About REEPworld's Student Site
Background | Development Team | Design Considerations | Technology | Contact Us
REEPworld is a project of the Arlington Education & Employment Program (REEP) in Arlington, Virginia. This project was funded by an English Language Civics (EL Civics) grant awarded by the Commonwealth of Virginia in 2004-2005. The goal of this project is to provide adult English language learners with level-appropriate, web-based activities that target lifeskill areas, while also preparing students to use the Internet as a tool for learning and participating in their communities. The lessons contained in this website are intended for adult English language learners and were designed with low-proficiency and low-literacy learners in mind. |
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REEPworld is unique in the following respects:
We are very interested in your feedback. If you have questions or comments, please contact us.
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Development Team: REEPworld |
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Project Coordinator 2004-2007 Content
Consultant |
Karen
Taylor Donna Moss |
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Project Co-Coordinator 2008 |
Michele
Cona |
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Content
Development Team 2006-2008 |
Deborah Jones Ruth Takushi Melanie Siteki Sarah Young |
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Content
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Deborah Jones |
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Video production:
Producer:
Karen Taylor Note:
This video is in the final stages of post-production. |
Actors Wife:
Larisa Andreyewsky* |
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Family English Stories: Authors
Hanna's Story: Ruth Takushi |
Narrators Hanna's Story:
Eden Husen* |
 Illustration by Miguel De Angel |
Work English Stories: Authors
Abdul's Story: Debbie Jones |
Narrators Abdul's Story:
Mohamed Tanziti* |
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The characters and events depicted in "What's the Matter" and in each of the Family and Work English stories, while based on common immigrant experiences, are entirely fictional. REEP thanks the many students who contributed their voices, their images, their ideas and their feedback on these stories. | * REEP Student ** REEP Staff |
We have learned a great deal in the process of developing this site. The notes below are provided in hopes that other designers will benefit from our insights.
Readability, Usability and Task Design
In an effort to create a reader-friendly website, we made a general effort to
use dark-colored sans-sarif fonts (in this case, Arial) set against light backgrounds.
To accommodate low-literacy learners and older adults, lessons feature large-size
text whenever feasible. Jacob Nielsen's article
on Low-Literacy Users has been a helpful resource, as has James
Gee's book, What
Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy.
Plug-in Requirements
We wanted to create a site
that would not put undue burden on users to download various plug-ins. Current
research suggests that Macromedia's free FlashPlayer is the most
widely downloaded plug-in in the world. That is, among the many plug-ins out
there (QuickTime and Shockwave are other examples), FlashPlayer is the one most
likely to be already downloaded on computers found in private homes, libraries,
schools and workplaces.
Bandwidth Requirements
With low-proficiency, low-literacy
English language learners in mind, this site contains many images and sound
files to support learning. At the same time we anticipate that many of our users
will access this site on older (slower) computers via dial-up modems, which
presents a significant challenge: creating a multimedia site that does not require
excessive bandwidth. Sound files on this site are therefore presented in .mp3
format, which economizes on file size. We chose to use Flash (.swf) files to
integrate sound, as Flash files are condensed and therefore also economical
with respect to bandwidth.
Learn more about REEP
and our ESL Curriculum
for Adults, free and online.
Share your questions or comments with us by sending an email to: reep@arlington.k12.va.us
Copyright 2005-2007, Arlington Education & Employment Program (REEP)