Learning via the Web A Guide to Resources
Introduction ...............................................................................................................................3 Resource Collections ................................................................................................................4 1.ESOL Collections ..............................................................................................................4 2.Literacy Collections ..........................................................................................................5 3.Numeracy Collections .......................................................................................................6 4.ESOL, Literacy & Numeracy Collections .......................................................................7 Dictionaries & Thesauruses .....................................................................................................9 Disabilities ..............................................................................................................................10 Dyslexia...................................................................................................................................10 ESOL .......................................................................................................................................11 Grammar .................................................................................................................................11 Handwriting ............................................................................................................................12 ICT Skills ................................................................................................................................12 Integrating Themes .................................................................................................................14 Learning Styles .......................................................................................................................15 Numeracy Basics (+ – × ÷ ) ...................................................................................................15 Numeracy Applied .................................................................................................................16 1.Measurement ...................................................................................................................16 2.Fractions, Decimals & Percentages................................................................................17 3.Money ..............................................................................................................................18 http://www.senteacher.org/ ...............................................................................................18 Practitioners’ Support .............................................................................................................19 Practitioners’ Tools ................................................................................................................20 Publishing ...............................................................................................................................21 Reading ...................................................................................................................................22 Spelling ...................................................................................................................................23 Text to Speech Readers ..........................................................................................................23 Writing ....................................................................................................................................25
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Introduction This list of web sites has been produced by staff at the CLAN Edinburgh Resource Base as a guide to the resources for learning that are available on the web. We hope to update the guide regularly as sites change and new ones are found. The latest version of this guide will be available to download from the Resources section of CLAN Edinburgh’s web site: http://www.clanedinburgh.org/resources/ If you find a web address is out of date, please let us know so we can correct the problem in our next edition. We also welcome suggestions for inclusion. If you would like us to send you a paper based copy, please email the Resource Base via resources@clanedinburgh.org or phone us on 0131 652 3938. All of the learning resources listed in this guide are free in that site providers do not charge for their use. Many learning centres and most public libraries offer free access to the web. CLAN Edinburgh’s Resource Base has a high speed broadband connection and is open to all practitioners.
Several entries in the guide are marked
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This means that the resource material is a software programme or document that can be downloaded from the web to your computer free of charge. If you are new to downloading and installing software, you can find the process clearly explained at http://newbieclub.com/download. Step by step instructions, with screen shots of the dialogue boxes that will appear as the download and installation progresses, help you learn all you need to know. Catherine Macrae ICT & Literacies Development Officer
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Resource Collections 1. ESOL Collections The English Language Study Zone (at University of Victoria, British Columbia) has a mixture of reading, grammar and writing activities grouped around five levels of difficulty. It can be found at http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/studyzone/index.htm The material is well presented. The reading activities are particularly good: based on a short piece, the learner first completes a multiple choice task, then rebuilds the story from a choice of sentences and finally fills in the gaps in a summary (try the Nesreddin stories in the 3rd level). Unfortunately the home page looks unfriendly as it presents the levels in the form of numbers (200, 330, 410 etc.) that don’t mean much to an external user but it is worth pressing on! Activities for ESL students is a collection of quizzes, activities and puzzles covering grammar, vocabulary, idioms and homonyms. It can be found at http://a4esl.org/ . Quizzes are listed by general type (grammar, vocabulary, crosswords) and level of difficulty or by type and browser requirements (e.g. HTML or Javascript). You have to choose one of these options before reaching a list of topics. As there are over 1000 activities to try, it may take some time to find what you need. Unusually this site features bilingual quizzes. Over 35 languages are available including Urdu, Chinese, Turkish and Romanian. Quizzes cover useful vocabulary such as body parts, colours and numbers. A drawback is that many activities use a simple click on right answer or fill the gap method which gives little advantage over pen and paper exercises. English for Everybody’s Game Zone has twenty games for developing a variety of skills in using verb tenses, spelling, vocabulary, parts of speech and numbers. www.english-online.org.uk/games/gamezone2.htm Some items are quite colourful or fun: try the Frog Games where you match past to present tenses, the self explanatory Verb, Noun or Both? and also Make or Do? where you choose whether make or do goes with nouns such as homework, the garden, an appointment.
