So, it’s clearly been years since i’ve posted in this place. There’s been a whole lot going on in the meantime, including pandemic etc. Since 2017, my teaching has focussed mainly on technology aka “digital literacy” within adult community education (ACE), and i haven’t done much in the way of language and literacy teaching at all. I’ve been working as a “learning facilitator” aka Tour Guide at the Polly Woodside Museum, with the National Trust. For those who didn’t grow up in Melbourne, Polly Woodside is an old sailing ship, restored to its original state back in the 1970s. (Photo shows me in my “pretend sailor” costume.) As well as taking on some kinds of creative performance such as roller skating choreography (and studying Ad.Dip Music at melbnPoly Fairfield), I’m still teaching basic intro to technology at Carlton Neighbourhood Learning Centre (CNLC) and North Carlton Railway Neighbourhood House. The classes at “Railway House” have been interesting, because we’ve run them on a “BYOD” basis, ie bring your own device. This has meant changing the way i teach quite significantly. How do you teach technology in a kind of “generic” way? In some ways it can be great, because it is important to focus on the ideas that underpin the technology, the broad brush of skills that might be needed to begin learning a piece of software, and the problem-solving skills people need when they’re learning on the go. Hm, maybe i could write more about that in the months ahead. […]

I decided to bring posts to this blog from other projects, such as: Digital Learning at PRACE Digital Learning at Lalor Living and Learning ACFE Learn Local Communities of Practice the North-West e-mentor projects from ACFE Learn Local iPad for Seniors at PRACE the 23 Things project from ACFE, CAE and PRACE.   Having written nearly all the text in those places, i wanted gather it all together. It was relatively easy to export from Blogger, and then import into WordPress here. Unfortunately, now i’ve discovered several roadblocks, namely: the embedded multimedia doesn’t always import very well (actually not at all) several of the posts from the NW e-mentor projects were actually written by my very wonderful colleagues Jill Koppel and Ann Hardingham categories and tags get quite messy. Essentially this means i’ve given myself a lot more work to tidy up all that now. Ah well, this will make me focus and upgrade in the next little while. If you notice any weird things, please add a comment or tweet at me. […]

You remember Mark Hopkins, the adult learner from PRACE who told his story so well, not only in our publication, but also on the SBS Insight tv program last year? Well, some of the stories from this Resilience collection have been translated into other languages for the EPALE* site, and the first story to be translated was Mark’s. *EPALE: Electronic Platform for Adult Learning in Europe. https://goo.gl/XqROOX […]

Last night Tricia Bowen spoke about her experience of reconnecting with the adult learners who have shared their stories in this volume. I talked about how great it was to join with Tricia and Lynne in the whole creative and collaborative process of editing. Then Lynne Matheson invited us to launch the video into the world, so we all made rocket-launching sounds, and the champagne flowed. * It was such a good experience filming and editing these stories with Tricia. I would love to hear any feedback, especially related to the video or the editing. Watch and enjoy. The back story: Lynne Matheson at VALBEC asked Tricia if she would be interested to follow up the conversations from her 2011 publication, “A Fuller Sense of Self“. Tricia managed to track down some of the students, and then i was invited to document the conversation. Videos here: goo.gl/CKDOMz More information on the VALBEC site: valbec.org.au/A-Fuller-Sense-of-Self #AFullerSenseOfSelf #5YearsOn #adultLiteracy * at the VALBEC Forum for Adult Learners Week. The official blurb: “A Fuller Sense of Self – a collection of stories told by adult literacy students” was published by VALBEC in 2011. These students shared their thoughts about returning to study to develop their literacy skills. They described why they made that move and how that decision shaped and changed their lives for the better. “Five years on we decided to revisit these students and their stories, to find out where they are now and to discover if and how learning continues to influence their life journey. We tracked down three of our original storytellers. Linda, a student from the Glenroy Neighbourhood Learning Centre, and David and Sue, both students from Southern Grampians Adult Education based in Hamilton in Western Victoria. This time our storytellers kindly and courageously shared their thoughts on camera. VALBEC launched the video stories on 06 September for ALW. More information at valbec.org.au/A-Fuller-Sense-of-Self Music credits, thank you for “Running Waters” by Jason Shaw at FreeMusicArchive.org, Licensed Creative Commons CC-BY. ALW: Adult Learners’ Week. VALBEC: The Victorian Adult Literacy and Basic Education Council. […]

If you think Australia is a highly literate nation, watch this recent episode of Insight from SBS. This powerful and moving episode features Mark Hopkins one of the students from PRACE. I spoke with Mark as part of the “Stories of Resilience” project, and it’s really heartening to hear his voice in this national forum. All these adult learners show real courage and vulnerability, as they describe their experience for people who have no idea of the extent of this hidden problem. Over 40% of Australians experience some level of difficulty with everyday literacy tasks – find out what that’s like. #adultLiteracy #insightSBS […]

If you’re involved with any kind of online facilitation, you may appreciate this article from The Guardian. They’ve done some research into the comment section, finding that much more abuse is directed at female writers than male. (Also, for web designers, some really good layout effects, especially the way they’ve integrated the graphs and the “how would you moderate this comment” bits.) There’s a whole series around this research, articles interviewing people who have experienced the maelstrom of massive online shaming and bullying.. and articles on ideas for making things better: “The Web We Want” via the Guardian. […]

Here’s a copy of the printed materials we handed out during the course. It’s a pdf file that should hopefully open on your iPad. Link here:   This post was originally on the site “iPad for Seniors” at PRACE. […]

Just sent out the latest PageTurners newsletter, letting people know that the new shopping-cart style website is up and running!! It’s taken me much time this year to get the site all updated and e-commercey, so i’m very happy that we’ve finally launched. Woot. You can read the newsletter here. Take a look at the site, tell us what you think. Oh, we need a feedback form don’t we. If you’re not subscribed to the PageTurners email list, you can join via the website. […]

I wondered if there are any iPad apps that would be especially useful for people over 55, so i searched the web for  “best apps for ipad for seniors“. Sure enough, there are many many lists: “16 helpful apps for seniors”, “27 bet iPad and iPhone apps for senior citizens”. But are any of them useful.. and how many of these apps are FREE..? Well, some of them are designed to help people by improving things like: Visual accessibility: Silver Surf is a web browser with “large navigation buttons, dynamic text zoom, high contrast viewing”. Your brain fitness: Lumosity is an app for keeping your brain fit and healthy.  Save you typing: Dragon Dictate takes your spoken words and turns them into written text. Might not be much help if English isn’t your native language however.  Other apps: Visual access: Eye Reader lets you use your iPad as a magnifying glass for reading magazines & newspapers. Seems a bit over the top to me.. just get an actual magnifying glass! Oh, plus it’s not free, although the review i read said it was free. Reading: one collection recommended iBooks, perhaps because the app lets you zoom in close on text, and increase font size. This app comes on your iPad when it’s new (?) Other lists: There are so many of these lists around. Assisted living has a fairly typical list to look at.  photo: iPad Reader Flickr – Jens Schott Knudsen – cc-by-nc. […]

Here’s a basic intro that Michael made – for low level students really (link: pdf stored in google drive). GCF LearnFree don’t have an intro to blogger, but they do have a great section talking about blogs in general, and an intro to Tumblr instead. Tumblr is much more visual than blogger, which can be text-heavy. Google themselves have a fairly decent help section. Grovo has a few videos showing the basics, including this overview. But they’re a commercial mob, and they’ll want you to pay for more. What good resources have you found so far? […]