The Jackson County Green Energy Park (JCGEP) utilizes clean, renewable energy resources to encourage economic development, provide environmental protection, and offer educational opportunities that together will help lead towards a more sustainable future for Western North Carolina. Located in Dillsboro, NC, JCGEP captures methane gas from the old town landfill, then uses the gas as fuel for a series of artisan studios, greenhouses and other ventures.
GEP Press Fact Sheet (PDF)
Glass - The Glass Studio is one of the only hot shops in the world utilizing landfill methane gas as a fuel. Glass Studio space is available for rent.
Blacksmithing / Metals — The Metals Shop features the first blacksmith forges and art foundry ever fired on landfill gas. Metals Shop facilities and equipment are available for rent.
Ceramics – Our Anagama Kiln is modeled on ancient Japanese designs. The 100ft3 kiln is fired using wood and waste vegetable oil as fuels. The kiln is available for public firings several times throughout the year.
Greenhouse - The Coy Melton Memorial Greenhouses are heated with a dual-fuel boiler that runs on methane gas from the landfill, with biodiesel as the backup fuel source.
Gallery – The Art Gallery showcases the exquisite work created by our artists using renewable energy.
Sculpture Garden – The Sculpture Garden features work by the winners of the GEP sculpture competitions, along with other pieces by local artists. The GEP is proud to provide a place for artists to showcase their exceptional talents in sculpture creation.
Guided Tours – Public tours are offered on Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays, 10 am - 3 pm; and at other times by appointment. Tours include a glassblowing demonstration, a walking lecture on the GEP's renewable energy use and history, a visit to our ceramics kiln, and a blacksmithing demonstration when available.
Methane gas from landfills is a very potent greenhouse gas, damaging our environment.
By burning landfill gas as fuel, our project provides direct and immediate improvements to our environment and local air quality.
Yearly reductions in emissions:
• Prevents 222 tons of methane from entering the atmosphere.
• Offsets 550 tons of CO2 that have been created by fossil fuels instead.
That’s comparable to:
• Removing 916 vehicles off the road, or
• Planting 1,305 acres of forest, or
• Preventing the use of 11,104 barrels of oil, or
• Displacing the use of 521,870 gallons of gas
Timm Muth, Project Director
With over 30 years experience in the energy industry, Timm has helped design and manage nuclear facilities, fossil fuel stations, hydropower, solar and wind power installations, and biomass resources such as landfill gas. Timm has led the effort at the Green Energy Park since its inception in 2005. He brings to the project an enthusiasm for renewable energy, belief in the power of community, and the ability to turn what could be into what is.
Chelsea Miller, Program Assistant
Born and raised in Homestead (FL) Chelsea is currently a student at WCU majoring in Art Education with a dual concentration in Sculpture & Ceramics. She is highly knowledgeable in the areas of glass blowing and blacksmithing having taken classes from master teachers. She is devoted to community and enjoys giving back - she started working with the GEP as a volunteer in 2010.


