Digital Learning Day is here!

Hi all,

Digital Learning Day is finally here!  You can learn more about what is going on nationally to celebrate Digital Learning Day at http://www.digitallearningday.org/.  What are you doing to celebrate?  Let us know by replying to this post.

On the Technology and Learning group we are celebrating all month long with a series of webinars and a connected discussion.

In January, LINCS announced the launch of the free, self-paced online course: Integrating Technology in the Adult Education Classroom, available now on the LINCS Learning Portal. As a follow-up to this professional development opportunity, LINCS is partnering with the Literacy Assistance Center in New York City (LACNYC) to bring you a series of 30-minute webinars on how to use technology tools in education. These webinars will be held weekly for four weeks starting on Thursday, February 13, from 3:00-3:30 PM ET.

Space for these webinars is very limited. Register via the links below for one or more webinars today! If you are unable to attend or if the webinar(s) closes before you are able to sign up, you will be able to access the archived webinars at a later date on the LACNYC website.

A month-long discussion connected to the Digital Learning Day: Four-Part Technology Tools Webinar Series will also occur in the Technology and Learning Group.

Title: Social Media Webinar Series: Twitter

Facilitator: Nell Eckersley

Audience: ESOL, ABE & HSE instructors; program managers

This 30-minute webinar explores the basics of Twitter and why it is a valuable education tool. You will learn what hashtags and mentions are, as well as how to shorten links to fit inside the 140-character limit of a tweet. We will talk about how to find people to follow and how to help people find you on Twitter.

Date: February 13, 2014

Time: 3 – 3:30 PM ET

Register: http://dig14201.eventbrite.com

 

Title: Social Media Webinar Series: QR Codes

Facilitator: Nell Eckersley

Audience: ESOL, ABE & HSE instructors; program managers

This 30-minute webinar explains QR codes: what they are and how to create them. We will explore lesson ideas including how to use QR codes to make reading a multimodal experience and using QR codes to access content via mobile devices both inside and outside the classroom.

Date: February 20, 2014

Time: 3 – 3:30 PM ET

Register: http://dig14202.eventbrite.com

 

Title: Social Media Webinar Series: Pinterest

Facilitator: Nell Eckersley

Audience: ESOL, ABE & HSE instructors; program managers

A 30-minute webinar on Pinterest, the fast-growing social network site that focuses on images. Learn how to use this tool as a visual bookmarking system that you can use for your own professional development as well as a collaborative learning space with students and colleagues.

Date: February 27, 2014

Time: 3 – 3:30 PM ET

Register: http://dig14203.eventbrite.com

 

Title: Social Media Webinar Series: Advanced Twitter

Facilitator: Nell Eckersley

Audience: ESOL, ABE & HSE instructors; program managers

This 30-minute webinar takes us to the next level of Twitter use. We will look at how to participate in Twitter chats and attend conferences virtually by following hashtags using TweetChat, how to turn your Tweets into an online magazine using PaperLi, and how to manage your various social media accounts using a single platform.

Date: March 6, 2014

Time: 3 – 3:30 PM ET

Register: http://dig14204.eventbrite.com/ 

 

best,

Nell

Comments

To piggyback on the spirit of Digital Learning Day, here are a couple of additional sites dedicated to Digital Literacy and Learning.

 

DigitalLiteracy.gov

The Digital Literacy portal is an initiative of the Obama Administration to serve as a valuable resource to practitioners who are delivering digital literacy training and services in their communities. As more and more jobs and educational offerings are available online, the ability to navigate the Internet is critical to participate more fully in the economy. Jumpstarted by a federal interagency working group dedicated to spurring the advancement of digital literacy across all age groups and stages of learning, the Digital Literacy portal organizes content conveniently, enables valuable discussion and collaboration among users and elevates best practices to improve the quality of digital literacy offerings. We invite users to share their content and their ideas to make the portal more robust and to fulfill its role as a destination for practitioners devoted to enhancing digital opportunity for all Americans.

