VL What Works

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Subject: [PD 3861] For Wednesday: What has worked?
From: Nell Eckersley
Date: Wed Aug 5 01:07:01 EDT 2009

Thanks for all the great posts on Tuesday. I think we got a real sense of the varieties of challenges and successes in using technology in Adult Literacy whether the technology is in the form of what used to be called "assistive technology" or web 2.0 tools and social media etc. Below are some of the challenges and successes that you mentioned.

Time and Money: Some students do not have access to texting, computers, or the internet outside the classroom, and sometimes programs do not have access to computers for in-class work. Technology changes quickly and it can be a challenge for educators to keep up with how new technology can be used in the classroom.

Navigation: It can be challenging to navigate to a website if students have to type in long URL's. Students can seem reluctant to use online modules and campus email. Adult learners need to be taught how to use information on the Web effectively, navigate through all the junk on the Web.

Personal vs Public: The blending of personal worlds with professional worlds—how to manage the personal and professional on social networking sites like Facebook. By the way, you can control who sees what on Facebook and you can create groups and pages on which classmates/educators can share information without everyone having to become "friends."

Universal Design: If you design for people with disabilities in mind then all people will benefit.

Bridging: Meeting students where they are and acting as a bridge to more sustained reading/writing/thinking.

Professional Development: Providing professional development opportunities without the costs of face-to-face meeting

For Wednesday

Please continue to introduce yourselves and share your experiences with technology in Adult Literacy. I'm particularly interested in hearing ways you've used technology that have resonated with your students.

We had a project when I was teaching in which ESL student wrote letters to the Mayor of New York City describing what they liked about the City. After years of doing this on paper, we decide to try this project using email. This added some steps to the project. We knew we would have to spend some time in the new computer lab making sure everyone had an email address they were willing to send this letter from. But once we were in the lab it became apparent that some students didn't know how to use a mouse, while others were very computer literate so we had to see if the more technologically advanced could help the students with less computer experience. Just getting everyone an email address turned out to take a couple of days. We wondered if we'd lost the objective of our lesson-to write the letter to the mayor. But there were several students who actually teared up when they got their first test email. These were women who had computers at home that their husbands and children used but the women had never known how to use, never mind having an email address. Now they felt they could use the computers and suddenly they even had the ability to be in contact with faraway friends. We still wrote the letters to the mayor, but we all agreed that it was the email access that the students resonated with. And having gone through the email set-up once, we could use the same email accounts for other kinds of writing.

In addition to ways you've used technology in the classroom, how have you used technology for professional development? There were some posts on the first discussion about using twitter as a form of professional development, and there is at least one state that considers the NIFL Discussion Lists as formal professional development. What's your experience?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts,

Nell

Nell Eckersley

ALIES/ASISTS Program Operations Coordinator,
Literacy Assistance Center

Moderator,
NIFL Technology and Literacy Discussion List

Subject: [PD 3864] Re: For Wednesday: What has worked?
From: Mullen, Jason
Date: Wed Aug 5 08:26:01 EDT 2009

My personal experiences integrating technology into a classroom has been bumpy. The classrooms are multilevel and multi-subject so a great deal of learning is trying to happen. Some of the classrooms I have worked in did have computers but no internet access. Some classrooms had excellent support learning software. Rosetta Stone, Azteca, Plato. Other classrooms had no technology available at all if we are considering Computers and internet access the forms of technology we are discussing. Low tech manipulatives like Cuisenaire rods and base ten blocks for math, Games like Scrabble and Boggle for vocabulary building are a forms of classroom technology that often gets overlooked during discussion like this but are tools we can use in a classroom that students may not be as apprehensive about using. I digress I have had similar experiences as Nell, a lesson about how to get an e-mail account and send an e-mail turned into a week long computer literacy class just to get consistently successful access to e-mail in the first place.

