Changing Education

Did you have a chance to look at the Learning and Violence project interactive multi-media tools yet?

For adult educators and learners, the issue of how people have experienced, or are experiencing, violence can be the elephant in the room. Learners feel that they cannot bring it up and, if they do, many educators feel out of their depth. Many of the mechanisms people develop to survive violence can work as barriers when they want to learn something new and sometimes these mechanisms result in behaviours that look to educators like learning disabilities, lack of motivation or resistance.

The Changing Education multi-media tools are designed to help us name the elephant and open up the conversation.

Jenny Horsman, a community researcher and educator who coordinated the project and whose long-term work on the issue of how experiences with violence impact learning informed the research, says, "It is important it is to come to learning whole and full of hope. When we feel stupid, there is nowhere to go. But when we try a whole new conversation, we can try a whole new set of approaches.”

The tools will soon be available on DVD for those who do not have access to the internet. The project is looking for new partners in Canada and internationally to develop tools for learning in workplaces, schools, corrections and homes. Visit http://www.learningandviolence.net/changing.htm

squaring the circles

Sir Ken Robinson talks about education in the 21st century:

education quotes flicker group

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“Great quotes about Learning and Change” Flickr group
Slideshow at Flicker

english for caregivers

Question:
Does anyone know if any online links to "English for Caregivers" materials? I have a lot of students that are involved in this field.

Answer:
In case your learners might benefit, (not sure of their level) here is a link to Project Care mostly geared to high-intermediate ESL students. It provides some case studies, multimedia (vocabulary and authentic listening practice) and projects on such topics as Depression, Alzheimer's Disease, Death and Dying. See projectcare.worlded.org.

Project Care is a World Education project.

World Education is dedicated to improving the lives of the poor through education, and economic and social development programs.

how search engines work

A short video designed to help you get more out of your web searches by Commoncraft.
Here is the transcript:

The Web may seem like a vast ocean when it comes to finding something you need. Thankfully, search engines can help turn oceans of information into small pools that make finding information easier.

This is Web Search Strategies in Plain English.

Before we dive in, let’s talk a bit about how search works on the Web. Search engines go out and try to account for every word on every webpage. All this information is then organized for easy reference.

When you search for a word, the search engine finds all the pages where the word appears, and displays them in the search results. Usually the pages that appear highest in the search results have lots of other web pages linking to them. Each link acts a vote to say, “This may be a good resource.”

The problem is that there are often too many results. You need a way to reduce the number of results so you can find what you need. Let’s look at how this works.

Say you’re looking for a specific kind of fish, and these represent all the websites on the Web. Searching for FISH doesn’t help much. There are way too many results. You need to be more specific.

Try to imagine the exact fish and describe it in the search box. You’ll see that each word you use gets you closer to what you need. You can do this for any website by imagining the website that has your answer. What’s the title of the page? What words appear on it? If you put those words in the search box, you’ll get closer to finding answers.

But to be a smart searcher, you should know some basic shortcuts. Let’s say you’re looking for words that appear together, like a phrase or a quote. An example is a search for information on sand sharks. If you search for it like this, the search engine looks for pages with SAND and SHARKS. To get better results, put quotes around the words like this. It limits the results to the exact phrase.

Here’s another shortcut. Words often have multiple meanings. Consider the word MULLET which is both a fish and a hairstyle. A search for MULLET may give you a number of results about the hairstyle, but fewer about the fish.

To remove the results about hair, place a hyphen or minus sign just before the word you want to exclude, which means “show me the pages about mullet, but take away results relating to hair.” By being specific, and using words and symbols that remove useless information, you can find exactly what you need, and keep the Web from swallowing you whole.

I’m Lee LeFever and this has been Web Search Strategies in Plain English.

science online

Scitable is "A free science library and personal learning tool brought to you by Nature Publishing Group, the world's leading publisher of science."

This is high level stuff and the focus is on genetics but this site might be worth noting as a resource.

this is a test

wiseone is on the blog

Further Education

There are no prepared, student-tested activities here... yet.

For people with academic upgrading goals, check out the activities at Skillswise and at the GED blog.

The Northern Edge has some excellent activities about learning and learning styles.
Learning in Action
Learning to Think in New Ways
Multiple Intelligences