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1. Did you meet your objectives/goals?

Our goal was to create eight new lessons and as a ninth element consider evaluations of exiting lessons: we met that goal. Among those lessons are some that efficiently connect existing online resources to classroom content we consider extremely important in ESL-based family literacy. Implementation of previous lessons in the classroom did not occur on a wide scale, but we were able to compile some evaluation data from the teacher evaluations we received.

2. What were the positive outcomes of the project?

Bringing personnel from different ends of the state from two programs that are different, but share many similarities, to work on such a project helped to further consolidate a valuable partnership begun at state and national trainings and conferences. Our lines of communication and mutual reliance have been greatly enhanced by this experience and the knowledge that we can serve as resources for each other helps us further build on the collaborative essence of Even Start.

3. Is the plan replicable?

Yes

4. Project is replicable with the following changes:

One of the important aspects of this project is to help already busy teachers and students make best use of their limited class and outside study time. So a major goal in working with online resources is to help teachers and students get to exactly what they need without getting bogged down in information overload. If you want to go for an enjoyable walk in the woods, it’s a far better experience to find a well-maintained trail than to have to bushwack it. Bushwacking and surfing the Net have their place and time, but being able to get directly to information about childhood immunizations, or local school performance or studying specific course content online, as we concentrated on here, is what teachers and students need to make their relatively brief time really effective.

5. Possible next steps:

• Move on to real implementation, with more attention given to instructor evaluation and also concentrating on student evaluation of the lessons. Attention could be given to barriers that programs face in implementation and creative solutions to those barriers.
• Consider other existing online resources that could be used to create lessons that are germane to parents in family literacy programs, particularly parents with limited English. Actively connecting teachers and students to the myriad of excellent resources already posted on the Internet could help them make better use of limited time.