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Virginia Westwood
Virginia Westwood is the founder and principle of Protea Textware. Protea Textware was established in Melbourne, Australia in 1994 to create multimedia learning products for K-12 literacy and adult ESL learners. Since its founding, Protea has published 13 products for the ESL and literacy markets in the US, the UK, Australia. Protea's products are highly regarded throughout the world and are currently used in 60 countries. We are pleased to distribute two of these products in the US market: Connected Speech and Spellingfusion.
Virginia participated in our Meet the Authors online chats: we hope to have her address the role of computers in another program soon!
“Computers (probably) won't ever replace teachers, but teachers who use computers will eventually replace those who don't.” - Anonymous, TESLCA list.
“The philosophy I developed when I was teaching, about what's important in teaching practice, has not changed. What has changed is my thinking about the role that technology, and especially the computer, plays in enabling and facilitating effective language learning. When we began producing and publishing English language and literacy software, I made a conscious decision to incorporate my teaching philosophy into the products we produced. This includes respecting and building on what adults know and are interested in; providing real choices; accommodating different learning styles; viewing language and literacy learning as a means of empowerment; supporting learners to become independent; creating a safe and supportive learning environment and by extending learners as far as possible. While we work the technology to the limit, the design of the program is always driven by the pedagogy and not by the technology.”
Protea Textware continues to ‘push the envelope’, as evidenced by their newest product, Spellingfusion, and by winning a 2007 Toolbook Award!
