Hooked on Learning

Given my last post and my grumblings in relation to the lack of ‘advisory’ and information in relation to Adult Higher Education options, I just had to share this blog post I came across today by Robyn Shulman, M.Ed.  In her post, ‘Academic Advising – 5 Tips for an Ever Changing World’, she shares her thoughts on what should be available for adults and how a ‘good’ advisor should operate.  It was a great read!  I particularly liked the emphasis placed on understanding and empathising with non-traditional, busy adult students (both undergraduate and graduate) and the importance of being ‘aware that daily life challenges take priority, and your role is to make the higher education process comprehensible, less stressful, and more meaningful’.

I like the idea of such an advisor being available but would also like to see something like this available at an earlier stage, even before an adult student has decided to return to study, what they will study and with what organisation. For many of us, especially those that came the ‘non-traditional’ route into Higher Ed, just establishing what’s out there, the different options available and routes to take, is a exhaustive task in itself.  I understand from a ex-colleague of mine, during a wonderful conversation that came about as a result of my last post, that there are some organisations like this back in the UK. I guess finding them is made difficult for me right now given my geographic location but this gave me hope.  As a graduate student myself right now, keeping up with work, life and study at the age of ? (opps, almost shared that!) is tough, but it is made much more rewarding when you are coached by advisors like the ones described in Robyn’s post. Thanks for sharing!

As 2012 arrives, I find myself wanting to further my own education once again; if truth be told, I have been working on finding the right ‘path’ for this for almost a year now but it is good to use the New Year as a boost to get back on track.

I did not take the traditional or expected route when I left school at 16; I did well in my GCSEs and headed to sixth form to complete my A Levels in preparation for University. When I got there, having transitioned from an all girls school to a mixed sixth form consortium in its inaugural year, I was quickly frustrated by the system and much more and was easily swayed into the big smoke to gain my independence and get a career underway.  The decision was quick and within a matter of weeks I had two junior job offers on the table with blue chip companies and so began my corporate career in the insurance offices of General Accident in Putney, South West London.

Many years later, 2 years after the birth of my son and following a fulfilling career and wonderful times in the corporate world, I decided to re-train and pursue a career in Post 16 Education primarily for the sake of family life.  Finding the information or the people I needed for help was a daunting and unrewarding process, I didn’t know where to begin.  Who should I contact?What did I need?  What path should I take? Would my work experience be taken into account? How much did it cost and what options were there for financing my continuing education……? I had SO many questions and just felt I was repeating myself constantly every time I inquired to another College or University. It was exhausting. Each one offered different options but I struggled to put it all together to make the most appropriate, informed choices. I failed to find an individual who could help advise me objectively and put all the puzzle pieces together and relied upon multiple inquiries and scribbled notes from telephone conversations and websites in an area that was so unknown to me. I recall the fury of frustration I felt at this time, trying to find the best route and objective advice; so much so that I even gave up the idea of higher education and an alternate career at one point and returned to the corporate world. Thankfully, I did not give up entirely and eventually found myself on the right path studying at both an Adult Community College and the Anglia Ruskin University.

However, some years later it was the same old story when I wanted to start my Certificate in Education (PCET) but thankfully in this instance, a friend and colleague had just done the same thing so her experiences paid dividends when it came to my turn.

Here I am again, 5 years or so on, eager to pursue continuing education for my own personal and professional fulfillment but once again there were so many different options and so little individual, personalised advice available for adults. Well, in my experience at least!  Why? No wonder so many adults fear returning to education, wading through all the information to even get to the point of available options is tough enough.  As a Post 16 teacher in FE and Adult Community Learning, the biggest issue was always helping these adults overcome barriers and get them back in the classroom.  The UK government offered lots of guidance to attract Britain’s adults back into the classroom and signpost them to help find appropriate courses; we even had specific advisers for this once you’d made it through the door, it was great.  But I am yet to find this for adults who want to continue Higher Education. Am I missing it?

Now I find myself living outside of the UK and looking for what is technically a ‘Post Grad’ qualification that has taken almost 3 months to find.  When I realised doing something in my current location was a non-starter, I looked for an online course in my home country (given that I was too far to attend!). One call left me asking the supposed ‘adviser’: “are you kidding me?’.  His arrogance left me spitting, he had no idea how to talk to  ’mature’ (used carefully!), professional students let alone advise them; seems the idea of advising someone who had done things a little differently was all too much.  His loss I say!!!!