Also useful is The Letter Game where you try to make up words from a grid of nine letters with the program accepting or rejecting them. The quality of the activities is variable. Number Hunt requires you to click on scrambled and moving digits that match a written number which is very difficult! Similarly, Quality Control asks you to click on the misspellings in a ‘production line’ of moving words. The Prefixes Game is a good idea but doesn’t work well. English Club for ESL learners has lots of lessons and activities covering a wide range of topics at http://www.englishclub.com/ The useful ‘hotlinks’ list to the resources available allows learners to review prefixes, prepositions, tenses etc. The quizzes section provides reinforcement covering grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. The activities are mainly based on drop down lists where the learner chooses a gives an example or completes a sentence (e.g. Noun = determination, react, but ... A builder = looks after our bodies, constructs houses … ). These would be good for students to work on in pairs. There is a clear home page with a clear choice of lessons or interactive pages. Some students (and tutors) would find the Business English section useful and the Frequently Asked Questions section that attempts to explain the peculiarities of English. In the games section the matching tasks look useful. Some drawbacks are that the site is based on US English and there are some distracting flashing adverts.
2. Literacy Collections Ambleside Primary School provides a good collection of interactive games and tools for literacy at http://www.amblesideprimary.com/ambleweb/literacy.htm and http://www.amblesideprimary.com/ambleweb/english.htm Many of the items are lively and interactive, see for example the ‘Look, Cover, Write, Check’ tool for spelling practice. Although some of the material can have a childish appearance, much is quite neutral and well designed.
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Manchester City College provides very useful lists of links to web based activities by topic (e.g. reading, spelling, punctuation, grammar etc.) and then sub topic. Literacy links are at www.citycol.com/basic_skills/activities%20english.htm The links take you directly to the web page, so if you click on Plurals under the Spelling heading, you go directly to the activity. A drawback is that, although the topic and subtopic names indicate content, the level of the material is only sometimes given and then via references to the curriculum in England and Wales. It helps to know therefore that E3 means Entry Level 3, and L1 means Level 1, on a six point scale going from pre entry to Level 2.
3. Numeracy Collections Ambleside Primary School provides a good collection of interactive games and tools for numeracy at http://www.amblesideprimary.com/ambleweb/numeracy.htm and http://www.amblesideprimary.com/ambleweb/maths.htm Many of the items are lively and interactive, see for example ‘What’s My Angle?’ which gives good visual reinforcement on measuring angles.
Manchester City College provides very useful lists of links to web based activities by topic (e.g. 4 basic rules, tables, ratios, fractions, time etc.). Numeracy links are at www.citycol.com/basic_skills/activities%20maths.htm The links take you directly to the web page, so if you click on Problem Solving under the 4 basic rules heading, you go directly to the activity. A drawback is that, although the topic and subtopic names indicate content, the level of the material is only sometimes given and then via references to the curriculum in England and Wales. It helps to know therefore that E3 means Entry Level 3, and L1 means Level 1, on a six point scale going from pre entry to Level 2.
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4. ESOL, Literacy & Numeracy Collections Ireland’s National Adult Literacy Agency (NALA) has developed some web pages for learners at www.literacytools.ie The materials are a mix of printable and online exercises and, if your computer has a sound card, the pages can run with speech. The exercises vary between short pieces with multiple choice questions, practical numeracy tasks and longer reading passages. The printable materials are divided into topics (e.g. Employment, Health, Hobbies, Memories of School) and the online topics are similar and are also categorised by skill type and level of difficulty. There is also a small selection of games. There is a diverse mix of materials, many well laid out and illustrated with graphics. Try the (printable) materials on health.
The BBC’s Skillwise materials are a popular source of resources. The materials can be found at www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise The materials are divided onto two groups: words and numbers. Under words you will find grammar (e.g. sentences, pronouns, tenses, apostrophes), spelling (e.g. homophones, silent letters, suffixes and prefixes), listening and reading (skimming, scanning, different types of text). The numbers materials cover the four basic operations, negative numbers and big numbers; measure, shape and space; fractions, decimals and percentages and averages. Each section offers a factsheet, online game (sometimes), multiple choice quiz and worksheets with answers. The full set of material on each item is quite comprehensive and provides different ways of tackling the item. The games can be lively with good visual effects. Each section comes with Tutor’s Notes outlining its content. The developers are improving the amount of interactive material on this site but many factsheets and worksheets are intended as print outs which can appear very basic and unattractive. N.B. All of the BBC’s website can be used with Browse Aloud (see Text to Speech Readers).
