The Adult Literacy Center has received a $15,000 grant from Prairie Meadows Race Track and Casino through its 2010 Community Betterment Grant Program.
Grant funds will help to support “Virtual Literacy to Succeed,” a project that assists struggling adult readers using emerging technologies so that individuals with low literacy skills can now have immediate access to information and knowledge. Text-to-speech and speech-to-text give adult learners the opportunity to build knowledge and skills prior to their ability to gain literacy competence in the traditional sense.
The goal of the Adult Literacy Center is to improve literacy, resulting in enhanced self-esteem, daily living, and life-long learning. Utilizing volunteers, the center improves the quality of adults’ lives by helping them learn to read, write and comprehend. The Adult Literacy Center has been part of the Drake University School of Education since 1976. Volunteers from the Drake and Greater Des Moines communities staff the center.
Drake’s Office of Marketing and Communications received $10,000 through the Community Betterment Grant Program.
Grant funds will help to support a new digital media initiative. Drake hopes to provide better access to the fine arts, lectures and other educational events held on campus each year through new digital media initiatives implemented by the Marketing and Communications office. With new equipment, campus events can be recorded and turned into videos and podcasts that can be distributed through multiple channels and viewed by anyone with an Internet connection.