The story does end well though as I am now hoping to be accepted to an online Post Graduate course in my chosen field that I can begin in Feb 2012.  Needless to say I am delighted about the course but even more so that this battle is now over and my further education path is set, well, for now……. But, and it’s a big BUT! Surely it doesn’t have to be this way? Many educational establishments and parents spend years trying to convince our young to love learning in the hope that they remain lifelong learners, I know I do.  Why do we make it so difficult to take a non-traditional path or change our options later in life , why is there not more in the way of advisers to help adults wade through this? Is there, did I miss it?

I’d love to hear your experiences too? Am I just expecting too much? Have you found an easier path?

Image courtesy of: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wfryer

I write this as a frustrated parent watching her child shift between two entirely different worlds as if one bares no resemblance to the other.  Those two worlds are home and school.

At home my son will build and play with lego, play make believe games with his sister, draw, ride his bike, play his PS3, play games on the internet and play intuitively with a plethora of different apps on mobile devices. When he doesn’t know a word he is reading or when he wants new words to use in his writing, he heads to the iPad dictionary and thesaurus apps without a second thought.

When he enters the school gates each day however, access to such interactive tools and activities, to which he is so familiar, are limited. In most cases they are replaced with worksheets and huge, heavy text books. Information is static and they are passive recipients.

This is not a personal gripe about the school he presently attends; great inroads are being made into using more technology in the classroom to enhance the great teaching and learning they already do. I am thankful for all their hard work but as an advocate for a 21st Century Education for today’s children, and of course an advocate for my own children and how they learn best, I cannot help but notice the discrepancy between his two worlds and wish that it wasn’t so. Understanding why it is so and arguments for change are a much bigger conversation for another time.

Every night when I unpack his backpack, I unload a heap of worksheets and tests he has fastidiously completed throughout the day and a list of homework tasks, most of which begin with ‘complete worksheet number XX’ or ‘read pages x -x and complete questions’.  Now, I am not suggesting that there is no place for worksheets in his, or any other child’s education, but there has to be more correlation between their two lives. There are most certainly lots of fun activities going on his classroom, he loves the experiments and the projects and he has some great teachers, but he needs more.  Recently he arrived home with a huge science text book, he had to read and absorb several pages of text and then regurgitate what he had learned by answering a set number of questions.  I have to admit, we both struggled with the task! Being a visual learner, the pictures helped but compared to his everyday visually stimulating and interactive world outside of school, it wasn’t enough. His eyes glazed over and I could tell that not much was being absorbed; we had to figure out a way, a better way, for him to learn the content. What to do?

He then suggested searching for You Tube videos and using Brainpop.com to look up the topic.  He was gone, rapidly online and researching his topic. Chuckling as he watched videos that explained the same content but with pictures and animation that brought it to life and made his learning relevant.  We went back to the book, re-read part of the topic chapter and set about talking about the content and making connections between the two.

I realise that there is no doubt that this topic is personally relevant for me, having a child who finds reading large amounts of text a challenge, but I know he is not the only one.  I also know that there are many too that would not have struggled with the text and that’s ok too. We could also review and discuss equity in relation to how much technology different children have exposure to at home, I understand that impacts things. However, I strongly believe that regardless of those facts, life outside of school for the majority of children today is full of visual and interactive stimulants everyday whether it’s TV, video games, dad’s smartphone or their own home computer, they want to be connected and their school life needs to reflect this fact. It’s their future.

My son has the most amazing imagination but like many dyslexic children he finds it hard to manage all the processes of writing in order to get his thoughts and ideas down on paper so that they will have the same impact there, as they do in his wonderful mind. I am sure that all of the things one has to think about in order to write creatively, must often look like this in his young mind:

At his former school, The American School of Bombay, he experimented with various digital tools to help express his ideas, things like Glogster and ePortfolios and likely many more that I was unaware of.  However, we have now moved locations and these tools just aren’t available to him in his current school so I began looking for ways to work with him at home using digital tools that could support him in order to achieve great writing, and most importantly, for him to retain a love of it!  As a blogger myself, I know how much I enjoy writing and sharing my blog and how nice it is to be able to use different types of media to bring my writing to life. So, I decided this would be a great opportunity to share it with him too.  I have to say at this point, that we have also invested a lot of time this summer hand-writing a journal in order to practise all the same things when physically writing but I also want him to know that there are other options, options that can remove so many barriers for him.

