Free Resources for ACL

Everyobody knows that there are loads of free resources for teaching and learning ‘out there’, but finding the best ones isn’t always easy. My colleague Hannah Dovey (now at St David’s College, Cardiff) has compiled a list of some of the best ones. Here it is: Guide to Free Resources for ACL

I hope you find this useful. Please feel free to suggest others to add to this list. By the way, another good place to look is the RSC Wales delicious bookmarks.

Come to the Edge

The JISC Regional Support Centre for Wales (RSC-Wales) is presenting a two-day conference on using technologies in the contexts of ACL, Voluntary Sector and Offender Learning. It will be of interest to those who support learning outside the bounds of univerisities and colleges – teachers and managers alike. It’s called ‘Come to the Edge’ because ‘the edge’ is often where the most exciting developments take place.

The conference will take place in Llandrindod Wells on February 7th and 8th, and you can register online now. Much more information is available at

http://tinyurl.com/38qp6p 

Intute Informs

Intute Informs

I have just been looking at Intute Informs to see how useful it will be to the ACL community. To quote the website “Informs is a flexible adaptive tool for the creation of interactive online tutorials. It consists of easy to use software and a database of tutorials. These tutorials have been created by users as a shared community resource, which can be re-used by other registered users to facilitate creative collaboration.”

You can register for free, as long as you share the materials which you create. I think this is a powerful model for sharing resources, and there is already a significant number of resources up there. Well worth checking out!

Essentially, each tutorial consists of a URL through which you would like to guide your learners, and a ‘guide on the side’ panel which you can script yourself (or use the tutorials which are already there).

Most of the material which is already up there relates to the general area of Information Literacy, and I was interested to see how widely applicable the system would be. The answer in my case was ‘not very’, although this may depend on your subject matter. One obvious problem is the need to keep material updated to match URLs, and this may not be easy. Even Google is apt to change its appearance, and highly specific instructions like (‘Click on the Grey button just above the ‘O’ in Google may be subject to all kinds of inaccuracies depending on Browser configuration, etc.

But don’t let me put you off! There’s lots of good material which can be used as a focus for activity in the classroom, as well as ‘homework’. I would be interested to hear anyone’s views on this.

If you do try this, a few specific points to note are:

• You need to use Internet Explorer in order to format text easily (alternatively you can type in the formatting characters, but this is a fiddle)
• You need to set your browser to allow pop-ups
• You will need to allow scripted windows.

E-Awareness event at Seiont Manor

A small but select band of people from the Adult and Community Learning (ACL) assembled at lovely Seiont Manor to hear about opportunities of using a range of technologies inside and outside the classroom. It was also an opportunity for people to raise issues, such as ‘what are the barriers to using the new tools?’. The event was arranged by the JISC Regional Support Centre for Wales.

Alison Trimble told us about opportunities raised by the new interactive web technologies (sometimes called Web 2.0), as well as some of the dangers which lurk in these online worlds, if people are not wary. Her presentation was called Miracles Take a Little Longer.

Siân Williams told us about the National Grid for Learning (NgFL) Cymru resources. These are designed by teachers to share with other teachers, and she showed us some excellent examples. The scheme was launched for school resources, and is currently being extended to the ACL and FE sectors. Many of the resources which are already there are very useful across a range of levels, and he resources for adults will expand. Teachers can also apply for funding to develop their own, which are then shared across the community. If you have simple resources which could be developed for online presentation, please get in touch with NGfL and find out about the Innovative Resource Fund. ngfl-cymru-presentation-seiont-manor.doc

Esther Barrett taught us some Italian names for fruit and vegetables, showing off various ILT skills in the process, including a crossword made using ‘Hot Potatoes’ (http://hotpot.uvic.ca/). The crossword was fun for people to do, but Esther also emphasised that it is even better when you get the learners to create their own crosswords. It’s great for teaching language skills, and could be used in a lot of other contexts. The process was rounded off with people voting for the best answers to a quiz on this topic.

Alistair McNaught told us about some of the many ways to make technology more accessible to everyone, including people with disabilities Alistair’s presentation. Starting from the premise that delivery of learning materials in an appropriate range of formats is a learner entitlement, he showed us a huge range of tools. The talk was transmitted from England via Instant Presenter. Alistair and Esther managed this effectively despite some technical glitches, although people did say that they would have like to be able to see his ‘talking head’, and also the screensharing wasn’t happening for us on this occasion. There are lots of really useful links in his powerpoint presentation.

I rounded off the day (Paul’s presentation) by asking the participants about their own experiences, in an attempt to establish common themes – opportunities and barriers for using the technologies. Good experiences which people shared included using ‘Sills for Life’ diagnostics (this is engaging for learners, and the automatic functions help teachers to identify learners’ needs).

http://catalogue.learndirect.co.uk/browse/sfl/

Effective learning is often a blend of online and classroom activities. People gave some nice examples of this, and it would be good to report some of these as case studies. Participants also some real potential benefits from the use of free electornic resources, including the National Learning Network (NLN) (contact me for details) and NGfL Cymru

We reflected on the fact that broadband is now available in around of half of Welsh homes – this is a huge opportunity (but let’s not forget about the other half!).

