Content Area Literacy (CAL): Initial Target
The objective of the proposed TORC system is to equip professors and teachers with open-ended knowledge of very precise and grounded educational technology able to guide them in answering instructional questions and expecting significant and measurable results. The Internet now makes this an ordinary function through websites that allow "asynchronous" communication. In other words, anyone can drop in 24/7 and add their two cents. Our pilot target is Content Area Literacy objectives since many of its methods are applicable from 4th- grade to college levels, and in the case of Emergent Content Area Literacy even younger (Alvermann, Swafford, and Montero, 2004: Manzo, Manzo & Thomas, 2005). These methods tend to address areas that seem to wind up taking a back seat to word recognition and analysis, or learning how to read. Typical of CAL concerns is the next stage which often is referred to as reading in order to learn, or: comprehension; thinking; and content/concept learning from text, class discussion and now electronic resources. Several CAL methods also have furthered the efficiencies of what could be called concurrent methods (Manzo and Manzo, 1990) since they contribute significantly to multiple objectives, such as promoting tolerance, collaboration, mechanisms and options for more facile teacher adoption, and most importantly, promoting student self-instruction, sometimes referred to as the sine qua non of educational processes.