We set about creating his blog and we walked through the basics of how to use it and some of the tools.  Most blog providers these days do allow a vast range of media, links and plugins to be used so this is something we decided to take one step at a time and will revisit these many time in the future.  We looked at templates and he choose one he liked and we talked about why they were all different and what that meant to the potential layout of his blog.  We then talked about content and the types of things he wanted to share; he decided that the main content of his blog would be random reflections and musings about what he was up – I felt this was important as he needs to have real interest in the subject he is writing about to be passionate about it.

His tutor also recommended poetry to help with reading fluency so he has been using Kenn Nesbit’s poems and LOVES them.  He laughs out loud at them and it is a joy to see him reading these for pleasure. As such, we decided to ask the author’s permission (good lesson in digital citizenship!) to share them on a ‘poetry corner” page on his blog and he sent us a lovely reply, giving us his blessing and wishing Thomas a personal ‘best of luck‘ with his blog.  This was a real boost – Tom was thrilled that an author had mentioned him so personally. Tom also wanted to add a jokes page (idea borrowed from his tutor) and now he loves to skim and scan his joke books for funny jokes to share.

This has been, and continues to be, a lovely thing to do together. There is no denying that you have to be prepared to spend the time doing it but of course it is a worthwhile investment; it is nice to have an ongoing project to work on too. It also allows us many opportunities to talk about cyber security and good digital citizenship – not a new topic in our house by any means but one that needs constant re-enforcing in my opinion.  We talk about what information one should or shouldn’t share and I like seeing him manage his profile responsibly. Now wonderful friends and family are taking the time to read, comment and share on his blog so now he sees the impact!  These social, personal connections provide encouragement, love and inspiration and I hope it will continue to fuel his desire to write more. To all that have taken this time, thank you!

We continue to learn lots of new tools together and often discover barriers we need to overcome. For instance, we recently discovered that WordPresss does not allow you to embed certain media, arh! This is a nuisance as I want this to be as media rich as possible for him, so we talked about how we might over come that – problem solving skills…….?????

We use other digital tools to enrich his learning experiences too. He is continuing to work at practising his maths facts using several great ipad apps that reward his effort with fun bugs (of the virtual kind!) and other creatures to play with and he uses Whizz.com to consolidate and revisit maths topics with visual and interactive activities that stimulate his interest and his mind. He loves the interactive nature of these tools and for such a visual learner, I am seeing how the very nature of these tools excite him about his learning as they begin to remove some of the barriers that can otherwise exist for him.

I am in no doubt about the power technology can have to enrich learning experiences for us all and it is great to see this in action so close to home.

Like many Londoners, I have been following the disturbing news of the London riots intently over the last few days and for me that’s mostly over the internet, watching news channels and following conversations on Twitter and other networks.  There is much that can be said in relation to what may or may not have caused these terrible acts of public disorder and sheer criminality and there is of course much talk in the press about the part social networks like Twitter and Blackberry Instant Messenger have played in gathering the yobs, but here I want to celebrate the good that has come out of Social Networking in such a dire situation.

• Support groups on Facebook.
• Support for local residents and the MET, the London Firebridgade and other emergency crews.  This group here on FB began about 72 hours into the riots and had massed almost three quarters of a million supporters (likes) within around 12 hours!
• Twitter and Facebook groups have been created to gain support and make arrangements for post riot clean-up in some of the worst effected areas. The @RiotCleanUp Twitter Page has gained over 83,000 followers as of the time of my writing and continues to use the page to make arrangements for concerned, law abiding citizens to clean up their communities. Similar pages on FB are also gaining momentum.
• Other members of the public are using websites, Social Networking sites and other media to name and shame those foolish rioters!  Lists of names, images and even screenshots of those idiotic enough to post pictures of their ill-gotten gains as some kind of trophy on their profile page, are being spread virally by the same media reported to have helped organise this insanity in the first place.
• Twitter conversation at #londonriots allowed residents and others to share real-time accurate information as to where the latest trouble was flaring up and many dispelled myths of violence in other cities.  As a Londoner currently living outside of the UK, I followed this conversation to get the latest information.  I just did the sensible thing and skipped any nonsense posted.
• And of course, in true British Style, Twitter conversation #OperationCupofTea encourages Brits to ‘Stay Calm and drink Tea’ in the face of adversity.