There were however plenty of barriers.. These included

• the difficulty of training part-time tutors to an appropriate level,
• hard to set up sophisticated equipment (e.g. interactive whiteboards) in remote learning venues
• the systems in some colleges are restrictive (e.g. prohibition of social network sites)
• management in workplaces not allowing access to the best (or any) equipment
• lack of time for teachers and learners to develop the appropriate skills

The JISC Regional Support Centre may be able to help with some issues. Please feel free to contact us if there is anything specific – we may be able to help, and if not, we may well know someone who can. It’s worth a try!

p.b.r.richardson@swansea.ac.uk

E-awareness events for ACL and voluntary sector

Nant Garw, Cardiff

Around 20 people assembled at ESIS at Nant Garw, near Cardiff, so a day of presentations on elearning for the ACL and voluntary sectors. Many of us travelled though floods to get there, and we were regaled with thunder and lightning during the session (there were also a few who didn’t make it – hope they are not still stuck in traffic on the A470…)

Alistair McNaught of Techdis gave a talk, using Instant Presenter. The microphone didn’t easily allow feedback form the audience (perhaps a wireless mic would have?), but Esther (Barrett) was able to give back some information from the audience based on a simple show of hands. The general feeling amongst those presents was that people lack skills and materials for inclusion. Interestingly, few people were able to say whether or not their organisation’s strategies for elearning and for inclusion were integrated or separate (the feeling was that these were mostly separate). his could explain the lack of progress on this aspect in some organisations, and rectifying this situation could well be an appropriate focus for action. ‘Flexible format is a learner entitlement’ could perhaps be the key rallying cry.
Alistair pointed out some really interesting examples of technology which is ‘nearly at their finger tips’, especially ideas which can be done with MS Office, like embedding sound files ad screen tips in word documents. These are very simple techniques which could be taught to people very quickly (and online). Others I a made a note of were:WordWeb, Natual Reader, Camstudio, D-Speech, Audacity, Letmetype, Xerte There were other links in Alistair’s presentation. I’ll post a link to this shortly. Xerte training is coming up in January.

Alison Walker explained the background to the Welsh Videoconferencing Network (WVN), explained how it works and what support is available. She also showed some examples of highly creative use of the system (e.g. election debates, red nose day activities, etc), which aroused a good deal of interest. Let’s hope it encourages some people to play!

Karen Ford told us about NgFL Cymru, which has been highly successful in the school sector for some years now, and which is currently being rolled out to the 14-19 sector (which can include all adult learners). Pete Scott explained that the NgFL is now seen as the key repository for elearning resources for all sectors across Wales. The NgFL resources are interactive, highly creative, and built by teachers. Karen also showed us the very simple process enabling teachers to add more resources – and get technical and financial support to do this.

Alison Trimble explored how many of the group were using ‘Web 2.0′ services (Blogs, Facebook, etc, etc.) . It is still a minority, but a growing one. She then showed us some really interesting services (the links are in her powerpoint) including Second Life (we got to follow ‘her’ around for a while), together with some salutory tales about inappropriate stuff which children get access to.

David Mather told us about the sucesses of the LearnDirect partnership based at Bridgend, and including WEA (South Wales) and Instant Muscle. He showed us how this can benefit learners, and exhorted those present to approach their local LearnDirect consortim with a view to giving their learners access to some courses. He said that Bridgend would welcome proposals form community providers wanting to put on e.g. ‘Skills for Life’ courses. Any takers?…

Paul Richardson (RSC-Wales)

07/12/07

p.b.r.richardson@swansea.ac.uk

Social Networking within the Creative Technology Sector

The SPLICE project is a JISC-funded project which aims to connect learners and teachers in multimedia studies with practitioners in industry. The project is led by Bolton University, and other partners include Coleg Harlech WEA and the Greater Manchester Strategic Alliance. More information is available at

http://tinyurl.com/3yfwhh

A group of learners, teachers, and practitioners met near Bangor in North Wales on November 22nd, at an event sponsored by ICT Forum Wales and Bloc. The evening was in two parts: an initial round table in which all attendees were able to discuss their own perspectives on the project, and a second session comprising three formal presentations. The round table session was a rare opportunity for a huge range of stakeholders to express their hopes and fears around the project. What came through for me was that despite the diversity of perspective, there was a strong common sense of direction. This arises from a common understanding of how the world is changing – that teachers can no longer keep students up to date, but that the learners must do this for themselves (with guidance from both teachers and practitioners). This also emerged later on in the presentations, where it became clear that the people already working in the multimedia industry were really well placed to guide students, as they are already using the new technologies in very creative and original ways. The SPLICE project is there to help these different groups to work together. It will be really interesting to see how this progresses.