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.

Curriculum updates – Feb 2014

Course in Applied Vocational Study Skills 52626WA (CAVSS) re-accreditation has been finalised. The final (amended) version of the  Course Accreditation Document (ACC1) was noted by the Training Accreditation Council on 11/12/2013. The 2014 CAVSS Business Rules are now published and available from the CAVSS page. The current course was extended ONLY UNTIL April 2014 so you need to be preparing to use the new course.

52379 Course In Underpinning Skills for Industry Qualifications (USIQ) has been re-accredited, the Business Rules are currently being reviewed and STARS will be updated with the new course number and information once the business Rules are finalised.

52426WA Certificate I in Entry to General Education will expire 30 September 2014. It is currently being reviewed

PD coming up and continuing Feb 2014

PD within the WA ALaN network

If you are joining the Face-to-face numeracy workshops with Beth Marr (application process now complete) you can still apply for travel support to attend but applications close very soon at 10:00am Tuesday 4th of March. Application forms are available on the GoogleGroup in a post entitled “Adult Literacy Sponsorship Program (WA)”

The “What’s in a number!” project is still in progress with the most recent blog post being the last of three about algebra: “Using letters instead of numbers – Part 3”. If you haven’t visited for a while there have been continuing posts over the summer except for a couple of weeks over Christmas so you might want to catch up by going to the “What’s in a number” blog and scrolling back through the posts, Don’t forget to check out the comments and feedback and add your own!

This year’s Teach Me Grammar is getting underway with Friday workshops. Check out the GoogleGroup and if you are intersted but have not yet said so then let Cheryl know because there may be another “run” starting in July.

Other PD

Coming up from IBSA/Velg are “Foundation Skills Workshops for VET Practitioners”  – NOTE that the target audience for these is NOT LLN/Foundation Skills specialists but VET practitioners. However they may be relevant for others in your organisation. As we already use CAVSS here in WA to support vocational learners through team teaching, these workshops with their focus is on identifying foundation skills in units and then using the Foundation Skills (FSK) Training Package are perhaps less relevant to our VET practitioners than they would be elsewhere.

 

Conferences update – Feb 2014

Australia

The National Adult Language, Literacy and Numeracy Assessment Conference 2014 will be held in Melbourne on May 1st and 2nd 2014.

The 2014 conference of the International Applied Linguistics Association is being hosted by the Applied Linguistics Association of Australia and takes place from the 10th to 15th of August in Brisbane.

This year’s ACAL Conference “Literacy: a learning spiral for life” is on October 2nd to 4th at Surfers Paradise in Queensland. Keep up to date with call for papers and all other information by registering an expression of interest on the ACAL website.

Australian Council of TESOL Associations – International Conference 2014 with the theme “Meeting the Challenge” takes place from September 30 – October 3 2014 in Melbourne. For information available to date check out the website.

The next Western Australian Adult Literacy Council state conference is planned for April 2015.  That’s a different time of the year than usual and there won’t be one in 2014.

A little further afield

In New Zealand this year – the 14th National Conference for Community Languages and ESOL has the theme “Essentials for Learning and Teaching:Ko te Pū, ko te Ako”