If you’re interested in learning something new, this article is for you. Broken down by subject and/or category, here are several top-notch self-education resources bookmarked online over the past few years. Subjects include: Science and Health Business and Money History and World Culture Law Computer Science and Engineering Mathematics English and Communications Foreign and Sign Languages Multiple Subjects and Miscellaneous Free books and reading recommendations Educational Mainstream Broadcast Media Online Archives Directiories of Open Education Accessed Here
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Check User Name Available At Multiple Sites 15 Brilliant Websites That Will Inspire And Change Your Life
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Recommended Websites
NALA – Write On This is NALA’s interactive website to help people improve their reading, writing and numbers skills online. The content is pitched at FETAC Level 2 and Level 3. Users can study at the own pace and in their own time to improve their skills or get a national qualification.
Worksheets and video clips from NALA’s Read Write Now, Really Useful Guide and Written Off series are on this site. Very useful if you are looking for something in particular from the Read Write Now Books or would like to watch an instruction video.
Information related to the RTE programmes on Literacy. Printable and online exercises. Literacy tools are for adults who would like to improve their spelling, reading, writing, number and computer skills. Tipperary ETB Adult Learning Scheme This website has lots of useful Tutor resources and guidelines, including information on local services and a Tutor Forum. http://www.southtippals.com/tutors.htm
This section of the BBC Skillwise website will explain the sounds of English, recognising letters and words, skimming and scanning, reading and understanding. http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/topic-group/reading
BBC Skillswise offers free maths resources, including explanations, videos, quizzes and games. It is designed primarily for tutors to use as a resource, selecting activities for their learners. However, many tutors have shown their learners how to use it and navigate around it to learn and practice. http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/topic-group/numbers Handwriting, filling in a form, writing a letter http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/topic-group/writing For working on a variety of spelling games and printable worksheets. http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/topic-group/spelling
Family Learning UK Here you will find lots of information and links to useful resources to explain various aspects of the UK school curriculum. http://www.familylearning.org.uk/ Clare Family Learning Programme Clare Family Learning Resource Pack was published in 2000 to support parents helping their children's emerging literacy and numeracy skills. As courses were piloted, research carried out and resources published, the Clare Family Learning Project became nationally renowned for its programmes, training and materials. http://www.clarefamilylearning.org/ Numeracy This site offers three interactive activities to help work out the time and understand time. The interface is adult friendly. Activities include: Telling the time, AM or PM and the 24 hour clock. http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks2/maths/time/ Free, customisable templates for practising numeracy skills. Designed to be used in a blended approach to learning, they provide tutors with an additional resource to enhance classroom delivery. http://llu.rkl.org.uk.peppermint.arvixe.com/ This website provides lots of maths materials and puzzles. Maths Challenge is a site providing a wide range of maths questions and tasks on everything from ‘what is a prime number’ to rectangle construction. Users can email a maths challenge or questions to the site. This site is here to help anyone who is looking for simple answers to basic questions about money. We have 7 money related topics on the left. When you click on a topic you will be brought to a list of questions we have answers to. All our answers are provided in 2 minute or less videos. We all use maths everyday, often without realising it. We estimate time, use money, plan journeys, garden, carry out DIY, shop and cook. All these involve maths! Click on some of the resources here to test your knowledge and find out more about everyday maths topics. http://maths4us.org/help-with-your-maths/ The Maths4Life project promotes active learning in mathematics. It has produced numerous resources that can be downloaded from here. http://www.nrdc.org.uk/publications_details.asp?ID=105 Ideas and worksheets that make real life maths more visible.
Maths Printables
www.teachingmoney.co.uk/eurosite/euroindex.html www.ictgames.com
Spelling It is well known that English spelling is very hard. Are you one of the many people who had problems with spelling at school? If so, Spellzone could help you improve your spelling. http://www.spellzone.com/single_adult_spelling.cfm Play Spell Me Right (TM) which is a spelling bee like word scramble game. Your goal is to figure out correct word spellings. This is one of the most popular word game on Android Market, and it is free without any annoying ads. If you love word scramblers, spelling bee, crosswords, scrabble, word search, hangman, or other word games, you'll love this amazingly fun game. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.applimobile.spellmeright This new website Words for Life gives you an idea of what communication milestones your baby and child might reach as they grow. There are ideas for fun activities you can do together to help your children develop their skills. http://www.wordsforlife.org.uk/
Look Cover Write Check method of learning a new word. www.ictgames.com /lcwc.html
WordTalk is a free text to speech plugin. It contains a talking dictionary to help decide which word spelling is most appropriate.
