Skills for Life Blog

Adult Curriculum Changes

2009-04-24T14:58:00.003Z

I noticed that the new Interactive Core Curriculum Tool on the Excellence Gateway website contains updated versions of the various curricula, in response to the consultation exercise of past year or so. There is no significant change as far as I can see to the Pre-Entry Curriculum itself and little to the ESOL one, bar distinguishing the elements better between beginners with no literacy and those with already know other scripts. (You may have to register before seeing any of this online. And I don't know if these documents are now "official.")

The numeracy curriculum does have a number of minor changes to sort out some of the discrepancies which have confused us over the years. This means I can now code my lesson plans correctly, for example, when teaching someone mental methods of calculation. A few things have been added to Entry 3. I like particularly this statement "Expressing one number as a fraction of another number has been included at Level 1 since this is a skill which is often tested at this level." So now I know: it's the testing which drives the curriculum, not the other way round; I've always had to teach it, of course, because it is tested.

There seem to be fewer changes in the literacy curriculum, but one is intriguing. They have moved "understand when commas are needed in sentences........ and that commas should not be used in place of full stops" from Level 2 to Entry 3. I'll be amazed if tutors can really get this working, as I find that a lot of my learners working towards Level 1 find commas really difficult, particularly the sentences bit. If people are going to be tested on this seriously at Entry 3, I'd stick my neck out and say there are going to be difficulties.

Otherwise the online implementation of the curricula is pretty good, and easy to find your way around when you get used to the layout - same as on any sophisticated site. The activities and ideas can be downloaded, or are linked to other places. You can add your own suggested activities for anyone else to see, and save places you want to return to frequently. There are also numerous forums on the Excellence Gateway site and Collaboration Spaces, including this forum for the Curriculum. Unfortunately most of these are pretty inactive. I'll be interested to see if any of the interactive side of this "tool" gets used more than other similar areas for Skills for Life or FE in the UK.

Maths Activities

2009-04-23T15:57:00.003Z

Two websites with good ICT resources for Numeracy have recently been overhauled.

Firstly, the American NCTM has revamped its Java-based Illumination activities. I have added a few to the Activities Maths page, and will consider some more. I particularly like the Pan Balance Numbers activity, which I should imagine will appeal to those who appreciate Thinking Through Mathematics. The instructions for these activities are useful and directly accessible.

Secondly, The Standards Site, now called the National Strategies, has good demonstrations for mathematical concepts which I have long linked in Activities Maths. These are now more clearly accessed from the home site here. The mode of access has changed slightly so that the activities and the important instructions can be downloaded and run immediately. The host page also lists Interactive Whiteboard suitable files for Excel, and for Smart and Promethean Boards. I will also search through these for other activities useful for Post 16 Numeracy.

BBC RAW

2009-02-09T16:29:00.002Z

I've added links for the newly enhanced BBC RAW site. The current content is not particularly about literacy or numeracy; rather it is about basic computing and financial literacy. However, these are two topics that are never very far away from the literacy and numeracy classroom, even if they do not feature high on the Skills for Life curriculum. There is certainly some direct literacy and numeracy in there - I've noticed a module on percentages. I can see many Skills for Life learners being motivated by these activities.

What I think is really stunning is the look of the site. It has a very clean and simple interface for a start, and the learning is nicely chunked. But it is the use of the presenters on the periphery of the screen with video or activity in the centre which seems innovative to me. I haven't looked at every BBC site, but this does seem to be a departure. It gives me an inkling of how TV and web content might come together some time in the future.

More content is promised over the next three years. I hope there will be something soon that is more directly "reading and writing." Mean time enjoy what is there now.

Online Dictionaries

2009-02-05T16:02:00.004Z

I've come across a number of visual dictionaries recently, so I thought it was a good time to review the dictionaries section on the Skills for Life website. It's not a section I've changed much over the years, and it's been eight years now that the website has been around. It's not surprising that new applications are coming along as a result of developing web technologies.

Dictionaries now can have speech or synthesised speech rather the traditional phonetic equivalent which is difficult for learners, especially literacy learners. Look at the Dictionary.com site which aggregates different dictionaries' definitions. But now people are thinking of different ways of introducing a visual element. Examples include Picture That which uses pictures and sounds and uses a phonic approach designed for dyslexic learners - the site needs registration. Merriam-Webster's visual dictionary takes an encyclopedia-like approach with graphics and labels. Visuwords uses mind maps to make links between words. The site I have come across most recently, Shahi, links a wordbank and definitions with pictures tagged that way in Flickr. It's a beautifully simple "mashup", still at quite an early stage, but crying out to be used in literacy or ESOL classes by teachers with ideas.

It's a while since I taught much literacy to classes. The Wordsmyth dictionary was around then and I designed learning activities using it. I wonder how much online dictionaries are used now. We still need to teach our learners alphabetical order and how to find words in book dictionaries. We still need to teach our learners to use spell checks effectively. These new multi-sensory tools give us a number of interesting new options.

ESOL Blogs

2009-01-22T16:10:00.002Z

At last I've done my long promised review of ESOL Blogs. I've added a few new entries on the Blogs page of the Skills for Life Website. I decided not add a lot of links for a number of reasons including:

There are a lot of ESOL (or EFL/ESL) blogs out there, and it's not at all easy to choose between them. So I have only included ones I follow (in Pageflakes) or ones that made a special impact.
Blogs come and go a lot. Class blogs are likely only to run for a year. People move city or job. People lose interest. I followed one promising set of links without realising the list was a couple of years old and very few of the links led to an active blog.
It would be more useful for anyone to follow links from the rolls on the blogs I've listed or from suggestions within the text.

The ubiquity and variety and strength of the ESOL blogs makes a striking contrast to the paucity of literacy and numeracy blogs. However, I think these ESOL blogs can give any literacy or numeracy tutor lots of ideas:

how to use blogs in a class
how to use technology in classes
how to use Web 2.0 in classes
how to reflect on your teaching
about teaching generally

I also came across 2 Pageflakes samples, one where Pageflakes is used as a class homepag e and one which links a whole lot of ESF/ESL blogs.

7 times 13 is 28

2009-01-09T15:27:00.004Z

I guess many people may have seen this. I'm sure it could have a place in a numeracy class, and I'm quite enjoying thinking of the ways that might work: Why can't it work? Why is the answer not sensible? Estimate what a sensible answer might be. Let's compare it with the ways we have discussed doing these things. Is it right to check the answer? How does place value fit in? There's a lot you can do with it.

I used to hate Abbott and Costello when I was a teenager and they were all over TV and film shows. However I find this convincing and their timing is great.

You can find the video here at Teacher Tube, and you may find the comments helpful. There's another similar clip here.

ESOL Grammar Activities

2008-11-21T15:50:00.002Z

I've added a new page for ESOL Grammar Activities to the Skills for Life website. Like the other activities pages, this contains direct link both to our quizzes and to quizzes on other people's websites.

This change reflects a change in some of my teaching this year. I am supporting a number of learners who don't speak English natively and I want to address some of their difficulties with grammar. In analysing their difficulties in initial assessment, there were a number of common factors: endings to words (both nouns and verbs), articles (or, more correctly, determiners), prepositions and conjunctions. Of course the internet is alive with quizzes and other activities for grammar for English learners, but I've not previously found them greatly useful for this group of learners. Some of these people may have been to school in the UK for at least some of the time, some may not be literate in their first language, some may not have been to ESOL classes. Moreover the mistakes are presented in English literacy, for me in their main courses, and so perhaps a literacy approach rather than an ESOL approach is needed.

The most acute difficulty is with the endings for tenses and plural nouns. I certainly don't want to teach tenses in a formal way, but I do want to help them recognise and correct their errors. So I have started writing some quizzes for endings. It has been hard work writing even a few. I have also found a few relevant quizzes for the other topics on other sites. I have used these activities for explanation as I go along, rather than for reinforcement which is how I usually use quizzes. So far the feedback from students has been very positive. I hope the page will develop in the coming months.

Literacy Changes Lives

2008-11-07T16:14:00.004Z

Just a quick word to help promote the Literacy Changes Lives full report from the National Literacy Trust, (summary here.) This follows an American model to gather together a number of adult literacy-oriented statistics, particularly those from the research of John Bynner and Samantha Parsons. Two points:

Firstly, the document firmly reinforces the notion that people with poor literacy skills are particularly isolated from the benefits of our advanced industrial society. I often think that Government gets too obsessed with the idea that poor literacy skills hinder our industrial progress, whereas the real problem is that it hinders people's lives. I get asked all too frequently why is literacy needed to do hairdressing or to be a care worker or whatever, and I usually find myself answering that you will need literacy to write records and so on. What I am thinking is that I believe you need literacy for yourself and for the families you may bring up in the future, but it is rarely the right time to talk about this.
Secondly, it is great to have all these statistics in one place. I have done some sessions for trainee FE teachers in the past, and this document makes the whole issue clear.

