Build Your Toolkit for Afult Learning with CrowdEd

Please join us tomorrow for an extended event during which participants will be introduced to CrowdED Learning.  Jeff Goumas is Founding Director and President of CrowdED Learning. He is a highly-experienced educator and educational publishing professional committed to expanding microlearning, competency-based learning, and use of open educational resources within adult education. Among other recent roles he has played to serve adult learners, has been Director of Product Management, Adult & Workforce Education Solutions, and Senior Editor with McGraw-Hill, where he managed an editorial team of nine people responsible for developing and managing basic literacy and numeracy, basic skills test preparation, high school equivalency exam preparation, and contextualized workforce skills programs for adult learners.  

CrowdED Learning's resources and pathways to other sites will be the focus of the activities promoted in this event. LINCS resources will be shared to help participants extend their knowledge related to planning reading and writing activities among adult learners.

LINCS Resources

OER

Lesson Planning

Contextualized Instruction

https://lincs.ed.gov/professional-development/resource-collections/profile-300

Although anyone can read what is being posted in LINCS communities, you must join the community (https://community.lincs.ed.gov/)  in order to participate. Bring questions, ideas, and challenges that you face in creating integrated lesson plans and activities to engage your adult learners in their process of becoming better communicators! “See” you there!

Jeri

Comments

Welcome to our ongoing, 10-week event—Build Your Toolkit for Adult Learning with CrowdED Learning! I’m using this post to serve as the introduction to the event, the topics we will be covering, and the format for exploration and discussions we will follow as we explore various topics. 

Event Overview

During what I hope will be a highly engaging series of topical videos, explorations, and discussions, you will be introduced to a wide range of free and open education resources ideal for use within adult education for Reading, Writing, and Language instruction. As we explore these resources together—all of which have been recommended by adult educators—we will discuss strategies for incorporating them, with a particular focus on integrating free tech and mobile-friendly tools to extend opportunities for learning beyond the classroom.

Event Details

This event will be broken into 5, two-week topical explorations and discussions. 

  • Topic 1 | Explore CrowdED Learning’s Resources (Sep 9–Sep 22)

  • Topic 2 | Resources for Building Comprehension (Sep 23–Oct 6)

  • Topic 3 | Resources for Developing Fluency (Oct 7–Oct 20)

  • Topic 4 | Resources for Building Vocabulary and Grammar (Oct 21 – Nov 3)

  • Topic 5 | Tools and Strategies for Sharing and Assigning Content (Nov 4 – Nov 17)

Each of these topics will follow a consistent, two-week sequence of activities and discussions in order to provide ample time to explore the various resources and maximize participation, engagement, and sharing. 

Week 1 Resource Exploration

The first week for each topic will be a guided exploration of resources around the particular topic of focus. On the first day, a new post will be released announcing the new topic of focus. Within that post, there will be:

  • a brief 5–7 minute video that provides an overview of the topic and the resources that we will be exploring,

  • a set of questions that are intended to guide your exploration of the resources and form the basis for our community discussion, and

  • a downloadable / shareable notetaking guide you can use to organize your thoughts and ideas as you explore the various resources.

Week 2 Strategies for Integration

The second week for each topic will revolve around strategies for integrating a particular resource(s) of interest with your students. Discussion topics will focus on things such as: 

  • how the resource can be used to support evidence-based reading instruction,

  • features and strategies that allow for leveled options and differentiation, 

  • ideas for using, adapting, and combining the resources with what you currently use to ensure comprehensive standard-aligned instruction, and 

  • suggestions for using the resource(s) to provide increased engagement opportunities for learners.  

In most cases, we have invited adult education practitioners who are currently using—and, in some cases, were involved in the creation of—whichever resources are the focus to support each Week 2 discussion. These practitioners will offer their guidance regarding their own use of the resource(s), as well as share insights and tips to support the discussion as others share their own ideas. 

Let’s Get Started!!!!

Tomorrow—Tuesday, September 10, 2019—will be the official “first” post and discussion prompt for Week 1. In the meantime, please take some time to think about what your favorite resources are for reading, writing, and language instruction with your students, and why :)

I’m greatly looking forward to what I hope will be an incredibly informative series of discussions and ultimately results in the addition of lots of new ideas to your instructional toolkit to provide a wider range of opportunities to support and engage learners in reading, writing, and language learning!

About CrowdED Learning

CrowdED Learning (https://www.crowdedlearning.org/home) is thrilled to have the opportunity to lead this event! We firmly believe that free and open education resources hold the key to providing adult learners increased opportunities to engage with learning both in and out of educational settings while providing instructors with a wide range of much-needed tools and resources to support the needs of all learners. Given this, our mission is to expand use of free and open education resources by increasing awareness of what’s available and experimenting with ways to make resources more readily accessible to adult education learners and instructors.

Thank you Jeff for getting this discussion started!  I'm looking forward to learning about many opportunities to learn about strategies and resources for our adult educators!

