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Adult education has a number of requirements which are somewhat different to the world of corporate training. In an adult education college we start with a Scheme of Work, a high level planning document which outlines a number of key project requirements.

When you are seeking funding for a project, your Scheme of Work puts forward the purpose of the learning project, outlines current resources and identifies any further resource requirements. It also identifies who your learners will be.

The following Scheme of Work was successfully used on a media skills project targeted at the following beneficiary groups who attended a day centre:

the unemployed, refugees, lone parents, people recovering from mental illness, lone parents and ex-offenders.

The document should include where you plan to run the sessions, the duration of the daily sessions and the number of daily sessions. For example, the sessions will be run from Titchmark Room at Banfield Tech from 10am-12 noon and the afternoon session from 1pm to 3pm:30pm. There will be six, three day courses starting on May 6th and the classroom can accommodate 6 students.

The learners will be screened by the Tech to identify appropriate computer literacy skills.

The document should include a breakdown of the resources required. As this is an IT project it requires a number of hardware and software resources.

With regard to resources: hardware:

3 digital cameras 3 Sony DV recorders 3 Dell multimedia laptops 3 tripods 1 TV 1 DVD player DVD media courseware

software:

Movie Magix Edit Pro v10, SonicDVD, Photoshop Elements v3

The aim of this workshop is for learners to film and produce a quality DVD of their project within the 3 day timescale.

This will involve shooting video footage and still images, downloading from tape to hard disk, cutting, fading in/fading out, merging clips, adding music, text, slide shows, DVD structures, menus and chapter marks. A testing phase will follow where we burn files to DVD and then replay them on TV.

Many of the students will not have had access to this technology and the subtext of the project is to demonstrate the hardware/software, develop the exploration of personal creativity and build self-confidence.

It is an empowering experience to produce a quality DVD that the learners can show to their friends, it builds self-esteem and produces a feeling of social inclusion.

The assessment of students' progress is quite straightforward with this project because of the visual nature of what is being produced.