Dear Family Literacy Colleague,

The Adult Literacy Education (ALE) Wiki* has over 500 registered  
users, nearly 50 of whom have added their introductions to the Who's  
Here page http://wiki.literacytent.org/index.php/WhosHere . The ALE  
Wiki has over 650 pages of content on research and professional  
wisdom in adult literacy education.  A wiki is a Web environment in  
which (after a free registration and log-in) you can easily add  
content, as well as read it.  The ALE Wiki is a community of  
practice, with teachers, tutors, researchers, learners and others  
from all over North America voluntarily contributing their  
professional wisdom and research.

Recently the Family Literacy topic area has grown. For example, it  
now includes pieces about the relative importance of parenting,  
catalysed by a letter from Tom Sticht published in the San Diego  
Union-Tribune on January 25, 2006  http://wiki.literacytent.org/ 
index.php/AleFamilyLiteracyQuestions, a promising practices section,  
and more terms defined in its glossary. The Topic Area leader for  
Family Literacy is Janet Isserlis, from Literacy Resources/Rhode Island.

The ALE wiki  http://wiki.literacytent.org  is organized by content  
areas, or topics.  Currently these include:

    1. Accountability
    2. Adult Learners' Self-Study
    3. Adult Literacy Professional Development
    4. Assessment Information
    5. Basic Literacy
    6. Classroom Practices that Work Professional Wisdom from  
Practitioners and Research
    7. Corrections Education
    8. English for Speakers of Other Languages
    9. Evidence Based Adult Education
   10. Family Literacy
   11. GED Research
   12. Health Literacy
   13. Learner Persistence
   14. Learning Disabilities
   15. Numeracy Research and Practice
   16. Participatory and Emancipatory Education
   17. Persistence and Retention
   18. Project Based Learning
   19. Public Policy
   20. Research to Practice, Practice to Research
   21. Technology
   22. Transition_to_College
   23. Workforce, Workplace and Worker Education
   24. World Literacy and Nonformal Education
   25. Young Adult Literacy

More topics can be added, and more content can be added within each  
of the topic areas.  The topic areas are usually organized as follows:

•  Questions -- usually actual questions from the field, often those  
posted by people on NIFL electronic discussion lists
•  Discussions -- usually selected threads from electronic discussion  
lists which are often added to on the Wiki.  Sometimes these are  
summarized.
•  Glossary
•  Research -- citations and links to pertinent research in the topic  
area
•  Promising Practices
•  Resources -- links to resources which are pertinent to the topic area

How can you use the ALE Wiki ?

.... in ways yet to be discovered.  But so far, users have:

•  looked for questions -- and answers -- in a specific topic area  
which they, as teachers, are facing
•  found references to research which they needed for proposals or to  
improve program practice
•  looked up puzzling terms in the glossary
•  remembered a discussion held on an electronic list, found the  
thread archived in the ALE Wiki, and sent the ALE Wiki address to a  
colleague

I hope you will look at the ALE Wiki -- a work in progress -- and  
register and add to it.  Please let me know other uses that you have  
found for the ALE Wiki, and if you are interested in being a topic  
area leader for one of the current topics or a new wiki topic.

------
* wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki) is a Hawaiian word meaning  
"quick" - wiki wiki means "very very quickly".

David J. Rosen
ALE Wiki Organizer
djrosen at comcast.net