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Earlier this year, Jennifer Chan and I surveyed the Canadian immigrant and refugee-serving sector to find out how you are doing, both individually and organizationally. This was a follow-up from our 2020 survey. In the coming weeks I'll be posting our survey results, which we'll then compile into a report of sorts, and share the raw data. In today's post, How do you feel your organization is doing when it comes to transitioning to a hybrid service delivery model?

Hosted on July 27, 2023, this Switchboard training session on creating rapid community assessments (RCA) with refugees was delivered by Dr. Mary Bunn, PhD, LCSW; Ramsha Sohail, MPhil; and, Dr. Karin Wachter, PhD, MEd. RCAs help collect community insights and views on a certain issue and calculate the major needs of the target community. That means the approach is useful for technology, digital literacy, digital inclusion assessments as well.

Kareem El-Assal, Director of Policy & Digital Strategy at CanadaVisa - Cohen Immigration Law, provides insights on how technology can boost immigration to smaller communities across Canada.

In this May 2023 TESL Ontario session, John Allan of the Avenue project provides an overview of the potential promise and limitations of AI tools in ESL work. I've also included more videos and articles John has shared about AI and ChatGPT specifically.

In this TESL Exchange session from July 2023, Jonny Kalambay provides an overview of his site roshi.ai, which allows ESL instructors to create lesson material from videos or articles online with just a few clicks.

In this newsletter update I provide links to a number of upcoming events related to digital transformation, along with tech-related news and reports, and some immigration and diversity-related stories.

In this July 2023 Scottish Council for Voluntary Organizations' webinar Digital Inclusion Development Officer Jason Railton delves into Essential Digital Skills, and how they can be used to support people online. The webinar shows you how you can use the Essential Digital Skills Toolkit and the SCVO check-up tool to support learners to upskill and make sure that they're ready for the future.

In this edition I continue to bring you my mixed bag of current and ongoing frustration with the lack of information and transparency on leadership in digital transformation along with innovation and leadership in our sector.

You may have read what I’ve written about Wired: Evaluation Settlement Online (WESO) before. In this post I’m going to explain why you, a manager at an Immigrant and Refugee-serving organization, should learn about, take the WESO training, and implement the WESO toolkit.