Creating a website for your program or class with Google Sites
Online learning sites help learners
Meet learner expectations
An online learning site can help meet learner’s expectations to find information easily online and lets learners connect to learning materials from anywhere at any time.
Develop lifelong learning skills
Your site can provide a centralized platform for sharing information, resources, and interactive learning experiences and promotes lifelong learning by modelling the ways we can stay updated with the latest knowledge in online environments.
Online learning sites help teachers
Streamline classroom communications
You can cut down on the number of handouts and emails you need to share and the strategies you use to remember with whom you shared them.
Tailor your site to your specific needs
You can develop your site to meet your specific communication and collaboration needs and the needs of learners who attend your program.
Online learning sites can be anything you want
You can use the site as a simple communication space and post announcements, events, and calendars as well as course outlines and learning pathways with links to assignments, study materials and resources.
Or you can create mini-courses with embedded materials, interactive slides and quizzes. See two examples of this in the PDF.
Open the PDF
This resource from AlphaPlus was created by Tracey Mollins after a workshop series called Create an Online Learning Site. You can see all the workshop links and resources here: Creating an Online Learning Site Links.
If you’d like to learn more about whiteboards or schedule a demonstration, contact Tracey or our Quick Tech Help service.
Have you been thinking about offering test preparation for the new Canadian Adult Education Credential (CAEC)? Do you need help supporting learners as they prepare to take these tests? As we kick off the academic year, we have a new guide to help you.
In the spring of 2024, the Canadian Adult Education Credential (CAEC) was released. This new credential replaces the GED® for Canadian adults seeking a secondary equivalency. While the CAEC offers important and useful changes from the GED®, it requires significant teaching and background knowledge, and the transition to a digital platform has implications for both test-taking and literacy. Until now, little support has been available to build teachers’ knowledge so they can assist learners.
New guide available: Preparing for the Canadian Adult Education Credential (CAEC)
AlphaPlus is pleased to unveil a new, comprehensive guide to help you learn about the new CAEC and support adult learners. The guide includes teaching tips, curriculum planning outlines, lesson routines, and other resources. Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll find inside:
- Test overview to help you get familiar with the unique features, demands and requirements of the CAEC and how to effectively prepare learners.
- Subject overviews and teaching tips on each of the five CAEC test subjects: reading, writing, math, science and social studies.
- Templates, curriculum plans, and lesson routines to help you develop your own test preparation courses and workshops.
- Test readiness tools: To identify your learners’ skills and determine their readiness to take the CAEC tests.
Check out this brand-new guide and get up to speed with the digital, content, and cognitive complexity changes you will need to understand to support learners with the CAEC.
Additionally, please let us know your thoughts on the content of the guide so far and what you’d like to see added. We welcome your feedback! Complete the form to let us know what you’d like to see in the guide.
Why is it important for us to understand this?
An essential 21st century skill is learning how to distinguish information that is reliable from disinformation, misinformation and fake news. Information literacy requires an understanding of the media landscape and knowledge about how to use our critical thinking skills in this landscape.
If we understand a little about how algorithms shape the attention economy, it helps us analyze and evaluate the media we are consuming and interacting with.
Algorithms and the Attention Economy
Algorithms are sets of rules or series of steps. Today, algorithms are generally understood as processes run by computers that take inputs and produce outputs. Online algorithms collect information from people and websites and apps use that information to decide what to show you. Here are some examples:
- Search engines – like Google – try to show you results it thinks are relevant and useful
- Social media sites use algorithms to recommend what it thinks you will want to look at
- Video streaming services (like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, YouTube, and others) use algorithms to suggest what to watch next.
The attention economy is an online business model in which tech companies compete for people’s attention — while also gathering data about them — to serve them personalized ads.
Building lessons with practitioners
How can we understand how algorithms work and how they shape our online experience?
One place to find lessons to help us learn the skills and knowledge we need is CTRL-F.
In this resource we explore the CTRL-F algorithm lesson.
In this lesson, participants:
- demonstrate an understanding of algorithms
- explain how Google uses algorithms to provide search results
- analyze how algorithms can be manipulated
See all Information Literacy Resources.
Why is it important for us to understand this?
An essential 21st century skill is learning how to distinguish information that is reliable from disinformation, misinformation and fake news. Information literacy requires an understanding of the media landscape and knowledge about how to use our critical thinking skills in this landscape.