Job Interviews - Video Quizzes for Support

2008-10-17T11:26:00.004Z

I've added some activities to the website around job interviews, in the context of travel and tourism, which I hope will be more generally interesting. This is only part of a larger project to create learning materials for support using video as the focus. Those materials are primarily for the college Moodle site; they have been written to run using a Flash player which allows better resolution and has a working slider bar.

This project has taken a lot of my time in the past few months. The idea was to create differentiated quizzes with video; video because it attracts and keeps the attention in class and quizzes because they are easy to make and so can easily be made at differing levels to aid differentiation. I wanted to demonstrate that differentiated learning materials was a good route to go for support. Many of the learners in the target classes have difficulty with both spoken and written English. The idea was to use the same videos with a range of quizzes at different levels. Learners not being supported can do a task with the video while those being supported can do different activities which will help them do the task eventually.

I was not prepared for the range of problems this would produce. Here are just some:

Videos already available on YouTube or some of the specialist videos for teaching sites were either not suitable or so tied up in copyright to make adaptation impossible
Shooting our own videos was a major undertaking. After writing scripts we had a shooting day with a semi-professional crew and serious amateur actors. I did not realise how active I would have to be as producer/director and so a lot of mistakes (going off script) have come through and we are stuck with them.
Putting video into quizzes was difficult but I got there in the end. I needed a lot of help from the support groups for Hot Potatoes and Hot Potatoes on Moodle. I grappled with file formats and free conversion programs. I learned a lot and it took a long time.
There is then the problem of getting things working on college servers where the staff have their own ideas about how things should run and may not have been happy with the solutions I found.

If I were to do it again I might well go down the road of using students as actors, shooting very short scripts and using my digital camera to film. The results would be very different and not so generally useful, but it would be less of an investment in time.

As always I find it a delight to work with Hot Potatoes. I enjoy finding new ways to get different sorts of learning materials out of the basic software and extensions.

New Numeracy Quizzes

2008-10-15T12:54:00.003Z

I've started adding some new quizzes to the Maths Quizzes page on the Skills for Life Website, and to Maths Activities. I've found I've needed some extra teaching materials for learners who are supposed to be working towards Level 1, but have real weaknesses with things like subtraction, tables and division. In an ideal world they'd work towards an E3 end test, but some are already at E3 in Initial Assessment.

I'm reflecting on why I've not felt a need to have these before. I suppose it's because I'm not able to work with these learners one to one this year and therefore cannot work with examples I hand-write off the cuff as the need presents itself. The published stuff is not much help: Maths the Basic Skills covers most of this need but progresses too quickly, Carol Roberts' Level 1 Numeracy assumes they've all got E3 well sorted and the examples are much too hard, and Skillswise also mixes harder examples on the same sheets, and the E3 part is not comprehensive enough. These learners, who frequently express that they do not like maths, quickly get too discouraged when they cannot do things.

Another direct issue is that multiplying and dividing by 10 and 100 does not enter into the curriculum until L1 (N1/L14 and N2/L1.6) , and you really have to be able to multiply and divide by 1000 as well in order to convert units in the same system (MSS1/L1.7). This makes the step up to L1 from E3 quite severe. Yet this skill underpins a lot else of Level 1.

Spelling and Predictive Text

2008-10-10T14:33:00.004Z

I was struck when a student told me she used Predictive Text on her mobile to help her with her spelling. I've not come across this before, but it seemed like such a good idea. She added that a spellcheck on the computer was a better option but not so convenient. Of course, if you're trying to complete records at work then having a mobile in your hand is not too embarrassing. I remember when some students had Franklin-style hand-held "spellmasters," but spellchecks seem to have driven them away. I'm now trying to think of ways of using this in my teaching, but I'll have to learn how do it myself first.

Curiously, the only Google link I could quickly find for this idea was some report quoted in the Daily Record, which stated, I think, that predictive text was the favourite reason why people's spelling was poor. As if poor spelling was so recent.

Initial Assessment

2008-10-06T14:37:00.004Z

For any support tutor, initial assessment is an important time. In my college we try to initially assess all full-time and important part-time courses during induction with the online bksb assessment. It's an intense and busy time, as you try to print out results and give at least a minimum feedback to sometimes anxious people. Then you try to analyse the results and see who might need support.

This year several curriculum and personal tutors have asked me what they are supposed to do with someone who scores E3 on bksb but got a C at GCSE - could be either English or Maths. Such anomalies are really rather common. I sometimes think that maybe as many as 10% of results are anomalies. I use the paper-based BSA Initial Assessment as well, and don't get quite the range of odd results, but some are still odd and it does not go above Level 1.

Initial assessment is a broad tool and bksb in particular is very broad. You quickly move on and judge the learner in a more person-centred way as you get to know them. And, yes, I do support generic basic skills initial assessment, because without that there would be much less support offered and taken up.

Literacy and Literacy Support

2008-09-18T14:42:00.002Z

I was asked over the summer what I do and I answered mechanically that I teach literacy to over 16s. However it has bothered me ever since that I’m not sure that that is still true. Sometimes, especially when I work a lot with dyslexic people, I wonder if I am really helping people get by on their courses without improving their literacy. Perhaps a literacy support teacher becomes an anti-literacy teacher.

So I’ve been reflecting on what I actually do with my working life these days. I can give support which is classified as literacy, numeracy, dyslexia or language according mainly to the needs of the learner, though there are funding issues which determine the exact classification. Numeracy support largely consists of teaching the skills of numeracy. The rest largely has two outcomes: the learners do better on their courses and the learners improve their skills. I teach in two main modes, in class and one to one, and the emphasis varies between these two. With all the learners I have support plans detailing the skills to be developed and regular reviews to check how the skills are improving. For some there is a certificate at the end in literacy or numeracy but not for most. For the learner, progress on the course is usually more important, though not necessarily.

Additional Learning Support has become a fairly diverse speciality, defined largely by the funding which enables it to happen. As such it remains something of a Cinderella discipline, and it could all disappear with the funding at midnight.

Here are some observations:

* Status and pay differ greatly from institution to institution. I work for a college which treats ALS staff as equal status lecturers and encourages them to get Level 5 qualifications. I know there was a move to develop a Level 4/5 specific qualification for ALS, but I have lost sight of that. Some colleges use lower-paid, lower status learning support assistants to do some of the work.

* Our work is clearly less rigorous than that done by Skills for Life tutors, but it can also be more wide-ranging and perhaps more holistic. For me it is closer to the literacy work I was doing twenty years ago than to the modern classroom. Some will say that is a good thing and some will say it is a bad thing.

* It’s very easy for an ALS teacher to concentrate too much on the enabling part. Equally it’s very easy for an ALS teacher to read a diagnostic report off a computer and try to teach those skills highlighted for improvement in isolation.

* There is precious little published to support the work of Additional Learning Support teachers. There is nothing in the way of learning resources, strategies, quality standards, etc, at least nothing that has come my way.

* There are alternative ways of delivering support. Some colleges have made a lot of progress with embedded skills for life. Some do it well and some not so well. It is also possible to have Skills for Life tutors delivering contextualised group learning. These methods put emphasis on the skills improvement. Learners may still need specialist help with their coursework.

On reflection, then, I feel renewed confidence that the work I do in literacy support is real literacy work. I believe it is a method which can be very effective. I hope it is a method of delivering literacy which can be supported and developed.

Dyscalculia Research

2008-07-02T14:27:00.003Z

There was a report a couple of weeks ago (the NCETM report links other reports) that research shows that dyscalculia may be more common in schoolchildren than dyslexia. This is quite a revolutionary idea. If it is true, and people take up on it, we can expect big changes in the way that maths is taught.

First however some background. The research was carried out on 1500 primary schoolchildren in Cuba and shows that between 3 and 6 percent screened positive, as opposed to "the 2.5 to 4.3 percent who have dyslexia." I think these are dyslexia in the UK figures. The research used a screener devised by Brian Butterworth - more information about him here, and details of his published screener here. Brian Butterworth is evidently one of our leading experts on the subject, and the screener is meticulous in its definition of dyscalculia and in its efforts to exclude other causes for maths deficit. The screener is only normed up to the age of 14 and it is only a screener and exhorts its users to look at other causes before making a diagnosis.

