Literacy and Technology in Minnesota

iPads for Literacy Education

2011-12-14T10:28:00.000-06:00

Recently I was contacted by an adult literacy educator who got the exciting news that her classroom will be provided with a set of iPads for learners to use. That's exciting news, but immediately questions arise, like "OK, what can I do with these things to enhance literacy instruction? What apps are helpful in adult and family literacy classes?" What you see below is my response to this question. Read on!

I only recently got an iPad at work also, and have been experimenting with it in a classroom with adult English learners and also with my son, who just turned 4. I certainly don’t have an exhaustive list of “great apps” but I do have a few ideas to get you started.

First off, what I have found is that there are hundreds of apps that claim to be “educational” and many of them are dubiously so. Most of the free apps and far too many of the paid apps are repetitive “drill and skill” at best, and bore even my 4 year old after about 3 minutes. It’s similar to what you might remember seeing in the first explosion of educational software for computers – a lot of people with software development skills are making and selling apps, but they have had minimal or no guidance from instructional designers and teachers, so they don’t incorporate good learning principles. But I expect that as the medium matures, the quality of the average app is going to go up, so don’t despair.

In the meantime, I have found that the best bets tend to be delivered by companies with experience in instructional design or with publishing learning materials in a different environment (print, video, computer software or educational websites). For example, my adult English learners have really enjoyed working with the “Clear Speech from the Start” app – an app that draws from the popular and successful line of pronunciation textbooks of the same name. (It’s published by Cambridge University Press.) I have also gotten quite a lot of mileage out of the Oxford Advanced American English Dictionary and my students have enjoyed the VOA News Special English iReader.

Another idea is to look for apps that are functional rather than educational per se. I have a colleague who uses an iPod touch in her adult ESL classroom, and she uses it for shooting and editing video. The app she uses is called “VidEditor.” I have not tried this myself, but she showed me what her students did with it and I was very impressed. (The students record and edit videos of each other to practice English.) You can also get things like calculators, weather apps, recipe apps, etc. and build learning activities around these.

Of course, the iPad is also just a great device for consuming media, including video (from YouTube, etc.), e-books, music, and podcasts and also for browsing websites. I find that adults who are reluctant computer users are less reluctant to pick up and try the iPad, even to perform a comparable task such as completing an online grammar exercise. Its controls and interface are more intuitive and less obtrusive, and as a device it exudes a kind of “friendliness” that invites you to touch it and play with it – and this is by design. Steve Jobs intended his devices to have precisely this effect on people, and it shows.

For kids there are many more options for learning apps than there are for adults. I have probably only scratched the surface of what is possible, but here are a few leads:

• Apps that let you make your own books. I have one called “Picturebook” which is OK though not superb, but there are many others on the market, and you should explore your options.
• Puzzle game apps. I have several including one that is a puzzle of U.S. states and another aimed at preschoolers called “ABC Puzzle” that my son enjoys.
• Apps from PBS Kids are very popular with my son, especially the “Super Why!” app and e-books like "The Monster at the End of this Book."
• The “Read Me Stories” app (for which you can buy stories for 99 cents each) is a hit with my son as well.
• Apps that aim to teach handwriting – there are dozens of these – but I particularly like “Learn to Write” for kids and “Letter Forms” for non-literate adults. (For a more realistic exercise on these, you can give learners a stylus instead of having them trace the letter forms with their finger.)
• I have an app called “Missing Letter” which aims to teach alphabetics. I have not tried this with my son – he’s not quite ready for this yet – or with my adult students, but I liked what I saw when I tried it out.
• There is also an app called “SeeTouchLearn” which allows you to create your own mini lessons using images, text, voice recordings, etc. It gets a little pricey to buy all the picture sets and the add-ons that allow you to enter your own images and audio, but a creative teacher could get really into it and make highly tailored and interesting learning content.

I hope this is helpful! I’d be interested to hear how your program ultimately integrates the iPads into the classroom. I think there are lots of possibilities, but not many programs have taken the leap yet so I don’t have many real-world classrooms to look to for examples.

This Friday, MLC Technology Administrator Jason Brazier will be leading the in-service workshop iPads in the Classroom at our main office in St. Paul. Check out the MLC Training page on our website (we're under the Educational Technology Training heading) for more information or to register: www.mnliteracy.org/volunteers/training. (And yes, you're welcome to attend even if you're thinking, "What is an "app" anyway?")

Flipping the Classroom: A Guest Blog Post

2011-10-20T13:26:00.000-05:00

Thanks to my colleague Burgen Young for this guest post!

Flipping the Classroom
Do you wish for more class time for practice but need to use that time to explain content instead? Then flipping the classroom may for you. In a traditional class the teacher lectures during class and students do application exercises for homework. In a flipped class, the content is delivered by assigning students to use resources such as video lectures, podcasts, or screencasts at home, freeing up class time for application.

Why flip? What are the benefits?
The main benefit is that more class time can be devoted to practice. Students come to class with questions and the class can go deeper with the material.
Advantages also include that students can work at their own pace through the resources, absent students don’t miss out on the introduction of new material, and students can review content whenever they want. Students can hit the pause or rewind buttons as many times as necessary without feeling like they are burdening their teacher. Plus, it is sometimes possible for students to watch lectures by experts in the field.

What if students don’t have computers at home?
It is still possible to share resources with students by copying the resources onto DVDs that students can play in a DVD player. If purchased in bulk, DVDs are inexpensive.
If students don’t have Internet access, but do have computers, the resources can be copied onto a flash drive.

Where can I find resources?

There are free lectures available on iTunes, YouTube, TeacherTube, SchoolTube, and other specialized sites. Be sure to check out the great math and science resources available at Kahn Academy.
You can also create your own customized resources. All you need is a recording devise of your choice. Use a video camera, or create a podcast using Audacity and a reasonable microphone on your computer. Create a screen cast using Jing and record your voice while you show PowerPoint slides or other software.

Can language teachers flip?
Flipping works best for classes that are taught lecture style. Flipping can work for some language lessons, such as grammar, vocabulary, or life skills lessons. Check out this example of a vocabulary lesson for a Spanish class.

Where can I learn more?
Check out this article at EmergingEdTech to learn from others who have flipped their classrooms.

2011-10-10T11:57:00.000-05:00

Can't get enough of Tech Training blogs? When things are slow around here, there's plenty to be found elsewhere.

My friend and MLC colleague Jason Brazier (who occasionally guest posts here) is blogging too. You can find him at: http://jaytrains.blogspot.com/. He's got some nice posts up about managing email and dealing with recalcitrant printers, among other things.

You can also find good language teaching tech ideas over at Nik Peachy's ESL Tech Blog: http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/.

Enjoy!

Susan

How do you spot a Phish?

2011-09-27T16:33:00.001-05:00

Phishing scams worry me. Not because I'm afraid I'll fall for them and give up my private bank data to some jerk in Russia who works for the mob - or in Texas or China or wherever these guys are these days - but because these scams are becoming ever more common, more sophisticated, and harder to spot. And as I work in a field that's striving to get more adult English language learners and lower-literate adults online, I worry about how well we are preparing our clients to be safe. Do you know how to spot a phishing scam? Do you know how to teach someone else to spot a phishing scam? Not sure? Here's a few tips using a phishing email that arrived in my inbox today (after getting past my pretty rigorous spam filter!).

Here's the original message. Take a look and see if you can spot the red flags. Then read on to see how many you saw.

Red Flag #1. I don't know who the sender is. I've never heard of Fulton Bank before. Why would they be contacting me? OK, you don't have access to my brain, so you probably didn't spot this one. But did you look at the name and think "Who's Fulton Bank?" Then you're on the right track.

What to teach? Your students - even those with limited reading skills - need to learn to recognize the names of the legitimate businesses they do business with, and to be suspicious of emails that don't come from trusted businesses.

Red Flag #2: They don't know me, either. The message is addressed to "Dear Fulton Bank member" not "Dear Ms. Wetenkamp-Brandt." Also, the "to" line in the message is blank - a red flag for Spam.

What to teach? Your students should be suspicious of email messages that address them as "customer" or "member" rather than using their proper name.

Red Flag #3: They ask me to "confirm my profile," name, address, etc. YIKES! Of all the red flags in a phishing scam, this one is the most brilliant shade of crimson.

What to teach? Your students need to know that no legitimate business will EVER send an email asking them to provide this kind of information. EVER. Under no circumstances should they ever respond to such an email, call a number provided in it, or click any link in the message. If they do accidentally click the link, they should immediately close the browser. The most important message is that they should never provide their personal information in response to an email request.

Red Flag #4: The writing/language is less than professional. Many phishing messages include spelling and grammar mistakes. This one is pretty good (see what I mean about the scams becoming harder to spot?) but there are run-on sentences and generally it just doesn't have a professional tone.

What to teach? Well, literacy. Have your GED students ever asked you to provide a real-life use for all that practice with "authorial tone?" Here's one! This message lacks a professional tone - and it's a red flag that, yep, the message is a fake.

Red Flag #5: When I point my mouse at the link in the message (note just point! not click!) the URL does not match the linked text, and it looks phishy! OK, you get a pass if you didn't spot this one, because you don't have the original message and can't do it. But, give yourself extra credit if you thought about doing it! (And take a look at the image below to see what I saw.)

What to teach? How to point a cursor at a hyperlink without clicking it, to see where the link leads. How to read a URL and differentiate a legitimate business website address from a phishy one. Yes, this is the hard part. But it's a very important step in making our students safety-savvy.

Need resources to help you teach these concepts? Here are two good videos that drive home the point:

Happy Browsing! And don't get caught by anything phishy!

Create interactive online charts with iCharts

2011-09-02T11:11:00.000-05:00

This free online tool allows you to upload your data and create charts and graphs with a few easy clicks - no programming required.

Next time you and your students are focused on chart reading for CASAS or TABE, think about making some of your own charts online. Your students will get to practice both their computer literacy skills and their chart-reading skills.

New Website for Minneapolis Public Schools Adult Education

2011-07-25T11:10:00.001-05:00

Thanks to Nathan Syverson at Minneapolis ABE for sharing the following information:

Minneapolis Public Schools Adult Education has made a major update to its website and went live as of Thursday, July 14 2011. You can view the updated website at http://abe.mpls.k12.mn.us. This is a complete overhaul, featuring a new layout, a design refresh, new content, and a reorganization of popular web resources.

Many readers of this blog use the following resources:

The Online Activity List
Bethany Gustafson's English for Work video series
MPS Adult Education's Touch Typing Curriculum.

These can be found under the Students Section of the website. There you can also find our Online Bookstore with a selection of books that we recommend to our ELL and GED students.

Also of note is our ABE Professionals section. This is where we will post all of the materials we create that we wish to share with ABE and adult literacy professionals everywhere. Do take a look from time to time, as it will be updated periodically.

Happy browsing!

Nathan Syverson

Minneapolis Public Schools Adult Education

Pic-Lits: picture-prompted writing

2011-07-07T10:45:00.000-05:00

I found this little gem of a website this morning and am thoroughly enjoying it!

PicLits.com creates a mechanism for generating writing through providing striking images and drag-and-drop words to layer on them (you can also go freestyle and type in your own text if you prefer).

Here's the PicLit I made:

One small annoyance: their "blog this" feature isn't working so I had to make a screenshot of the image in order to share it here. But tech glitches aside, this could be a really engaging activity for ESL and ABE students. How many of us have heard our students say that they don't know what to write about or have no ideas? A powerful picture speaks volumes. Using PicLits, those stalled writers may find some inspiration!

This activity could also be done as a whole class on a SmartBoard if you are lucky enough to have one in your classroom.

Botnets, or What you don't know CAN hurt you

2011-07-06T11:13:00.002-05:00

If you're online regularly enough to be reading this blog, you probably already know that there's some nasty stuff lurking on the Internet: viruses, worms, Trojans, and other malware. Even if you don't know precisely what all these things are and how they work, you probably figure that you've got your bases covered with a good anti-virus program. You know not to open unusual email attachments or get caught by too good to be true advertising (Click here to win a FREE iPAD!!!!). But there's one security threat that you may not know about... and what you don't know can hurt you. It's one of the hardest to prevent, hardest to detect, most widespread, and downright nasty pieces of work out there: a botnet.

Never heard of it? A lot of people haven't. And sadly, a lot of those people are probably infected. So what is a botnet?

As defined by Google dictionary, a botnet is "a network of private computers infected with malicious software and controlled as a group without the owners' knowledge." (The term botnet itself is shorthand for "robot network.") If your computer is infected with botnet software, part of its memory and processing power are taken over (enslaved!) by a "bot master" who controls thousands or even millions of slave computers, known collectively as a botnet or zombie army. The botnet is used to carry out cyber crime like sending vast amounts of spam email, attacking and bringing down legitimate websites, and capturing bank and credit card details.

Here's the worst of it: because the bot master has an interest in keeping your machine running and keeping its enslavement a secret, there is often little outward sign to you when your computer becomes infected. The signals are there, but they aren't the major crashes and data losses that signal a virus infection. You'll see your computer running slowly, you may be warned about suspicious activity, or occasionally your browser will lock up when you're online. But generally you'll keep on working, oblivious, while the botnet does its dirty work in the background.

And the worst news of all? Anti-virus software alone usually can't protect you from botnet infection. So how can you protect yourself?

1) Your computer needs a comprehensive security solution that includes anti-virus and anti-malware programs, and most importantly, a personal firewall. (Not sure if you have a firewall? Need to get one? CNET's download.com has several good options.)

2) Make sure Windows is up-to-date.

3) Make sure your browser is up-to-date.

4) Many botnets (including the largest ever detected, spanning millions of computers across 172 countries) are spread via portable devices like USB flash drives, so be careful where you put that thing! Plugging your flash drive (or digital camera, smart phone, etc.) into a computer whose defenses you are unsure of is the cyber equivalent of unprotected sex or sharing dirty needles. Sure, that computer might be clean, but there's no way to tell by just looking. If you must use your flash drive on public computers or the computers of less-than-savvy web users, set your security software to scan your flash drive whenever you insert it in your home machine.

For another, somewhat humorous but enlightening take on botnets, watch this video from Symantec. (Yes, they are selling you their product, but, hey, it's a good product and their videos are top-notch.)

Digital Photo Project: A Tech Mentoring Story

2011-06-22T11:56:00.002-05:00

In my Technology Mentoring work, I have the great pleasure to work with ABE/ESL teachers around the state who are committed to making technology a part of their classrooms. One of my current projects is working with Jan Olsen Stone's beginning ESL class at the MORE school in St. Paul. Her class has been working on basic computer literacy (learning how to turn on the laptop computers, learning basic vocabulary like "double click" and "press Ctrl-Alt-Del," and using Google to search for websites and photos). This week I worked with Jan to plan the next big step for the students - taking their own photos using digital cameras.

The first 90 minutes of the class was spent on learning vocabulary for the camera (lens, shutter button, focus, etc.) and how to use the cameras. Students learned to make simple sentences like "The camera has a lens," and "Press the button to take a picture." (A lesson which was periodically interrupted by tornado sirens. Yikes! Luckily, no tornadoes. Whew!) The second hour was spent on a field trip to the local Sears department store. Each of the four small groups of students had one camera (all provided by teachers & class volunteers). The students' task: take pictures of each other with items in the store they would like to know the names of. You can see some of the results above and the full sets can be seen on the Jan's Class1 Flickr page.