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A site with over 250 free printable worksheets, teaching instructions and links to other sites can be found at http://www.members.aol.com/skillsworkshop/ The site categorises items using detailed references to the curriculum in England and Wales. It helps to know therefore that E3 means Entry Level 3, and L1 means Level 1, on a six point scale going from pre entry to Level 2. Some resources are very simple but others (especially from DfES) make good use of images, drop down lists etc. Worksheets are downloadable as Word or pdf (portable document format) files. The site gives information on how to download and save these.
A site that offers materials contributed by literacy, numeracy and ESOL practitioners can be found at www.talent.ac.uk The resources can be searched by subject, level and keyword or type. The types of material available include online and offline worksheets, schemes of work, lesson plans, learning plans, assessment tools, case studies, booklists, quizzes and articles. You have to register to use this part of the talent site but this is free. There is a wealth of material on offer to help you meet the needs of learners however diverse in ability and purpose. Another site offering a range of handouts and interactive exercises covering writing, spelling, grammar and ESOL is http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/ You can browse using ‘resources page’, ‘handouts’, or ‘exercises’. A useful section is the resources and handouts with related exercises, some of which are interactive.
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Gary Ollwit has created a site with a huge collection of downloadable free games, quizzes, exercises and tools. It can be found at www.adders.org/freeware Go to the Education section and there are links to a wide range of activities such as Word Quiz Maker, Crossword Maker, Sentence Builder, Loose Change, Flash Cards, Hangman, Clock Face and Press a Letter. When you follow a link, you are taken to the download page where you will find information about the programme and a screenshot.
Dictionaries & Thesauruses
Wordweb is a free dictionary and thesaurus. It has 142,000 words and gives you word definitions, how to pronounce the word and tells you whether the word is a noun, verb or adjective or adverb. It also lists synonyms and words with a similar meaning. You can download Wordweb from http://wordweb.info/free/ You can look up words using Wordweb itself or from within another programme (e.g. word processor, email or web browser). In an email for example, you simply place your cursor at the word you want to look up and click on the Wordweb icon on the toolbar at the bottom of the screen. The programme opens and immediately offers information on the word. Sadly, the free version does not work out possible words if you can only partially spell them, so you cannot type in tom???ow and get tomorrow. Nevertheless Wordweb is a very useful tool. You can access an interesting visual thesaurus which presents words as a mind map at http://www.visualthesaurus.com/online/ You simply type in your word in the Look it up box at the top left of the screen and your words appear. As a trial user, you may only look up 2 words at any session, however the map could then be printed out as a screen shot (using SHIFT + Print Screen on your keyboard) and used as a basis for further discussion and activities.
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Disabilities Information on making a computer more accessible to people with disabilities and literacy learners can be found at www.abilitynet.org.uk/myway/index.htm This site suggests ways of making it easier to see the screen, use the mouse and keyboard and read text. Much of the advice uses software and settings that will already be on the computer. Examples of the kind of advice available include how to make the mouse pointer larger and how to prevent Word text ‘disappearing’ from the visible window when using zoom to enlarge the page. As you might expect given the purpose of the site, the instructions are clearly written with plenty of white space and illustrations of dialogue boxes to help you understand what to do. The Learning Disabilities Resource Community has a very useful site for practitioners who want to develop their understanding of learning disabilities and learning strategies and styles. It can be found at http://www.ldrc.ca/ The site includes Projects on Learning to Learn and Multiple Intelligences, online activities to help learners become more aware of themselves as learners and a seminar (online topic based forum) on Multiple Intelligences and Special Needs students. You have to register to use the site but this is free.
Dyslexia A site that will interest tutors and is relevant to students with dyslexia is www.iamdyslexic.com This extensive site has been developed by a dyslexic teenager and has a variety of information, description and ideas. It includes a very personal account of the author’s school history, experiences and strategies as well as tips, quizzes, advice to teachers and reviews of products. The message board is lively and thought provoking and there are inspiring pages of success stories from adults and children. The long list of mnemonics in the tips section usefully show inventive and quirky ways of remembering difficult words. There is a lot of material by and for children and this may put some adults off, but the site provides an insight into dyslexia.
