Anne Dunn, Chris Malakar and Moira Hanrahan have done it again, produced a delightful collection of funny and engaging stories for beginning adult readers all around the world.

pageturners.prace.vic.edu.au

My personal favourite stories in the new series 4 are:

• Can you read this? – about a woman returning to learning,
• Tooth Fairy – about a woman in a retirement home who loves to be helpful, and
• Red Dog – a true story about a wandering dog in Western Australia.

The fun part for me is that i got to do the layout on one of the books this time, which means learning about scanning images for print (black and white not greyscale, i discovered after the first draft). Yes i got to publish Moira’s book about the Tooth Fairy, which is hilarious!

i’m also working on editing the website and the audio books, which will be up next week sometime. The style sheets on the website need some tweaking because it’s all a bit grey at the moment, whereas the books themselves are very lively and colourful.

i always forget how finicky and time-consuming the whole web development thing can be, when you’re editing CSS style sheets, PHP includes, Dreamweaver templates etc etc, and constantly uploading and re-uploading to try and get things exactly right. But the perfectionist in me loves that repetitious kind of thoroughness. i bet there’s a few mistakes in there still.

We also need a shopping cart of some kind, because it’s ridiculous asking people to print and fax PDF documents in this day and age! It’s the shopping cart that could be most challenging i think, although there are plenty of open source options around.

Anne’s keen to have a blog on the site for regular updates, so we’ve installed wordpress.. but haven’t published that section to the world  yet. And one of the books is now out of print, so we’re talking about making that an online multimedia / audio book instead.

Have you ordered your copies of PageTurners series 4 yet?

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Certificate of General Education for Adults (CGEA) level 3 is considered “foundation level training”, under the new regime.

However, Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) Intermediate is considered “Skills Creation”, and comes under a different set of funding criteria.

The fact that i’m struggling with here is that intermediate VCAL is based on CGEA level 3. In many respects they are the same.

If you already have a Certificate 2 in Anything, the Victorian government will fund your study of the CGEA 3.. but they will not fund you to study the VCAL intermediate. Apparently.

i’m confused.

i’m not alone in that.

i’ve heard that the briefing meetings are full of officials who say things like, “i’ll have to take that question on notice”, because even they can’t find their way around the morass of contradictory regulations.

—————————————-

The real catch with this new “demand-driven” policy framework is that the government will fund their demanding citizens to study only one course at any certificate level above “foundation” (ie above certificate 2). If you have done a certificate 2 in horticulture, you will not be funded to re-train in hospitality, unless you can start at certificate level 3.

Even if you can only get 2 days work gardening and you need to supplement with some evening bar work, and your gardening income is all going on the massive Melbourne rental rates, or you’re living in a boarding house where the operators are taking all your invalid pension and more.

One bite of the cherry.

No more life-long learning.

User pays. And pays. Or is left at the bottom of the heap.

—————————————-

For those who don’t already know, the Victorian adult education sector is grappling with a new funding regime. Adult Community and Further Education (ACFE) has been quartered (its funding reduced to 25%), and Adult Community Education (ACE) organisations must now go through “Skills Victoria” to fund their accredited programs (the ones that lead to official “competency-based” certificates recognised by official training boards).

For many years, ACFE has pushed the ACE sector toward accredited training, away from the non-accredited programs* – now known as “pre-accredited” training. Now they’re pushing the other way, because it’s the only kind of training they’re allowed to fund.

—————————————-

Good on the Victorian government for attempting to change the sector. Change can be really good when it’s informed by compassion, understanding and the need for balance. Maybe there is a need for change here:

• Maybe there are some unscrupulous education providers who take the money and don’t deliver. [They're in the minority.]
• Perhaps some Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutes smudge the funding a little, by packing classes so full that people withdraw, but still taking the money for all who enrolled.
• Perhaps some ACE providers need to think about expanding their funding options, and increasing their full-fee-paying loads.
• Perhaps some students keep studying for years without returning to work, because they’re lazy and incompetent. [Most are struggling with our "post-capitalistic" economy which is increasingly weighted against people with low-level education.]

However this set of changes is giving every impression of being a massively foul bungled operation, with rules that exist only inside the heads of whichever operative you ask at the time.

