Well, all the enthusiasm around new gadgets for recording, documenting and sharing experiences at the recent ACE e-mentor day (plus a recent stimulus package from KRudd).. made me let down my guard and purchase the Medion graphics tablet from Aldi supermarket on my day off. (Apparently it’s a
Amazing work from the network of Victorian ACE e-mentors. Each (ACE) region across Victoria has one (or 2) mentors to support teachers and organisations learning to develop their plans for e-learning at strategy and classroom levels. On Friday there were demonstrations of “all things google” – how to chat with gmail, how to synch your google calendar, use the reader for following student blog feeds .. set up groups and sites, use the gmail app for your domain. (Coach Carole, Michael Gwyther, Sarah Phillips) .. and a session on gadgets Read More …
Over at PRACE we’re setting up flexible delivery for ICT (information technology) and VET (vocational education & training). (Wrote about this before here, in an attempt to find someone who had the answer already.) But who wants to invent the wheel.. we want to use existing learning materials. Where do we start? So i compiled a big list of places to start searching for learning materials, including: Tied firmly to training packages, the Flexible learning toolboxes, from the Australian Flexible Learning Framework .. or the flexible learning toolbox “repository” (where Read More …
Inspiring adventures from Dale Pobega of Duke St community centre in Sunshine Victoria, who has recently started using blogger to engage and educate his English as a second language (ESL) students. Great to see Dale using the tremendous resource “Online Banking“. This resource came out of Olympic Adult Education about 6 years ago, and remains one of the best online resources for adult numeracy. There’s a few broken elements on the site (eg the bulletin board no longer exists, and the sim bank doesn’t work).. but much of it works Read More …
Imagine my delight when Jane the wonderful VCAL co-ordinator at Preston Reservoir Adult Community Education (PRACE) said she wanted to try out flickr for building a slideshow on our website!! 1) Jane had already chosen the photos to go online, and copied them into a folder on her desktop. We used a free image editor called XNview to re-size and optimise for the web. XNview is great because you can do the whole folder in one “batch process”. .. (More details about xnview over on my wiki page .. including Read More …
Ann H, one of the amazing ACE e-learning practitioners on the research circles adventure, wrote that she had had some progress with blogs and wikis in her classroom. But the learners weren’t so happy with the look of a wiki, they wanted something more like a print-style magazine. A couple of ideas emerged for someone wanting the “look and feel” of a magazine. 1) the visual book (“MyEbook“)that Dale looked at a few weeks back 2) a site called Issuu gets good reviews: example showing optical illusions. (That second review Read More …
i admit, when i was teaching adult literacy last year, sometimes project work was too much work, and we resorted to literacy worksheets. People responded well, because they felt it matched their needs for less complex, more focussed activities. So i relied on a few websites to do the production for me. i’d take the current theme’s vocabulary list, and build up a collection of worksheets. Students can then choose which ones to do. Here are the main sites i would use: Worksheet Genius – on this site you can Read More …
The comical folk at current.com have done another twitter satire. It’s funny. Disclaimer: i admit, i have been following some celebrities. Yes i am a twit. (aka miczl) My big issue with Twitter is this: Get A Room. .. if you’re having a private conversation, get off the public airways. Use Skype or messenger. Have a proper conversation. Stop leaving notes in the middle of the road for everyone else to trip over. But that is not how twitter works, so i will just get off my high horse right Read More …
Part of the new PRACE flexible delivery project is about showing information technology teachers how to set up a screencast in their classroom. Because there are a few different products on offer, i thought it would be useful to trial some of them up front. Last year, we looked at Jing, as Lisa from Moreland showed her MYOB students some new skills. (Part 1, part 2.) This time around, the buzz is on Screencastle. Recording is straightforward and fast. You set the size of your screen grab and go. It’s Read More …
Via Rose on the innovations blog (gone now), found this video (below) showcasing stories from the 2008 e-learning innovations projects. People talking about different tools, such as wikis, web conferencing, scenario based learning, blended learning, using a virtual classroom for companionship and classroom buddies. These are many people i worked with as part of the Flexible Learning Framework’s Community Engagement projects. Snapshots and Stories: 2008 E-learning Innovations Projects from E-learning Innovations on Vimeo. All sorts of good stories, including these: Georgina Nou on how they recreated the Alice Springs Telegraph Read More …
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 …
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 Read More …
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 …
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 …
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 Read More …
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 …
What are the the basics of blogging? make new blog, with title & web address (URL) hopefully at a time when google is not policing your IP address make new post add & format text add images make links save draft / publish get people interested in reading your blog post knowledge you may need Ideas for engaging learners with online activities. Ideas for adapting your already brilliant teaching and learning knowledge into online spaces. On writing for the web keep it as visual as possible make your text very Read More …
