Current News
Last chance for DISCOUNTED EARLY BIRD conference tickets!
Today (May 2) is the last day to purchase VALBEC2022 conference tickets at a discounted rate!
● VALBEC Members (10% early bird discount) – $85.00
● Non-members (10% early bird discount) – $135.00
● Concession – $50.00 (Students, non-waged, volunteer tutors)
Register here: https://valbec.org.au/event-4764526
When: 20 May 2022 9:00 AM - 2:30 PM
Where: Angliss Conference Centre, Level 5, 555 Latrobe St, Melbourne, VIC, 3000
VALBEC AGM
Friday May 20th Face-to-face and via Zoom
10:45-11:15 am Angliss Conference Centre, 555 Latrobe St, Melb.
Are you an LLND educator who values professional connection, contribution and transformation for Victoria's adult learners and communities? Do you want to influence adult literacy and numeracy development in your community?
We invite you to share your enthusiasm and expertise on the VALBEC Committee.
Submit your nomination via the VALBEC website: https://valbec.org.au/Considering-a-role-on-the-committee
Reading Writing Hotline Survey
The Hotline has been funded by the Commonwealth Department of Education Skills and Employment to research current provision of adult literacy and numeracy education and literacy needs.
The survey is anonymous unless respondents choose otherwise, and the results will be aggregated so that respondents cannot be identified.
The aim of the survey is to find out the actual needs of adults seeking to improve their literacy and numeracy, provide a snapshot of current literacy/numeracy provision and look at needs that are not being met.
We’d love you to take 10 minutes to complete our survey. The results will help us to give government accurate, credible information about what learners and communities really need. And you or one of your teachers could win one of four $100 gift cards! You need to complete the survey by Friday 6th May.
To fill out the survey you can scan the QR to go straight to the survey, or use the link Adult Literacy Need Survey 2022.
Excellence in Language, Literacy and Numeracy Practice Award
The Excellence in Language, Literacy and Numeracy (LLN) Practice Award recognises innovation and excellence by an individual involved in improving LLN skills in an educational, community or workplace context.
Applications can be made by relevant individuals or organisations (eg colleagues, professional bodies, students, employers, industry or community representatives); or through self-nomination. More
Building a website, building a learning community!
One of the highlights of 2022 has been learning how to use the new VALBEC website. Working with Web Developer David Collett and VALBEC’s Administration Expert Leanne Wu, the VALBEC Committee is learning how to set up events, insert images, edit web pages and even paste chunks of HTML in the right places to create online forms and ‘register here’ buttons.
With David, we’re slowly building a library of videos that talk us through the processes of doing all these little steps. For example, a few weeks ago David showed us how to create an online form and embed it into the Submit a Proposal to Present web page on the VALBEC website.
All it takes after that is a little bit of editing, a funky soundtrack and the video is ready to share with the Committee!
If you want to join a dynamic digital learning community, we invite you to nominate to be part of the VALBEC Committee via the online form that Leanne has created especially for Committee nominations!
Happy nominating and all the best for Term 2,
Liz Gunn
VALBEC President
And don’t forget to register for the VALBEC Conference, 20 May, Angliss Conference Centre, LaTrobe St, Melbourne, 9.30 am.
New VALBEC Membership Portal and Payment System
To keep costs down, VALBEC has changed its membership payment system. This is good news for members. We hope to be able to reduce membership fees, or at least not to have to increase them for a while.
You can join or renew online via this link: https://valbec.org.au/Become-a-Member/
Member benefits:
- Professional Learning Forums: strengthen communication and knowledge of adult language, literacy, numeracy & digital (LLND) education, webinar recordings and certification provided
- Fine Print three times a year: hard copy professional journal for discussion and debate about adult LLND practice, theory and policy
- Free online numeracy resources
- eVALBEC: newsletter linking members to professional networks, learning activities, and relevant policy changes.
- Discounts for the Annual Conference and other associated statewide professional learning activities.