—————————————-

(*Non-accredited programs have traditionally been denigrated by economic hard-heads in blue suits as airy fairy macrame and water aerobics for middle class retired citizens.. however these pre-accredited programs are accurately recognised by community development workers and adult literacy and basic education (ALBE) teachers as vital to strengthening community cohesion and providing a means for disadvantaged and marginalised people to re-connect with community, employment options, as well as their own ability to learn.)

[These statements do not reflect the opinions of my employer or any of my colleagues. i wouldn’t want to suggest for a moment that the ACE sector is seething with rage.

In fact the Victorian ACE sector is well versed in responding to change and adversity with an extraordinary level of level-headed creativity and flexibility.

Some people have said that this could be a time of great opportunity for organisations prepared to be creative and flexible.

Okay fine the glass is half full.

But why is the glass locked in a glass cabinet?

..and who set the glass on fire?

Links:

• AceVic response to the initial reform proposals
• Skills Victoria, formerly known as OTFE or office of training and further education
• Adult Community and Further Education (ACFE)
• (ACFE is now part of the former Department of Victorian communities (DVC), currently known as Dept of Planning and community development (DPCD))
• The AQF is the Australian qualifications framework, from which we derive all the information about certificate levels: (a) direct link (b) on wikipedia
• Photo credits: (creative commons at flickr) Thanks:  photo credit: roberthuffstutter,  photo credit: Jeremy Brooks, photo credit: ?ellie?

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He wrote recently, in “Pedagogies for the Oppressed” about how the adult literacy learners in his classroom became interested in public affairs, during the Obama Hope campaign, and enthusiastically studied the stories of the US civil rights movement. However now that enthusiasm has faded and been replaced by a more familiar apathy or even cynicism.

In my experience, adult literacy learners often have a sense of helplessness in the face of public affairs (don’t we all!) This usually expresses itself in a lack of interest. It’s one of the ironies of modern democracy, that most people wind up feeling disempowered and apathetic.

What was amazing to me was the way Obama’s election stirred so much positive regard around the world, and yes the US civil rights movement became like a beacon of possibility.

It’s inspiring that Wendell’s learners were so interested at the time.

He’s right though, over time, unless people are actively involved in some local community action.. they’ll start to see that high-level politicking as out of their reach and irrelevant once again. Paulo Freire was very much about using literacy to get people actively involved in taking local action for change.

i’ve never found it easy to inspire learners into community action.

But back in the days when the “employability skills” were known as the General curriculum options (GCO) of the Certificate of General Education for Adults (CGEA).. learning activities based around community action could be matched to the certificates reasonably well. Community action could be relevant not only in people’s lives, but also to their accreditation and literacy learning processes.

i wonder if that’s still the case..

One thing i found inspiring about the ‘08 US campaign was the way that Obama’s people trained about 11,000 local community activists in the ways of taking action. So that the election win would not be just about change in Washington, but also enabling local change in communities across the nation.

(Or am i imagining that? i can find no reference to it among the anti-socialist bile washing through the US internet airwaves.)

You’re so right Wendell, pinning your hopes on a distant leader won’t wash in the long run.

People need to get active in their community to feel really empowered.

So, how do we make that happen..?

Links:

• Wendell’s Qualities Literacies Communities blogspot
• His post on “Pedagogies and the Oppressed“
• photo credit: JSmith Photo
• photo credit: JSmith Photo

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How many times do i have to learn the lesson: don’t use your portable USB drive as your only backup option, even if it does have over 300Gb of space on it. This is the 3rd time in 2 years i’ve had a USB portable drive collapse under the pressure of.. ordinary daily use.

Windows tells me there’s a “read/write error” and suddenly that 160Gb of precious data is unavailable. Corrupt. Vanished. Collections of software, videos, backup data from various work projects.. plus many articles relating to digital literacies and e-learning.

Aaaagh.

Boo.

Time to send the disk off to a data recovery shop?

Reminds me of a double-page spread once featured in the Age Green Guide, where 3 writers told of their dramas with backup, lessons learned, and the software apps they’d decided to trust with their weekly backup shifts. They all recommended apple mac time machine, from memory.

The 4th article said basically, “Don’t worry about it, you’re going to lose all your data at some point, stop hoarding information, and stop being so attached to it.”

