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LR/RI produces a bulletin roughly every two weeks in order to inform area practitioners of news, events, and calls for participation and also as a forum for posing questions, issues and discussion topics. The current bulletin is posted below. To read previous bulletins, go to Bulletin Archives.June 20, 2005Bulletin #198 Dear Colleagues, Calls for participation, employment, funding, and conference and workshop opportunities, online and other resources. To post information, and/or to receive the bulletin via email, please contact LR/RI or leave a message at (401-863-2839).
Janet Isserlis NOTICES
Changes in the federal budget have been proposed. Information is available at http://www.cbpp.org/2-9-05bud.htm, http://www.brown.edu/lrri/advocate.html, http://capwiz.com/tesol/home/ or contact janetisserlis@yahoo.com ESOL share - Wednesday, July 13, at 2:00 pm at the Genesis Center, 620 Potters Avenue, Providence. We’ve been talking about basic level literacy, native language literacy and goal setting.. Please join us. The NIFL-Assessment Discussion List will host project directors from the National Academy of Sciences in a discussion on the newly released report: Measuring Literacy: Performance Levels for Adults, Interim Report . I invite you to ask questions and make comments on the report, online at http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11267.html. The discussion will be held June 20 – 24. In order to join this discussion, you must subscribe to the Assessment Discussion List. Directions at:http://www.nifl.gov/lincs/discussions/nifl-assessment/assessment.html. Project Directors Judy Koenig and Stuart Elliot are the principle guests. All of the committee members will also be present, although it’s up to them whether they wish to speak or not. They are very interested in hearing what the field thinks about the report. They also wish to clarify some of the information that’s presented. If you have questions or need more info, please don’t hesitate to contact me. Thanks! Marie Cora marie.cora@hotspurpartners.com more information at : http://www.nifl.gov/nifl-fobasics/2005/0159.html Rhode Island Adult Education Conference. http://www.brown.edu/lrri/conference05.html. If you attended and did not complete an evaluation form, please send it in – or contact LR/RI for an electronic version to return via email. Thanks to all who contributed time, energy and interest. From the Fed: The Assistant Deputy Secretary for
Innovation & Improvement announces that, Radical Math Teachers
Call for Curriculum: Our website, http://www.radicalmath.org,
will be The National Even Start
Association (NESA): call for
papers for the spring 2006 issue of Family Literacy Forum, a
peer-reviewed journal published twice a year by the NESA. Practical approaches related to working with families and
literacy; Personal essays, reflections or opinion pieces related
to family literacy; Research and evaluation related to family
literacy program development; and, Issues of assessment and standards
in the field. Manuscripts should be between 1,000 and 5,000
words. Submissions should be typed in 12-point font
double-spaced, including quotations and references. Include a cover
sheet with the manuscript title, authors' names, addresses, phone
numbers, and e-mail addresses. The names of the authors should not
appear on the text as submissions are reviewed anonymously by
peers. Instead, type an identifying word on the top of each page.
Follow the Publication Manual of the American Call for Manuscripts: Assessment
Practices in Adult Basic Education Grass Roots Press events at the Providence Public Library: http://www.provlib.org/branchout/current.html learning opportunities Summer programs? - if your program is offering summer classes, and has space available, please contact LR/RI so that this information can be shared with others needing to refer students. Thank you. TRANSITION TO COLLEGE, Project RIRAL's ABE-to-college transition project, in collaboration with the New England Literacy Resource Center is accepting applications for August 2005. This free 16-week program assists non-traditional adult students to upgrade their academic skills, to receive support on their college and financial aid applications, and to receive academic counseling to transition more smoothly into college. Students who enroll in TTC will also receive three academic credits from the Community College of Rhode Island. Students are required to have a GED, EDP (External Diploma), or high school diploma and meet program criteria. TTC meets three evenings during the week and on Saturday mornings at netWORKri 175 Main Street, Pawtucket and at CCRI in Providence. Anyone interested in attending should contact Marie Crecca-Romero at 722-9800, or email her (creccaromero@cox.net) to arrange for a placement test. Space is limited. Volunteer Mentors and/or Tutors needed. If you are interested in mentoring and/or tutoring one of our adult students, please contact Marie. For more information, visit our website at http://www.transitiontocollege.org Adult Education Professional Development Online Course AEPro, the Online Professional Development project of the Ohio Literacy Resource Center, the Center for Literacy Studies in Tennessee, and national LINCS, offers an online professional development course, Integrating Technology into the Classroom Using the Internet. The course will be offered two times: June 13- July 18 and July 5-August 8. The course requires approximately 2 hours of time per week. To register for the course, go to http://midwestlincs.org/aepro/ and use the Register button on the left panel. Cost is $99 per person; a discount of 10% is available for 5 or more registrations paid from one source. The course helps adult education practitioners learn how to successfully integrate computer technology into the classroom. This six weeks course provides quick access to educational resources, lesson plans, activities, tools for evaluating educational software, information about purchasing education software, and knowledge on using a variety of software in the classroom. Linda Eckert will facilitate the course and can respond to questions about course content: leckert@urhere.net. Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE) is offering a "Women at Work" workshop free of charge to labor and community organizations, and we're looking for groups to participate. Women at Work is a project of DARE's Jobs with Dignity Campaign, whose goal is to build women's leadership in the labor movement. In order to build connections between women workers and advance the issues that are important to women workers, this project conducts workshops which focus on efforts to preserve health care and to win community access to good, living wage jobs. If you'd like the DARE workshop team to come to a meeting, class, or other event and lead the 30-minute workshop, please contact Eric Larson at Eric_D_Larson@brown.edu. ASTHMA WORKSHOP AND ESOL LESSON This workshop fuses key, simple vocabulary and grammar into a lesson-like format tailored for ESOL learners. The workshop is one to one and a half hours long, and includes information about the main characteristics of asthma, its symptoms and triggers. Through a participatory and interactive environment, learners not only become aware of basic information relating to asthma, but they also learn English. This workshop can also include data on how asthma affects Latinos, and local community resources where they offer bilingual help. The workshop is free of cost and its language is applicable to all levels. This is a workshop that could easily be integrated into a health unit or delivered as an isolated informative session and lesson. If you and your learners would like to schedule a workshop, please feel free to contact me via e-mail or by phone. Thank you. - Erick Garcia, ESOL Facilitator, American Lung Association, 401.935.8736 erickdgarcia@hotmail.com funding opportunities - large and less large Toyota Family Literacy Louisville, KY (June 15, 2005) - The National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL) announces the expansion of its groundbreaking Toyota Family Literacy Program. This expansion is made possible through Toyota Motor North America, long-time partner of NCFL and supporter of family literacy. Toyota Motor North America's $2.97 million grant will fund the expansion of the successful Toyota Family Literacy Program into five new communities across the nation. The Toyota Family Literacy Program provides Hispanic and other immigrant families with quality family literacy programming, designed to increase basic language and literacy skills, as well as provide parents with the specific skills they need to help their children succeed. The program specifically serves children in kindergarten through third grade and their parents. Communities across the nation are eligible to apply for the opportunity to develop the program in three elementary school sites per community. Through a competitive application process, five cities will be selected to receive grant funding, training and technical assistance, materials and many other forms of support from NCFL. Contact: Emily Kirkpatrick National Center for Family Literacy Office: 502-584-1133 Cell: 502-649-7372 Email: ekirkpatrick@famlit.org Web site: www.famlit.or or Mira Sleilati Toyota Motor North America Office: 212-715-7435 Cell: 646-932-6128 Email: mira_sleilati@tma.toyota.com Web site: www.toyota.com For more information: http://www.famlit.org/ProgramsandInitiatives/tflp.cfm Funding opportunities from PEN Weekly NewsBlast, Hasbro Children Foundation grants to support the development and/or expansion of programs for children. Maximum Award: $500-$35,000. Eligibility: Programs must provide direct services to children under age 13. They must serve children and families who are economically disadvantaged. They must be innovative and provide a model from whichothers can learn. Deadline: N/A. http://www.hasbro.org The Allen Foundation supports educational nutrition programs, with priority given to training programs for children and young adults to improve their health and development. Maximum Award: Past grants haveranged from $2,000 to $1 million. Eligibility: Schools and schooldistricts should partner with local nonprofits to form nutrition education programs. Deadline: Ongoing. http://www.allenfoundation.org/ The UPS Foundation funds volunteer management, hunger and literacy efforts. http://www.community.ups.com/community/philanthropy/focus/main.html. The federal government's new one stop grant site: http://www.grants.gov/ The Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC) announces another round of education reform grants in areas of social science research. PRACC is particularly interested in issues such as high classroom turnover/mobility and its disproportionate impact on low-income, minority, and