- Advocacy on significant policy issues impacting the field through representation on relevant government and association bodies such as the Australian Council for Adult Literacy
Member benefits continue to develop to meet member needs. Tell us what you’d like.
Organisation memberships
Organisational memberships include individual bundle members. The bundle administrator, nominated when joining, can manage their organisation's bundle members within the Valbec membership portal
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Funnetics! VALBEC’s PL Forum in June
Join Catherine Bunnard and VALBEC’s Professional Learning Team for some frenetic, Phonetic Fun.
When: Wednesday 15th June
Time: 5-6 pm
Where: Zoom (where else!)
Presenter Catherine Bunard has been teaching English as an Additional Language to adults for over thirty years... and still finds it hard to pronounce the word "rural" even though she knows exactly how to write it using phonetic symbols. She has always been interested in phonetics and decided she would share her passion with some of her colleagues at Chisholm through a series of three hands-on workshops. She met some like-minded people who are excited about having a go at creating and using phonetics with their students at various levels and it seems that both teachers and students are having Fun!
Funnetics starts with an overview of phonetics for teachers who need a little encouragement in using pronunciation activities with students. This is followed by Funnetic participation in breakout rooms where teachers try out Catherine’s pronunciation activities. Register here: https://valbec.org.au/Events
Multimodal texts surround us. What are they? How can we use them in our teaching?
Blog post in the Australian Association for Research in Education EduResearch Matters blog by Georgina Barton who has been researching how teachers use and teach multimodal texts. Georgina believes Australia needs to update its teaching of multimodality and also how we assess students in relation to this important aspect of literacy and communication. More
The site offers writing prompts that you can download, customise, and print for free. Choose from exercises in creative writing, suggestions for "how to" essays, persuasive writing topics, holiday-related ideas, and dozens of other thoughts—inspiration for writers of all ages. https://www.freewritingprompts.net/
Conversation starters and English speaking practice ideas.
Daily ESL is designed to help students become familiar with common vocabulary and expressions they can use all the time in many situations. Choose a topic, listen, answer questions, read along with paragraph, and then discuss the questions. https://www.dailyesl.com/
Education today:
Photo by Alex Knight on Unsplash With most of the learning happening online and rapidly becoming a preferred way to learn, it is important for the teachers to adapt the new way of imparting the knowledge. This is an additional task for the teachers who are the Subject Matter Experts in their field but not necessarily in Education Technology. There is a small learning curve, and the process is not as daunting as it sounds. I started my journey in the digital world in 2014 and since then have tried many tools. I came to realise that the simplicity is the best. Here I am sharing the easiest and most effective way of developing online courses Let’s start with creating class activities and assessments. Lots of the resources available on the internet. Few of the websites/technology I use to teach digital Literacy, Literacy and Numeracy are Websites: For lesson creation: MS PowerPoint/ Google Slides For video creation: Camtasia (Paid product with free trial period) SnagIt (Paid product with free trial period) For games: For quizzes: Free images: Once creating class materials is sorted, we will need to either store it in the shared space (LMS) or use a conferencing software (Zoom) for synchronous learning experience. We will discuss this in next month’s evalbec newsletter. So, stay connected. |
“What I’d like to convince you of, first and foremost, is that play is essential to education at all ages,”! writes Daniel Teitelbaum in the latest issue of Fine Print. If you’ve not read his article already, find it in Vol.45(1) pp.3-6, it could prove just what you need to get you through May.
And congratulations to Despina Davatzis who won a set of AusPen refillable whiteboard markers for her Planet Friendly Teacher Tip. You can read all the submitted ideas here: https://bit.ly/eValbecMay2022
eVALBEC
eVALBEC is the monthly electronic newsletter of (VALBEC) the Victorian Adult Literacy and Basic Education Council and is sent to about 1000 practitioners on the first of each month (other than January). It is also available in the ‘News’ section of our web site
Disclaimer:
The activities, goods and services mentioned in eVALBEC are not endorsed by Valbec in any way. People should make their own judgment about the suitability of each item.
How to submit items: https://www.valbec.org.au/evalbec