After class, the teacher, class volunteer, and I downloaded all the pictures the students had taken and uploaded them to the Flickr site. Now that the pictures are accessible, Jan has a wealth of content to mine for language lessons. Here are some ideas we have for what she and the students will do with the photos:

write a Language Experience Story about the field trip and illustrate it with a selection of photos
use the photos to teach new vocabulary (the original purpose!) and grammar such as prepositions
categorize items in the photos (clothing department - women's - shirts)
students can copy and paste photos from the Flickr site into Word documents and write sentences to describe them.

Jan plans to continue to use digital photo projects throughout her summer school session. Other photography assignment ideas for her students include:

taking pictures of things that are a certain color
taking pictures of things that surprised them or were new to them when they came to the U.S.
taking pictures of places in the community (walking around the neighborhood)
taking pictures of signs in the community (also a walking project)

Working with this class really reminded me that cameras provide a unique and powerful tool for prompting engagement with one's surroundings. In our students' hands, they can give us such rich content for language learning. I hope you'll think about trying something like this with your students too!

United Nations: Disconnecting People From the Internet Is a Violation of Human Rights

2011-06-08T11:21:00.000-05:00

United Nations: Disconnecting People From the Internet Is a Violation of Human Rights

Well, there you have it: Internet access is officially a human right. It's an interesting position for the U.N. to take. In our cushy American setting, that might seem a little silly. Internet access is a human right? Really? When most people just use it for entertainment? But there has been quite a lot of controversy at the international level over whether individuals can claim that their rights have been violated when their governments cut off their Internet access in order to, for example, prevent them from organizing protests against said government. Seen in that context, this decision makes a lot more sense. It also makes me wonder if there have ever been similar discussions about other technologies. If Internet access is a right (based on the idea that people have a right to freedom of expression and opinion) is access to other information/communication technology, like cell phones, also a right? Would forcing cell phone providers to take their carrier signals down (like Egypt did during their recent revolution) also qualify as a violation of the populace's human rights? Very interesting stuff.

The world is changing, and fast! It's difficult for governments and educational institutions to keep pace. Policies that govern technology use that were developed even 5 years ago often seem anachronistic. In many ABE programs, we struggle just to get access to basic online resources like Gmail and streaming video. 5 or 10 years ago, these things may have been seen as an "extra" or something that schools shouldn't be providing because they were too entertainment-focused. Now they are basic necessities for online learning and for full participation in adult life. We need more flexible policies that allow instructors and learners to access the full range of opportunities provided by the Internet. It's a human right. Just ask the U.N.

Browsers - Basics and Beyond

2011-05-11T14:30:00.004-05:00

What is a web browser? A web browser is a computer program (or smartphone application) that connects to the Internet and displays websites and related web content like videos. There are five prominent web browsers you should consider (listed here alphabetically by manufacturer): Apple Safari, Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera (by the company of the same name).

How do I know which browser (and version of it) I’m using? First, look for the icon in the upper left corner. The icons for the various browsers are:

For details about your version, go to the browser’s Help menu and choose the About option. Or, check one of these websites: www.whatbrowseramiusing.co or www.thismachine.info.

Why does it matter if my browser is kept up-to-date with the newest version? In a word: security. Most updates that software developers release for browsers fix a known security risk. To help prevent vicious malware and viruses from infecting your computer, you should keep your browser up-to-date. (When a major new version is released, you will also see improvements in speed and features, of course.) What to do? On the browser’s Help menu, look for an option to check for updates.

Which browser is right for me?
Google Chrome: Chrome claims to be the fastest-loading web browser available. It has integrated Adobe Flash player and innovative programming that predicts which links you will click on a site and pre-loads the content for those links before you click, which results in reduced wait times when you actually click the link. Chrome has a simple interface and is great for general web browsing, especially sites that are media-heavy. It may have some compatibility problems with older-generation websites, especially the back end of web-based tools. However, it's the most compatible with other Google products like Google Docs. Get it: free download from www.google.com/chrome.

Apple Safari: disputes the claim that Chrome is the fastest browser available. Regardless of who’s right, it’s a strong competitor in the same market. Like most Apple products, it has a clean, intuitive interface and is noted for its stability and for being less vulnerable to Internet security threats. As the built-in browser on Mac computers, it’s obviously a Mac-user favorite, but is also available for Windows PCs. Get it: free download from www.apple.com/safari.

Mozilla Firefox: the only completely open-source and non-profit browser available, Firefox is a strong, steady workhorse. It’s not as fast as some of its competitors (although the newest version improved speed significantly), but for people who need to do a lot of online heavy lifting (teaching online courses and managing websites in content management systems, for example), Firefox is a friend you want to get to know. It’s also a solid all-around browser – which is why it has overtaken Internet Explorer as the most commonly used browser in the world. You should definitely consider it if you like the idea of breaking away from the products of the “Big Three” software corporations. Get it: free download from www.mozilla.com.

Microsoft Internet Explorer: this is the standard Windows browser, an old familiar program for PC-users. Most PC-users will find its controls easy to use (even if they aren’t objectively the most intuitive) by virtue of having used its predecessors for years. Explorer has lots of useful features and available add-ons, and the newest versions (IE8 & IE9) have improved on safety concerns. However, Explorer also has some compatibility issues with older-generation websites, especially the “back-end” where Firefox and Opera are more reliable. Get it: You probably already have Internet Explorer 8. If your computer runs Windows 7, and you want to upgrade to IE9, go to http://windows.microsoft.com and look for the IE9 promotional button.

Opera: the browser you’ve probably never heard of (but should have). From Norway! Also disputes the claim that Chrome is the fastest browser, and according to some, actually has the proof to back it up. Because it has a smaller presence on the web, it’s less vulnerable to Internet security risks. It has a sleek, intuitive interface and, like Chrome, seamlessly installs updates to Adobe Flash Player. Opera also claims to have more built-in features than any other browser available. So don’t be scared off by the unfamiliar – Opera might just be the perfect browser for you. Get it: free download from www.opera.com/download.

Want to read more about the browser wars?
Check out these stories from LifeHacker and NPR News.

Amazon To Bring Ebook Lending to Local Libraries

2011-04-22T14:00:00.001-05:00

Is it:
a) an exciting development for libraries and Kindle users alike or
b) about time Amazon got with the program - the Nook and all other e-book readers have been doing this for years?

That seems to be the debate on Mashable and elsewhere.

Personally, I think it's both. The only people I know who have e-book readers all have Kindles. For them, it will be a great opportunity to access more free reading material - especially my mother, who lives in a rural area with very limited (physical) library access. On the other hand, this is something the competition (most notably, Barnes & Noble with the Nook) have been doing well for quite some time. Amazon is pretty much the last one to the party when it comes to e-book library lending, yet they get headlines? (And isn't it ironic that they announce this big story shortly before having the planet's biggest cloud server failure, sending websites around the world -including the MLC website - plunging into darkness for 2 days?)

Ah, technology. It's a love-hate relationship.

Mostly love, though.

Visuwords Revisted: A Guest Post

2011-04-18T15:29:00.000-05:00

Visuwords Re-Visited

Each year I get dozens of referals to educational websites from co-workers, colleagues, magazines and newsletters. Time constraints and site usefulness often result in a visit or two, and then the site is forgotten. However, one site that I seem to return to time and time again is www.visuwords.com.

I often use the site as both dictionary and thesuarus and believe it would a great site to use with a SMARTBoard. Visuwords is also very easy to use:

Enter words into the search box to look them up or double-click a node to expand the tree.
Click and drag the background to pan around and use the mouse wheel to zoom.
Hover over nodes to see the definition and click and drag individual nodes to move them around to help clarify connections.

Developed by university students, Visuwords uses Princeton’s WordNet open source database and is free for everyone.

--Jason Brazier, MLC Technology Administrator

For a demonstration of Visuwords, check out this screen-cast video!

Guest Post: Khan Academy Online Math & Science Resource

2011-02-17T14:00:00.000-06:00

Hello! This week I've got a guest post from a friend and colleague at Minneapolis Public Schools ABE, Gina Jarvi. She writes:

Darlene Hays sent me an email this morning about a math and science website that I tried to access for our lab last year, but couldn’t because the videos were YouTube. I wrote to professor Khan and asked him if he would consider creating a mirror site that districts could allow. He never replied, but his site is now accessible! And it is extensive!
www.khanacademy.org
What I especially love about this site is that Professor Khan breaks concepts down into very simple forms. Students then have access to another teacher to learn from, as well as, offering teachers a way to brush up on a particular concept or area of math/science to help you teach it.
The videos are clean, no buffering issues that I’ve detected so far. In one year he has managed to really expand and develop the site. You will be amazed! :)
I have 3 students using the site in the lab right now and they are fully engaged.
Enjoy.

Thanks, Gina and Darlene, for the resource recommendation!

How Play Improves Learning

2011-02-10T12:05:00.002-06:00

Please watch! Huge implications for educators.

20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Web

2011-01-04T13:45:00.003-06:00

Have you ever wondered "What exactly is a 'URL' anyway? Or an IP address? Are they the same thing?"

Or maybe you recently found out your computer has been compromised by Malware (malicious software) and you want to know more about how to protect yourself.

Or your anti-virus software keeps warning you about "tracking cookies / low threat" and you're wondering what that means, exactly.

Or you're just curious about technology and the web and would like to understand how it works.

If this sounds like you, then you should read this e-book from Google! http://www.20thingsilearned.com/

If you read it, feel free to leave a comment here with a "Thing you learned" and if you found it helpful.

Learn English Words - Cab

2010-10-06T14:42:00.000-05:00

Watch and Understand: The power of video for teaching vocabulary.

And for the geeky science buffs out there: remember that rich experiences (those that engage several senses) are more deeply encoded the brain.

We often use simple images to teach words like "cab," of course. But I'm betting that this video presentation will get the job done faster and better (e.g. better retention later on) because it is so visually and auditorially rich.

Chalk up one more reason why schools need to get with 21st century and stop blocking YouTube - especially for adult learners.

Writing by Hand is Good for you - and your Learners!

2010-10-05T14:47:00.000-05:00

Creative Commons licensed photo from Flickr

Check out this article from the Wall Street Journal about How Handwriting Trains the Brain.

Some interesting points:

writing characters by hand improves retention of new information when learning a new script or becoming literate for the first time. Teachers of non-literate adults: make sure they are practicing writing their letters, not just reading them!
writing text out long-hand may help keep your brain "sharp" as you age - it's "cognitive exercise"!
children wrote more (more words, more ideas) in assignments done by hand than at the keyboard, indicating that the act of putting pencil to paper may improve writing output for learners.
applications are coming out for touch-screen devices (smart phones, iPad) that allow you to input text by drawing the characters on screen with your finger or a stylus. Could adult learners use something like this to learn the alphabet? Anybody out there have a iPad to try it on?

Anecdotally, I'll add that I always prefer to start writing on paper before turning to the keyboard, if the text I'm working on is complex or requires much creative thought.

And thanks to Larry Ferlazzo for sharing this on his website of the day blog and tipping me off to it.

Creative Commons licensed photo by Dan4th on Flickr

See you at Summer Institute!

2010-08-17T09:12:00.001-05:00

The annual MN ABE Summer Institute is nearly here! Will YOU be there?

Since I'm both a) on the planning committee and b) leading 3 workshops and one discussion session, you'll probably see me around!

At MLC the Technology Services Department has an exciting new program rolling out this fall, one I'll be heavily involved with... but hush! It's a secret till tomorrow. Summer Institute is our venue for telling all. Hope you'll be there to get the scoop. If not, keep an eye on this blog for an update soon!

Computer Terminology - What Words Cause Confusion?

2010-07-09T12:56:00.001-05:00

Right now I'm in the middle of preparing a workshop for the annual ABE Summer Institute. OK, I'm preparing 3 workshops and one discussion group, but there's one session in particular that I'm crunching away on more vigorously than the others. It's titled "Everything You Wanted to Know About Your PC, but were Afraid to Ask." It's targeted at the teachers in our field who have found themselves bypassed by the quickly moving world of computers.

My hope is to orient participants enough (and reduce anxiety enough) that they can begin trying to teach themselves new computer skills. I'm focusing on a few fundamental Windows tasks (like using the taskbar and right-clicking for contextualized menus), Internet and browser basics, and perhaps most importantly, clarifying vocabulary so that teachers can more fully participate in the technology conversations going on around them. To this end, I'm coming up with a list of specialized computer terminology that has become ubiquitous, but often needs explaining to people who are not comfortable with computers. Words like "upload" and "download" are on there. "Browser" and "URL" and "Wi-Fi" are too.

But my question for you, dear readers, is: What words do you think cause the most confusion? Is it functional stuff like I've listed above? Or is it names of products/services like Twitter and YouTube that cause anxiety among the uninitiated? If you were a rank novice in the land of computers, what terms would you most want defined and clarified so that you could begin teaching yourself?

Send me your thoughts in a comment, or look me up on Twitter or email. I'm not hard to find.

Super Example of E-Learning Content... that ins't "E-Learning Content"

2010-06-28T12:05:00.001-05:00

If you read this blog or know me in person, you can probably guess that I think e-learning is (or at least, can be) really cool, really inspiring, and really, really powerful when done well. Of course, the flip of that is that e-learning can also be really dull, mind-numbing, and next to useless when done badly. Pretty much like most forms that teaching and learning take!

Last week I was disheartened to see a classic example of bad e-learning content (from a source I will not disclose). It was the dreaded PowerPoint slides full of lines of bulleted text, with a voice-over narration. No animation/movement, no images or rich media, just a voice talking at you over a text which didn't always match the audio (which is the worst, because of course you can't attend to two different messages simultaneously, we know this from brain research!). Granted, even those of us who really worry about instructional design sometimes use the "narrated slides" format. But, there are degrees of quality even among narrated slides. If you're going to do it, you can at least use animations to bring things into view as you talk about them, and include imagery that matches your text/audio. And above all make sure that the text and audio "fit!"

Then this morning, as if to brighten my Monday, I came across a super example of exactly the opposite of the dull narrated slides - a truly rich, interactive, and engaging piece of e-learning content... the only thing is, it's not "e-learning content" per se. It's an online multimedia feature from Scientific American magazine, called "12 Events that will Change Everything, Made Interactive." Granted, ABE programs don't have anywhere near the resources (in terms of money, time, technology, or expertise) that Scientific American has. But there are principles at work here that anyone involved in creating instructional content for adult learners can and should learn from.

For one, it's beautiful to look at and draws the reader/learner in. As teachers we tend to think that content trumps presentation, but increasingly, I'm not so sure. Aesthetics do matter quite a lot. In many ways, the presentation IS the content. These two aspects of design can become so intertwined as to be inseparable. Are the images there to instruct or there to make it look nice? Well, both! Is the interface functional or beautiful? Well, ugly interfaces tend to be hard to navigate, which means they don't function well. Yes, I've also seen beautiful but completely dysfunctional interfaces. But when design is simple and clean, it tends to be both easy on the eyes and easy on the brain.

