Digital literacy for “offline” students – Part 1

Worried about how to incorporate digital literacy in your literacy course if your students have no, or limited, Internet access? There are downloadable tools that you can use to help you with this. Most need to be installed on the computers your students use although some may be run from a USB memory stick or a CD/DVD. This article focuses on PowerPoint as a tool for creating digital texts.

The maths resource “Language of shape” on this blog page, was developed in PowerPoint. It is a digital text containing internal hyperlinks and audio so that it has a degree of interactivity. The links below connect to short “how to” tutorials on creating different interactive texts using PowerPoint:

Some ideas for student tasks that create digital texts using PowerPoint advanced features.

Wordle ideas for Ppt projects

There are a number of other tools that may be used to create digital texts without being connected to the Internet, however PowerPoint is probably the most easily available in most teaching contexts.

Jo Hart

ALaN WA Newsletter – April 2014

Welcome to edition 12 of the Adult Literacy and Numeracy Network of Western Australia Newsletter!

Views expressed by contributors to the newsletter are their own and, unless expressly stated, do not reflect the opinions of their employers/organisations.

This contents page links individually to each article enabling you to go immediately to those of your choice. Alternatively, if you go to the main blog link, you can access the articles by scrolling down the page.

We welcome your comments and contributions to our newsletter. If you are an Adult Literacy/Numeracy practitioner in Western Australia or indeed, anywhere in the world, we invite you to subscribe and comment. If you are interested in joining the GoogleGroup for our network, please visit our “How to join” page and complete the online form.

Contents

1. ThingLink! Linking to content from images

A neat online tool for using images with links to further information

2. New time for the WAALC conference

WAALC is piloting a new time of year for the WAALC conference

3. Excellence in Language, Literacy and Numeracy Practice Award

A national focus award in the Australian National Training Awards

4. WA curriculum update April 2014

Re-accreditation activities

5. PD coming up/continuing

PD available through the network and beyond

6. Some conferences this year

Update on conference information for 2014

ThingLink – a different way to share!

In one of our regular webinars a couple of weeks ago someone mentioned “ThingLink”. Over the follwing weekend I spent a bit of time exploring this tool.

ThingLink is described as a tool that helps you share content using images. The idea is to use an image and to add “tags” which link to content. The tool has been developed so that you can add many different types of content link including audio, video, webpages and polls.

Here are a three different ones that I have created – these are fairly simple and just link directly to content relevant to the spot in the image where the tag is positioned. The images can be easily embedded in websites and blogs. If you don’t see the links on the images immediately then move your mouse onto the image, you should then be able to checkout the content links.

The scene from Gooseberry Hill

 

  A “Toon” for introducing e-pedagogy


Free E-tools for teaching and learning

For me this has immense possibilities for use in literacy/numeracy contexts. Here is just a very quick “off the top of my head” list of some of the possible uses:

Students making their own “ThingLinks” to evidence their own understanding and research eg in “Current Issues”

  • Students developing their own audio, visual or written explanations of maths concepts and linking to them via tags
  • Students making ToonDoos eg related to Internet safety and linking to the source of their information
  • Students collecting a series of images recording project progress with tags linking to videos of different project activities and/or other project documentation
  • Language of shapes with links to audio files and or text glossary items.
  • Maths concepts with links to practical applications of the concepts in the real world
  • Managing student web access in exploring a topic to ensure that the sites they visit are of suitable quality
  • Writing prompt images with related information links as tags in the image

One of the reasons that I liked this tool straight away is that basic use is very quick and easy to learn. So it makes a great addition to the repertoire of quick and easy to learn tools that can be used by students while also having potential for developing engaging learning resources.

If you explore and try this one out please let us know by commenting on this post – we would love to know how you use it and what you and your students think of it!

Jo Hart (April 2014)

ALaN WA Newsletter – February 2014

Welcome to edition 11 of the Adult Literacy and Numeracy Network of Western Australia Newsletter!

Views expressed by contributors to the newsletter are their own and, unless expressly stated, do not reflect the opinions of their employers/organisations.

