This section is devoted to teachers (and students) in adult education who are developing Web-based materials. Each menu item on the left represents a different topic related to the development process (or at least what we think are important topics in the development process). The major difference between the information included here (which is not, by our own admission, comprehensive), and other guides to Web site design is that there is more of a focus here on the experiences and interests of the adult education community.

Our work is focused around helping practitioners and programs develop their own materials for the Web. Many Web-based educational resources, (especially those produced by large organizations and publishers), while often excellent in some ways, often suffer from one or both of these problems:

1. Out of necessity, perhaps, the content tends to be designed for the broadest audience possible (as opposed to addressing individual leaners, classrooms, and local community concerns);
2. They are often designed for individuals with higher-level literacy skills; and
3. They sometimes require technology, (faster computers, high-speed Internet) and technology access (many teachers and students have limited access to the computers they have) that is beyond the reach of many, if not most, practitioners and students.

What we are trying to do is help teachers and students build relevant content from their point of view that also makes sense for them in terms of the amount of access they have to technology. (For more on the issue of relevant content as a "digital divide" issue, see "Online Content for Low-Income and Underserved Americans: The Digital Divide's New Frontier" a recent report from the The Children's Partnership.) As a consequence, we hope to have an influence on some of the larger publishers and organizations that are producing adult education content on the Web.

We're also hoping, in the future, to increase our support for the development of sites that address the needs of lower-level literacy learners.

Finally, people in the field report that Web site projects can be an effective way to engage students and teachers with technology, so the benefits of embarking on such a project may go well beyond the final "product." (Let's face it, there is just something cool and motivating about the prospect of publishing your own stuff on the Web!)

This "Developers" section is in some ways an on-line version -- and extension -- of the training we provided in 2001 for participants in our mini-grant program. The handouts and links to resources mentioned during those sessions can be found here. Although we created this section for the participants in our own Web publishing initiatives, we hope these materials might also be of use to others in the field.