Name: Maria Lindgren
Institution: Urkraft
City: Skellefteå
Country: Sweden
I’m interested in: Teaching of second language to immigrants
Please describe briefly your background and your institution: I am preschool teacher from the beginning. For two years ago I made a pilot study about the immigrants situation in Skellefteå. After a workshop were I present my pilotstudy we built a group and send an application to start an integrationproject. Urkraft became the head for the grantet project and they employed me. I am now teaching women a second language by alternative methods like for instans cooking.
Urkaft is a company that have a lot of experience and are used to run projects. It is a coaching company that help people to get into work.
What do you hope will be the outcome of the contact seminar in terms of future international cooperation for your institution? We hope to start up new projects for immigrants and we want to do it together with other companies in order to learn from each other and exchange experiences so we can improve the situation for the immigrants.
Our company is capable of coordinating a project application but we should prefer to not do it at the moment. But if there are no one else who are capable or interested we can consider it.
Name: Gabriella Russo
Institution: Adriatica Consulting Srl
City: Lanciano (CH)
Country: Italy
I’m interested in: Basic skills training (workplace)
Please describe briefly your background and your institution: Adriatica Consulting Srl is a training institution i Lanciano. The primary objective, is to provide effective responses to the different needs of the professional development and deliver training and consulting services higly competitive,innovative and skilled. We also promote training for adults and projects for individual and corporate training.
What do you hope will be the outcome of the contact seminar in terms of future international cooperation for your institution? I hope to make arrangements to present project applications already by this year, about the chosen topic.
Name: Birgitte Kristiansen
Institution: Kongsgård Skolesenter
City: Kristiansand
Country: Norway
I’m interested in: Adult literacy
Please describe briefly your background and your institution: I have been working with teaching of basic skills for two years. I mainly teach young adults in the age of 16-30, but also older participants. The participants have no, or little schoolbackground. I teach adults in math and digital competence.
Kongsgård Skolesenter is teaching center with six different departments consisting of approximately 1000 students. I work at the department teaching basic skills in norwegian. Approximately half of our participants are young minors, coming to Norway without parents or family. These participants attend classes that prepares them for the Elementary school for adults. They have the following subjects: norwegian, english, math, digital competance, social studies, biologi and sports.
One of the challenges is that they also have to learn "how to go to school".
What do you hope will be the outcome of the contact seminar in terms of future international cooperation for your institution? I hope to get in touch with institutions with the same category of students and the same challenges to exchange experiences and methodes.
Name: Irma Partanen
Institution: IP Koulutuspalvelut Tmi
City: Kouvola
Country: Finland
I’m interested in: Teaching of second language to immigrants
Please describe briefly your background and your institution: My company is a private language training provider which organises Finnish as a second language -courses for immigrants at all levels + profession related language training and training for community interpreter´s qualification. We work in close co-operation with local Employment and Economic Development Offices. At the moment we +local education institutions are planning a joint project for improving spontaneous speaking skills and fluency of immigrant students.
What do you hope will be the outcome of the contact seminar in terms of future international cooperation for your institution? I would like to participate in projects aimed at developing methods & materials for teaching numeracy for adult immigrants who lack basic skills. I am also verý interested in developing ways of using storytelling in language teaching for low lever learners.
Name: Pirjo Kapanen
Institution: Tampere Adult Education Centre
City: Tampere
Country: Finland
I’m interested in: Adult literacy
Please describe briefly your background and your institution: I was born and went to school in North-Finland. I am a mother of four lovely girls and these days also a proud grandmother.
In Finland I have been working as a teacher for adult immigrants since 2001 and since 2002 as an adult literacy teacher in Tampere Adult Education Centre. I have been cooperating in planning and developing targeted education for adult literacy teachers in Finland. From 1990 until 2001 I worked in Austria. My main responsibility there was to help refugees and other immigrants integrate into the new society. As a young student I worked in Sweden during several summerseasons. I have university degrees in Finnish, Swedish and pedagogics.