If we understand a little about how to verify information, it helps us analyze and evaluate the media we are consuming and interacting with and stops us from spreading misinformation.
Misinformation, disinformation and fake news
- Disinformation is information that is false or distorts reality. It is transmitted by means of mass media or social media. Its aim is to manipulate public opinion.
- Fake news is a publication that has the same structure as a news article, but contains exaggerated, distorted or false information. Fake news is a form of disinformation.
- Misinformation is information transmitted by mass media or social media that is considered to be truthful by the transmitter, but, in reality, distorts facts or is wrong.
Read more here: What is disinformation? (activities to do with learners)
Building lessons with practitioners
How can we verify the information we see online and make sure we are not spreading misinformation?
One place to find lessons to help us learn the skills and knowledge we need is MediaSmarts.
In this resource we explore part of a MediaSmarts lesson called Break the Fake: Verifying Information Online to help us build our resilience to online misinformation.
In this lesson, participants:
- Learn simple steps for verifying online information
- Practice verifying online information
- Understand digital literacy key concepts
- Create a media text
See all Information Literacy Resources.
What are information zones?
Information can be categorized into one of six “zones”: news, opinion, entertainment, advertising, propaganda or raw information.
Each category has a primary purpose: to inform, to persuade, to entertain, to sell, to provoke or to document.
Why is it important for us to understand this?
An essential 21st century skill is learning how to distinguish information that is reliable from disinformation, misinformation and fake news. Information literacy requires an understanding of the media landscape and knowledge about how to use our critical thinking skills in this landscape.
If we understand a little about the purposes of different forms of information, it helps us analyze and evaluate the media we are consuming and interacting with. If we confuse the categories, we can ascribe incorrect purposes to the information we access.
Building lessons with practitioners
In our recent Information Literacy series, we looked at some possibilities for how to combine News Literacy Project and Checkology curriculum resources to create an Information Zones lesson for emergent readers.
The News Literacy Project is a website designed to help teachers make sure that students are skilled in news literacy and develop the knowledge and ability to participate in their communities as well-informed, critical thinkers. Checkology is a virtual classroom from the News Literacy Project. Many of the lessons on this site are presented by working journalists.
See all Information Literacy Resources.
How do journalists and editors decide what news to cover and which stories to promote to readers and news consumers? Why is it important for us to understand this?
An essential 21st century skill is learning how to distinguish information that is reliable from disinformation, misinformation and fake news. Information literacy requires an understanding of the media landscape and knowledge about how to use our critical thinking skills in this landscape. The decisions journalists and editors make are important to all of us as they shape the news media landscape. If we understand a little about how these decisions are made, it helps us analyze and evaluate the media we are consuming and interacting with.
Building curriculum with practitioners
In our recent Information Literacy series, we looked at some possibilities for how to combine News Literacy Project activities and Checkology lessons to create an Understanding Journalism curriculum for emergent readers.
The News Literacy Project is a website designed to help teachers make sure that students are skilled in news literacy and develop the knowledge and ability to participate in their communities as well-informed, critical thinkers. Checkology is a virtual classroom from the News Literacy Project. Many of the lessons on this site are presented by working journalists.
See all Information Literacy Resources.
Whiteboards with Frames (like *Jamboard): Whiteboard.chat and Padlet Sandbox
Whiteboard.chat
In whiteboard.chat, you can make frames so that different learners or groups of learners can work on activities. It can be integrated with Google Classroom or Microsoft Teams. Users do not need to create accounts to participate on the white board. It has activities such as math quizzes that you can insert. You can play around for free – you do not even have to make an account to test it out. There is a teacher guide and a student guide that will introduce you to all the tools. You get 10 boards with a free account. These boards expire after 7 days unless you go in and refresh them. There are three levels of paid accounts that allow you to create more boards and keep them longer.
Padlet Sandbox
Padlet has introduced a digital whiteboard they are calling Sandboxes. The sandboxes are different from the Padlet Boards. Padlet Sandboxes have similar features to Jamboard* plus extras. The communication tools include voice recordings, drawing, typing, sticky notes, shapes and video uploads. You can create a slide show and play it like a slide presentation or use it as an activity board. There is a set of education templates that can help you get started. You can have different groups working on different cards (frames or pages) and prevent them from seeing what others are doing. Here is one we made for a workshop in June 2025: Ideas from teachers (It is “frozen” so you cannot add to it but you can remake it). The Sandboxes can be integrated with Google Drive and Classroom. Padlet does not require users to create accounts to participate on the Sandboxes. Padlet allows you to have three active Sandboxes and Boards on a free account. You can store your old work but you can only have three working at one time. They have several tiers of pricing that allow for more Sandboxes and Boards to be active and for different numbers of editors per Sandbox or Board. (We made a Padlet Tip Sheet that explains how to use the Boards.)
