World Education wishes a happy retirement to Silja Kallenbach, who has served as vice president for more than a decade and directed countless projects over the course of seventeen years. As chair of the US Division, she has overseen operations for the EdTech Center, the National College Transition Network, the New England Literacy Resource Center, and SABES Program Support Center. Throughout her 40-year career in adult education, Silja has worked as a teacher, professional development provider, administrator, fundraiser, and researcher.
 
She will pass the mantle to Priyanka Sharma who has worked at World Education for sixteen years in multiple roles managing a range of projects, including coordinating the National College Transition Network and leading the Digital Navigator project. Please join us in welcoming Priyanka as she assumes this new role in leadership, and in congratulating Silja on her tremendous contribution to World Education.

Do you love integrating technology with adult learners? Do you have experience designing effective digital learning solutions and delivering professional development? If you’re interested in working with a growing, fast-paced team focused on ensuring digital inclusion and equity and expanding technology-rich instruction in support of adult learners, come bring your expertise and passion to the EdTech Center @ World Education! We are hiring a Digital Learning Specialist to support our work both in the US and internationally. Applications are due Friday, October 29th.

On November 12th at 1PM EST, Jeff Goumas will present on the EdTech Integration Strategy Toolkit, which is chock full of effective edtech routines rooted in evidence-based strategies, along with over 1,000 curated digital skills learning activities crowdsourced by educators as part of our Spring 2021 EdTech Maker Space! We’ll discuss ways to use the toolkit, as well as upcoming opportunities for you to contribute to what we hope will be a growing, go-to resource for adult educators. For our second presentation, we'll hear from the Sacramento County Office of Education (SCOE) on the latest updates to make the free USA Learns platform optimized for mobile users and learn how one adult education ESL teacher uses the site with her beginning level students.

CrowdED Learning, an initiative of the EdTech Center @ World Education, is a central component of a five-year grant award to World Education and our partner the American Institutes for Research (AIR) from the Institute of Educational Sciences (IES) at the U.S. Department of Education. The funding supports the rollout of the Teaching Skills That Matter (TSTM) in adult education project, an initiative of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE) led by AIR. The CrowdED Learning initiative aims to increase awareness and effective use of open educational resources (OER) in adult education and workforce development and will explore how use of the SkillBlox educational application can scale and operationalize use of the Teaching Skills That Matter (TSTM) model.

Sacramento County Office of Education (SCOE) has launched a new and improved version of USA Learns, a website offering free ESOL instruction, literacy training, job skills, and US citizenship preparation for adults. New site features include easy access across multiple platforms and devices, activities and navigation that adjusts according to screen size, additional accessibility features such as closed captions and alternative text, and more! Read the blog post to learn about these updates and see what’s new, and join our next Distance Ed Strategy Session on November 12th where the SCOE team will be sharing more about this work.