Tampere Adult Education Foundation was founded in 1962. The foundation runs the Tampere Adult Education Centre with almost 15,000 adult students annualy. Our institution is known as a dynamic and developing institution which provides know-how and development services for enterprises and communities, as well as international cooperation.
Tampere Adult Education Centre meets the needs of its clients' globalizing operations by organizing development projects crossing borders and improving our own and our clients' competence. Our international partner network is constantly expanding due to cooperation with enterprises and educational institutions.
For international students, we offer Finnish courses as a part of Immigrant Education.
Our courses for immigrant students include basic level language and integration courses as well as more advanced courses. Literacy courses for immigrants we have offered since 1996. We also have experience in planning, developing and offering targeted education for adult literacy teachers.
What do you hope will be the outcome of the contact seminar in terms of future international cooperation for your institution? Our Institution hopes to get new contacts within the European Basic Skills Network. We would be happy to learn and share practices and experiences concerning the teaching of basic skills/the professionalization of basic skills teachers. We also plan to participate in developing new project- and cooperation ideas concerning the professional development of adult literacy teachers with other seminar participants. Our institution looks forward to possible partnerships in future Grundtvig-projects concerning the professionalization of adult literacy teachers.
Name: Maria Teresa Tabernero
Institution: Centro de Adultos "CELTIBERIA"
City: Soria
Country: Spain
I’m interested in: Teaching of second language to immigrants
Please describe briefly your background and your institution: I have been working in different areas of education. I have taught Spanish in a primary school and been the headteacher in it for 19 years. This is my 3rd year in a School for Adults, and my first time as the secretary of the centre.
Celtiberia Adults School is the only centre for adults in my town, Soria (30.000 inhabitants). It offers a wide range of studies: Literacy for immigrants, Spanish 2nd language, foreign languages, primary and secondary education, distance secondary education, courses on-line and workshops (plumber, electricity, image & sound, fabric design…) It has also a very active association which completes the curriculum with extra and complementary cultural and free time activities.
What do you hope will be the outcome of the contact seminar in terms of future international cooperation for your institution?
Exchange of experiences.
Networking and partnerships between similar schools.
Developing of new resources and class materials.
Name: Inger Midmo Alves
Institution: Vuxenutbildningen (Adult education) Municipality of Upplands Bro, Sweden
City: Kungsängen
Country: Sweden
I’m interested in: Teaching of second language to immigrants
Please describe briefly your background and your institution: I am a teacher of Special Education and hold a Master of Secondary Education in Swedish and modern languages.
I teach students with lighter learning disabilities and dyslexia individually. I find this very challangeing, when it comes to students with another mother toungue than Swedish and a possible reading and writing dysfunction. I have been taking part of several conferences on high functioning autism and dysfunctions linked to this.
What do you hope will be the outcome of the contact seminar in terms of future international cooperation for your institution? It will be very interesting to meet collegues interested in the same subject and overall adult education. I do hope to join a consortium on the subject of learning disabililties in adulthood, with a focus on those students that are following the regular curricula dispite their difficulties. I speak Spanish, Portuguese fluently and French, Italian "helply". I do understand some other languages, since languages as such has been a special interest of mine since childhood.
Name: Tomas Stens
Institution: Vuxenutbildningen Upplands-Bro
City: Stockholm
Country: Sweden
I’m interested in: Teaching of second language to immigrants
Please describe briefly your background and your institution: I work as Headmaster of the Adult Education Department in Upplands-Bro municipality in the northwest of Stockholm region, Sweden.
The adult education centra mainly offers basic adult education and has approximately 600 students of which most are in the age between 20 and 40 years. More than 50% of our students have immigrant backgrounds.
We offer:
- Swedish for immigrants, all levels
- General adult education, for students who want to study basic adult education or complete their high school diploma at adult age.
