AOK Basic Skills Project
Portland, Maine
E: kirkjohnb5@gmail.com
W: www.aokbasicskills.gratis
2022- 11-20
Dear Director of the Institution:
RE: “How to use the Internet for free to improve the studies of your high school adolescents”
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 that was connected to my English school in Quito. AOK is not an organization. Before the Pandemic I wrote 18 AOK workshops and presented many of them throughout the Ecuadorian Sierra.
Workshop summary
“How to use the Internet for free to improve the studies of your high school adolescents” is one of six workshops that are for native language pre-K – grade 12 and adult education students. This workshop gives an overview of some websites that contain Spanish materials that can improve an adolescent’s educational skills at the secondary level at no cost. These materials can provide support for most of the basic high school subject areas, as well as an introduction of study skills and computer use.
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
Participants:
- Learn about some of the many websites that can help high school students catch up with their class or extend their learning in core subject areas.
- Learn from online math and science materials that provide alternative ways to explain difficult topics.
- Learn some ways on how to use fiction and nonfiction materials with comprehension questions to help improve a high school student’s reading comprehension. Parents will receive a list of general reading questions applicable to materials in general. Also, some of the materials provided come with specific questions.
- Learn about some ways to encourage writing and provide interesting topics and interchange ideas to do this.
- Familiarize the participants with how to use the AOK file of 60 websites. This includes free high school internet courses.
- The website list also includes several sites that teach how to use Google for educational purposes and how to use study skills.
Long term goal 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 UNICEF is included with the workshop materials which can be rewritten if desired and asking if they could do this.
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. AOK workshops are designed to act as a base for local organizations to individualize and update according to their needs…
Sincerely,
John Kirk
kirkjohnb5@gmail.com