Kokotsaki, D. (2011) 'Student-Teachers' conceptions of creativity in the secondary music classroom.', Thinking skills and creativity., 6 (2). pp. 100-113.
This study aims to explore the meaning of the concept of creativity from the perspective of student teachers pursuing a one year teacher training course following their first degree. Seventeen student teachers following a specialist music teaching route in secondary education were selected as the sample for this study to offer their understanding on creativity in the secondary music classroom. Data were collected through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews and were subject to in-depth qualitative analysis using Atlas.ti software. All student teachers seemed eager to teach for creativity as they thought it was a vital component of their pupils’ musical engagement and development. However, some held richer conceptions than others or tended to overlook significant areas of musical involvement, such as improvisation, group work and engagement in evaluating and refining the creative musical product. Creativity was generally expected but it would emerge on an intuitive level as a by-product of a learning objective rather than being explicitly considered in the planning process. These narrow conceptions of the meaning of creativity in the music classroom need to be taken seriously and explicitly addressed in music education programs in order to maximize the expression of pupils’ creative potential in the music classroom and beyond.
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(2001). Music assessment and the hegemony of musical heritage.
In: Philpott, Chris and Plummeridge, Charles eds.
Issues in Music Teaching.
London, U.K.: Routledge Falmer, pp. 118–130.
About the book:
Issues in Music Teaching stimulates critical reflection on a range of topics related to the teaching and learning of music in both the primary and secondary school, including:
• the place of music in the curriculum
• the nature of music and music education
• ICT and music education
• music education and individual needs
• continuity and progression in music education
The book prompts the reader to be analytical and critical of theory and practice, and to become an autonomous professional and curriculum developer.
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Walsh, Andrew (2011) Martini Information Literacy: How does “anytime, anyplace, anywhere” access to information change what Information Literacy means? In: LILAC 2011, 18-20 April 2011, British Library, London. (Unpublished)
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A few years ago it was the norm to access the internet through a fixed line, with perhaps small numbers of users using WIFI to connect devices such as laptops. Increasingly nowadays it is becoming the norm to connect wirelessly through devices as diverse as laptops, netbooks, iPads, mobile phones, handheld gaming devices and even digital cameras. A Morgan Stanley (2009) report on the mobile internet said in December 2009, “The mobile Internet is ramping faster than desktop Internet did, and we believe more users may connect to the Internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs within 5 years.”. Already 59% of American adults access the web wirelessly (Smith, 2010), which includes 40% accessing some aspect of the web from their mobile phones. In the UK, by the end of 2009, around 41% of adults were able to access the web from their mobile phone (Mintel, 2010). This penetration is only set to increase, as it is believed that by 2015 all new mobile phones will be smartphones.
Recognising this increase in access to the mobile web, many of us have offered mobile friendly materials to support our users' information literacy development. But what does access to information on the move mean for the concept of information literacy? Our search behaviours must surely be changed by the Martini web (anytime, anyplace, anywhere - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hfHDSXuXSM), so what does Martini information literacy look like? This short paper will discuss how the mobile web is changing what it means to be information literate and act as a starting point to trigger the development of new models of mobile information literacy.
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Z Bibliography. Library Science. Information Resources > Z719 Libraries (General)
|Schools:||Computing and Library Services|
Computing and Library Services > Centre for Innovation in Information Services
School of Education and Professional Development > Centre of Lifelong Learning and Social Justice > Technology Enhanced Learning Research Group
|Depositing User:||Andrew Walsh|
|Date Deposited:||28 Mar 2011 15:55|
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The Supreme Court has upheld the constitutional validity of the Right to Education Bill making it mandatory for private schools to reserve 25% seats for children of economically weaker sections of society.
The RTE judgement will come into effect from today and the court said prior admissions would not be affected.
See also - Quality Education (Teacher Eligibility Test ) to implement RTE :
A bench comprising Chief Justice SH Kapadia and Justices KS Radhakrishnan and Swantanter Kumar, which had reserved its verdict on August 3 last year, upheld provisions of the law which made right to education a fundamental right of children in the age group of 6-14 years.
The RTE Act will be applicable for day schools and not for boarding schools. The RTE Act will also not be applicable in private minority schools.
The order was passed on a bunch of petitions by private unaided institutions which contended that the Act violates the rights of private educational institutions under Article 19(1)(g) which provided autonomy to private managements to run their institutions without governmental interference.
The Centre had defended the law saying it was aimed at uplifting the socially and economically weaker section of society.
The Centre had emphasised the need to de-link merit and talent from social and economic differences among different sections of society and said that the act calls for "moving towards composite classrooms with children from diverse backgrounds, rather than homogeneous and exclusivist schools".
FAQs on the Right To Education
New Delhi: The Supreme Court today has said Right To Education is constitutionally valid and has made it clear that it will apply to all schools controlled by govt or local bodies. Here are some FAQs on this act.
What is the Right to Education Act?
All children between the ages of 6 and 14 shall have the right to free and compulsory elementary education at a neighbourhood school. There is no direct (school fees) or indirect cost (uniforms, textbooks, mid-day meals, transportation) to be borne by the child or the parents to obtain elementary education. The government will provide schooling free-of-cost until a child's elementary education is completed.
What does this mean for schools across the country?
Right to Education Act, 2009, mandates 25 per cent free seats to the poor in government aided and private unaided schools uniformly across the country. However this will not be applicable to private minority institutions that get no aid from the government. Government schools will have no quota. These schools have to admit all.
Schools will have to implement the 25% reservation at the entry level of the school. States will have to bear the cost of this.
How will the poor students be selected?
Poor students from neighbourhood areas have to be admitted, based on a lottery system.
What are problems with the Act and its implementation?
Many activists feel, that exempting private minority schools from admitting poor students is the biggest drawback as many private schools will exploit this. Bachpan Bachao Andolan, an NGO, conducted a study across 9 states last year to understand the impact of the Right to Education Act and discovered some disturbing trends.The names of a large number of students were enrolled but they were not in schools. Bodies which are to implement the Right to Education Act haven't even been set up in many states.
What happens if the RTE is not implemented by schools?
The National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) can review the safeguards for rights provided under this Act, investigate complaints and have the powers of a civil court in trying cases.


Pupils could have more opportunity to use internet sites like Twitter
Primary school pupils should learn how to blog and use internet sites like Twitter and Wikipedia and spend less time studying history, it is claimed.
A review of the primary school curriculum in England will be published in a final report next month.
But the Guardian newspaper says draft copies it has seen shows pupils will no longer have to study the Victorian period or the Second World War.
Ministers said British history would always be a core part of education.
The review of the primary school curriculum was commissioned by Schools Secretary Ed Balls last year and is being drawn up by Sir Jim Rose, former chief of England's schools watchdog, Ofsted.
The Guardian said the draft review requires primary school children to be familiar with blogging, podcasts, Wikipedia and Twitter as sources of information and forms of communication.
They must gain "fluency" in handwriting and keyboard skills, and learn how to use a spellchecker alongside how to spell, the article said.
The government says history will still be studied
Every child would learn two key periods of British history but it would be up to the school to decide which ones.
While schools would still be able to opt to teach Victorian history or the Second World War, they would not be required to, the Guardian said.
In an interim report published in December, Sir Jim said primary age children needed a greater understanding of information technology.
He also said he wanted to create a more flexible, less "overloaded" timetable.
His interim review suggested there could be six broader "areas of learning", rather than up to 14 individual subjects, such as history, geography and science.
The proposals suggested that "key ideas" might overlap different subjects - for example, the way that learning about human settlements could teach about both history and geography.
'AREAS OF LEARNING'
understanding English, communication and languages
scientific and technological understanding
human, social and environmental understanding
understanding physical health and well-being
understanding the arts and design
He also said the level of lessons in information, communication and technology (ICT) currently taught in secondary schools should now be taught to primary-age pupils.
Technological advances were driving a pace of change that would have been "unimaginable" when the national curriculum was created 20 years ago, he added.
Commenting on the claims in the Guardian newspaper on Wednesday, Schools Minister Jim Knight said: "Sir Jim Rose's report has not been completed let alone published yet - but we are already getting stories about dropping this or removing that from the curriculum.
"The bottom line is that we are working with experts to free up the curriculum in a way that teachers have asked us to do but British history has, and always will be, a core part of education in this country.
"Of course pupils in primary school will learn about major periods including the Romans, the Tudors and the Victorians and will be taught to understand a broad chronology of major events in this country and the wider world."
Ministers will formally respond to Sir Jim's proposals when they are published in April.


