Great to see this guy from an English school in France interviewing people on the street, and then adding captions to the video. This one is part of a series focussing on homeless people, on the beach in Miami. Interesting to compare the two women’s opinions here. Here’s the first in the series, with interviews of Santa Claus, whose residence is South Miami Beach. From (Real English MPG.)
Adult learners are starting to get into Self-Publishing (aka blogging). and Barbara Dieu, a Brazilian educator, has set up an Exchange for ESL students around the world. With two colleagues, she has found a way to gather and re-publish the writings of students who have blog journals in their ESL classes. (This re-publishing is known as ‘aggregation’.) The site is called Dakita (i don’t know why), and the collection of student writings you’ll find in The Orchard (or The Exchange). Worth a look, especially if you’re thinking of using blogs Read More …
Now if you know me, you’ll know that i am a keyboard junkie, my fingers can fly across the dvorak keyboard, and if i have to use a mouse, give me a trackball anyday. However when teaching people in the community to use standard Qwerty keyboard and mouse, i wish the future would get here faster. I know there are ‘tablet pc’s for people who can afford them (ie not ACE), but what i’m really wanting is something more like what Jeff Han demonstrated last year .. the multi-touch visual Read More …
Here’s a reference guide for any students in Adult Literacy classrooms – how to navigate your way through buying a computer, a “plain English resource”. The site is based in the US, so no local shops for Australians, but it could be a good place to start for groups considering a similar activity. The group was given a task to find the best value computer for under $1000. Certainly seems a good idea for a classroom activity.
The Australian Flexible Learning Framework has put out their monthly “Flex e-news” for February, and there’s plenty going on. This time of year, details about available project funds, but also interviews. Have a listen to Alex Hayes interviewing Jo Kaye. Alex and Jo worked with the NSW Learnscope teams last year.
I’ve been thinking about this: How do people use web-based resources in their classroom? I’m sure the answer is “plenty of different ways”, eg.: Blended Learning: group activities involving discussion around a theme or text, followed up by a link to a web site. Blended Learning: in a face-to-face class, use a digital projector to engage a whole group with web-based learning activities … Ask learners to search for resources and share links (either in a face-to-face group, or in an online course). Provide links in a self-access, or independent Read More …
Over at Preston Reservoir ACE, we’re slowly setting up an intranet. Anyone on the site can set up their own “blog” (diary, or journal). This could be useful for reflective learning in the classroom: teachers could encourage students to post thoughts on their own learning progress. There’s so much going on in the world of learning- with- technology, that it would be great to involve the wonderful teachers at PRACE even more. I’m hoping this place will help us share our knowledge more effectively. We’re using moodle, the popular, open Read More …
Wow! Take a look at this collection of flash writing tools from Read Write Think dot org i’ve only tried the “Bio-Cube” so far, but was impressed when the printout revealed an actual cube that the student can cut and glue into the shape of a cube.
Looking back at all the feedback we’ve had from the Beach site, one of my least favourite comments was this one: “There are some very good points in this website but as a teacher I have been told that I cannot use terms such as ‘Christian name’ and ‘Surname’ because it is offensive to some. Therefore I would like to see the offensive racist comment ‘When Europeans first invaded Australia’ removed from your web site. I am sure your point could be made just as simply by stating ‘When Europenas Read More …
When spammers attacked our “English at the Beach” website, on both the Guestbooks and the Feedback Survey pages, we were experiencing the “New Chicago-style Web”. “We used to call the Internet a sort of Wild West. Now it’s more like Chicago in the 1920s with Al Capone,” says Prolexic President Keith Laslop. Writing up my research on the web usage server logs, i needed a definition of ‘botnet’. While searching, i came across an intriguing article in Wired late last year, which outlines an attack on Six Apart’s Type Pad Read More …
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 …
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 …