More Flickr

I've just uploaded a set of photographs from the Camel event on Friday to the AdEd Flickr group.

You can see them by following the link at the top of the right hand column on this page.

AdEd Interest Flickr

It was rewarding to share with other tutors yesterday the great benefits of using the AdEd Flickr site to record learners' work. We all agreed it was an excellent way of celebrating our learners' achievements, and a way of them to share their work with friends, family and the rest of the world. I really look forward to seeing other tutors' photos.
I've recently started uploading short video clips to Flickr. I've found that Flickr doesn't always want to upload them, it says "Bonk! Try again?". It's worth trying again, for me the upload of video clips was successful second time round.



This very short video clip shows Robert drawing a chair, he chose it as he especially likes its shape. My ALDD group decorated postcards with stitch, print and drawing yesterday morning. At Cinderford Artspace we're celebrating The Big Draw by exhibiting hundreds of postcards made by our learners' and by local people. They'll be on display next week Mon - Thurs and for sale at £1 each. The assortment of postcards by adults and children of all levels of experience is quite fantastic.

What a day!

The feedback I had from tutors leaving the Camel event yesterday was universally positive and I must say how exciting it was to see tutors embracing new technology with an open mind and willingness to pitch in and have a go. So many new posts here on the blog and comments from people who were there, most of which were from first-time bloggers.

I was delighted to send quite a few emails to tutors this morning, inviting them to become blog authors and we look forward to hearing more from you. When you receive your invitation, follow the instructions to sign in for the first time to confirm your identity and email address. If you have trouble, don't hesitate to contact Jane Carter-Dunn or myself (Gill) and we will help you.

If your invitation doesn't arrive, or you forgot to leave your details please let us know and we'll send another one straight away.

This blog is for all Gloucestershire tutors. Anyone may leave a comment by clicking on the link to "comments" at the bottom of each blogpost - you don't need to sign in to do that. But only people on the "author list" may participate fully, contribute or start a new conversation. If you'd like to be on that list, then please email Jane.Carter-Dunn@gloucestershire.gov.uk and we'll send you an invitation!

CaMel Bazaar

A big thank you to everyone who made this event a success. To our speakers - Stephen Nichols, Alastair Clark, Tracey Morris, Jim Austin and Karen Bilous. To the trainers - Ali, Amanda, Gill, Jane, Lizze, Maggie and Sara. And to all the tutors and managers who took part so enthusiastically. The real work begins now - we will shortly be in contact with managers to get the equipment out into the provider organisations where tutors can put it to work.

We look forward to reading how it is being used on this blog and to seeing it in action in this year's observations.

As for the day - all that's left is the Turkish Delight!

The docucam workshop at Gloucester rugby club.

What a fun day, and thank you to all those wonderful people who attended my workshops. Loved meeting you all and I was so impressed with the imaginative and enthusaistic response to the Docucam and all the ideas you had illustrating how you can use the docucams in your lessons..

Such a lot of talent was evident and the hardware was up and running very quickly, and then enthusiastically put through its paces

Thank you also to the organisers--- the venue was superb!

(click on any of the photos to enlarge)

There seem to be a lot of new blogger posts today, hope it continues, especially as I would love to know how you use the docucam with your learners.

Maggie Harris

English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL)

Inviting ESOL tutors of pre-entry and Entry 1-2 to share ideas and materials. There doesn't seem to be a lot out there that is suitable for refugees and asylum seekers apart from the SKills for Life materials.

Where we are now!

We are in a very interesting venue with someone who takes rubbish photos!

BLOGGING WORKSHOP

This is trickier than I thought. What do others think?

seagulls

They fly through the sky like shadows into reflections into my deepest misery dressed as a hooker in fright.

what's it all about Alfie?

The title says it all!

How do we make 28 hours in a day?

Kingsholm Training Day

We have enjoyed the opportunity to play with new toys but the challenge now is to bring that into the real world. We both enjoyed the workshops we attended, the docucam, flickr and blogging.

Mew Ning

Mew Ning is interested in borrowing one of the Eee PC's for use in her advanced English classes.

Diane

Jim and Alistair deep in conversation!

The day today

I am very impressed with the facilities and venue for todays event

Alison

ha ha - caught this group engrossed in new technology, they didn't notice me taking their photo!

food hygiene information

wash your hands after handling raw foods.

Go to this page

Belly Dancers

Well Rob, Eugene and Duncan....



You missed a great day at the Camel Bazaar. There were two FABULOUS belly dancers, prancing around, showing their wares. I'm sure you would have appreciated it.