BUREAU OF ELEMENTARY EDUCATION
main thrust of the Bureau of Elementary Education is to provide access,
progress and quality in elementary education. It formulates and
implements key programs and projects to enable every citizen to acquire
basic preparation that will make him an enlightened, disciplined,
nationalistic, self-reliant, God loving, creative, versatile and
productive member of the national community.
Key Programs and Projects
- Multigrade Program in Philippine Education (MPPE)
program supports the DECS mandate to improve access to and quality
elementary education through the opening of complete multigrade classes
and completion of incomplete schools in far-flung barangays. It also
provides instructional materials, training, school buildings and
introduces community support schemes.
The project outlines the broad policy directions to pursue by the State for Filipino children under six year-old.
- Multigrade Demo Schools Projects (MDSP)
- Pupil Learning Enhancement Program (PLEP)
- Little Red School House Project (LRSP)
- Integrated Curriculum for Multigrade Classes (IC-MG)
- Early Childhood Development Project (ECDP)
ECDP is being implemented by the Department of Social Welfare and
Development, Department of Health, and DECS. Services are addressed to
children under ____ are delivered in an integrated approach; DOH takes
care of health and nutrition concerns of children ages 0 to 6; DSWD
takes care of the early education of the six year olds.
- Preschool Service Contracting Program
program is an alternative delivery system to provide preschool
education to prospective Grade I enrollees throughout the country
Preschool classes are organized in the
5th and 6th municipalities and urban poor areas, and are provided
preschool experiences for 6 months by private preschool providers.
- SPED Personnel Enhancement Program
are short term summer/semester courses, seminar or training workshops
and national conferences done year round primarily aimed to hone the
capabilities of regular and SPED teachers, administrators, supervisors
and other service providers in addressing the educational needs of
gifted and children with disabilities and in managing programs
appropriate for them.
- Resource Materials Development for Children with Special Needs (CSNs)
development and production of various resource and instructional
materials for CSNs include textbooks in braille and in large print,
Handbook on Inclusive Education, Reference or Guide Materials for
Teachers of Children with Learning Disabilities and Learning
Competencies for the Gifted in Grades I-III and Enrichment materials in
six learning areas including Computer Education.
- Early Intervention Program for Children with Disabilities
program focuses on the training of SPED teachers and social worker as
facilitators to provide parents and other community volunteers with
knowledge and skills on educational intervention that should be given
to infants, toddlers and preschoolers under age 6 who are disabled or
those with developmental delays. The program utilizes the Filipino
Adaptation of the Portage Guide to Early Education.
- Standards for Quality Elementary Education (SQEE)
project intends to generate competency standards for the workforce in
all levels of elementary education. It draws upon the rationale that
the improvement of instruction is influenced, to a certain degree, by
setting standards for what the students, as well as other education
stakeholders, should know and be able to do.


