Hi Everyone, 

This is the beginning of our yearly cycle on the discussion lists, and I
want to welcome you all to another year of discussing the wealth of
Focus on Basics articles, sharing resources, and being part of this
online community!  

As you know, NCSALL's funding has not been continued, and we are all sad
to see that new issues of FOB will not keep coming as they have for the
past 9 years. We are still trying to find funding to continue FOB as an
online publication, and in the meantime we do have funding for another
year of this discussion list!  

There have been 33 issues of FOB, each with 6-8 articles about rigorous
research on adult education strategies, interventions and teaching
methods, written specifically to encourage practitioners to use the
information to improve teaching practices. I see this as a treasure
trove of material that we can share and discuss. While our usual plan
for this list is to discuss articles from new issues (and there is
another one due in December!), part of our plan for this year is to
review the collection of past Focus on Basics issues, and tie together
some themes from the entire collection. 

To help facilitate this review, we will have FOB Article-of-the-week:
every Tuesday, I will promote a past article and ask if anyone has any
comments or experience using this article that they would like to share.
  

PLEASE E-MAIL ME DIRECTLY WITH SUGGESTIONS OF AN ARTICLE-OF-THE-WEEK,
and I will use them in the weeks to come. Tell me your favorite article,
one that you have used in trainings, one that has improved your teaching
or program strategies, or one that just opened your eyes to a new idea. 


Thanks for being part of this community. I look forward to this year
ahead, and welcome any suggestions you have for improving the list!  


All the best,

Julie 


P.S. Please pass this on to anyone who may be interested in joining the
list and reviewing the treasure trove with us! They can subscribe at:

http://www.nifl.gov/mailman/listinfo/focusonbasics  


Julie McKinney
Discussion List Moderator
World Education/NCSALL
jmckinney at worlded.org