The reports of the research do raise a lot of questions. Why Cuba? Were the schoolchildren also screened for dyslexia? (If not, the comparison with dyslexia is far from convincing.) Did the researchers look for other contributing causes? Was the screener similar to the published one?

I've always thought of dyscalculia as a comparatively rare condition, relating to difficulty with conceptualising numerical information. I've met a few, but only a few, people like that in my years of teaching. What I don't think it is includes:

disliking maths
not understanding maths after bad teaching
dyslexia - a lot of dyslexics have difficulty with maths
memory difficulties - cannot hold how to do things

You'd want to filter these things out, especially the dyslexia. Someone who cannot learn tables, or gets confused between multiplication and division, or tries to take the top number from the bottom one in a written sum, or confuses median and mean, and so on, most likely does not have dyscalculia.

Of course if the research proves to be true I may need to change my opinion. But I may find that all that has happened is that the definition of dyscalculia has changed.

Stick With It and ICT

2008-05-14T08:26:00.003Z

A link to a new practitioners' guide "Using ICT to help Skills for Life learners Stick with it!" arrived in my in-box this morning. This derives from research undertaken during the Stick With It project, undertaken by NRDC, NIACE and Tribal/CTAD, which looks at "persistence" of Skills for Life learners, ie what helps them stick at learning. The guide is published by the QIA.

At first glance it is good to have a document which outlines all sorts of uses of ICT in Basic Education, which is well produced and laid out, which is glossy and freely available. However reading it this morning has brought out a whole lot of long-standing frustrations.

Firstly the only research quoted is the one which shows that among 34 year olds those with Entry Level literacy and numeracy are disadvantaged digitally by being the group most likely not to have a computer at home. The relevance of ICT to persistence is basically treated as self-evident. Maybe something more enlightening will come up further down the research.

The guide certainly gives lots of examples of using ICT. The categories are, in the order of presentation: photos, videos, audio, text (word-processing, presentations, etc), User-generated content (basically Web 2.0), mobile learning, and information management (webquests etc). Each section has ideas for beginners and more confident users and lists benefits and pitfalls. However I suspect that most beginners ideas will be far beyond the confidence of many literacy and numeracy tutors; the first suggestion in the document is to use a digital camera to record learner achievement. Even the order of presentation is a bit daunting.

Having a class blog is suggested first for beginners under User-generated content. Unfortunately this is the one area where there are more pitfalls than benefits listed, with the authors getting serious about online identities and linking up with undesirables.

My main issues are:

There is no mention of using computer assisted learning, interactive worksheets and so on. I still feel this is the main way forward to help people move away from the world of printed worksheets.
There is no effort to link things to the curriculum which so dominates the teaching of professionals in this country, and few if any examples of good uses for numeracy.
It would be nice to know how disadvantaged Skills for Life tutors are in theirICT skills, because I find that barriers start with tutors who know little beyond Word and email, and perhaps Google. Google is often the main way to find a site on the internet, even a site which is used regularly, even the main college website.

I could go on.

Literacy Blogs

2008-04-25T14:07:00.002Z

I've been reviewing the current state of literacy blogs, after 18 months of writing this. I haven't found a lot to add to previous findings but it is all listed on the blog page. It is good to report that blogs are being written at all and read of course. There is a cluster of blogs in Canada, a couple in the US and one or two others. There remains only one significant current blog for literacy writers, but I kid myself that there are others which are not publicly listed. Bloggers come in all shapes and sizes and I enjoy reading personal tales as well as posts focusing on being a teacher.

Readers not familiar with the format of blogging will benefit from subscribing to RSS feeds and displaying these. There are a number of different ways of doing this. I like the look and feel of Google Reader and this is usually reviewed well. For myself I use Pageflakes and would find life online difficult without that application. I have put some of these current literacy blogs on the published Skills for Life Pageflakes page I have made, so anyone interested can see how easy it is to scan RSS feeds.

There are a lot more ESOL blogs and many of these are of interest. Over the next couple of weeks I will sort and consider these.

Speaking and Listening Page

2008-04-09T12:33:00.004Z

I've added a Speaking and Listening Page to the Skills for Life Website.

This is not quite like an "activities" page, because it does not necessarily go directly to online activities. It has come about because I increasingly work with learners needing to improve speaking and listening skills while being supported and with tutors providing this support. There are quite a few relevant audio files published or activities containing audio to listen to, but they are not very easy to organise while planning. So I have linked all the component parts of the excellent Skillswise resources for a start. I am also listing relevant units from the published DFES packs and from the newer NLN resources. I cannot link to the NLN resources outside of college because of copyright, although I can put links on our Moodle site. The DFES ESOL packs have good resources which can be run as as Moodle courses from Moodle to Go, and this works smoothly. It would be nice to have the same facility for the Literacy packs, but the CDs provided can be ripped to Windows Media Player or similar and preferably labelled for easy reference.

I wonder how much these Literacy audio files get used. As a literacy tutor I have always put the emphasis on reading and writing skills, but the needs in support are different. Learners have very different support needs and may be receiving support for literacy or for language. I have found the process of sorting out suitable learning materials difficult, and I hope that by listing everything on one page it will make the process of planning a bit easier for me and for others.

Seeing Yourself in Print - Reflect 10

2008-04-04T14:52:00.003Z

Reflect 10 is out in print and pdf download from the NRDC but not yet online.

There's a piece on elearning for ESOL which covers a number of applications, including blogs and captioned pictureshows, but does not go into much how to do it detail. The ideas would have application usually for literacy as well, though I suspect some tutors would ask for advice on how to fit the idea into the curriculum.

Seeing Yourself in Print is a nice piece about publishing learners' writing from the past (Write First Time and Gatehouse) to current initiatives such as NRDC's own Voices on the Page. The authors stress the confidence coming from seeing your writing in print.

Elearning tutors may help by allowing learners to see their writing in virtual print (online) as well, through things like Skillswise's Your Stories and blogs in general. The Skills for Life website started with a magazine, which the learners liked to show family and friends, and that certainly contributed to confidence.

When I worked in Adult Education as a literacy tutor in the 80s, I ran a poetry class in the evenings for any Basic Education students who wanted to do something in May and June after the year's classes had ended. The real confidence came from the writing itself. We were able to put the emphasis on expression and technique rather than on correcting and producing acceptable English, and the learners found this liberating. And, yes, they did take pride in seeing their names in the magazine, produced with a BBC B and a dot matrix printer.

E-Book on Literacy and Dyslexia

2008-04-02T16:14:00.003Z

Hugo Kerr’s highly recommended chapter on dyslexia from “The Cognitive Psychology of Literacy Teaching: Reading, Writing, Spelling, Dyslexia (& a bit more besides)” brings me back to the ongoing debate, at least in my mind, about the “reality” of dyslexia.

Hugo is truly sceptical about dyslexia, without going quite as far as to suggest that it doesn’t exist. I might have agreed more fully a few years ago, though I would never have read the amazing quantity of literature quoted, which covers the field. In those days I really was more anti-dyslexia, I believed that it didn't matter to the way I delivered my teaching; I wondered about trying to put those views into order. Looking back now, I remember a few people in particular who came to me for help with spelling, but their needs were great and they never seemed to make as much progress as others.

Now I feel I am more of a believer. I have written in this blog before here and here ideas around the definition of dyslexia. From Hugo’s quoted definitions I am probably closest to the Moray House definition; I certainly do not like the idea of the primacy of reading or literacy difficulty.

I wonder about the other, perhaps secondary, “symptoms” of dyslexia, which include:

Memory difficulties
Organisational difficulties
Difficulties listening to two people at once
Mis-saying words
Difficulties with maps
Difficulties with maths

I wonder about the idea, in Cynthia Klein for one, of difficulties with different sorts of processing, motor, auditory and visual, and the different sorts of literacy problems consequent; I have done these analyses and find them useful.

I wonder about the continuum, about dyspraxia and dyscalculia.

I wonder above all about all those people I have worked with who find great relief in the diagnosis of dyslexia; once it is accepted, there can be release from the anxieties remaining from school and there can be a new addressing of current priorities. As a support tutor I can move away if desired from teaching spelling to supporting writing and expression.

In the UK the diagnosis of dyslexia is crude and unsatisfying, and open to abuse. However it is very often needed for funding to ensure support, and therefore necessary.

I found the book from Maggie Harnew's site, as so often. I'll read more of it, when I can find when I get used to the idea of an e-book - I don't find it easy on a landscape monitor.