This is a BBC video from Britain, about ancient Greek sculpture.
The antiquities museum says about one of its present non permanent exhibitions, Models of beauty. Masterpieces in plaster:
13 June through 16 November 2008
This exhibition shows beautiful 17th, 18th and 19th century plaster casts of the finest sculptures of Antiquity. The timeless beauty of classical sculpture is the focal point of this exhibition. Further attention is paid to the role played by plaster casts in science, art criticism and art education in the past four hundred years.
He started with talking about Rome, as in that city, in the sixteenth century, were the origins of copying sculptures from antiquity. When, early in that century, visitors came to Rome, they might know from writings that during antiquity, there had been many sculptures in public places. However, when they visited the city, they saw only a few sculptures said to have survived from the Roman empire or earlier: the she-wolf of Capitol hill; the Marcus Aurelius statue; Trajan’s Column.
When, while building churches or other buildings in medieval Rome, sculptures or parts of them from antiquity had been found, they had been recycled as building material. After 1500, however, people found out that discoveries like these might add to knowledge about antique art. In this way, new sculptures which became famous, were found, like the Laocoön group and the Apollo of the Belvedere. They attracted many artists and other visitors from many European countries to Rome.
The popes and other élite people from the papal state sometimes, as a favour, started giving plaster copies of antique sculptures to princes in other countries. One example was Trajan’s column, a copy of which was given to King Louis XIV of France. In 1824, these plaster copies were found in a windmill in Leiden. the Netherlands. It is not known how they had ended up there. As, since the seventeenth century, in the open air of Rome, the original Trajan’s column has suffered much from pollution, these plaster copies are today valuable, as they show details which are no longer clear in the original.
In the exhibition are also cork models of ancient Roman buildings, which used to be sold to tourists. And reproductions of idealized paintings of ancient Roman remains, by the neo-classicist Giovanni Paolo Panini (1692 – 1765).
During the eighteenth century, drawing academies, based on neo-classicist views, arose in many countries. First, the students had to learn to draw skeletons and muscles for human anatomy. Then, they had to make drawings of Greek and Roman sculptures, considered as models of perfect human bodies. Only after that did they draw nude human models, with bodies not as perfect as antique sculptures.
Among the plaster copies often found in drawing academies were the Venus of Arles. And the “Borghese gladiator” which does not really depicts a gladiator, as gladiators did not fight while naked. The nude statue probably depicts a hero.
The Venus of Arles was considered the ideal female form, until 1820, when the Venus de Milo was discovered in Greece.
One of the drawings, depicting a statue of the Greek god Apollo, at the exhibition, is by nineteenth century drawing academy student, later famous painter, George Hendrik Breitner.
When female students had to draw plaster copies of statues, fig leaves were attached to prevent the women from seeing male genitalia.
Certainly since the 1960s in the Netherlands, neo-classicist ideas in art education became weaker. For the plaster copies, that often meant they were hidden away or even destroyed.
In the sixteenth century, mainly Roman sculpture and Roman copies of Greek sculpture had become known in western Europe. In the early nineteenth century, for the first time, classical Greek sculpture became widely known. Eg, after the Parthenon marbles arrived in London. People had difficulty in getting used to them. The poet John Keats was one of not very many people admiring the Marbles right from the start. While fellow poet Lord Byron attacked Lord Elgin for taking the sculpture from Athens. More about Byron: here.
When sculpture from the Aegina temple, still older than the Parthenon, became first known in Germany, famous author Goethe did not like it, as it did not conform to his preconceived ideas of what Greek art should be.
Bronze Horse Head Hints at Roman Ambitions in Germany: here.
MSU art professor’s theory about ancient decorating choices casts new light on Roman paintings: here.
Why the ancient Greeks and Romans reclined for a meal: here.


Summary: For courses in Foundations of Reading, Teaching Reading in the Elementary School and Trends in Reading Education.
Although this text promotes a balanced approach for the introductory courses for reading, it has long been recognized as a leader in phonics instruction. This tenth edition strengthens the text's reputation and serves as an authoritative and practical guide to teaching reading. Throughout the text readers will experience a wealth of classroom app ...show morelications in the form of activities and games, detailed lesson plans, and examples of decoding and comprehension strategies.
NEW The latest research findings.
Provides a complete synopsis of the research conducted by CIERA, the National Reading Research Center, and the National Reading Panel to inform readers of the most current findings.
NEW Inclusion Strategies Sections in the majority of chapters.
Exposes students to practical teaching modifications for children with special needs in a regular classroom.
NEW Portfolio and field-based assignments close each chapter.
Emphasizes the transition from theory to practice by encouraging student portfolio entries and field-based assignments.
NEW A contributory chapter by Dr. Donna Norton.
Devotes an entire chapter to merging children's literature in reading by one of the leading children's literature experts.
NEW Instructor's Manual.
Equips professors with test questions, discussion questions, and blackline transparency masters.
NEW Literacy Cluster website www.prenhall.com/heilman.
Offers students additional information on resources for topics such as word study, comprehension, emergent literacy, and assessment. ...show less


Take a stroll down memory lane with the new Library exhibit: Promoting Children’s Literacy – A collaboration between the DiMenna-Nyselius Library and the Graduate School of Education and Allied Professions.
Visit the DiMenna-Nyselius Library during December, 2011 and January, 2012 to view our new exhibit, Promoting Children’s Literacy. The exhibit features some of the wonderful materials available in the library’s Curriculum Collection, created to support the Graduate School of Education and Allied Professions (GSEAP). The large cases in the lobby focus on popular children’s books that will evoke fond memories: Madeline by Ludwig Bemelans, Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, Alice and Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Harry Potter by JK Rowling, Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein, and Lord of the Flies by William Golding.
The smaller cases just inside the library represent different GSEAP programs. Each case is devoted to a different program and contains materials from the Curriculum Collection that directly support it. Programs featured include the Early Learning Center, Elementary Education, Secondary Education, TESOL, World Languages, and Bilingual Education, Special Education, Educational Technology, and School Library Media.
The Curriculum Collection, located on the Main Level of the DiMenna-Nyselius Library, contains a selection of K-12 instructional materials. This collection is an essential resource for those studying and working in education. Materials are available in a variety of formats, including books, multimedia, computer software, periodicals and educational kits. Our collection is constantly updated and includes award-winning titles including Caldecott, Newbury, Coretta Scott King, and Nutmeg books.
Visit the Curriculum Collection, located on the Main floor of the Library, to check out the Library’s wonderful collection of children’s material.