After the fact, that 4th article was the most useful with its Zen, non-technical approach.

—————————————-

Post-script:

The other day my home windows machine refused to boot, so i loaded kubuntu Linux from a USB stick – which worked perfectly. Strangely enough, this operating system could see all the data on that portable USB drive that failed last year. The one that neither windows nor mac could read.

Hooray.

Recovery.

Thanks Ubuntu Linux!!

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Another chapter focusses on the global phenomenon that is e-Bay. i confess i know barely anything about e-bay. i am not an insider. The closest i’ve come to using it was in 2008 when the Reservoir literacy group went in to search for furniture, and one of the students tried to sell her hair extensions. That was an adventure!

In chapter 10, “Pay and Display – the digital literacies of online shoppers”,  Julia Davies examines the multiple literacies involved and talks about:

1. “insider-liness”,
2. identity work,
3. value construction, and
4. the multi-modal narratives of objects.

Davies states that authenticity of narrative and characterisation count a lot in e-Bay product descriptions, as sellers work toward making powerful texts. If you want to sell your goods, and maintain positive relationships (the reliability rating!) it’s crucial to have:

• a consistent tone,
• apparent honesty and
• a direct approach.

“Literacy is about more than accuracy” (spelling mistakes don’t really matter if you have the other elements, she implies). Being an insider is important for developing relationships and understanding the cultural values – the language of this place. Davies conducted group interviews with insiders for her research, and concluded that the values of e-Bay include: authenticity, trust, reputation and the notion of community.

There are social practices around the trading, which could be called “new literacies”. As literacy practices contain social aspects, their meanings are shaped by socio-cultural matters. Not only this, but ”texts are socio-cultural constructs”, and ”literacy is primarily something people do”.

Davies shows there are plenty of literacy skills required to participate (and provides a good and useful list, on p235).

Objects and Desires

This idea i found interesting, that: buying and selling is not only about the intrinsic value of the object, but also about “taking part in an unfolding dramatic narrative”. People purchase “the symbolic value of goods and involvement in narrative”, and material goods become semantically significant through their social history. By purchasing an item, you become part of the ongoing narrative.

Investigating the d/Discourses of the environment, Davies notes there are socially agreed “ways of being” – e-bay is a “specific discursive space, comprising multimodal discourses”: if you’re a “real eBayer” then you follow these discursive practices. This includes the importance of ratings and feedback.

discourse of Community

Community is claimed as a primary value by the marketers behind the corporation, it’s included in set of values where e-Bay addresses people as “you”, implying shared ownership. There are systems in place to support these values, eg discussion boards.

.

That’s all i’ve got for now on this chapter.

i wonder if it’ll help me next time i need to help a student sell their hair extensions.. ?

.

(PS: yes, Davies really gets into that academic distinction between discourse and Discourse, as set up by James Gee (?), where small d discourse is the language patterns and social practices, and Capital D Discourse is the entire social space and all the embodied literacies.)

.

photo credit: (creative commons at flickr) Thanks: danielbroche, and lciewf too.

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Microsoft word telling people, “You’re wrong!”

“Neighbourhood House” gets a big red wiggly line.

Which for literacy students is frustrating, and for an anti-imperialist language purist like me is infuriating.

How hard is it for a tech department to set the default language to Local, ie Australian English??! Why should the tech department have to do it anyway.. microsoft knows everything about us, and we’ve told windows exactly where in the world the computer lives.

How hard is it for Word and Publisher to get this information automatically from Windoze??

Very very hard, it seems.

So how much more frustrating when i discover the same issue on my own computer.. and realise that i can’t even blame the tech department! It’s me who manages the errors on this machine.

Oops.

Now i genuinely can’t work out how to tell microsoft Publisher to set the default as Australian English.

.

.

..and the other thing i hate (rant, rant, rant).. those green “grammar” lines. Some tech-head from microsoft telling our language and literacy students what good grammar is.

.

Grrr.

.

So how did your word processor irritate you today?

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So i’ve set up a form at google docs.. which inputs directly into the spreadsheet. We’ve embedded the form on the student wiki, and linked to it from all over the place.

Delightful!

Just a couple of problems..

