What we’ve been up to recently... Winter 2010-11
Knowing Me, Knowing You... ah, ha! Working in partnership with Cartrefi Cymru, Menter Fachwen, North Wales Housing and Key Connections groups we have delivered a series of one-day courses called “Knowing Me, Knowing You” aimed at improving the confidence, assertiveness and communication skills of people working and volunteering in the third sector.
The course has been really well received and this is largely due to the specialist tutor, Viv Newman, whose enthusiasm for the course and the learners is infectious. Originally designed for Cartrefi Cymru’s care teams, the course has been adapted for use with a range of different learners of varying abilities and backgrounds.
Here is what some of our learners think about the course:
“Good friendly relaxed atmosphere” Non, Cartrefi Cymru
“Very good course. I would recommend it” Steve, Cartrefi Cymru
“A really enjoyable session, chatting and laughing from start to finish. Learnt so much!!!” Annette, Menter Fachwen
What we’ve been up to recently... Winter 2010-11
British Sign Language This is our fantastic group of British Sign Language learners with their tutor Richard, from Coleg Llandrillo Cymru. The course is still running, with people attending from Cartrefi Cymru, North Wales Housing as well as people from Betsi Cadwaladr UHB signposted from the Connecting Health Through Learning WULF project.
Changing Together Workshop Recently we responded to a request from a 3rd sector residential care home, the Olinda Trust, who wanted us to kick-start our partnership together by organising a taster workshop that would form part of their staff away day. The team from the care home had a great afternoon learning about how to work better as a team and respond to change in the workplace. This is just the start as we hope to have specialist tutor Sandra Hughes involved in the “Connecting with Change” events during Adult Learners Week.
Connecting with Change We have been working closely with Connecting Health Through Learning and Making the Learning Connections to put together three joint events across North Wales as part of Adult Learners Week. Aimed at enabling staff to understand and cope with change, the days will include a Confidence Boosting session and workshops based around helping people to recognise their existing skills and abilities, present themselves positively and discover opportunities to improve their skills.
What we’ve been up to recently... Winter 2010-11
Bringing the Project Online After attending the inspirational Digital Inclusion Wales 2010 conference in Swansea in December, we have embraced social media technologies as a means of communicating with our partners and learners as well as publishing materials in new and innovative ways. As a result, we now have a twitter account, a blog, a YouTube channel and are using Issuu and Prezi to produce and publish our course materials.
Connected Learners Cymru, the social network for WULF learners that we created in Autumn 2010, and which Unison kindly funded, has had a complete revamp recently. It has new features including videos, photos, groups with embedded materials, more prominence given to upcoming events and fun things to do like creating videos from your doodles using Ort. There is even an introduction video featuring a digital version of Richard and Lynn from Connecting Learners. The site is for everyone involved in WULF projects – ULRs and Project workers have special forums and roles that they can play organising content and helping learners. And on top of its roles creating communities of learners, sharing best practice and supporting offline learning it is also a great tool for teaching people about using social networks and web 2.0 technologies in a safe and secure environment as part of our ICT courses.
What we’ve been up to recently... Winter 2010-11
INCLUSIVE: Grundtvig Partnership After attending an Information Day at Venue Cymru in Llandudno, Richard quickly applied to go to an EU Contact Seminar in Brighton aimed at fostering Leonardo and Grundtvig partnership projects related to technology and digital inclusion. The result was that Connecting Learners is one of 9 organisations from across the continent that has applied to create a partnership aimed at supporting adult learners using a variety of social media technologies. The application has to be approved by our respective national agencies, but the partnership idea won a competition at the Contact Seminar. If we do go ahead, project workers, ULRs and learners will be able to visit Portugal, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Germany or Hungary to share their experiences of using our social network to support their learning.
The Project Launch – 31st March We’ve booked the beautiful new Wales Institute for Sustainable Education at the Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth as the inspirational venue for the official launch of our project on 31st March. Paul O’Shea from Unison and Adrian Roper from Cartrefi Cymru are down to speak on the day, and local poet Rhys Trimble will perform his amazing verse throughout the day. There will be a range of third sector organisations, learning providers and other interesting people in attendance, and exhibitors including LearnDirect, the RSC Wales and Coleg Llandrillo Cymru. It’s going to be a great day and we’d love to see you there. Sign up at www.connectedlearners.blogspot.com