But perhaps most importantly, as a reader/learner looking at this piece of content, you have choice. You can decide for yourself which of the 12 events you want to explore. You can read the text, or not. You can choose which multimedia objects to view. You can jump around whenever and where-ever you like. There is also a mechanism for including reader/learner voice: you can vote on how likely you think each event is to happen by the year 2050, then see how your answer compares to other readers'. You can also listen to the author's opinion if you wish.

As a result of applying these principles (attractiveness, integrated multimedia, choice, and learner voice), this is a piece that begs for deeper engagement. I know I had a hard time pulling myself away to write this blog post! And that kind of engagement is what we want for our learners. When learning is self-motivating because the content draws you in and makes you want to stay engaged, then learning is deep and powerful. Much, much more so than listening to someone talk at you while reading bullet points on a PowerPoint slide.

PS: Thanks to Larry Ferlazzo for finding and sharing this resource with me and countless others on his ESL Websites of the Day blog.

Free Geek

2010-06-25T13:46:00.002-05:00

Free Geek Twin Cities is a program that rebuilds/refurbishes old computers (and other geek hardware) and gives them to low-income individuals who can use them. "Helping the Needy get Nerdy," is a tag line in the promotional video on their site. Gotta love that.

Any components that are too old or damaged to be useful are instead recycled in the most environmentally sound way possible. The program also encourages learning about computers through volunteering at the center (for example, one way to earn a free computer is to build computers as a volunteer).

The program is moving into a new location and isn't open to the public during its move, but is looking for donations. So, if you have an old PC (or cell phone, or printer, or camera) laying around the house/office, and think to yourself, "It's old, but it's still useable. It seems a shame just to throw it away," don't! Donate it to Free Geek instead.

Once the program is in full swing in its new location, I'd encourage you to share the program with learners who might benefit from Free Geek services.

Free Geek is online at: http://freegeektwincities.org/.

Creative Commons licensed image from Flickr user deanj: http://www.flickr.com/photos/deanj/2398424227/sizes/m/.

Tornado Safety - Teachable Moment

2010-06-18T11:03:00.001-05:00

If you live in MN, you probably heard the news that a record 36 tornadoes were spotted across the state yesterday. Several people were killed; homes, businesses, and farms were damaged. It's a lot to take in... especially if you don't speak English well and come from a part of the world where tornadoes are unheard of.

When I was teaching ESL full time, in our weather unit we ALWAYS talked about tornadoes and tornado safety: what to do if you heard a siren, staying away from windows, going to the basement, etc. But I frequently sensed that my students "just didn't get it." They told me flat out that they didn't believe that tornadoes could happen in the city, that they were safe where they lived. Then just last summer, there was a tornado right in the heart of Minneapolis.

This morning's news makes for a powerful "teachable moment" regarding tornado safety. While none of us want to terrify our students or make them feel unsafe, it's vitally important that they know what safety precautions to take when a tornado warning is issued.

Here are some online resources with photos, news stories, and safety information you can use:

WCCO.com story: http://wcco.com/weathernewsstories/NWS.damage.tornado.2.1759448.html
WCCO.com photo slide show: http://wcco.com/slideshows/tornadoes.storms.across.20.1758304.html
Minnesota Public Radio story and photo slide show: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/06/18/minnesota-tornadoes-severe-weather/
Tornado FAQ from the Storm Prediction Center: http://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/index.html
Tornado Safety Info from the Red Cross
Test your knowledge with the Severe Weather Quiz: http://wcco.com/quiz#08_0422_severewxquiz

Image source: http://climate.umn.edu/doc/journal/tornadoes080711.htm: University of Minnesota Climatology Workgroup.

"Your Disease Risk" Website

2010-06-11T10:52:00.001-05:00

This is an interesting, free (and largely ad-free) interactive online tool that's accessible to adult learners with high intermediate reading skills. It allows users to self-assess their risk for 5 major diseases (cancer, diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, and stroke) that can be affected by prevention measures like a healthy diet and exercise. To use the tool, you enter information about your height, weight, waist size (you might need a measuring tape for this one!), diet, exercise habits, smoking habits, etc. When you're finished, you see results that give a rough risk-level assessment along with recommendations for ways you could reduce your risk.

You can find it here: www.yourdiseaserisk.siteman.wustl.edu.

It would make a nice extension activity for learners who are working on a health unit, or as a resource for a health literacy curriculum.

If you try it, let me know what you think!

Why Geometry Matters

2010-06-09T10:12:00.005-05:00

Check out the first item in the NewsCut blog for today: http://bit.ly/d6wGN8

Then follow the link to find out what's wrong with the info-graphic (it leads here: http://bit.ly/aookgS).

Here's the graphic in question.

What's wrong with this thing?

Hint: it's a math problem. Geometry, specifically. Apparently, the people who made this graphic forgot a basic rule of geometry. Or, maybe they got it wrong on purpose, thinking that most of the rest of us don't understand math concepts, either.

If you're teaching Geometry, try bringing this info-graphic to class. See if your students can spot the mistake! It's a great teach-able moment where Geometry intersects with current events in the news.

Interesting Commentary on Web 2.0, Brain Science, and Learning

2010-06-02T14:08:00.002-05:00

Here is a good read for those of us interested in using Web 2.0 to enhance student learning.

Check it out at www.weteachwelearn.org.

Creative Commons licensed photo from Flickr by tobiaseigen.

Three Free Tools for Screen Capture Videos

2010-05-21T10:32:00.002-05:00

If you instruct online or in a computer lab, screen capture/screencast videos can be a powerful tool in your teaching toolbox. Instead of making long, detailed step-by-step instructions for computer tasks (which it seems like no one reads past step 3 anyway), you can show and tell with videos of on-screen actions. Here are three free tools to try:

Jing
Jing is a free software download available from www.jingproject.com. This simple piece of software allows you to create both images of your screen and screencast videos. You can select the entire screen, the active window, or just a portion of the screen. Screen images can be edited before being saved or pasted into a document. For example you can add arrows, text boxes, and highlighting directly on the image. The video capture tool allows narration if you have a headset with a microphone. Videos are limited to 5 minutes. You can easily save images and videos to your computer’s hard drive, or copy images to paste into a Word document. Videos and images can also be uploaded to www.screeencast.com, after which you can share them in different ways (email, instant messaging, etc.), get the links, or embed them in another website.

Screenr
http://screenr.com This is a free online tool for creating screencast videos. It is similar to Jing, but can be used without downloading and installing anything. It is integrated with Twitter, and you sign in with a Twitter account. So if you use Twitter, it makes it easy to share your videos through that channel. Once you have recorded a video and posted it to Twitter or the Screenr website, you can share the link or embed it in another web page.

Screen Toaster
www.screentoaster.com is another free online tool for creating screencast videos. Like Screenr, there is nothing to download or install. You capture and edit your video all within your Internet browser. One nice feature of Screen Toaster is that in addition to online video storage and easy uploading to YouTube, it allows you to save your video to your computer’s hard drive as either a .mov file (for editing with video editing software) or a .swf file (flash video, for playing offline). Another nice feature is that you can add audio or subtitles after recording the screen activity. So you can record just the action first and then record audio later.

Birds of a Feather...

2010-05-18T11:15:00.004-05:00

Blog together?

Thanks to the brilliant technology of Google Alerts (which automatically sifts the web for any new content that matches your search terms and sends you a compilation of that material), I've now discovered two more adult literacy technology bloggers to read and share! They are Duren Thompson and Bill McNutt of the Center for Literacy Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Yay! I knew there had to be more birds in this flock out there somewhere.

Check out their blog "Skills for the 21st Century" for interesting insights into teaching adults technology literacy skills, technology and education trends, and - oooohhhh - data!

Creative Commons Photo "Elegant Tern Flock" by Mike Baird shared on Flickr.

New(ish) Online Reading Program for Adult Literacy Learners

2010-05-05T12:30:00.003-05:00

If you teach adults to read, and those learners have access to computers, you'll definitely want to check this out!

One of my favorite online learning sites for adults, GCF Learn Free, has added a new resource called the Adult Reading Program. It's an interactive site that includes a variety of engaging types of content, including word study and readings. It's not precisely instructive (in that it doesn't teach people how to read), but is good practice for adults learning to read, and appropriate for self-directed, exploration-focused learning.

You can find it online at www.gcflearnfree.org/reading.

Free Research-Based Health Literacy Curriculum

2010-04-26T11:07:00.004-05:00

The National Institute for Literacy has made available a new, comprehensive, research-based Health Literacy curriculum for adult educators.

It includes instructions for teachers, vocabulary illustrations, readings and activities, discussion prompts, and more.

All materials can be accessed on their website at: www.healthliteracynetwork.org/materials/index.html.

Giving Google Moderator a Shot

2010-04-22T12:09:00.002-05:00

In preparation for my workshop at this Saturday's upcoming Sharing the Power conference, I'm trying out yet another free tool from Google... this time it's Google Moderator. Moderator is a tool for gathering input from a group - questions, ideas, suggestions - and allowing the group to vote on which appeal to them the most.

Since I'm going to be presenting about social media tools for volunteers and volunteer coordinators, I started this "series" of ideas:

Social Media for Volunteers
Are you are volunteer? A volunteer coordinator? Do you work for an organization that promotes volunteerism? We're starting a discussion about how social media can be used to strengthen volunteer programs.

What questions do you have about social media?

What social media applications are you using?

What do you think social media can do (or not do) for volunteer programs?

If you're a volunteer, how do you think social media could be used by your organization to improve your experience? What about outreach to new volunteers? Building community among current and former volunteers?

Share your ideas and questions with us!

I hope to use it before, during, and after my presentation to gather input on the topic. If you have something to share - whether or not you'll be in my live audience! - please contribute your ideas here: http://www.google.com/moderator/#16/e=688d.

Thanks!

So You Want a Website

2010-04-15T14:38:00.004-05:00

Here's a question I get asked fairly often:

I want to make a simple website as a place to put PDF files, web links, etc. What's the easiest tool to use as the builder - and most reliable and cheapest?

It just popped into my email inbox again this afternoon. The teacher who asked has been replied to personally, but I thought it was a good question and one worth responding to in "public" as well.

So, here's what I had to say (more or less).

There are lots of options out there, but for ease of use and lowest cost (= FREE) I would go with either Google Sites (http://sites.google.com) or a wiki site with PBWorks (http://pbworks.com). One major benefit of Google is that you can sign in using an existing Google account if you use Google docs or Gmail already. So, there’s nothing to sign up for, you can just start building. Also, Google’s “themes” can make your site look really cool with almost no effort. PBWorks is much more utilitarian-looking, especially with the free account.

The major benefit of PBWorks is that you have better control over any other users that you invite to collaborate with you, including giving students access to “write” on the site even if they don’t have email accounts, which is pretty slick. It also has more plug-ins like calendars and easy ways to add video and that kind of thing. And on a larger site, I think the navigation and organization can be better and more complex.

They’re both quite easy to use and have nice, clean interfaces that are fairly intuitive. PBWorks is probably more powerful, but of course that also means there is more to learn about (if decide you want to learn about all the interesting features).

As far as reliability, I’d say you’re pretty safe in either case. PBWorks has been around quite a few years now, and has many business clients and seems to be making constant improvements and upgrades, which I take as a sign of business health. And I doubt Google’s going to go under anytime soon either!

After sending this reply, it occurred to me to also recommend Yola (www.yola.com), which is a free website building service. It's aimed at small businesses, but I know a couple of adult learning centers which also use Yola sites. Yola is less wiki-like than Google sites or PBWorks, so it's less about collaboration and sharing, and more about just building an attractive website.

Have you made a simple website for yourself or your students? What tool(s) did you use? Send us some recommendations!

Librarian's job description expands to help unemployed | Minnesota Public Radio NewsQ

2010-04-12T15:12:00.000-05:00

I read this story about librarians serving the "social service" and technology literacy needs of their unemployed patrons, and thought to myself, "this same article could be written about ABE teachers, just substitute the words 'adult education center' for 'library' and 'teacher' for 'librarian' and you'd be pretty close."

Next time you're at your branch library, give the librarian a pat on the back, eh? Just like all of us in ABE, they're doing more and more with less and less - and working just as hard to fill educational gaps in our communities.

Librarian's job description expands to help unemployed | Minnesota Public Radio NewsQ

BlackBoard CMS Goes to the Small Screen

2010-03-30T10:08:00.004-05:00

From the NPR All Tech Considered Blog
Hey Teacher, Leave My Cell Alone!

"Could there come a day when teachers actually ask students to turn on their smart phones for class?

Blackboard, which is best known for creating course management systems, recently announced plans to further expand into the mobile universe. The company is launching a mobile application called Blackboard Mobile Learn that will be available for smart phones and Wi-Fi-enabled devices in June.

Blackboard says the app will bring "two-way teaching and learning" to mobile devices so students will have the ability to look up assignments, check grades and access all of the same course materials they can presently do from a computer."

What do you think? Are cell phones the bane of your teaching existence? Or just another tool that creative teachers could use to their advantage? Will the small screen open up Internet access - and online learning? - to adults who have limited access to computers?

Defining "Instructive"

2010-03-26T13:07:00.007-05:00

If you teach in an ABE program in Minnesota, you're probably aware that there has recently been an upsurge of interest in expanding Distance Learning (DL) opportunities for adult learners in our fair state. While certainly not all distance education is computer-based, a good portion of it is, and that portion is likely to increase in the coming years. In my technology training role, I get to have a seat at many of the tables where the discussions about DL policies are happening. It was at once such table, many months ago, where I got a particular bee in my bonnet. And it's been there ever since, and I've been trying to ignore it, but it hasn't gone away or died off, so I'm finally giving up and saying something about it. Hence, this post: What does "instructive" mean when it comes to DL content?

First, some background. The discussion was about the creation of DL content which would be approved for proxy hours. In order for a DL program to be approved to earn proxy hours (seat-time equivalent) the content it provides must be instructive. It can't simply be practice or homework. It must teach new concepts or skills. Which is a fair standard, I think. If the DL program is going to be considered as equivalent to a classroom experience, it should definitely teach you something. No argument there.

My problem is with the assumptions that surround the word instructive. After listening to and engaging in numerous conversations on this topic, it has become clear to me that many people only understand instructive in one way:

I, the knowledgeable teacher, tell (possibly show) you, the less knowledgeable learner, some information. Then I quiz you on it later.

Of course, that is one way to instruct. In edu-speak, I'd call that the deductive approach. But it's not the only way. There is also the inductive approach, in which the learner is guided by the instructor to discover new knowledge for him/herself. And as an instructional designer, curriculum writer, and teacher, I happen to believe that inductive teaching is actually much more powerful than deductive! Especially in an online format.

Take a look at this piece of instructional content from Minnesota Public Radio, for example: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/projects/2010/03/obesity/quiz/index.shtml.

(Take the quiz. Really! You'll probably learn something.)

That quiz is an example of an inductive approach to learning. There was no "instructive text" before the quiz. There was just the quiz. I took it and I learned something. What's more, I am more likely to remember what I learned than if they had built a web page with text and then a quiz at the bottom. Why am I more likely to remember? Because when I got a question wrong (and I got 4 wrong - ouch!) my brain perked up and said, "Hey, wait a minute! You don't know as much as you think you do! You had better pay attention to this." And when I got a question right, I thought, "Cool! Let me see if I got that right for the right reasons." And I read the instructive text (which pops up after answering a question) with much more interest and engagement than I would have if the information had been front-loaded.

