Hello All, 

I would be more than willing to be a part of a small discussion group on this. 

The GED-i does almost all of our PD online or at a distance. We began to offer PD online/at-a-distance as a direct response to the cut in our adult education budgets, our limited PD staff time available to travel around the state of IL and to other states. We needed to save our project $s and time and save our adult ed provider $s and time away from the classroom as well. 

We provide the following at a distance PD and have provided it to IL and our other partner state users for several years. 

    • A variety of phone conference PD opportunities (these are very well received and attended) . 
    • Several online chat opportunities using tappedin.org (we used to use yahoo but have switched to tappedin for a variety of reasons that I can share). 
    • Email follow up to F2F trainings to extend the learning process and provide further support to our users. 
    • Online email trainings that range in length from 3 weeks to 6 weeks that are geared toward administrators (program leadership), coordinators, and instructors. 
    • Full day, half day, and one hour video conference trainings and training follow ups are also a part of our offerings as well . 
    • Online email mentoring for a 12 week period that follows our F2F training or our email trainings. 
    • Two online courses are also available, although they are fairly labor intensive and require a much higher level of commitment than the other at-a-distance offerings we provide our users. 

When we started this we had a hard time filling our at a distance PD and offered about a equal amount of F2F and at a distance trainings. Now we offer about 90% online and have waiting lists for our PD and have to go as far as having repeat offerings that were unscheduled to accommodate those who want to take part. We have learned a lot offering PD at a distance. We have definitely evolved our registration, training, tracking, and follow up processes as well as the structure of the PD we do. 

Let me know if there are questions and if you would like me to be involved in further discussion of this topic. 

Crystal 

-- 
Center for the Application of Information Technologies 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "djrosen1" <djrosen1 at gmail.com> 
To: "The Adult Literacy Professional Development Discussion List" <professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov> 
Sent: Sunday, December 28, 2008 8:12:26 AM GMT -06:00 US/Canada Central 
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 2703] Re: Economic Stimulus and Professional Development 

Colleagues, 



On Dec 27, 2008, at 3:05 PM, Jackie A. Taylor wrote: 



So, a few questions: 

What are the considerations for professional development if the $500 million stimulus for adult education became an immediate reality? 


• Massachusetts many years ago decided that 10% of its state and federal adult education funding should be used for professional development. I think that's a guideline that should be recommended to other states in all new federal funding. 


• We (professional developers, practitioners) need federal funding for a national research center specifically for adult literacy education (like NCSALL). 


What additional models already exist that we can learn from? 


One of the adult literacy education delivery models that has great promise, but that will require significant new and additional professional development ,is online learning. This is especially useful for programs that involve initial face-to-face training and/or education and then job placement, where there is still need for continued education once the person is working, but because of the work schedule there is not much opportunity to attend classes. A blended model, that involves some face-to-face, perhaps one or two Saturdays a month, and 4-10 hours a week of online learning might be an ideal model for some people in this situation. Currently there are very few adult literacy education teachers who have been trained to do online learning well. If online or blended learning significantly expands, there will be a "labor shortage" of these teachers. 


How would we get up and running as quickly as possible? 




We are now close to having final AALPD standards for professional development. Using those standards as a touchstone, and the knowledge gained by Project IDEAL, the Health Care Learning Network in Massachusetts, The McDonald's Corporation's English Under the Arches , programs that have used English for All (and now USA Learns ) and other online and blended learning models, perhaps we could discuss here -- and archive on the ALE Wiki -- some design principles, objectives and content areas for training/professional development in online teaching. Has someone already done (or begun) that? 


If there were a small group of people who were interested not just in discussing this, but also working on developing a PD design for online adult literacy education teaching, perhaps they could organize themselves in an online workgroup (using Officezilla, Community Zero, a Google or Yahoo group and/or a wiki). We could discuss that here, too. 




David J. Rosen 
DJRosen at theworld.com 








David J. Rosen 
djrosen1 at gmail.com 




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