How to educate the low-skilled and low-qualified adults

The Greece meeting was supposed to happen in 2020 spring. We were all ready to go when everything changed and AdELe had to move online. Our fantastic team of adult educators didn’t give up and the very important topic “Improving and extending the supply of high quality learning opportunities tailored to the needs of individual low-skilled or low-qualified adults” took place a little bit later. The aim of this LTT was to emphasize the importance how to reach, keep and educate the vulnerable part of the students. The educators of all the partner countries gave presentations on the same topics that we agreed before the meeting. It gave us a good chance to see how the partners are acting in similar situations.

The web-meetings usually need different approach and very well done preparations. When you are communicating through zoom you cannot feel, touch and perceive the same when you are together and having a meeting in the same room. Very often, you are dependent on the speed of you Internet, the language skills of each participant and the tasks that everyone has besides the meeting. That is why we are so very pleased with the online seminar arranged by our Greece partner on the topic, how to take into account the differences of adult learners and deal with it during the learning process with the focus on low-skilled and low-educated adult students.

After the two workshops, where in a short time, we were given the basics of how to teach the adult students, we were ready to make the lesson plans. Every country had to prepare the lesson scenario and on the next day present it to the others. The key points that we learned from the workshops were how important is the target group, learning environment, inclusive and positive feedback during the whole lesson. We also reminded the tips for the good scenario – think systematically before planning your whole lesson and use different and inclusive methodologies. Offer some dessert and tie it to your topic.

It was interesting to see how the participants had put it all into practice. We all liked the Croatian lesson plan with using different digital environments, especially Nearpod, what the Croatian team had taught to all of us in our last online seminar “How to be Creative in Adult Education?”. And we really liked the Netherlands approach – help the students to express their feelings – it’s not only a language learning process. I guess the Netherlands team has taught it to all of us during all of our meetings and I hope that we all are better in inclusive lessons and active participation.

Workshop 1 – ROLE OF THE ADULT EDUCATOR IN THE  VULNERABLE GROUPS

Workshop 2 – EDUCATIONAL TECHNIQUES THAT ENHANCE ACTIVE PARTICIPATION

AdELe was noticed.

The online meeting of AdELe “Extending and developing educators’ competences through the effective use of ICT”, caught the eye of the Teachers Newspaper (“Õpetajate Leht”) of Estonia and they wrote a long article about our project as a good example of online teaching and sharing the knowledge internationally. AdELe is really proud As the paper is the official media channel for Estonian teachers, it is written in Estonian.

Have a look and test your Estonian 🙂 Haapsalu VET shared their digital experiences.

The final day online in Estonia

On the last day of the online project meeting of AdELe, HKHK asked some guests to join us. The previous adult student of Haapsalu Kutsehariduskeskus (Haapsalu Vocational Education and Training Centre) Kaja Aaliste, who graduated as a Nature Guide this autumn, gave an overview of the Läänemaa Loodusfestival (Nature Festival of Lääne County), which was supposed to take place in May 2020 but had to be moved online with quite a short time. The Festival was organized from scratch by the adult students’ group as a part of their studies. It was a good example of how to be creative in adult education and put your studies into practice in quite a different way.

After that Tiina Alasoo from Tallinna Ülikooli Haapsalu kolledž, the cooperation partner of HKHK presented their specialities and the ways they had to re-organize and digitalize their studies during the spring period. They also pointed out the pros and cons of online studies based on the survey they carried out a week ago. The survey was carried out among both, teachers and students. Some pros that were mentioned were the possibility to record and better overall time management. The cons that were pointed out were mostly the lack of real human connection and passivity.

All the 4 days online and dealing with practical tasks were much more exciting than we could expect. Why couldn’t we expect that? It was our first time to do it online and we are also missing the real contact with our great, smart and wonderful project partners

AdELe became creative

During the third day of the meeting, after everyone had got so many creative ideas from the last previous days, it was time to go creative and start to put it all into practice. Every team worked on their own and tried the gained knowledge.

The result of this day is a Padlet full of AdELe Digi Grains – different micro-teaching objects to use straight in your classroom. The Padlet is still growing and all the materials of the teachers are also found in AdELe TOOLBOX.

How to be creative in adult education?

The online seminar “How to be Creative in Adult Education?” brought together five countries to share their best practices about different online tools and environments. During the day every country carried out training in Zoom and introduced the digital tools their school has used and appreciated during their distance learning period. As the goal of the Erasmus+ project “Adult Learning – It’s Never too Late to Learn (AdELe)” is to gather together all the best practices in different areas of adult education, the participants can now share the gained knowledge with their colleagues and add the international value to their teaching process.

The topics of the seminar handled the interactive presentation tools, integrating your content with different online environments, creating student-paced activities online, practical online activities with Moodle and activating teaching methods for online learning to bring more energy, connection, theatre and humour to your online and real-life lessons. All the presentations were recorded and are available to re-watch and use in your lessons. Now the project is going on with putting it all into practice.

AdELe went online

AdELe project started today in Estonia :)  Sounds great, but not exactly like that. Correction – the new meeting of Erasmus+ project “Adult Education – It’s Never too Late to Learn” (AdELe) started today online and will be continued during the next three days. The topic of the current meeting is “Extending and developing educators’ competences through the effective use of ICT” The participants of 5 countries shared their experiences during the distance learning period in spring. Every school pointed out their difficulties and challenges, showed their most-used online environments and talked about the gained skills and how their teaching-learning process is going on at the moment. Tomorrow we will continue with an online seminar “How to be Creative in Adult Education.”