Various ways to help with spelling Students watch a video introducing each lesson, then listen to the audio file in each lesson that corresponds to the text. All of the instructions, all of the information, all of the drills necessary for a student to master the reading and spelling process are presented in a tightly-structured format. Students proceed one-lesson-at-a-time through all 644 online lessons and complete the over 400 worksheets embedded within our online curriculum. http://www.weallcanread.com/phonics-for-adults.html ESOL The materials found on this website are all the handmade product of members of the Read Theory team. The team consists of a handful of professional writers and educators, many of whom have received advanced degrees, are published authors and award winning teachers. http://www.englishforeveryone.org/
About the site: This site contains a lot of tutor resources and advice. It has a comprehensive selection of resources for all skills and all levels. There is a range of beginner lesson plans and tips for teaching grammar as well as a comprehensive ESOL support section with a piece on how to integrate IT into ESOL classes. Students and practitioners need to register to use, but it’s free. Who is it for? http://www.onestopenglish.com/esol/ This has plenty of excellent virtual activities on it. Shopping at the market is a good one for low levels. Students can operate a lift and put the right change in a shopkeeper’s hand. The themes, such as friends, food and drink and neighbourhood are very topical and there are virtual activities on every theme covered. There are teacher’s notes accompanying each unit. Who is it for? ESOL practitioners and students http://www.talent.ac.uk/londononline/welcome/home/index.htm Islands Voices holds over 150 online ESOL listening recordings (including authentic speech interviews) and 75 video clips all CEFR-referenced (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages), with transcripts and listed by theme and language content in 4 online PDF catalogues. The documentary clips give a plain language introduction to a topic or event and are complemented with more challenging authentic speech interviews. http://guthan.wordpress.com/about/ About the site: This is a huge resource which is full of worksheets, lesson plans, resources and tips for all aspects of ESOL. There is an automatic gap-fill exercise generator which is easy to create and print off. There are a large range of articles on listening, speaking, reading, writing, pronunciation, vocabulary, games and teaching resources. On the ‘Learn English’ section of the site there’s a lot of video content with ‘real world English’ and plenty of listening activities and exercises. http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/ BBC World Service Learning English This is an excellent self-study site with audio, video, lesson plans and worksheets. It’s particularly good for pronunciation, idiomatic English and day-to-day English for the workplace. It has up-to-date news and sports stories with reports from around the world on a broad range of subjects. Tasks reinforce good learning strategies for listening with good pre-task exercises. Who is it for? ESOL students and practitioners. http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/
Puzzles & Wordsearches For making word searches, crosswords and other puzzles. http://puzzlemaker.school.discovery.com/
Miscellaneous Interactive Literacy and Numeracy This website stands out amongst the rest in terms of ease of use and rich multimedia content. The website is games based so it is quick and fun. www.ictgames.com Worksheet Generator www.literature.org – Website where you can find a variety ofstories www.toolsforenglanish.com – Paste your story into this website and you will be able to create wordsearches, cloze sentences, questions and answers.
A website packed full of fun activities to help children learn every day. Academy Khan Academy is an award winning site with numerous demonstrations of how to practice maths, science and finance exercises. There are thousands of videos on everything from arithmetic to banking and money. This site is ideal for independent learners. The Skills Workshop provides free adult literacy and numeracy resources. http://www.skillsworkshop.org Powerpoint Presentations Free presentation in powerpoint format and free interactive activities
Wikipedia Up to date information on any imaginable topic. The language can be a bit technical and difficult for literacy students. It may help to use the information but simplify the text.