Sorry, I know it’s a corny title but it had to be done. Just home from a wonderful 4 day trip to Memphis and the Laptop Institue Conference 2011, which began with an ASB tour of Graceland hence the title…..!

Now home, back in the balmy heat of Florida and ready to digest all that I have learned and to remain connected with all the people I met, including new and old friends from Mumbai. So many things to take away from the conference, so many things to digest and the process hasn’t even begun yet but my lists, both in my head and in my Google Doc, are full to the brim of books to download or buy for further reading, people to follow up with, new courses to write, new ways to use tech tools in my online classes and even more determination to help adults around the world develop their technology skills.  We all know digital fluency is no longer a matter of choice, it’s a necessity.

I attended so many useful sessions from the keynote by Jeff Utecht who got us thinking about why we were there, sessions on QR codes (finally think I have got the hang of those little guys) and a session by Jeff Whipple on using Netvibes as an aggregator for your RSS feeds – even though I am already an avid user of Netvibes I still came away with lots of great new ideas about using it in the classroom.  These few mentions hardly touch the surface of all the things that I took away from the conference not to mention the fact that this was the first time I felt brave enough to partipate in the Twitter conversation rather than be a passive observer of the content.  It felt so good to be part of the conversation and I learned so much from this online chatter and sharing too; I have especially enjoyed reading and learning from the blogs and reflections of other professionals posted here post conference, like this one that belongs to Tami Brass: Laptop Institute 2011 – Big Takeways. Thanks Tami!

ASB once again had a great presence with presentations on a variety of topics and initiatives and it felt good to share the journey of the ASB Online Academy. I was proud to share all of our initiatives to help develop the Digital Fluency of our parents and prouder still that we are now able to offer those same Technology Courses to any adult, worldwide! So, as you return from the conference full of excellent ideas to share with colleagues and co-workers, feel free to share the ASB Online Academy with them too! We have an ever-growing selection of courses to help develop the technology skills of both your faculty and your parents to speed up that journey to reach the 21st Century Classroom so why not come and join us online?

This week sees me preparing for my visit to the Laptop Institute Conference in Memphis, Tennesse.  This will be my second visit to the LI conference, the last one I attended being the European Laptop Institute held at the American School of the Hague in October last year.  So much has happened in those 8 months it’s almost hard to comprehend; the last time I attended as the Parent Technology Representative for ASB and I travelled from India to the Netherlands to share how we were working to develop the Digital Fluency levels of our parents. This time, I attend as the Co-Director of ASB’s Online Learning Academy where we have taken our courses online and I am traveling from Florida to Tennessee!

8 months on from the Hague, I am excited to be sharing our continuing journey; our discoveries, things we have learnt and all the exciting learning opportunities we are offering as part of the ASB Online Academy.  Here’s a sneak preview of what we will share:

• A journey of parental engagement – from Parent Tech Connections, an internal Social Network, a program of Parent Tech Tutorials to the creation of ASB Online!
• An environment that models participation of LifeLong and 21st Century Learning
• Increased accessibility and flexibility of learning
• Adult technology courses, from the basic to the most innovative Web 2.0 tools, that are offered to global participants
• Technology courses offered to parents to:
  • To ensure a consistent message between school and home
  • To learn the facts so as not to be scared by the fiction
  • To be seen as part of their child’s online life, not an intrusion
  • To help support their child’s learning and online life
• Technology courses offered to faculty to:
  • To learn the tools to build their own PLN
  • To learn the tools to enhance teaching and learning in their own classrooms
  • To develop and enhance their own skills
• Our vision for the ASB Online Academy…….

As the conference approaches, I am excited to re-connect with colleagues from ASB India; today’s technology allows me to work comfortably on a remote basis but I am certainly looking forward to connecting on a more personal level too this weekend!  At the same time, I look forward to all that I will learn and the new connections I will make at the conference too. I am even hoping to get the hang using the conference’s Twitter Hastag this year to share and collaborate with other participants – hopefully with more confidence and success than my attempts in October!!!

