TOWES has been working in a partnership with the Canadian Virtual College Consortium (CVCC) and Fanshawe College to develop and test our new online training tool: Essential Skills Direct.

The ESD field test is currently underway; for more information on what our partners are contributing to this project check out CVCC’s project website.  Here you will learn about how Fanshawe College is using a new technological and human interactive approach to help vunerable learners to over come learning barriers. Fanshawe’s  ‘Distance Education Assistive Bundle’ will be tested by some of the participating field-test learners as they work their way through ESD.

To learn more about this project, contact us, visit the CVCC website, or follow the TOWES Times for updates.

New Year, New Projects

2010 is proving to be a busy year for TOWES and the TOWES staff.

In the first month we have been on the road to visit our distributors and partners, participate in project meetings and deliver training sessions.

TOWES is also busy with a couple new pilot projects, which are being conducted in Alberta and across the country:

Essential Skills Direct (ESD) - We have 13 project partners on board to field test this new Essential Skills training tool; that means almost 300 participants across Canada will be involved.

Essential Skills Online for Licensed Practical Nurses (ESO-LPN) – TOWES is excited to launch the field test for ESO for LPN, an online Essential Skills too developed specifically for IPNDIEN (Integrated Practical Nurse Diploma for Internationally Educated Nurses).  Developed as a support tool for internationally educated nurses, ESN for LPN features several enhancements that consider Essential Skills instruction for ESL learners. If you are interested in learning more about this project or participating in the field testing, please contact Meghan at: 403.410.3198.

Stay tuned to the TOWES Times, as we will be announcing some new exciting projects that we have coming up for 2010 — including changes to our website.

Tell us about the new Essential Skills projects you have on the go!

TOWES the Season!

2009 has been a busy year here at TOWES, and 2010 is shaping up to be another action packed year!

Some of the new initiatives that TOWES will be rolling out in 2010 include:

• field tests of new online Essential Skills tools: Essential Skills Direct (ESD), and Essential Skills Online (ESO) for LPNs
• launch of new projects: web platform for online tools, Learning to Read (LtR) and TOWES Online
• online TOWES Test Administrator training
• updates to the TOWES website

Contact us, follow the TOWES Times or visit our website to learn more about what is coming in 2010!

Happy Holidays from all of us at TOWES!

SkillPlan is a joint labour and management initiative of the BC Construction industry and since 1991, has participated in research, development and the promotion of Essential Skills (ES) as extremely valuable in the construction sector. TOWES has had opportunities in the past to work closely with SkillPlan in several ES initiatives.

Late October 2009, SkillPlan hosted the “ESSENTIAL SKILLS in Instruction” Conference in Ottawa. The purpose of the conference was to bring together ES practitioners and policy makers in order to participate in a discussion about ES in the classroom. TOWES was invited by the SkillPlan conference advisory committee to educate ES practitioners about our exciting new online ES curriculum.
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