Karten Bloggers at Beaumont
In the Karten Centre at Beaumont College, learners are practicing their literacy skills in a way that engages their interest in a way that more traditional techniques sometimes fail to do. The College has implemented a safe, internally hosted blogging system – Powerful Voices. It is safe – only staff and learners can access it. The interface has been streamlined so that learners can access it directly. Each blog is stamped with the email address of the person posting it. But it means that learners can blog on issues that are of interest to them, and include pictures, videos and music. People are keen to log on and read the latest! And staff are taking every opportunity to embed numeracy and IT skills as well as literacy. The tutors monitor the posts, and pick up the issues that the learner needs to work on, and feed this back into learning objectives.
This innovation has been picked up by the Skills for Life Update, who are featuring it as one of their case studies in the summer edition.