Not Passing your HAZARD test - Driving

Not passing your hazard test means another $30 or so. This can add up if some people fail to achieve the test- over and over. Failing is easily done if the student doesn't have the language or computer skills to pass.

I found myself in the Burwood VicRoads Office the other day (with my own son) and happened to meet a Karen student from Burma. He recognised me and changed seats to come next to me & showed me his ticket. They were reading out the tickets in a robotic voice, "ticket, zero, N, R number, seven, teen, go to counter, number, 8"  and followed quickly by the next announcement for the next number. This Karen man, his name was Bell, looked like he'd just walked out of Asia, complete with dark green woven shoulder bag with long pink & green tassles draped over his shoulder, could not keep up with the speed of the spoken words and numbers. I helped him get to the right desk and the lady just said, 'yes can I help you?'

So after working out that he needed to pay for his (3rd) failed test and book the next one, I decided to take things a bit further. I said to the Australian woman, obviously there is a problem here, and it may not be that his knowledge of the driving skill is limited but perhaps there was a communication problem or a lack of computer skills. (The test is done on a computer, and knowing how to use the mouse is essential). Could we get an interpreter to sit with him during the test to identify the problem? She went away and came back to say there was a Burmese interpreter to which the student replied he definately did NOT want this. But he would accept the Australian one. I tried many times to find out the reasons for this. Finally, a Burmese Chin driving instructor, with better English, entered the waiting room and told me that the students' Burmese was very limited. Therefore it would be more stressful. Just because the man comes from Burma, doesn't mean that he speaks Burmese! I explained this to the woman who gave a look of slight shock. There are so many ethnic language and cultural groups in many different states in Myanmar country, that people don't necessarily have the knowledge of the national Burmese language. They also may have been fleeing their land and experiencing many hardships that 'going to school' (and therefore learning 'Burmese'), has not been an option.


The encounter in the license office last week taught me that while many service officers and administrators deal with refugees, they often don't know a lot about them nor how to deal with situations. English teaching has taught me the skill of communicating across barriers. It is an art that many people don't see as an art. Often I have been in the situation of interpreting English language into ESL or vise-versa.
 I hope that people will learn to trust Australians and start to feel like they are welcome and they can make a positive difference to our country with their presence.

The need to keep learning.

Pondering method of best upload and display/presentation..over a kopi Lombok!

Collecting and collating information.

Which ever method of learning - individually, thru' on-line demos, or having a tutor or training in workshops,  I am constantly trying to research and find more effective and easily manageable ways to apply technology and learning onto my network or into the classroom. For my students, all half my age, and newly arrived to Australia from third world countries, are on their own journey of social media immersion, I am trying to be there too, but have less time to play with it.

I am constantly  surprised at my ignorance of basic things, like yesterday, I had a student  trying to bluetooth to me a picture she liked, to add it to her word doc, to be included in the new book we are making. Because she had no phone credit, we had to try to think of other ways to do the transfer to my computer. the options are getting wider, and more accessible-if only my expertise could grasp it. Free apps for info sharing...sometimes I wish I grew up with it, or, on reflections of my youth - maybe not...things would certainly be different and I would have a lot more (real) old friends on FB! I'd like to mind map (bubbl.us) the possibility of that!
This reminds me of a link I saw this week on The Living Facebook Experiment.

While I may be ahead in some aspects of computer literacy, I am sometimes behind in knowing automatically the settings and controls of the more popular hand held devices that we so often feel lost without. And it seems the knowledge of the use of these is a prerequisite for living effectively and engaged within our social world, especially for youth.
Without lessons and training it is harder for some of us to pick it up, especially if there is isolation in having an effective mentor to offer tips. I seem to have the gadget, now it is a matter of GO.
Discoveries: thanks to online forums, Nings, blogs (edublogs challenges), Yammer, teachers and tech advisers we can make a lot of discoveries on line. So it is goodbye to my day off again.
Time to walk the dog! Will I get points for that in Urban Farmville, John Spencer?