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ESOL
Material for students who want to practise common patterns in English, tag questions, verbs, homophones, etc. can be downloaded free from www.angelfire.com/ab2/literacy/win.html The programmes (written by Bruce Laidlaw, an Australian practitioner) are called Practice Your English, Practice Your Verbs and Practice Your Stress. It is possible to customise them for your learners and there is an interesting paper on the site describing the full set of programmes and how they have been used in workplace courses. You need to download each programme you want, together with a file of sounds and WinPlus (if you don’t already have it and you are using Windows,) and then install each component on your computer, so allow time for this however t is worthwhile. See also ESOL under Resource Collections above. Grammar To liven up learning about parts of speech, there is a web site called Wacky Web Tales: http://www.eduplace.com/tales/index.html It enables users to create a bizarre story by entering a list of specific kinds of words e.g. a verb ending in –ing, a number, an adjective, a friend’s name. The words are then reproduced within a bizarre (and hopefully amusing) story. There are instructions on how create a story and a help page explaining parts of speech in a simple and clear way. Although the site is geared to children, several of the themes for tales are suitable for adults, including The Day I Got Stuck on the Web, My Lucky Day, The Best Pet.
Poem Maker works in a similar way. This is free software that can be downloaded from http://www.mape.org.uk/activities Users create word lists consisting of nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. The software then chooses words randomly from the lists and arranges them in phrases.
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The resulting poem can be edited to alter the phrase structure or word pattern. Poem Maker provides a way for learners to research words and think about parts of speech. Although, as the Teachers’ Notes put it, ‘whether or not this is poetry is open to debate’. Handwriting Tower Hamlets College have developed an animated Handwriting Tutor which shows learners how to move their pen to form upper and lower case letters. Choose a letter from the on screen keyboard and click on the ‘pencil’. The letter shape is then drawn for you. www.tower.ac.uk/mediainternet/writing.asp Unlike paper based handwriting guides, you don’t need to picture the sequence of movements needed to form a letter from tiny direction arrows, as the animation shows each separate movement clearly and slowly. You need Macromedia Flash 6 to use the Tutor but there is a link to enable you to download this on the introduction page and it is free, although you may need permission to install it. An online tool for creating handwriting practice sheets is available from The Big Bus. Handwriting Page Maker allows you to enter text into a box which then appears as ‘dotty font’ with arrows showing where to begin or restart joining the dots to form the letter shape. You can then print the page out. http://www.free.thebigbus.com/try/resources/writing/index.htm You can enter any text allowing learners to practice whatever is most useful to them. You have some control over how text appears by choosing whether to align text left, right or centre, varying font size and altering letter spacing and page width. Sadly, the tool does not offer practice in joined handwriting which is an important issue for many adult learners. ICT Skills A site offering help to those who are new to using a mouse to develop their skills is http://moo.twmuseums.org.uk/moo It provides some lively mouse practice using graphics. The user uses pointing and clicking in a simple game to move a cow through fields.
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For those who want to develop their keyboard skills, Gary Ollwit’s Practice Typing software at www.adders.org/freeware/typing.html offers a simple, free programme. It asks the user to copy a piece of text using an on-screen keyboard (using existing texts or ones you have added yourself). When you make a mistake, the letter/s will turn red in the blue box and you hear a beep. A counter at the top of the screen shows roughly how many words per minute you are typing so you can see your progress.
For learners who find it difficult to read the information on the Web, there is free software called Infowalker. The software can be downloaded from http://www.naturallyopen.com/infowalker/index.html Once installed, it works as an add-on to Internet Explorer. Infowalker can read a sentence aloud and highlight it on the web page. One disadvantage is that the voice is American and there are no other choices. There are other options: it can display the sentence in large type and illustrate it with a picture or graphic (a sentence mentioning Edinburgh and stories results in a picture of J. K. Rowling); a web page can be translated into any language, sentence-by-sentence or products from Amazon.com ‘relevant to each sentence’ can be pointed out.