Read The Words

2008-04-02T12:02:00.008Z

I've added a link to Read the Words to the Dyslexia Resources page on the Skills for Life Website. I know that dyslexic people sometimes use or are recommended software to turn text into speech. This is a free version and might be attractive if you don't want to use it a lot. I find the slurs between words difficult sometimes, but a dyslexic student pointed out that you have to learn to use software like this so that you become used to its peculiarities; I don't need to use it so I am not a good judge. Just don't try to read a web page from the url; cut and paste the text instead. I can see how this could be a really useful tool.

Another purpose of the site is to embed speech on your web page, so here goes.

It sounds pretty good to me, though I did have to switch to Internet Explorer to get the embedding to work.

Video Jug Punctuation

2008-03-05T16:59:00.002Z

I found the videos on videojug for punctuation interesting. The explanation is very straightforward and rapid, but as it's a video a teacher could keep pausing and starting again. A teacher might even find it easier to find out about punctuation from this than a book, as it is so straightforward. I like the easy English accent; there is a comment complaining about the voice over's mispronunciation of "haitch", but actually I like it as it is the way that most teachers and learners in my institution talk. The content makes it mostly Level 2 however.

I wonder how much teachers will actually use little bits of video like this. You'd need to be confident and well-equipped to switch a little bit of video in, because you don't want to make a big thing of it - it's just an alternative way of presenting learning. However, I can see from my teaching and that of my colleagues that video is becoming more and more important.

I'm working on creating videos at college for use in supporting in mainstream, and that is creating interest. I seem to be adding video links regularly, but this is the first time I've added something to the interactive activities pages.

ESOL Scotland and Teachers TV

2008-02-06T14:58:00.001Z

Both these sites have something of interest.

The ESOL Scotland site is a new site, so the potential is not clear yet. It's a general portal site for Scotland. It does have now a raft of usable learning resources, many of which will be useful for literacy and those in .doc format will be easy to adapt. There are also some listening resources which may be useful in Literacy or ESOL Support.

I'd been aware of the Teachers TV site, linked to the digital TV channel. I hadn't noticed that there was a section with Skills for Life Videos for 14 to 19 year olds in the FE section. I immediately found these useful; maybe it's very much my job, but I work with apprentices in Social Care and in Hairdressing, and these videos will appeal to my learners. They demonstrate Skills for Life (Key Skills really) in practical situations, which are realistic and relevant. They are also well made. I've been looking for videos recently with a view to using them with quizzes.

New Activities on Website

2008-01-17T11:49:00.000Z

I've written a couple of quizzes for Level 1 students working towards the End Test (Grammar). I've had a few people recently doing practice tests asking me what "grammatical" means, so the quizzes are there to give practice after the explanations have been given. I may also add the PowerPoint I've used to help in the teaching, though I've not posted this sort of resource before. I found the quizzes quite difficult, partly because the practice tests cover the issue in a number of different ways, but also because I am not at all sure how it is presented in current real tests. The quizzes may then get altered with more experience.

I also like the Handling Data resources from the Gold Dust Resources from the QIA. The for Interactive Activities were written for tutors learning but are great for some Level 2 learners. I like the way they show all 4 averages together subject to change as data changes. It is such an easy idea but I don't recall seeing it before. Many learners, especially the dyslexic ones, find remembering which average is which confusing, so a new resource is very welcome. This one shows it clearly, and you can hide the bar chart and frequency table if they interfere.

Blogs from Canada

2008-01-08T12:32:00.000Z

I have been following a couple of blogs from Canada recently, and have added links for Literacies Cafe and AlphaPlus Blog on the Blogs page. I have been aware of the AlphaPlus Centre in Toronto for some years, but only came across the blog recently. A recent post points to this class blog which is a splendidly straightforward place to publish literacy learner writing. Literacies Cafe relates to Literacies, a research magazine and links to other Canadian blogs.

I think what is most impressive about these organisations publishing blogs for different purposes is the immediacy, helped by the accessibility. Literacies Cafe enabled me to participate in a forum thousands of miles away which was relevant to my day to day work. I have tried publishing student writing in a few ways over the years and have read student writing in a number of different contexts but the writing linked above is so current and immediate. This is a true Web 2.0 way of seeing what is happening around the world.

MindMeister

2007-12-20T18:06:00.000Z

A little more on MindMeister which I mentioned yesterday. I've used it this last couple of days for assignment planning with a student who has used both Inspiration and Bubbl.us. We have used it in three ways, us both sitting at a single computer, us both sitting at adjacent computers and both updating different sections, such as me correcting spelling, and from home with her updating and me changing layout after she has finished editing. The finished maps look great. They can be printed very easily to pdf, which may leave quite small print on a large map. The rtf print option is useful too for making notes for putting things in order if your plan is leading to an essay or assignment. You can compare the output with one I produced with bubbl.us, and posted here. You can centre the embedded map below with your mouse. The one drawback I have seen is that you can only have six maps with the free version.

Newly Discovered Elearning Sites

2007-12-18T13:59:00.000Z

These are three sites I have come across recently which could be interesting in very different ways.

First off is Inspiration Lane, a magazine cum blog for ESOL from America, run by Susan Alyn. It is really a compendium of teaching ideas; in part it makes use of daily links so that you can always have something fresh to use, such as caption writing or recipe reading, just as useful for literacy teaching as for ESOL.

Second is Rash Kath's set of blogs from India. Although they relate to her primary maths teaching it is a really inspiring way of using elearning. I started from Planet Infinity, her class blog, but look through all her blogs for the nuggets useful for numeracy. There are some useful videos for techniques - I like the one for multiplying by 1 1. I also like the teaching idea for adding time. There ought to be a repository of ideas like this. Her videos are short and simple as they should be.

Finally there is MindMeister which has knocked bubbl.us off the number one slot for online mindmapping. It's not quite as easy to get going, but it is more aligned to commercial software and has good printing controls. The free version is fine - just sign up and get started.

Busy, Support Materials

2007-12-18T13:43:00.000Z

I seem to have been busy this term, but it has surprised me to find it is almost 3 months since anything has been added here or since a proper update of the website. I have added one or two links and today's update is only because there are a couple of outstanding sites I have come across in the past couple of days. See next post.

My online energies have been taken up with learning materials for additional learning support. Anyone who has looked will have realised that there is nothing out there. I have therefore been trying to write some, designed to run in Moodle when tutors are teaching alongside curriculum teachers. The key word is differentiation. I'm trying to use video with quizzes at different levels.

In the meantime I keep searching for something useful for the site. The only link I know of value is inevitably Maggie Harnew, who has a page of contextualised resources on her wonderful site.

Dead Links, Peter Symonds College

2007-09-28T12:57:00.000Z

At this time of year I usually go through all the links on the Skills for Life website, trying to find those addresses that have changed or no longer exist. I'm slower this year as a result of being off sick for ten days and working in a new office with less easy, temporarily I hope, access to IT. It's always a slow process as you cannot be sure that a great site has gone just because it is not there today - it may be just down today and back in business tomorrow. I've tried using an online verifier this year but it has introduced new difficulties.

One of the first problems I discovered was that those great learning resources from Peter Symonds College were now behind a password on their intranet. It has been sadly the case that the number of interactive resources has not increased much over the years, as sites are protected or go subscriber only. Luckily I searched around the college's main site and discovered the Peter Symonds resources here. I've tried to update all relevant links.

Word Sorting for Spelling

2007-09-26T14:17:00.000Z

The activities linked from this page on the Houghton Mifflin site are a series of word sorting exercises to assist spelling. This one for example looks at different spellings for the "er" sound. The site is American, aimed at primary school grades and is very difficult to find what you are looking for. But these include exactly the sort of activities I've been looking for - sorting things into different categories. I'd like to be able to create them myself and have looked at ways of doing it. That seems to be to learn Flash, obtain the software and do it myself. That's a long process.

I'll try to find my way through this site and link some specific activities. At that point I'll find it useful.

Skillswise E3

2007-08-29T14:55:00.000Z

I have added links for the materials under Skillswise E3. This includes direct links to the individual modules under Activities English and Activities Maths. This represents a substantial new body of teaching and learning resources, and I hope they will be useful as the Level 1 resources, and I'm certainly looking forward to using some of them in the new term.

The E3 resources follow the same pattern as the L1 stuff: factsheets, worksheets, games for some the units, multiple choice quizzes and tutor notes. The style is just the same. This means that everything is safe and reliable, but that nothing is cutting edge.

I use the Level 1 resources pretty regularly, especially quizzes and worksheets where I do not have my own, or which I know work well and so I have not bothered to write my replacements. Some of the games are good and some not so good, some the learners like and some they do not see the point of. I remember what I want to avoid for the most part. What I have looked at so far of E3 looks good.

It's worth reflecting that the BBC needs to take considerable credit for sponsoring the Skillswise initiative. In terms of online literacy and numeracy learning, for many people Skillswise is still the beginning and the end. It's great to have it, but it would have been interesting to see some of the materials trying something less traditional.

