Special E-Guides award for Gloucester trainer Tuesday, June 15, 2010 - 09:47

Jane Carter-Dunn, from Gloucester, has encouraged rural learning providers to embrace technology by travelling evenings and weekends to train and support them, after completing an E-Guides Training Programme run by NIACE.

Her dedication and commitment to E-learning was recognised with a special Tony Burgess E-Guides Award - sponsored by LSIS - at an annual conference held in London on Tuesday, 15 June 2010.

Jane Carter-Dunn has trained as an Advanced E-Guide and has been working as an E-learning Development Officer at Adult Education in Gloucestershire for two years. In the last year, she has developed the Adult Education Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), which is already being used by hundreds of tutors and has been embraced by all staff at Adult Education in Gloucestershire, who use it to add value to their projects and courses.

The countless training sessions delivered by Jane - often during evenings and weekends - have supported tutors across the county in using modern technology like digital cameras and voice recorders. She has also trained 10 E-Guides who are in turn delivering cascade training to help produce over 50 tutors across the county.

Jane has recently managed an LSIS project, developing a new module for Adult Education in Gloucestershire's in-house Preparing to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector (PTLLS) course. The tutors taking the course are self-professed technophobes, but were so inspired by Jane's approach, that now all their students submit their work via the VLE. Jane is currently working on a project that will see all vital information for tutors being delivered through the VLE, ultimately allowing her to support all 400 tutors working for Adult Education in Gloucestershire.

Jane's nominator and colleague, Jane Griffiths, said:

"Adult Education in Gloucestershire works with 25 external providers - from colleges to voluntary and community organisations - who would never have considered embracing technology in their work if it wasn't for Jane. [She]...is a joy to work with and truly inspires those around her. She is never too busy to advise and support and works tirelessly to ensure that everyone is comfortable with the use of technology and encourages it's appropriate contribution to all learning activities."

Alastair Clark, Senior Programme Director for NIACE's Digital Learning Team, said:

"Tony Burgess had a clear view of the potential of digital technologies to transform learning experiences. His early death was a sad loss to many in post 16 learning but it is appropriate that this award honours those who follow in the trail that he blazed."

"Jane Carter-Dunn has richly deserved her award this year - illustrating the high standard of skill and commitment that can be found amongst the trained E Guides. This training programme has now been delivered to nearly 3,000 practitioners who in turn continue to pass on their skills to colleagues."