Another similar free software programme is Browse Aloud which works with Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. The software is available from http://www.browsealoud.com/ Browse Aloud allows you to move your cursor to a sentence on a web page and then it highlights the whole sentence and reads it aloud. There is a choice of voices but a big drawback is that web site providers have to pay a subscription to have their pages included on as a site that Browse Aloud is compatible with. The BBC’s site, including the excellent Skillwise section, works with the software, but Google, Manchester’s City College and many others don’t.
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If you and the learners you are working with don’t already have anti virus software, you should look into what is available (and make a back up copy of your files regularly). There is a useful programme called AVG Anti Virus with a free version for home users. It runs in the background, protecting as files and programs are opened and as email is sent and received. It also has a scheduler that checks every file on your computer automatically at regular intervals. Virus updates are available free too. The software can be downloaded from http://free.grisoft.com/freeweb.php/doc/2/
Integrating Themes There is a wealth of thematic material on the web which can be used to integrate literacy, numeracy or ESOL learning with learners’ interests. Here are some examples:
The ‘Learning FC’ pack is an excellent example of how to integrate learning goals within a theme. This freely photocopiable pack on football has well presented, colourful material which can be used as a source of stand alone or sequenced activities. Sections of the pack can be viewed and downloaded (as Portable Document Format or PDF files) from www.dfee.gov.uk/playingforsuccess The sections are The Football Match, The Players, The Fans, Football as a Business, The Stadium, and The World. The ideas in the pack are interesting, for example, one activity involves looking at players’ heights and where best to position them on the field. N.B. The advantage of PDF files for those working with learners with limited reading skills, is that the latest version of Adobe Reader will read the text aloud (see Text to Speech Readers below). The British Library has material on citizenship at www.bl.uk/citizenship The issues are explored under the headings: Who Are We? Whose Rules? How Do We Live? The material includes photos, letters, handbills, and leaflets which can be printed off or shown on screen. The accompanying information gives the context. Many of the
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activities suggested are very demanding but, as a source of original material and ideas to adapt, the site is interesting. A site that offers lively and effective material on escaping from slavery in the US can be found at www.nationalgeographic.com/features/99/railroad/index.html This site uses original photographs, quotations, songs and documents to follow the journey runaway slaves made to freedom. The materials could be used to explore evaluating sources, comparing distances and writing autobiography and parallels can readily be made with the journeys of asylum seekers.
Learning Styles You can find out your preferred learning style using a simple cartoon style quiz which also explains the characteristics of theorists, reflectors, pragmatists and activists. www.mathemagic.org/styles/index.html Although the cartoon style may not appeal to all, this quiz provides a light hearted means of exploring learning styles. A site which offers a learning styles quiz that tells you to what extent you are a visual, auditory, or tactile learner can be found at http://www.ldpride.net/learning_style.html There are 30 statements to judge yourself against on a 4 point scale: very little like me, a little like me; like me or a lot like me.
Numeracy Basics (+ – × ÷ )
Big calculator is a large on screen calculator that works with either the numeric keypad on your keyboard or the mouse. It would be useful to students learning to link numbers and symbols with their names and for group work. It can be downloaded from www.sensorysoftware.com/software/bigcalculator
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You can use the calculator with speech if you have a SAPI speech engine 4.0 installed; this can also be downloaded free from www.microsoft.com/speech/download/old/sdk40a.asp
Maths Quiz software offering practice in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division can be downloaded from http://members.aol.com/hecnor/index.html It has animated cartoons and optional sounds to indicate right and wrong answers and background music. The learner’s current score and an all-time high score is shown as questions of increasing difficulty are asked. The programme is free and very simple to use. To make the game look a little different you can set the background colours, or ask for them to be changed for you at random. Some learners may be put off by the basic appearance, It is fairly basic. The animated (or rather flashing) cartoons can be annoyingly distracting and the window size is small and cannot be adjusted.
