what's in a name?

Tragedy

Norwegian Sky

Mermaid's Gown

This website has the most amazing collection of colours, each with its own story. It's great fun to simply click through to each and decide whether or not the name represents your own idea of the colour of the pencil.

Imagine what fun you could have with learners making up names for colours. Could be a useful starting point!

I have no idea what an Amaranth is (will have to google!) but it's a glorious colour.

A few links to share

It's easy to tell when I should be doing something else...I start following links on websites! There were some goodies to share today:

Aviary tools looks a useful place to find web based programs which can be accessed anywhere

I'm not a language teacher, so can't evaluate LiveMocha objectively, but it looks a pretty useful site which might interest your learners, as does Xlingo . Another language site which might be worth exploring is italki, especially the facility to communicate with a native speaker. I might exercise the usual internet cautions with that one however, reminding myself of some basic internet security advice before beginning a conversation!

Finally, I'm not sure that the ability to make a balloon starfish qualifies as an essential life skill but who knows when such a skill could come in useful? The 5 min website has plenty of displacement activities, most of which take slightly longer than the name suggests.

Hmmm...I wonder if learning to make a balloon starfish would count as CPD? I'm off to reflect on that right now.

Inspiring Tutors in Adult and Community Learning

That's the title of the presentation Jane C-D and I made at the eCPD conference this morning, showing all the good things Gloucestershire AdEd tutors are doing and sharing here on the blog and elsewhere. We took along some of our Flip video cameras, Pogo printers, eePCs, Sony cameras and Panasonic voice recorders and set the participants in our workshop a ten minute challenge: what could they achieve in such a short time with these nifty bits of technology?






In no time at all, they were filming, printing and recognising what powerful tools these were for recording learning and the air of excitement in the room was wonderful to witness.



We made a list of the achievements in those ten short minutes - quite a long list, actually.

They:

used Flip video to record learning :: bluetoothed an image from phone to pogo :: found the webcam on an eepc :: made a bluetooth connection for the first time :: printed using the pogo :: fell in love (with the pogo!) :: used the voice recorder :: found the USB on the Flip :: took advantage of peer support :: uploaded video to an eepc :: took a still photo with a digital camera :: recorded evidence using a camera :: identified further applications of the equipment in their own teaching :: took a photo with a mobile phone for the first time :: recognised the importance of learner involvement :: recognised the importance of recording the process of learning as well as the outcome :: had FUN!

Thanks to all the participants in our workshops - we had a ball working with you and enjoyed sharing what's going on in Gloucestershire with a wider audience. Thank you Sally, for being such great technical support and for holding it all together for us!

We're very proud of the work our tutors are doing and thank everyone for sharing so many great ideas.

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....

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.

Taking a different kind of class

Never one to turn down an opportunity to learn something new, I booked myself into a dyeing and weaving workshop the other day. It was not quite like the classes I'm used to - I don't think they'd heard of RARPA or Health and Safety ;-)

Rather than repeat myself here, I'll simply suggest you read about it on my Elegant Sufficiency blog if you're interested.

On a serious note, it did give me experience of learning a skill in an unknown language - not easy, but practical people have ways of communicating skills in a visual manner. Show me how and I'll try to do the same. It worked almost all of the time!

On a different scale

I got a taste of my own medicine yesterday when I did some work with a proper film crew for a new online learning channel. I found it totally intimidating, was a nervous wreck (both before and afterwards!) and was exhausted by the whole affair.

I'd imagined working with one man and a digital video camera but not a bit of it - a full film crew of five, together with all the equipment that goes with it. Even a camera on a track!! It put our small scale work into perspective as I experienced the time and patience which goes into producing the shortest of films. I was there six hours for six three-minute slots, working more or less all the time, with no break. But you know, I think our short films taken with our Sony are just as effective, equally fascinating and rather more approachable for not being anywhere near "perfect".

Not that mine will be anything near perfect either, believe me - unless they can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear!

You can read the full story here.

Bumper sticker

Fun website

Much fun to be had at Wordle

This is the result of typing in this blog's url, but the more linguistically adventurous may well feel more creative. Anything is possible.

At the show

We've just got back from the Three Counties Show, where I was part of the team promoting the "Healthy Lifestyle" project sponsored by the Food Standards Agency. Part of that involves getting children interested in food and one of the hits of the weekend was making butter in jamjars.

All you have to do is to put about 150ml of ordinary double cream into a large, clean jamjar and shake. A bit of music helps - we used "La Cucaracha" - so you can jiggle and wiggle and get some exercise at the same time (sorry, no video of that!)

After ten minutes, voila! There's a nice pat of butter there, just ready to spread on a piece of bread, just like Kieran did with the batch he made (His Mum said we could use his photo) Or you can use the buttermilk which is left in the jar to make some great home-made scones for tea and spread your butter on those.

All good healthy stuff!