You Tube Up to date information on any imaginable topic in video form. Use it to listen and learn about a topic, then write a summary with the student. With a little creativity it has great potential: learn about ‘Phonics’ ‘How to cut hair’ or ‘Repair a car’.
SNIP Programme can be downloaded for free. Aimed at improving reading and spelling using high frequency words. Literacy Programme Part 1, 2, 3
Just World Basic level worksheets that deal with social justice issues.
Dyslexia Increases readability for readers with dyslexia.
Time and Date Create your own calendar. Good site for numeracy. www.timeanddate.com/countdown/create Information from: Isabelle Dumont Sometimes you want to disconnect a USB drive or a flash memory card but Windows says it can’t be removed because it’s busy. Or maybe you just don’t like the “Safely Remove Hardware” function that sits in the notification area. If you are looking for a better way, you might try an open source alternative that will let you quickly and safely disconnect USB drives, even in some cases where Windows says you can't. It’s a free portable program called “USB Disk Ejector” and it makes safely ejecting drives about as easy as it can get. USB Disk Ejector works in Windows XP on up, both 32- and 64-bit. It requires no installation and can be run from anywhere convenient. The developer’sdownload page is here. The download is a 0.95 MB ZIP file containing the executable file and an HTML information file. It’s probably best to extract it to a separate folder. A CFG file containing your personal settings will be created when you first configure the program. The program can be run by clicking the executable or by creating a shortcut. Another option is to minimize it to the notification area (system tray). You can do a straightforward ejection by using the simple interface shown in the first graphic or you can configure a number of additional options by clicking “More” to open the dialog shown in the second graphic. The program works for external USB disk drives as well as USB flash drives and memory cards. Next time you need to write a long email message or some other document, or maybe a letter, try running the text past Hemingway before you send it. Not Ernest, of course, but the free web-based text analysis tool that shares his name. Hemingway checks your text, tells you what reading level it scores, and gives you tips on how to improve your writing. In the example below, for example, it suggests changing "all of" to a simpler "all". Not all of its suggestions are as sensible, but it's still a fun exercise, especially with the kids' homework maybe! Hemingway is available as a desktop app, but the easiest way to use it is via the free web-based system. Just go to www.hemingwayapp.com and paste in some text from your PC, for instant feedback. Thanks to Gizmos Future Learn offers a diverse selection of free, high quality online courses from some of the world’s leading universities and other cultural institutions. Once upon a time, writing music involved the use of music notation paper (with those familiar 5 lines), and lots of pencils and erasers. Nowadays, you can do it much more easily on a computer, using software that's really just a musical version of a word processor. Start with an empty sheet of notation paper, then drag notes onto the page at the appropriate point. You can move the notes around with the mouse if you make a mistake, and you can hear your work in progress at any time just by pressing the Play button. If you've never tried writing music this way, or indeed if you've never tried writing music at all, Forte 5 is a well-known notation software product for Windows which is available as freeware for a limited-functionality version. Despite being free, it has everything you need in order to try creating your own tunes. Forte 5 Freeware is available for download at http://www.fortenotation.com/en/products/writing-scores/product-overview/(check out the last column on the page, and the download link at the bottom). It runs on all recent versions of Windows, at the 26 MB download is malware-free according to Web of Trust and VirusTotal. Note, however, that you may be asked to restart your computer after installing it. These are the best battery saver Android apps in Google’s Play Store. These aren’t your average run-of-the-mill power saving options — we’re looking at apps that actually work as intended and help your device make better use of its battery. That said, here are the top five best battery saver Android apps. DU Battery SaveDU Battery Saver easily comes in as one of my favorite battery saver Android apps. It seems to work better than most built-in power saving options, and has a whole lot more features to take advantage of than some of the more average power saving apps. There are various intelligent mode and pre-set options that you can set up to make sure you’re using as little battery as possible. Du Battery Saver even has a few of its own widgets to make things easily accessible. All in all, DU Battery Saver is one of the best battery saving Android apps you can get. Easy Battery SaverAnother great battery saver Android app is Easy Battery Saver. In some ways, it works the same Du Battery Save does, but it’s unique in that it gives you a quick status of your battery levels on the main page, giving you fairly accurate analysis on how much more use you can