I found in one classroom last year a smart board that apparently the daytime teacher (AE held in a middle school classroom) didn't use. I plugged it in a for a month we spent part of our class time visiting different websites with tutorials and mini-videos demonstrating things I could not do in a classroom w/o the tech.

Regarding personal/professional use of the internet social groups: I am constantly worried about the crossover and other instructors have expressed the same concerns.

Looking forward to reading about how others are using cell phone and text messaging in the classroom, although we just spent a massive amount of time developing and enforcing a no cell phone policy in all classrooms to get rid of the disruption they have been causing.

As an Instructional Specialist I send a massive amount of e-mails to all of my instructors with ideas and links to websites. The college has recently developed a new online course delivery system that I am anxious to try out. I also suggest to new instructors and especially volunteers that they check out the free online courses available through Verizon's Literacy website.

What is working, more and more of my teachers are using e-mail to share ideas and discuss issues, I have few hard core anti Internet instructors but most are coming around to the advantages, especially the immediacy of response that can be achieved with e-mail communication.

Jason Mullen,

Instructional Specialist
Chesapeake College Adult Education

Subject: [PD 3866] Re: For Wednesday: What has worked?
From: Maryanne Donovan
Date: Wed Aug 5 09:54:22 EDT 2009

Thank you all for the wealth of knowledge and ideas pouring from this list.

I wear several hats in this world of adult literacy. First, I teach Business Communication and Computers to business majors at a SUNY college. Second, I run a small, website-based business that offers online writing courses and writing services.

In the classroom, I have been amazed to find my students lacking in the virtual communication skills needed to effectively navigate today's business world, i.e. blogs, forums, discussion lists, Twitter, and software tools such as databases, project management, and even Word, except in its most basic, manual capacity.

My goal in teaching them is both use of, as well as how to think critically about, the best use of these tools. I weave a single project throughout the semester and require the students to use the tools as they would be used in a real world business environment within the scope of this project. Thus, the tools become a means to an end instead of an end unto themselves. At the end of the semester, the students express both surprise and appreciation of their new-found skills and knowledge and see direct relevance to their upcoming careers. For this project, they work in teams of two or three, and they often use a blog as a project management tool. Of course, they use email and instant messenger for communication. They find forums and discussion lists to be good sources of current thought on topics, and despite significant initial skepticism about Twitter, they at least come to understand it which mitigates their significant skepticism and converts it into more of a question (critical thinking) about its true value.

Mary Anne Donovan

Freelance Writer
Adjunct Professor, English
SUNY Brockport
http://www.donovan-wright.com

Subject: [PD 3867] Re: For Wednesday: What has worked?
From: Maryanne Donovan
Date: Wed Aug 5 09:55:40 EDT 2009

Interesting article:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/08/05/notesharing

Subject: [PD 3868] Re: For Wednesday: What has worked?
From: Katrina Hinson
Date: Wed Aug 5 09:39:05 EDT 2009

I've used technology like Blackboard/Moodle, Instant Messaging programs, and e-mail to provide access to my students—both face to face and online. I use all of these to communicate with students outside of my class time. Students find it reassuring when they are studying at home, and have a question, to have access to me in real time. We can dialogue back and forth, in terms of the IM'ing, until we've resolved whatever question the student might have had. I like the discussion boards because students can talk back and forth to others in the class, often more freely than they do face to face, and learn from each other. A program like Dim-Dim is also GREAT. You can create a virtual classroom environment for your students and at a set time, your students can meet you there for group discussion on common problems. This works very well for my online students and students in a face to face class also find it effective.

One project I've had my face to face class participate in, in the past, was a project I think I learned about from David Rosen—a Virtual Class Exchange—my class partnered with another class in a different country, Australia, and exchanged email's for a time in which they discussed their commonalities associated with getting their GED. The students really enjoyed it because they learned that while the process might be different, there were students in other places who were just like themselves. Suddenly, they weren't 'alone' in their boat - not having a GED/ high school diploma wasn't an issue limited to their small community - they saw and learned how it affected others and how others were overcoming their own barriers. It was one of the most successful projects I have had the pleasure of participating in! It would not have been possible without internet access or email capabilities - the technology helped my students cross cultural boundaries they had never thought about or imagined.