Numeracy Applied 1. Measurement The BBC’s Skillwise site has good material on distances and temperature at http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/numbers/measuring/ Measuring Temperature’s fact sheets cover reading different types of thermometers and understanding the difference between Celsius (Centigrade) and Fahrenheit. They go on to explain about negative numbers, scales and the use of marked and unmarked divisions to represent degrees. Next there is a quiz to test your knowledge and 6 worksheets on different aspect of the topic. The fact sheets on Distances cover using scales and tables to work out the distance between places. As usual, there is a quiz and worksheets to check and reinforce learning. A simple and visual site for learning to tell the time is available at www.time-for-time.com
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As well as games and quizzes, there is an interactive practice clock. This shows the current time and allows the user to go forward or back by 1 minute, 15 minutes, 30 minutes or an hour. As you do so, not only do the hands of the clock move, but the background changes from light blue with a sun to dark blue with a moon. This visually reinforces the abstract concept of time changing. Although a digital as well as analogue clocks are covered, the site is a US one so only the 12 hour system is used. 2. Fractions, Decimals & Percentages The BBC’s Skillwise site has good material on decimals at http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/numbers/fractiondecimalpercentage/ The material starts with Introduction to Decimals, where fact sheets cover reading and writing decimals, place value and place holders and comparing decimal numbers (here there is a clear explanation of why, for example, 3.4 is bigger than 3.27). Rather than the usual quiz, there is a lively game where you drag decimal numbers into order, trying to keep as many of your five lives as possible by getting the order right. 3 worksheets are available. Using Decimals takes the work a step further by covering adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing, followed by approximating and rounding decimal numbers. The multiplying and dividing fact sheets are very clear, with the digits that are ‘carried’ shown in red and arrows to help the learner see how the sum is done. Again there is a quiz and worksheets to go with the fact sheets. Students and tutors confused by decimals and fractions can find and download explanations of popular maths misconceptions (and how to avoid them) at www.counton.org/resources/misconceptions . Explanations include, for example, multiplying decimals, dividing whole numbers by fractions, and decimal places. There are 22 in all. The explanations are well laid out on the page with good use of analogies such as ‘when we point at boxes containing 6 eggs each and say ‘3 of those boxes please’, we walk out with 18 eggs, that is 3 times 6’. You need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed to view the files but as some of the language is demanding, e.g. ‘to understand why the rule works, we look at its individual component
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parts’ this will be useful to read text aloud. (see Text to Speech Readers on the free Adobe Reader programme). 3. Money A useful site offering information on family finance topics, workshops on buying a round of drinks, reading meters, tips on saving etc. plus guided tours of the information and workshops based on key life changes (e.g. expectant mothers, losing your job). The site has been developed by NIACE and can be found at www.moneymatterstome.co.uk The workshops are well designed and lively with a wide range of topics. The cash machine simulator and writing a cheque are good examples to try. SEN Teacher Recourses website is for those involved in the education of pupils with learning difficulties, autism and other special educational needs. It includes resources, freeware downloads, links and documents. It has a UK coin machine which is free and easy to download. Click on the link below then click on UK Coins Addition Machine to download the game.
http://www.senteacher.org/
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Practitioners’ Support The national community learning organisation, Learning Connections Scotland, has a website at www.lc.communitiesscotland.gov.uk The Adult Literacies pages include a learners’ zone, discussion forums and information and resource pages. You can also find newsletter and conference presentations on the site. The site looks at literacy and numeracy from a Scottish perspective, adopting a social practice model which sees literacies as a key dimension of community regeneration and part of a wider lifelong learning agenda. The site is huge and you will need quite a bit of time to get to know it all and take part in the discussion forums (including one on ICT). The site will changing to make navigation easier soon. The independent Basic Skills Bulletin has a web site at www.basicskillsbulletin.co.uk The publication covers literacy, numeracy, ESOL and ICT issues for those who manage, deliver or coordinate programmes. The site gives examples of the Bulletin’s usual mix of news, professional issues, good practice, resources and training articles. This is a useful site to dip into if you don’t subscribe to the Bulletin with a guide to the basic skills acronyms and an archive of back issues. The information and updates are written from an English policy perspective so the points at issue are not always relevant to practitioners here. The ESRC Adult Basic Education Seminar Series has a web site at www.education.ed.ac.uk/hce/ABE-seminars which gives a feel of the academic debates around literacy, numeracy, communication and language learning. The site offers references and resources relevant to the topics in the series and, for the seminars already held, background papers from the speakers and an account of the issues explored. This is a good site for practitioners wanting to reflect on the current research and theory related debates and very useful for anyone doing academic study. The paper by Peter Lavender from the seminar on Social Inclusion is really thought provoking.
