Adult Literacy and Technology

Abstract

Illiteracy among adults is a serious national problem in the United States and elsewhere. Attempts to alleviate the problem have worked only marginally well. Recently the Adult Literacy Initiative of the United States Department of Education convened a workshop to address the question of how technology might be used to teach reading, writing, and related skills to adults. This is the chairman’s report of that workshop. It begins with an overview of the problem of illiteracy among adults. There follow discussions of what it means to be literate, of considerations pertaining to the teaching of literacy, of how technology relates to literacy, and of some possible ways in which technology might be used to facilitate the teaching of reading, writing, and related skills. Several specific recommendations are made regarding the exploitation of these possibilities.