As for Professional Development, this is something I am exploring with a colleague who still works in the community college environment. We want to create online modules for training that instructors can access in order to meet training demands required by their job. This is one of the things I hope to learn more about as this discussion progresses. I've used the NIFL lists in the past in training sessions I've done face to face, and I have always been an advocate to other instructors in terms of locating information in the archives that they might find useful. One of the problems with using the technology in professional development, is that some instructors don't want to learn about the technology—they don't see it as useful and see it as more of hindrance than a help. Access would also be an issue—because just like many students, many part time adult teachers in the area I work with, don't have computers at home or don't have Internet access. They may have a cell phone, but the idea of texting is something they are not comfortable with. The same goes for something like Facebook or Twitter - they're simply uncomfortable with the collision between private and public space.

Regarding Facebook and students, as has been noted in some of the other posts, I do think it can be utilized both with students and with other professionals. I'm in several groups on Facebook associated with adult education and adult literacy—being part of the group is another way to learn from others but it doesn't mean that all the group members are on my 'friends' list and therefore I maintain my own sense of privacy within the social networking environment. The nice thing about Facebook is that you can adjust your privacy settings and control the access others have in regards to what they see of you.

Katrina

Subject: [PD 3870] Re: For Wednesday: What has worked?
From: Glenn Young
Date: Wed Aug 5 10:06:33 EDT 2009

Please let me address a point that has been raised by some, costs and availability.

Yes right now, the cost and availability of the technology puts it out of the range of many.

But a dozen years ago who would have projected the extensive use of cell phone technology since at that time it was so expensive.

And 30 years ago the personal computer was seen as rear thing because of costs.

The answer is to look at us at the beginning of a process. Lets prove it works, and then the cost and availability issues will be addressed by the market forces that push success. Right now we are at the beginning of a process where costs and availability are always the issue.

Lets think a bit more long term.

Glenn Young
CSLD

Subject: [PD 3873] Re: For Wednesday: What has worked? SIDE TRIP?
From: Dave Middlebrook
Date: Wed Aug 5 10:41:30 EDT 2009

I realize that this discussion is about high technology, rather than all technology (pencils and paper are technology), so I am hesitant to butt in. I have added "SIDE TRIP" to the subject line so that those of you who would like to stay focused on high technology will be able to do so. And now for my low-tech success:

My work involves using paper scrolls and colored markers. I have used them in a wide range of settings, from preschool through college. Here is how my methods relate to Nell's challenges:

  • Time and Money: It is very cheap, but does require extra time.
  • Navigation: It makes navigating a book—and teaching book-navigation skills (such as skimming and scanning) —a breeze. These are very hard skills to teach on screen or in a bound book. They are not hard to teach on a scroll. And once learned, they transfer back to ebooks and bound books.
  • Personal vs Public: Scrolls are a very social media. They invite shared reading and conversation. Scrolls in the classroom stimulate conversation about books.
  • Universal Design: Scrolls provide a range of sensory access that neither bound books nor ebooks can provide. In some ways, scrolls are less accessible than ebooks (I'm not talking here about proprietary ebook formats—just the open ones such as Daisy and OEB), but in balance they are far more accessible. Scrolls fit the UD paradigm much better than bound books or ebooks.
  • Bridging: Same as Universal Design.
  • Professional Development: I have not yet done distance PD for using scrolls. I expect that it can be done, and am watching and learning from this conversation about the possible avenues.

You can read about scrolls here: http://www.textmapping.org/whWorkshopNotes.html#introductionHead

So that's my low-tech pitch. I hope you find it interesting!

