The Adult Literacy and Numeracy Network  continues to be supported by the Department of Training and Workforce Development (DTWD) with the task of fostering collaboration and professional learning between adult educators in Western Australia.

Network facilitation

Jo Hart will offer support to the online functions of the ALaN Network including acting as editor for this Edublog ALaN WA. Her expertise in online learning will continue to offer us access to new ways to collaborate as professionals and to use these tools with our students.

Claire Willis takes over from Dani Murray as membership manager, offering assistance to practitioners to gain and maintain access to our members only facilities and to make the best use of them.

CAVSS Leaders Projects

A new initiative this year will be the development of a CAVSS Leaders Network. C. Y. O’Connor Institute of Technology and Durack Institute of Technology have offered to start us off with some products to share with the objective of creating much wider understanding of the CAVSS model across organisations and how to make it work.

Adult numeracy projects

The new adult numeracy projects build on the great start we made in 2013 and early 2014.

Phil Hart will maintain the Edublog What’s in a number?  that resulted from our 2013 round of projects. This provides us with a dedicated numeracy and mathematics space to share teaching and learning ideas online as well as access the great work done over the last two years.

Beth Marr will continue her work in offering a range of professional learning options that develops teacher skills related to using collaborative learning in the context of teaching adults numeracy. This will include:

• A repeat of the three block series piloted in 2014 Collaborative Numeracy
• A two day workshop for those unable to commit to a longer course see item 2
• creation of videos and a PD leaders guide based on the pilot workshop and designed for in house use by RTOs
• working with Centacare Employment and Training staff to develop an adaptation of collaborative activities to support numeracy development for low level ESL students.
• Delivering an initial Practical Strategies workshop in  Geraldton (co-funded by Durack Institute of Technology will partially fund  for their teachers to avoid the cost of sending teachers to Perth).

Other projects

Gerard Laumen from Challenger Institute of Technology will share his experiences in using free Google applications with students building literacy by creating a Google Circle focused on this topic.

Watch the newsletter and the Google Group for more information on all these projects in the next few months.

Cheryl Wiltshire
ALaN Network Coordinator