Cycle Five: The following three projects were funded in the fifth (FY 1996-2001) cycle:

• University of Nebraska-Lincoln, School Class Project will provide individual students with access to interactive, flexible course materials that include data, graphics, and video, and will incorporate electronic interactivity between students and teachers, other students, and external resources. The project will provide wider access to educational opportunities than conventional classroom and teaching situations. The project proposes to develop a highly interactive curriculum for electronic delivery, and create an electronic online, highly interactive, and individualized accredited high school diploma sequence. It will deliver instruction through an Internet-based delivery system and through systems located at secondary schools.

• LiteracyLink: Literacy Linkages Through Online Access to Educational Resource, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). PBS, the National Center on Adult Literacy (NCAL) at the University of Pennsylvania, Kentucky Educational Television (KET), and the Kentucky State Department of Education have joined together to build an initiative that for the first time ever will use the latest in video, online, and computer technology to help adults receive literacy instruction and earn high school diplomas.

• This project is designed to crash through barriers that block many adults from obtaining a high school diploma or its equivalent, LiteracyLink will create two video series-complemented by online materials that will help students prepare for the General Educational Development (GED) exam. In addition to their use as part of LiteracyLink, Pre-GED/Workplace Basic Skills and GED Skills 2000 will be available for broadcast by PBS member stations.

• LiteracyLink will also adapt successful adult literacy materials for use in online GED modules that can be tailored for specific students or local literacy programs. LiteracyLink will deliver content in easy-to-use electronic formats, with icon-driven menus and audio instructions. Special software will encourage interactive access to the widest range of relevant materials on the Internet.

• The project will call on the expertise of literacy programs at 25 "innovation sites" across the country, using the significant resources of local schools, libraries, colleges, PBS member stations, business, and community-based organizations.

• To enhance the knowledge and professional skills of literacy teachers and service providers, LiteracyLink will establish a technology-based "virtual" resource center that will include training in technology issues, technical assistance, a rich online menu of materials on literacy education, and professional development videoconferences.

• 101, Pacific Adult Literacy Project is a multi-state consortium that proposes to develop three interactive broadcast courses: GED by satellite; English as a Second Language; and Career two an interactive course geared to displaced adult workers who need retraining. Self-paced GED (a CD-ROM project), teacher inservice training, and other system enhancements geared toward high school competition, adult literacy, workforce readiness, and school-to-work transition, are also proposed. All programs are designed for nationwide dissemination and/or replication. Learning sites will be at middle and secondary schools.