Colleagues, please join our discussion to share you thoughts and ideas, as well as strategies ns resources you are already using!

Jeri

Welcome to Topic 1—Explore CrowdED Learning’s Resources! During Week 1 of this topic, we will be exploring CrowdED Learning’s website (https://www.crowdedlearning.org/) to check out the range of resources and tools they have organized to make it easier to find high-quality, free lessons, activities, and more for use with adult education students.  

The following resources will be used for this week’s exploration:

  • Overview Video | Please watch this 12 minute video to get an introduction to this event and how it will be structured, as well as an overview of the portions of CrowdED Learning’s website we will be exploring. (Note: This video long because the first three minutes are dedicated to providing an overview for the format of this ongoing event. We will try to keep this to around 5–10 minutes moving forward!) The video includes closed captioning, and the full transcript can be dowloaded. 

  • Notetaking Tool | If desired, please use this notetaking tool to gather information as you explore the website. Please note—it is a shared Google Doc in “View Only” mode. To get your own editable version of it within Google Drive, you will need to make a copy of the original. If you do not have / do not want to use Google Drive, you do have the ability to download the document in a number of different formats, including Microsoft Word. Directions both for making a copy and downloading a copy are provided at the end of this post. 

Resource Exploration Overview

This week our focus will be simply to explore the various resources made available on CrowdED Learning's website. As is discussed in the video, much of CrowdED Learning’s work to date has been geared toward identifying quality free and open education resources that have been identified by adult educators as being effective with their learners. The purpose of much of the website is to help organize these resources in ways that make it easier to locate quality lessons, activities, readings, and more for use with your students. 

As time goes on, CrowdED Learning is continuously experimenting with ways to make it easier to implement these resources into your instruction and provide increased opportunities for learners to engage with learning both in and out of class. Given this, the CrowdED Learning website is constantly changing as we tinker with ways to make resources more readily available and retrievable for instructors. There are three main areas to focus on for this week’s exploration, all of which can be found in the site’s main navigation. 

  • Explore | This section includes the Skill Directory, which includes listings of resources organized into 11 different subject areas, including academic, employability, and 21st-Century competencies. 

  • Our Work | This section includes links to current webinars and recordings of previous webinars. It also includes a link to the CrowdED Musings blog and an index to all of featured the Resources of the Month. 

  • SkillBlox | Check out the Reading, Math, and Language sections where there are links to various, high-quality free and open education resources. Within each, you will see there are standards alignments for a selection of resources that allow you to find specific lessons, activities, and reading sets that align to College and Career Readiness Standards. 

In addition to exploring and sharing your thoughts on these resources, we also want to hear more about YOU and what free and open resources you use with your students to help develop their skills in reading, writing, and language. 

Week 1 Discussion Questions

Our focus of our discussion this week is on what reading, writing, and language resources you use, what resources from CrowdED Learning’s website seem promising, and why you feel these resources are or might be effective and engaging resources for your students. 

  • What do you hope to learn / take away from this event? 

  • What resources do you currently use to teach, practice, and apply reading, writing, and language skills with your learners? What features make them particularly helpful, engaging, or effective?

  • For what areas of reading, writing, or language instruction do you feel there is a lack of resources?

  • Explore CrowdED Learning’s Skill Directories, particularly for Reading and Writing. Check out some of the resources listed within these directories. What resources seem like they might be particularly effective and easy to implement with your learners? Why? 

Please feel free to answer any or all of the questions by adding a comment to this post. You can use the notetaking tool to gather your thoughts around these questions. 

Your participation might entail any number of actions—posting your answers to each these questions, sharing additional thoughts and considerations related to this topic, asking questions to the moderator or to other participants in general related to this topic, or providing comments, insights or feedback on others’ posts. 

I look forward to this week’s discussion!

 

How to access a shared Google Doc in “View Only” mode

The notetaking tool for this week’s exploration is a Google Doc that has been shared in “View Only” mode. (This will be the format for all notetaking tools for this event.) Regardless of whether you have or use Google Drive or Google Docs, you can access an editable version of the document to help organize your thinking. 

If you do have Google Drive and want to work within your own version of the Google Doc you have the ability to make a copy of the file that will be saved as a separate version in your Google Drive. To do so:

  1. Open the document by clicking this link.

  2. Go to the “File” menu.

  3. Select “Make a Copy” and you will be prompted to indicate where in your Drive the copy should be saved. 

Once you’ve completed these steps, you will be able to directly edit within the document. 

If you do not have Google Drive or if you don’t want to work in Google Docs, you can still view the file on screen and then download it in a number of formats, including as a Word doc (editable) or a PDF (not editable). To do so:

  1. Open the document by clicking this link.

  2. Go to the “File” menu.

  3. Click “Download” and you will see the list of file formats in which the document can be downloaded and saved. 

Once you’ve completed these steps, you will have your own version of the document—in whatever format you selected—on your computer or device.