Infinite White Boards: FigJam, Lucidspark or Miro
When Google closed down *Jamboard in December 2024, they recommended FigJam, Lucidspark or Miro as possible replacements. These boards are different than Jamboard in that you get one big, seemingly infinite board where you can create areas of activity. You do not navigate by going from frame to frame (page to page) but by floating across one continuous space and finding the area you want to work in. I think for some learners it could be quite confusing. Others may be delighted by the bouncy, nonlinearity of the boards.
- Lucidspark has a free account but they have a note that this option may not last forever.
- FigJam is free for students and educators but institutions need to go through a verification process.
- Miro promises that they will always have a free account. On a free account, you get three boards that other people can edit. After that, any boards you create are view only. Boards that have been shared with you are included in that number. It seems that you cannot delete any of the boards that have been shared with you so once you hit three, you need to create a new account to create more.
Combo White Boards: Canva
Canva has a free whiteboard where you can create pages — look in the bottom right corner of the whiteboard. Each page is an infinite whiteboard. Canva has created a set of education templates. Users do not need to create accounts to participate on the white board.
Google Slides
One way to replicate some of the functionality of frame-based whiteboards is to use Google Slides. See how here: Creating a collaborative learning space using slides.
To see how this could work, take a look at some of these samples in the Collaboration Slides Folder.
*Jamboard
was a free online whiteboard. Users could add text, sticky notes, images, and links. You could create online discussions and opportunities for synchronous or asynchronous collaborative or individual learning. A nice thing about Jamboard was that workshop facilitators and instructors could see what individuals and groups were doing on each frame (page).
Sample Jamboards to translate into another whiteboard environment
In the Sample Jamboards folder you can see activities by some Ontario literacy practitioners (and me) that you can copy and adapt.
You will also see a folder called EDTechTeacher Samples where you will find copies of many of the Jamboards that were shared in the shared in the Building digital skills with Google workshop.
If you’d like to learn more about whiteboards or schedule a demonstration, contact Tracey or our Quick Tech Help service.
Our idea that literacy workers might be interested in AI policies and guidelines came from a question that a literacy instructor asked in an Ai for Educators workshop, “I showed a learner how to use AI to get help on a simple task. Now that learner is using AI for everything. I feel that this is hindering them in developing some skills that they will need. How can I get them to stop?”
The facilitator, Shawn McCusker, suggested, “Work with the learner to create guidelines that work for you and that specific learner or group of learners in the specific contexts where they are learning.”
We thought this made sense. AI is so new that there are no great templates for the use of AI in adult literacy classrooms. Literacy instructors work with learners to create guidelines for the ways they will work together and are used to facilitating this process.
Here are three workshops presented by AlphaPlus where we discussed the topic of how to create a set of classroom AI guidelines to determine ways teachers and learners can use AI to support teaching and learning in specific contexts. We kicked off the conversation at a Showcase and took a deeper dive into the particulars and how tos in a series of workshops.
To see more about using AI in educational settings, check out our What is Generative AI? resource.
Virtual Showcase: AI policies, ethics and practices in LBS
“In this Showcase, three guest presenters plus three AlphaPlus staff members (Alan, Guylaine and Tracey) discussed how they are integrating AI into their practice and how they are thinking about AI policies and guidelines for organizations and for classrooms.” (November 2024)
Creating AI Policy with Learners
“This three-workshop series, facilitated by Tom Driscoll, is about what an AI policy for adult learners in literacy could look like. We will look at how to work with learners to create a policy that offers guidance for using AI ethically and safely to do research, make material more accessible and support creativity, communication and collaboration.” On the Padlet board, you can see how literacy instructors responded to the scenarios with thoughtful and well reasoned ideas about when using AI can support learning and when it can hinder developing certain skills and knowledge. (January 2025)
- Workshop 1 Slides and Recording
- Workshop 2 Slides and Recording
- Workshop 3 Slides and Recording and Padlet
AI Policy for Literacy Practitioners and Learners
AlphaPlus was invited by Calgary Learns to expand on part of what we presented at the November 2024 Showcase. Guylaine and Tracey facilitated the discussion. “Generative Ai for teaching and learning is still a relatively new technology. In this workshop, facilitated by AlphaPlus practitioners, we will discuss the why and when of using generative Ai tools in adult education classrooms. As the technology and our practices evolve, so do our questions. We will share some of the questions we have been grappling with and invite participants to add theirs to the conversation.” The stoplight discussion is one way to start the conversation about AI use with colleagues and learners. (Calgary Learns, April 2025)
Stoplight Discussion Template
As we explore the use of AI in LBS, we need to consider the organizational aspects of it as well.
