Tell us what you feel about the day
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Presentation on drive & blogger
Here are the slides from today. Lots of questions to follow up.. if your question isn’t in the presentation itself, please add your own question in the comments below.
Refurbished iPads
Suppose you want to buy an iPad, but you don’t want to pay a fortune for the latest and greatest.. what can you do? I’ve done a basic search for “Refurbished iPad in Melbourne“, and found that Apple themselves have specials on their website as low as $309 for an old model (which is still a lot of money, but less than $700, right?) Also, not sure who these people are, but they explain “Refurbished” quite well – “MacpricesAustralia“. Other than that, it could be worth asking at your local Read More …
Here are the slides on google apps in the classroom
Here are the slides we started with on the first day. Since then, we’ve been adding to these each time. This post was originally part of the ACEE Communities of Practice blog.
PageTurners has now launched series 7
Very exciting news – PRACE PageTurners has just launched its 7th series of books for adult learners, and we’re about to launch a new shopping-cart style website as well.. stay tuned! Some great stories in this collection, about a missing dog, a woman who crosses the world to realise her dreams, a mysterious car crash in the desert, and a drink machine that seems to have evil intentions.
Help – how can I upload files into the google drive space?
Teachers at PRACE need to store audio recordings from class in a shared online space. Lately we’ve been using google drive for this. Sometimes you can upload files directly from your iPad to the “Gdrive”. Other times you might save them to USB stick or a folder on your computer. Here’s a video showing how to upload from ordinary computer (windows), into the Gdrive space. Let us know in the comments below if this seems clear or helpful in any way (or not). It moves pretty fast, you may need Read More …
Sharing files from Quick Voice (..when the free version doesn’t let you share)
A few teachers at PRACE have been using the iPad app “Quick Voice” to record students talking. Unfortunately, the free version has a limit on the file size you can share via email (and also via google drive i think). We experimented a bit, and found that you can get around this by sharing the file 1) firstly share across to a different app known as “Voice Record Pro (VRP)” 2) and then you can “Share .. Open in” google drive. (This will only work if you have VRP installed Read More …
Chris Mooney talks about using the iPads with students
A while back, I asked Chris Mooney how she was experiencing the iPads in her English as a second language (ESL) classroom. She replied that so far, they have already been looking at YouTube videos and information texts, and it’s been fun. In future, Chris would like to find ways to: play interactive games on the overhead, get the group doing gap-fill (cloze) activities together, get into reading information texts as a group. You can hear the whole one-minute conversation here: What about you – what have you done with an iPad Read More …
Q&A session at Spring St Campus – many many questions!!
So, the session we had at Spring St was more chaotic than the one we had at Reservoir Neighbourhood House. Again, we started with brainstorming questions, but this time we dived straight into responding before the full list had built up. 06 May at Spring Street Airdrop – what is it and how does it work? Much of this session focussed on Airdrop, as many of you wanted to experiment and get hands-on with it. We tested out sending photos and documents from one iPad to another. How do we Read More …
Q&A session 3 – apps for English
A few teachers got together at Reservoir Neighbourhood House in May, to explore iPad apps for teaching and learning. This was the second session we had at the RNH. Apps worth looking at: Spell better, Dragon dictate, Google translate – lets you add words by handwriting, Park stories (Link??) Apps we’re not so sure about: A few apps got the vote of displeasure because of their hidden cost. There might be a free basic version, but if you want the full app, you could be looking at over $150 for 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 …
Skills you may need (blogging)
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 …