TV411 Health Smarts While You Wait: The Pilot
In collaboration with the Greater New York Association for Directors of Volunteer Services, health education programs at New York City colleges and universities, and five local hospitals, we began work on a health literacy campaign, TV411 Health Smarts While You Wait. This easily replicable and low-cost project equips a new generation of educators with literacy and media techniques with which to deliver mini-lessons in basic health literacy to patients in non-acute hospital waiting rooms and other healthcare settings.

In the pilot phase (2005-2006), we taught a corps of undergraduate and graduate students in healthcare professions a variety of instructional strategies that are effective with low-literate adults. We arranged internships through which these students could use ALMA’s multimedia health literacy materials to teach low-literate adults at our partner hospitals. An outside evaluation indicated that in less than six months 1,250 adults received health literacy instruction and that in our test location at New York Hospital Queens the intervention increased participants’ understanding of basic health literacy concepts, such as active ingredient and contraindication. The pilot was funded by the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation.

Health Smarts While You Wait provides a training manual for directors of volunteers or program managers and three lessons, in Spanish and English, each with the following components:

• A TV411 video segment showing a real-life application of a particular health literacy skill
• A step-by-step facilitator's guide with discussion questions and activities that help patients understand the strategies modeled in the video
• Teaching aids, such as over-the-counter medications and pill caddies
• A student magazine that encourages learners to practice what they’ve learned

Two additional lessons on nutrition, with accompanying videos and student handouts, are available in English and Spanish.

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TV411 Save Smart
With funding from the NASD Investor Education Foundation, we produced TV411 Save Smart, a free multimedia tool for ABE teachers to help adults learn the basic reading and math skills behind saving and investing. The DVD offers a video, print, and web-based curriculum in four units: Planning for Retirement; Tax-deferred Savings and Investing for Retirement; Mutual Funds: The Ups & Downs, Ins & Outs; and Mutual Funds: Calculating the Cost. Each unit includes the following:

• A video segment, featuring TV411’s math-minded Calculating Women, that highlights key literacy and math concepts about saving and investing strategies
• A step-by-step teacher’s guide with discussion questions and classroom activities that extend and deepen the lessons introduced in the video
• Student handouts that encourage learners to practice what they’ve learned
• Links to interactive lessons on the TV411 website

TV411 Think Math
With a grant from the National Science Foundation, ALMA created a new DVD: TV411 Think Math, a multimedia teaching tool that aims to make math plain and simple, relevant and fun. Teachers can use the DVD's engaging video, classroom activities, and online lessons and games to jumpstart math lessons for pre-GED learners on fractions and percents, basic geometry and perimeter, ratios and rates, number patterns and data analysis. 4,360 copies have been distributed free to adult basic education, youth, and community-based organizations, as well as PBS stations nationwide.

The easy-to-use DVD offers eight multimedia lessons, each containing:

• A TV411 video segment that uses a familiar context, such as sports, cooking, or choosing a cell phone plan, to illustrate a key math concept
• A step-by-step teacher's guide with discussion questions and classroom activities that further explore the skills and strategies modeled in the video
• Student handouts and links to an online game and interactive lesson that invite learners to practice what they've learned

Financial Education: Principles and Practices
With passage of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, people who file for bankruptcy must now complete a debtor education course before receiving a discharge from their debts. The U.S. Department of Justice, Executive Office for U.S. Trustees commissioned ALMA to create the curriculum and learning materials.

The three-part, two-hour workshop, with a video component, begins with money management, including setting financial goals and creating a budget. The second part covers tactics for keeping debt under control, finding the best source of credit, and maintaining a good credit history. The workshop ends by familiarizing participants with consumer protection laws and resources. Participants leave with a magazine, available in English and Spanish, containing financial tools, including budget templates and a goal-setting worksheet, and a concise compilation of financial information on topics such as savings and insurance options, strategies for selecting a credit card, and tips for establishing and maintaining good credit.

FDIC Money Smarts
Building on a shared interest in improving the financial literacy of the some 70 million undereducated adults in America, ALMA and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) joined forces to develop multimedia financial literacy workshops targeted to adults who read between a 5th and 8th grade level. The workshops merge teaching objectives from FDIC's comprehensive Money Smart curriculum with TV411 videos and lessons from ALMA's substantial inventory of learning materials on financial themes.

In three customized pilot workshops led by an EDC Training Specialist, learners explored the math behind rent-to-own credit plans, tips for reducing credit card debt, and strategies for budgeting and saving. FDIC's Money Smart curriculum is used by banks and other community organizations interested in sponsoring financial education workshops.

TV411 Health Smarts Kit
Produced with funding from the Pfizer Foundation, the TV411 Health Smarts Kit creates an active learning environment in which participants tackle the reading, writing, and math skills they need to manage their healthcare successfully. They develop the reading and writing skills to explore real medical documents, such as prescription and over-the-counter drug labels, and practice strategies, such as using a pillbox and journal to track multiple medications, and researching health issues with books and the Internet. Math skills come into play as students make sense of health statistics and evaluate risk.

The kit has seven two-hour units, each containing:

• A TV411 video segment that presents select health literacy skills with compelling, real-life relevance
• A teacher's guide with step-by-step directions and background health information
• Extensive student handouts and recommendations for interactive lessons found on the TV411 website that enable learners to put their health literacy skills to work.

The kit has proved popular with adult basic education programs, hospitals, and community health programs. With a grant from the United Hospital Fund, New York Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn asked ALMA to train volunteers to use materials adapted from the kit at the New York Methodist Family Health Center of Flatbush. Following its initial success, the program was expanded to the hospital's pediatric practice, where it is ongoing.

TV411 Financial Literacy Kit
This six-unit multimedia kit, produced with funding from Bank of America, was one of our first thematic curriculum packages, combining TV411 video, a teacher's guide, student workbook, and recommendations for interactive lessons available on the TV411 website. The TV411 Financial Literacy Kit: Minding Your Money introduces pre-GED adults to some of the basics of personal finance, from understanding a pay stub and reading the fine print common in credit card offers and rent-to-own deals to buying a home.

TV411 Read All About It Kit
Funded in part by The New York Times Company Foundation, this kit helps pre-GED learners navigate newspapers and tackle challenging articles. The literacy skills explored in the curriculum, such as using a table of contents, finding the main idea, and using context clues to decode new words, are invaluable for reading the paper, as well as other difficult texts learners may encounter.

TV411 Family Learning Kit
Designed in collaboration with Even Start centers, this kit encourages parents to work on their literacy skills while reading, writing, and doing simple math with their children. The arts-and-crafts oriented lessons, such as "What's Cooking?," "Lots of Letters," and "Surfing Cyberspace," turn play time into learning time—for children, as well as their parents. The kit is ideal for family literacy programs with an ABE component.

TV411 Health Smarts for Parents Kit
Staff at ALMA and Bellevue Hospital in New York City created the TV411 Health Smarts for Parents Kit. Volunteers continue to use these materials to help approximately 600 low-literate families each year keep track of their children’s appointments, read medicine labels, and prepare questions for their pediatrician. Materials are available in Spanish and English.