1

Volume 5, Issue 3

FALL 2005

The Adult Learning

Network is a

quarterly publication

of the Arkansas

Adult Learning

Resource Center.

John Wyvill is New Director of Workforce Education

Governor Huckabee's Press Release August 30, 2005

Gov. Mike Huckabee said Tuesday that John Wyvill

has been named director of the state Department of

Workforce Education. Wyvill will replace Steve

Franks, who earlier this year was named the chan-

cellor of Southern Arkansas University Tech at East

Camden.

George French has been serving as the interim director of the Depart-

ment of Workforce Education since Franks' departure. Wyvill is the di-

rector of Arkansas Rehabilitation Services, a division of the Department

of Workforce Education. He will begin his new job Oct. 3.

Wyvill was interviewed by the state Board of Workforce Education and

Career Opportunities, and his name was forwarded to the governor for

consideration.

Wyvill, 39, joined Arkansas Rehabilitation Services in 1999. Prior to

that, he was the governor's assistant legal counsel. Arkansas Rehabili-

tation Services provides vocational and independent living services that

allow those with disabilities to become productive members of society.

Wyvill received his bachelor's degree in political science from Hendrix

College at Conway in 1988 and received his law degree from the Uni-

versity of Arkansas at Little Rock in 1991.

Continued on page 8

Functional Context Education Workshop

Continued on page 3

The Arkansas Adult Learning Resource Center will host a one-day

workshop entitled Functional Context Education with Dr. Tom Sticht, In-

ternational Consultant in Adult Education, on October 25, 2005. The

workshop will give participants six hours of professional development.

SCHEDULE OF TOPICS (Subject to change if new research is found)

I. Introduction to Functional Context Education (FCE) materials and

principles available online; overview of FCE in Australia, Canada, Ire-

land, New Zealand, United Kingdom; concepts of "relevance;" determin-

ing "relevance" at the national level: the Adult Literacy and Lifeskills

(ALL) survey, National Adult Assessment of Literacy (NAAL) survey,

and relationships to foundational concepts of literacy in FCE.

2

Adult Learning Network

Tuition Reimbursement

Program

Contact your Program Advisor at the

Adult Education Section or Marsha Taylor

at the AALRC for more information on this

program. Reimbursement is applicable to

courses taken for Adult Education Licen-

sure ONLY! This form is available on the

AALRC website (www.aalrc.org).

Remember: (1) The application form must

be submitted to the AALRC 10 working

days before class begins.

(2) Your class grade and receipt of pay-

ment must be received within 30 days of

class ending.

There is a new requirement: Applicants

must provide documentation that the

class will count for adult education li-

censure.

AALRC Staff

Director

Marsha Taylor

___________________

Secretary

Toccara Pearson

Administrative

Assistant

Wanda Johnson

Professional

Development

Coordinator

Nancy Loftis

Media

Coordinator

Klaus Neu

Information

Technology

Specialist

Rob Pollan

Disabilities

Project

Manager

Patti White

Professional Development News

For a list of courses available in adult education, please contact:

NOTICE:

If you are unable to attend a work-

shop you have registered for, please

contact the AALRC as soon as possi-

ble. Participants are often placed on

waiting lists because workshops fill

up. If you find that you cannot attend

a workshop and you call ahead, this

gives us time to notify wait-listed

participants that they can attend.

When a workshop has a waiting list,

participants may not send substitutes

from their center to attend in their

place. Registrations are held for par-

ticipants and not for centers.

Arkansas State University

Jonesboro

Dr. David Agnew

(870) 972-3943

University of Arkansas

at Fayetteville

Dr. Barbara Hinton

(479) 575-5119 or

(479) 575-4578

University of Arkansas

at Little Rock

Dr. Charlotte Robertson

(501) 569-8933

University of Central Arkansas

Conway

Dr. Sherry Roberts

(501) 450-5431

TRAVEL Reimbursement

It is important to remember the guidelines when making travel plans to attend

meetings/workshops at the AALRC. Programs must follow state travel guidelines

and the policy written below. We have had to disallow many travel requests be-

cause the guidelines are not being followed. The AALRC would appreciate your

cooperation in this matter.

