Final Project Scope

Terry met with me yesterday to go over our Project and advised us to add some additional information. Here is the final Project Scope:

Project Scope for Emma and Sheryll

Project Name: More Word Processing

Date: 20/9/07

Department Contact: Jean Tilleyshort

ECD Contact: Leigh, Terry and Bronwyn

Project Leaders: Sheryll and Emma

Project Summary

The aims of this project is to provide students with extra wording processing skills not already covered in our current resources. Students will be able to work through this new resource in there own time in our community learning centres.

Project Background

This project was developed because we found there was a need in our Community Learning Centres for students to learn more word processing skills. We know this because students often asked “how to do” things that were not covered in our current resources, or not covered in depth.

The work books will be designed for self paced learning so the students work on the work books during class (with our help when needed). Useful handouts will also be offered for students to take home as references. Videos on “how to do” things will also be available.

This project will be designed for our Community Learning Centres as we see there is a real need for it.

Steps to be taken

1. Outline what is needed – requested from the students
2. Consult all CLC’s re: what else they think is needed
3. Emma and Sheryll get together and discuss theses areas that were missing and students requested.
4. Draft course outline for approval within C4Free programme
5. Gain approval of course
6. Compile the information and transfer this into a draft copy of a possible work book and resource sheets.
7. Create the draft
8. Test the draft copy
9. Improvements made necessary to make this an easy to follow instruction book.
10. Create training videos to be used along side the book.

Learner and Graduate Profiles

The resource will be used for students of all ages and backgrounds who wish to learn more skills without necessarily getting a qualification. There will be a range of skill levels. Some people will come with no skills in word processing this book will follow on from our current word processing resource, which would be at level 1. This More Word Processing book would cover students at level 2. The book and handout sheets plus videos will cover all learning styles, visual, auditory, read/write and kinaesthetic, (VARK)


Visual
For Visual students the book has picture/diagrams for example showing symbolic arrows and buttons and other items that will help the student find the item on the PC that could have normally been presented in words.

Auditory
For auditory students we will have videos created in Cam Studio with talking instructions on “how to” which follow the pages of the book. Students could either use the videos as instructions alone or use the book alongside the videos.

Reader/Writer
For reader/writer students the book is text base so all of these types of students will be covered.

Kinaesthetic
For kinaesthetic students, the book has exercises to do following the instructions which are also in the book, or they can use the videos as instructions and they also can take home handouts to refer to after there class.

Students with a disability which will make it hard for them to come to the Community Learning Centre may be able to purchase the book to work on in there own time at home with the videos as well. We will also be available by phone/email to support them with their learning where necessary. Students with learning disabilities will have support during the session from a Community Learning Centre Facilitator.

Students will leave feeling more confident working with word in home and office situations.

Possible Issues and Considerations


This module will help encourage unconfident learners’ to build their skills to a higher level, so encourage them to enrol into a qualification.
The book will only be available in the Community Learning Centre and unable to be removed, although reference sheets will be available for the student to take away. Students with a disability who are unable to make it to a Community Learning Centre, could be given the opportunity to purchase the book at a small fee.
The cost of the book to be produced for all the Community Learning Centres to be considered – although this could be minimal.
Although the Community Learning Centres are designed for a flexible learning situation they are only open during selected times and this may not be suitable for all possible students.

Project Scope

Emma and i have put our heads together and realised that there is a real need for another word processing book for our students as well as some handouts for students to take home so they have a reference for their learning. We have put together a draft book and sheets for our project.
Terry is coming to Cromwell this week so i hope to catch up with him to see if we are on the right track.

Project Scope

Project Name: More Word Processing

Date: 20/9/07

Department Contact: Jean Tilleyshort

ECD Contact: Leigh, Terry and Bronwyn

Project Leaders: Sheryll and Emma

Project Summary

The aims of this project is to provide students with extra wording processing skills not already covered in our current resources. Students will be able to work through this new resource in there own time in our community learning centres.

Project Background

This project was developed because we found there was a need in our Community Learning Centres for students to learn more word processing skills. We know this because students often asked “how to do” things that were not covered in our current resources.

The work books will be designed for self paced learning so the students work on the work books during class (with our help when needed). Useful handouts will also be offered for students to take home as references.

This project will be designed for our Community Learning Centres as we see there is a real need for it.

Steps to be taken

1. Outline what is needed – requested from the students
2. Emma and Sheryll get together and discuss theses areas that were missing and students requested.
3. Compile the information and transfer this into a draft copy of a possible work book and resource sheets.
4. Create the draft
5. Test the draft copy
6. Improvements made necessary to make this an easy to follow instruction book.
7. Final product produced and distributed to the other Community Learning Centres.


Learner and Graduate Profiles

The resource will be used for students of all ages and backgrounds who wish to learn more skills without necessarily getting a qualification. There will be a range of skill levels. Some people will come with no skills in word processing this book will follow on from our current word processing resource. Students will leave feeling more confident working with word in home and office situations.

