Supporting Prison Officers and Foreign-National Prison Inmates

 

A report in Der Standard (http://derstandard.at/1358305154185/Mehrsprachig-im-Haefn describes the massive problems that exist with multi-lingualism in prisons and the criminal justice system – according to der Standard, Austrian prisons are populated by individuals from no less than 110 different nationalities!

Whilst a great many of foreign-national prison inmates have lived for years in Austria and can speak fluent German – or at least can communicate with prison staff in English – those with proficiency neither in German nor English have to rely on interpreting from other inmates with important tasks such as filling in forms and understanding prison rules and regulations.

This not only presents a problem for individual prison inmates, but places a massive strain on prison staff and officials, who work extremely hard under very difficult conditions to maintain a positive, orderly regime.  Any communication difficulties between staff and inmates must be very frustrating for prison officials, and could leave to difficult – and potentially dangerous – situations.
Prison staff currently have the opportunity to take English training as part of their professional development through the Strafvollzugsakademie, but according to der Standard there are few opportunities for prison staff in Austria to learn how to communicate in Russian, Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian or other languages which are common amongst the foreign-national prison population.

Without these language skills, prison staff are prevented from being able to communicate important instructions and regime information – and foreign-national inmates are unable to fully understand their rights.  As reported in der Standard, inmates would be likely to miss important family or legal visits, if they have no idea what the word ‘visit’ actually means.

Whilst der Standard acknowledges that the current situation is less than optimal, the project Languages Behind Bars (LBB) is addressing the issue head-on.  A European-Funded Project, Languages Behind Bars is developing and piloting a new learning programme to help foreign-national prison inmates communicate – and understand – key prison-related information in the local language.  At the same time, these learning materials are offered to prison staff in multiple languages, providing them the opportunity to communicate instructions in various important languages.
Coordinated by die Berater® with the support of the European Prison Education Association (www.EPEA.org), LBB is being piloted in Germany, France, Holland, Bulgaria and the UK.  We hope to be able to make these learning programmes available in Austria in the future.
For more information on the LBB project, visit the website www.lbb-project.eu. 

Internal training seminar – using the “Health Box” in a training context

Healthy Lifestyle through education – following this motto an internal training seminar was organized at die Berater® in Wels. The aim of this training workshop was to present and to introduce the training material which has been developed in the EU-project “Health Box- Integration of Health Issues in Adult Education”. The material was created to reach socio-economical disadvantaged persons with health issues, to raise awareness, to provide information and to show them how their lifestyle is connected with their health.

The core element of the workshop were hands on activities – to try out a selection of the developed exercises, discussing them with the trainers, asking them about their experiences with health topics in their courses.

Explain the term “breakfast” without using the following “taboo-words”: eat, morning, coffee, get up, meal - Last Wednesday eight trainers of die Berater® Wels spent one afternoon getting to know a playful way to integrate health topics in adult educational settings. With this playful version of the popular game “Taboo”, they discussed positive and negative aspects on alcohol consumption and they tested their knowledge on drugs and their long term consequences on health.

8 trainers of die Berater® Wels participated in the Workshop, 6 of them are working with youth. What they report sounds startling: A high percentage of their course participants suffer from bad nutrition, overweight and show bad physical condition, which influences their general health condition and thus their employability. Therefore the topic “health” is an integral part of their training activities. The Health Box training encouraged them to continue their work on health issues, using new tools. All trainers are fully aware of the fact, that this is only a small piece of contribution they can provide. Especially the involvement of parents would be an important aspect to support young people in changing their habits. Maybe the idea for another project?
To download the Health Box training material go to http://healthbox.eu/index.php?id=2&L=1

Developing Creative Training Methods in EU Candidate Countries

In mid-February we held a hugely successful train-the-trainer programme in Vienna, for delegates from Antalya, Turkey for the European project APPSA (Achieve Pedestrian Priority and Safety in Antalya City Center).  The training programme provided creative methods for promoting road safety and pedestrian priority to diverse target groups ranging from primary school children to driving instructors.

The focus of the training – developed within the framework of the European Transfer of Innovation project APPSA – was on enabling driving instructors, police officers and traffic safety officers to create target-group-oriented training courses using a variety of multimedia materials, adapted to learners’ various ‘multiple intelligences’.  The trainees will be using their new skills to develop their own tailored trainings in Turkey, disseminating this best practice to over 50 new road-safety trainers in Antalya.

Source: Transport of London

Our trainees learnt that teaching road-safety legislation to learner drivers can involve more than just dictating a set of rules. Instead, by using various multimedia materials, such as this shocking image from a recent road safety campaign in London, trainers can begin to have a real impact on the knowledge, understanding and attitudes of learners.

The training culminated with a practice-training, in cooperation a Vienna-based driving school.  Our trainees from Antalya had the opportunity to develop short training sessions, and practice them on a specialised group of Turkish-speaking driving instructors from the driving school U3ver.
How would you use this image to create lively training sessions, that get learners moving, talking, planning, thinking?

