BEST PRACTICE

Collaborative Literacy Training project for Trainers and Educators.

This literacy training project is currently in the software Beta testing phase.

We are interested in assisting anyone involved in literacy training who would like to make their own training lessons using our platform or who have any specific literacy problems they would like us to address. Our objective is to produce a literacy training system where trainees can work individually on exercises on networked computers, and teachers and trainers can monitor performances through a Learning Management System displayed on a master screen and intervene when they decide it is required. The motivation for this project came from an observation by a group of teachers who assessed that they spent 95% of their time on unlearned or forgotten information, and only 5% of their time doing what they were trained to do - teach!

If you are interested in participating in a project that aims to reverse these percentages, or you have input or comments, please let us know through our Contact Us page.

As this version of the literacy training program was intended for use in schools, the graphic interface was designed as "Merlin's Magic School."

The interface can be modified for use in Adult Literacy Training and many of the lessons used can be easily modified to reflect adult situations.

New lessons are made easily by any teacher or trainer simply by entering the required information in a lesson template. 

The opening screen offers 4 choices. 

The first choice teaches the skills required during examinations, such as following instructions and time planning. 

The second choice allows the student to start a lesson. 

The third choice allows the student to take an examination. 

The fourth choice is a complete run-through tutorial on how to use computer devices such as the mouse and how to use the training system.

When a student starts a lesson, a section of text is presented for reading on the screen, and a question relating to that text is displayed below it, with 4 potential answers.

As all training time data is collected, there is a pause button in case a student needs to leave the exercise temporarily, and an "I'm done" button for use if the student wants to quit the exercise.

Three other buttons are displayed for the "help on demand" function of the software - the "Word Help" button, the "Hint" button and the "Show me what to read" button. These are discussed below.

Word Help button:

When the "Word Help" button is clicked, a box opens offering help. The student can get an explanation of the meaning of any of the potentially difficult words in the text, and can hear the word pronounced by clicking the "Let me hear this word" button.

As students frequently misread questions, the box also contains a "Read me the question" button

Hint button:

Each time the "Hint" button is clicked, a hint appears in the white box below the text. The hints are graduated from a general hint through to exercise specific hints. As the hints are displayed, answers that cannot be correct are struck through, leaving the student with the correct answer to the question if all the hints are used.

Every time the hint button is used, the data is captured and reported for teacher review and intervention purposes.

Show me what to read button:

Each time the "Show me what to read" button is clicked, a portion of text unrelated to the question is grayed, narrowing down the text that needs to be searched to discover the answer to the question.

Every time the Show me what to read button is used, the data is captured and reported for teacher review and intervention purposes.