It was wasted on us ladies though....

Another group

Another group of bloggers now, enjoying the chance to leave a few thoughts.

AdEd @ Kingsholm

Lovely venue

Informative afternoon.

Next session here please!

Alastair

I am having great fun on this e PC.

What's the collective noun for a bunch of bloggers?

We're here at the Gloucester Rugby Club this afternoon, where a few new bloggers are trying their hand at posting their first message.

Prepare for a flurry of posts!

Learning Champions - volunteers who help attract local people to learning

Established over the last two years we have a group of 8 volunteers working in the centre of Gloucester. They advertise learning opportunities FREE to their peers, neighbours and families. If people are a bit hesitant the volunteers offer to accompany people to the first class.
Shortly a similar group will be starting in the Forest of Dean with a FREE course run at Coleford in November. It is proposed to have another group in Tewksbury next year.
course is based on learning manual on http://www.continyou.org.uk/resources_and_publications/publications/Adult%20and%20community%20learning

Information is needed from tutors and providers on the classes for the volunteers to advertised on your behalf. Please let the gloucester group have the information!!!! Use gloslearningchamps@googlemail.com


What a wonderful FREE way to increase your enrolments!!!

voice recorder update

this week I recorded 5 new learners telling me a little about themselves and their families - the recorder is so small and discrete they hardly bothered about it. I have uploaded the 5 files at home, which will form part of the initial assessment process. It is great to have the recorder and be able to take it home to play with!

Now I need to find creative and effective ways of using the information in the creation of the learning programme and in RARPA.

I'm at the Camel workshop in Kingsholm and learning such a lot! more later.,

CaMel

Well the big day is finally here. I am not taking a photo to upload this morning as I'm still in my pj's sitting writing some instructions with the manager's "hands on" during the afternoon. We have a lot of equipment to get in place ready for the sessions so it's going to be an early start. Feeling very excited about the day - just hope all the equipment behaves! See you all later.

Stanley behind bars

Just an update regarding Stanley the cat. As some of you may know, Stanley decided to take on a motorised vehicle, which resulted in a badly fractured pelvis. He spent 2 days at the vets, where he was given powerful painkillers. So, thinking he was better, he proceeded to attack the other sickly cats in the pens either side of him. This led to him being moved to another pen, which he tried to escape from. Therefore, by the time we collected him, he was in solitary confinement. Not bad for the runt of the litter.The long and the short of it is he has to have 6 weeks of 'cage rest'.

On his return home, his brother Olly rushed towards him - and promptly ate all of Stanley's specially medicated food (£12 a kilo). He's not called '2 dinner Olly' for nothing. Since this time, Olly has decided life was better as a single cat and hisses at Stanley every time he strolls past the cage. Such selfless creatures.

So, as our picture shows, Stanley is banged up and not too happy about it. With over £420 of our hard- earned going into the vet's pocket, we're not exactly enamoured ourselves. However, I do feel a children's book coming on...

Experimenting

A train journey to London and back yesterday gave me plenty of time to try out the new Eee PC. Can highly recommend it for working on the go. It's light and so compact you can use it on the pull down table without disturbing the person in the next seat. Also after an hour's trek across the city I didn't know I had it - couldn't say that about my usual laptop. My current laptop runs out of power after a couple of hours - not this one. It kept going for over 4 hours,still had over a hour left when I finished and wasn't fully charged when I started the day.

I played with some of the features too. There's a potentially interesting video capture programme but on the two occasions I tried it, it crashed the laptop, so more work to be done there.

However, the built in webcam does enable me to take a photo and I'm just about to experiment with loading it to the web. Thought I could then challenge the provider managers to give this a try on Friday. If there's a pic above I've been successful - it not I'll keep trying.

Hmmm success but not a very flattering photo.

What do you think?

Two pages of evidence from today (funny how it often involves food, isn't it?)


Evidence page 1:



At the beginning of the session (top photograph) the ingredients were assembled and previous experience assessed. Some of the group had come across lemon cheesecake before, others said they had no previous knowledge (how could we tell?)

By half way through the session, quite a few lemon cheesecakes were in the box, which was surprising really.

At the end of the session, the package was complete. The group stood back and congratulated themselves on their success.


Evidence page 2:

At the start of the session, a full box of lemon cheesecake was placed on the table by a generous member of the group.

After ten minutes, only half of the package remained.

By the time the session was completed, only the empty packing remained.