"A voice like hers comes once a century," said Arturo Toscanini. Even as a child her voice was so stunning that her church set up a special fund for her music education. From the choir of a black church in Philadelphia, she went on to an exceptional international career as a concert and opera singer, overcoming the obstacles of racial discrimination in the arts. In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow her to perform in their auditorium, Constitution Hall, because she was black. In a triumph over bigotry, Marian Anderson drew an audience of 75,000 for her Easter Sunday concert, relocated to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.


Just been working with teachers in Zambia -some have ZERO reading books in their classroom and many have less than 10. This is an area with their local language of Bemba, so a few reading books in English is not going to help when they come to having to take a leaving exam in English.
Literacy development, in such confusing situations, is common in many countries, and a concerted policy and implementation process to get the best out of these children and young people. A whole generation can lose their right to quality education, due to a lack of vision and resources , in terms of literacy. One day is not enough , but we have to kkep trying :)
Literacy is a human right. It is a tool for personal empowerment and essential for sustainable development, poverty reduction, gender equality, maternal health, child mortality reduction, and peace and democracy. – UNESCO
Celebrated on September 8th of each year, International Literacy Day serves as a reminder of the status of literacy worldwide and of the importance of literacy in peace, development, poverty eradication, empowerment, health and gender equality.
While the number of illiterate persons has fallen over the past decade, 781 million adults, two-thirds of whom are women, still lack basic reading and writing skills. An additional 126 million youth are considered to be illiterate. More than one-half (53%) of the global illiterate population reside in South and West Asia, 24% in sub-Saharan Africa, 12% in East Asia and the Pacific, 6.6% in the Arab States and 4.2% in Latin America and the Caribbean. Less than 2% of the remaining global illiterate population live in the remaining regions combined. Living in conflict-affected areas increases the likelihood of individuals not becoming literate or gaining access to education. An estimated 28.5 million primary school aged children remain out of school in conflict affected countries. For more information on adult and youth literacy rates, click here.
While much progress has been made in improving adult and youth literacy over the past two decades and literacy rates are estimated to continue to improve in the coming years, continued efforts are needed to lessen the vast number of illiterate adults and children worldwide. Literacy not only helps reduce poverty and enables people to find jobs, but it is one of the most efficient ways of improving the health of mothers and children. UNESCO estimates that the lives of more than two million children under the age of five were saved between 1990 and 2009 because of improvements in the education of reproductive age women. Literacy also facilitates peace and democracy within societies, as poorly-literate individuals are less likely to participate in democratic processes and have fewer chances to exercise their civil rights.
Literacy and Sustainable Development
The theme of International Literacy Day 2014 is “Literacy and Sustainable Development.” As UNESCO notes, literacy is a key element in empowering people so that they can make the right decisions in the areas of economic growth, social development and environmental integration. It plays a critical role in the development of sustainable, prosperous and peaceful societies.
International Literacy Day iscelebrated worldwide with the main global celebration taking place in Dhaka. The Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh in partnership with UNESCO, in support of the UN Secretary General’s Global Education First Initiative (GEFI), is hosting an International Conference on Girls’ and women’s literacy and education titled: “Foundations for sustainable development.” The UNESCO Literacy Prizes will also be awarded.


WEB RESOURCES IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
LISTED BELOW IS A SELECT GROUP OF WEB RESOURCES AVAILABLE TO THE RESEARCHER IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION. IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS, ASK YOUR LIBRARIAN FOR ASSISTANCE OR CALL 672-1233.
Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement--An archival website, the center's major mission was to improve the reading achievement of America's children.
Children Defense Fund--This website's major mission to ensure that no child is left behind.
Child Trends Data Bank--Source documents national statistics and research on indicators of child and youth well-being.
Cumberland County Schools--Site serves as the gateway to information in elementary education for Cumberland County School District.
Foundation for Child Development-- Site dedicated to the principle that all families should have the social and material resources to raise their children to be healthy, educated and productive members of society.
Franklin Porter Graham Child Development Institute--A component of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, this institute's major goal is to cultivate and share knowledge that will enhance child development and family well being.
Harvard Education Letter--Sponsored by Harvard Graduate School of Education, this series of articles focuses on education in preschool through grade three. In addition to articles, the site provides the researcher with a comprehensive lists of additional websites on selected topics in early childhood education.
National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER)-- Research based, this site supports early childhood education initiatives by providing nonpartisan information to the researcher.
National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)--This organization is committed to improving the well-being of all children from birth to eight years old.
Public Schools of North Carolina Success INC--Located at the state's Department of Education website, this resource supports efforts to meet the needs of all young children and their families through in-service, networking and collaboration among early childhood professionals.
Smart Start--An private and public sponsored initiative in North Carolina committed to helping children 0-5 enter school healthy and ready to succeed.
United States Department of Education--Serving as one of the largest repositories of information in education, this site provides an abundance of resources on the quality of education in the United States.
Zero to Three--This organization's major mission is to promote the healthy development of youch children fro infancy to three.
Illustrator: Joseph D. Bates FSU Visual Arts Major
Page Maintained By: Bernadette M. Ross firstname.lastname@example.org
Page Last Updated: July 9, 2005
Charles W. Chesnutt Library, Fayetteville State University, Fayetteville, NC 28301


