LIT2T Leadership Guide

52 TO: TABLE OF CONTENTS “The notion of everyday life information seeking (or ELIS) is useful in shedding light on the complexity of immigrants’ quotidian information practice” (Caidi, Allard, & Quirke, 2010, p. 501) Social networks play a central role in the immigration process: “Research indicates that they rely on strong ties or people with whom they have close personal relationships such as family, friends, neighbors, and co- workers… They also tend to rely on weak ties or people who are not particularly close to them such as settlement workers and government employees” (P. 507) Information Practices and Settlement Language Training From an adult newcomer’s point of view, how can information technology assist the immigration project? Can technology skills facilitate learning English, aid one’s personal immigration project? In fact, LINC professionals can be helpful gatekeepers in assisting learners to explore the settlement and language training options the Internet provides. They can encourage critical thinking and other learner readiness skills that enable effective information gathering, seeking or sharing practices. The potential applications of communities of practice or personal learning networks, connectivism and rhizomatic knowledge concepts in immigrant settlement language training are just beginning to be realized. These technologies demand “multi-literacies” and infer “entirely new semiotics and communications pragmatics” (BOUCHARD, 2013, P. 312) and are best understood as “a community of weak ties” (P. 313) . How is a newcomer to take control of these technologies to advance their personal immigration project? What role does technology play in questions of equity, access or diversity? Information technology has become ubiquitous in life, learning and work in Canada in this century, and newcomers without technology skills are disadvantaged, perhaps even marginalized by an inability to participate. More than education for economy, and perhaps as importantly as education for diversity, settlement language training represents an opportunity to support education for transformation. In transformational learning, “Learners no longer simply fit new knowledge into existing meaning schemes, but their frames of reference and patterns of thinking themselves shift” (LANGE & SPENCER, 2012, P. 77). What could be more transformative than moving to another country and adapting to a new language and strange culture? The whole personal immigration project is an enormous challenge to a person’s adaptation and learning skills and inevitably challenges an individual’s beliefs, assumptions, norms and values. Immigrant settlement is a conversation between how an individual adapts to the country, and how well the country adapts to the individual. By helping extend learning beyond the language classroom walls, e-learning represents an opportunity to break down barriers to learning and form one’s own personal learning network. References Allard, Caidi, Quirke, L. (2010). Information Practices of Immigrants, Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, (44) 493-531. Database: Scopus®. Bouchard, P. (2013). Education Without a Distance: Networked Learning. In Nesbit, T., Brigham, S., Taber, N., & Gibb, T. (Eds.) Building on Critical Traditions Adult Learning and Education in Canada (pp. 305 – 315). Toronto, ON: Thompson Educational Publishing. Craig, A. (2009). Literacy matters: Helping newcomers unlock their potential. TD Bank Financial Group. Retrieved from http://library.nald.ca/item/8527 Blakely, & Singh, D. (2012). LINC and CLIC: Looking Back, Looking Forward. INSCAN, Special Issue on Settlement Language Training, 7-11.