Well, what do you think?!!? Surely I don't have to show you the time/date information embedded in those photographs to prove which is true?

The small photographs in the pictures above were taken with a mobile phone camera and bluetoothed to the wonderful Pogo printer with no wire in sight. If you haven't seen this little treasure yet, you'll have an opportunity to have a go yourself at the Camel Bazaar on Friday this week, if you've booked your place. If you haven't booked your place yet, then you need to ring Hilary at AdEd 01452 425923 as soon as possible to see if there's a place left.

voice recorders and memory sticks

I think the voice recorders will be a great addition to the equipment. I know it is possible to record voice with the Sony camera (using 'movie' mode) - but settings on the 'mode dial' need to be changed when moving from 'still images' to 'movie' mode. I encourage learners to take photos and make comments as the session progresses. Changing the mode can be confusing for learners. The voice recorder will make it great for learners to use separate bits of kit to take photos and record comments.

- next job - order the memory sticks - blog is great way to let us know about these initiatives. Glad to see more initiatives being developed to address the whole issue of getting equipment out to tutors.
sara

Shockingly I have to admit that I have not posted anything for ages - but reading back through I realise that we have aWest Country contingent growing amongst our contributors.
I was born in Truro and spent my formative years in Tavistock ( explains a lot I suppose) My Mum's family originate from Polperro where we practically populated half the town. I have a smuggler as a great, great, great great grandfather - who was "unfortunately" shot and killed by a cannon ball fired by the Excise men, whilst running from their boats - his boat being loaded with illegal lace, brandy etc. All pretty exciting and swashbuckling!
My Mum, who sadly died recently, had researched our family history and it makes me think about how she used the internet for research and wordprocessed volumes of work - all while in her eighties. My Dad, too is a wizz with all things IT based and loves gadgets of any sort.
My message for the day being - Technology is something that can bridge the generations and is a very accessible medium for all ages.

Free Memory Stick

Memory Sticks 4 Teachers is a major new ICT initiative taking place within the UK education sector.
The project has been developed to support teachers and educators in addressing their ever-increasing workloads by funding the provision of 750,000 USB memory sticks across the UK. The memory sticks have a capacity of 2 GB and include free educational resources for teachers to utilise, through a user-friendly embedded interface that appears on screen immediately as the memory stick is plugged in. These free resources cover all major subject areas and include lesson plans and ideas, worksheets and much more.

There are many other benefits too:

• Teachers can save work to take home easily and efficiently.
• Free embedded Educational Resources
• A calendar that teachers can utilise and update.
• Education Directory
• Links to select websites
• Link to a supporting web channel with additional resources and downloads.
• Ongoing savings for schools as use of consumables drops dramatically.
• Environmental benefits of reduction in waste.
• Teachers can share resources easily with colleagues.

You can register at http://www.memory4teachers.co.uk/teachers_registration.asp BUT your memory stick must be delivered to a named educational establishment. So if you work for Adult Education in the community and would like your memory stick delivered here for you please use postcode GL1 2TP. I have just ordered mine and will let you know how long it takes to come, and what resources it contains.

Voice Recorder

And here is a picture of the voice recorder Pauline blogged about yesterday. It has room for over 138 hours of recording time and plays back WMA/MP3 files. It can also be used as a standard storage device so Schemes of Work, Lesson Plans and Resources can also be on hand. Why not book a place on the CaMel workshop offering ideas on how to use these devices for RARPA.

New Equipment

Am posting this blog on one of the new Eee PC's we have purchased with CaMel funding. It is very easy to set up and is smaller than an A4 sheet. I have taken a photograph of it with a standard size paperback so that you can get an idea of the size. Several people in the office who have seen it have asked about the keyboard. I'm impressed with the keyboard - and I speak as a typist. The only difficulty I have found is the location of the Shift key on the lefthand side. There is a page up key where the shift would usually be which means I send the cursor up a line every time I try to do a capital - but I'm confident I'll soon get used to it. Once set up the PC loads in seconds when you turn it on. It has Windows XP Home edition and Works installed. We have a set of 10. If you would like to borrow one or more to use with your group please let me know how you would make use of them.

Hello Stroud!

The last "Log on, Reflect and Progress" tutor training session takes place tonight at Stroud College and we're looking forward to seeing another fifteen colleagues from all parts of the county and introducing them to this blog.

So, welcome everyone! Please feel you can leave a comment, make a suggestion or simply say "hello".