Sadly, I have been told (by very well meaning individuals) that when we create DL content for our adult learners, we can't do this. Not if we want it to count for proxy hours. We are not supposed to start with the quiz. We must "instruct" first. But, I want to cry out, the instruction is embedded in the quiz! The quiz is, in and of itself, instructive! It just instructs in a different - and frankly more powerful - way.

Now it is possible that my fears are entirely misplaced, that I misunderstood the conversations over these past months, and that in fact a inductive approach to instruction would be acceptable. And some of the things I have seen happening since then assure me that that is the case.

Still, I must ask, am I alone in worrying about the definition of instruction? If you design online learning content for adults, what approach do you use? Which way do you prefer to learn? Which way do you think your learners acquire knowledge best?

Defining "Computer Literate"

2010-03-22T13:59:00.007-05:00

Check out this blog post from chron.com called "Computer Literacy: See if you know the basics." I read this list and thought it was an excellent summary, and a great place to begin building a computer literacy curriculum.

Although the whole post is worth reading, I'll summarize the topics the author (Dwight Silverman) included as necessary for "computer literacy":

files and navigation
what things are called
mouse and keyboard
basic hardware
how to get online
how to search
security
program basics

In reviewing his list, I was pleased to see that the computer literacy curriculum I am currently working on includes activities that address all of these topics (and more!). One thing I think is missing from his list goes with "what things are called." I would include "names for actions." His list includes the nouns, but ignores the verbs. And as an ESL teacher, I have to say, the verbs (like click, scroll, minimize, etc.) are just as important!

Any ABE teacher could be working a few of these topics into their regular classroom instruction, even if it's just a simple introduction to "how to search." You might be surprised how useful it is to teach the concept of "key words" and "phrases" and how to use them to get better search results from Google or Bing. And of course, "key words" and "phrases" are useful literacy concepts in themselves - helpful in all sorts of tasks, like outlining, taking notes, highlighting a text, and so on - which is where computer literacy and just plain old literacy become very hard to distinguish from one another.

Here's the complete link for the original blog post: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/silverman/6746496.html.

For my readers: what else is missing from this list?

Glogster

2010-03-15T12:59:00.001-05:00

Discover Your Digital Audio Prowess

2010-03-03T14:41:00.004-06:00

Another FAQ from the tech trainer file: "How can I record audio projects for my students to listen to?"

Some teachers want to make CD projects to pass out to their classes, like the pronunciation CDs Heather Turngren of Minneapolis ABE produced with an MLC technology mini-grant last year. Others want to put audio into online courses or on websites, wikis, or blogs. Other teachers want their students to record themselves for fluency or pronunciation practice. Across these varied uses, ABE practitioners work under similar constraints: little to no budget for new hardware and software, and little to no time to learn how to use new hardware and software.

So what's needed?

Free, easy-to-learn software
Low-cost hardware
A little help learning how to use it

Of course, this topic could easily make up an entire technology training workshop (and it did, back in December). While I can't realistically reconstruct all 2 hours' of the Speak Up! Audio and Podcasting workshop here on this blog, I can share a few things that might set you on the path to discovering your own digital audio prowess.

First up: free software. Yes, there is some! I use Audacity, which is free, open-source software available for both Windows and Mac computers. Audacity is pretty simple to use, and the community that creates it also supports a vibrant Forum and Wiki site for help and questions. If you have a Mac computer, it's likely you already have Garage Band software, which will perform admirably as well.

Next, Recording Equipment. Basically, you need a microphone. If you have a laptop, it probably already has a mic built in. This may be perfectly adequate if you have a nice, quiet space in which to record. Otherwise, a headset with a mic is a good option. A quick search at any major electronics retailer like Best Buy or Amazon.com will provide oodles of options. I've used Plantronics and Logitech hardware, and have been reasonably impressed by both. However, you might want to check into Califone headsets if you need to buy a whole set for a computer lab.

Alternatively, you could pick up a stand-alone mic like the $100 Blue Snowball or the $60 Blue Snowflake. For that kind of investment, you'll get significantly better sound quality, and you won't have to worry about constantly re-recording files because all the plosive sounds (like the 'p' in plosive) in your words sound like mini explosions - which can easily happen when a headset mic is too close to your mouth.

Alright, so let's assume you've recorded some audio tracks in Audacity and exported them to MP3 files using the LAME MP3 encoder plugin (which is not required for basic recording in Audacity, but is required to make MP3 files). Now what?

If you have a website or wiki site, you can upload your MP3 files to your site for your learners to download and listen to. Better yet, after uploading the files, stick them into a sleek little flash-based audio player like this one so your learners can listen online without needing to download anything. You could even publish a podcast! Watch this video on YouTube for a quick how-to featuring, naturally, Audacity. If you just want to create CDs, use whatever CD burning software is installed on your computer to create an audio CD project, add your MP3 files to it, and burn the CDs.

And there you have it: a cookie crumb trail to follow if you're interested in discovering your personal digital audio prowess. Good luck and let me know how it goes!

Learn English Online with Videos

2010-02-26T11:12:00.007-06:00

Here's a sweet website for English learners who have access to broadband Internet (at home, school, or the library): www.englishcentral.com.

It features real video clips of all different genres - everything from President Obama taking questions from reporters to movie trailers and TV commercials to business speakers. Videos are organized topically by category, and also sorted into "easy," "medium," or "hard," categories so learners can choose material that is appropriate to their level and interests.

Learners are prompted to record themselves repeating the audio from the video clips, so using this site does require that learners have access to headphones with a microphone.

It's free to use, though users must complete a brief registration form with an email address.

If you try it with your learners, let me know how they like it!

Computer Literacy Textbook for Adult Learners

2010-02-12T10:31:00.004-06:00

ABE teachers often ask me if there is a particular textbook or curriculum that I can recommend for teaching basic computer skills to low-literate and/or non-native English speaking adults.

While I'm not normally in the habit of pushing one publisher's content over another, here is one book that at least makes the attempt to serve this need - and there are very few that do, so it's probably worth taking a look.

The title is Out and About in the World of Computers and it's published by Alta ESL.

Has anyone used this text? If so, leave me a comment and let me know how you liked it. Or, if you know of another title that serves the same niche, please share it!

You can check it out on the Alta ESL website.

Online Tools for Job Seekers

2010-02-04T14:04:00.003-06:00

The U.S. Department of Labor has collected and organized online tools for job seekers on its Career One Stop website.

In addition to traditional job boards and career exploration sites, there are sites/tools for social media job searches and "niche" job boards for specific job markets.

If your adult learners are looking for work or for career building information, check them out at: http://www.careeronestop.org/jobseekertools/.

Video Annotation

2010-01-12T11:32:00.002-06:00

Do you use videos for distance learning or self-study materials? If so, take a look at this tool from the University of MN called Video Ant.

Video Ant is a free flash-based tool for annotating videos with markers set on a timeline matched to text comments. The comments appear in a panel next to the video, and the viewer can jump to different portions of the video by clicking on the text comments.

Social Networking for ABE Volunteers

2010-01-11T11:35:00.002-06:00

Re-posting from Technology Services E-newsletter:

Attendees of my Social Media presentation at the Volunteer Management Conference (VMC) last November had the pleasure of helping me build – live! – a social networking site for ABE volunteers. That exercise was not just a demonstration of how easy it is to use the tool (Ning.com) to create a free social networking site (think FaceBook for a specific community). It was also the first step towards launching a new resource for Minnesota’s incredible volunteer tutors and teachers. The site we built during my presentation has been polished and refined and is now ready to start doing its job: helping build community, connections, and skills among the thousands of people who volunteer every year in Minnesota’s ABE programs.

Check out the Literacy Volunteers Network at: literacyvolunteers.ning.com. Then refer your volunteers to the site – or join yourself. It’s free, it’s fun, and if it grows, it has the potential to be a fantastic resource. At the VMC we planted the seed. Now it’s up to the ABE volunteer community to help it grow and blossom.

Fun with Time and Date (dot com)

2009-12-30T10:23:00.005-06:00

I use this handy-dandy little website every once in a while, and it's nice to see that an old stand-by gets more useful with time by adding new applications and goodies.

It started out with basic things like time zone maps, a service to look up the time in major world cities (very handy when making overseas phone calls and you're too jet lagged to remember if you're ahead or behind of your loved ones' time - and too tired to read a time zone map), and another to build custom monthly or yearly calendars. Of course, it still does those useful things, but you can also look up sunrise and sunset times, count down to the New Year (also available as an iPhone app!), figure out meeting times across times zones (nice for webinars with people from the East Coast, West Coast, and Midwest altogether), calculate the distance between two cities, such as Minneapolis, MN and Albequerque, NM, and look up the phases of the moon.

So if you and your learners are working on geography, calendar reading, learning about time zones, or any of the other functions on this site, you might find it useful - even if it's just to print out a monthly calendar for your class.

Here's the website again: www.timeanddate.com. Enjoy!

Lessons from Christmases Past

2009-12-18T09:40:00.005-06:00

The first years I worked in ABE, I taught in an evening computer lab with students of all levels and backgrounds. Each class in the program had one time slot a week for computer time, rotating through for 45-60 minutes each. Most of the classes were English language classes, but there was also one basic skills class and one GED class. For whatever reason, most of the ABE and GED students (and their teachers) weren't really interested in learning computer skills, and made very little use of the computer time allotted to them. But there was one student in that group who came down to my lab every week for several months, and of all the hundreds (maybe thousands) of adult learners I have worked with through the years, he's one that I will never forget.

His name was Greg, and he was a Native American man of indeterminate age (I was just a young mid-twenties - anybody over 30 seemed "middle aged" to me then!), possessed of a quiet, calm demeanor and a serious lack of confidence in himself. He had been in treatment for alcohol abuse, but was now living in a half-way house, trying to make his way towards a better future for himself. He had already gotten his GED but was brushing up on some skills before trying to get into technical college.

Being somewhat older, wiser, and more emotionally stable than his peers at the halfway house, he had come to be in something of a leadership position there. One of his responsibilities was keeping minutes of meetings and ledgers of expenses. The reason he came to the computer lab was so that he could learn how to do these tasks on the computer instead of writing things longhand. So I taught him how to use word processing software: how to use "tab" to line income and expenses up into neat rows, how to save to a disk, find his file from the previous week, print his work, etc.

At first he was pretty shy, and he always was a quiet and reserved sort of person. But as the months went by we struck up a real friendship. While we worked together on his computer skills we chatted about all sorts of other topics, and got to know each other pretty well. He really was a sweet guy, and I enjoyed working with him a lot.

For both of us, it was a great experience. For me as a teacher, it was really refreshing to work with someone who was so motivated, really liked learning, and was generally just easy to get along with. Besides that, all my other classes were full groups of 12-20 non-native speakers of English, which are super fun to teach but really wear me out. Working one-to-one was dream! And for Greg it was a chance to learn in a really safe environment, where he could ask any question he wanted and get as much or as little help as he needed. I could tell he was really excited by what he was learning, and it made him feel like a real leader in his house when he could demonstrate to some of the younger and wilder young men he lived with how he was improving himself and learning "cool" computer skills. It was obvious how proud he was of himself. For me it was really rewarding to watch his confidence grow as he became more and more proficient.

Around the end of the year, he decided to move back to North Dakota (where he was originally from) and apply to a local technical college. On the last evening of class before winter break he brought me a little Christmas present - small package of chocolates. I'll never forget what he said when he gave them to me: "Thank you for teaching me this year. You make me feel like I can do anything." I almost cried, right there in the computer lab. And to this day, it ranks up there with one of the most sincere, most touching, and nicest things anyone has ever said to me.

Every year since then I think about Greg when winter break approaches. I wonder what ever happened to him - if he made it in college and continued on the upward spiral he was on when I last saw him. I sure hope so. He deserves a good, stable life and I hope he got it. When I think of him I remember how powerful our work as ABE teachers really can be - how we can truly share the power of learning with the individuals we serve, and change lives forever. The computer skills I taught Greg were simple to me, something many of us take for granted. But to him they were exciting, powerful symbols of his own competence and intelligence. To the toughest audience in the world - the internal one - together we proved that he could do anything he set his mind to do.

Though your students might not have the language skills or the ability to overcome their shyness and tell you this themselves, trust me - you're doing this job too. Everyday you help adults develop their own pride, self-confidence, and innate abilities.

Happy holidays, ABE teachers and volunteers everywhere!

Image: "Christmas decoration" by apdk. Creative Commons.

Podcasting: a Piece of Cake?

2009-12-14T15:27:00.005-06:00

In preparation for an upcoming workshop on podcasting and audio tools for the ABE/ESL classroom, I've been testing out a free tool from CLEAR called Broadcasts. CLEAR is a federally funded language resource center, and they create, host, and share free tools for language educators. Broadcasts is intended to give teachers a simple, hassle-free, no special software required way to produce a podcast.

In a nutshell, it's podcasting made quick-and-dirty: easy to use, but no bells and whistles. Which is just right, I think, for the average teacher who doesn't need bells and whistles, and doesn't have much time for creative projects like podcasting! Using Broadcasts, teachers can get up and running and publishing a podcast in a matter of minutes, rather than hours or days. Here's how to use it:

Step 1: Go to http://clear.msu.edu/teaching/online/ria/ and sign up for a free account.
Step 2: Test your audio recording setup using CLEAR's built-in Flash recording tool.
Step 3: From the list of applications, choose Broadcasts.
Step 4: Click Documentation to get step-by-step instructions. Print, and read!
Step 5: Or, skip that and just try it out! Click New Channel, then New Episode and dive right in to recording.
Step 6: Click Publish this Channel.
Step 7: Click the RSS icon next to your channel's name to view your channel's feed. The URL for this page is what you want to give to your students so they can subscribe via iTunes or Google Reader. Make a note of this because it's not always easy to find it again, especially if you subscribe using iTunes yourself.

So, now you've published your first podcast! How do your students subscribe so they can listen to you?

These instructions are for iTunes, and they will take you to my first podcast! You can listen to me testing out the Broadcasts tool.

Step 1: Get iTunes (if you don't already have it) from: www.apple.com/itunes.
Step 2: Click Advanced then Subscribe to Podcast. In the pop-up window, enter the url for the podcast. Mine is: http://clear.msu.edu/teaching/online/ria/broadcasts/feed.php?ID=1819. (If you already use iTunes to subscribe to podcasts, this may pop up automatically if you click on the link.)
Step 3: iTunes will download the podcast. Double-click to listen.

Please check out my first podcast and give me some feedback. I hope I'll be able to continue podcasting in the new year. Let me know if you would enjoy getting tech teaching tips this way.

PS: The web address for Broadcasts that I gave in my podcast was not quite correct. Use the one above instead!

English for Work Interactive Goes Online

2009-12-14T12:53:00.004-06:00

The English for Work Interactive Video Series, created by former MLC - Arlington Hills Learning Center teacher Bethany Gustafson, was designed to give students the vocabulary and language to succeed at work they were already doing in the hopes this would help prepare them for supervisory positions. Previously only available on a Windows-Compatible CD-ROM, the videos and accompanying lesson planning aids are now available for download and on-demand streaming on the Minneapolis ABE web server.