Possible Issues and Considerations

• Book will only be available in the Community Learning Centre and unable to be removed, although reference sheets will be available for the student to take away.
• The cost of the book to be produced for all the Community Learning Centres to be considered – although this will be minimal.
• Although not all learning styles are covered with this resources friendly facilitators are always on hand to show the student or explain in more detail.

Flexible Learning Project

At our community learning centres we get a wide range of students from 16 to 80+ and from very different backgrounds and cultures. Most of the students that enrol have never sat in front of a computer before and/or have not been in a learning environment for a long time.

Because our courses are self taught and self paced we have a introduction book that students are ask to go though, after the initial enrolling process, called “Back 2 Basics” This is the first book the students are given to go though and read and follow the diagrams and instructions. For some students this book will either make or break them into wanting to come back and learn more.

There is a real need to have this book in video form for students to access at any time.
The students that like to have a more visual approach to learning will be encouraged to learn more. These videos could be on all those simple things that we find we just do everyday without thinking about it. Also the videos would help with the language that we use for computer programmes etc.

Some Ideas for the videos are:
What is the desktop?
What is a screen saver?
What the mouse is used for….left click / right click?
How to play solitaire…..or other games that are helpful to learn how to use the mouse.
How to open a word document?
How to save a document?
How to find my files?
How to print a document?
How to Shut Down the computer?
How to turn the speakers on?

Some of these could be put into one video…….

Some more advanced video’s could be:
How to…. Anti Virus software on my own computer?
How to….System maintenance, disk cleanup, error checking and disk defragmenter?
How to create shortcuts to programmes for easy access?
What is hardware and software?

These instructions would be there for all the students to access and view at any time on the desktop.

At our community learning centres we like to make our students welcome and comfortable about being here and learning something new….I find the first book is helpful to some students, but there is a need for something better to work with the book. Some learners at the start need to have a facilitator beside them reading the words literately from the book and also pointing to the computer and explaining what is being read also. This would be ideal to be able to do this for all students but is very impractical as our Central Venues are usually run by only one facilitator at one time.

These would also be helpful to other students from different courses that will be accessing our venues in the near future.

I'm having trouble getting my blog to edit gggrrrr

First attempt at CamStudio and YouTube

First attempt at CamStudio and YouTube

This is my first attempt at CamStudio and YouTube. I will have a go at putting voice to them soon. I would like to do some videos for our new learners that come in....so instead of having lots of reading to do they could watch the videos instead....i find we sometime loose newies because there is too much reading at the start and not enough computer stuff. Alot of our students haven't been in a learning environment for a long time, so reading a lot of stuff can become very frustrating for them. Having short videos on... How to access our files....How to save files.....etc would be great to have on the desktop of our computers for the students to access when they need to see them. These would be great for the visual learners instead of having to read the information they could see whenever they want.

Playing with CamStudio and YouTube

Flexible Teaching to Students from Vanuatu

For the last 7 weeks i have had to opportunity to teach 5 men from Vanuatu. Henry, Tony, Andrew, Josiah, and Jonathan. Teaching these students has been very different for me as i have had to teach them in a classroom situation rather than the way we do here at the Community Learning Centre by self paced learning with books. These students were great to teach, being giant sponges soaking up all the technology that I could throw at them and more. 4 of them had never sat infront of a computer so it was a huge learning curve for them. Week by week i could see their confidence grow and their welliness to learn was so exciting to see and be apart of. Having only a limited time to teach them new skills, i focused on teaching them how to email and use the internet so that when they are away from the families they can keep intouch. It was great to show them how to txt chat with MSN and talk to each other, the skills that i now take for granted and do everyday to keep in contact with the other supervisors within Central Otago. These men will be back to work here in October so i'm looking forward to teaching them lots more about technology.

Comment to Emma's Blog

Hi Emma
By reading your blog i can't help thinking that the three of us (Jaquie, you and me) feel that same way about this course. Maybe this is because we all work at the Community Learning Centres and we use a lot of different technology thoughout the day within our courses that we deliver. It also sounds like we all learn very similar and are aware of the different learning styles that we encounter every day. I feel we need to have more visual projects for some students as they do struggle with firstly reading though the books and trying to make sense of this new technology that they have never even tried before. I think it would be easier for these students to have a video to watch first.

Comments to Jacquie

Ditto Jacquie……I feel exactly the same as you and i too learn by hands on. I too felt like a fish out of water and now will have a renewed respect for our new students that come to our classes. I hope to use Camstudio for our new students to show them how to open documents from our files and save their documents to the right folders etc. These could be used instead of the students just reading how to do this out of our Back 2 Basics books or they could be used a well as the book for students that like to visually see what they should be doing. These videos could be saved on the desktop so students could access them anytime to reasure or remind them what steps to take. We often find that students come in and find it hard to sit down and go though the steps of the book, this can be frustrating to them if they don’t like reading instructions so to have videos that they can watch will be great.
Once i have done these i will post to my blog so you can have a look.

Elluminate

Sorry Leigh.....i was going to write this wonderful blog about Elluminate, then got busy with sessions and only managed the title.....

I have had the opportunity to log into both sessions of Elluminate with Terry this week. "Thank you Terry, really enjoyed the sessions."