And if, by any chance, we've sparked a little interest in what's going on with all of these nifty gadgets and gizmos and you fancy having a go yourself, then do let us know, won't you? We'd love to put a digital camera in your hands and see how you use it with your learners.

wanna picture, mate?

(Picture above: Rigmore is no longer able to resist the call of her Scandinavian ancestors...)

Just a quick blog to tell you about the father's activity day at Park Children's Centre in Stonehouse on Saturday, 11th October. The event made full use of the Epson Picture Mate (PM260 to its friends) - this gives instant photographs on glossy photo paper. The children always love to see the machine in action! We took portrait photographs of the dads, printed out using the Picture Mate, cut them out & stuck them to card dollies that the children had made earlier.

The great thing about the Picture Mate is that it can provide instant results. We have lots of ideas where this could be used, specifically on the new FLLN programme written around the BBC RAW storybook 'Max and Lara's Amazing Travelling Circus'. Just think, you could produce a whole series of sequenced pictures to use in a storybook, taken and printed in the same session!

Disadvantages? Picture Mate seems to eat print cartridges (maybe 30-35 photos per cartridge). Also, our original PM seems to have given up the ghost after 2 outings (do you think some little angel might have fed it a wax crayon when we weren't looking?)

So, the Picture Mate is very useful, generates exciting ideas but can be expensive and need careful maintenance. Which reminds me, thanks to Jane C-D for getting me up and running again on the blog.

new voice recorder

just got a new voice recorder

read the instruction manual on the park and ride this morning - looks straightforward and instinctive thank goodness! will find out how to use the folder filing system to keep records of my learners using English. Watch this space, once I try it out with learners.

Hurry - only a few places left!

My phone has been ringing all morning and I'm delighted that our Camel Bazaar is attracting so much interest.

If you'd like to come along and haven't already booked a ticket for this inspiring afternoon, please ring 01452 425923 or email me as soon as you can to reserve your place.

welcome

welcome to the blog Di.
looking forward to seeing your photos
sara

Worth all the bother (?)

Sometimes, the prepping and planning for a teaching session seems more bother than it's worth, don't you think? My work today involved just the odd bit of paraphernalia - just five bags, two boxes, a sewing machine and a laptop. I'll admit, at times I felt that was five bags and two boxes too many.

I decided to use laptop, projector, docucam, speakers...needed extension lead and screen too. Samples and sewing machine, paperwork and other kit filled the boot of the car completely. Setting it up took a while - of course, you knew the room would be upstairs, didn't you? - and the wire spaghetti around my end of the table was such a trip hazard I banned everyone from that side of the room.

Was it worth it?

You bet!

The expressions on the faces of the participants in my workshop were priceless, for this is a group not noted for making best use of technology. However, they embraced the whole shebang with enthusiasm and the evaluation comments made particular reference to "that great camera for showing details" and one said how she "loved all the computer stuff".

What did I do? I was teaching craft judges who normally work in village shows and used the comments of the Strictly Come Dancing judging panel as examples. We had recorded a short clip from the programme and included it in the powerpoint presentation I used during the day, complete with (loud) music, thanks to the speakers (which are excellent). The whole thing was contained on a memory stick and I had nothing to do but click the mouse button to get it all running smoothly. Worked a treat! Later, I used the docucam when we were discussing the finer points of the "competition entries" and found it so much easier than passing the things around.

Even more interesting was the discussion which followed, about the potential of using laptops and other kit. This group are ready, willing and able to take this further and I fear will be disappointed if I don't come up with something equally surprising next time. Ideas on a postcard, please!!

CaMel Bazaar

Invitations have now been sent out for the this event on 24th October and we are starting to get replies in. If you have not received an invitation via your provider manager but would like to attend please contact Hilary McLaggan either on 01452 425426 or by email Hilary.McLaggan@gloucestershire.gov.uk. Hilary will then send you a copy of the workshop schedule and a booking form.

Hello

I know we have a lot of new readers as a result of all the core training events recently so I thought I'd say "hi" and encourage you to leave a comment when you visit.

Perhaps it's not clear how to do that - so I'll explain!

At the bottom of every post there's details of who posted it and when. On the right hand side there's a little graphic of a speech bubble and "2 comments" (or however many have been left previously).

Click on the word "comments" and a box will open up for you to type something in. You'll have to complete a bit of word recognition, which is there to protect us from automatic posting systems and you can choose to remain anonymous if you prefer.

We'd love to hear from you, wherever you are, so please, leave a comment!


Photograph above: Yesterday's training event was at the Waterways Museum in Gloucester Docks, a really great venue - do you agree?

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