1) Several students don’t realise they haven’t fully completed the form.. because the big red “You Haven’t Finished Yet” sign appears at the TOP of the form, a couple of scrolls up from where they submit. So all that feedback gets wasted.

Made a note near the “submit” button to let people know. Hope the language is accessible enough for English as a second language (ESL) learners.

2) Can’t seem to delete test responses from the hidden internal records that the google form is keeping in the background. Yes i’ve deleted test rows from the spreadsheet.. but they seem to stay in memory. Hmm.

Anyone have the answer to this one (2)?

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Recently Larry Ferlazzo reviewed a small program, “Take on the Teacher” ..it’s an interesting idea, with mixed results:

• => This one has a highly visual interface which is potentially engaging,
• => however it’s a strange characterisation of the teacher at the board (why pretend the visitor is challenging a teacher, when we are clearly taking on a computer program?)
• => and you’re right.. spelling programs need both audio and context (either visual or the classic “in a sentence”). Without context, words can have multiple meanings.. or be meaningless.

i was caught out on the word “baul”. i managed to select this word correctly as the incorrectly-spelled word.. but i was unsure if they wanted me to write “ball” or “bawl” as the correct version. Given that “tantrum” was in the list, i chose “bawl” (to cry loudly).

Wrong! Says the “teacher”. Surely a teacher would have more insight and flexibility than this machine script.

Dear reader, do you have any favourite screen-based spelling games? Applications that are less faulty than “take on the teacher”?

thanks and kind regards, michael

Links:

• Take on the Teacher Game, c/- someone in the UK (Scholastic? very hard to find their front page from this game)
• Larry Ferlazzo on “Learning Games“

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Well the organisation may be upgrading to windos7 and MS office ‘07.. but i’m jumping ship.

Migrate to “The Ribbon“? Send people “docx” files that word’03 can’t open? i say no. (Ironically Open Office can open these word 2007 files, even though microsoft office 2003 cannot.)

• For operating system, i’ll try Linux and apple.
• For an office suite, i’ll continue to learn Open Office and google docs. Open Office has a portable version i can run from the USB drive.

Every time microsoft upgrades, they try to make life easier for newbies, and end up making things more annoying and difficult for people who know what we’re doing.

This can be liberating however, as i’m compelled to find alternatives.

For example, when i upgraded to microsoft office ‘03, the program disabled all my macros and keyboard shortcuts. Yes the company promised an easy conversion but it just didn’t work. So i’ve ended up switching all my “auto-text” shortcuts to “AutoHotkey“.. which means i can now use them in any windows program, on any windows PC. i have gained much freedom and power as a result.

Next step: find a way to export the list cross-platform so i can use them on apple mac and linux as well. Open office runs on all platforms.. maybe there’s a way to export AutoHotkey scripts too.

My ideal situation is not to be tied to any one physical computer, or any particular operating system.

However, i’m sure in time i’ll have to use windows 7 at work. And i suppose i’ll get used to it. i’ll probably learn to enjoy it.

Eyes Roll.

photo credit: Jason DeRusha

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One of our major difficulties has been different versions of office software. Moreland Adult Education uses microsoft office 2007, while PRACE and Carlton NLC use 2003. On top of that, students at Carlton are primarily English as a second language (ESL).. with more urgent needs for simple and accessible language.

Great.

How do we build a shared resource when each organisation has such different needs? We decide to make or find screencasts for multiple versions of each skill set.

Then we find out – here at PRACE – that our tech department has decided to upgrade to microsoft office 2007 next year. Should have seen that coming, eh!! Now Soheir is caught between needing to make screencasts for her current students, and wanting to make resources that are useful into the future.

We’ve decided she’ll make the screencasts for office ‘07.. and we can use them to help staff make the adjustment too.

Okay good.

Then there’s the navigation issues.

On the student site, originally we had thought to organise by skill, and each page (eg how to print) could have multiple applications (eg word ‘03, word ‘07, Open Office etc). But people felt that students would get too confused. It’s hard enough for people just beginning to learn technology to navigate a web site.. we have to make it as simple as possible.

So now we’ve decided to organise the navigation by application.

Still on track, yes.. still getting things done (GTD).

Nervously looks at clock..