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The National Centre for Research and Development has its website at www.nrdc.org.uk The site is designed to interest practitioners, policy makers and researchers and covers the Centre’s research and development programmes and publications. There are also online discussion forums and event listings. The Centre’s work focuses on adult literacy, numeracy, ESOL and ICT and is funded by the DfES in England and Wales. The site is valuable for those e studying as it has conference speeches, summary reports and downloadable publications. A nice feature is that users can bookmark pages they are interested in via ‘My Space’ so it is easy to relocate them. The Centre for Literacy of Quebec holds a major resource collection and the web site www.nald.ca/CLR/search/ offers resources from a Canadian perspective. The site has lists of resources, online articles and a publications section with downloadable bibliographies on topics such as literacy and the arts and learning disabilities and technology. The online articles are lively and interesting reading and the health project reports are really useful (health education is an area where Canada has an international reputation). The huge collection of resources can be searched by title, date, author, keywords or category.
Practitioners’ Tools
Students and tutors who like to make up their own word search puzzles can download free software from www.schoolhousetech.com/products/wordsearch/overview.htm Word Search Factory allows you to create grids with answer sheets, using between 10 and 30 scrambled words, depending on the size of the grid. There are a number of options e.g. displaying or hiding the word list, using upper or lower case in a variety of font sizes and styles, placing words horizontally, vertically and / or diagonally. The riddles and graphic in the page header can seem childish (although these can be changed). Be careful when closing the programme or worksheet, as you are not prompted to save it.
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Hot Potatoes is a suite of 6 applications that allow tutors to easily create interactive exercises using multiple choice and short answers, jumbled sentences, crosswords, matching and gap filling using any text. You can download Hot Potatoes from http://hotpot.uvic.ca/index.htm#downloads (click on Hot Potatoes 6 selfextractor) Hot Potatoes is a fairly sophisticated set of applications and is free of charge for those working for publicly-funded non-profit-making educational institutions, who make their pages available to others on the web. There are online tutorials to show you how to use the suite.
Practitioners thinking about to carry research may be interested in software to help organise research notes which can downloaded free from http://chnm.gmu.edu/tools/scribe/ Scribe 2.5 is a free cross-platform note-taking program designed along the lines of traditional 3x5 index cards Scribe allows you to manage your research notes, quotes, thoughts, contacts, sources, digital images, outlines, timelines, and glossary entries. You can create, organise, index, search, link, and cross-reference your note and source cards. You can assemble, print, and export bibliographies, copy formatted references to clipboard, and import sources from online catalogues. You can store entire articles, add extended comments on each card in a separate field, and find and highlight a particular word within a note or article. Although originally designed for history students, Scribe can be used for a range of purposes, from an informal enquiry to a research project.
Publishing
Serif Software’s Page Plus 5 is a free desktop publishing programme that enables you to make colourful and professional looking teaching and learning materials and to work with learners to make posters, invitations, newsletters etc. You can download it from www.freeserifsoftware.com/serif/pp/pp5/Index.asp
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Page Wizards and Quick Tours help you get started with popular options and learn about inserting graphics or pictures for example. As with many free offers from commercial producers, it is intended to interest you in the product so you will find invitations to buy a product with more features.
For learners and tutors who want to try out interesting fonts beyond the range offered by Microsoft Word, you can download free fonts, many using handwritten styles, from www.astigmatic.com Some of the fonts available (e.g. Handage Family, Big Ruckus) are reasonably easy to read and their handwritten style makes a change from the legible but ubiquitous Comic Sans. They would make eye catching material so your leaflets or posters are never missed. A drawback is that you only get a very limited view of each font before you download, so you might find yourself with something that does not appear as you had hoped.
Reading The California Distance Learning Project’s web site has activities designed to build reading and life skills. The site is at www.cdlponline.org You can choose from a range of topics including working, housing, money, family, school, law and government, health and safety, going places and nature. Each of these topics offers a list of stories to read (often based on news stories) and some have an accompanying video. A button at the bottom of each page allows you to hear the story if you wish. You can read and hear a ‘basic’ version of the story and then move on to the story as it originally appeared. Finally you can move on to a sequence of activities such as new vocabulary and spelling lists, word and definition matching, and filling gaps in sentences.
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Spelling
A paper based Look, Cover, Write, Check helper is available from http://members.aol.com/twittwoo/grpdfs/lsciwc.pdf It is a follows the standard layout but has a left-handers version which is a useful addition. The file is in pdf (portable document format) and you need the free Abode Reader to view it (for more information, see Adode Reader under ICT Skills above).