farm worker students. However, other issues will be considered as well. To apply, send PRRAC a proposal outlining the planned research and methodology, the advocacy work it is designed to support, a budget, timeline, and qualifications of the researchers. Maximum grant: $10,000. No application deadline. http://www.prrac.org/grants.htm Funding Solutions for Small Nonprofit Organizations A collection of resources to help small nonprofit organizations fundraise including ways to motivate your board, sample fundraising letters, phonathon advice, and tips to improve your direct mail solicitation. http://www.nonprofit-innovations.com/ employment opportunities Substitute list: if you would like your name added to the list, please see contact LR/RI. The list needs to be updated so that it can function more usefully for teachers and programs hoping to work with them. (http://www.brown.edu/lrri/sub.html) Rhode Island Community Jobs (RICOMJOB) is a public e-mail announcement list that seeks to raise the profile of meaningful work in Rhode Island by helping non-profit and public interest employers publicize openings effectively. Anyone seeking a job that makes a difference in Rhode Island can join the list. Any non-profit, government or private sector employer advertising a paid position related to the public interest or community concerns can post a free job listing. Positions must be paid but may be part-time, full-time or temporary. To join the list as a job seeker or to post a job as an employer go to: http://www.ricommunityjobs.org Rhode Island Community Jobs is supported by the Swearer Center
for Public
Service at Brown University and the Rhode Island Campus Compact.
If you have questions about this service, please contact us at
ricomjob@brown.edu online / resources available The Massachusetts Worker Education Roundtable has designed a Workplace Health and Safety ESOL Curriculum to help ESOL students learn about and exercise their workplace health and safety rights. The curriculum can be adapted for various ESOL levels or Adult Basic Education (ABE) classes. The curriculum uses learner-centered activities that engage students in discussion, elicit and build on their experiences as workers and encourage critical analysis and strategies. To view and download this curriculum, go to http://www.umass.edu/roundtable. The curriculum is based in part on the Workers Rights Pilot Curriculum by the University of Massachusetts Labor Extension Program. The Workers Rights Pilot Curriculum is designed for trainers and other staff of unions and community-based organizations who need to inform workers of their basic rights under Massachusetts Law. The Roundtable has designed lessons that make the Pilot Curriculum's information more accessible to ESOL students. - Jenny Lee Utech, Massachusetts Worker Education Roundtable The Council for Advancement of Adult Literacy (CAAL) has just put out a new discussion paper (78 pages, co-authored by Forrest Chisman and Gail Spangenberg), titled TO REACH THE FIRST RUNG AND HIGHER. It has to do with building healthcare career ladder opportunities for low-skilled, disadvantaged adults. The paper is posted on the CAAL web site and is being distributed to the adult education/ literacy, community college, and other groups From EdInfo – more online resources "Nationalatlas.gov"- a primary source of U.S. maps & geographic information. Zoom in on your state & make your own map by selecting features to display: cities & counties, roads & rivers, population and 109th congressional districts, crops and livestock, amphibians and butterflies, air and water quality, earthquakes and land cover, forest types, & more. Print a U.S. map (with or without names of states & capitals). Find an aerial photo of your neighborhood. http://nationalatlas.gov/ To subscribe to EDInfo, address an email message to: listserv@listserv.ed.gov Then write either SUBSCRIBE EDINFO YOURFIRSTNAME YOURLASTNAME in the message,; (if you have a signature block, please turn it off) Then send it! To read past messages: http://listserv.ed.gov/archives/edinfo.html The Center for Adult English Language Acquisition (CAELA) announces the first in its new series of briefs, How Should Adult ESL Reading Instruction Differ from ABE Reading Instruction? This brief summarizes the research base on adult English speakers learning to read and the suggestions for instructions from these studies. Then, using findings from a synthesis of research on adult English language learners learning to read, it describes how these learners differ from native English speakers, and how these differences should affect instruction. http://www.cal.org/caela/briefs/readingdif.html learning resources from EDInfo, a periodic email list, well worth pursuing http://www.ed.gov/free While many of these resources are geared to K-12 audiences, many are easily adaptable , interesting toand useful for adults. To subscribe to EDInfo, address an email message to: listserv@listserv.ed.gov Then write SUBSCRIBE EDINFO YOURFIRSTNAME YOURLASTNAME in the message Past messages: http://listserv.ed.gov/archives/edinfo.html The Adult Literacy Education Wiki: "Wiki-wiki," a Hawaiian word meanimg very, very quickly, refers to a web site where you can immediately and easily add to or change text. The best-known application is the Wikipedia, a multilingual encyclopedia, created and modified daily by thousands of people across the world. We think a wiki can be a useful online environment