Their new home on the web is: https://abeweb.mpls.k12.mn.us/english-for-work/.

The English for Work videos and accompanying materials were developed through a Minnesota Literacy Council technology curriculum mini-grant. For more information on the technology mini-grants, including links to other FREE materials and updates about this year's projects, go to: www.theMLC.org/techgrants.

Visualizing Word Relationships

2009-12-07T11:59:00.002-06:00

From a young age I've had a fascination with "word books." I'll admit to being one of those kids who sometimes sat down and read the dictionary... you know the ones who are just infatuated with words? My older brother gave me a hard cover thesaurus for a high school graduation gift. It was one of the best gifts I got, and probably the only one (except for the Samsonite luggage my parents gave me) that I still own and use.

If I were a kid today, I'd probably be just as fascinated with the new "visual thesaurus" online tools that are springing up on the Internet. These tools represent word relationships in a sort of web, showing the connections that are close as a knot of tightly grouped words, the loose connections sort of drifting away on a tether, the antonyms in an opposing color, and so on. By displaying information visually, they tell us something about words and the relationships among them that I don't think I can quite get from my old thesaurus. For this reason I think they might make a helpful tool for adult learners, especially those who are grappling with complicated vocabulary.

There are several tools available online. The simplest is the "Lightweight Visual Thesaurus" at http://awordlike.textdriven.com. It's free and has a really clean, simple interface. The most elaborate is probably www.visualthesaurus.com, but sadly, it's not free (except for a two-week trial). My personal favorite is www.visuwords.com. It's free and it has several really sweet features, including: zooming in on words using the scroll button on your mouse, displaying different kinds of relationships with different styles of color-coded connectors (dashed lines, arrows, etc.) and also showing the parts of speech using color coding.

Try them out and let me know what you think! If you know of another visual thesaurus that I missed, please let me know and I'll include it.

Minneapolis' ABE Online Activity List has Moved

2009-12-03T16:47:00.003-06:00

If you were a fan of the Minneapolis ABE Online Activity List (abeonline.mpls.k12.mn.us) I'm sure you have discovered that it's gone!

The content, however, has not disappeared forever. It is being reorganized and republished on a new site: http://abeonline.mpls.k12.mn.us.

As my friend Nathan at Minneapolis ABE said in his FaceBook announcement:

You may have used our on line activity list in the past. In fact, it is our number one hit on google. (http://www.google.com/search?q=Minneapolis+ABE)
It is a wonderful resource, but has been a behemoth to maintain. In fact, I don't believe it has been updated since 2007. We are testing an itty bitty page driven by an itty bitty database, that will hopefully be easier to update and maintain. Take a look: http://abeweb.mpls.k12.mn.us, and feel free to give feed back [there], or on the FaceBook group page.

So please update your Favorites/Bookmarks and keep the online learning going!

Immigrant Communities Using Media to Educate for Improved Health

2009-11-23T14:33:00.003-06:00

New Routes to Community Health is a program / project based in Wisconsin that is using immigrant-created media (video, podcasts, radio programs, etc.) to educate immigrant communities about health-related issues.

Media projects include videos and audio programs that discuss issues as diverse as H1N1 flu, sexually transmitted diseases, childhood obesity, and mental illness & depression. All media projects can be accessed on their website at http://newroutes.org.

Although the majority of the media resources are not in English (and thus not so applicable for English language learning projects) they provide a wealth of information to the immigrant adults we serve in ABE programs. Take a few moments to explore their site (click media to view examples) and share the information with your learners.

Here's one example of the content from their site:

Students got cell phones? Try Poll Everywhere

2009-11-10T16:31:00.003-06:00

Poll Everywhere is a service that allows you to get feedback from your audience (as a presenter) or class (as a teacher) and represent that feedback as a graph LIVE as it comes in. You can display results in a web browser or in a Power Point slide.

If your students are hooked on cell phone text messaging, Poll Everywhere gives you a tool to hook them into your lesson using a medium they know and love.

Here is an example of a Poll Everywhere poll, which accepts either text message input or input from this web widget. Try it out at www.polleverywhere.com.

Make a live audience poll at Poll Everywhere

Computer Skills Needed for Successful Transitions

2009-10-28T14:15:00.003-05:00

Fresh on the heels of the ABE Transitions conference, here is further confirmation of the need our adult learners have for computer skills training. In this news report from Minnesota Public Radio about a new program called "Free Geek" (which aims to address the "digital divide" in the Twin Cities) an adult learner at MCTC plans to participate in the program because:

Going back to college has been a big adjustment, especially when it comes to technology. His professors require assignments to be submitted online...

"It's kind of embarrassing to be the oldest student in class and to be the most challenged and then to have to hand in the paper hard copy. They just look at me and think I'm a grandpa," he says.

Ouch.

As adult educators, I think we have a real opportunity to improve the success rate of older adult college students by strengthening their technology skills before they get to this point of feeling stigmatized.

What are you doing in your program to help adult learners succeed on campus? I'd love to hear your success stories!

Comparing Power Point Slides

2009-09-29T10:24:00.005-05:00

Right now I'm busy working on materials for a conference presentation on effective use of Power Point. I plan to show example presentations to illustrate ideas about using slides as a visual medium to support the presenter, rather than just an outline of talking points.

Here are two versions of the same presentation: one with typical, bullet point slides, the other is less typical but more powerful. Look at both slide decks and notice:

Which one has fewer total slides?
Which one is more visually striking?
Which one functions more as a document?
Which one requires a presenter/audio?
In which one do the main ideas stand out most clearly?

Grow Your Brain (Dull Version)

View more presentations from swbrandt.

Grow Your Brain (Interesting Version)

View more presentations from swbrandt.

Tip from Jason: Read on Web

2009-09-21T10:39:00.006-05:00

My colleague and next-office-door neighbor Jason sent me this tip last week, and I liked it so much I thought I would share it here too.

Here's what Jason had to say:

Read on Web has Great Tools for Literacy

While the browser wars continue to wage, often with tools you never think of using, Read on Web is a small plug-in that could be a big help to learners.

The requirements: Read on Web works on Windows 2000, XP & Vista operating systems. It also works with Internet Explorer 6.0 and above (current version is Internet Explorer 8). What you get is a simple but powerful toolbar in your browser:While saving files, emailing articles to friends, and printing may be old hat, the tool bar has a great filtering feature that locates the main text of a webpage and displays it without all the ads or other distracting text. For example, The Minnesota Literacy Council’s home page displays like this:

But with a simple click of the filter button, you get this:

Not stopping there, the toolbar will also read the article to you. Granted it reads in "Microsoft Sam" which is painful to listen to, but you can easily download Microsoft Mike and Microsoft Mary voices which are a bit better.

The Zoom In and Zoom Out buttons are also cool and very useful, but my favorite feature is the speed reading application that puts the webpage into a new window that bolds text and lets you practice reading. Speed Reading also allows you to set the number of lines, font, and words/characters per minute. Pretty cool for a small free browser add-on.

While Read On Web is not going to change how most people search the web, it may do a good job of changing how it looks for some of us. For more information, check out http://www.readonweb.com/.

Spreading a little literacy love…

Jason

ESL + Tech = Fun!

2009-08-26T13:04:00.005-05:00

My colleagues over at the MLC Learning Center - Arlington Hills are demonstrating that even beginning English learners can benefit from the use of technology in their classes.

The teachers are using an English-learning music video from YouTube to teach students the "Washing Machine Song". Using music to teach language is a tried-and-true method for improving pronunciation, rhythm, vocabulary, etc., but using the animated video adds to the teaching potential by appealing to the visual learning style and adding humor!

After (or as part of?) the lesson, the students and teachers also collaborate to blog about their class - which is how I knew about it so I could share it with you.

Ah, I love working in an organization with so many fabulous, creative teachers and motivated students ready to engage and learn English.

Surprising Science of Motivation

2009-08-25T15:29:00.005-05:00

I recently stumbled across a fascinating video from TED (www.ted.com) about the well-established and thoroughly ignored science of motivation. And to my pleasant surprise, this morning I saw that at the same time, Larry Ferlazzo posted about this exact same video on his excellent Websites of the Day ESL/EFL teaching blog. Check out his post there - especially for the insightful comments by readers.

Anyway, about the TED video.

It seems like common sense - you offer a person a reward for doing a task, and his/her performance will improve. But in this case, common sense is (apparently) nonsense.

In this presentation from TED, Daniel Pink discusses the science of motivation in the context of business, but I think there is a strong relevance to teaching and learning as well. Basically, he presents research that demonstrates clearly and unequivocally that not only do extrinsic rewards (like cash) not improve performance on most tasks, they actually make performance worse. Yes, worse. The only arena where extrinsic rewards improve performance is on simple, straightforward tasks that do not require any creative or higher-order thinking. If your task requires that people think in order to accomplish it, offering an extrinsic reward will harm your results. Simply put, extrinsic rewards seem to kill creative thinking. Whoa.

In contrast, intrinsic rewards (such as pride in accomplishments) improve creative thinking and results. What happens when you offer an extrinsic reward is that it kills off any intrinsic reward that the activity previously held for the individual.

In the business world, extrinsic rewards are cash, stock options, or the like. In education, they're grades, "extra credit", points, etc. Given this, does anyone wonder why going to school seems to kill the inborn thirst to learn in far too many children? When learning becomes all about the grade, it deadens our native motivation to learn for the pure love of learning.

This video also makes me worried about the goals that Minnesota's Governor & Legislature have set for expanding the "performance pay" system for teachers. By offering increased extrinsic rewards for teachers, will we in fact be cheapening their passion and dedication to their craft?

I encourage everyone to watch the video and think deeply about what it means in the context of teaching and learning. How can we strengthen the intrinsic motivation to learn that our students bring to the classroom? How can we avoid the pitfalls of offering extrinsic rewards to teachers and learners?

Tech Training Schedule Up

2009-08-14T10:34:00.002-05:00

The schedule of upcoming Minnesota Literacy Council Technology In-Service Workshops is up on our website!

New this year: Friday afternoon workshops to better accommodate busy teaching schedules.

This fall you can come to MLC for:

The Latest and Greatest Tech Resources for ABE/ESL Instructors
Author Your Own RealeBooks
No Such Thing as a Dumb Question - Helping Adult Educators Make the Digital Migration
and more!

For full workshop descriptions, dates/times, and the online registration form, go to: www.themlc.org/techtrainings.

Online Lessons for Using an Informational Website

2009-07-16T13:31:00.007-05:00

Superpages.com has a free online course for adult learners (developed by Idearc Media and ProLiteracy Worldwide) that teaches the skills needed to navigate and make use of an informational website. Although the lessons are specific to Superpages, the skills are easily transferable to other sites.

The course includes audio and video lessons and printable Teacher Notes and Student Workbook pages.

Check it out at: http://www.superpages.com/adultlearners/course.html.

Online Exercise Makers from CLA Language Center

2009-07-09T14:52:00.004-05:00

These little tools have been around for quite a while, but I have to admit that I had forgotten about them until a couple days ago, when a colleague asked me if there was a better way to make a matching exercise for her online training (the one in the CMS wasn't very pretty). I snooped around my bookmarks and rediscovered these online exercise makers from the CLA Language Center at the University of Minnesota.

There are only three tools, and they have their limitations, but they are FREE, and they are easy to use. The first allows you to make "glossed" web pages - so learners can click on a hyperlinked word to see information about it (whatever extra information you have provided in the 'gloss'), the second allows you to create self-check learning activities (you can embed audio or video, which is nice), and the third to create drag-and-drop matching exercises (including matching to an image).

Once you've made your exercises, you save them as .html files, then share the files with learners through a website or course management system. If you're teaching online, they can make a nice supplement to other online teaching tools.

Check them out at: http://languagecenter.cla.umn.edu/index.php?page=makers.

Wish I had a cool graphic... to explain Brain Rule #4: Attention

2009-06-25T13:28:00.003-05:00

Looking back at the last two "Brain Rules" Summary posts and thinking... urgh, too much text. But then, I am trying to explain a book... to folks who won't have time to read it... but will they have time to read this? I don't know, but onward we plunge into Brain Rule #4. It's one of my favorites: We don’t pay attention to boring things. Thank you, Dr. Medina.

OK, so at first glance that seems really, really uninteresting. Of course we don't pay attention to boring things. That's why we call them boring!

But this whole chapter is about attention - that oh-so-elusive capactiy that teachers are constantly trying to get from their students. How does attention work? Is it really just a matter of mental discipline vs. bad habits? Or are there principles that teachers (and everyone else) can use to capture and hold the attention of others? Let's take a look at what Dr. Medina has to say.

First, one thing that seems sure from brain research is that the more attention the brain pays to a particular stimulus, the more elaborately it will be encoded, and the better it will be retained. Obviously, we have to get our students’ attention if we want them to learn anything.

Second we have a curious and slightly alarming fact for presenters and professors who stick to old-school lecture format: at 10 minutes into a presentation or lecture, most people begin to lose attention. It’s not our fault. Our brains just refuse to pay attention to the same stimulus for longer than that at one stretch. One guy lecturing = one stimulus. After 10 minutes, no matter how fascinating the subject matter, the brain labels the stimulus as boring, and we just can't pay attention to it any longer.

So a single, uninterrupted stimulus (like a lecture) is deemed boring by the brain. What else determines what we can pay attention to? Culture and life experience play a big role in here. Adults who grew up in totally different cultures and with different life experiences may simply not notice things (especially small details) that we think are important – like punctuation marks, for example. Of course, this is true on the flip side as well. If we were asked to function in a hunter-gather society, would we be able to track animals in the forest or quickly identify edible plants? Probably not. Even if we were taught what to look for, we’d have a hard time at first because the details that are relevant aren’t salient to us. It's going to take a lot of practice before those previously unimportant details can become the focus of our attention.

How does attention work? First, the brain must become aroused to a stimulus as something of interest or importance. It is then brought to our conscious awareness where we can pay attention to it. This happens in three stages:

Detection: the brain is in a constant state of surveillance for stimuli. When something important is detected, an alert is sent that activates the next stage.
Orientation: the brain and body orient towards the stimulus so we can focus our senses on picking up more information about it.
Reaction: as information comes in, the Executive Network processes it and decides what to do about it. The Executive Network controls reactive behavior.

Attention has been widely studied. What else do we really know about it? Four big ideas:

1. Emotions are the basis of attention. During an emotionally charged event, the amygdala releases dopamine (a neurotransmitter than aids memory), flagging the experience as one worth remembering. Emotionally intense times in our lives are seared into our memories. We can't forget them even if we want to, because the brain has encoded the information so deeply and richly. But if your content is not perceived as emotionally relevant, it’s unlikely to grab your students’ attention.

2. We remember meaning before details. Emotional arousal focuses attention on the “gist” of an experience (its relevance to us) at the expense of the details (precisely what happened). But memory of details can be enhanced through association – attaching them to the gist. Human knowledge is organized around core concepts or “big ideas” that guide thinking and give the brain a place to store related facts and details. If you don’t get the big ideas, you’ll never remember the details. So teachers need to focus on making sure everyone understands the "big ideas" in their subject area. If they do, the details will fall into place.

