Conferencing from the State Library
The other week
Adventure trail in the North West of Melbourne
There’s some amazing work happening in the
a story of help desking via skype
Christine rang me on the phone, “michael i’ve done something to the (PRACE) web site.” She went on to describe how she’d lost her work and one of the pages had somehow reverted to an earlier version with last year’s brochure. i have to admit i’m terrible at providing help desk assistance over the phone. i really need the visuals, because often i can’t make sense of the way people describe their screen. Maybe it’s my weak listening skills.. maybe it’s because people leave out important details. I think that Read More …
Spell with flickr
Spell with flickr is one of my favourite sites ever. You can make a word using images taken from the flickr photo site. eg, what on earth is the: Notes: 1) there’s no mention of copyright, if you really want to be sure, you’ll need to check every letter, eg the question mark is fine, it has creative commons license.. which really means we should have the author’s name as well as the link. Ah i shouldn’t have raised that issue should i? 2) the images all come from the Read More …
How to embed documents in your blog (eg blogger)
Several people on the CAE 23 Things project wanted to know how to embed documents in their blog. There are a few ways. (edublogs allows you to upload documents, but i’m not sure that blogger does. And David made the point that if he’s uploading all the time, he’ll use his storage quota in no time.) The trick is to use an external service, eg Slideshare, iScribd, youtube, docstocs, yudu or google docs (your choice could depend on the kind of document). sign up to another web service (eg scribd, Read More …
How to embed documents in your blog (eg blogger)
Several people on the CAE 23 Things project wanted to know how to embed documents in their blog. There are a few ways. (edublogs allows you to upload documents, but i’m not sure that blogger does. And David made the point that if he’s uploading all the time, he’ll use his storage quota in no time.) The trick is to use an external service, eg Slideshare, iScribd, youtube, docstocs, yudu or google docs (your choice could depend on the kind of document). sign up to another web service (eg scribd, Read More …
Top 3 operating systems – comparing sound & video over a network
Win, Lin and Mac: It’s true that Windows (TM, microsoft corp) occupies nearly all the computers in the known world, but there are other operating systems, and it’s been my side project over the last few years to find out more about all of them. Thanks to the iPod and the iPhone, Apple mac has bounced back from the lean years to become a major player; everyone knows about apple these days. Their reputation says they care about beauty, elegance and simplicity in their design. The iPod comes with no Read More …
23 Things starts up again
Exciting news.. Ann at the college of advanced education (CAE) is bringing some of her Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) teachers along to learn about web2 via the 23 Things course. (The Victorian ACE version of it.) Here we are at the CAE in the heart of Melbourne’s central business district (CBD), with Ann, David, Fiona, Gillian, Eileen and Parama. Most people are choosing blogger to set up their reflective journals, except David who’s investigating edublogs for the first time. The idea of a public reflective journal is central to Read More …
23 Things starts up again
Exciting news.. Ann at the college of advanced education (CAE) is bringing some of her Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) teachers along to learn about web2 via the 23 Things course. (The Victorian ACE version of it.) Here we are at the CAE
PageTurners, series 4 out now!
Very exciting news! PageTurners series 4 has arrived. 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 Read More …
Updates and work changes
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
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
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”
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
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
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 …
Help Files for the iPad
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.
PageTurners has a new online shop
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??
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
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 …