Teaching with Technology

Check out OTAN to learn more about Teaching with Technology. You can go in and search the directory by selecting the level of students and topics. OTAN is for adult education and literacy programs.

Using Your IPad--Down Loading Apps

Is your literacy program lucky enough to get a new IPad?  Maybe you got a handme down when someone in your community got a new IPad, or got them via grants.  To make an IPad work for learning, you need to know how to download apps.  Here's how.

Check out vocabulary.com to learn new words.  It pulls words from many places, including the New York Times.

As students progress, they need to learn a lot more to be able to pass the GED.  They can do it via online tools like this one. Even if your student reads at a very low level, you can read to your student and discuss the articles together. This builds their critical thinking skills --which will be even more important in the 2014 test.  Even if a student can't read a word like grandeur, he or she can learn what it means and how to use it in a sentence.

Webinar Tonight --Recording Will be Available--FYI

Tuesday, September 4th, live and interactive FutureofEducation.com webinar with Ron Wolk, to discuss his book Wasting Minds: Why Our Education System Is Failing and What We Can Do About It.  Currently Chairman at Big Picture Learning, and the founder and former editor of Education Week, Teacher Magazine, and Quality Counts, "Wolk draws on three decades spent in the school reform trenches to question the common assumptions about the U.S. education system. Instead of calling for more reform efforts, Wolk makes the case for a new schooling strategy where students break free of the failing assembly line approach to learning and receive the individualized instruction they deserve." Wolk "insists that the dominant reform efforts have not closed the student achievement gap, reduced the 'scandalous' dropout rate, or even improved schools. Wolk asserts that simply introducing new practices and reforms to the existing education system will not work—the system is broken beyond repair." (Quotes from the ASCD press release). See you online! Steve

Free Online Training Through Libraries

Many public libraries in Florida provide free online training for adult education.  As students gain very basic skills with help from a volunteer tutor, their lessons can be enhanced if they add independent learning strategies.   They can take courses online free at some libraries. Or if they are lucky enough to have access to the Internet in other locations via a wireless hotspot or from home--though their library. Larger libraries tend to be able to afford these programs. Ask your library if they have a free program or are considering getting a program. Tell them that you will help promote the program to your clientele if they purchase it.

Tutor.com is one libraries provide. It provides free tutors for all ages.  Learning Express is another online tool. Tutor.com can be accessed through an I.Phone which extends access as many students have smart phones.

If you are a tutor or program manager, share how you introduce these free resources to students in comments below.  Most require a library card to sign in. I know alot of programs, help students get a library card early in their tutoring sessions.  What do you do?

The programs need to be used to make it worthwhile for a library to pay for them.  I just learned that Learning Express only provides data on students who complete a full test --not those who go in and only go part way. If tutors promote these online tools and share their success stories of their students with library staff, libraries may be more likely to keep paying for them--even as the collection budget shrinks.

As a tutor, you can be the cheerleader for students who complete a course.

Continue to share your student outcomes--with funders and with your library partners too. Libraries need stories like these, to convince the politicians that libraries are important in the 21st Century!

Have a good Labor Day weekend and Happy Literacy Month.
Thanks,

Sandy Newell, President, VALF