lie. Okay. Do you wanna touch on this? You were going down that, that road, I think. Yeah. What was your rollout strategy for the new tools?

[00:20:29] Kay Combs: As in everything you have to, punt and kick and see what happens. And so we thought we'll just roll it out and share it with some of the parents. But see, as a community, not all our parents were there together. So you'll see on down through here that we work with our community partners with a QR code. Say that families. Are reminded of that when they're at events.

And also our community partners are reminded of the fact there's this app and the QR code. So at any events our families are at, within the community, the schools, et cetera, then they can use it. So we thought, oh, it could be just from us. And we realize, oh no, it can't. We all have to be in this. So you're gonna see some of that here in a minute.

And it says, what is, what content's in your messages on your app. I feel like when you sell our app, 'cause you just pulled it up, we tried to make it very simple. Very engaging and is one of the things I wanna speak to is forms. Many of you have forms that your families have to fill out different types of forms at different pieces of time throughout the year.

This is an excellent way to have those forms available. You put them on there and you just say, Hey, here's the app. It gets filled out. You have the form filled out. It works just great. You don't have to email a form and you don't have to keep up with a lot. You've got a lot of possibilities for reporting and so this works out really well when you're working with any programs.

And yeah, here it is. And I love the way both of us are working on this app differently and easy peasy, I think on getting it out there to people.

[00:22:07] Casey Loewenthal: Yeah, no, the, these are the examples that Kay was mentioning. They have both in English and Spanish, which is great. The QR code application still takes 'em to the same section.

We do have a Google Translate integration into the mobile apps as well, so the content can actually be translated into I think it's up to 120 languages now. Which is great for that digital literacy and making sure those resources are available. And then you also see Kami, who will touch on this in a moment.

Their different, each of those QR codes is a unique list that they've created. So we're gonna ask about segmenting lists to subscribers and the benefit of that. So I'll use that. Transition to Cami now. So you have, what was that, eight different QR codes with. Some acronyms. I'm sure the students know what they're signing up for, but do you wanna describe a little bit about what you guys have there?

[00:22:59] Kami Moore: Yeah. So we introduce the Engage by Cell texting service in our orientation that we have with all of our students. So within the first day of class, they understand what the texting service is, we provide examples, and then we ask them all to opt in. We have this on our slideshow that's up on the board, but we also have the larger QR codes for each of the classes that we'll pass around to the students in class, and then they can scan it and then opt in.

And then on the backside we also then go back. Check that all of the students did opt in, and if they didn't, we add them into the class list. Obviously with their permission as long as we have permission to do that. And we put their name and then their cell phone number in it. So we use it from the side of they are students of our program already not looking for new students.

And we just have that during our orientation. That way they are familiar with it. It also will help when we send out a text for the follow-up surveys because the students will have already had texts come from that phone number, so it's not gonna be a brand new phone number, and it won't be unfamiliar to them.

[00:24:27] Casey Loewenthal: Perfect. Yeah, no, that's a, that's great. And then once when you segment lists, you can be a bit more granular in terms of your messaging. You could send someone a reminder for a specific class. Maybe there's 10 people in the class and that class is getting rescheduled, but the afternoon one's fine. You don't wanna send a blanket message to 150 200 people.

Yeah. 'cause you don't have it segmented. So as much as you can break down your lists as Cami did here is a benefit. And then you can always send a blanket message to everybody and every list and tell them that Kansas weather's happening, let's stay home today.

[00:25:03] Kami Moore: Yep. Or

[00:25:04] Casey Loewenthal: whatever that may be.

[00:25:05] Kami Moore: Exactly.

[00:25:07] Casey Loewenthal: Anna, do you wanna hop back to the previous slide?

This is is one that we don't always want to touch on 'cause we don't like to talk about the challenges we face, but they are reality and it is software and I'm sure anyone on the call who's yet to dive into this space has some apprehensions about adoption of new software and what it takes.

And I'm sure the three of you also did. And I'll start out with you. Did you have any hesitations or challenges that you guys faced with the adoption of this? Whether that was from. The purchasing process or the onboarding or rollout process?

[00:25:41] Anna Kaiper-Marquez: Yeah, so I was definitely concerned about it just because, everyone has various.

Levels of comfort with digital tools. I think of myself as fairly comfortable with new digital technology. However, the creation of an app is something that felt a little scary to me, and so I was so incredibly surprised at the ease to which the app. Really did not require a lot of knowledge of technological skills.

