As a group, Aboriginal adults are among the most diverse in Canada. Living in urban, rural, on-reserve and off-reserve settings, they may earn their livings traditionally or in ways that make them indistinguishable from their non-aboriginal peers. This diversity means that there are dramatically different levels of literacy amongst aboriginal adults and very different economic and social demands for literacy skill use, depending on where and how one makes a living.

The TOWES department at Bow Valley College has received funding from HRSDC’s Office of Literacy and Essential Skills (OLES) to complete a market segmentation analysis of the Aboriginal literacy market.

TOWES is working with T Scott Murray (DataAngel) on the project titled:  A Market Segmentation View of the Aboriginal Literacy Market. The main objectives are to complete the analysis of adult Aboriginal populations and to undertake a process of consultation in each province and territory in Canada.

As part of the consultation phase, TOWES and Mr. Murray, supported by the NWT Literacy Council, will participate in a session at the Baker Centre in Yellowknife, NWT on June 29.

At the session, Mr. Murray will outline the findings from the analysis and speak to what the findings mean for communities, literacy instruction providers and individuals. The market-segmentation approach to the analysis provides a much more finely differentiated view of adult Aboriginal literacy rates than traditional analyses.

Ms. Gardner will describe the OLES funded online literacy assessment tool and instructional system which Bow Valley is developing with an international team of experts in literacy and assessment. She will also outline opportunities for participation in the validity testing and/or field-testing of the tool and the system.

Session attendees will have the opportunity to participate in a question and answer session and to discuss the current state of literacy instruction within their own organizations and how it might be strengthened or refined, based on the results of the market segmentation analysis.

Date: Tuesday June 29, 2010

Time: 9:00 am to 12:00 pm

Where: Baker Centre 50^th Avenue Yellowknife

RSVP by June 25 to:  mbarton@bowvalleycollege.ca or 403 410-3198

nwtliteracy@nwtliteracy.ca

Did you know that Continuous Learning is one of the 9 Essential Skills?

This week, the entire TOWES team participated in Continuous Learning, as we attended the Bow Valley College PD day.

The theme of this year’s PD Day was: “Sustainability – Living and Learning Beyond Tomorrow. The day kicked off with an engaging key note address by Ken Steele of Academica Group Inc. on Emerging Trends and Sustainability in the World of Post Secondary Education.

Have you checked out Academica’s “Top Ten”?

Not only were we busy learning about different initiatives going on at BVC and participating in sessions to learn new ideas and skills we can apply in our work, some of our team participated by making presentations, including a presentation on teaching Essential Skills in Namibia and Enhancing Sustainability through Customer Service.
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We are excited to share that the funding for two of our upcoming projects was announced this afternoon at a Federal Funding Announcement event hosted by Bow Valley College.

Lee Richardson, MP Calgary Central, and Sharon Carry, President and CEO,  announced that BVC will receive over $1.6 million for three projects through the Career Focus Program and the Office of Literacy and Essential Skills.

The three projects that will receive this funding are:

Connection to the Workplace, Read to Succeed (RtS) and a Market Segmentation View of the Aboriginal Literacy Market (ALM). The RtS and ALM projects will be managed and developed by us, and our colleagues at Connexion Carriere will be handling the Connection to the Workplace project.

For more information view the Press Release or  watch the event on Webcast.

We will be posting more details about these projects soon, but if you have any questions please contact us.

We are gearing up for an exciting announcement this afternoon at Bow Valley College.  Information about some of our upcoming Essential Skills initiatives and new projects is about to be dropped, with a visit from Calgary Central MP Lee Richardson.

Bow Valley College will be web casting the event so tune in at1:00pm (MST) to: http://webcast.bowvalleycollegeweb.com/

Stay tuned to the TOWES Times for more information and be sure to follow our tweets for up to the minute updates!