Palm Beach Organizational Member Renews

We are pleased to announce that the Palm Beach County Public Library Literacy Project recently renewed their organizational membership with VALF.  This program is part of the library's outreach department. The Board of County Commissioners is actually the library's governing board.  The program recognizes the support of the Commission by listing names of each Commissioner on program announcements.

This library based literacy project has a Friends of Literacy that provides material and support for the library's volunteer literacy program.  Watch for more blog posts about Florida's volunteer literacy programs.. 

Thinkfinity Courses Move To ProLiteracy

You don't have to be a member of ProLiteracy to take online courses now available at their site.  The courses are free and most were originally on Thinkfinity which has now gone to k-12 (kid focused).

All you have to do is set up an account. 

Once you take a course, provide a review of it  via comments on this blog.

Here are courses available in mid-August 2011... 

Adult Literacy Instruction.    
Principles of Adult Learning
Working With Adult Literacy Learners     
Phonemic Awareness Instruction for Adult Literacy Learners      
Volunteering in English Language Learner Literacy Classes      
Culture and English Language Learners     
Citizenship: The Literacy Test 

Free Literacy Material

The Florida Literacy Coalition has a variety of grant funded posters, bookmarks, books and more available for free.  Order them today.

Ideas for Reaching Boys and Men

I recently ran across an idea for promoting reading to men and boys.  A library in England developed Football Family Fun Day with activities and games to promote the variety of sports resources available in libraries. Volunteer literacy programs could provide a family sports day where dads could come and play sports with their children --AND be exposed to sports computer web sites, high interest magazine articles, short stories, biographies, audio books, dvd's and more --all borrowed from the library,donated by your local sports store, a sports bar etc..

Social Networking Tools, Literacy and Libraries

A discussion started this month on social networking tools and literacy.  One article, written by the ALA Literacy Office, Dale Lipschultz, covers issues that are not a surprise for tutors.  You have to read and write before you can effectively use the Internet on a computer or smart phone.

What was interesting to me was a new word: Auding...

David Rosen, a long time authority in adult literacy and technology provided a post about -- Auding is the ability to learn by listening.  This word seemed so new that I couldn't find it in wikipedia. People who are blind have often had to have good "auding" skills to learn but so do adult learners who can understand English.  Learners with the goal of getting the GED--can start studying by listening to articles on science, history, literature etc. even if they can't read very well.  As I have mentioned in the past, free magazine and research articles are available through the Florida Electronic Library.  All they need is an IPod to download an authoritative article.  I get my newspaper online now and can listen to articles on my I Phone.