Professional Development: New Directions for Texas

Click on Over. . .

Three New Titles in TCALL's Occasional Research Paper Series can now be read online. Go to TCALL's home page - http://www-tcall.tamu.edu - and click on "Research" in the lefthand side menu.

Number 3: Adults and Learning Disabilities: Moving Beyond the Limits of Learning (Linda Eastwick Covington, 2003). An extended version of this paper has been accepted for publication in an upcoming issue of COABE's journal, Adult Basic Education. Congratulations, Linda!

Number 4: Even Start Longitudinal Data Pilot Study (Don Seaman, 2003) has been replaced by Follow-Up Data on Parents of Selected Even Start Programs in Texas 2003 and 2004 (Don F. Seaman, 2004). This document has been archived.

Number 5: Trends in Program Evaluation Literature: The Emergence of Pragmatism (Roemer Visser, 2003).

The Change Agent Issue 17: Focus on Housing and Home. The New England Literacy Resource Center publishes The Change Agent twice a year to provide news, issues, ideas and other teaching resources that inspire and enable adult educators and learners to make civic participation and social justice related concerns part of their teaching and learning.  Past issues have focused on the changing world of work, countering crime and violence, working across differences, and environmental justice. The Change Agent Issue 17 addresses issues of housing for low-income people and describes a literacy program that incorporates a housing anti-discrimination project.All back issues and subscription information are available online at: http://www.nelrc.org/changeagent/.

Free Online Typing Test Helps Develop Keyboarding Skill. Typing Master, a company that sells typing instruction software, has a website featuring a free typing test your students can take online. If you are working with students on keyboarding skills, they might enjoy taking the free typing test on this website. Test results are provided in a printable form with the test-taker's name, date ands time stamp, words per minute and accuracy and errors. http://www.typingmaster.com.

Verizon Thinkfinity. VLU offers a range of online courses and other resources to support volunteers and program staff working to create a more literate nation. VLN is brought to you by two of America's premier literacy organizations, the National Center for Family Literacy and ProLiteracy Worldwide, and is funded by Verizon Communications. VLN has a number of resources to support program directors staff, with many more in development.

For example:
Courses about basic volunteer management: how to recruit, interview, orient, train and support volunteers.

Courses about running a more effective program, such as: working with a board of directors or advisory board, planning effective fundraising events and more. http://literacynetwork.verizon.org/. See menu link to Free Online Courses.

Adult Basic Education & Community Colleges In Five States: A Report from the Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System (CASAS). The first working paper in the Council for Advancement of Adult Literacy (CAAL) project to study the role and potential of community colleges in adult education and literacy was recently published on CAAL's website (http://www.caalusa.org), listed first in the left home page column under CAAL Publications.  The report compares selected program characteristics of community college and non-community college programs in five states (Oregon, California, Iowa, Connecticut, and Hawaii) based on comparable data collected by the Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System (CASAS). The characteristics investigated include size of enrollment, demographics, education level, retention, staffing, service to welfare clients, and learning gains. For each state, data from individual programs is aggregated at the state level and comparisons are drawn. The paper is the first in a series of working papers to be followed by a final task force report and recommendations in the summer or fall of 2004.

The New Neighbors: A User's Guide to Data on Immigrants in U.S. Communities. This new resource by Randolph Capps, Jeffrey Passel, Dan Perez-Lopez, and Michael Fix of the Urban Institute can help local policymakers, program administrators, and advocates use U.S. Census and other data to identify the characteristics, contributions, and needs of immigrants in their communities. http://www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=310844.

Rural America at a Glance (2003). This six-page brochure highlights the most recent indicators of social and economic conditions in rural areas for use in developing policies and programs to best serve the needs of rural populations. A format of text bullets make the report easy to read and visually interesting, while providing information on key rural conditions and trends for use by public and private decisionmakers and others in efforts to enhance the economic opportunities and quality of life for rural people and their communities. Download the brochure at:
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/rdrr97-1/