E-projects in 2010: ‘North West Cafe’ opens for business

Michael ChalkLeave a commentUncategorized

Just to give an idea of what happened last year, the following organisations participated: ACE NING North west Cafe Group Olympic Adult Education (OAE) Australian Vietnamese Women’s Association (AVWA) Carlton Neighbourhood Learning Centre (CNLC) Span Community House (in Thornbury) Yooralla (Flinders Lane, City of Melbourne) Thornbury Women’s Neighbourhood House (TWNH) Diamond Valley Learning Centre (DVLC) Participants explored a number of tools via the Victoria-wide web conferencing workshops that we conducted on: wiki for content management, Moodle course management, voice technologies and Flip video. We also arranged some site visits to Read More …

Music videos at the Reservoir Baptist Church

Michael ChalkLeave a commentUncategorized

I went down to the Reservoir Baptist Church, where Yvonne and Paula have been wrestling with the machinery.. to get it under control. Internet, printers, the data projector.. and extension cords!  I was hunting around for more musical sites and found this one: Lyrics Training which actually has cloze activities at multiple levels for some videos.  We hooted in the Merrilands teacher room because  the Chris Isaak video is so suggestive. Would this motivate your students, distract them or upset them?Here’s one that might be more suitable: ABBA plays “Money Money Money”. Plus Read More …

Easi-speak microphones at PRACE

Michael Chalk1 Commentace, adult literacy, community, e-learning

Somebody bought a set of 5 new Easi-speak recording gadgets for the teachers at PRACE. How exciting! Early in the term we showed them around the staff meeting, and soon after that i’m in the classroom with Chris and her beginning English as a second language (ESL) group. They’re on the computers working with the AMES “That’s Life” reading and listening software.. so only a few people are open to taking a break to try something new. But Chris is getting a good feel for how they work, and coming Read More …

New Easi Speak adds Journalistic Effect

Michael Chalk1 CommentUncategorized

Someone in the PRACE office bought a new set of the Easi-Speak microphones, before the new year. Well done, someone! (i think it was Jennifer. Champion.) These little gadgets are (reasonably) easy to use: the Red button to Record, and the Green button to Play. It’s a bit more complex than that, but each kit has a microphone, a set of instructions, a big A4 version of the most important bits in the instructions, and a cable to connect to the computer. Essentially, you need to know what the flashing Read More …

Motivation, an animation

Michael Chalk1 Commentprofessional development

Great adaptation of a talk by Daniel Pink on what motivates us. i watched this again last night.. and i love the way this group has added so much to the talk visually. According to this talk: The science is “a little bit freaky”. Recent research shows that while paying more money gets good results for physical labour and simple tasks, for cognitive and advanced tasks it can have the reverse effect. Much more important are things like: => autonomy: creative freedom and self-direction, => mastery: people love to feel Read More …

Great walls of fire

Michael ChalkLeave a commenttechnology

i’m currently working in a very large country north of Australia, which is renowned for having a “Great Firewall”. i should begin by acknowledging that this is a tremendous cultural experience, and i’m thoroughly overwhelmed by the sense of opportunity. However, sure enough there is no access to => facebook or twitter, => google docs, => anything on blogspot. (So Dale, if you were thinking of exporting your free ESL club to the good people of Szechuan.. think again. The international blog community only extends so far, ironically blocked by Read More …

e-mentors share their insights, aka "Who wants to be a mentor?"

Michael ChalkLeave a commentace, e-learning

This Friday morning (9am i think) at Converge10, the Victorian e-mentors and champions are presenting under the banner of “Who wants to be a mentor?” Here’s an audio presentation we’ve put together (using voicethread), with plenty of rich insights into the program, and into the whole process of integrating e-learning into program delivery. Great to see a lot of participation from people in the project. Currently in a dress rehearsal for the big day. This voicethread is an added resource, with the aim of adding to our live presentation.

Learning skills of the future

Michael ChalkLeave a commentprofessional development

Here’s an interesting video with a bunch of educators talking about how the future might work. Names i recognise include Daniel Pink and Greg Black (of education.au). i’ve taken some brief notes on what the educators are talking about, but haven’t really commented with my own response. Many people have been saying this kind of thing in recent years: Schools are like factories, following models of the industrial age; students have more enriched experience outside of schools than in; US schools rank lowest out of all industries surveyed for technology Read More …

Embed media in a wikispaces page

Michael ChalkLeave a commentace, how to

Jill and i were working with Ursula and Trish over at Thornbury Women’s Neighbourhood House the other day, showing them some new skills in wikispaces. So many Adult Community Education (ACE) educators are taking up the wikispaces toolset, especially given ACFE’s private domain label wikispaces for Victorian ACE providers. Afterwards i remembered that i had once made a couple of video screencasts for wikispaces. (Look for the full screen button if you need it, in the video controls). a) how to embed media (such as video) into your page

Take charge of your learning (a talk by Stephen Downes)

Michael Chalk2 Commentsprofessional development

Stephen Downes is full of good ideas. i’ve followed his thoughts for many years now. A Canadian education researcher, Stephen is an incredibly articulate and rigorous thinker who is definitely worth listening to, and i believe he listens to others really well too. In his first Huffington Post article, he gives an overview of the PLENK massive online course, and his perspective on connected and networked learning. (PLENK = Personal Learning Environments, Networks and Knowledge.) “That is not to advocate throwing learners off the bus to fend for themselves. It Read More …

Updates and work changes

Michael ChalkLeave a commentace, community, technology

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, Read More …

Writings Reclaimed

Michael ChalkLeave a commenttechnology

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 Read More …

Mark Hopkins’ story translated into many languages

Michael ChalkLeave a commentadult literacy

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

Adult Learners in Conversation – “A Fuller Sense of Self”

Michael ChalkLeave a commentace, adult literacy, community

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 Read More …

Reading between the Lines – SBS Insight focus on Adult Literacy

Michael ChalkLeave a commentadult literacy

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 Read More …

Dark Side of the Comment Section

Michael ChalkLeave a commentcommunity, technology

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 Read More …

PageTurners has a new online shop

Michael ChalkLeave a commentace, adult literacy, community

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.

iPad apps especially for Seniors??

Michael ChalkLeave a commentace, technology

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 Read More …

Some help files for blogger

Michael ChalkLeave a commenthow to

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 Read More …