for adult literacy practitioners, adult learner leaders, and researchers to have ongoing discussions in areas of mutual interest. The Adult Literacy Education (ALE) Wiki is not a replacement for electronic lists. It is a complement to, and we hope an enhancement of them. Because a wiki is an easily edited document environment, current or past electronic list discussions can be selectively copied to the wiki, continued at any time, and referenced (and linked) in future e- list discussions. For each wiki discussion topic a summary, glossary, and list of research and other references can be created. We hope the ALE Wiki will become a handy electronic reference shelf of definitions and resources for discussions which take place on adult literacy e-lists, and where one could easily find research citations, full-text studies, threaded discussions which have taken place on lists, and other materials organized around specific research topic areas and questions. It could also be an environment where researchers describe their completed and ongoing work, see how practitioners are reacting to or using their research, and see what questions and issues practitioners and adult learner leaders think are important to study. A wiki, by design, is a participatory environment. We invite you to work on the ALE wiki with us. We are trying to organize this so that lots of people from the field are involved in adding/changing and editing text, but also so that in each of the areas there is a leader, a topic manager, to help keep things organized. The Adult Literacy Education Wiki, is online at http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/Main_Page To set up an account, and add to the Wiki, go to: http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/Special:Userlogin Please e-mail David (djrosen1@comcast.net ) if you have technical questions. We hope you that you will join other researchers and practitioners who have begun to experiment with it.- David J. Rosen Jackie Taylor Marie Cora Marian Thacher Erik Jacobson Practitioner Toolkit: Working with Adult English Language Learners - provides support and resources to adult education and family literacy instructors who are new to serving adults and families learning English and provides a variety of materials to help practitioners meet the language and literacy development needs of the ELL students they serve. These include responses to Frequently Asked Questions, a first-day orientation guide, lesson plans, research-to-practice papers on English language and literacy learning, and an annotated list of English and Spanish language assessments in use. On the Center for Adult English Language Acquisition Web site, the Index page at http://www.cal.org/caela/elltoolkit allows you to select and download the entire document or to select and download topics of interest as needed. The toolkit is made possible by a grant from the Office of Vocational and Adult Education, US Department of Education, through DTI Associates, and is a collaborative effort between the National Center for Family Literacy and the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) http://www.cal.org. If you have comments or questions about the Practitioner Toolkit, please contact Lynda Terrill at lterrill@cal.org. Google Scholar enables searches for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as articles available across the web. Google Scholar orders search results by how relevant they are to your query, so the most useful references should appear at the top of the page. This relevance ranking takes into account the full text of each article as well as the article's author, the publication in which the article appeared and how often it has been cited in scholarly literature. Google Scholar automatically analyzes and extracts citations and presents them as separate results, even if the documents they refer to are not online. This means your search results may include citations of older works and seminal articles that appear only in books or other offline publications. http://scholar.google.com/ Literacies, a Candian journal, is available by subscription and archived online. Special sections of the website recently posted include: three oral history projects at http://www.literacyjournal.ca/oh.htm and have added a practitioner knowledge page at http://www.literacyjournal.ca/cw.htm. Living in Poverty slideshow does the math: what does it take to live at the poverty level. http://www.nccbuscc.org/cchd/povertyusa/tour2.htm RI Foundation online scholarship directory - searchable by city/town, intended field of study, current high school, and more. http://scholarship.rifoundation.org/ YouthBuild USA Learning Network has links to Web sites and full-text documents, and includes a section on "Authentic Materials/Engaged Learning/Constructivism/Contextual Learning/Project-based Learning." http://www.youthbuild.org/learningnetwork/professionaldev.html Providence Community Resource Network (PCRN) http://www.provplan.org/pcrn Spanish language version of PCRN is up and running. You can access the site from the PCRN home page, http://www.provplan.org/pcrn, or go to http://www.provplan.org/pcrnespa. The Web pages, online instructions, and the content of the database have all been translated. Civics 101 - website of the RI Secretary of State, at http://www.rules.state.ri.us/civics_101/; a high school curriculum that may be adaptable for adult learners and/or useful for initiating critical reflection about citizenship and communities. conferences and workshops - conferences and workshops are listed chronologically and are updated with each bulletin Rhode Island - Training/events around employment issues for people with disabilities http://www.ric.edu/uap/training.html CALL FOR PRESENTERS The Student Coalition for Action in Literacy Education requests workshop proposals for SCALE's Read. Write. Act. Conference October 27-29, 2005 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Please join us for the only national conference created