I have read many interesting articles recently that refer to the ‘summer education slump’ for both the kids and teachers of our schools and even witnessed it myself at home on many occasions with my own children, despite the fact that we do actually study during the holidays, check out these two great articles:

Dealing with the Summer Slump

Avoiding the Summer Slump as Educators

With this in mind I decided to be proactive and enrol my children in a summer reading program held locally, especially as we have been in our current location for just 6 months.; this is something that we have not been able to do in the past since we are usually packing up and heading out of town to avoid the monsoon rains. As this is no longer necessary, I paid my money and looked forward to the course to start with baited breath.

It’s important to know that I write this based on my experience as a parent, a Post 16 educator but also as an advocate for a 21st Century education for our children but I stress,  NOT as an expert in the field of K-12 education nor in the field of specialist reading education.  However, that said, I believe my observations are valid and changes to some of what I discovered would make an incredible difference to the engagement of the students that were there and their learning experience.

I had heard that these short course were a little dry but when we turned up one sunny Saturday morning, I had pretty good inital impressions:

The Good:

1. Impressed by the clean and organised location
2. Organised and Enthusiastic teacher who greeted the children well and tried to engage with them at their level
3. Organised and thoroughly planned material on first observations

However, I was struck like a ten tonne truck by several depressing observations as I walked into the classroom, I felt like I’d stepped back in time………

The Bad

1. All desks were in a line, squashed together with little room for movement between unless the person in the row did not mind your behind in their face!
2. The room was dull, 4 grey walls, nothing to indicate this was an exciting reading class and that reading was fun and engaging to do
3. The class was overfilled, not enough chairs for all students and their parents with some perched on the end of the desks
4. There was not ONE piece of technology insight with the exception of a HUGE TV and Video recorder perched worryingly from a fixture in the corner of the room.
5. The layout of the class allowed the louder partipants to dominate the conversation even when the teacher tried to ‘manage’ this and select people to contribute – you had to shout loud to be heard and have the confidence to do so in front of 18 other kids that you had not met before and you’re only age 5 or 6! Not everyone had a voice.
6. The class layout didn’t provide any opportunity or possibility for collaboration or group work – I know they are only young but I am sure some exciting conversations could be had about some of the books they were reading………..

The final straw came during the brief rest break when the minute all the kids left the room they got out their DSs or other electronic gadets to keep them amused whilst they waited to start part two!  It was just natural……………

As for the parents, I could see them all bristle as they entered with memories of their schooling, rows and rows of desks with a teacher ‘imparting’ their knowledge at the front and trying hard to make yourself heard over the loud and dominate participate next to you. All they needed were long socks and bunches in their hair and we’d have been back 20-30 years ago in a flash! Are these really the memories we want for our children?

I am not suggesting that this course will not provide any value for us, not at all. However, I am suggesting that it needs re-thinking and dragging into the 21st Centruy using tools that even kids of this tender age are using day to day.  For this group, the cost of the technology possibilities should not be a barrier (or an excuse) given what we all paid, so I do not believe this is an issue here. What I am suggesting, is that they should take what they already do well (good structure and sound goals) and use some new tools to deliver it! They should think about the following:

• Decorate the room with engaging, age appropriate materials ( I know this is borrowed location but it doesn’t take much!)
• Change the layout of the room, one more appropriate for 5-6 year olds, conversation and sharing
• Learn phonics and sight words with fun ipad apps and web tools
• Introduce some interactive books on tablets, mobile devices or laptops – bring the books to life!  Even if cost and resources were an issue, I am sure as parents we could rally round and bring some in to use????
• Share reading websites and online resources; allow the children to share their online work with their parents, teacher and peers
• Get the children to build their own interactive book with their parents’ help – I can’t name a tool but I am sure there is one they can use……?
• Get the children to write their own stories using relevant mobile apps and sites – there are several great apps you can use to design a picture book story.

These are just a few ideas, I know there are many, many more.

We return this week for the first week of my son’s course and I am worried.  As a strong visual learner and one with reading challenges, this type of class will be prove challenging and intimidating so I am hoping for a more innovative start to this one!

We are  almost at the end of our first two full weeks with the ASB Online Academy and I pleased to report I am surviving but more to the point, are my learners?  It would appear so and they even appear to be enjoying themselves as our first set of feedback tells us!