3. When it comes to conscious attention, the brain cannot multitask. It can only shift attention quickly from one thing to another – not pay conscious attention to multiple stimuli at once. Multitasking is a myth perpetuated by the fact that our attention shifts happen very quickly (tenths of a second) and seamlessly. We don’t really notice (pay attention to!) our brain’s gear shifting, so we convince ourselves we aren’t doing it. But in fact, we are biologically incapable of processing multiple attention-rich inputs simultaneously. A good working memory may allow a person to pay attention to several inputs one at a time in rapid sequence, but that's it. And we pay a price for trying to multi-task with a one-track mind. Attention shifting increases error rates and the amount of time required to complete a task – as much as 50% more time and mistakes. So keeping distraction low in the classroom does really make a difference.

4. The brain needs a break. We need time to put new information together, connect it to what we already know, and make sense of it. The most common mistake made by teachers is relating too much information without enough time devoted to processing that information. After a while, the brain will simply stop paying attention to any new information that’s coming in so that it can process the previous information. We shouldn’t overstuff our students with new information. They need time to “digest.”

So, one last thing: How can we get over the problem that we lose our students’ attention after 10 minutes? Use emotion. Do something emotionally relevant (yet still related to your content, such as a funny anecdote that illustrates an idea) at the 10-minute interval and you will recapture their interest. Short, emotionally relevant “asides” that don’t contain details that the students need to remember also allow the brain some of the processing time it needs.

Brain Rule #3: Wiring

2009-06-12T10:22:00.005-05:00

In this next installment of my discussion of Dr. John Medina's fabulous book Brain Rules, we'll take a look at how and why every brain is unique. Dr. Medina's rule is "Every brain is wired differently."

You can imagine the brain as a huge intercontinental road map, with millions (billions?) of pathways for transmitting information. There are tiny back roads where hardly anyone ever goes, city streets and two-lane highways, and massive interstate freeways. The larger routes don't just accommodate more traffic, they also have a higher speed limit - allowing messages to travel more rapidly along them. Information routes in the brain become larger and faster the more they are used, so the skills and knowledge that you use regularly have the fastest and strongest connections in the brain.

The interesting thing is that no two brain maps are the same. Although the major highways are in more or less the same places from person to person, the smaller routes differ, and the smallest ones can be totally unique to each person. Everyone's brain map is distinctly their own.

Whenever a person learns something new, he or she forges a new pathway in the brain. Neurons split and make a new connection. The brain changes; it rewires itself. The new pathway is negligible at first - like a few footprints in the grass - but if it is used repeatedly, it will become larger, deeper, and faster. In this aspect, the brain acts like a muscle: the more activity you do, the larger and more complex it can become. So repetition is as central to learning as it is to weight lifting. Learners need to repeat, repeat, repeat in order to lay down strong pathways in the brain.

This process of forging new pathways and then strengthening them is what teaching and learning are all about. When we teach our learners something new, and then help them master it through meaningful repetition, we are helping them rewrite the road map of their brains.

Because every brain is wired in a unique pattern, each learner's needs are also unique. Everyone learns at a different pace and has different associations and networks in the brain to build on, and thus will master complex material to a different depth in a given period of time. Even if every learner starts out in roughly the same place at the beginning of a lesson (which is itself unlikely), they will not end up in the same place by the end of the lesson. There is no such thing as a homogeneous classroom.

So what does this tell us? For one thing, class sizes really do matter. Since each learner is unique, one of the teacher's most important responsibilities is keeping track of where each learner is at. This is much easier to do when there are fewer people to keep track of! In order to perform well at this job, a teacher must be highly adept with Theory of Mind skills (which we learned about in the last chapter). That's because a teacher relies on the subtle mental and emotional signals being broadcast by the learners to "get a feel" for who understands what, who's frustrated, who's confused, who's made a good analogy, who's got a mistaken understanding, who's off-task, who's bored, who's excited, etc. In a crowded classroom, too many signals get lost, and the teacher runs the risk of losing students - the proverbial problem of people "falling through the cracks". In a classroom with fewer learners, the teacher can more easily pick up on signals from everyone and make sure she is keeping everyone on track.

One other thing this tells us is that differentiated or customized instruction is not only beneficial but may in fact be necessary if we are to achieve high quality outcomes for learners. One way this might be done is through software programs that can diagnose the gaps in a particular learner's knowledge and then guide the learner to improve in those areas. This has been done with reading skills software and has proven very effective. Students in a class all get the same lesson from the reading teacher, but then also have a chance to work independently on computers. The computers have adaptive software that assesses their reading skills and then targets their areas of weakness. The difficulty of course, is in developing high quality, engaging, educational adaptive software. It's not that it can't be done - it just that it's going to cost money and time: two things educators never seem to have enough of.

Brain Rule #2: Survival

2009-06-04T13:20:00.005-05:00

In this next installment of my discussion of Dr. John Medina's fabulous book Brain Rules, we'll take a look at how we survived by using our brains. Dr. Medina's rule is "The human brain evolved too." You might think of this chapter in the book as a lesson in "Survival of the Brainiest".

This chapter has a ton of good information about the brain, how it is structured, and how it works. I personally find it fascinating, but I know it's not for everyone. And it's probably less relevant to teachers than some of the other content, so I'll focus on just two aspects of this chapter that really have something to say about teaching and learning.

First, the best theories of human evolution and survival indicate that human beings evolved in a challenging world of environmental change, and the reason that we prospered (where other species went extinct) was that we adapted to deal with variation (change) rather than adapting to a single, stable environment. The adaptation that allowed us to deal with the unpredictability of the world was the development of two separate brain systems: one that stores a fund of knowledge (a sort of database of everything we know about the world), and the other a capacity for improvising off that knowledge the way a jazz musician improvises off a musical score. The first system allows us to know when we have made a mistake, and the second allows us to learn from that mistake and try something different.

In classrooms, we need to deal with both systems if we are to tap into our learners' best abilities. It's not enough to transfer some information from teacher to student; the students need to apply that information in a creative or novel way. They need to solve problems that are relevant and interesting to them by making use of the new information. It's in this application stage that the new information is really integrated into the learners' fund of prior knowledge. It's not enough to just do the creative application and problem solving work, either - learners need their teachers to provide the information to build up their database.

In order for teachers to communicate information to learners, they need to be experts in another uniquely human adaptation: the Theory of Mind. Theory of Mind allows us to understand - to intuit - the emotions and inner lives of others. Dr. Medina uses this example:

Read these two sentences:
The husband died. Then the wife died.
How much do you know about these two people?

Now read these two sentences:
The husband died. Then the wife died of grief.

Everything that you can now intuit about these two people, their relationship, and their emotional lives comes from your skill in Theory of Mind. We use Theory of Mind constantly to navigate our complex human relationships. It comes so naturally and is so pervasive in our thinking that it affects everything we do, including teaching and learning. Everything we learn and everything we know is colored by how we feel about it and how we think others feel about it.

As every wise teacher knows, teaching and learning are rooted in relationships. Learners need to feel safe and feel connected to (understood by) their teacher. Without the feeling of safety, learners don't take the intellectual risks that allow them to improvise off new information (and thus truly understand it). Teachers need to be able to gauge and react appropriately to the emotional state and emotional needs of the learners: they need to be experts in Theory of Mind.

You'll see more of why Theory of Mind is so important for teachers in the next chapter. For now, I'll summarize by saying that the human brain evolved to be an efficient learning machine, because learning new things kept us alive in an unpredictable and dangerous world. Our mental software gives us several powerful tools for learning, but our ability to use them is dependent on human relationships and emotional connections.

Brain Rules: Rule #1: Exercise.

2009-05-29T10:53:00.005-05:00

I recently read an absolutely fantastic book called "Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home and School," by Dr. John Medina, a brain scientist and director of the Brain Center for Applied Learning Research at Seattle Pacific University. (Get more info at http://www.brainrules.net/). So much of the information in this book is relevant to teachers-and in many cases, confirms what savvy practitioners have seen for years in their classrooms-that I have been inspired to (re)share it with the world. Or, at least that small sampling of the world that reads this blog. I'll try to summarize one rule each (one chapter of the book) in a series of 12 posts to this blog.

I'll start with Rule #1: Exercise. It's probably the easiest rule to explain and to understand, and it really connects with common sense. The rule is: Exercise boosts brain power.

To think well, we need to move. Our bodies and brains evolved to exist in nearly constant motion. A sedentary lifestyle just ruins our ability to think and learn. If you want one simple way to improve your students' performance, get them up out of their chairs and moving. Even low impact exercise (walking or bouncing up and down on an exercise ball) can produce major improvements in creative thinking, attention and memory - and thus learning. Studies with children have shown that simply adding physical activity to a school routine improves outcomes in core content areas (reading, math, etc.). 30 minutes playing dodgeball may actually do more to improve kids' math scores than 30 extra minutes working word problems. Obviously, you have to have the lessons too. But exercise releases chemicals in the brain that make the lessons stick.

This doesn't just apply to children. To remain life-long learners, exercise is key. It wards off dementia and can halt or even reverse age-related declines in mental performance. In educational settings, there is every reason to believe that adults' brains benefit just as much from exercise as kids'.

One reason for the improvement in mental function among elders may be that exercise encourages the brain to grow new neurons. Yes! That old idea that we are born with all the brain cells we will ever have (and simply proceed to lose them as we age) is just plain wrong. You can grow new brain cells, and exercise might be the best way to release the chemicals that will set that process in motion. At the very least, regular exercise significantly reduces the chance of stroke. And stroke, if it doesn't kill, can cause serious brain damage.

The long and the short of it: sitting still in a chair is not a good brain environment for attention, memory, thinking, or learning. Get your students up and about! A parked butt signals a fuzzy brain.

And on that note, I think I'll go for a brisk walk around the office before turning my attention to my next project!

Reading Rockets Videos from PBS

2009-05-28T15:11:00.005-05:00

"Reading Rockets" is a series from PBS that focuses on issues of children's literacy, including brain research into reading difficulties, teaching strategies that work, and ways to empower parents.

Although the series does not deal directly with adult literacy issues, much of the information is valuable to the adult literacy community. Adults who struggle to read were once children who struggled to read. As adult educators, we can learn from our peers who work with children.

Of particular interest to adult educators might be the episodes on Reading Comprehension and Becoming Bilingual. Many of the ideas that these successful teachers are using with children and parents could be adapted to work for adult learners.

Take a look!

Mmmmm... Lots of Teacher Videos

2009-05-22T14:25:00.003-05:00

Here's something new that might catch the eye of teachers, program coordinators, volunteer coordinators, trainers and others: a site specifically dedicated to ABE/GED and Adult ESL teacher professional development videos. It's at http://mlots.org and is definitely worth a peek.

In-service teachers can learn about teaching methods and strategies they may not have tried before, and trainers and coordinators can find videos that effectively demonstrate strategies they want their staff to use. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many is a video worth? Anyone who's ever tried to describe how to do something in the classroom will understand the great value in being able to show it instead. We humans are visual creatures (any idea how much of your brain's processing power is dedicated solely to vision?) so seeing a demonstration can be a powerful way to learn. Which is not to mention that watching a 5-10 minute video takes significantly less time than reading a chapter in a teaching methods textbook.

So, see for yourself. You'll get the idea faster than if I write a whole chapter here!

Make sure to check out the "Other Adult Learning Videos" link to see a list of related videos on other sites.

Creating with CLEAR

2009-05-21T15:45:00.005-05:00

CLEAR (the Center for Language Education and Research, based at Michigan State Univ.) has a number of sleek, easy-to-use online language teaching tools. Most allow you to build speaking and listening activities for your students - a real rarity among teacher-friendly tools for building online activities. There is also a nice process-writing service for writing teachers called "Revisions".

Teachers can sign up for a free account to build activities. Students can work on those activities without an account (except for the Revisions service, which they do need to register for and be added to their teacher's class). Teachers will need someplace to place their activities for students to access them. That could be a blog like this one, a class wiki page, or a standard web site.

Here is one very simple example: the Audio Dropbox. Intended as a place for students to "drop off" speaking assignments (like they might drop a writing assignment in your mailbox), the audio dropbox takes about 5 minutes to build and embed in a web page. Please feel free to leave me a comment.

Check them out at: clear.msu.edu/clear.
And thanks to Barry Bakin for posting about CLEAR and leading me to their stash of goodies!

Considering Social Networks

2009-04-17T09:41:00.003-05:00

Would adult educators and volunteers be interested in a social networking site created specifically for them? A kind of FaceBook for people interested in adult literacy?

As my experience with social networks grows it seems more and more likely that these online communities will expand and proliferate in the years to come. I'm intrigued by the idea of using a social network to create personal learning environments, where educators can connect with other educators, share resources, attend online workshops, and engage in truly constructivist learning. There's a great deal of potential here. Social networks go beyond mere "discussion boards". They allow for the establishment of personal connections and even mentoring relationships, where the "old hands" guide the newcomers (in a true "zone of proximal development" for those readers who're interested in learning theory). I've seen this kind of relationship develop among members of the Classroom 2.0 social network, of which I'm one member among 10,000. A newcomer poses a question or a "cry for help" and is quickly responded to by sometimes dozens of more experienced users.

The question I have is, if I build it, will they come? Or is this just one more thing that my colleagues don't have time to learn or participate in?

Citizenship Day

2009-04-01T09:45:00.002-05:00

Hear ye, hear ye, all Minnesota citizenship teachers and ESL teachers with students who want to apply for citizenship!

On Saturday, April 18th, the Minnesota/Dakotas Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) presents Citizenship Day 2009! Immigration attorneys, paralegals, and trained professionals will be available at sites around the state to help clients prepare citizenship applications for just $20. (Which is much, much less than this kind of assistance would usually cost.)

Locations in St. Paul, Bloomington, Rochester, St. Cloud, and Fargo, ND are open from 10:00-2:00. Get more information at www.citizenshipday.info.

Help spread the word!

Considering "Blog Guilt"

2009-03-09T17:07:00.005-05:00

In a meeting this afternoon about my organization's "Technology Vision" I argued that it was important that technology/electronic communications be integrated into work plans and be recognized as "real work". I mentioned that I don't post to my blog very often partly because I feel like it takes me away from what I'm "supposed" to be doing. A colleague responded "Yeah, we don't want to encourage Blog Guilt."

What exactly is "Blog Guilt" and do I have it? Does "Blog Guilt" show up in all those meaningless blog posts that people make about why they aren't blogging? Is it when I don't blog because I don't know if blogging falls under the grant that I work under? Am I misappropriating tax dollars if I'm blogging on work time--and is worrying about that question a sign of Blog Guilt?

I think this is a question for teachers, too--though maybe more broadly as "web guilt". Teachers often aren't given time for work outside the classroom, so spending prep time reading a blog (or accessing other online media, even for work-related purposes) may engender guilt. How do we move to a work culture that embraces the use of web tools as a meaningful work activity? And how do we make sure that what we're doing online is a meaningful work activity?

If you think you've been struck by Blog Guilt, leave me a comment! And I hope you haven't gotten a case of it from reading this blog post!