WikiSkills - Enter into Wiki Culture

Wikis permit asynchronous communication and group collaboration across the Internet, it's been sometimes described as a composition system, a discussion medium, a repository, and a tool for collaboration.

 

A wiki is a website whose users can add, modify, or delete its content via a web browser using a simplified mark-up language or a rich-text editor. There are over 100 different wiki software systems. Some permit control over different functions (levels of access), others may permit access without enforcing access control or particular rules may also be imposed for organizing content.

The EU project WikiSkills develops and implements a wiki training to teach educators how to make the best use of wikis in education. die Berater® will be piloting the Wiki training in Vienna in March. Through this, the project promotes innovative pedagogical approaches to foster digital literacy, as well as social skills, writing skills and critical thinking. By working with wikis, students and course participants can learn not only how to publish content, but learn to acquire and improve cooperative skills.

Benefits of using wikis
Wikis embody the idea of a potentially collective, democratic, open, and dynamic design. However, this somewhat romantic vision has been challenged by vandalism and “information wars” and required registration is not uncommon in some wikis.

Wikis allow users, with both author and editor privileges, to edit the overall organization of contributions as the content itself. Examples include community websites, corporate intranets, knowledge management systems and note-taking. Many wiki platforms are open to alteration by the general public without requiring them to register user accounts. On the other hand, private wiki servers require user authentication to edit pages, and sometimes even to read them. Some wiki platforms welcome thousands of editors at the same time. But most wiki platforms have much less participants, ranging from a handful to a couple hundred. It is also possible to run a personal wiki. Thus, a wiki holds technology as well as community aspects.

When wiki activities enter schools or universities there are consequences for learning and teaching. Content and networked structures are built from within as users add material and make use of a simplified hypertext mark-up language to create links and add features. In LMSs and groupware, activities are often linked to individual work (learners’ personal folders etc.) that can be shared later, while in a wiki it is the collective (e.g. class) activities that give rise to content formation, structure, and (indefinite) growth. And while degrees of interdependence can be observed when people jointly draw and take notes, the wiki affords immediate and unlimited participation due to its distributed character; interdependency is not an option but its rationale.

What can a wiki be used for?

Wikis may serve many different purposes. Examples include community websites, corporate

intranets, knowledge management systems, and note-taking.

 

Here are some examples of uses:

• Collecting historical data; building encyclopedic content: purpose heavily inspired from wikipedia, it is frequently used within companies as well or on local territory wikis.
• Drafting and reviewing material: promotional flyers, public documents, reports, books, grant requests, documentation, annotated bibliography, minutes of a meeting, writing
• assignments etc.
• Directory for team, officials, local media: great use for a wiki, each person can keep her or his information up-to-date.... as well as information for others. Administration is quick and easy. A famous example is Diplopedia, the wiki of the US Diplomatic Department.
• Project knowledge management: brainstorming, sharing of ideas, coordination of activities etc.
• Publishing: all of the above, course resources
• Website supporting a temporary event, such as a conference: the wiki may host information about the program, about the speakers, content of talk, list of attendees, travel details and much more. Information can be easily and quickly updated by editors in a context of relative urgency.

die Berater® pilot the development of Knowledge Partnerships !

Earlier this year the EU commission launched a call for “Pilot projects for the development of Knowledge Partnerships” (EACISO3/2012). The general objective of the call for proposals was to support the implementation of Knowledge Alliances which should ensure stronger societal and economic relevance, and outreach in higher education, by strengthening the role of higher education institutions as engines of innovation and increasing the employability, creativity and innovative potential of graduates, professors and company staff. Knowledge Alliances are structured partnerships aimed at stimulating innovation by bringing together businesses and higher education institutions.

The call met huge interest; over 100 consortiums applied for a grant, only 3 were selected. The project EDUCCKATE, which was developed by die Berater®, together with the University College London (GB), Quality Programe (IT) and OLN Learning (GR) and 7 further partners, was successful.
The project will implement an innovative mentored internship scheme to boost the innovation potential of HE institutions & companies, foster an entrepreneurial mindset in students & promote entrepreneurship.

The cultural & creative (CC) sectors make places attractive to live, invest in & visit; they’re key to sustainable economic growth. Recent reductions in public funding have lead to job losses & loss of expertise in small & medium sized CC organisations (SMEs). In an insecure economic environment, large graduate employment schemes are over-subscribed & SMEs report an application shortage. A new generation of entrepreneurs is needed to increase the long-term sustainability of the CC sectors & increase flexibility to future economic changes.

The project provides students in CC majors with: access to businesses, including CC SMEs; opportunities to develop business projects & new professional paths. It benefits HE Institutes through links with CC businesses & businesses by partnership with specialist HE departments in order to develop new sector specific services/products/prototypes with commercialisation potential that benefit from state-of-the art academic research/knowledge.