It was so easily set up. It was very intuitive. But I will also say this, shout out to Fred who works at Engage by Cell, who was. Absolutely amazing with holding our hand throughout this whole process and making everything very easy to understand. And so I think the amazing thing about Engage By Sell that I've seen is that not only does it have a very streamline, easy to understand kind of process for the creation of the app, but there's also the support that comes with it and the support of, really a deep understanding that everyone is coming to this with various skills and levels so that, in tandem with the ease of the actual technology has been incredible. And every single partner that we're piloting it with, several different family literacy sites and all of our coaches that have started working on this and all of the sites that we're piloting it with who come from very different.

Spaces and very different comfort levels have all seemed to find it very easy. So that's amazing. I will also just say as well. That, for those working with adults, there's this idea of a digital native, right? Or a non-digital native. And so part of family literacy is the role of the child and the parent working together.

And one of the great things about something like an app is that it really provides space for the child to support the parent in their digital literacy skills and be able to work on that together so that both. The child and the parent or the caregiver are teaching each other new skills. So that's another part of this that's been really beneficial just for our own model.

[00:28:06] Casey Loewenthal: Thank you. Kay. Was there any hesitations or challenges that you faced? I,

[00:28:13] Kay Combs: At first I thought. When I looked at, when I went through the training with Fred, I was like, what if I have a question? You're, you always go through a training. You say, oh, what if I have a question later?

Immediate needs were met and I have to say kudos to engage by sale. Okay, I don't want this here, I want it there, but I'm not sure how, or like it was just even in the text messaging I wanna get this started. And it was, and. I will say this, it was just in time. As soon as we made the change, we saw it on the app.

We didn't have to wait, we didn't have to wait for anything to upload. The, what did the I'm looking at your subscriber list and any challenges. I will just say that I just can't. I can't sell this product, but I will say that it was probably one of the easiest if you could do Canva and some other programs out there.

This was probably one of the easiest programs that I've been involved in, that we can, we know we can make a change. We can send out a text in a minute. So that process for this app was just amazing to me. 'cause I thought it would be more technical and I'd known nothing about coding. And so it was like, we can't do this.

But not only myself, but my assistant. We just run it together and. I wanna speak to what Anna said. She has other programs that are adopting this in Kentucky, and I've been involved in their training and I will tell you that immediately in one of 'em, they made changes in the training on their app, and then the second one, the next day they had it all worked.

I was like. You did what? They were so excited. So that's how easy it was. And these are all not really digital natives, but they're not in the app world, so to speak. So very easy, I feel like. Perfect.

[00:30:11] Casey Loewenthal: Kami, any challenges that you faced?

[00:30:14] Kami Moore: We too had training from Fred, so he is definitely he's good. I'm of the, I like to play around and figure things out myself, and I knew it was not gonna be something I could mess up. And if I did, I'd call Fred, but I didn't have any issues with figuring things out. My teachers use this especially my ESL instructor because picking up a phone and calling some of her students is hard when you teach.

Five or six different languages in one class, so she can send a text and most of their phones will automatically change to a different language. And so it, it's easy. So we didn't have any major issues with getting everything going.

[00:31:03] Casey Loewenthal: Perfect. Awesome. All right, we're gonna move down to growth opportunities.

What is your ongoing communication strategy? Kami, you were just speaking. We'll let you take this one. What, we'll combine the next two questions together. What's your ongoing communication strategy and how do you plan to use this in the future? If there's any additional use cases you're maybe thinking of.

[00:31:28] Kami Moore: So we use it for our classes that are con, that are starting right now or that are go going on right now. But then we also. During signup sessions and people have filled out applications to be in the classes, we send those reminders to those students of when orientation will begin. So we've used it in three different ways, like within class to send reminders and then before any of the classes start as a.

Just to check in to make sure you're still wanting to be in the adult ed classes and then as the follow-up survey. And I'm really excited because the students now are more comfortable with this texting app and I think we're gonna get a better response. Response this next go around of the follow up surveys because they're comfortable with it.

They know who we are and they understand what the text is used for. We also have it in our orientation to remind them that, hey, we will be contacting you via text. So just to be on the lookout for that in six to 12 months. Yeah. And Perfect. We, I actually, I sent out a text today sending it out to all of our GED students to remind them that we have a graduation coming up in June and to make sure you start getting in here to start taking GED tests.

'cause times will fill up. So we use it in a lot of different ways.

[00:32:57] Casey Loewenthal: That's great. Yeah. And with the texting too it grows organically. It it starts out, people stay on the list. If you find that sweet spot of not too much communication, not enough communication it flows. Every organization and user will want a different amount of communication.

But yeah, as you start to use it, the phone number gets recognized. They can, that doesn't change from your organization, that's your allotted phone number. So they can save. Thornhill Education Center as a contact. So any text they send, it pops up with a contact's name, not a random 10 digit number. So there's definitely some strategies for that.

