E-Resources

Digital Skills Promotion Toolkit 2021

This resource is the result of collaborative effort between QUILL Learning Network and Simcoe Muskoka Literacy Network (SMLN). It is meant to help your agency identify what digital skills are required for entry-level jobs in your area so you can create and promote programming to address the need in your clientele. You can use the resources in this toolkit through social media, posters, and communication with employers to promote your ability to help clients improve their digital skills.

Soft Skills Resources Google Site 2018
The Learning Networks have created this site to host resources to build the soft skills of our learners. We created it to:
- assist LBS programs in documenting what they already do to increase learners’ soft skills.
- identify community partnerships that show some good practices related to soft skill development.
- provide some resources to LBS programs that may want to increase their soft skill programming.

Soft Skills Resources Google Site

Step by Step to Success in Transition-Oriented Programming - Resources
LBS programs are working to attain the “Fully in Place” marker in the Ministry’s Agency Self-Assessment tool for implementing the Ontario Adult Literacy Curriculum Framework. Simcoe/Muskoka Literacy Network (SMLN) and QUILL interviewed LBS programs, across the province, who are “Fully in Place” to gather their best practices and samples of their documents.
- Webinar recording – Step by Step to Success in Transition-Oriented Programming
- Presentation with notes – Step by Step to Transition-oriented Programming
Updated Community Literacy of Ontario OALCF Tracking form

SMLN and QUILL have updated this tracking form with permission from Community Literacy of Ontario (CLO). It now includes all the examples that we received from programs across the province.

Coming soon!

Sample documents from the webinar
Other samples received when researching best practices

Community Learning Alternative
- CLA – Informal Documentation
Georgian College – Barrie Campus
- Georgian College – Comm – suggested weights with Resources
- Georgian College – LBS Comm Barrie
Kingston Literacy & Skills
Outreach Literacy
- Outreach Literacy – Sample Learner Checklist Feb 2013
Tri-County Literacy Council
Trent Valley Literacy Association
We would like to thank all the LBS program staff who participated in our research.
- Lesley Hamilton, Trent Valley Literacy Association – Peterborough
- Pat Whittington, Georgian College – Simcoe Co., Orangeville, Owen Sound
- Vandra McQuarrie, Literacy Nipissing – North Bay
- Joyce Bigelow, Connections Adult Learning Centre – Sharbot Lake
- Kim Sawyer, Canadore College – North Bay
- Judy DesRoches and Karena Persault, Barrie Literacy Council
- Stacey McQuoid, Community Learning Alternative – Trenton
- Trish Daubs, Lambton Kent District School Board
- Chris Mitchell-Kidd and Sara Brown, FIP-Northern College – Cochrane
- Rick Townend, Pinar Shakir and Kate Wypior, Fanshawe College
- Daniel Russell-Matthews, Thunder Bay Literacy Group
- Wendy Olsen, Dryden Literacy Association –
- Debbie Hamilton, Outreach Literacy – John Howard Society of Kawartha Lakes & Haliburton (Minden)
- Martha Rudden, Kingston Literacy and Skills
- Roger Hannon, Grey Bruce Georgian Adult Learning Centre
- Carol Sproat and Yvonne Thompson, Adult Learning Programs of Perth
- Charlotte Parliament, Simcoe County District School Board

Common Assessment for the OALCF Goal Paths Resource
Here is the OALCF Common Assessment Resource Tool created by Literacy Northwest

Common Assessment Strategy – print on legal sized paper

Common Assessment for the OALCF Goal Paths Resource Website

EmployAbility Success! Essential Skills at Work

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QUILL Learning Network has created EmployAbility Success! Essential Skills at Work in response to the literacy field’s need for more workplace materials that incorporate Essential Skills. With EmployAbility Success! students are able to read about workers in four different entry level jobs and practice the Reading, Document Use and Numeracy skills that are needed for many of their job tasks.

EmployAbility Success! uses genuine workplace scenarios and engaging characters so that students will be encouraged to enter into an authentic work-like experience. Students will:

• read authentic workplace scenarios that enable them to understand how Essential Skills are needed on the job
• learn how workers in each scenario use specific Essential Skills
• practice using the Essential Skill in a similar job task
• reflect on workplace realities with questions, special Workplace Know-How information boxes and discussion opportunities
• complete Overtime Activities that reinforce the Essential Skill already used
• self-Assess on the Essential Skills used in each chapter before and after each module
Ontario Practitioners!

We have also created a Relationship Matrix that shows you the relationship between the job tasks in EmployAbility Success! and the Ontario Adult Literacy Curriculum Framework (OALCF). The matrix will help you to easily identify how the job tasks in EmployAbility Success! support specific competencies within task groups in the OALCF. It uses the same colour code as the OALCF for quick and easy reference.

Download EmployAbility Success!

Recognizing Life's Work: Helping Learners Connect their Essential Skills from Home to Work

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Recognizing Life’s Work: Helping Learners Connect Their Essential Skills from Home to Work – A Practitioner’s Resource Kit” highlights the Essential Skills (ES) developed and strengthened through 12 different common leisure and home-based-activities. The kit is a comprehensive bank of materials that include high and low-level learning activities, authentic documents, steps to the answers to the learning activities, and fictional ‘day-in-the-life of a job’ case studies. The tools help practitioners and their learners make the link between the most important Essential Skills used in leisure activities to occupations that also require the same Essential Skills. This resource provides credibility, validity and recognition to the Essential Skills that adults develop and strengthen through daily home and life activities and emphasizes that adult learners with no, or limited, work experience, still have a wealth of knowledge, skills and experience to bring to the workplace.

The Most Important Essential Skills database (designed for use specifically with this project) is in Word to assist practitioners in easily identifying the occupations pastimes are linked to. For instructions see page 264 of the resource.

Download Recognizing Life's Work

Through the Worker's Eyes: Developing Learning Activities with Work-Related Documents

This guide is part of a trainer’s kit developed and distributed by QUILL Learning Network. Trained facilitators have committed to use this guide when delivering the workshop “Through the Workers Eyes: Developing Learning Activities with Work-Related Documents”. They will deliver the workshop in literacy network regions across Ontario in an effort to:

• help build the capacity of workforce and workplace literacy instructors
• provide instructors with training, tools, and strategies for using authentic documents and developing learning activities

To find a trained facilitator near you, contact QUILL

Download Through the Worker's Eyes

“Congratulations on your excellent e-publications: Through the Worker’s Eyes: Developing Learning Activities with Work-Related Documents, and Recognizing Life’s Work: Helping Learners Connect Their Essential Skills from Home to Work. As someone relatively new to the area of essential skills, I found these to be two of the best resources I came across in my research.”

Sandra Loschnig, writer/researcher for Literacy Alberta

Contact QUILL for more information about these resources or to find additional materials.

Heather Robinet, Executive Director

Email: execdir@quillnetwork.ca
Telephone: 519-881-4655

E-Resources

Contact QUILL for more information about these resources or to find additional materials.

Heather Robinet, Executive Director

Heather Robinet, Executive Director

QUILL Learning Network

PO Box 1272, Seaforth, N0K 1W0