- Is your program open to staff/learners using AI?
- Have you discussed the ethical aspects of AI as a team?
- What’s allowed and what’s not?
- Do you have a written AI policy or guidelines in place?
- Have you talked to your learners about using AI when they complete lessons or assignments
- What do you expect from your staff/colleagues/learners when it comes to building prompts and referencing AI generated content/images?
In this Showcase, three guest presenters plus three AlphaPlus staff members (Alan, Guylaine and Tracey) discussed how they are integrating AI into their practice and how they are thinking about AI policies and guidelines for organizations and for classrooms.
Presenters
Jaclyne has been an instructor for nearly 10 years, with almost 7 of those years dedicated to Literacy and Basic Skills (LBS). During this time, she has taught various subjects including digital technology, employment, communication, and language skills (including ESL), mathematics, and more! Jaclyne is a Moodle LMS Lead, online mentor, and adult educator for Good Learning Anywhere (GLA) / Sioux Hudson Literacy Council (SHLC). In her LBS role, she is responsible for developing, administering, and teaching courses to adult learners throughout Ontario, particularly for northern and Indigenous communities.
As the technology lead for Contact North’s AI in Higher Education initiatives, Michael drives the integration of AI tools to enhance learning and teaching experiences for students and faculty. He oversees the design, development and management of web-based solutions for higher education at Contact North | Contact Nord, including the conceptualization and implementation of accessible, user-friendly online portals. With over a decade of high-impact private sector experience, he has successfully spearheaded digital, print, and e-commerce solutions across various industries, bringing a wealth of expertise in scalable web architecture to his current work in advancing online education through innovative technology solutions.
Rick Sleaver leads Contact North | Contact Nord’s internal and external marketing and communications functions.
The topic of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere. Many instructors have tried ChatGPT/Copilot prompts and/or attended AI workshops, but still find it overwhelming to contemplate using it in the Literacy and Basic Skills (LBS) classrooms.
In this Showcase, three guest presenters who have tried AI in their programs on the administrative side and with their learners, discussed why they are integrating AI into their practice, what has worked for them and what hasn’t.
Presenters
Sara has worked in Literacy & Basic Skills at Northern College in Moosonee for over 12 years in various positions ranging from instructor, program coordinator and overseeing programming in the James Bay area (Moosonee, Moose Factory, Fort Albany, Kashechewan and Attawapiskat). She enjoys curriculum design, innovative practice and digital skills. Education is a big part of her life and she is always learning new things from courses and training online.
Jessa is an experienced educator exploring how artificial intelligence (AI) can enhance learning for adult literacy learners. With a Master’s degree in Adult Education and Community Development from the University of Toronto and ongoing studies in Counseling Psychology, Jessa has both successfully and unsuccessfully applied AI in her teaching. A dedicated lifelong learner, she continues to seek innovative ways to integrate technology into education.
Other resources
- duckduckgo.com – search engine
- goblin.tools (chatbot with MagicToDo, Formalizer, Judge, Professor, Estimator, Compiler and Chef tools)
- Poe chatbot
- Poe LBS-Assistant chatbot
- perplexity.ai chatbot
- gauthmath.com chatbot
- Roshi.ai chatbot for lessons
- AI and Environment – UN Environment Program report
- The RACEF framework for prompts
- Neuron’s Introduction to ChatGPT, Module 2: Prompt Engineering 101
- Zoom recording tools – built in Smart Recording with AI Companion, otter.ai, read.ai, and more – PLEASE NOTE that some organizations don’t allow/disable AI companions for zoom.