- Vocational education and training
Integration of disadvantaged groups into studies and into the labour market is a key concern. Many of our students are immigrants, unemployed or persons who for different reasons (early parenthood, dyslexia, different personal problems, learning disabilities etc) didn’t complete high school or even their basic studies.
I manage a staff of approximately 30 employees (teachers, student counsellors, project managers and administrators). I am responsible for quality assurance and for reaching the pedagogical goals. I am also responsible for development of the school in all aspects.
What do you hope will be the outcome of the contact seminar in terms of future international cooperation for your institution? The reasons to participate
- To get new ideas how to work with basic adult education
- To get more "tools" for school development and leadership in basic adult education
- To get new input in how things are done in other European countries. I am confident I will find useful things to "import".
- To develop network with partners on an European level for projects and exchange of teachers and students
- To develop a Grundtvig project
Name: Esin Antusan
Institution: Talas İlçe Milli Eğitim Müdürlüğü-Talas District National Education Directorate
City: Kayseri
Country: Turkey
I’m interested in: Basic skills training (family learning)
Please describe briefly your background and your institution: I work as EU project expert in Research and Development department of Talas District National Education Direrectorate. As the directorate so far we haven't been involved in any EU lifelong projects, but we would like to initiate one through this seminar. The district directorate is a public institution and in charge of coordinating all kinds of educational activities in preschool, primary, secondary, vocational and adult education in the district Talas. We are open to all offers as long as they are pertaining to education, adult education, teacher training and management issues. I would like to give a brief information about our district. Talas is very close to the centrum. The district Talas has remarkable historical buildings like American hospital, American college,Underground city, Mount Erciyes which is one of the biggest and most famous ski resorts in Turkey. Our town is also very close to the Cappadocia- Fairy Chimneys. Talas is under preservation within 7 regions 7 sites by ÇEKÜL (Environment and Culture) foundation.
What do you hope will be the outcome of the contact seminar in terms of future international cooperation for your institution? we hope that the outcome of this contact seminar will be in the way that we will be able to find partners that we are seeking for our potential project entitled "Talking books: women". we are also open to become partner in a project in which the coordinator is not us.
Name: Karsten Schneider
Institution: Deutscher Volkshochschul-Verband
City: Bonn
Country: Germany
I’m interested in: Digital competence for adults
Please describe briefly your background and your institution: The German Adult Education Association (Deutscher Volkshochschul-Verband e.V., DVV), is the federal umbrella association for the 16 regional associations of Germany's community adult education centres (Volkshochschulen, VHS). DVV and its Institute represent the interests of the association's members, together with those of 940 Volkshochschulen, at the national, european, and international level.
Furthermore, DVV supports distance learning in the field of basic education. Ich-will-lernen.de (“I want to learn”) is Germany’s biggest open learning portal. It provides free learning materials to increase the users’ literacy skills and basic education and offers over 31.000 exercises. Since 2004, it has been used by more than 328,000 learners. The interactive exercises are compiled individually for each learner. Users can register anonymously online and are guided by online tutors. Institutions for adult education can use the portal as a blended learning instrument and set up online courses to support their own classes.
What do you hope will be the outcome of the contact seminar in terms of future international cooperation for your institution? Evidence suggests that ich-will-lernen.de reduces the stigmatised image that is attached to early levels of literacy work. Working on a computer gives learners a sense of accomplishment and status that they sometimes do not experience with traditional approaches to literacy. Using our e-learning portal allows learners to work autonomously and to control the time, pace and content of their learning. The integration of basic skills and technology allows the simultaneous improvement of both traditional and digital literacies
The implementation of ich-will-lernen.de has changed the role of the tutor in a blended literacy group. Tutor training should take note of the rapid shift towards online learning. Within a learning partnership we would like to exchange experiences concerning blended learning in the field of basic skills. We are interested in systematically describing the training needs of literacy tutors making use of blended learning. Furthermore, we would like to outline a training programme which could address these needs. This, by itself, should make use of a blended learning approach.
