Looking for a Free Team Management Tool --up to 15 people can use this one for free

Tech-Talk: WEB TOOL - Asana.com For Project Management Intermediate Do you ever want to collaborate on projects with colleagues and need a way to keep track of who's working on what... and the progress each person is making? Group efforts can involve whole teams of people, both inside your organization and outside.  Even if you have a defined goal and know who is responsible for each part, it can turn into a mess of back-and-forth email communications, not knowing the progress other members are making. Project management software can be expensive, have steep learning curves and people have different preferences in the tools they use. So how do you manage these tasks? We discovered a web-based option that we'll call a "lite" project management (PM) tool that includes the must-have options -- AND has a free level for up to 15 team members so that you can stay organized and get your work done at no additional cost. Asana www.asana.com is a web-based tool that gives you one place to create projects with tasks, assign work to team members, and share ideas and updates.  While it may not be filled with some of the bells and whistles that other PM tools offer, it has all the functionality you need to stay connected to your team and is simple and easy to use. Asana's tag line is "teamwork without email" -- so that you don't have to rely on reading, writing, sorting messages related to each group task. Interestingly enough, Asana was founded by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and ex-engineer Justin Rosenstein, both of whom worked on improving the productivity of employees at Facebook. The creators of this tool like to refer to it as more of a "teamwork communications manager," rather than a traditional project management tool. All communication in Asana is actionable and tied to the work that needs to be done. In one place you'll see the critical information of:  ·  Project list ·  Tasks within each individual project that can be broken down into subsections ·  Who is responsible for each task ·  The due date of a task and if has been done ·  Notes and comments from team members ·  Links to corresponding documents (in GoogleDocs or Dropbox) Asana Lets You: ·  Assign team members to be part of a project or just be designated to "follow" it (and receive periodic updates). ·  Create templates for recurring projects to save time in the future. ·  Archive completed projects so that you can save the history if needed. ·  Work on-the-go from anywhere ... because it is web-based. ·  Connect via iPhone and Android smart phones with an app. ·  Receive email updates to give you a heads-up when task due dates are approaching or a team member has completed a phase of the project. ·  Invite guests and give them special permissions to be assigned tasks or just view projects. Sometimes with free tools, you "get what you pay for." But even though we consider Asana to be a lite-weight tool, it is robust enough for project planning and working together as a team.   However, there are benefits to upgrading to a paid version. When you upgrade, you'll be able to use it if your organization has 15 or more members who you want to create projects, work within teams and have unlimited guests (not officially part of your group).   To stay productive, you can even use Asana by yourself to get a handle on your own projects and to-do list items. Take a look at www.Asana.com.

Health Literacy

Here is a post by Julie McKinney I just saw on LINCS:

Have you tried using the MedlinePlus Interactive Health Tutorials in your adult ed classes? They are self-paced online tutorials that use pictures and animations to supplement the text, which is read by audio. They are interactive and include quiz question to test knowledge. You can also get a printout of the texts to use offline for previewing vocabulary, reading practice or review.

The topics available include a huge range of health issues and a good selection of tests, surgeries and other procedures. So you can learn about a condition you have, or about a procedure that you are preparing for or deciding about.

You could use these tutorials to teach technical skills, reading comprehension or health literacy, among other things.

LINCS has several discussion groups you can join.

Renew your VALF membership today.  We make it easy. Complete the online form and use the donate button to go to PayPal. It is only $15 for an individual and $25 for a group.  Business members only pay $100. 

Sandy Newell