Basic Skills Agency

2007-07-11T10:20:00.000Z

Last week saw the passing of an era with the incorporation of the English side of the Basic Skills Agency into NIACE. I had noticed that the BSA had launched a new website recently, while some of their project sites and the Observatory had disappeared. The Wales sites are so far unaffected. I have tried to reflect these changes on the Background page.

NIACE and Tribal have formed the Alliance for Lifelong Learning to work in the "field of literacy, language and numeracy to form the country's leading concentration of expertise across all age ranges." So says the NIACE news report. It remains to be seen what this means in practice.

The BSA grew out of ALBSU which formed an important part of my learning to be a basic skills practitioner. In the Eighties their training was central to many of us developing practice in London and probably in other parts of the country as well. In the early nineties I managed an ALBSU funded Open Learning Centre and was impressed by the commitment to innovation in practice. Things were changing though; ALBSU became the BSA, the training element declined in quality and was eventually discarded, the BSA became involved in schools, the tone became more authoritarian "this is the way to do things", the New Labour Government established ReadWrite+, and the BSA became less relevant. Last year saw the departure of Alan Wells who had been at the helm since before my own interest. Where next? Who knows?

Gordons

2007-07-11T09:26:00.000Z

I have added some more links on Maths Activities to the excellent Gordons numeracy activities. I added a first batch a few months ago, but had always been aware that there were more that were useful. I have tried to concentrate on learners working towards E3, L1 or L2 as these are my core audience. Gordons generally aim to develop mental maths skills, such as subtraction with a number line and halving and doubling. It is worthwhile looking through the whole suite and seeing what is useful for your own teaching.

These activities can be used in different ways. Many will work best on a projector - they are designed as interactive whiteboard activities - and these can also be used one to one, which is how I use them. Some allow for answer entry and so could be used for individual work under supervision. I would hope that any numeracy classroom in a college would have a projector attached to the internet these days, but I know from experience how far this is from the truth.

Social Networking and Skills for Life

2007-06-28T12:09:00.000Z

There has been one positive step forward for me from recent training I've given on elearning - I can now see the application of social networking for literacy or numeracy learners. A colleague tipped me off about Ning, which is a service which allows you to set up online social networks. A participant at one of the sessions thought that social networking was the Web 2.0 tool for her Entry Level learners, because many used or were interested in MySpace, but she was anxious about the open nature of most networks.

Ning was right for her because you set up a private network for free and enrol your learners on it. They can then link with each other, post photographs, make comments and blog posts. The Ning site can act as the social centre of your course or group and you can introduce as much educational content as you wish. I can easily see the application of this with younger FE learners.

Anyone interested can check out Classroom 2.0, which is a network for educators running on Ning, mainly from the schools sector in the US inevitably. It does show the power of the platform, and you can learn a lot about the practical applications of Web 2.0 if you follow the links and discussions.

Quizzes for Number Bonds

2007-06-15T14:06:00.000Z

I added a few quizzes yesterday to the Maths Quizzes and Maths Activities section to help one of my students with her number bonds. I've not done much work with Entry Level numeracy of late; this learner wants to do numeracy next year and is almost at Entry 2.

I was aware that there a couple of other good resources around: the NNS Number Facts one, which involves counting, and the Ambleside game which involves typing in answers. I may use these, but drag and drop matching still seems to hit all the right keys. By moving one number to the other you make an association of the two numbers together in the head, maybe with a picture or a sound depending on learning style. The drag and drop brings in a kinaesthetic element. It is a simple game, no typing, no counting, easy to do (and easy to create). So many of my quizzes nowadays seem to end up as drag and drop matching. Does this show good practice or a lack of imagination?

Being Dyslexic

2007-06-15T13:35:00.000Z

I added a link to Being Dyslexic to the Dyslexia Information Sites page yesterday. The site has been around for a few years and gets a lot of traffic. The site was set up by a dyslexic adult, it contains a vast amount of information and has a very active forums section. I do however have some reservations.

With so much information from so many sources, it is inevitable that some of it is conflicting. As a tutor working with dyslexic learners I am looking for clear information which is reliable, both for myself and to point others towards. Because the underlying cause of dyslexia is unclear, dyslexia is defined through its symptoms and diagnosis tends to be restrained, even tentative. Yet when I am working with someone who is dyslexic I have no doubts about it. When a learner displays a symptom I think (or say) that that is the dyslexia coming through. It is quite different from working with someone who is not dyslexic, although there is also a category of people who might be dyslexic.

Unfortunately one of the first statements I came across on the forums was that dyslexia is about difficulties with reading, writing and spelling and that is the sum of it. I have read this online in several places in the past few weeks. And it is a statement which I find very untrue. I would try to define dyslexia as being something which has a number of characteristic symptoms and these include difficulties with reading, writing and spelling. Other symptoms such as short term memory difficulties, difficulties processing sounds, organisational difficulties are just as significant, if not always so apparent, and are also used in diagnosis.

The reason I feel a need to bring this up again is that dyslexia remains a controversial subject and is liable to enquiry by the media. We have seen writers such as Julie Birchill and Peter Hutchins cause backlash and outrage in recent weeks, as elements of the media seek to undermine the legal right to recognition and support. What we need is clarity and discretion.

Pageflakes

2007-06-14T13:13:00.000Z

Because Pageflakes has become so much part of my online life in the past six months, I've been looking for ways to share it. So I have made a sample page with some Skills for Life links and feeds on it and posted it here. It is very easy to sign up to and set up your own home page. I've quickly found I need a page at work, a page at home, etc. Luckily it's very easy to add new pages. I believe this page will get updated as I add things to it.

The Pageflakes team are also touting the collaborative side of pages. This means that a teacher can share a page with learners and have everybody accessing and selected learners, or all, making changes. It could therefore become a useful means of coordinating a set of blogs.

More Mental Maths Quizzes

2007-06-12T08:59:00.000Z

The purpose of more mental maths quizzes (on the Maths Quizzes page) came about from the chilling understanding that my L2 numeracy students had forgotten the techniques they had learned to do 4 Basic Rules calculations. Some might say that it would not have made any difference if they had forgotten their tables and their written methods. However my learners are adamant that they cannot remember tables. Some of them have learned at least to recognise some tables over the course of this year. But the tricks and techniques have contributed more to confidence and, I believe, more to mathematical understanding. I have concentrated more on easier tasks this time.

Functional Skills

2007-05-24T15:56:00.000Z

I had no sooner added a link to Totally Skilled's embedded learning models, for example in IT and Health, where the embedded skills are functional rather than basic, than I came across them in a meeting, where part of this document was circulated. It's a few months old, but I had never realised that functional skills were going to take over from Basic Skills and Key Skills. August 2012 is currently the final date for Skills for Life awards.

It will be interesting to see how the Core Curriculum fares in this brave new world.

New Links: City and Guilds Format End Tests

2007-05-24T15:47:00.000Z

Maybe they've been there for ages, but I've only just discovered the links for City and Guild style end tests (linked on this page). At this time of the year especially, it is useful to be able to give people an idea of what the tests will actually look like when they are done on computers. We use City and Guilds, and it has often not been easy to show this to learners, as most of the samples are in a different format. The City and Guilds format can be confusing when first encountered - some dyslexic learners get confused with the way documents can be shown in a pop-up window, and some older monitors do not handle this very well. Practice helps.

Elearning for Literacy

2007-05-11T15:20:00.000Z

Preparing staff training for Web 2.0 has of course made me think about the purpose of it all. Why use elearning? And in elearning why use Web 2.0? If you follow the arguments through, one of the strongest reasons given why elearning works and especially Web 2.0 works is that it passes control to the learner and takes control away from the teacher.

The elearning enthusiasts tell us that we must prepare for this change - we as teachers cannot stay in control of learning.

In literacy teaching I spent a lot of time in the nineties trying to give learners control of their own learning through an open learning centre, with written packs and elearning at its heart. A lot of that seems to have gone out of the window with the arrival of Skills for Life. We have the agenda of a national core curriculum, and achievement to be assessed against portfolios and tests aligned to that. We assess needs against the curriculum and code all activities to the curriculum in our lesson plans to meet quality requirements. Of course there is plenty of space to use Web 2.0 with this. However it is easy to see why busy tutors, who have received their training in this setup, let the needs of the curriculum drive the learning rather than the wants of the learner. Too many of us are happy to take our learning materials of a shelf or off a link on a website.

This thread of thought was inspired by a quote from David Warlick from here:

"We are a generation who was taught how to be taught — not how to teach ourselves."