This contents page links individually to each article enabling you to go immediately to those of your choice. Alternatively, if you go to the main blog link, you can access the articles by scrolling down the page.

We welcome your comments and contributions to our newsletter. If you are an Adult Literacy/Numeracy practitioner in Western Australia or indeed, anywhere in the world, we invite you to subscribe and comment. If you are interested in joining the GoogleGroup for our network, please visit our “How to join” page and complete the online form.

Contents

1. Supporting effective delivery of foundation skills to Indigenous, remote and disadvantaged learners

Input sought for a National VET E-Learning Strategy foundation skills project

2. Slideshare for sharing on the web

Using Slideshare can make resources more accessible.

3. WA curriculum update Feb 2014

Re-accreditation activities

4. PD coming up/continuing

PD available through the network and beyond

5. Some conferences this year

Update on conference information for 2014

Supporting effective delivery of foundation skills to Indigenous, remote and disadvantaged learners

We are looking for input from foundation skills (LLN and Employability Skills) practitioners into the “Technology Innovations Applied Research Project” that CY O’Connor Institute is currently undertaking (funded through the National Vocational E-Learning Strategy (NVELS)).

The project focus is on building the e-capability of the VET workforce to identify and address the foundation skills needs of disadvantaged learners.

Natures window distance

One of the main outputs from the project will be a “toolkit” for foundation skills teachers working with the identified learner groups that will provide them with:

  • A framework of e-pedagogy outlining the key principles for teaching foundation skills to disadvantaged learners in VET
  • Advice on the use of selected media and technological applications for foundation skills training for disadvantaged learners
  • Good practice examples of the use of e-learning technologies for the development of foundation skills for the identified equity groups
  • Case studies of ‘e-mbedding’ foundation skills in vocational training for the identified equity groups
  • E-teaching strategies that will enable foundation skills teachers to ‘deliberately’ introduce and teach the literacies, numeracies and foundation skills that are taken for granted within the vocational course.

We are seeking examples and ideas from foundation skills (LLN/Employability Skills) practitioners to help us create a useful resource for others. So please, please share if you use/have used any e-tools and strategies with your students.

We are looking particularly for:

  • case studies of how you/your students have used technology to support LLN/Employability Skills development, in a vocational or general education context;
  • information about any media/technology/apps you have trialled/used and how successful these were (especially if you had any bandwidth – speed – issues)
  • any strategies you have used to introduce vocationally specific foundation skills to students

Please add a comment here on the post or visit the Google group and comment on the post there so that we can contact you for more information. It is so important that we have input from as many people as possible so that we can create a terrific toolkit!

Sharon Ross, Lina Zampichelli, Jo Hart (CY O’Connor Institute)

Slideshare – sharing on the web!

Slideshare is one of my favourite tools for sharing the slides from any PD sessions that I deliver. If you have been to any of my BlackboardCollaborate or face-to-face sessions for the ALaN network it is quite likely that I have shared my slides via Slideshare. I have found it a really useful and easy to use tool for both me and my students. I use it mainly to share presentations and resources created in Powerpoint (.ppt and .pptx) so that students and others accessing the content are not required to have Microsoft Office in order to open the resource. My students who have used it have used it for sharing their own presentations and stories – again they don’t need to have Powerpoint, presentations made in OpenOffice Presentation Document (.odp) can be uploaded as can .pdf and other documents.

This short screencast gives the steps for signing up to Slideshare. Once you have signed up you are directly in an upload screen. However you will get an email with a link for you to click to confirm your membership. Remember to click this or your account will disappear!

The embedded Slideshare below will show you how to upload and embed a Slideshare in a blog or other website, however you can also easily just share the link.

If you already use Slideshare please add a comment about how you use it. If you are encouraged by this post to try it yourself and/or to use it with your students, then again please post a comment to share your ideas and feedback.

Where do you get these sites from?

This post will be cross-posted to my personal blog so apologies if you have seen it twice.

Introduction

This question was posed in response to a recent post by Phil on the ALaN GoogleGroup – Phil shared a site called Visuwords, a visual dictionary that gives a visual representaion of associations between words. Phil’s answer was that he gets many of these kinds of links via his Personal (Professional) Learning Network (PLN).

