What is that Media Development Team Doing Now?

In mid-February, the Media Development team, including the Curriculum Coordinator, Carey Hilgartner, the Media Development Lead, Deanna Jager, and myself, the Media Development Assistant, decided it was time to do a mini project.  The purpose of the project was to create a PowerPoint and video that could support instruction in Math Foundations and Essential Math and give me an orientation to project development.

Following our process for project development, but on a smaller scale, I met with Glenna Besse to review existing Essential math materials and to do a needs analysis.  Glenna has done an incredible amount of work creating PowerPoints for Essential Math and her guidance was an enormous help.  Thank you Glenna.  After meeting with Glenna, and deciding to create a PowerPoint on whole numbers, I brainstormed and played and made mistakes and brainstormed some more.  The goal was to create a PowerPoint and video that was engaging, relevant, and instructional.  The result can be seen on our YouTube channel:

As we develop projects, we learn what works and what we can improve. Your reviews and feedback are part of this process and help us create better media in the future.  Interested in what the Media Development team is doing now? Check out the Media Development Centre on the Foundational Learning Curriculum website.

Email comments or suggestions to Jenny Tzanakos: jtzanakos@bowvalleycollege.ca

Building Relationships with Community Agencies - a fundamental strategy

It seems to me that how students find their way to BVC and the offerings of the Centre for Excellence in Foundational Learning specifically has been left largely to chance.  This is especially true when we think of students with basic literacy challenges or those with learning disabilities - these are not typically students who will pay attention to print advertising.

Having worked in the nonprofit sector for a long time, I know that the move is towards the creation of "systems of support" for individuals accessing a variety of human services... including education.  Yet the reality is that most organizations act as independent islands rather than as contributors to a sequence of services that a person may require.

I want to create systems related to literacy and have undertaken to invite community agencies to BVC to start conversations about how such a system  might look.

On March 5, we had 14 agencies working with adult literacy.  We discussed what our department is doing, the programs we offer and where we are thinking of going.  We expressed an interest in working with agencies and eventually have cross referals between BVC and literacy organizations.  A closer working relationship would mean that families or individuals who may be connecting with social service agencies for basic needs could be referred to BVC once they are stable enough to undertake improvement in their literacy and/or educational foundation.

Moving forward, I will be meeting with Persons with Developmental Disabilities Regional Board to explore how we might better draw the nearly 2,600 individuals funded by PDD to the College for literacy programming.

Other opportunities to meet with groups of agencies will present themselves over time.  I would like to take advantage of those opportunities.

If you are aware of networks of nonprofit agencies that connect with our students in some way, I would be interested in hearing about it.

Your role as an educator puts you on the boundary between BVC, the community, and the lives of our students.  Your insights are unique and valuable.  I do hope that you will share your thoughts on how we could build new relationships and address the literacy and educational concerns of our students - current and future.

Open Learning

Sugatra Mitra in this TEDTalk video discusses open learning and the premise that students can learn much more than we expect with little resources but much encouragement.

He certainly challenges our conceptions of learning and offers an engaging approach.