Week 2 has seen a flurry of activity with 2 new courses starting, 2 others wrapping up and 1 in its second week.  All kidding aside, here’s what some of our learners have said about their Online experience thus far:

They described the course as individualized, engaging, interesting and self-paced

When asked, ‘Did the course meet your personal objectives’, they replied:

‘Met my objectives and more’,
‘Absolutely’
‘Yes’

‘It was excellent!’

They liked the activities, videos and the fact that it was self-directed and self-paced.

They felt they received active, frequent support,

After month’s of preparation and course writing, it is great to finally be interacting with learners online and I am thrilled to see them having such a positive experience so far. There is no doubt we will continue to grow and learn from our learners’ experiences and feedback in the coming months – I have certainly learned a huge amount from my first few live weeks and here’s a snapshot of those lessons:

• Be as prepared and organized as possible
• Design a method of keeping track of learners, their progress and any other admin tasks – I use Google Docs for all of my admin as it’s easy to use and we can share across time zones without issue
• Get a system and routine up and running as soon as you can for the course management tasks and teaching and contact time – document it and use it!
• Make a checklist for each new course with key tasks and things to do – this will ensure you complete all tasks for each course.  This is key if you have multiple cohorts and multiple courses rolling on and off, it can get very confusing and time consuming.
• Be prepared to tweak and adapt your course before, during and after delivery. I come up with some new additions and ideas during the courses once I get to know the learners more.
• Ensure you communicate effectively and in a timely manner with your learners, before, during and after the course.
• Be realistic about the number of courses or cohorts you can have running at any one time to ensure you have adequate teaching and support time available for all learners.
• Be prepared to be flexible – certainly for adult courses at the very least! Learners do not always finish on time due to other life commitments
• Be prepared to actively support your learners via other communication methods such as email, Skype, online chats and even Facebook and Twitter if possible.
• Ensure you prepare a comprehensive and constructive course evaluation to be completed at the end of each course and USE the feedback to develop and enhance your instruction and design.

I am sure there are many more that I will think of and I will share these as we continue to develop and grow but for now, this should provide some ‘Food for Thought’……

Finally, be sure to check out our summer course dates that have just been released. These include an exciting combination of some of our most popular courses thus far and some new.  We will continue to add more courses and dates so be sure to we our website @ http://asbacademy.org/adultlearning.htm for more information.

Don’t forget to ‘like’ our Facebook page to get the latest news, updates and tips on the Academy and courses: https://www.facebook.com/pages/ASB-Online-Academy/186959344680816

I have wonderful news to share this week, the ASB Online Academy is now live and our first set of courses will be ready to start on the 25th of April.

Visit http://asbacademy.org/adultlearning.htm to find out more.

Background

Last January ASB started offering hands-on parent tech tutorials. Later in the year we created the Parent Tech Skills Continuum that listed skills considered important for parents to acquire in order to demonstrate digital fluency and literacy and to be an engaged participant in their child’s learning. All the hands-on tutorial offerings were aligned with this continuum. Even though the number of tutorials and parent participation grew during the year, we were reaching only a small percentage of our parent body. We started exploring other ways to offer these tutorials to those parents who were unable to attend the face-to-face sessions. Online tutorials was a serious option.

ASB Online

Visit out Adult Learning Page, this is where the technology courses are listed.  The courses are currently under development and will be taught by me using the Learning Management System, Haiku.

Some notes about the courses:

• All courses are listed on the Adult Learning page on the website

• The first courses will be begin on the 25th of April.

• Courses are organized into lessons and are open for either 1 or 2 weeks according to the estimated number of study hours; this allows for complete flexibility so learners can study anywhere, anytime that suits them.

• Registration will be open from the 13th of April

• Courses will be run on an asynchronous basis using a variety of activities including but not limited to, reading, watching videos, online discussions, chats and exploration.

Take time to explore the site and learn more about ASB’s vision.  Taking these courses will help you build your own skill set and knowledge base to support you in your work, productivity, and your communications. It will also help you stay connected and current with your child(ren)’s use of these tools at school and in their lives.
Use the ‘Contact Us‘ page on the site to ask questions or share ideas for other types of non-technology courses we could offer.

Receive updates on the Academy by “Liking” the Online Academy’s Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pages/ASB-Online-Academy/186959344680816

Our online curriculum presently focuses on Digital Literacy skills that will benefit both parents and other adults alike, but be sure to check back regularly and check our social media channels for announcements of further courses as we offer them.