Welcome to episode 45 of the Technology in Human Services podcast. In this episode I chat with Tracey Mollins from AlphaPlus, an organization that provides digital support and solutions from peers in Ontario’s literacy community. Tracey is a Professional Learning Specialist – Education and Technology at Alphaplus. She has worked in adult education at community programs, school boards, colleges, universities, unions and network organizations. Her work is informed by her experience as an instructor, program worker and researcher as well as project experience developing e-learning strategies, blended or distance curricula and models for online instructional design. She is especially interested in investigations into connectivism ~ diversity, autonomy, interactivity and openness + creativity, collaboration, camaraderie, critical thinking, justice, kindness, freedom and fun ~ in digitally-mediated networks. I’ve written that I think that the Immigrant and Refugee-serving sector needs an AlphaPlus to help support our hybrid service delivery evolution and work. I wanted to talk to Tracey to find out more about how they do their work and what we can learn from and replicate. Some of the questions we discussed: * Our sector has seen an increase in awareness about how digital technology can be part of a useful and practical service intervention model, bringing along some workers and organizations that were more skeptical before the pandemic. Have you seen a similar trend in your work and sector? * What I’m particularly after is how the support models came about and their impact/outcomes on the literacy sector. In our research about other interesting digital literacy and inclusion models, AlphaPlus came up as something our sector could learn from and replicate. * As mentioned I think we could spend a nice chunk of time discussing the AlphaPlus support model focusing on your Coaching, Quick Tech Help, Educator Network, the Digital Toolbox course, Wayfinders and Community Gabfests, a well as Custom Solutions for service providers.Let’s start with the overall mission of AlphaPlus and the ways you support literacy service providers when it comes to digital strategy, implementing digital tools in their literacy work, and more. * The Immigrant and Refugee-serving sector also wants to “use digital technology to increase the relevance, responsiveness and reach.” You help both adult literacy educators integrate technology into teaching, as well as program managers and co-ordinators integrate technology into program administration. That seems like an important combination, getting the front line as well as agency leadership literate and involved. Can you tell me a bit about the different challenges and approaches that come with those 2 different groups? * Can you tell me about some success stories in that work, as well as some of the challenges you still face? * If we were thinking about creating some of the services and supports that you have created at AlphaPlus in our sector, what advice would you give to help get us started? Machine-Generated Transcript What follows is an AI-generated transcript of our conversation using Otter.ai. It may contain errors and odd sentence breaks and is not a substitute for listening to the audio...