Will Richardson refers to it in this blog entry, and Will's argument is just as relevant to Skills for Life as it is to school teaching in the UK or USA.

More on Blogs

2007-05-04T15:43:00.000Z

Because I'm preparing a session on Web 2.0 tools for the college - not Skills for Life specific, blogs have come up a lot in the past week. I've put a new page on the website (linked off the teachers page to collect all the blog resources. This will allow me to structure the headings more usefully, and so organise the content by student or teacher, and by numeracy, dylexia and so on.

One of the new links was for Larry Ferlazzo's daily list of resources for ESOL/EFL. He is interested in Web 2.0 tools as well as traditional approaches and I haven't begun to explore it yet. I'm sure more links and thoughts will come in the next couple of weeks.

New Website Links 2 - Blogs

2007-04-27T14:56:00.000Z

Blogging Resources: Minnesota and New York. I came across these two pages by chance. Although some of the listed blogs are a couple of years out of date, there is an interesting sample of some of the ways blogs could be used with learners:

Tutor writes blog on topic, and learners respond through comments anonymously, here; even better would be for the learners to add their names ("Ahmed wrote...".
Students respond through logged in names here.
Teacher (here) writes main blog, and adds links to students who write their own blog entries, example here, with teacher responding through comments.
Teacher and learners all on same blog (see Clan)

I will probably find more, but the links are a bit slow this afternoon. I'll get back. I think it is the flexibility of blogging as a writing tool that makes it so powerful, it's sequential, it's the comments, it's the feeds, it's the simplicity of the interface, it's the tags (labels), and so on.

New Website Links 1

2007-04-27T14:17:00.000Z

Scientific Calculator: I know this isn't Numeracy, but every now and then I need one when working with a student, and this is such a beautiful tool. I found it as a new link on Maggie Harnew's site and so it gives me the opportunity to plug the Adult Basic Skills Resource Centre, which probably needs no introduction, as it must be the country's leading (the world's leading?) online depository of paper-based Skills for Life resources. Although my focus is very much Elearning, I need paper-based stuff and I like to dip in when my own resources don't cover what I'm looking for. I was however brought up in the old school: my literacy volunteer training in 1983 stressed strongly coming into every session with something specially made for each learner. You can't do that of course, but I like to have my own materials where I understand why they were designed in the way they were. I need to know that on, for instance, a maths sheet of sums or a spelling reinforcement that all the issues are covered and that there is a learning progression to be worked through.

New Website Quizzes

2007-03-22T15:44:00.000Z

I've added a few Beauty Therapy quizzes linked from the Quizzes page.

As might be guessed I wrote them for a particular student who is struggling with remembering the names of muscles and arteries. I try all sorts of things, especially mnemonics, so I am trying Hot Potatoes quizzes with her to see if it works. She enjoys doing them, but she hasn't learned the words yet. If I have them on the web, I am acting in accordance with the software licence and will have them there the next time I need them. They may be useful for someone else. I get this quite a lot with students I support, where they are asked to remember wonderful, impossible names for a level 2 NVQ; another example is where Horticulture students have to learn the Latin names of plants. I did Latin so the names of these muscles mean a little bit to me. They don't mean much to my Somali student.

Blogs and Wikis for Literacy

2007-03-21T12:32:00.000Z

These thoughts come from reading Doug Belshaw's blog here. This post led me to his class wiki, the class blog roll, and a discussion of how this works in practice. Reading all three in conjunction is fruitful.

I can certainly see a literacy class, where the class materials are on one page - a wiki, and where the student writing is on a set of others - blogs. Moodle certainly has the set up to do this, but the wiki approach is more straightforward and more easily customisable, and the learners might prefer to be in a more public (and more neutral) space. I'll have a go in Moodle and see if I can make it look right. The problem Doug Belshaw has is where to store the blogs, but with a smaller literacy class each student could have a Blogger account.

I also liked Doug's recent post on Hitting the Wall, talking about wanting innovate as with elearning but finding a brick wall - cue nice illustrations. This is just as relevant in FE as in Secondary School. He doesn't talk about demotivated (and confused) staff though, maybe that only happens in FE.

Reflect 7

2007-03-15T15:15:00.000Z

There is a new issue of Reflect out in pdf, which I always enjoy reading. One article I found interesting, another I'm afraid to say rather made my blood boil.

Firstly, positively, I enjoyed the piece on Page 17 entitled Bilingual Learners - literacy or ESOL? It's about class placement, what is the boundary between an ESOL class and a literacy class. Examples are given of learners ending up in what purported to be literacy classes when their real need was oral English. At a few stages of my career I've had a hand in placing bilingual learners, and it's never been a problem, but then I've always known the content of the classes and the skills of the teachers. The examples given here could mostly have been put right if the learner's needs had been adequately assessed. I cannot say whether these learners were asked whether their main need was to improve speaking or literacy, but it looks as if they were placed to meet institutional needs, group everyone together because the institution cannot fund two different classes. There may also be issues with non-specialist referral staff who are confused by the presence of Speaking and Listening in the Literacy Curriculum. Working in Southall in West London in the 1980s, I was responsible for setting up specific ESOL/Literacy classes, for learners who had poorish oral skills but little or no first language literacy. These were taught by literacy specialists with an interest in or experience of ESOL. Currently colleges may run Basic Skills courses within their ESOL provision for this group of learners, mostly I believe taught by ESOL specialists. I have always been more than happy to place bilingual learners in literacy classes, but only if I am convinced that is what they need and want, and that the teacher can cope with it. The article also makes reference in passing to the idea that British born literacy learners may have ESOL needs as well. It is good to see that research is being done into the issue.

On a more negative mode I was less happy to see a plug for the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics (NCETM), under the guise of a review. There is a link between NRDC who publish Reflect and NCETM via the DFES - too many acronyms. The NCETM site worries me a lot, maybe because it does not seem to have a lot to do with excellence, although it should be a portal to so much. Sure there are links to resources, but in the world of mathematics, there are hundreds of sites with links to resources, some with just as strong moderation. However the site (and the "review")sets great store in its blogging. I fail to see what they mean by the word "blog"; I think they are confusing "blog" with "blog post". It's not easy to follow one person's posts, and there are no RSS feeds for "blogs" that I can discover. The only two blog posts with reference to post 16 consist of a starter entry and a single comment (from the same user) that he'll digest and get back. The biggest problem with the site at present from my perspective is that it's all about schools. The "review" says that we as practitioners should contribute, but I cannot see why we should as there is no evidence that this is the right forum. It also adds that Maths4Life is getting involved so that may change things. Maybe I'll look again next year and it will be wonderful. Unfortunately the burden of an unintuitive site may prove too much. Surely Reflect should distance itself more from NRDC projects.

Enough rant, back to preparing next week's teaching.

Mind Maps

2007-03-14T09:50:00.000Z

Here is a new Web 2.0 tool from Bubbl.us - quick and easy mind maps that you can edit collaboratively over the web. The product is at an early stage and there is not a lot of functionality, and maybe it will stay simple. As I see it you can only share to people you nominate as a friend with their email; you cannot post a link. You can however embed and I've put one below. I like to use mind maps to plan things with learners, especially dyslexic learners. I also use them to demonstrate things to be learned like this example. It's Flash based and takes time to load. It prints well, but really needs a colour printer. It's free of course and readily accessible.

Additions 9th March

2007-03-08T16:21:00.000Z

I've added links for the following:

I found a link to dyslexics.org on a blog I have been following - I Speak of Dreams, particularly the post on Theories on the Cause of Dyslexia. Both writers are what I would call sober on dyslexia; they are concerned that dyslexia should be understood in a way that includes a scientific understanding. Theories on the Cause of Dyslexia refers to the idea that we can expect that more than one cause of dyslexia will prove to be the case when we have full understanding. This page on dyslexics.org refers to the myths of dyslexia and suggests that a lot of the problems that dyslexic people have are caused by bad teaching early on - this in a week when inspectors have criticized literacy standards in nursery education. A lot of misunderstanding is caused by focusing so much on the idea that dyslexia is poor reading skills, rather than that poor reading skills is one symptom of dyslexia, exacerbated in countries with difficult spelling patterns.

I have started to put resources I use to teach what I call underpinning numeracy skills for people to learn in preparation for the end tests in to one place. At the moment this is on a wiki page which I can update easily wherever I am. Eventually I will incorporate it on the site along with the Spellsheets page and other similar sets. At the moment it mainly includes my own resources (quizzes and pdfs) and stuff from Skillswise. Although the site is mainly about online learning, there are some points where I need to organise paper-based resources as well. At the moment this is linked from the End Tests page.