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Ha ha. Serves me right for not double-checking in multiple browsers. The screencast channel is working fine on firefox / linux, also in the Opera browser on windows xp.

Problem is with java in google chrome browser.

Duh. Now i feel silly.

On the plus side, now i’ve fixed java on my linux laptop.. that means i can make screencasts and join elluminate from that machine too. Cool.

Oh, and AJ from screencast-o was very rapid in supportive response. Thanks AJ.

—————————————-

So i had discovered something very distressing over at screencast-o-matic. Vanishing screencasts!! Here’s the feedback i sent them:

Here at Preston Reservoir Adult Community Education (PRACE), our teachers have been making screencasts for learners.. and we chose your service because it had much to offer, including

• option to export screencasts to local disk,
• very small file size,
• (relatively) easy-to-use recording controls.

1) But now i’ve found many of my screencasts appear to have been deleted or are missing, and the same with other teachers too. My channel has all 10 screencasts still listed, but they seem to not exist on the screencast-o-matic server.

2) One teacher has repeatedly found the “export” option doesn’t work. Does this mean she may have lost her screencasts? That’s a lot of project time and money down the drain if so. We’d be really distressed.

By the way, our learners are very high need.. and our teachers don’t cope so well with technological frustration either.

thanks and kind regards, michael

Is that too dramatic? Am i panicking too soon, over something that will sort itself out?

(Well that question answered itself – yes, panicking too soon!)

Links:

• For the flexivet project.
• My not really empty screencast channel.

PS: Here’s the message i got from their feedback form:

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So i’ve loaded up (k)ubuntu linux, and the system is running beautifully.

• The start menu is superior to anything windows has ever done (screenshots below).
• i can tweak the desktop appearance with my usual collection of favourite images.
• i can easily assign keyboard shortcuts to various operations.
• Installing new software is far easier than on a windows machine, mostly – because of the inbuilt “download and install” program.
• Flash and java work effortlessly in either web browser (native konqueror or mozilla firefox)..
  (correction: after some effort, Java is now working).
• and the laptop is now permitted to send a signal out to the external projector.

Plus if i really need to, there’s a way to run windows applications. For the moment, i’ve found several mind-mapping apps that also run on Linux.

Sweet.

Here’s a couple of screengrabs of the brilliant Linux (KDE) “start menu”.. with apps neatly and automatically organised into categories. All right, i used the built in menu editor to create a new mind-map category. (images link to larger version.)

Plus: this post entirely written and edited in the new ubuntu system.. including screengrabs and image editing.

Postscript: Well that was a real “fan boy” post wasn’t it: i left out the negative side. Largely because i was so happy to finally work with a useful “start menu”.. and because the laptop would put out to a projector easily enough.

Problems?

• Java install needed problem-solving.
• Occasional screen glitches.
• Yes programs do sometimes freeze inexplicably, just like in windows.

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Things i do like about windos7

• Windos “Explorer” (file manager) has a new keyboard shortcut for navigating up the file structure (about time);
• overall the “my computer” experience is greatly improved with breadcrumbs in the title bar (you can search deep inside folders you’ve just visited);
• the whole thing is more aesthetic.. some of the themes are almost attractive (i don’t believe it!);
• windos volume control finally gets some attention, with a “mixer” (but you still have to guess where the microphone controls might be hidden);
• you can turn down system sounds in the volume mixer;
• i can still run my favourite dual-pane file manager – Xplorer2;
• the start menu has a new “find” option that responds (slowly) to the letters you key in.

Things i don’t like about windos7

• Themes: when you change theme, the system sounds get turned back on – i hate system sounds;
• resource hog: running very few apps, but the whole thing is dragging badly.. 60% CPU usage for the browser and the file manager (compared with xp.. annoying because everyone promised it runs well, compared to vista i guess);
• i can’t find drivers for the hardware, so this laptop will not push out to a projector anymore, and my trackball mouse is weaker than i’d like;
• can’t manually adjust the start menu any more.. no more adding application categories (eg audio, video etc) – (see image for explanation).

Anyway.. back to work.

Maybe i’ll try Ubuntu Linux instead.

• Have you tried windos7 yet?
• How do you feel about the endless upgrade cycle?
• Are we getting genuine improvements?

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