In isolation…..
Jul 26th, 2007 by robynjay
Yesterday I was up in the gorgeous North Coast sunshine visiting the www@Ballina team; they work with a diverse range of NESB, literacy and VET trainees who share a common characteristic - isolation.
It’s an interesting phenomenon. We can feel desperately isolated surrounded by others or totally connected and supported with huge distances between us and the next human being.
New arrivals are removed from all that’s familiar to them - family, friends, culture -and may find themselves drifting amid strange faces, language and surroundings. Workplace trainees may be a days drive from their teacher without anyone to ‘hold their hand’ through the quagmire of VET instruction and assessment. Or a young person in Byron bay can feel marginalised from the mainstream community and it’s systems; without a voice.
[image: Raumwahrnehmung]
At the meeting we spoke of the need to focus foremost n function and purpose, to map suites of tools and solutions specific to learners characteristics, context, needs, purpose, interests and the nature of their course of study.
We spoke of voice; giving voice to those on the margins disempowered by systems, policy and circumstance.
And we spoke of the connections that social software can enable, and the intoxicating power of life stories, narrative and multimedia to entice people to embrace new technologies in their learning and lives.
As a teacher it can feel totally overwhelming:
so many tools
so much to learn
so many issues
not enough time
Under the wing of Regan and Lindy the Ballina team are initially focusing on one young learner isolated from his peers, away from home in a program at Grafton. From there each team member will develop their own solutions for their particular student group.
You can listen to some snippets from our conversations in our podcast
Thanks for your visit Robyn…. its certainly given us the courage to continue our quest to make bridges and meaningful connections for our learners…
I thought I’d check out the snippets of conversation, however the podcast doesn’t seem to work…. just thought I’d alert you.
Again, many thanks for another ‘wing’
Your right Regan……I’ll try and get it uploaded with Robyn when I return to Sydney
The recording in podomatic works fine. I’ve removed this one for now.
It certainly does. Now I’m wondering why all the others are now not working.