Local programs funded with state or federal adult education funds must adhere to Arkansas Department of

Finance and Administration guidelines when requesting travel reimbursement.

3

Adult Learning Network

Dr. Thomas Sticht

III. Case Studies

Case Study #1: Integrating Basic Skills with Vocational Education

Case Study #2: Workplace Literacy

Case Study #3: Workplace Literacy Case Study

Case Study #4: Family Literacy

Case Study #5: Health Literacy

IV. Question & Answer period

Functional Context Education Workshop

II. Functional Context Education in historical perspective, 1860-Present (illustrated with teach-

ing materials integrating functional content with literacy instruction): Freedman’s Schools;

Moonlight Schools; Military Schools in World Wars I and II; Laubach Literacy; Paulo Freire and

Learner Centered, Participatory Literacy Education. Overview of methodologies and research-

based methods used in adult literacy research for determining what is relevant to youth and

adult learners, including focus groups; individual interviews; literacy task analysis; photographic

ethnography; community newspapers; teachers and students as researchers and reporters; en-

vironmental analysis and design for learning.

Dr. Thomas G. Sticht is an International Consultant in Adult Education. From 1976 to 1979, he

served as Associate Director of the National Institute of Education (NIE) where he directed the

Research & Development program of the Basic Skills Group. In 1975, he was Visiting Associ-

ate Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Dr. Sticht received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Arizona, where he specialized in ex-

perimental psychology. His research and development efforts have focused on the application

of cognitive science, communications technology, and computer technology to the literacy, edu-

cation, and training needs of under-served youth and adults. The results of this work are re-

ported in over 150 reports, articles, and books, including Cast-off Youth which formulated the

functional context education approach to adult technical and literacy education established as

policy by the armed services and the U.S. Department of Education's National Workplace Liter-

acy Program. The volume also discusses a project directed by Dr. Sticht that created computer-

based instruction in reading and mathematics for the U.S. Navy. This work lead to the publica-

tion of a 15-volume set of books that integrates basic skills and vocational skills development

for the Glencoe Division of the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company. In 1991, he authored Testing

and Assessment in Adult Basic Education and English as a Second Language for the U.S. De-

partment of Education.

In 1978, the International Reading Association awarded Dr. Sticht the Albert J. Harris Award for

outstanding research on the assessment of learning disabilities of adults. In 1993, he was

elected to the Reading Hall of Fame. In 1997, the Reading Research Quarterly of the Interna-

tional Reading Association reported that the work of Paulo Freire and Thomas Sticht were the

two most influential lines of research on adult literacy education in the last thirty years.

Continued from page 1

4

Adult Learning Network

News from the Disabilities Project Manager

Instructional Tips for Teaching Students with Learning Disabilities

Experience Before Labels: The majority of students with learning disabilities are primarily tactile-

kinesthetic learners, due to visual and/or auditory processing deficits. In addition, the majority of

students with learning disabilities learn new information more easily when it is presented with con-

crete methods rather than abstract. Many students will therefore benefit from learning new con-

cepts, facts, and methods with a concrete introduction to the new information. Below is one exam-

ple of how to allow the students to experience the learning (concrete) before applying any labels

(abstract).

To introduce sentence structure and parts of speech, give the student a list of words to copy on

colored index cards. The word list can vary depending on the student’s instructional level, but one

example might be like this:

Some students will want to add their own words to the list, which is great, but may require some

discussion about what kinds of words need to be with certain colors. Try to discuss the words’

functions, not labels. (Ex: Ask the student, “What’s the difference between the pink cards and the

green cards. Can you see a ‘school’. Can you see an ‘is’. Can you ‘eat’. Can you

‘neighborhood’.” etc. Avoid talking about the labels; e.g. nouns, verbs, etc.) After the student has

transferred each word to its color-coded index card, ask the students to arrange the cards into

sentences.