In the News... Online Citizenship Study

2009-02-06T14:10:00.006-06:00

Earlier this week a colleague and I were interviewed by Katherine Glover of MinnPost.com for an article about our efforts to create free online self-study resources for immigrants preparing for U.S. citizenship.

You can check out her story here: Minnesota Literacy Council piloting software to help immigrants with citizenship test.

The new self-study resources are under development as part of the Learner Web (LW) project, of which the St. Paul Community Literacy Consortium is a regional partner. While the Learner Web materials will not be available except to LW partners for the duration of the original 3-year demonstration project, once that project is complete, the goal is to have LW released as open-source learning management software, something akin to Moodle, but focused on delivering self-access, self-paced learner-directed resources rather than semester-based, instructor-led online courses.

But Moodle and Learner Web shouldn't really be seen as competitors: the two systems in our case work together in partnership. Using our existing Moodle site we were able to create lessons and practice exercises and host our own content. That content can be seen at: http://online.themlc.org/ -- click on "Study for the U.S. Citizenship Test". Those lessons are then linked into Learner Web, which is a system for organizing existing resources (such as online courses, websites, books, community organizations, etc.) around the steps a learner needs to take to achieve a goal.

Anyone is free to browse through the Moodle course, which is open to guest users. While you're there, you might want to check out our other online training courses for adult educators and volunteers.

How to Recover from YouTube-Block

2009-01-15T10:31:00.004-06:00

Thanks to Marian Thatcher and Larry Ferlazzo for re-posting and discussing this great blog post by Joyce Valenza. All three teacher techies offer tips & tricks for teachers and students who want to use YouTube videos at school. They offer alternatives that allow us to use YouTube videos as learning resources while we wait for our schools' policies to catch up to 21st century realities.

Even with these alternatives out there, I personally feel that the ban on YouTube should be lifted from Adult Education programs--we are working with adults after all. It's patronizing to treat adult learners the same way we treat children, as though we are their guardians who need to "protect" them from the dangers of the Internet. Clearly K12 schools have a duty to protect their young charges from inappropriate and potentially disturbing material. But teaching children and teaching adults are two totally different endeavors, and restrictive policies designed for 8-year olds should not be applied to their parents! Furthermore, as adult educators we have a responsibility to provide our learners with the skills and know-how to be effective parents and role models in the digital age. That responsibility includes helping our learners understand sites like YouTube that their children are probably using at home or with friends. Yes, there is a slew of awful garbage on YouTube, but there's also a wealth of truly valuable material. Which is why our adult learners need guided experiences with it: so they can provide those same experiences for their own kids.

And on that note, I'll share two of the truly valuable resources I've recently discovered on YouTube. Both are resources for immigrants applying for U.S. citizenship and could be of great use to ABE educators and learners. Enjoy!

Geeking out about Jing

2009-01-09T10:05:00.004-06:00

Here is a tool that has great potential for teachers, especially technology teachers. How often do you find yourself demonstrating how to do the same thing on a computer--create an email account, use an online learning resource, or just search on Google? Jing is a tool that can help! Jing allows you to quickly and easily create screen-cast videos, narrated live in real time as you perform and action on your computer. Here's my example (it's too large to embed here, so click the link to view it on www.screencast.com): http://www.screencast.com/t/8wcwxm43S.

I don't have time this morning to write much more, but Wow! Think of the potential for technology instructors! Check it out at http://www.jingproject.com/.

Winter Magic

2008-12-03T12:05:00.004-06:00

It's beginning to look like winter here in the Northland. We had another dusting of snow on the sidewalk this morning, but I'm anxiously waiting for enough to build a snowman!

In honor of the season, I thought I would share my Winter Magic photo slide show from Slide.com. Slide makes it easy to create short digital 'stories' like this one, incorporating music, text, and images. Adult learners and their teachers can use tools like Slide to tell their own stories, using free images from Flickr Creative Commons like I have here. I'm going to be leading a workshop on free online digital storytelling tools on Monday, December 15th from 6:30-8:30 pm at the Minnesota Literacy Council in St. Paul. Come join me if you would like to try this out for yourself!

Thanksgiving Day Teaching Resources

2008-11-24T13:43:00.006-06:00

Yep, the big turkey day approaches! If you will be sharing information about the holiday with your learners, you might enjoy browsing these resources for teachers and students.

Larry Ferlazzo has already put together a comprehensive list of ESL resources on his "Best Sites to Learn and Teach About Thanksgiving". Thanks to Larry, who always does a great job sifting the wheat from the chaff on the web, I have very little to add.

Although not particularly fancy, here is a straightforward Power Point slideshow telling the story of the first Thanksgiving that you might like (click the image of the Mayflower to load it).

Also, I don't remember seeing Plimoth Plantation's "You are the Historian" site listed on Larry's page, so I'll recommend that one as well, then wish you and yours a Happy Thanksgiving. See you in December!

Wild Turkeys by teddy llovet used under Creative Commons license.

News For You Online--Now with Audio!

2008-11-18T11:44:00.002-06:00

If you work with adult learners (native or non-native English speakers) with limited literacy or language skills, you should know about News For You. News For You is a weekly newspaper written specifically for adult learners. It features real news stories written with easier vocabulary and sentence structure than you find in typical newspapers. You can subscribe to the paper to have it delivered to your classroom.

Now, the online version of News For You also has audio options. You can listen to entire stories, or click on any sentence in the story to hear just that sentence. This is a great fluency reading exercise, and helpful to learners who want practice with English pronunciation.

For teachers, there are classroom ideas and teachers' guides to accompany every issue. Enjoy!

YouTube more mainstream than ever, when (and how?) will schools get on board?

2008-11-14T17:03:00.005-06:00

The newest sign that YouTube has gone mainstream: President-Elect Obama will now be using YouTube videos to communicate with the American public. The first in this series is already available--Valerie Jarrett of his transition team "provides a web-exclusive update on recent personnel decisions and the latest steps taken on ethics reform". Click here to read more from the Associated Press about Obama's YouTube initiative. The video is embedded below.

Still, many school districts block YouTube, fearful both of its uncensored content and the bandwidth consumed by watching videos online.

But if YouTube is the serious media of the future, at some point, educational institutions are going to need to come to grips with it. Students, especially the adult students we serve, should have access to view messages from the Presidents' office. If that's not an "appropriate use of technology", I'm not sure what is. How then can we provide access to educationally-appropriate content on YouTube while preventing the waste of tax-payer resources on the sea of garbage which is also available on YouTube? I don't have any answers, but I'd sure like to hear your comments.

Hey! Where can I get one of these?

2008-11-13T16:22:00.005-06:00

Seriously, friends, I love Flickr Creative Commons! It's all about share and share alike, just like you learned in Kindergarden. Get out there, take pictures, and upload them to Flickr with a Creative Commons license. Together we can build the greatest collection of free-to-use photos in history.

Photo "Computer Geek Award" by Flickr user eecue.

Remembering Veteran's Day

2008-11-11T13:17:00.008-06:00

On Veteran's Day, November 11th, the anniversary of the signing of the armistice that ended World War I (then called "the Great War") I would like to take a moment to remember a couple of veterans in my life: my father, who served in Korea, and my cousin, who is now in Iraq and has already served two tours of duty in Afganistan. For them and for all who serve and have served this country, thank you.

And thank you to Flickr user Cliff1066 for this lovely photo of the Korean War Memorial in Washington D.C., which I somehow missed on my speed-walk tour of the capital last month. I'm sorry I accidentally bypassed the Memorial but I'm glad I can at least get a pedestrian's eye view through the magic of Web 2.0 and photo sharing.

For those of you who are new to Flickr and want to find great images to illustrate your work, sign up for a free account and then search the Flickr Creative Commons. For more about Creative Commons licenses, check out: http://creativecommons.org/.

Also, check out the History Channel's website on Veteran's Day. They've put together some resources that could be really useful for social studies and history teachers.

Ask Your Lawmaker widget from PBS

2008-11-06T12:46:00.002-06:00

Thoughts on Voting... and Voting Technology

2008-11-04T11:30:00.003-06:00

I went to vote this morning before coming to work. I arrived at 8:30 a.m. to find a line out the door, around the corner, and a quarter of the way down the block. Wow! I thought that the morning rush would have been over by that time. But everyone seemed to be taking the wait pretty well and be excited to exercise their right to vote. In the end the wait wasn't that bad; although the line was long it kept moving along at a good clip and I was able to vote about 50 minutes after arriving at my polling place.

Inside I was surprised to see a number of people gathered around the same-day voter registration table. I was surprised since my precinct always has high turnout (in 2004 I believe it was 90% or better) so I didn't expect to see so many people in my precinct who weren't already registered! I'm so proud to live in Minnesota where we have such a clean, efficient, and inclusive voting system. I'm particularly pleased with the technology that we use here--the optical scan paper ballots. They're great for a number of reasons:

1) As a voter, you get a real paper ballot to hold in your hand and mark with a pen (rather than relying on a punch-card system or some such to mark it for you). There should be no question that you really voted for the people you wanted to vote for.
2) The optical scanner reads and records votes quickly and accurately.
3) If there is a question about the accuracy of the voting results, a hand-count can be done because voters have completed real paper ballots.

Combining this accurate, reliable and efficient technology with progressive policies (e.g. same-day voter registration) is the reason that Minnesota consistently has among the country's highest voter turnout rates (check out results from the Secretary of State's office here!) and yet lowest incidence of irregularities and complaints. Hoorah for Minnesota! How fabulous is it to live in the United States and the great state of Minnesota, where voting rights and responsibilities are taken seriously and exercised with care!

YouTube Volunteer Recruitment Video

2008-09-26T14:05:00.005-05:00

The Minnesota Literacy Council volunteer outreach staff have collaborated with technology and training staff to produce a fun new video for YouTube. It features adult literacy volunteers and learners discussing the importance of volunteer tutors in their programs.

It's part of a new strategy at MLC to leverage the power of Internet technologies to advance the organization's mission, communicate with new audiences, and raise awareness of literacy issues in the wider community. You'll find the video below; I hope you'll check it out and pass it along! If you have feedback on the video or ideas about how you could use YouTube in your adult literacy program, please share them in a comment.

Custom Search Engine

2008-09-11T13:50:00.002-05:00

Thanks to a tip from CogDogBlog I found myself exploring the possibility of customized search engines from Google. Basically, a CSE allows you to make your own search tool that will focus on the topics or keywords you mark as important, and limit (or focus) the search to websites that you designate. You could create a CSE for your website, wiki, blog, or for a set of websites that you regularly use.

Here is an example that I created: an ESL exercises search. (Warning: I slapped this together very quickly, so it's far from perfect, but I hope you can get the general idea.)

Google CSEs are free for non-profits and universities!

Political Personality Quiz from PBS

2008-09-03T12:01:00.002-05:00

PBS has developed an extensive website of curricular materials (including complete lesson plans and Web 2.0 resources) for teaching civic engagement and the use of social media at www.pbs.org/teachers/vote2008.

In browsing through the resources on this page, I found this interactive quiz "Let's Get Political". Although it's designed for K-12 students, it could be used successfully with adult learners.

Take the quiz and find your own "political personality". Then check out the PBS website for more great teaching resources.

Celebrate Your Colleagues (and use Web 2.0 to do it)!

2008-08-15T14:21:00.005-05:00

This morning at our monthly staff meeting we honored an employee who has served in our organization for 20 years. It's a great accomplishment and many kind, heart-felt, inspiring things were said about him and his impact on literacy education in Minnesota. It got me thinking about how statements of this kind are absolutely invaluable for sustaining organizational morale, and also how difficult it can be to get everyone together in one place to honor the contributions of special individuals and teams.

Could we use Web 2.0 tools to say "thank you" and "great job!" even though we're not face-to-face? Could this help build community among colleagues who work at a growing number of sites throughout the state? Here are a few ideas:

Have a blog, wiki site, or Twitter feed set up (that everyone in the organization can post to and subscribe to via RSS) specifically for sharing "Thank Yous" and similar announcements.
Build a Social Network on Ning and use it to maintain connections with far-flung members and members who've left the organization
Use a wiki or social network to plan happy hours, potlucks, and other real-world social gatherings.

Blogs and Wikis and Podcasts, Oh My!

2008-08-12T15:23:00.002-05:00

Thanks to everyone who came to one of my technology workshops at Summer Institute last week! I had a great time facilitating and I hope you got some useful ideas to take back to your programs for the new school year.

To make it really "stick" remember that follow-through is key! Things you can do:

1) Request "writer" access to the Adult Ed Tech wiki where you can share your teaching ideas and links to your work.
2) Tell a colleague about what you learned. Direct them to the Adult Ed Tech wiki site so they can get resources too.
3) Create something right away! The tools you learned about are at your fingertips. Try them out again now before they get lost in the back-to-school rush.

Take care and keep on plugging away!

5 Great Web Sites for ABE/ESL Teachers

2008-08-05T10:49:00.002-05:00

One of my favorite random work-related activities is collecting web sites of interest to ABE/ESL teachers and staff. Here are a few of my recent discoveries (presented in no particular order):

1) Inspiration Lane a blog constructed as an online, classroom magazine for English learners. The content updates daily, and there are suggested activities for teachers and learners.

2) My Great World is a socially-built database of photos of places around the world. You can search for places and see pictures that others have uploaded, or you can upload your own photos to share with others. (Minnesotans, take note: pictures of Minnesota are few! Let's show off the beauty of our state by uploading some great pics!)

3) Why Reading is Hard explains the difficulty that children who don't speak English as a first language have when they are learning to read in English. Yes, it's about kids, but many of the same principles apply to adult readers. This is a great site to share with people who aren't familiar with literacy development.

4) Adult Ed Online is an online self-assessment tool that adult educators can use to chart their personal professional development needs in the area of technology. The tool allows you to indicate what your priorities are as well as assess your strengths and weaknesses.

5) Curriki is a wiki web site where teachers can share curriculum materials and teaching ideas. Although most of the resources here were originally created by and for K-12 teachers, many could be adapted for use with adult learners.

Have you used any of these sites? Or do you have others that you'd like to share? Let me know!

Is reading on the .net "real reading"?

2008-07-29T12:04:00.006-05:00

My colleague Emily sent me a message on Twitter yesterday, asking for my opinion on an article in the New York Times titled "Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?" It's a big, deep, and broad question with many more aspects than I'll be able to discuss here, but I'll give it my best shot, Emily!

In the concluding chapter of a book I read recently* (and yes, despite the fact that I am a netaholilc, I also read books), the author discussed this very issue. One of her conclusions is that the Internet age is bringing us into a "Secondary Orality", which is to say that communication and interaction with 'text' on the Internet is bringing us back to aspects of the oral culture which preceded our current literate culture. As one of the people interviewed in the Times article said, the 'net is more about conversation than it is about reading. It's just that, in many cases, the conversation takes place in print.

Reading on the 'net is sometimes real reading (I sat down and read a 4 page article from the Times on the 'net, didn't I?) but in many cases it's really more of a discussion. In a discussion, ideas flow quickly in a stream. We don't rest our mind on any of them for long, but rather we allow ourselves to be swept along in the give and take, point and counter-point, tangent and return, fluid experience of words and ideas.

