In my President's Letter for last fall I mentioned that at the ProLiteracy conference, which two of us attended, the emphasis was on how to maximize the use of technology in helping our adult learners. Little did we know at the time how heavily we would need to depend on technology six months later!
Your Board has continued to meet monthly via video conferencing and make decisions on how to adapt to current social constraints and to develop Diablo Valley Literacy Council for the future. This turns out to be a good opportunity to turn our attention to building a better financial foundation for DVLC and also to focus on how we can make fuller use of technology.
We communicated with eac
h of our tutors to find out whether they had found ways to continue working with their students. About a third of our tutors are successfully using video conferencing. I myself only joined the conferencing ranks recently and I find I enjoy meeting via Zoom with my student. He now lives in San Pablo, so the logistics of meeting are easier with conferencing. I love being able to share a worksheet on screen and edit it as we discuss it.
Of course, video conferencing is not feasible for students (or tutors) if they lack technical expertise or don't have equipment to facilitate smooth conferencing. Some tutors are finding a place to meet outdoors with their student, keeping social distance as they work together. We admire all of you who have found work-arounds in order to maintain the tutor-tutee relationship. In the future we hope to be able to present short virtual workshops with new ideas to help tutors adjust.
How or whether we will conduct training for new tutors in the fall is up in the air. We will be looking into how we might use online training if that becomes necessary.
We would love to hear from you with any ideas you have and be sure to participate in
our upcoming
"Summer (virtual) Get-Together"
on August 1 for more inspiration.
With on-going gratitude to all who support Diablo Valley Literacy Council's mission
to assist adults in the Diablo Valley area who need to improve their English as a second language.
Lucy Goodell
President
