Tutela and Avenue – An interview with Diane Ramanathan

Moderated by Paul Carter, a mentor and resource developer for the Avenue – LearnIT2teach Project, this podcast is an interview with Diane Ramanathan, the Tutela Community Coordinator for Tutela.ca. The session focused on what LINC teachers and Avenue users can find on Tutela, how the resources are organized and classified, what the Collections are, and […]

Embedding on Avenue

This webinar, by Avenue mentor and developer Paul Carter, demonstrated the steps to embed external resources on Avenue in blocks and a variety of activity/resource types.
Participants could follow along as Paul showed how to embed YouTube videos, Google Forms and Maps, Flip videos, Padlets, Weather Widgets, Twitter Feeds, and more!
Ideas were shared on how to use these resources in online teaching and tips were provided for embedding external websites.

Cyber Awareness Training Part 2 – Privacy: Fragile Handle with Care

Presented by Avenue-LearnIT2teach mentor/developer Margarita Berezyanskaya, this webinar discusses digital privacy.
Every time we go online, we leave digital footprints, both anonymous and personally identifiable, that become part of big data used by companies, governments and cyber criminals to know who we are, what we do and what defines us.
In this session, participants will learn how to protect their privacy, minimize impacts of digital surveillance and manage their online presence.

Cyber Awareness Training Part 2 – Don’t Feed the Phish

Presented by Avenue-LearnIT2teach mentor/developer Margarita Berezyanskaya, this webinar introduced participants to phishing.
Phishing remains one of the most effective avenues leading cyber criminals to your data.
With the help of breached data, artificial intelligence tools, spoofing techniques and open-source intelligence, they evolved and became harder to detect.
In this interactive session, participants learned about different types of phishing (such as spear phishing, whaling, vishing, smishing), commonly used social engineering strategies and indicators of a phishing attempt.
The NLOC project, developed for the Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) Program, will introduce innovative and unprecedented online courseware on avenue.ca. This is a five-year project funded by IRCC for CLB-3, CLB-4 and CLB-5 learners. This curriculum incorporates digital literacy and specialized content, such as Indigenous perspectives, Francophone communities, inclusivity and cultural awareness. This accessible courseware fills a language learning gap for self-directed, asynchronous learning, offering “off the shelf” comprehensive e-units that learners can do anytime, anywhere. Also designed to be flexible, this courseware can be used as a blended model in face-to-face and virtual classrooms, providing a ready-made curriculum for instructors to supplement as they see fit. This courseware includes the principles and best practices for a PBLA-aligned curriculum, incorporating real-world tasks, prior knowledge and experience, skill-building activities, skill-using and assessment tasks and reflection. Content is organized under themes for the 21st century, and the activities are designed to take the learner on a journey that builds skills and strategies needed for integration in work, education and community.

Avenue.ca-Onyxon.ca Merger – Why and what’s in it for the Avenue community?

This presentation for the Avenue community by Jim Edgar of New Language Solutions gives an update on the merger of avenue.ca and onyxon.ca.
The presenter explains why this is a “win-win” endeavour and how it benefits Avenue users.
These benefits include new portal features and access to more eUnits and modules aligned with the Canadian Language Benchmarks and Portfolio-Based Language Assessment (PBLA).
The merger will also include access to new Occupation-specific language training courses for Avenue programs.

ChatGPT Your Assistant?

In this webinar, John Allan, Avenue-LearnIT2teach mentor and senior developer, introduced ChatGPT applications and innovative methods to efficiently create language learning materials. Participants learned ChatGPT basics and its potential for language teaching and learning.
John explained how to use practical prompts, and he provided tricks and tips to create various activities.
Participants also learned how ChatGPT can help produce targeted vocabulary activities, including realistic dialogues, role-plays and more.

Demystifying Stage 3 of LearnIT2teach on Avenue Webinar

The presenters, Paul Carter and Vesna Radivojevic, break down the LearnIT2teach Stage 3 training into manageable chunks to help participants come up with strategies that will work for them. Several Stage 3 tasks are demonstrated.