The student should continue to make sentences until they have at least one paragraph. (This is

more fun if you do it together.) At some point – and this point varies with each student – he or she

will begin to see sentence patterns by color. (Ex: “Every sentence has a pink card and a green

card,” or “There’s always a pink card after a blue one, but sometimes there’s a yellow one before

the pink one.”) Eventually, you can add more parts of speech with different colors, but only when

the student expresses a need for more complicated sentences. There are some students who

should begin this activity using only nouns, verbs, and articles.

After the student can see and explain the patterns in the sentences they write, you can introduce

the labels. This is where you bridge from concrete to abstract. Have the students label each card

with its part of speech, and know that some words will fall in more than one category. Let the stu-

dent decide how to handle those words: separate cards or make one card be half one color and

half another.

Pink

Green

Yellow

Blue

Orange

White

neighborhood is

a

to

intelligent !

workplace

are

an

below

hungry

,

school

going

the

above

demanding .

supervisor eats

A

across

beautiful

.

student

believes An

over

helpful

;

dog

appears

The

behind

interesting ,

place

follows

of

challenging .

opportunity tries

under

silly

.

5

Adult Learning Network

AALRC

Advisory

Committee

Charlotte

Robertson,

Chair,

Little Rock

Emily Barrier,

Little Rock

Harriet Branch,

Monticello

Dubs Byers ,

Pine Bluff

Sharon Ellis,

Fort Smith

Jennifer Hurst,

Pine Bluff

Lloyd Huskey,

Little Rock

Steven Lilly,

Lonoke

Trece Shepherd

Williams,

Helena

George Stegall,

Texarkana

Nancy

Whitmire,

Batesville

Students with learning disabilities think more in terms of images

(concrete) than words (abstract). By learning sentence structure and

parts of speech with the creation of color-coded images, students can

refer to image patterns for increased instructional retention and retrieval.

More instructional tips will be discussed in future AALRC newsletters. If

you have specific questions about teaching a student with learning dis-

abilities, please contact Patti White at

prwhite@madisoncounty.net

or

800.569.3539.

Research on Women with Disabilities

Program administrators, instructors, and students may want to explore

the Center for Research on Women with Disabilities’ (CROWD) website

at

http://www.bcm.edu/crowd/

. The site contains news items, general in-

formation about CROWD, and content on their main topics of research

(health behaviors, secondary conditions, health care, psychoso-

cial health, sexuality and reproductive health, and violence). They

have compiled some statistics about demographics and health disparities

for women with disabilities that will be useful for advocates, policy mak-

ers, and grant writers. There are also materials for students and re-

searchers interested in health issues for women with disabilities, and a

long list of links to information resources. In addition, there is a page list-

ing research studies in progress for which they are currently recruiting

participants.

New Rick LaVoie Video: Beyond F.A.T. City, A Look Back,

A Look Ahead

A follow-up to the original 1989 best-selling Rick Lavoie video, How Diffi-

cult Can This Be. The F.A.T. City Workshop, this new video is now avail-

able for checkout from the AALRC. Contact Klaus

Neu at

klaus@aalrc.org

or 800.832.6242 if you

would like to see the follow-up to the original F.A.T.

City video that has touched so many lives.

Lavoie’s 70-minute discussion is filled with powerful

insights and practical strategies on coaching and

teaching, building self esteem, creating individualized education plans,

imparting accountability, home schooling, parental responsibility, and

much more.

Beyond F.A.T. City, A Look Back, A Look Ahead has been segmented to

facilitate viewer discussion during teacher in-service meetings and to

serve as a gateway to discussion during parent/teacher presentations

and educational workshops. The companion Viewer’s Guide helps dis-

cussion leaders stimulate dialogue through a series of thought-provoking

questions and commentary.

