Volume 24 Issue 1 | March/April 2024 | |
Adult Learning Network
The Adult Learning Network is a quarterly publication of the
Arkansas Adult Learning Resource Center (AALRC)
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The Digital Resilience in the American Workforce (DRAW) initiative prepares adult education practitioners who support learners who struggle to fully engage in tasks that demand digital technologies. The DRAW Professional Development Pilot will train instructors and state leads on integrating DRAW materials, methods, activities, and tools into their programs and professional development training.
Information on this project can be found by clicking here. Arkansas Adult Education was chosen to participate in the Second Cohort. A director and instructors from ATU Ozark and UAM McGehee were chosen to participate in the Second Cohort along with the AALRC Director. The Arkansas team attended a kick-off meeting in Washington, D.C., in January and will continue to meet with their coach monthly until the project is complete in April. Geoffrey Woodland, IHPDS/Digital Literacy Specialist from Pennsylvania, will coach the team throughout the project. Be sure and watch for training to come in the near future.
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R-L - Regina Olson, Christy McCollough, Geoffrey Woodland, Marsha Taylor,
Ashley Hammond, and Stephanie Bierbaum.
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Arkansan Adult Educator Receives Prestigious National Award From the Coalition on Adult Basic Education
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BENTONVILLE, Ark., Feb. 2024—Dakota Shelton, adult educator at Northwest Arkansas Community College Adult Education, has been awarded the Scholarship Award by the Coalition on Adult Basic Education (COABE), the leading national organization dedicated to advancing the field of adult literacy.
Dakota Shelton served as a math teacher before entering into teaching for adult education. Right from the start, Dakota knew that the field of adult education was where she belonged, so she gained some experience and continued teaching for a few years. Today, Dakota is pursuing her Adult and Lifelong Learning Master of Education at the University of Arkansas. Taking classes has been difficult while working full-time and single parenting, but she is not deterred. She knows that this degree will help her pursue her future career aspirations.
Concerning her future goals she states, “Since I started in adult education in 2018 and began this educational journey in 2020, I have solidified my passion for adult education and plan to continue learning and growing in this field. A few goals that interest me for the future include GED® coordinator, program coordinator, program advisor or even program director. I love teaching and would like to stay as an instructor for as long as possible, but I also know the skills that I have acquired and continue to obtain will be useful in roles beyond the classroom someday.”
Sharon Bonney, CEO of COABE, states,"Dakota Shelton has set her goals high and is committed to the field of adult education. At COABE we applaud her efforts to further the field and look forward to where this degree will take her in her career.”
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Impressions from the COABE 2024 Conference | |
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This year’s COABE 2024 national conference was held at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee.
This is the world’s largest adult education conference where participants access new best practices and receive targeted training from national-level speakers. Fifteen strands, comprised of almost 500 break-out sessions were offered over 3 ½ days, providing valuable, state-of-the-art training.
Over 3,000 conferees enjoyed numerous networking opportunities.
Many Arkansans involved in adult education from all parts of the state took the opportunity to learn and share with other adult education peers from around the country.
If you would like to visit next year’s COABE 2025 conference held in Dallas, Texas, please mark your calendar 2025 from March 30th – April 2nd.
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PD Calendar for Upcoming Months | |
Please click button below to access the AALRC Professional Development (PD) Calendar for 2024! | |
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For further information on upcoming COABE Webinars in 2024,
please click below!
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Tucker Unit Workforce Alliance for Growth in the Economy (W.A.G.E.) Graduation
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Congratulations to the twenty-one graduates of W.A.G.E.! A ceremony was held for them on Thursday, February 8, with Ms. LaCarol Clement, the Director of Lonoke & Prairie Co. Adult Education, as the guest speaker. | |
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Mr. Emerson, the unit WAGE Instructor, opened and closed the ceremony. Ms. Clement presented the Certificates of Graduation, a Workforce Preparation Certificate, to the men as many other guests sat in attendance.
The Island of Hope Praise Team provided refreshments for the graduation.
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Clipboard History is a Hidden Gem of an Easter Egg | |
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Are you a copy and paster? I am, and it makes my work go much faster. But what happens when you copy an item, paste it, and then you are working on something else and copy a different item, but then you need the item that you copied earlier? Before you would have to go back to the other app and copy it again, but now you have Clipboard History to save the day!
This is a nice little hidden gem of a setting in Windows 10 and 11. The clipboard history on Windows 10 works for multiple copy and pastes, but is lacking in several other features, so we are going to discuss the Windows 11 version for this article. The feature is so handy, that I can’t believe it’s not on by default, and once you try it, I think you will agree.
| Turn on clipboard history – this feature can be turned on in Settings, but there is an easier way, simply press the Windows logo key at the bottom of your keyboard, plus the v key at the same time. Then click the "Turn on" button. | |
Now that it’s on, you won’t have to turn it on again.
After you copy something and then want to paste it, simply press the Window logo key + V to bring up the clipboard history and click on the copied item that you want pasted.
| But that’s not all! After you press the Window logo key + V, you also have a great selection of emojis 😁, .gifs, kaomojis (❁´◡`❁), and symbols (including language ἂ, math ⅓, and other symbols ©) that are quickly at your fingertips. Enjoy 😎! |
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For further questions or help, please feel free to contact
Rob Pollan rob@aalrc.org.
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AmeriCorps Members
Celebrate Martin Luther King Day
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In 1994, Congress tasked AmeriCorps with leading Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the only federal holiday designated as a National Day of Service, to encourage all Americans to volunteer to honor the life and legacy of Dr. King and improve their communities. AmeriCorps programs throughout the United States have since celebrated this day by service in their local communities.
Last year, many of our programs took advantage of the opportunity to participate in the “Little Food Pantry” program. Engage Arkansas, which provides funding to support AmeriCorps programs in the state, offered old newspaper boxes to every AmeriCorps program that wanted to be a part of this pantry program. AmeriCorps Members could decorate the boxes and place them outside their local literacy councils or adult education programs. Eight of our Arkansas Reads AmeriCorps programs requested boxes; some even requested two. Engage Arkansas asked each program to maintain food in these boxes for people in their communities. AmeriCorps Members, along with volunteers from the program such as staff, board members, and even students, currently help keep food stocked in the “Little Food Pantry.”
This year, Arkansas Reads AmeriCorps Members decided to address the issue of food insecurity in their communities throughout the state. For the MLK Day project, Arkansas Reads received a $4000 grant from Engage Arkansas, which helped us provide each of our AmeriCorps programs with $500 to use toward stocking food in their “Little Food Pantry” or Members could creatively come up with a way to assist another community program in getting food to those who need it. Members who did not supply a little food pantry purchased food and toiletries with the funding they received to donate to local food pantries. One AmeriCorps Member devised a very creative way to distribute food to children in her community. Their program has a “Little Food Pantry” at a local school bus stop for elementary school students. She and other volunteers at her program filled Ziploc bags with breakfast items and after-school snacks and placed them in the pantry for the students in the morning and afternoon. Another AmeriCorps Member serves a large Hispanic population, so he decided to buy food specific to their culture to distribute to those families. He and a group of volunteers bagged the food up and then had a food giveaway for them. We applaud all of our AmeriCorps Members for serving daily to meet the needs of people in their community.
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