specifically
for campus-based literacy programs, college student tutors, program
coordinators,
adult learners and community partners. We welcome you to submit a
proposal
that addresses one of our conference themes: SCALE's annual Read. Write. Act. Conference is a unique
national networking
opportunity and learning event. It offers the chance for campus
programs,
tutors, coordinators, new readers, administrators and community
partners
to share information, develop new skills, reflect Teleconference: Utilizing Federal Financial Aid to Fund Postsecondary Education for Students with Disabilities Tuesday, July 19, 3-4pm EST This teleconference will cover issues and resources related to financial aid for postsecondary students, with an additional focus on students with disabilities. Included in the discussion will be general student eligibility requirements, "Ability to Benefit", Title IV Programs, and web-based resources. Speakers: Dan Klock, Program Specialist, Policy Liaison and Implementation Division of the Federal Office of Student Financial Aid Megan A. Conway, Ph.D., Assistant Professor Coordinator, National Center on Secondary Education and Transition (NCSET) http://www.ncset.hawaii.edu Associate Editor, Review of Disability Studies (RDS) www.rds.hawaii.edu - Center on Disability Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1776, University Avenue, UA 4-6, Honolulu, HI 96822, Tel: 808-956-6166 Fax: 808-956-7878 Email: mconway@hawaii.edu other events and conferences http://www.nifl.gov/cgi-bin/Calendar/calendar_world.cgi TESOL worldwide calendar of events http://www.tesol.org/isaffil/calendar/index.html
from previous bulletins: REMINDERS, RESOURCES: SABES Resource Lists Available. From Carey Reid [full message here]: As you might know, Massachusetts now has a rigorous, stand-alone ABE teacher's license. SABES, the System for Adult Basic Education Support, is a state-wide staff development system funded by MassDOE. Ö[S]months ago I asked if NLA subscribers were interested in helping SABES build resource lists, by standard, in support of teachers seeking the new license here in Massachusetts. Many of you helped out, thank you, and we've also worked with small groups of people locally to build these 29 lists, now with over 150 resources--books, articles, websites, and videos. The lists are now available on SABES's license support website at http://www.sabes.org/license. You can get quickly to the lists by clicking on the "new resources added" link under What's New, or at any time by using the resources link on the bottom of every webpage. When you arrive at the chart listing the 29 standards, click on any standard to go to the resource list we've compiled for it. The lists are annotated; with the annotations, teachers who wish to improve their knowledge and skills in respect to a particular standard can be more assured they're getting the resource they want or need. If the resource can be viewed or downloaded on the Net, we've provided a link. Additionally, we want to improve these lists, so please email me
if you'd like to suggest additions or changes. BTW, the full list
of resources is also collected in a ProCite bibliography file, so if
you
use that software and would like to have your own "instant" database,
let
me know and I'll email you the file. As stated earlier, SABES is funded
by the Massachusetts Department of Education. To avoid confusion,
the website is not an official DOE site but rather one of SABES's means
of supporting license-seeking teachers in our state. Links to
Massachusetts
DOE webpages, however, are provided on the site. breathe - everyday yoga at your desk. http://www.mydailyyoga.com/yoga/everyday_yoga.html what do you think? LR/RI has had an online survey on its site forever. Previously, those who may have come across the survey were asked to copy and paste it into an email message, or to print it and complete it. Thanks to the brilliant technical support and inservice learning provided by Brown University, the survey can now be completed on line. I'd be grateful if you could please take the time to complete it. While occasional word comes back about the work LR/RI has done, this survey attempts to be somewhat more systematic in considering the work that's done and the work that needs to be accomplished. Please complete the survey at http://www.brown.edu/lrri - scroll down and click on the link to the survey. If you lack web access and wish to complete the survey, please contact LR/RI to receive one via snail mail or fax. Please contact LR/RI if you have information, questions or announcements to share with adult educators in Rhode Island. Bulletins go out at least twice a month; more frequently when there's more to share. To submit information for the next bulletin, please contact LR/RI by phone (401-863-2839), mail (PO Box 1974, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912) or email. back to LR/RI home |