- Dave

Dave Middlebrook
The Textmapping Project
A resource for teachers improving reading comprehension skills instruction.
www.textmapping.org
dmiddlebrook at textmapping.org
Learning Diffabilities blog: http://diffabilities.wordpress.com

Subject: [PD 3875] Re: For Wednesday: What has worked? SIDE TRIP?
From: Katrina Hinson
Date: Wed Aug 5 11:01:54 EDT 2009

Dave:

I very much appreciate your "Side Trip". What a great reminder that some times, tried and true traditional learning aids are still highly effective and can bring so much to a learning environment.

Thank you for sharing some wonderful ideas!

Regards,
Katrina Hinson

Subject: [PD 3880] Re: For Wednesday: What has worked? SIDE TRIP?
From: Reba Dibartolomeo
Date: Wed Aug 5 13:01:46 EDT 2009

I do like the scrolls idea. I think it offers a measure of "how much?" to beginning readers, which is an analog discussion.

I think it also offers an interesting analog to digital crossover. Getting students to manage what they consume—meaning what to print, how to print, and how much to print—is a plague upon nonprofits. It is also a foundation skill for true literacy, comprehension, and reading with a purpose. You are not finished when you print; you are finished when can function without staring at the page. This is a hard lesson to learn. It is equally as hard to convince students to preferentially take notes over printing. I think scrolls can add a measure of accountability and a visual cue that might help these goals. If students must tape together everything that flows from the printer and wrangle it for the rest of the lesson, absurdly long scrolls/ scrolls with unnecessary pages could be 'the necessity' that mandates learning the "print selection" toggle or how to copy and paste into a word document before printing.

Danielle Reba DiBartolomeo
Move Up Instructor
Impact SEC

Subject: [PD 3884] Re: For Wednesday: What has worked?
From: French, Allan
Date: Wed Aug 5 14:21:14 EDT 2009

I fully agree with Glenn that the accessibility to today's most advanced technology will improve over time. Just five years ago, the majority of my intermediate-level ESL students didn't have access to the Internet at home, and today only a very small number do not.

However, what remains is a great gap between those who always have the latest and those who won't get it until it becomes cheaper and easier to use. Another poster stated that while most basic skills students have cell phones, many don't know how to fully utilize them. Ten years from now, most of those students will be able to utilize mobile technology more completely than they can today. But by that time there will be even more advanced technologies developed that many of these same folks won't have access to right away.

Education and educators have a responsibility to keep up with advancing technology, but we must remember (especially as it pertains to any type of standards, assessments, accountability, etc.) that not all will have the same access to the latest innovations. The gap will remain, albeit at a higher level of the "technology chart." Remember, after over a century of being the greatest economic power in the world, this nation still has significant socio-economic and even technological gaps, and I don't foresee these as being narrowed much (unfortunately) in the near-term.

Allan


Allan D. French

ESL Instructor and Assessment Coordinator
Basic and Transitional Studies Division
South Seattle Community College

Subject: [PD 3892] Re: For Wednesday: Need working models
From: Glenn Young
Date: Wed Aug 5 16:41:41 EDT 2009

Thank you Allen, for your remarks.

But I'd like to add one thing ..

We don't deny access to people because not all people have access .

We need to learn how to present new services so a demand can be made to create more service for those without .. for example:

Nokia has a very expensive phone out that can take a photo of any document and make it into a text document and reads it to the phone user in nanoseconds. It great and the IOWA VL project is promoting it as a great tool, which it is, but it is very expensive. (they have developed a great video on it and that can be found at
http://www.educ.drake.edu/webfiles/ivls.mov

However, right now we could make it so that even the cheapest cell phone with a camera and e-mail capacity could be made into a product that could do the same thing in a matter of about 2 seconds. (still a very manageable time)

We can do this without violation of copyrights. I have a friend at Google who explained how this could be done nationally for about $150,000 (one time cost) and then maintained with very nominal fee for the service. I've been trying to find that 150,000 to make it happen and haven't come up with it yet. So for a small investment we can make it that all those younger people with cell phones could be using that phone to be able to "hear" documents they can't read, in a matter of seconds, VL in action.

