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Manchester Adult Education Service

Name : Chris Hayes
Occupation : Tutor – Basic Skills – Community
Employer : Manchester Adult Education Service
Previous IT experience :Basic word-processing

My teaching takes place within an adult education centre, in primary schools, high schools and community centres and I deliver the following courses: Basic Skills, Make Your Experience Count, Assertiveness, Family Literacy and more recently, Making Choices. All courses are aimed at adults who are making their first step back into learning after many years.

Because I spend time on different sites I cannot be guaranteed I.T. support therefore having the laptop has enabled me to create letters, worksheets, training packs and lesson plans at home. Time spent using the laptop has made me aware of the relatively poor quality of my current teaching materials. I have begun a process of updating worksheets and students have commented on the improved quality. Although not at expert my speed has increased and I am able to respond to ideas and suggestions for additional work very quickly. I particularly appreciate being able to e-mail colleagues working on similar projects, share ideas and get instant feedback.

Before acquiring the laptop I had not used the Internet and within a short time I became convinced that my own students should experience this instant access to information. I designed a new course based on an NOCN outline entitled Making Choices. My idea was to give adults the confidence and motivation to make their own choices, for example, a next step course, new training or employment or simply find new information. Built into the course is Access to the Internet sessions and I have persuaded The Library Service to open up their tiny sub library to allow our students use of their networked computers. I bring along my laptop as extra support and have created basic worksheets and a list of useful sites, for instance M.P.s’ e-mail addresses and the Citizens’ Advice Bureau updates.

Response from students to this new course has been very encouraging; one woman discovered important information about her son’s Attention Deficit Disorder condition and is planning to set up a support group. Another traced a Travel and Tourism course. (She actually left my course to start this one!) My curriculum group was especially interested to find out much more about this student and I was able to create a Student Profile overnight to present the following morning. I enjoy watching the students discover information for themselves enabling them to become independent learners.

Piloting Family Literacy in High Schools is particularly challenging but introducing the Laptop has made it more rewarding. For instance, one week a nervous parent brought in a letter she had received from a solicitor because she could not understand the terminology. A discussion took place about formal and informal English and the barriers to understanding created by using jargon. I encouraged her to search the Internet for help and she discovered the Plain English Campaign. This information confirmed that using complicated sentences is confusing and unnecessary. As a group we decided that access to information encourages us all to become active citizens.

I want to include access to the Internet in all of my courses, as it seems an effective and almost instant way to improve a learner’s self-confidence. My next step is to look at ways to record student’s achievements and track their progress from course to course.

Chris Hayes
Rackhouse Adult Education Centre
Manchester Adult Education Service

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