This is both a good thing and a bad thing. Discussions are wonderful! I thrive on them--both the online and the face-to-face kind--and love the opportunity to engage in meaningful conversation with people from many places and perspectives. But it's a bad thing if it completely replaces the quiet, reflective, self-to-text introspection that can only come when one individual sits down to read. As Maryanne Wolf explains in her excellent book, the most important thing that literacy gave us is time to think. Reading is thinking. Discussion is also thinking, but it's not the same kind of thinking. Discussion, in my experience, is usually thinking broadly (many ideas touched on lightly) while reading is thinking deeply (one idea explored thoroughly).

Ultimately, I believe that we need to be able to do both things well to succeed in the modern world. Reading on the 'net is not a substitute for reading books, but it is an important complement to it. I wouldn't give up either for a fist full of greenbacks.

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*The book in question is: Proust and the Squid: the Story and Science of the Reading Brain, by Maryanne Wolf, Harper: 2007. Learn more about this book on LibraryThing!

Wasting Energy

2008-07-23T14:52:00.003-05:00

Right up front I'm going to admit that this post has very little to do with technology literacy. But bear with me.

Why is it that as demand for energy grows, prices go up, and the planet suffers from our endless consumption, our country is still fundamentally incompetent when it comes to conservation? On my way to a meeting across town (a sort of one-on-one training about wikis for a colleague) at 9:15 this morning, with the sun blazing down in glorious brilliance, I noticed that all the street lights along this particular stretch of busy city street were also on. What the heck is going on here? How is it that the city of St. Paul cannot time its street lights (or make them light sensitive) such that they turn off during daylight hours? Was this just a random error, or are they on every morning? How much energy is being wasted lighting up streets in broad daylight?

(In case you're wondering, it's not as though the sun had just come up, either. We're in the northern latitudes here. In the summer, sunrise is really early. According to the Weather Channel, sunrise this morning was at 5:50 a.m.)

For all my infatuation with 21st century technology, I believe that technology needs to serve people well, not just look flashy. What good is all our information technology if we can't consistently accomplish even basic tasks, such as turning off the lights in the morning?

Alright, I'm getting down off my soapbox now. Thanks for bearing with me. And turn off the lights when you leave the room, please.

Is McCain out of step with tech savvy senior peers?

2008-07-21T12:49:00.003-05:00

Thanks to my ever-so-helpful husband for referring me to this interesting article from CNN.com about how Senator McCain (presumed Republican presidential candidate) compares to other seniors in his Internet use (or lack thereof). To sum up: the Senator admits to being technologically "illiterate" and relying on his wife to help him navigate the Web. The CNN article sites statistics that only 35% of seniors use the Internet, but that 75% of white, college-educated men 65 and over do. If you look at those numbers, McCain looks a little out of step with his peers.

But perhaps things are not quite what they appear. The Senator's aides have clarified that he is capable of getting on the Internet himself and does so several times a week. It seems to me that these statements (1-he's "illiterate" and 2-he accesses the Internet at least once a week) can't both be 100% accurate. Probably Senator McCain feels tech illiterate compared to his tech savvy family and staff, but probably isn't actually so out of touch as the phrase "computer illiterate" would lead people to believe.

Which leads me to think about other senior citizens in our tech saturated world. How many actually know a lot more than they think they know? How many are intimidated by computer technology and feel stupid when comparing themselves to peers they believe are more sophisticated and tech savvy then they? How many lack the confidence to even try to get on the Internet?

It seems to me that Senator McCain has stumbled upon a great teachable moment. He has now, with the media focused on this issue, the opportunity to speak to other American seniors and say, "Look, I didn't grow up with this technology either. It's new and intimidating for me, too. But I'm learning, I'm benefiting from it, and you can too." He has the chance to inspire seniors to learn and grow and take the plunge into the Internet world.

Senator? The class is yours....

Wordle for Fun

2008-07-18T15:31:00.003-05:00

The enigmatic title "wordsmith" popped up in my Google reader page today, and intrigued I popped in at Litearcies Cafe to see what they were blogging about. Turns out they were highlighting this fun little tool called Wordle that creates a word cloud from any text you enter.

I pasted the link to my blog and was treated to this "visual interpretation" of my blogging. I have no idea how this might apply to adult literacy programs, but it was fun and took about 3 minutes... so why not?

Will Wikis Take Hold in Adult Literacy Programs?

2008-07-17T11:26:00.003-05:00

I, for one, sure hope so. I admit that I'm a geek, but honestly, I love wikis.

My infatuation with wikis is a relatively young love, however. The first time I tried out a wiki, to be honest I really didn't get it. I had no idea how I could apply the technology. I understood the idea of Wikipedia (an encylopedia that anyone can contribute to), but I didn't feel that I had any particular area of expertise to use as the basis of building my own wiki. This line of thinking shows that I had failed to grasp the true essence of wikis: that they are collaborative documents. My problem with understanding wikis was that I kept thinking of starting my wiki. But a wiki is not the product of any one person. It belongs to a group. Of course I had trouble thinking of how to apply the technology--wikis come about because they are useful tools for groups, and I didn't have a group.

But the seed idea of wikis was planted, and it lay dormant in my brain until groups came along that could make use of wikis. Here's a good example: a group of people working on a volunteer outreach project who needed to brainstorm a list of questions for conducting interviews. The group members had trouble getting together in one time and place, but the questions were needed pronto. Solution: a wiki! Each group member could edit the list of questions on the wiki, building on, improving/revising, and adding to the ideas of others. Rather than each person working in isolation, creating a list and emailing it to someone to compile, the group worked collaboratively to create a single product. This system eliminated redundancy, saved time, and ultimately produced a better result than would have been created by people working in isolation.

How do I see wikis working in adult literacy programs? First off, they are a great tool for committees of any kind that need to produce a collaborative work (a curriculum development project, a set of standards, an evaluation rubric, a policy draft, etc.). Secondly, they could be used for teachers to collaborate on lesson planning. As community Web spaces, wikis could be created for teachers working at the same level, where they could upload worksheets and share activity ideas. Lastly, wikis could be created by teachers for their classes, where students could share their ideas and creative work. Do you want your class to create a group project, such as a cookbook or program brochure? Why not use a wiki? Do you want students to read and respond to each other's writing? Build a student writing wiki.

It's important to note that wikis can be either public or private. You might want your students' work to be public, but you might not. Your curriculum development project might need to be private, but perhaps your worksheet/activity sharing space could go public.

How can you get started with wikis? Here are several wiki hosting services that are easy to use, free or low-cost, and produce an attractive, functional site with a minimal amount of effort:

http://www.pbwiki.com/

http://www.wikispaces.com/

http://www.wetpaint.com/

Why not start a wiki with your group and see where it leads you!

25 Ways to Blog?

2008-07-16T10:04:00.004-05:00

Are there really that many different ways to blog? I was unconvinced until I viewed an excellent slide show on http://www.slideshare.net/ called "The 25 Basic Styles of Blogging... and When to Use Each One." Suddenly, my own blogging efforts seem, well... kind of lacking in inspiration. I've got an idea but I'm not sure if I can pull it off: to blog once in each of the 25 styles between now and September 1st. That's 25 posts in about 6 weeks (about 4-5 posts a week). Right now I'm not blogging anywhere near that much. It seems like a good challenge to set for myself, though, so I'm going to give it a shot.

For those of you interested in learning more about different ways to use your blog, take a peek at the slide show!

View Upload your own

Learn English with YouTube?

2008-07-01T14:39:00.005-05:00

Now I know that many large ABE/ESL programs are part of school districts that block YouTube and other streaming video sites, but what if--bear with me a second here--what if YouTube could actually be educationally useful? I know, I know, schools have all sorts of issues with YouTube--mainly that it eats up bandwidth and contains inappropriate content--but are those issues holding teachers and students back from accessing a potentially powerful learning tool?

The reason I bring this subject up is that I was recently introduced to a website called ESLVideo.com which uses YouTube videos to teach English as a Second Language. Teachers who use the site can choose videos and embed them in interactive quizzes that test students on their comprehension of the video.

Here's an example from the ESLVideos website:

Ford Model T

So... YouTube videos for English learners... pretty powerful stuff, no?

But many ABE/ESL teachers won't be able to use this in their classrooms or computer labs, because of school district policies that block streaming video.

As more and more audio, video and photographic media are distributed via the Web, is it possible that ABE/ESL programs are contributing to, rather than working to erode, the digital divide between middle-class mainstream society and more marginalized ABE/ESL students? When we block Facebook, YouTube, chatrooms, etc. (and yes, I know they are blocked for good reasons) in our schools, are we in effect saying "these new technologies are not for you"... since many students only have Web access at school?

It's not a question I have an answer for, but it's one that I think deserves discussion. "Open access" vs. "educational use only" issues have haunted the field of educational technology as long as there has been an educational technology field! But the stakes get higher and higher as our society becomes ever more reliant on technology for meeting everyday needs. Give it some thought and post your answer in a comment!

Digital Storytelling

2008-06-24T12:47:00.005-05:00

Someday, I will find the time to explore all the digital storytelling tools on CogDog's excellent wiki site http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/50+ways. For now, I must simply accept the fact that there's a lot more going on out there on the Web than I can keep up with. And who's to say that any one person needs to develop expertise with every tool imaginable, anyway? I don't want to fall into the folly of "toolishness" where I adopt new technology tools just because there are new technology tools (see Jamie McKenzie's website for more about toolishness).

New tools need to present some usefulness, meet some need, fill a purpose. As I explore new Web 2.0 tools, I try to keep that firmly in mind, looking for the application for educators before sharing what I've learned. It's that usefulness that I'm thinking about with one of those new digital storytelling tools, ANIMOTO.

Wait, wait! Back up a second! What do you mean by "digital storytelling" anyway? According to the Center for Digital Storytelling, it is "using the tools of digital media to craft, record, share, and value the stories of individuals and communities". It's the timeless tradition of telling stories, using today's digital media (pictures, videos, audio) to do it.

So, back to ANIMOTO. Animoto allows you to upload a series of images, choose a music soundtrack, and then set their artificial intelligence loose on your content to mix a digital video for you. It's free, it's easy, and it's fun. But what's the educational application? Well, for anyone thinking of using a blog to inspire student writing, it could be really powerful. Instead of one static image for a writing prompt, you can have a dynamic video slideshow. Here's my attempt, aimed at a job theme unit:

It took about 30 minutes to create, including signing up for an Animoto account, searching for images on Flickr Creative Commons, uploading the images, choosing music, and waiting for Animoto to do its thing.

A couple other application ideas for adult education: students could take photos using the school digital camera and create video slideshows that tell the story of their learning. Volunteer recruiters could make slideshows to post on the school web page to build excitement about the program. (This could also apply to student recruitment and outreach, too, especially for out-of-school youth.) If you have a blog or web site, give it a try and let me know how it goes!

Images in the "mechanics" video from Flickr Creative Commons users: soldiersmediacenter, chicagoeye, sylvar, iMorpheus, absolutwade, Jennie R. F., Simon Langford, Memotions, ocean_yamaha, and furryscaly.

What is "Web 2.0"?

2008-06-19T12:38:00.005-05:00

I'm working on a new interactive quiz that will help educators learn about the world of Web 2.0. This is a first draft of the quiz I made at http://www.mystudiyo.com/. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Web 2.0 for Adult Educators

Hamline ESL Workshop

2008-05-23T15:04:00.004-05:00

This week Hamline University hosted their 15th annual ESL Workshop for teachers who work with adult English learners. As usual, the turnout, presentations, and energy were great! Of all the conferences that I attend, this one always shines through as a real winner.

This year was especially exciting for me as I changed roles from participant-only to session leader! I led two educational technology sessions on Tuesday; one on using RealeBooks with adult learners (http://www.realebooks.com/) and one on using authentic Internet sites with learners. Both had 30+ participants who were engaged and excited to use the software and resources provided.

I was particularly honored to lead--and somewhat nervous about--these sessions because I was presenting alongside three wonderful professors from Hamline: Betsy Parrish, Kimberly Johnson, and Julia Reimer. Yes, that's right, your teachers are three university PhDs... and me! But I'm happy to report that I held my own and created quite a bit of buzz from my sessions. I'm looking forward to getting the session evaluations... because I think they're going to be quite a satisfying read!

On a similar note, I was also slightly imtimidated when I realized that Diane Pecoraro (who in the Minnesota ABE/ESL field is almost legendary) was attending my morning session. Diane has recently retired from her leadership position at the state Department of Education, but it was she who first started the Hamline ESL workshop back in the early 90's. She sat in the back row (uh-oh!) but she stayed very engaged and asked lots of questions... and at the end, this self-described technology novice raved about my session to anyone who would listen! That, I have to say, made me feel pretty dog-gone good!

Here are a couple pictures of me leading the afternoon session:

Sharing the Power!

2008-04-18T15:31:00.006-05:00

The Minnesota Literacy Council's annual Sharing the Power conference last Saturday was a resounding success!

My workshop on RealeBooks was well received and I hope that the teachers, tutors, and learners who attended the session went back to their learning centers ready to make lots and lots of books.

Thanks to everyone who came and made this such a great event! I look forward to seeing you there again next year.

Here's a pic of me leading the RealeBooks workshop (note the wild hand gestures!), and another one of session participants:

Reflections on the CEA Conference

2008-04-11T16:24:00.002-05:00

For the past two days I've been attending the 2008 Region III and Region IV Corrections Education Association conference in Bloomington, MN. I don't work (and haven't worked) in corrections education myself, but MLC supports literacy educators at all levels throughout the state, including in corrections. So I went to make myself more familiar with the particulars of this area of adult education that has been, up to now, completely unknown to me. It was an interesting experience for me, an "outsider", to attend. I got a chance to speak with vocational, ABE/GED, and ESL teachers who work with offenders in the corrections system throughout the Midwest, and those conversations gave me a real insight into the special needs, challenges, and rewards of that particular line of adult education work. Every time I'm in a gathering of adult educators, I'm struck by the passion and committment that they have for their work and their learners. In this group of teachers, who work with some of the hardest to reach adult learners, I sensed and even greater depth of committment and love for their work than in almost any other group I've had the privilege to work with. Powerful stuff. Keep up the good work, CEA teachers! You've inspired me to dig deeper into my own work and find renewed energy for my most difficult projects. Thanks!

RealeBooks

2008-04-09T14:58:00.004-05:00

This Saturday I will be presenting "Become the Author of Your Own Real e-Book" at the Minnesota Literacy Council's annual Sharing the Power conference. RealeBooks are picture books that you can share by email (to read as e-books) or print to read the old-fashioned way. You upload your own pictures (from a digital camera, scanner, or Internet site) and write your own text. RealeBooks are a great tool for adult and family literacy educators, because they allow you to:

control the reading level and word choice in your text
create books that have adult-appropriate topics
work with your learners to help them write their own books

RealeBooks are great for adult English and basic literacy learners because they allow you to:

write bi-lingual books to share with your children
write books that tell your stories
practice reading and writing English in a fun and meaningful way

RealeBooks are made with RealeWriter software. The basic version is free, and the pro version is available for a $30 upgrade (for a single user license). Check it out at: www.realebooks.com.

Technology and Literacy... big issues

2008-04-09T14:30:00.000-05:00

...derserve discussion.

I hope that this blog will be a place that discussion can take place.