I have gone over the word lists in the spellsheets and changed fonts into sans serif ones for easier reading with my learners.

Dyslexia Scotland

2007-02-27T10:31:00.000Z

On the Friday I added a link to Dyslexia Scotland to the Dyslexia Information page. What impressed me most is that it's a beautifully designed site. It contains all the usual dyslexia information with all the Scotland specific information you would expect. It incorporates the Textic toolbar so cleanly it seems part of the design - it probably was. The links to Readspeaker are very clear. The whole design has been worked out wonderfully. The British Dyslexia Association site also uses Textic and also has the Textic talk toolbar for sound, but inevitably they could not redesign the site to incorporate these.

I played around with the Textic bar when it first came out, but rarely had the opportunity to use it with dyslexic learners. It's a great idea and I would recommend dyslexic people to pay for the Word bar. I'm not so sure about the Internet Explorer bar - I mostly abandoned Internet Explorer about a year ago, and they do not yet have a bar for Firefox. I don't know if anyone has gone for a whole college approach to Textic - I imagine the limitations and costs would be complex. The website way can be effective. With public websites having to make themselves accessible under the DDA, there is a lot of scope for clean design and tools like this to help poor readers.

I also played around with text and background colours a few years ago on this page. I try to do handouts on coloured pages and use sans serif fonts like Arial and Verdana, but I'm not a great fan of Comic Sans (not available on this blog). I've tried Arial and Verdana on this post as well

Website Additions 20 February 2007

2007-02-20T16:05:00.000Z

I have added links today for Maths Activities for some of the Canterbury Cross programs. I have a couple of quite strong reservations:

they are .exe files and may cause difficulties when they are clicked on some set-ups. Firefox also handles .exe files in a more cumbersome (but perhaps more secure) way.
they can be quite large programs with and the bit with what I see as real Adult Numeracy relevance may not come up first.

However the value of these activities may be quite high. There is a similar issue with the Gordons files which are flash based but which may reference a number of different skills within one file. I haven't added many of these yet.

I have also started a section on the Elearning page for what is at the moment Blogs, wikis and podcasts. I hope in time that this will become a whole section/page on Web 2.0 approaches for Skills for Life. At the moment there isn't much. I have added the Grammar Girl podcasting site - it is likely to be of more value for teachers than learners; but it demonstrates a great use of the technology. I'd be interested to hear how learners like the change to a listening style. The blogs show that blogs can be used in a number of different ways.

Literacy and Web 2.0

2007-02-08T14:13:00.000Z

Seeing this video on YouTube yesterday started me thinking, as I am sure it has for many people (400,000 hits in 9 days). It sums up in 5 minutes how Web 2.0 is changing our culture, no less.

My thoughts are about literacy and the requirements for it. It is rapidly becoming essential to read the web and to write to the web, to remain included in society; the video shows just how. As ICT becomes increasingly seen as a Skill for Life, we need to make sure that our learners can access the web both ways. They must be able to read web pages and to recognize and understand hyperlinks. They must be able to write to web packages like blogs, wikis, Moodle, web forums and all the others, using the sort of post editor that I am using here, using the icons and conventions that they would use in a word processor

So along with using Web 2.0 technologies as learning tools, we must ensure that our learners, particularly those returning to learning, have the skills to access them. Of course our teachers also have to have those skills.

I had a look at the Level 1 Adult ICT Skills standards from the QCA, published 2005. The internet is still passive, for reading and downloading. I dare say someone learning Web 2.0 skills could be accredited using these standards, but it shows how fast we are moving.

New Additions to Website

2007-01-25T11:47:00.000Z

I've added a couple of links for podcasted listening materials, Breaking News and Podcards. Both have mp3 listening with worksheets and transcripts, so you can use them for reading as well as listening. It would be nice to think in this mp3 oriented world that someone would produce some listening materials tied in to the Literacy Core Curriculum and made freely available.

I also like the class Mnemonics Sheet from Stella Jales at Wiltshire College, hosted by Maggie Harnew on her excellent Resource Centre. I have a few collected on Topics on the CCM site. I use them regularly in my teaching and new ideas are welcome. I don't usually link paper-based resources, but Topics lists a few that are available over the web.

The Canterbury Cross numeracy programs are executable files (.exe) so they may create some difficulties to run on some networks. I find they run straight off the links in IE6, but not in Firefox 2.0, and they may come in useful. Area is Level 2, while Fractions has a nice game for percentage quantities of money, and Round It is Level 1. I'll need to look right through them and see if I can make direct links for the activities page; it depends on what the issue is with Firefox.

Website - GCSE Maths Help

2007-01-09T12:10:00.000Z

I've added a link to Keith Burnett's GCSE Maths help, which I should have linked before but neglected to. Keith's podcasts and videos are of interest, and one or two have direct relevance to numeracy teaching:

YouTube does have one or two other videos of relevance, and certainly there is a lot of potential here. I need to find a way of putting these sorts of link on a page. They are not interactive, of course, but they will create interest and offer varied learning styles.

What's New Blog

2006-12-19T21:21:00.000Z

I'd written earlier that I wanted to add an RSS feed to the website's What's New page. I haven't found an easy way to do this without a complete restructure, so I have started a second blog to cover this. It's called What's New, and I'll link entries there to this blog.

New Additions to Skills for Life Website

2006-12-19T16:22:00.000Z

I have added a small raft (7) of mental maths quizzes to Activities Maths, covering some techniques for larger numbers, ie not simple bonds and tables. They were done for a couple of my students and went down well. I have tried in some of them to make them not just sums - so fractions involves divisions and area involves multiplying.

I like the way a matching exercise works. It's a bit like a puzzle and the learner gets satisfaction on completing it. It also has some of the same benefits as multiple choice - the learner can do the calculation and then compare it with possible answers. In this way it gives good practice for multiple choice.

I've added a link for the National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics to Background. It's not really got anything yet for post 16 numeracy. There are a couple of relevant blogs, Fractious Fractions and SfL/KS/FS in FE, but at the moment they look more like the start of a discussion board than a blog. Some of the more general or school blogs are more interesting and read like blogs, such as John Dabell's entry here.

Google Docs in the Literacy Class

2006-12-14T14:14:00.000Z

While blogs and wikis are something I can look forward to using with learners, and they are integral to Moodle, another possibility is Google Docs - in particular the word-processing part. Here is something I have run up as a first example to give some idea of what I have in mind. The linked example has the comments as part of the document, but if you publish it normally you would not have the comments embedded.

The Google Doc is basically an online interactive worksheet. You can put comments on them and all changes get displayed in real time. This example has a number of learners working on the same topic. However it could equally well be an individual doc for an individual learner.

Time Line

2006-12-12T10:44:00.000Z

I've been thinking about changes I've seen in using computers for teaching Basic Skills in the past 20 or so years. The starting point came in a presentation I gave in Sheffield a couple of years ago.

1984-5 Community Drop-in - using BBC for word-processing, programs
1985-9 Community Classes - carrying BBC Masters in my car for word-processing, programs
1989-96 Open Learning Centre - suite of PCs (Amstrads) - used for word-processing (Wordstar), Lotus, authoring programs especially Storyboard
1990 - Laser Printer to replace dot-matrix to print learning materials
1990 - First "laptop"
1993 - Multimedia CD-ROMs
c1995 - First contact with internet
1996/7 - Heard presentations from computer gurus about how internet would change everything
2000 - First used internet with students
2001 - started writing quizzes
2004 - started to collect interactive activities
2006 - quizzes and interactive activities still what I mainly use in 1-1; I know I'd be using different strategies in a classroom

Most of these moments seemed very exciting at the time. Taking the BBCs to community classes was very rewarding because the students were very interested and gained hugely in confidence, even if the equipment was heavy and parking sometimes difficult. The first laser printer was also great because it allowed us to make professional looking learning materials. We used Ventura which had GEM, a better than Windows 2 GUI. The printer cost over £1000 and was only the second in the college - that felt cutting edge (an unusual feeling in Basic Skills).

Numeracy Teaching

2006-12-11T09:10:00.000Z

I saw a presentation on Thursday which included a section which showed written mistakes that a dyslexic student might make doing written calculations.

I was struck by how rarely I come across people doing sums like this on paper. My current role includes supporting apprentices to pass Level 1 or Level 2 tests. I can only think of two of those students who regularly did calculations on paper, and one of those was one of the few dyscalculics (does that word exist?) I have come across, and he could not hold a sum in his head. Of the others, few have wanted to do calculations on paper and they have been relieved when I started to offer them alternative strategies.