There are significant gaps in compliance of the minimum standards in the schools under the Right to Education Act, 2009 that guarantees every child the fundamental right to free, quality elementary education. This came to the fore during an on-ground study conducted by leading child rights NGO CRY (Child Rights and You).
The study entitled ‘Learning Blocks’ that was conducted across 71 districts in 13 states, including UP, tracked the infrastructural gaps in the implementation of the RTE Act. These gaps pertain to school infrastructure, adequate buildings, toilet and drinking water facilities, fencing or boundary walls, pupil teacher ratio and one-classroom-one-teacher practice etc.
The study reveals that 11% schools did not have toilets. Only 18% schools had separate toilets for girls. In 34% schools, toilets were observed to be in bad condition or unusable. Overall, most of the schools did not have separate toilets for girls and boys. Around 49% schools had common toilets for staff and students. It was found that 20% schools did not have availability of safe drinking water. Another 12% schools had source of drinking water (tap/hand pump) outside school premises. The RTE Act makes it mandatory to have a separate kitchen in every school preparing the mid-day meal (MDM) inside school premises. But in 18% schools, the MDM was either not cooked inside a designated kitchen or did not have a kitchen space at all.
Puja Marwaha, CEO CRY says, “One cannot expect children to stay in school without basic infrastructure like safe classrooms, electricity, clean drinking water and functioning toilets. CRY’s experience on-ground points to the fact that the lack of basic infrastructure – especially facilities for drinking water and separate toilets for girls - is one of the key factors that push children out of school.”
What about playground and play materials? Some 63% schools under the study did not have a playground. About 60% sample schools overall reported absence of play materials. Similarly, around 60% schools did not have boundary wall, damaged boundary wall or boundary wall was under construction. The study also shows that 74% schools did not have a library. In schools, which did have a library, around 84% did not have activity books and 80% did not have story and general knowledge books.
As per the findings of the study, only 13% schools provided age appropriate admission. In most of these schools, special coaching or training was provided to the child who received age appropriate admission.’ The child rights NGO has demanded that the act be effectively implemented.


William Gedney Bunce (1840 – 1916)
Born in Hartford, Connecticut, William Gedney Bunce served in the Civil War, 1st Connecticut Cavalry. He was discharged after two years due to a leg wound, which resulted in a limp the rest of his life.
Bunce began his art education under Julius T. Busch, a German-born artist residing in Hartford. After the Civil War, he moved to New York City where he studied under William Hart.
By 1867 he had moved abroad. He spent more than a decade studying in various European cities. He sojourned in London, Paris and Rome. World renowned sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens met Bunce soon after he had arrived in Rome. St. Gaudens had been informed of a fine studio that was being occupied by a young dying man. St. Gaudens met the supposedly fatally ill young man who turned out to be Bunce. Saint-Gaudens later commented: “We became fast friends. This was thirty-six years ago and still he is alive, as sound as a drum, as lively as a cricket, and likely to outlive those of us who expected to attend his funeral and occupy his studio in Rome.”
While in Rome in 1871, Bunce’s first paintings were sent back to the United States for exhibition, but it was not until his 1879 return to New York City that he received critical acclaim. His paintings were unique in that he composed them with a palette knife rather than a paintbrush. In 1880 his evocative Venetian canal scenes were praised, but a year later there were already warnings from the press of mannerism and unmotivated repetition. Nevertheless, he was recognized for his sense of color and apparent simplistic design.
Until World War I, Bunce divided his time between Venice and the United States, but he was more associated with Venice. Over the years he became something of an institution there. Acquaintances like Robert Blum and William Merritt Chase joked about his proud and cantankerous nature, which in 1881 had caused Venetian gondoliers to refuse him their services. But he also had loyal promoters and patrons, such as the dealer Daniel Cottier, the architect Stanford White, and Queen Victoria of England who had ordered one of his Venetian landscapes.
Bunce kept a New York studio on Washington Square for many years but ultimately moved back to Hartford, where he built a new studio and continued to paint until 1916. Bunce died on November 5, 1916 when he was hit by a car while crossing the street – one of the first victims of an automobile accident in Hartford.


Almost half of British adults have the maths skills of an 11-year-old or worse, a study into adult numeracy has found. The number of adults who struggle with basic maths skills has been rising, meaning that many are unable to carry out simple numeracy tasks.
Over the last eight years, the number of adults with the maths skills of a primary school pupil has gone up from 15 million to 17 million – representing 49% of 16 to 65-year-olds.
This worrying statistic has raised concerns that parents will pass on their poor numeracy skills to their children. Campaigners now want to boost maths skills in the general population, and give parents the tools to boost their children’s maths levels.
A new charity, called National Numeracy, has been launched to try and tackle poor maths skills in all areas of the population.
‘We have 17 million adults whose maths capabilities are – at best – at the age of an 11-year-old,’ said Chris Humphries, Chairman of National Numeracy.
‘Now that’s a scary figure because it means they often can’t understand their pay slip, they often can’t calculate or give change, they have problems with timetables, they certainly can have problems with tax and even with interpreting graphs, charts and meters that are necessary for their jobs.’
National Numeracy analysed data from a Government survey carried out in 2003 and 2011, which asked adults to complete sums designed for primary and secondary school pupils.
The analysis showed that 46.9% of adults struggled to complete the primary-level maths questions in 2003, with the figure rising to 49.1% in 2011.
“We want to challenge this ‘I can’t do maths attitude’ that is prevalent in the UK. It is often a boast or a badge of honour, and that’s across the whole of the social spectrum.” Mike Ellicock, National Numeracy’s Chief Executive.


