AOK Basic Skills Project
Portland, Maine
E: kirkjohnb5@gmail.com
W: www.aokbasicskills.gratis
2022-11-20
Re: “How adults in an Adult Basic Education program for levels 1-2 can use the Internet at no cost to improve their studies”
Dear Director of the Institution:
I am a semi-retired ESOL and native/first language teacher over the age of 65. I lived in Ecuador for over 10 years before moving to Portland, Maine in the USA last year. I am the director of AOK, which is a charitable educational endeavor and my retirement project. AOK is not an organization. It was connected to my English school in Quito.
Workshop summary
“How adults in an Adult Basic Education program for levels 1-2 can use the Internet at no cost to improve their studies” is written for adults to help them improve their level of literacy. This workshop gives an overview of some websites that contain Spanish materials that can help improve adult education student’s educational skills at levels 1-2 at no cost. These materials can provide support for most adult literacy programs. This is one of six workshops that are for native language pre-K – grade 12 and adult education students.
Workshop materials
The workshop includes a written PowerPoint presentation (visuals can be added for the local area), director and student evaluation forms, key handouts, and a list of free, annotated websites from which to study. The workshop is given in support of UN Global Goal/SDG 4: Quality Education and UNICEF objectives. It includes information on how nonprofit organizations can use SDG student badges and videos to motivate the students’ learning and promote inclusion . It can last for one or more 50-minute sessions and can serve for follow-up, as well. The materials can be downloaded in Spanish on this website.
Workshop Objectives
The following are the workshop objectives. The participants will:
- Learn about websites with initial level stories that sometimes have literacy skill exercises included and that are of interest to adults.
- Learn about websites that teach the use of the computer. This should help students learn to read, since they can type and copy their own stories.
- Learn about websites which give good practice in mathematics that the students can use with the help of their tutor and on their own.
- The students will learn how to use and access the complementary AOK file of websites for Adult Basic Education (ABE) levels 1-2. It has more than 40 websites.
It is sometimes difficult to use the Internet for adult basic education due to the fact that some good learning sites are difficult to find. For example, some sites for teaching basic computer skills in English can also be used to a certain extent in Spanish such as learning to keyboard.
There are also some adult education literacy materials and ESL reading materials available for free on the Internet at very low reading levels which only need to be translated. Some departments of education in different countries freely make low level adult education texts available on their websites. These could serve for free parallel reading materials.
The long-term objectives of the workshop
A long-term goal of the workshop is to encourage UNICEF to provide multi-lingual materials that provide instruction on the Internet in literacy, basic digital education and study skills . It would be motivational for participants to learn some basic skills from UNICEF, and they would be written in a professional manner. A formed letter to this effect is included with the workshop materials on this website. It can be rewritten if desired.
I was registered with the National Human Talent Directorate in Ecuador and presented the workshops listed on my website to about 1,000 participants before the Pandemic. I hope the workshop materials prove useful to your program. AOK workshops are designed to act as a base for local organizations to individualize and update according to their needs…
Sincerely,
John B. Kirk, Director
kirkjohnb5@gmail.com