But yeah, once you start texting, you don't really wanna stop. You want to keep that communication going. You wanna keep the phone number coming to them, whether that's twice a month, automatically, four times a month, whatever that kind of sweet spot is for your organization. Kay. Next to you. What is your kind of ongoing strategy and what do you guys have plans for the future?

[00:33:56] Kay Combs: I just picked up a, some information from Kami that I'm gonna use. But how we intend to utilize this in the future. One of the big assets for our app, the way we're using it, is the community resource. And we all know that there's these community resource pamphlets out there that schools keep, and then phone numbers need to be updated and a lot of.

Controversy. So in our community, we're going to be developing that part out where our community resources can actually be put on here. They update it themselves. They have their information if they need their contact. If you've gone through our app, you'll notice it. It goes to them directly. So if the family needs shelter, clothing transportation, et cetera these.

Initial needs and others, these resources can, they're just in time and they're available on the app for anybody who has this app in our community. So that's one of the big things that we'll be using it for. But I've realized I'm going to be building mine out and putting, because it's so easy to upload through Excel a, a spreadsheet with.

Names and phone numbers, all of our adult ed contacts. So there's a lot of things I've just realized we need to build out more, so thank you.

[00:35:15] Casey Loewenthal: Perfect. Ana, any other plans on the NCFL level for the future that you guys foresee?

[00:35:22] Anna Kaiper-Marquez: Yeah, beyond maybe, growing it across different sites especially once we.

Kind of gather some feedback from these pilot sites. I think that something that's really important to think about with this app is that, we all know that adult edu in adult education, persistence is an issue, right? So the retention of. Adults can be difficult. And one of the things that we always talk about with family literacy is that family literacy is a way to bring the community together to really increase learner empowerment create more community and that often leads to higher levels of persistence.

And I think that this app provides an easy way to do that. There's an easy way to connect. Learners with one another, learners with community members, staff with community members, so that it really does provide a larger community of support, which ultimately impacts persistence and retention, which then ultimately impacts measurable skill gains, right?

So there's definitely that piece of it that I think is really vital. And the other thing that I think has been interesting, i, but prior to this job, I was more on the evaluation side of adult and family literacy and gathering of data can always be really difficult, right? So there's, surveys and different, weekly activities that people need to do and attendance.

And this app, the way that Kay has used it and the way that we're starting to see it is really, we noted this before, but really a way to streamline some of that data collection. I think a way to merge that, that data collection with digital literacy skills. So while data is being collected to support evaluations, it's also leading to growth in digital literacy for staff and families.

So I think, that's why this has also been beneficial because it grows these. Other pieces that we know are important, but sometimes are siloed and brings them all together into this community of support under this technology.

[00:37:29] Casey Loewenthal: No, that's a good point. We didn't touch on any reporting today.

But that is a big aspect of our platform is there's the tools to do the communication, but on the backend, you need the data on your side to, to show that the communication was done with students. That you do have attendance at your job fairs or your orientations or any of those resources.

So we have a report tied to every aspect of our platform, and if there's ever. A specific metric that you need. If it's not in there, we'll find a way to, to track that for you with some sort of custom report. Yeah, no, all of that is great information. Here's some results that Anna threw up for both the usage of that the opt out rates for you guys is crazy.

If you think about a high open rate of an email is 20 to 30%, if you're doing a really good job 3% or I think. 0.5%. That probably means one person opted out of Cammies and I don't even think that we can fully count that was pro, we'll just throw that one out there. Basically 0%. But but no, they're doing a great job and the adoption of 3000 app page users is great.

And obviously they're hearing the feedback directly from them, so they're hearing it in other ways other than the reports which is huge as well. All right. That is gonna conclude kind of the discussion portion of this. We have contact information for Camana and Kay. If you're open to it, maybe people can reach out and ask you guys questions.

You're a wealth of knowledge in your areas way more than I can be. Thanks for being a resource there. If anyone does have questions, we'll stay on for a few minutes to answer any that you guys have directly with them now. And thank you everybody for joining us.

Any questions.

Looks like you guys answered all of them. Hit it right on the nail. Thank you all for your time, Kami, Anna Kay. Appreciate it very much. I'll reiterate it's a pleasure to work with all of you guys along the way. We've shared the kind words you've said with Fred and he only had good things to say back.

We appreciate all of that and appreciate all of your guys' time today. Thanks everybody.

[00:39:53] Kay Combs: Thank you.

[00:39:54] Anna Kaiper-Marquez: Thank you, Casey. Thank you everyone.

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