Participants should have completed Pre-Stage 1, Stage 1, Pre-Stage 2, and Stage 2 of LearnIT2teach prior to the session. They can follow along on another tab, a second computer or device and they have the opportunity to complete one or more of their training tasks during the session or using the recording.
The NLOC project, developed for the Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) Program, will introduce innovative and unprecedented online courseware on avenue.ca. This is a five-year project funded by IRCC for CLB-3, CLB-4 and CLB-5 learners. This curriculum incorporates digital literacy and specialized content, such as Indigenous perspectives, Francophone communities, inclusivity and cultural awareness. This accessible courseware fills a language learning gap for self-directed, asynchronous learning, offering “off the shelf” comprehensive e-units that learners can do anytime, anywhere. Also designed to be flexible, this courseware can be used as a blended model in face-to-face and virtual classrooms, providing a ready-made curriculum for instructors to supplement as they see fit. This courseware includes the principles and best practices for a PBLA-aligned curriculum, incorporating real-world tasks, prior knowledge and experience, skill-building activities, skill-using and assessment tasks and reflection. Content is organized under themes for the 21st century, and the activities are designed to take the learner on a journey that builds skills and strategies needed for integration in work, education and community.

Demystifying Stage 2 of LearnIT2teach on Avenue

The presenters, Paul Carter and Vesna Radivojevic, break down the LearnIT2teach Stage 2 training into manageable chunks to help participants come up with strategies that will work for them. Several Stage 2 tasks are demonstrated.

Participants should have completed Pre-Stage 1, Stage 1, and Pre-Stage 2 of LIT2T prior to the session. They can follow along on another tab, a second computer or device and they have the opportunity to complete one or more of their training tasks during the session or using the recording.
The NLOC project, developed for the Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) Program, will introduce innovative and unprecedented online courseware on avenue.ca. This is a five-year project funded by IRCC for CLB-3, CLB-4 and CLB-5 learners. This curriculum incorporates digital literacy and specialized content, such as Indigenous perspectives, Francophone communities, inclusivity and cultural awareness. This accessible courseware fills a language learning gap for self-directed, asynchronous learning, offering “off the shelf” comprehensive e-units that learners can do anytime, anywhere. Also designed to be flexible, this courseware can be used as a blended model in face-to-face and virtual classrooms, providing a ready-made curriculum for instructors to supplement as they see fit. This courseware includes the principles and best practices for a PBLA-aligned curriculum, incorporating real-world tasks, prior knowledge and experience, skill-building activities, skill-using and assessment tasks and reflection. Content is organized under themes for the 21st century, and the activities are designed to take the learner on a journey that builds skills and strategies needed for integration in work, education and community.

Academic Language and Skills for Stage II

The presenters, Marijke Geurts and John Allan, demonstrate two PBLA-compatible modules available on Avenue under the theme ‘Attending Post-Secondary Education:
– CLB 5/6: Developing Academic and Research Skills
– CLB 7/8: Working in Academic Groups
An overview of the skills covered in these modules is provided, and practical suggestions for teaching these modules in a blended context are suggested.

The Structure of an Avenue PBLA-compatible Unit

This video for the Avenue-LearnIT2teach Project explains the structure of a typical PBLA-compatible eUnit at Avenue.ca. (PBLA is the abbreviated form of Portfolio-based Language Assessment.)

Onboarding New LINC Students to Avenue

This webinar, presented by Svetlana Mitrovic, with support from Vesna Radivojevic, Jasjit Saraw and Maureen Kelbert, introduces the Orientation to Avenue for LINC 3- 5 Students.

This resource was developed by Vancouver of Community College to orient new-to-LINC students to the Avenue courseware.

During this session, the presenter introduced the Orientation to Avenue for New LINC 3 – 5 Students and demonstrated some lessons.

A model of onboarding new LINC 3 – 5 students was introduced, and possible modifications discussed.

Development of the orientation was funded by IRCC with support from the LearnIT2Teach team.