Literacy.org - Projects and Activities

For more than two decades, NCAL has engaged in cutting edge and high-impact research, innovation, and training in adult education and technology, as well as in other areas of adult basic education and literacy (e.g., assessment, numeracy, ESL instruction, family literacy, international comparative studies, and so forth). NCAL has played a significant role in R&D technology efforts in adult education at federal, state, and local levels across the United States. NCAL is regarded as an innovative center for research and development of major projects in adult literacy, with specializations in educational technology, professional development, and multimedia instructional design. Go to NCAL's page

The International Literacy Institute (ILI) was officially established in 1994 by UNESCO and the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. The mission of the ILI is to provide leadership in research, development, and training in the broad field of international literacy and development, with an emphasis on developing countries. The ILI organizes regional and international conferences, disseminates the ILI newsletter, Literacy Innovations, and is involved in a number of significant research, development, training, and networking activities around the world. The ILI has completed a variety of major projects, contracts, grants, and events on time and within budget. Go to ILI's page

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PROJECTS

Learning Connections seeks to help learners identify and navigate the array of opportunities and service providers available to them, as well as to understand their own progress and achievements. The individualized self-advising platform will be accessible to low-literate learners and will offer goal-setting and self-assessment tools as well as referrals to on-line and local service providers. Progress tracking tools and instant-feedback rewards will assist learners as they pursue customized pathways to careers and post-secondary education. By providing a flexible, context-sensitive tool to help learners identify pathways and potential outcomes, Learning Connections will help individual learners aspire beyond basic skills, and will empower them to make their own choices and understand the impact of those choices on career and educational aspirations and opportunities.

Bridges to the Future Initiative (BFI) addresses the Digital Divide of education and technology in emerging economies by improving literacy, basic education, and technological literacy, thereby assisting the world's poorest peoples to better determine their own social and economic future. With funding from multilateral agencies and private foundations, BFI has major projects underway in India, South Africa and Ghana, with other projects in development. A longitudinal evaluation study of local language multimedia tools in Andhra Pradesh can be found on the BFI website.

	TECH21(SM): A National Technology Laboratory for Adult Education (2001-2005) The newly awarded TECH21 project will serve as a hands-on and virtual research-to-practice and dissemination system for the analysis, enhancement and implementation of high quality IT applications in learning and instruction in adult education. NCAL, in partnership with OTAN/SCOE, PBS, and NAEPDC, has implemented TECH21, which consists of the NCAL National Technology Laboratory in Philadelphia, a "hands-on" Demonstration Lab in Washington, DC, and six adult education program-based field sites nationwide.
	LiteracyLink This partnership between NCAL, PBS Adult Learning Service, Kentucky Educational Television, and the Kentucky Department of Education is an online literacy instruction and staff development system that incorporates online technologies (through the Internet), video technologies (digital, closed-circuit, broadcast, and satellite), and computer technologies (including digitized audio and video, computer-generated graphics, interactive multimedia, and text) to deliver instruction in workplace basic skills and GED instruction.
	Professional Development Kit (PDK): Multimedia Resources for Instructional Decision-Making PDK, designed by the NCAL in collaboration with SRI International, is a research and development project to produce a prototype multimedia staff development tool to support adult literacy and ESL practitioners' efforts to strengthen their classroom practice. PDK produced ABE, GED, and ESL CD-ROM video case studies of adult education classrooms; online tools for practitioners to structure their own cases; and resources that include a knowledge database, digests, portfolio, group discussion and class products; and staff development and user guides have also been produced.
	Captured WisdomTM on Adult Literacy NCAL, as part of its R*TEC project, worked in partnership with the North Central Regional Education Laboratory to produce a series of videos and multimedia CD-ROMs on best practices of integrating technology into ABE/GED/ESL instruction. Videos of actual classes are complemented by questions raised by adult education practitioners from focus groups and answered by the cooperating teachers, ensuring that the resource will address the concerns that teachers may have about using technology with adult learners. (Videos and CD-ROMs available free of charge; contact info@ncrel.org.)
	International Literacy Explorer A multimedia teacher training tool designed to give an overview of literacy and basic education issues and practices in an international context. The Explorer focuses in on several innovative and effective literacy projects across the globe and includes sections on general literacy concepts and statistics. Contained on a CD-ROM, Explorer captures five years of NCAL's research efforts in one easy-to-use, searchable, multimedia CD. Included in the CD are full-text research papers, practice guides, searchable database of selected research documents, software demos of the leading software products for 1995/96, and an interactive easy-to-use introduction to implementing technology in adult literacy programs.
	Project Connect Project CONNECT is a U.S Department of Education funded technology development project. The goal of Project CONNECT is to create supplemental web-based instruction for intermediate level adult ESL learners. Partners in the project include PBS, Jefferson County Public Schools in Kentucky, and several public TV Stations. The free, self-paced units focus on working in the United States, continuing one's education in the United States, and civic participation. All of the site material is written specifically for adults learning English with an emphasis on listening and reading.
	ESL/CivicsLink ESL/CivicsLink is a web-based professional development program for ESL teachers. ESL/CivicsLink enables teachers of people seeking English language literacy to acquire effective ESL methods and foundation skills and U.S. Civics content knowledge through self-directed, interactive online distance learning. Each individual unit of ESL/CivicsLink addresses critical areas of interest identified by ESL teachers.
	YouthHub With the support of the Kellogg Foundation, NCAL has completed a study of technology and basic skills education for at-risk youth. In sum, the study concludes that information technologies that are socially embedded into youth culture and local communities have the greatest motivational value and impact. It is not the technology itself that multiplies the impact of successful programs; rather, it is the ways in which the technology is incorporated into those programs that make the difference. NCAL is building on several of the findings of YouthHub through a new project entitled Learning Connections , funded by Lumina Foundation for Education.