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Conference: Community Languages and English for Speakers of Other Languages Wellington, 5-8 July 2002 The Conference provides a meeting place and an opportunity for professional development for language educators and teachers from preschool to adult. Respected international and local speakers present papers and plenary sessions addressing latest trends in language education policy, practice,research and theory; but classroom teachers also offer many workshops to demonstrate practical ways of teaching. Contact: clesol@paardekooper.co.nz
Workshop: Getting Your Point Across Rotorua, 4, 11 and 18 June 2002 Workshops for people who are or may be speaking to community groups and working with the media. The workshops are designed for people working in health and community services. The first two days are on speaking to community groups and the third is on media work. The workshops are designed to increase participants' skills in these areas. They are facilitated by people with extensive experience. Contact: Serious Fun N Mind Trust - Arlene Foster, SeriousFunNMind@xtra.co.nz
Free PCs: Community Groups Apply Now Community groups, community projects and schools (in Wellington City only) can now apply for low cost refurbished PCs. The PCs, given by Wellington City Council, are mostly Pentium 100 Mhz or better and will come with Windows '95 and a selection of free software installed. Contact: The Wellington 2020 charitable Trust. http://www.2020.org.nz/
Smart Newtown: Web Site Portal Now On-Line Find the latest Newtown news, have fun, find out about community services and groups, learn Newtown's history, get information on free computer training and courses plus much more. http://www.smartnewtown.org.nz/
NetAid Online Volunteering is a service managed by the staff at the United Nations Volunteers program. Organizations that have programs serving developing countries (and these do NOT have to be computer-related programs of any kind) use NetAid to recruit and involve online volunteers, who translate materials from one language to another, build web pages, research information online, write grant proposal drafts, design logos, build databases, and so on. http://www.netaid.org/volunteer/
Kereru is a weekly NZ e-mail for all community participants and organisations about ecological restoration. Relevant notices are very welcome. Help bring back our natives. http://www.bush.org.nz/
Volunteering Canterbury is a Christchurch based charitable trust that supports and promotes volunteering. People who wish to volunteer can search for and be referred to voluntary positions on the site. http://www.cvc.org.nz/
The Distance Education Association of New Zealand is a national association committed to fostering growth, development, research and good practice in distance education, open learning and flexible delivery systems for education. http://www.deanz.org.nz/
Tip: Give it Time
CommunityNet Aotearoa is most often updated on Tuesdays. Make sure you allow plenty of time for your notices to appear or enquiries to be answered.
Bonus Tip: make sure to check your anti-virus software regularly. CommunityNet has received dozens of copies of the latest virus, the Klez worm, in the last few weeks.
This worm's nasty feature is that the emails with viruses attached claim to come from an address which isn't the sender's. You can be assured that the CommunityNet Aotearoa computer is kept free of viruses. Mail you receive from us does not contain viruses, even if it appears to do so.
Site: Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB)
Citizens Advice Bureau is a voluntary organisation which can give you free information and advice about all sorts of problems or questions.
The heart of the CAB website is information. There are detailed pages on more than 30 areas of interest. Here are a few of the huge range of topics:
Be ready for some slightly slower downloads, as these pages are packed full with what you need to know. If you have a 28K modem you could wait as much as 30 seconds for some pages. Be assured that they are worth the wait.
The CAB have also made the wise decision to make their information available in a format everyone can use: HTML pages. They have steered away from the proprietary formats so many people have difficulty with, such as Word and PDFs. You can just go to the page and read what's there without worrying about downloading or updating software.
Many of these pages have links to other sources of information and some pages even include sample forms.
There is information on the CAB itself:
In that section you can find submissions the CAB have made on a variety of subjects and media releases too.
The site works fairly well for those who don't have access to images. The alternate text for the navigation bar is displayed if you don't get the pictures, but there are some graphic elements which are missing their alternate text. This makes it a little confusing for those who surf with graphics off (such as this reviewer, those on slow connections and blind people). The front page does suffer without graphics, but it's still usable.
This is a big website and a resource you will need time and again. Make sure you add it to your Bookmarks / Favorites.
http://www.cab.org.nz/
This month's Have Your Say! outlines coming changes to the CommunityNet Aotearoa website.
Since CommunityNet Aotearoa was launched in November 1998 not only has the amount of information on the website grown enormously but the needs of visitors have grown and changed too. To make sure the website is keeping up with the needs of communities and organisations, the Community Development Group (CDG) decided last year it was time to take a close look at how well the website was meeting the goals set for it. It was agreed that an upgrade of the website may be necessary.
The first step was to talk with stakeholders, including a representative sample of community groups. In March 2002 four small workshops and a series of interviews were conducted in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, and an invite was made to website visitors to provide comments.
The feedback was generally positive: the website is considered a useful resource, CDG should continue maintaining it, but community organisations would like a greater chance to have input. Two areas identified for improvement were: providing information for all groups, not just those starting out; and providing opportunities for groups to talk about 'political' issues. Good news stories and case studies were also wanted.
A copy of the feedback report and upgrade report are available in Microsoft Word format. The feedback document is approx 140Kb and should take about 20 seconds to download with a 56K modem, while the upgrade document is about 70Kb and should take about 10 seconds. (Now are available on request only.)
A very clear set of directions for an upgrade of the website was provided, and CDG is working with developers to improve the existing content and add some new features. The aim is to release the upgraded website around September. The following features will be incorporated as we upgrade the website:
As well as working on the website, it was also clear that more work needs to be done to involve community organisations in governance of the website, and ultimately to look at the most appropriate ownership structure. The immediate priorities are finding ways of building up the number of people involved in ensuring the website meets community need, and setting up an advisory group. This group will define policy, principles and direction. Membership of the advisory group and its modus operandi have yet to be decided.
The Community Development Group is pleased to be working to improve not only the website, but the ability of community groups to have input into its future direction. By its fourth birthday in November, we really should have something to sing about.
If you are interested in finding out more about future direction for CommunityNet Aotearoa, contact: stephen.blyth@dia.govt.nz.
A monthly opinion piece from the community.
Want to have a say? Contact: information@community.net.nz. Please put "Panui opinion" in the subject line.