6

Adult Learning Network

Adult Education

Advisory Council

Patricia Bates, Chair

El Dorado

Diane Shores,

Vice-Chair, Helena

Jim Allen,

Fayetteville

Dubs Byers,

Pine Bluff

Pat Collins,

Russellville

Sharon Ellis,

Fort Smith

Lloyd Huskey,

North Little Rock

Margaret Jarrett,

Monticello

Steven Lilly,

Lonoke

Becky Linsky,

Hot Springs

Paulette Martin,

Little Rock

Sheri Rogers,

Arkadelphia

Flora Simon,

Dumas

Marsha Taylor,

Little Rock

Billy Upson,

Texarkana

Peggy Weir,

Pocahontas

With an increasingly growing immigrant population in Arkansas, free and

accessible ESL classes for adults are becoming a necessity for many peo-

ple and for the industries that employ them. Four years ago, around 3,000

immigrants enrolled in free ESL classes in adult education centers, literacy

councils, and businesses in Arkansas. Last year, that number had ex-

panded to over 5,000 ESL students.

The Adult Education Section of the Arkansas Department of Workforce

Education provides financial and technical assistance for these ESL pro-

grams as well as professional development for the adult education instruc-

tors. For the last four summers, ESL instructors from across the state

have converged for an intensive multi-day workshop to learn the most up-

to-date methods for teaching ESL students. This summer was no excep-

tion as 45 teachers, from Warren to Rogers and from Newport to De-

Queen, met from July 19-21, 2005 at the Arkansas Adult Learning Re-

source Center in Little Rock for the Adult Education ESL Summer Institute.

Dr. Philip Less, ESL Coordinator for

the Adult Education Section, organ-

ized the ESL Institute, which focused

on hands-on activities and strategies

for teaching. The trainer for this sum-

mer’s institute was Ms. Laurel Pol-

lard, an educational consultant from

Tucson, Arizona. Ms. Pollard has

written four highly successful and

practical books for ESL teachers:

Zero Prep, Zero Prep for Beginners,

Now You’re Talking, and Yours for

the Asking. The general topics that

were covered in this summer’s three-day workshop included: teaching

multi-level classes, zero prep activities, adapting materials for higher and

lower levels, helping students take charge of their own learning, using mul-

tiple intelligences, and stress reduction for teachers and students.

For further information about the ESL Institute or teaching English as a

Second Language, contact Dr. Philip Less at the Adult Education Section

at 501-682-1970.

Professional Development for Adult Education ESL Teachers

Dr. Philip Less

Ms. Laurel Pollard and Dr. Philip Less

South Arkansas Adult Education Administrators’ Workshop

Flora Simon

Approximately seventy-two adult educators from across south Arkansas

converged upon SEARK College in Pine Bluff for a two-day workshop on

August 2-3, 2005. The workshop was funded by the Arkansas Adult

Learning Resource Center.

Continued on page 8

7

Adult Learning Network

Tech

Talk

Note: To link to any web address (URL) in this newsletter, go the AALRC's home page at

http://aalrc.org, look up this newsletter, and then just click on the appropriate link.

Remote Computer Help

Good news for those with computer woes! The AALRC is pleased to announce the implanta-

tion of our new Remote Control program with One-Click Secure Zero Configuration Firewall

Transversal. One-click what. What does all that mean. It means that if you have a computer

problem, you can go to

http://aalrc.org/remote/slave.exe

and with a few clicks I can remotely

control your computer, just like I was there. I can show you answers to your computer ques-

tions, or fix your computer problems, all without having to travel to your location.

Ever had a question about using Plato, Microsoft Word, email, or just anything you

needed help with but couldn’t find the answers. Help is just a few clicks away. Having trouble

with viruses, spyware, or program errors. Just click on our web link and I’ll help you fix it.

We’ve used remote control software in the past, but there was always the issue of setting

it up and making it work properly. With most centers using firewalls these days, setup could be

difficult or impossible. With our new system, setup is a breeze, so we can spend our time fixing

your problems instead of solving remote-control issues. Even if you have a firewall on your

Internet connection, you will not have to open any ports or use NAT (network address transla-

tion) to make it work.

