2016 ACAL-ACTA conference

Scholarship winner report

Anna-Lisa Egan is from Yuendumu, NT, and attended the ACAL-ACTA conference with the support of ACAL. Here is her report and pictures.

It was my first time at a conference and was a really new and different experience for me.

I learnt lots of new things even before I went to the conference. I learnt how to draft, how to edit, how to format, how to get quotes, add up a budget and how to submit a grant.

I learnt how to speak in front of a large group of people. It was scary but I got through it. I felt very keen to be part of the presentation with Ros and Sam but knew that I would be too nervous. So I made an imovie about the sorts of things I do in the adult learning centre where I work. I did the voice over in Warlpiri and English.

I also learnt some literacy activities in English and I have been working on how to make them into Warlpiri activities that can be used in the Learning Centre and at Yuendumu School. One of these activities was called 'words and numbers'. We tried to change this to Warlpiri but it was very difficult because we have less vowels and consonants in Warlpiri than in English; also some letters like 'n' and 'g' go together in lots of Warlpiri words so we needed to make this a letter/sound combination not just single letters like we could in English. Another session I attended was by the Western Australian Library. They talked about how to find stories, information and picture of Yapa people. When I came back to the learning Centre at Yuendumu, I found the NT Libraries Archive and bookmarked it on all the computers so yapa can look up their family.

I taught a group of teachers how to make a bilingual Adobe voice story. I met Yapa from other parts of Australia and I also met Jenni Anderson who is the President of the Australian Council of Adult Literacy.

There were 2 other Warlpiri Yapa with me so I had marlpa (company), this is very important for Yapa people especially when we are in new places. We set ourselves a challenge to get lost in Perth (not too far away) and then they to find our way back to the motel using google maps. We had to stand on the corner and look for streets signs, type in the address and it told us how long it would take to walk back.

Anna-Lisa Egan

Here's the report from the local school newsletter