But if we had the political will and desire and willingness to adapt and embrace the future … we can make so much happen with the existing technology, for so little money. But the whole system seems unwilling to think beyond their own classrooms or the technology that is right in front of them now .or to work collectively to ensure that the capacity of technology is adequately represented in legislation.

We need to expand out thinking and our activities .. pool our resources and our political capacity to make this new future, this new way of accessing knowledge, available to our populations. Or the digital divide just keeps growing and growing and growing.

Let's work to make the future work for us ..

Glenn Young
CSLD

Subject: [PD 3896] Re: For Wednesday: Need working models
From: French, Allan
Date: Wed Aug 5 17:10:01 EDT 2009

Glenn:

Again, I agree that those who offer literacy or educational services should make new technology available to all. Still, your own quandary of finding $150,000, suggests that there remains a gap not just among individuals but also among institutions, and even within institutions. For example, CASAS has e-testing which I am convinced would be great for instructors, students, programs and institutions. The problem is building the local infrastructure to take advantage of it, especially in tight economic times. On my own campus, some buildings are up-to-date smart, while others have very limited hi-tech capacity, with no good solution on the horizon. As Pres. Obama stated a few weeks ago, the community colleges have always been given the least amount of help compared to K-12 and the universities. He has verbalized a need to change this reality, but the proof will be in the dollars.

Allan

Subject: [PD 3911] Re: For Wednesday: What has worked?
From: Anne Murr
Date: Wed Aug 5 18:45:32 EDT 2009

Here is how one of our learners discovered "virtual literacy," which in the end, did increase her actual literacy.

Some years ago this 60 year old woman earned a GED after intensive tutoring help from a retired high school teacher.

1 1/2 years ago she enrolled in the basic literacy skills class I teach, because she continued to struggle with reading and spelling. At the same time we began a "Reading of a Different Kind" book club at our local library where we "read" books on CD. She began to listen to the books on CD. Then she read the same book while listening to the CD. Over time, she has left the listening behind and now reads independently. She also attended 60 hours of instruction in basic word structure.

When I gave her the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test post test, her reading comprehension increased 7 (yes, seven!) grade equivalent levels (9.0 to 16.9) and her word knowledge increase 2 grade equivalent levels (7.3 to 9.4). She described herself as a "ferocious" reader. (She then added another word to her vocabulary--"voracious"!)

I believe either approach (word structure alone or VL alone) would not have produced such dramatic results. But together, her accomplishments are outstanding.

Anne

Subject: [PD 3908] Re: For Wednesday: Need working models
From: steven pritchard
Date: Wed Aug 5 18:49:13 EDT 2009

Dear Glenn,

Once again in this letter I am using the Dragon NaturallySpeaking the phone that you talk about I have used which was on loan to me by the Drake University adult literacy Center, I have not found many flaws at the K. reader mobile has.

It's very simple it was demoed on the video which you can find at the Drake University adult literacy Center website, how can this phone help people like me I'm a slow reader, in being discharged from a hospital or medical center the 12 page document that you have to read and sign before being dismissed as so many words that it would take me at least one hour to read this entire document.

If the medical center had this K. reader mobile, this phone in other words the nurse or doctor in the ER could bring it to the patient that has a reading problem a literacy problem, by pushing the button on the phone taking a picture of the text within seconds it would read it back to me and I would understand that I am not going to hold the hospital liable for discharging me without proper treatment, the phone can help read text with the earplug plug into the side of this phone I would definitely use this in college years ago if it had been around,

This phone was introduced to me thanks to the Drake University adult literacy Center here in Des Moines Iowa for more information on this phone please contact Anne Murr Drake University adult literacy Center Des Moines Iowa,

I look forward to your comments
Steven Pritchard

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