RnR Spelling is a programme that helps the learner to practice words he or she learning, based on the Look, Cover, Write, Check method. The learner or tutor must enter lists of words and give each list a name. You can download the programme free at www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/khughes/RnRspelling The programme checks each spelling and tells you whether it is right or wrong. The presentation is very simple and incorrect letters are not highlighted as in many purchased programmes. However RnR Spelling would give useful practice to students with access to a computer outwith their class.
Text to Speech Readers
Read Please is a free programme that reads aloud any text pasted into it. You simply copy the text you want read (from an email, word processed document or web page), open Read Please, paste the text in its window and click on play. The software is available from www.readplease.com/english/downloads The choice of voices is limited and the voices are less realistic than the commercial product. On the same site you will find another version of this programme, called ReadWords Lite, which is a text to speech reader available from within Microsoft Word. Once you have installed it, when you open
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Word, you will be asked whether to allow ReadPlease as a trusted source. ReadWords then appears as a button to the right of the Help Menu at the top of the Word Window. When you click on this button, a box appears with play, stop and speed controls. To use the reader, select words, paragraphs or your whole document and click play. An options button allows you to alter mispronunciations and change the voice.
Many web documents are available as pdf (portable document format) files and some printed resource packs include CD’s with content in this format. Adobe Reader is free software that is needed to view pdf files and the most recent version (version 6), will read pdf (portable document format) files aloud, so they are accessible to learners with weak reading skills. The Reader is available from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readermain.html. To start the Read Aloud feature, press CTRL, Shift + V to switch read aloud on and CTRL, Shift + E to turn it off.
For learners who find it difficult to read the information on the Web, there is free software called Infowalker. The software can be downloaded from http://www.naturallyopen.com/infowalker/index.html Once installed, it works as an add-on to Internet Explorer. Infowalker can read a sentence aloud and highlight it on the web page. One disadvantage is that the voice is American and there are no other choices. There are other options: it can display the sentence in large type and illustrate it with a picture or graphic (a sentence mentioning Edinburgh and stories results in a picture of J. K. Rowling); a web page can be translated into any language, sentence-by-sentence or products from Amazon.com ‘relevant to each sentence’ can be pointed out.
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Another similar free software programme is Browse Aloud which works with both Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. The software is available from http://www.browsealoud.com/ Browse Aloud allows you to move your cursor to a sentence on a web page and then it highlights the whole sentence and reads it aloud. There is a choice of voices but a big drawback is that web site providers have to pay a subscription to have their pages included as a site that Browse Aloud is compatible with. The BBC’s site, including the excellent Skillwise section, works with the software, but Google, Manchester’s City College and many others don’t.
Writing Internet story writing is a new writing genre. A lovely example can be found at www.gillianhoodless.co.uk This project (by an Edinburgh College of Art graduate) allows you to choose your way through an online story, each choice can be as random or purposeful as you want. The site offers a great way of exploring writing in short bursts, using and making new meanings with quotes from songs, poetry, tv etc. etc. The project, and your own adaptations of the idea, has huge potential for exploring the politics of genre and language. A site that features poetry by teenagers is: www.weread.org/teens/poems.asp Many of the poems posted here are quite short and very personal and could provide good stimulus material for discussion or writing. The site welcomes comments on the poems. www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=39 has ideas for developing lessons around writing Japanese haiku and links to haiku poetry sites. Why haiku? The rules for syllables in haiku lines provide a different way of developing students’ ability to break words into syllables.
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The Massachusetts Adult Literacy Resource Institute have developed pages of advice and student writing for learners at www.alri.org/esquare Esquare is presented as a town square with a range of shop fronts to ‘enter’. This is an attractive idea and a visual way of moving through the different topics available. The student writing is often in the form of ‘virtual visits’ with a mix of photos and text and sometimes an explanation of the planning students undertook. Topics covered as advice include house buying, getting a job, choosing childcare and buying computers. One drawback is that Esquare’s links lead to an unpredictable mix of sites. Some sites are commercial information ones, such as Boston Public Library and Massachusetts Public Transport System whereas other links take the reader to student projects on health or planning a visit to a public representative.
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