get out of it. One of the best advantages of Easy Battery Saver is that it lives up to its name — being user friendly is probably one of the best things about it. It’s definitely one of the best battery saver Android apps out there. Battery Widget RebornBattery Widget Reborn is another one of my favorite battery saving Android apps, mainly because it has a lot of features, a notification icon, and some really useful widgets. Honestly, it’s one of the more thoughtful and well designed battery saving Android apps on Google Play. Additionally, it has the Dashclock Extension that lets you activate your camera flash to use as a flashlight. It’s not like those two features are a must have, but the Dashclock Extension is certainly a nice addition for us Dashclock users. For more info on Dashclock, click here. As for more useful features, there are a few power saving options that automatically kick in during the night while you’re sleeping, such as turning Airplane Mode on. Overall, it’s one of the more useful battery saving Android apps, so check it out. JuiceDefenderJuiceDefender has tons of different preset modes. For the most part, all of them work wonderfully, and one of the more unique things about JuiceDefender is that it scales the CPU when your device is idle. In other words, the processor isn’t taking as much power when you just aren’t using it. It has an easy to use interface, it can turn mobile data off automatically, and most of all, it can extend your battery life for long periods of time. It’s also one of the most recommended battery saver Android apps. Most of the app is free, but some features will want you to purchase the Plus or Ultimate version. Either way, though, it’s one of the many loved battery saver Android apps. Battery DoctorBattery Doctor is one of the more popular battery saving apps for Android. Battery Doctor is nice because it not only is designed to speed up your device, but also features a built-in task killer to get rid of the apps taking unneeded space and power in the background, like bloatware that many Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and other carrier branded phones come with. This battery saver Android app actually shows information very accurately. For example, it will show you how much battery power you have left after shutting down various features on your phone, such as Bluetooth, GPS, Wi-Fi, and etc. One of the best parts of this app is how accurately it gauges battery levels, and that’s probably one of the best features you could ever get so you actually have an idea of when your device is going to run out of battery, based on your consumption patterns. It’s nice to know how much time you have left, and can be very helpful. Wrap UpThere you have it – some of the better battery saving apps for Android. There are a lot of power saving apps out there, but some of them just don’t work as we want them, too. Of course, you don’t always need an app to save battery life. There are plenty of things you can do on your own to eek out that last bit of juice. Often, basic things like changing your wallpaper to a darker color will help lower battery consumption. Getting rid of background data and live wallpapers can be a huge help, as well. And finally, the more apps you have installed, the worse your battery performance is likely to be, so be sure to keep only the apps that you actually use. Final ThoughtsWhile these are some of the more advanced battery saving Android apps out there, it’s important to note that nothing will extend your devices battery life like you changing up your usage patterns. Any battery saving app that functions as a ‘task killer’ should be avoided at all costs. Android is a multitasking operating system, and, as such, keeps apps in the memory so that they can be accessed quickly. Android has been designed use up most of the available memory, and keeps often used apps in the background. If a manager (app) comes and closes them, they will simply reinitialize, and consume a lot of battery in the process. Check out our best battery saving tips and tricks here, you’ll find some fantastic tips inside. Do you have any battery saver Android apps you’ve used in the past? Did you like them? Latest Issue:Includes: Special on The Spaces Apps Challenge, Cancer Research in Ireland, The Age of All Things, Digital Health Apps, The European Space Agency, Back from the Dead, Digital Privacy and Social Media in Ireland FREE until Sunday April 13th (Normally €2 per digital PDF copy)
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Literacy in IrelandIn the past literacy was considered to be the ability to read and write. Today the meaning of literacy has changed to reflect changes in society and the skills needed by individuals to participate fully in society. It involves listening, speaking, reading, writing, numeracy and using everyday technology to communicate and handle information. Categories
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AuthorHi, my name is Loreto and I'm an adult literacy tutor. I created this website to keep track of all things useful I have come across. Sometimes I am given a link by someone and if its not put on here it can be forgotten about. If you come across something you think is useful or even just fun, drop me a note to let me know and I will put it on here. Thank you for your time and I hope you find this website useful. |