Early Foundations® Toddlers
Your Toddler's Day
Knowledge Beginnings' toddler-specific curriculum enables your child to grow in confidence and learn to walk tall in their new world.
Toddlers are naturally curious and want to explore the world around them. We have designed our classrooms and equipment to support safe exploration so your child has room to discover, build motor skills, and improve coordination. Activities focus on experimenting with space to develop balance, hand/eye coordination, participation in creative movements to music, and more.
Toddlers need an environment that is interesting to explore, safe, and filled with caring teachers who respond to their emotional and intellectual needs. Our program offers children a variety of fun, stimulating activities, such as matching and sorting, exploring colors, counting, and categorizing objects.
A foundation for reading success begins as early as the first few months of life. Introducing toddlers to books and language nourishes early literacy development. Toddlers focus on first words and phrases, vocabulary development, following simple directions, and identifying and naming familiar items.
Exploring art materials and experiencing music, dance, and drama enrich the classroom. Our experienced teachers reinforce important developmental objectives through these creative, fun experiences. Creative Arts activities are designed to introduce toddlers to cause and effect, self-expression through art and music, and taking on pretend roles.
As toddlers learn more about themselves and their abilities, they become aware of their social setting. With frequent opportunities for group experiences, they gain an awareness of others and a sense of group identity. Daily group-time incorporates a number of activities, such as songs, games, stories, and more.


Summary: Early literacy has been thrust into the education spotlight with a flurry of recent research and U.S. federal initiatives focused on early reading and writing. Now, more than ever, preschool teachers feel mounting pressure to increase children's literacy development. This book will help preschool educators and administrators respond to these new challenges by providing the latest information on topics important to them and their young learners.
The authors ...show morepresent the foundationsthe core content and bestpractice strategiesneeded to provide preschoolers with balanced, effective early literacy instruction. To help teachers develop this kind of instruction, the chapters offer ideas on how to read with young children, create a carefully planned printrich environment, join children's play, plan a daily schedule that meets children's needs, and help parents help their children learn. A chapter linking standards with assessment and instruction will help readers tie together everything they've learned. ...show less
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Music education is a field of study associated with the teaching and learning of music. It touches on all domains of learning, including the psychomotor domain (the development of skills), the cognitive domain (the acquisition of knowledge), and, in particular and significant ways,the affective domain, including music appreciation and sensitivity. The incorporation of music training from preschool to postsecondary education is common in most nations because involvement in music is considered a fundamental component of human culture and behavior. Music, like language, is an accomplishment that distinguishes...
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'It’s important that we tell the world about... the value of music education in our school systems'.
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RT @PFCFoundation: Today is the 4th annual PFC Day! Join me and 1000’s of people worldwide to support music education for kids @
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Teaching Strategies for the Slow-Learning Social Studies Student
- Reciprocal teaching of social studies in inclusive elementary classrooms. Lederer // Journal of Learning Disabilities;Jan/Feb2000, Vol. 33 Issue 1, p91
Reading comprehension relies on the use of metacognitive strategies. Reciprocal teaching has been found to be an effective comprehension technique to use with students with learning disabilities. This study examined the effectiveness of reciprocal teaching during social studies instruction with...
- The differential effects of two systematic reading comprehension approaches with students with learning disabilities. Rabren, Karen; Darch, Craig; Eaves, Ronald C. // Journal of Learning Disabilities;Jan/Feb99, Vol. 32 Issue 1, p36
Presents the results of a study which compared two highly dissimilar approaches for teaching learning disabled students to determine character motive when reading three types of narrative text. Comprehension measures used; Rule-based instruction; Results of transfer and maintenance tests.
- LEARNING--A MATTER OF STYLE. Dunn, Rita S. // Educational Leadership;Mar1979, Vol. 36 Issue 6, p430
Suggests teaching methods for slow learners. Definition of slow learners; Characteristics of slow learners; Materials used for teaching slow learners.
- Chapter 1: CONTEXTUALIZING MYSELF IN PRACTICE, THEORY, AND PLACE. Connor, David J. // Urban Narratives: Portraits in Progress--Life at the Intersectio;2007, p7
A personal narrative is presented which explores the author's experience of teaching the learning disabled (LD).
- Strategy Training and Reading Comprehension. Brailsford, Anne; Snart, Fern; Das, J.P. // Journal of Learning Disabilities;May1984, Vol. 17 Issue 5
Describes the application of a remedial strategy training program to improve the reading comprehension of learning disabled students. Comparison of the experimental group in cognitive strategy training and the control group in remedial reading; Results indicating greater experimental than...
- Best practices in promoting reading comprehension in students with learning disabilities. Mastropieri, Margo A.; Scruggs, Thomas E. // Remedial & Special Education;Jul/Aug97, Vol. 18 Issue 4, p197
Describes the best practices for facilitating reading comprehension for students with learning disabilities. Review of research in reading comprehension with students with learning disabilities; Analysis of relevant literature; High effects of some reading comprehension strategies; Description...
- Connecting Brain Research with Dimensions of Learning. Hardiman, Mariale M. // Educational Leadership;Nov2001, Vol. 59 Issue 3, p52
Suggests the best practices for teaching children, especially students with learning disabilities, based on a brain research and the dimensions of learning. Techniques for inculcating positive attitudes; Practice for making students acquire and integrate knowledge; Activities which allow...
- The SM rap -- or, here's the rap on self-monitoring. Rankin, Joan L.; Reid, Robert // Intervention in School & Clinic;Jan95, Vol. 30 Issue 3, p181
Focuses on the method of self-monitoring in the teaching of students with mild learning disabilities. Explanation of self-monitoring; Implementation of self-monitoring intervention; Illustration of the procedures used for a student with learning disabilities having difficulties in math.
- Teaching effective comprehension strategies to students... Swanson, Philip N.; De La Paz, Susan // Intervention in School & Clinic;Mar98, Vol. 33 Issue 4, p209
Summarizes several metacognitive strategies designed to improve reading comprehension in students with learning and reading disabilities and describes an instructional model showing how to teach comprehension strategies to students. Discussion of practical suggestions to help teachers implement...