Like Phil I have an extensive, global PLN – mine is in excess of 4,000 educators globally with fewer than 20% of these in Australia and less than 10% in WA. I find this network invaluable in helping me to stay up to date and innovative in my teaching and learning. The inevitable next questions are of course “What is a PLN, how do I get one, and what are the benefits?”

A PLN is …

A PLN is a network of people often, but not always, with similar interests to your own. We all have a PLN of some sort even if it is just the network of colleagues we meet through our daily work. However the most useful and effective PLN is one which extends outside our own day to day physical environment, outside our own specialist teaching area and outside our particular educational sector.

My own PLN is global, cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral. It makes considerable use of social media and online tools in general. So my Personal Learning Environment (PLE) through which I access my PLN is largely electronic. The main point here is that no two PLN’s are the same! We all have our own preferred balance of people and communication environments/strategies. Mine (like most others) has evolved over time and now looks something like the diagram below.

PLN PLE 500I expect that my PLN will continue to change and evolve – I currently use a variety of platforms so that I don’t miss out on posts from people for whom I have enormous professional respect but who don’t use my preferred platform for the majority of their interactions.

Getting a PLN

There are many different strategies for developing your own PLN. Mine started inadvertently, when a fellow e-learning enthusiast who was also a TAFE lecturer but in a different college introduced me to Twitter. This is still my “favourite” PLN environment although I now use many other social networks as well. Many members of my own PLN have been introduced to the concept and started developing their own PLN through PD activities. If you are thinking about building your own PLN there are a few strategies that can be particularly useful:

  • Start with one social media platform – find a mentor on that platform who is very experienced and has a medium to large network of their own.
  • Sign up to the platform – make sure you complete your profile and have an avatar, many potential followers/friends won’t connect with you unless they have a little information about you
  • Don’t rush it – allow your contacts to grow fairly slowly at least initially
  • Give as well as taking – join conversations, make comments, share resources and links
  • Be social, be human – the social interactions are important despite the derision you see levelled at some platforms regarding the triviality of some posts, social interaction – the personal relationship “oils the wheels” of the professional relationship.

If you are interested in PD to help you get started with developing your PLN then leave a comment here in the newsletter or in the ALaN GoogleGroup because if enough people are interested we could do one or two webinars on this. If you are going to take the plunge anyway and your chosen first platform is any of: Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or LinkedIn then please feel free to follow/friend, or whatever the connection label is, me. You can find me as follows:

I do check out profiles before I connect back (because like all online contexts there are plenty of “black hats” out there) although if I already know you from another context I may not. I will usually connect back within a few days.

What are the benefits?

The benefits are many! The list below is just a few of the positive gains shared by members of my PLN:

  • Keeping up with innovation in education
  • Links to great tools and resources
  • Instant help with tech problems and other questions
  • Learning, learning always learning!
  • Support in coping with issues
  • Sharing, sharing and sharing again!
  • Opportunities for global collaboration on projects
  • Opportunities for PD through online discussions
  • Overseas “e-visitors” to classes (via Skype or similar)
  • Broadening perspective from local to global
  • Learning about other cultures
  • Never feeling isolated at a conference (someone from your PLN is almost certainly there!)
  • People (that you feel you already know) to meet up with when overseas/away from home
  • Someone to “talk” to in the small hours – there is always someone awake

Some members of my own PLN have become good friends without us ever meeting! When chance gives us opportunities to meet there is none of the awkwardness of strangers meeting for the first time. This is a huge benefit for me as, despite my advanced age and years of teaching, I am quite shy when meeting strangers.

Conclusion

For more ideas about PLN’s checkout this post “What the heck is a PLN?” by a local West Australian teacher, with a global presence, who is part of my PLN and is now a good “real face-to-face” friend that I first “met” online via Twitter.

For me personally the global nature of my own PLN and the opportunity to be involved in learning from such a diverse group are the “icing on the cake”! I have been immeasurably enriched by many people in my own PLN and can only hope that I am able to “pay this forward” in some way.

