Casey Finn-Lefsrud, Avi Spector, and Matthew Kennedy led a session on the benefits and limitations of different assistive tech applications for the Place Cartier (LBPSB) resource team.
 
The Place Cartier resource team took a closer look at WordQ and Read & Write with the goal of exploring how these two tools could be used by adult learners during class and how WordQ could be used within the constraints of an exam situation.
 
In a classroom use case, the Special Ed techs discussed how some students with learning difficulties require verbal instructions. This becomes a challenge when written content is placed online and no one is available to help the student decode it.

The Special Ed techs proposed a solution using the “audio maker” feature we explored together in Read & Write. The audio maker feature allows for highlighting a passage of written text (e.g. written activity instructions) to create a spoken dialogue audio file, a process called text-to-speech or TTS.
 
The Special Ed techs suggested uploading the resulting TTS audio file to their learning management system (Google Classroom) for students to review at home. Not only would this help students who require verbal instructions but now ALL students could benefit from the choice of having both written and spoken instructions, depending on their learning preference!
 
If you are interested in setting up a similar in-person or online exploration of Assistive Tech applications in your centre, please contact aspector@rsb.qc.ca.

Inspired by the University of Minnesota’s Check & Connect program, the resource teachers, professionals, and administrators from the ACCESS West centre at RSB have developed their own tutoring program.

In their tutoring program, weekly meetings are set up for adult learners in the bricklaying and masonry program. These regular meetings help adult learners track information, such as hours spent in class, absences, a calendar of upcoming modules, evaluations, and so on.
 
Weekly tutoring meetings also provide a space for 1-on-1 discussions, which help to strengthen the teacher-student relationship. The teacher not only works with the adult learner to develop motivational strategies but also intervenes with academic and personal difficulties, when they arise. The ultimate goal of the tutoring program is to help adult learners succeed by taking responsibility for their own learning and eventually becoming independent learners.  
 
Mariève Gagné (RSB) gave us a first-hand account of the tutoring approach that is now used with the Bricklaying and Masonry program at ACCESS West. Want to know more? Please take a look at this bilingual video miniseries, created in partnership between RÉCIT A2T and Services éducatifs complémentaires (SÉC).
 

English interview  |  Entrevue en français

Nobody likes recreating the wheel! Project RISE is all about supporting teachers as they create interactive digital learning resources intended for our curriculum and our adult learners. These resources are then shared across the province for the benefit of the anglophone adult ed community.

All RISE resources are what are known as Open Educational Resources. OERs are teaching and learning resources that are available for free and which can legally be retained, reused, revised, remixed, and redistributed under Creative Commons licenses. This chapter from the open source K-12 Educational Technology Handbook has more information about OERs and Creative Commons licences.

Curious about Project RISE? Learn more about it here.

“Things end but memories last forever”¹ goes the old adage, but not all memories are eternal. When I came back from my three months of medical leave in August, I had forgotten how to use a variety of tools that I used effortlessly just a few months prior. Fortunately, I have in-house tech support (Google and my youngest child, the tech wiz). I felt the frustration that one feels when this type of memory loss occurs. I brushed it off as an over-reliance on technology. I am a RÉCIT after all.

Then I took a deep breath and looked for more concrete answers. If you’re asking yourself the question: have we forgotten how to remember? Let me reassure you that the answer to that is: no! “We remember naturally. We forget naturally too. Both processes happen regardless of our education, intelligence, or tendencies to out-source part of our memory.”² That is all fine and dandy, but why had I forgotten?

Memory for skills is called procedural memory. Think of the expression: “it’s like riding a bike”. It works much in the same way. Basically procedural memory is stored as an action sequence, and is usually retrieved automatically when a person, for example, wants to: drive a car, send a text, write a letter, etc. In other words, every single thing that we do, everything that we know how to do is stored as a sequence in procedural memory. This means that if there is memory loss relating to part of the sequence, then these losses are perceived as distressing and confusing. Essentially, you need to remember the whole sequence for the procedure to be complete. Failures or losses in the sequence occur when the sequence becomes disrupted or in my case interrupted for three months. When this happens, we must retrieve the information in our conscious memory, which was accessed when learning the skill. Without practice, facts and procedural skills are susceptible to being forgotten. I drew parallels between what happened to me and what we call summer loss or regression of learning that students experience during summer vacation.

Teachers know how to support students with summer loss. Some strategies could be a review of the content or exercises to remember concepts and solidify notions. After that, we proceed by introducing new concepts on a strong foundation. I then asked myself the following question:  

In what ways does “summer loss” or something akin to it impact the teachers that I support?

Without doing any in-depth analysis, and based on my own experience, I suspect that there are strategies and practices that you have heard about, or have wanted to incorporate, and somehow got disrupted. As a result, there are fragments that were lost or forgotten. This further delayed your motivation or willingness to adopt or apply whatever it was that you were interested in applying.

I speak from experience. When I was in the classroom, I wanted to try everything, but lacked the time and the energy. The strategies that I did adopt were purely accidental and fortunately, they helped both me and my students. So, why are we talking about this today? It is because I’m on a quest to help as many teachers as I can, in the specific ways that they need. Perhaps you attended a training session and didn’t have the opportunity to try a strategy or tool. You’re now being presented with new PD opportunities, but you want to go back and try something that you’ve seen before. Unfortunately, you only remember fragments. Maybe instead of creating new PD opportunities, we revisit, reuse, and reinvest missed strategies and tools. I invite you to reach out to your local ped consultant, to your TLT (Technology Lead Teacher), or to me for support in reviewing, exercising, and solidifying concepts that will optimize your practice.

Giovanna Salvagio — gsalvagio@emsb.qc.ca
 
¹ Kumar Milan
² https://www.mempowered.com/taxonomy/term/31

Visit the RÉCIT VT website for updates and information. Vocational teachers, consultants, and administrators can also book an appointment with James for any PD needs or training requests.

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