A New Ordinary: ALC Part Three: Wrapping up and lots of pictures!!

Over the rest of the week, we focused on sharing best practices and sharing what still needed some fine tuning. We went over the different components of learning to read and how those things can be practically applied in the classrooms.

We also talked about cross-content literacy – like in sciences and math, my specialty! My college students are used to word problems by now, I’m sure.

We also got this excellent software called Bloom! From a non-profit called SIL (originally stood for Summer Institute for Language), the program makes book making SUPER EASY. The best part – SIL focuses on languages and increasing literature in local languages. So let’s say you use Bloom to write a simple children’s book in English. Then you work with people at your site to translate it into local language. You upload both of those translations to the Bloom website – now other people can download them and translate them into other languages. So as time goes by, you may have the same book in 10 or 20 different languages! (Or many, many more.)

You have to do all the translation yourself, but once it’s uploaded it’s saved on the Bloom website. The software is free of charge and comes with some 11,000 copyright free images (simple but good drawings) to use in your books. You can choose to use these pictures, find some online, or even upload your own, if a local artist wants to draw pictures for the book.

You also have the option (if there’s a printer big enough near you) to print a Big Book, on large paper. So cool! The program also resizes pages and text to fit two languages on the same page if you want.

Here’s some screenshots of an example book I made at the conference with some fellow attendees.

PICS OF BLOOM

One of the nights after a full day of literacy craziness, there was a trip offered to a local weaving cooperative which uses looms to make large rugs and blankets, among many other things. So naturally, even though I didn’t buy anything, I still took a crap ton of pictures and some video! It’s really cool, and I plan to go back before my service is over.

The workers here use it as a small business to help them support their families and the community around them. One of the guys was super happy to give us a tour and explain how the looms and weaving worked, though I will tell you right now that I forgot most of the technical jargon.

Look at all the pretty colors!!!

Loom.

Loom!

Guy showing us how the loom works!

Woven things!

More woven things! I'm planning to go back here and buy stuff before I leave the country.

I’m so thankful I got the chance to attend this conference and it was hard to say goodbye to all the great Peace Corps Volunteers and staff I met from outside Uganda. But I’m already putting this knowledge to work! Currently (fingers crossed), I have plans to do some literacy mini-workshops with my tutors! I also am thinking about the best way to display lots of different instructional materials, since that’s one of the bigger concerns I’ve been seeing with my students in school practice: not enough props!

I hope this conference continues in the future and that everyone who was there got the chance to take home some passion and knowledge! It was great to see you all!

To end, here are some pictures of people making instructional materials (we had basically an arts and crafts shop at the back of the room), as well as finishing their idea quilts. This was an way to remember the important, ‘big ideas’ that participants took away from the conference. I think I missed some countries but the ones I got look awesome! Can’t wait to hear the projects they bring.