In case you have never used remote-control software, let me explain how it works. Once

you click on the web link

http://aalrc.org/remote/slave.exe

, I will be able to see what you see on

your computer. I will have control over your computer just like I was sitting at it, even though

you can take control at anytime. We can type messages back and forth or we can talk on the

phone while we are in session. You will see the mouse moving around, and I can show you

what to do while I’m doing it. Frustrating computer-help phone calls should be a thing of the

past.

Setup

1. Your computer must be connected to the Internet. Using Internet Explorer click in the

address bar and type

http://aalrc.org/remote/slave.exe

2. When asked to SAVE or OPEN the program, select SAVE to desktop.

3. After the slave.exe file is saved to your desktop, you should be prompted to OPEN the file;

click OPEN. If you are not prompted to open the file, double-click the slave.exe icon on your

desktop. After 10-20 seconds, you should see this ring appear in your task bar at the bottom

right-hand corner of your screen by the clock. This means that it is ready for remote control.

That’s all there is to it!

FAQ

1. Is it secure. The new remote control software does not listen on port numbers. This

means that it cannot be detected or attacked by hackers, since it doesn’t accept connections.

2. How long will it take to download. The file is only 80K. It will only take seconds to

download, even on a dial-up connection.

3. My Internet Explorer is not working, how can I download the program. I can email the

file to you as an attachment. Or you can download it to another computer and transfer it with a

floppy.

8

Adult Learning Network

Continued from page 6

Wyvill is a past president of the Council of State Administrators for Vocational Rehabilitation, a

national organization of chief administrators of public rehabilitation agencies. He's also a past

president of the Pulaski County Bar Association and a member of the Arkansas Bar Association.

He has served as a Pulaski County election commissioner and was honored by Arkansas Busi-

ness as one of its top 40 leaders under the age of 40.

Wyvill received the Leadership in Public Service award in 2003 from the League of United Latin

American Citizens. He also has received the Golden Torch Award from the Arkansas Association

of the Deaf, the Arkansas Trial Lawyers Association's Outstanding New Member of the Year

Award and the Arkansas Trial Lawyers Association's President's Award.

Wyvill received the Belle Greve Award in 2004 from the National Rehabilitation Association for

the creativity he showed in developing and administering service programs for those with disabili-

ties.

"John has served our state well in every task he has ever been given," Huckabee said. "He will

continue to provide us with distinguished service in this post."

South Arkansas Adult Education Administrators’ Workshop

John Wyvill is New Director of Workforce Education

Governor Huckabee's Press Release August 30, 2005

Continued from page 1

The program opened on Tuesday with a general assembly and the presentation of an informa-

tion panel composed of Klaus Neu, AALRC Services & Materials; Patricia Bates, Policies & Pro-

cedures; Bobbie Sanders, AACAE Benefits & Events; and Emily Barrier, Regional Concerns.

Topics for the two-day workshop were chosen to meet the sixty-hour requirement for re-

certification and presented by regional staff personnel. Topics were also broad enough to be

beneficial to non-certified staff. Topics and presenters were Parental Involvement – Jan Lovell;

Woodcock Test – Patricia Bates; Assistive Technology – Klaus Neu; Working With the Blind –

Harriett Branch; Math Concepts & Skills – Kathy Varnell; Pathways/ WAGE Connection – Lil Wil-

liams; Troubleshooting/ Fixing Internet Problems/Security – Rob Pollan; Best Classroom Tech-

niques – Jim Lewis and Susan Knight; Practical ESL – Brenda Truelove; and Power Point – Rob

Pollan.

South Arkansas Adult Education

Administrators meet quarterly and

invite other administrators to attend.

The next meeting will be held

Wednesday, October 19, 2005,

from 12-2:00 P. M. at UAM College

of Technology in Crossett. Janie

Carter will be the host. The area

legislators will be invited to this

meeting for an informal get-

acquainted period before the busi-

ness session.

Ms. Linda Kittler, adult edu-

cation director at SEARK,

welcomed participants.

Patricia Bates, Bobbie

Sanders, and Emily Barrier

(from left to right)