 

ALaN WA Newsletter September 2013

Welcome to edition 8 of the Adult Literacy and Numeracy Network of Western Australia Newsletter!

Views expressed by contributors to the newsletter are their own and, unless expressly stated, do not reflect the opinions of their employers/organisations.

This contents page links individually to each article enabling you to go immediately to those of your choice. Alternatively, if you go to the main blog link, you can access the articles by scrolling down the page.

We welcome your comments and contributions to our newsletter. If you are an Adult Literacy/Numeracy practitioner in Western Australia or indeed, anywhere in the world, we invite you to subscribe and comment. If you interested in joining the GoogleGroup for our network, please visit our “How to join” page and complete the online form.

Contents

1. Digital Technology is the way to connect with students

Janet McArtney describes how she has used technology based activities to engage her students

2. Invitation to participate in consultation on a Foundation Skills professional standards framework

This is very important for all of us. Part of the consultation is about required qualifications for practitioners! Join one of the group consultations or send your individual feedback.

3. Updates on available PD

PD coming up in the near future

4. Conference information updates

Conferences “near, far and online” coming up in the not too distant future!

5. WA Curriculum update

Re-accreditation activities

Digital Technology is the way to connect with students

As we are encouraged to make learning purposeful I have tried to engage my students (Cert 1 – 2 boys with Autism Spectrum Disorder in Yr 12) in writing that suits their career pathway or interest.  Fortunately both have career pathways in food and hospitality and are quite computer savvy.

Some task for Engage & create were:

Learning Purposes

  • Complete 3 pre-selected online food safety quizzes (interactive, images), discuss the Elements and then design their own multiple choice quiz from a food safety booklet then give the quiz to the other student.
  • From one of the completed online quizzes, create an instruction text for the other student on how to access the website, complete and printout the certificate.

Community Purposes:

  • Read a number of school newsletters from own school and source others on the internet, discuss the Elements and create your own about the topic/tasks completed in your class.  Watch a How to ‘You Tube” on Publisher Newsletter templates and create your newsletter for others to read.

Personal Purposes:

  • Read, listen to and watch online a number of radio adverts, discuss Elements, create your own advert and record on mp3 and download onto a computer file. One student chose a fundraising BBQ with some local celebrities attending.

As my students are visual, aural and kinaesthetic learners and not straight writing or paper based, using digital literacy has always been the way to motivate them.  I am excited that the new CGEA is coming into the 21st century though many lecturers have used this technology now they will have to embrace it more and update their own digital skills.  Moodle, iPad Apps, Scootle (Ed Dept) and online bookmarking such as SymbalooEdu and blogs I will also need to upskill in.  Thanks to Jo Hart’s recent Webinar on “Digital texts, digital safety – what’s the connection” it has really started me thinking how I can connect more with my students.

Janet McArtney

Updates on available PD

PD within the WA ALaN network

This year’s projects are under way with webinars and workshops.

“What’s in a number!” is having a re-launch and looking for further input on what YOU want from the project.

“Adult Literacy and Numeracy Professional Development Workshops” at  Kimberley Training Institute are continuing through September, October and November with sessions focussing on the TAELLN401A, and on grammar (strategies for teaching, and enhancing business writing skills).

The “Digital Literacy in the CGEA” webinar series is now finished but the session recordings can be accessed via the GoogleGroup and thence the GoogleDrive.

For more information, or to become a participant in any of these, visit the network GoogleGroup (if you aren’t a member see this page on how to join) and check out the posts.

DTWD events management system

The DTWD PD calendar system is where you will need to go and create a user registration before you can register to attend DTWD LLN or other DTWD sessions.

Expressions of interest

Expressions of interest are still being sought from those interested in attending any of the following:

  • Face-to-face numeracy workshops with Beth Marr – coming up soon
  • CAVSS training later this year
  • Teach Me Grammar in 2014

Please send a separate email for each one of the above that you are interested in attending to literacy@dtwd.wa.gov.au

Also watch out for more information on the GoogleGroup