Being a good FE teacher I write learning plans and lesson plans and try to code these to the Core Curriculum. Normally I support the Core Curriculum, though I strongly believe we should teach other things as well. But it is not easy to code mental arithmetic to the curriculum. There is however a whole section at the level I usually teach (N1/L1.3) about written methods. Luckily my students do not have to demonstrate that they can use efficient written methods. And why should they have to? Numeracy is about everyday maths in practical situations - the only real world place you will be presented with a sum is in a maths class.

Most maths books, maths websites, maths worksheets, numeracy worksheets, etc, etc, demonstrate numeracy skills by written methods, which renders most of them useless for teaching purposes, although they may have useful practice questions. Even the wonderful Maths the Basic Skills Curriculum Edition does this. An honourable exception is Skillswise which has good sections on mental maths.

The Literacy Class of the Future

2006-12-06T10:12:00.000Z

I have recently read 2 interesting schools based wikis (here and here), used to collaborate between schools in different continents. I certainly see blogs and wikis as being central to the literacy class of the future, in the same way as Interactive Whiteboards are central to the numeracy classroom of the present - aren't they? Learners can write to blogs individually and they can collaborate on creating a group wiki on subject or subjects of mutual interest. I've already commented (Reflect) on the use of Wikipedia in a literacy class. I used to publish student writing but Web 2.0 tools make it a lot easier and a lot more learner controlled.

I have added some blogs to the Using ILT page, but a major rework will have to wait. I am still trying to progress my Web2.0 skills. I've been further working with del.cicio.us: (these are my elearning bookmarks I enjoyed the del.icio.us tutorial from John Pederson, and have browsed other people's bookmarks. The tutorial seems to be a Google Doc, another nice Web2.0 tool which would be good in a literacy class of the future.

I have Pageflakes as a homepage, which I can use anywhere, on any browser, complete with well presented RSS feeds, including del.icio.us, including an elearning stream, and Flickr pictures I have rather dully uploaded. I have tried Flock (a Mozilla browser which has a front end for Flicklrand Myspace) and Elg g.

Maths Quizzes - New Additions

2006-11-27T09:28:00.000Z

I added a new Maths quiz on Currency Conversion to the site at the end of last week. There is a wealth of activities for maths out there. I have come across many at several sites in the last couple of months and have added some of their goodies to Activities Maths. They are mostly Flash-based, look good and work well. There are many more useful activities around for numeracy than for literacy. Some of the reasons for this include: schools activities are often created in a neutral way which will appeal to adults, the schools curriculum is much closer to the adult curriculum for numeracy than for literacy, and the issues are more similar; activities are often created to work on interactive whiteboards and so look good and simple on the screen; many literacy activities I've come across are from an EFL background or a University Study Skills background - there are useful activities in the NLN materials (needs registration - look under Family Care etc), but I cannot link these.

However I still find it useful to write Hot Potatoes quizzes for numeracy. I was brought up in the old-fashioned basic skills way where it was an ideal to bring in something individual for your learners each session. A Hot Potatoes quiz is generally only a worksheet online with online rather than verbal feedback, but it feels completely different for both tutor and learner; the learner feels more involved while the tutor can be more neutral, not having to correct it. Drag and drop can add quite a lot extra, but I've not been able to persuade the Hot Potatoes team of this. For this week's quiz on Currency Conversion I had something particular in mind as well as currency conversion, which was multiplying by halves, 6 x 2.5, etc. Things like this rarely crop up in generic flash activities which look at one element only, and are not often concerned to teach things which people find difficult, the core task of a Skills for Life tutor.

I work with a number of learners moving from E3 numeracy to Level 2 numeracy, and there are always issues with fractions. I know that any worksheets or quizzes I write on this topic will always be useful for next year's learners.

Reflect

2006-11-23T14:16:00.000Z

I was interested to see in the new issue of Reflect from NRDC, under the heading Effective Practice:

Our analysis pointed to four guiding principles for ILT in a Skills for Life context:
1. Foster learner autonomy.
2. Enhance peer collaboration.
3. Plan the construction of artefacts.
4. Aim for technological diversity.

We also identified two strategies that do not appear to work:
1. Telling learners how to do the task rather than listen, discuss, prompt and extend.
2. Tutors using PowerPoint.

Although the research was done 2 years ago, and activities observed were things such as webquests and mindmaps (Web 1.0), the conclusions (autonomy, collaboration, doing) are more Web 2.0. A report and practitioner guide will follow. I hope the guide will include Web 2.0 ideas: blogs, forums, etc., as they should enable those guiding principles. It will be interesting to read the research which led to these conclusions.

There was also a review about using Wikipedia, with some ideas and starting links. It might also be useful to think of Simple Wikipedia, maybe to use in tandem. This has the benefit of using easy English. It might be easier also for groups to edit or add pages. Wikis are also also Web 2.0, the web as a place where people are writing information as well as reading it.

I always enjoy reading Reflect. This is Issue 6, available only in pdf at the moment. Earlier issues in html are here.

elearning

2006-11-22T11:02:00.000Z

My head is full of ideas about elearning at the moment. The growth of the internet gets faster and faster as seers have always predicted. I got into this by looking at lots of the sites which are really blogs, such as Jane Knight's Jane's Link of the Day, Will Richardson's Weblogg-ed and Tony Karrer's eLearning Technology.

Will writes an education blog and most of his ideas and enthusiasms are practical and classroom related. Jane and Tony both come from a business perspective. Jane regularly has items of interest in her daily pick - I enjoyed Cappuccino U last week for instance. Hers is a good starting point. Tony has a very clear way of writing his blog, simple but inspiring.

I was very taken with the idea from Will, picked up on (here) that teachers must be users. I have widened the range of Web 2, collaborative, things I have been doing on the web, because this is where a big part of the future of elearning must be. As well as blogging, I have been using Moodle, to which my college is migrating from Blackboard, a great step forward if teachers can grasp the opportunities for collaborative learning it offers. I have been using RSS feeds, and would like to add one to the What's New page. I have been playing with del.icio.us and browsing Utube, Myspace and Flickr.

Some of this must get reflected in posted links. I am trying to rejig the ILT page but haven't found the formula yet.

I am finding it hard to punctuate elearning properly: it could be e-learning, elearning, eLearning, Elearning and others.

New Additions - Spelling

2006-11-21T10:16:00.000Z

I have added a pag e which links some of the Spelling Quizzes to other resources, mainly pdf word lists at the moment. This reflects the way I have been teaching spelling over the past few years, both with groups and with one to one support. I use a word list to look at particular rules or patterns, have the learners write sentences using the words and use the quizzes to reinforce the learning at the end. Normally I'd do one rule a week and have tried to indicate how I would organize this with the numbers down the left. Some learners will go more slowly. I'd often back it up with individual look/cover/say programmes. You can compare this with the LEAP programme in Jenny Lee's "Making the Curriculum Work for Learners with Dyslexia", published by the Basic Skills Agency, details here. I came across this more recently. There are also references to LEAP deep in the DFES Framework for Understanding Dyslexia.

I have also posted an L2 spelling quiz, which is longer and gives more feed-back than usual. This was designed as a task sheet with oral feedback for a particular group of Level 2 candidates, doing the test with minimum of input. I have added the feedback to the quiz, but am unsure how this will go down with a range of learners aiming at the Level 2 end tests.

Recent Additions

2006-11-17T09:46:00.000Z

I have enjoyed finding useful resources on public Scottish sites recently. Two good examples are a store of worksheets and website links on Adult Literacies Online which is a little like the resources part of Talent. Sites like these are not necessarily easy to find what you are looking for, as either you go through sequentially - and the Scottish site is already up to 156 items since June - or you search which can be difficult if you don't know what you are looking for. Easy to organise from the point of view of website design though. On Talent you can search by curriculum reference.

The Learning and Teaching Scotland Core Skills site has some useful numeracy activities. I particularly liked 10% and similar which would be good for one to one, or self-study, or on a whiteboard. I found it difficult to align these activities with English and Welsh Curriculum or Key Skills levels and references. I understand that Scottish tutors have difficulty with our references, as in this guide (pdf: page 6) from CLAN. I have tried to avoid classifying resources on Activities English and Activities Maths completely by curriculum reference, but as the number of links grows it gets harder to find what you are looking for.

First Blog

2006-11-15T10:34:00.000Z

There are not a lot of blogs around in Skills for Life at the moment. The first I came across was Keith Burnett's Bodmas Blog for maths teaching (not really numeracy), and then a small raft in Scotland, including Clan Gathering and Blogging for Numeracy Students, aimed at groups of learners.

For this blog I am really thinking about things I put on the Skills for Life website, and the ways I use these resources and other elearning techniques.

Chris