"Elluminate". What a brilliant resource. I found the way you use the microphone one at a time (when it works without sounding like Darth Vader....sorry Bronwyn) worked really well. In comparision, with Skype, you can over talk someone else easily which becomes hard to keep track of who is talking and then you have a long silence because everyone is waiting for the other person to talk. The connection seemed alot clearer in Elluminate than with Skype. Often with Skype the connection is very disconnected and you end up only hearing have the conversation. Elluminate is much easier to use. If someone is talking you can put your hand up by clicking on the hand icon and this lets the site manager know that you would like to talk. Then by clicking on the microphne icon you can speak to all or one, you choose. Great to beable to txt chat as well. This would be great for shy students that may find it abit easier to do initially rather than speak though the microphone.

The powerpoint presentation was easy to follow with Terry's commentary. The white board is also a great feature where you can write messages, insert pictures etc. I guess the options are limitless. The shared files once they loaded were easy to see and follow. Great to beable to see, hear and participate at the same time. I think if you had dial up, it could be a problem with the files to downloading a bit too slow though.

I can see the great benifits of this teaching tool being used for distance learners. You really do feel as though you are part of the class and is very interactive.

I have been doing lots of reading about flexible learning. The entrys that other students have done are very interesting and raise some good points.
I have been finding it hard myself to be motivated in learning this course although i am finding it really interesting and relative to my work. I find it differcult to go about learning by myself without being in a stuctured class. My learning style is visual and auditory so i find it differcult to motivate myself to get out there and do research. I can be reading information and at the end i dont wont have a clue what it is i have just read.
Looking for to the Elluminate session this afternoon. I think i will find that most interesting. Using Skype though the Central Otago Venues has been easy and has saved lots of time being able to set up meetings with the other supervisors at different venues instead of phyically going there.

What is Flexible Learning??????

The way we deliver our courses here at our Community Learning centre is, i feel, very flexible.
A person can walk in off the street and be learning how to use a computer within a short time.
Session times are very flexible with 2 hour session thoughout the day and night sessions to suit students that maybe have day jobs or family commitments during the day.

We cater for ages 16 years to 100 years. My oldest C4Free student was born in 1921. He was given a computer from his family and wanted to learn how to use it and send emails to keep intouch with his family that is scattered far and wide around the world. Learning doesn't stop because you think you have reached a certain age.

The process for students enrolling in Computing For Free (C4Free) is very quick, filling out one form and a dicussion with a facilitator to find out how much they know and what their learning needs are. Then they are given a book to work though at their own pace.

Our Qualifications For You (Q4U) courses take a little more time with paper work etc but much the same discussion goes on to find out how much the student knows, their experiences with computer programmes, what their needs are and what they would like to learn. Students are then given the unit standard book to go though at their own pace. Students are given workbooks to fill out as they go though the sections of the book to reinforce what they have learnt in the previous section. This is a good way to assess their learning along the way.
Once they have completed the unit standard book students are encouraged to complete the assessment for that unit. My oldest student enrolled in Q4U was born in 1931 and has now completed their National Certificate in Computing Level 2 . What an achievement!!!!

We also have an on-line version of Q4U with Intuito where the student enrols with us at the Community Learning Centre and is shown by a facilitator how to work with the on-line learning programme and then they are free to work with it anytime, anywhere. They can also come in study the on-line course in our computer suites if they find they need help or reasurrance from a facilitator. I find with the Intuito though its not as flexible as it could be as the students still need to make time to come into the suite to go though the enrollment process and wade though the paperwork with a facilitator. Also when it comes to completing their unit there is an on-line assessment to pass but also they need to come and make a time to do our own assessment to beable to pass that unit. Once the assessment is passed the student then needs to go though the whole process again for the next unit/units. Not very flexible for some people.

Flexible Learning Course

So far joining the flexible learning course Leigh has helped the Central Community Learning Centres by setting up Skype so we can all communicate to each other. This has proved very successful for all of us. We communicate on a daily basis with each other mainly one on one conversations. Any problems and queries can be solved and/or talked over in an instant. Skype is very easy to learn to use.
Next we joined up with Leigh in Wanaka on th 26th Feb to set up my delicious account and talk over the course.
I found setting up delicious abit confussing. You need to use numbers and letters so i needed to use a different password than my usual one.
Leigh showed me how to post sites to my delicious account. It will be interesting to see if i remember how to do this when i'm on my own.
Vida came with us to Wanaka and she is also helping me with my Blog. Vida is a student from last year and is the CLC supervisor for Alexandra. It is great to have her on board and have her help though this course.
My background is hairdressing which was along time ago. I completed my 3 year apprentiship in Queenstown. My theory work had to be done though correspondence which was very hard to do in your spare time. I had papers sent to me every so often that had to be completed by a certain time. I didn't know or see the person behind marking my assignments, they were just papers that came and went to be marked. Flexible Learning has come a long way since then!

Useful Links:

http://creativecommons.org/

www.SoftwareEducation.co.nz

Welcome

Welcome to my blog.
Hi my name is Sheryll. I am the superisor for Cromwell Community Learning Centre.