 

DigitalLearn.org

The Public Library Association's new site, DigitalLearn.org, is an Institute of Museum and Library Services grant-funded project to create an online hub for digital literacy support and training. The site launched in June 2013 and is intended to build upon and foster the work of libraries and community organizations as they work to increase digital literacy across the nation. DigitalLearn.org is being undertaken in partnership with ALA's Office of Information Technology Policy and Chief Officers of State Library Agencies, as well as bringing together a diverse group of stakeholders including representatives from national agencies, state libraries, public libraries, community organizations, and many others. Included in DigitalLearn.org is a collection of self-directed tutorials for end-users to increase their digital literacy, and a community of practice for digital literacy trainers to share resources, tools and best practices.

 

If you are already familiar with these sites and have used them for professional growth or with students in your classroom, please share with us the resources you have found most helpful on either of these sites!

 

 

Hi all,

The Digital Learning Day: Four-Part Technology Tools Webinar Series starts on Thursday with a webinar on Twitter.  The webinar is currently full but we will be recording it and I will share a link to that recording once it is ready.

In the meantime please share in this thread any questions you have about the technology tools we will be covering in the series.  The tools are Twitter, QR Codes, and Pinterest-- and in advanced Twitter webianr we will look at PaperLi.  Do any of you use these tools already?  Or perhaps you haven't even heard of some of these tools and have questions about how they work?  

best,

Nell

Hi Sandy,

Many libraries have technology training for literacy volunteers.  One example is http://philaliteracy.org/programs/volunteer/become-a-tech-tutor/.  

This seems like a great discussion topic for the list so I'll see if I can arrange to have some library folks ocme on the list for a guest discussion on technology training for volunteer tutors.

best,

Nell

Hi Everyone,

The online courses for tutors were created by The Mayor's Commission on Literacy.  We've been doing blended training for a year and a half, and now we have both GED and ESL tutor training completely online, cohort-based, interactive, and facilitated.  The Philaliteracy.org URL is ours.  These are new trainings, so we're in the shake-down cruise.  I think it will be very appealing to a lot of our volunteers, since they can do the courses asynchronously.  We've been incorporating tech skills in our tutor training to model how to use tech in tutoring.  Nell, if you want anyone to guest on this, please contact either me or Saadia Oulamine, who is our Volunteer Manager, and created the courses.

Cheers,

Judith Rényi

I am very interested in using technology in every class and not only as a once a week lab class.My hope is that  using Twitter, Pinterest and technology will be to the students today as notebooks and pencils were to them when they went to school in the past. Technology is a part of everyday life and when an adult returns to school it may be for the need to learn how to use technology to learn.

As a teacher, I am curious to learn how to use Pinterest with students and not just for teacher ideas.

Thanks, Christine

Hi.  I am interested in how to set up a professional portfolio, in light of the fact that much of my work (in a field besides education) is not online, but in print.  I understand that Blogger can be used.  What are some other resources for online porfolios and how can I get my adult learners, who are searching for jobs and volunteer opportunities, to warm up to having their personal work/projects online?

Hi Carrie,

I am taking an online course on online education and for that course I'm using a google site as my e-portfolio.  The course included a template for the google site so that it will contain all the elements they require--here'sa link to mine (so far) https://sites.google.com/site/nelleckersley/.  I've also used Weebly to create very easy elegant websites which could certainly work to show peoples' work.  Here are a couple of websites created using weebly: http://www.adultedcompass.org/ http://nelightful.weebly.com/ and http://nycabeconsortium.weebly.com/.

 

best,

Nell

I am hoping to learn more about how I can use Pinterest with my class. We do use Google and I have just crested a web site for them.  During school breaks they also use Google Hangouts to stay connected. A goal I have is to allow those students who miss class to stay conected and not miss the topics that were covered in the class they missed. We all know life happens for our students and they don't want to miss class but often work and family give them no choice.They also want to share things they learn or find outside of class and not wait for the next class to share.