School’s Out for Summer? Maybe for some, for others not yet…..but the Summer Reading Lists are Ready!
Summer is the ideal time to relax and the perfect opportunity to get lost in an exciting adventure story or mystery book, read something historical or imagine the future through science fiction.
We are happy to have our annual Summer Reading Lists published early this year, ready for those already beginning to plan trips, days at the cottage or stockpiling for rainy days at home! We hope that by choosing and reading some of these books, literacy skills and enjoyment of reading will be enhanced.
Why Summer Reading?
Dr. Seuss wrote, "The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn the more places you'll go."
Research clearly shows that students who read over the summer, improve academically and those who do not read, backslide. In other words, those who elect to read during the summer demonstrate academic growth over the summer as well as over the school year. Summers filled with reading can account for significant differences in literacy development and academic growth in students!
Our Summer Reading Programme is created to inspire reading. In addition, selections have been made to fulfill the main aims of the IBO curriculum at all grade levels. These lists include a wide range of multi-cultural-international fiction chosen for its potential to stimulate curiosity and creativity; provoke thought and reflection; provide hope and, make you laugh.
Please take a look at our suggested summer reading lists below and head to the public library, search the family bookshelf, or browse your favourite bookstore for those fabulous stories. Launch yourself on the path of becoming a life-long reader. Summer Reading is not just a free choice but a wise one too!
Best wishes for a wonderful summer vacation and happy reading!


Early Childhood Education
As the number of parents working outside the home increases, the need for quality childcare continues to grow both locally and nationally. Education and training has been identified as one of the key factors to decrease the current rate of staff turnover in childcare settings. Early childhood educators work with children from birth to age eight in childcare and early learning settings.
Paraprofessionals are assistants in classroom settings who provide instructional support for pre-K-12 classroom teachers. By providing students with individualized instruction, teacher assistants tutor and assist children in learning course materials. Teacher assistants also supervise students in the cafeteria and playground. They record grades, set up equipment, and help prepare materials for instruction. Teacher assistants are also called teacher aides, instructional aides, paraeducators or paraprofessionals. The federal legislation No Child Left Behind requires newly hired paraprofessionals to complete two years of college, obtain an Associate Degree, or to pass a rigorous test.
Certified teachers in the K-12 school system are required to hold a bachelor's degree, complete a state-approved teacher preparation program at a regionally accredited college/university, and pass a basic skills test and a test for each endorsement. A teacher is responsible for implementing required curriculum in the classroom, assessing student progress, managing classroom discipline, communicating with parents, working cooperatively with other professionals and adhering to all school district policies.
Early Childhood Education prepares students to enter the childcare and early learning field as highly skilled caregivers or early learning professionals who can immediately contribute to the development and growth of a child. The Early Childhood Education curriculum promotes high quality learning and play in early care and educational settings. Opportunities for the ongoing professional development of caregivers is also included. Students have the opportunity to apply newly acquired skills and knowledge through participation in cooperative work experiences. Certified teachers may apply specific courses towards continuing education credits. In an effort to accommodate currently employed students, Early Childhood Education courses are generally offered in late afternoon or evenings. Program curriculum is reviewed by an advisory board composed of local and regional early learning professionals.
Students may earn an Associate in Applied Arts and Sciences Degree in Early Childhood Education upon completion of the two-year program of study. This degree allows graduates to enter the workforce. A certificate in Early Childhood Education is available upon completion of one year of the program.
An Associate in Applied Science-Transfer (AAS-T) degree in Early Childhood Education is also offered for students planning to transfer to a four-year college or university.
Students may earn an Associate of Arts in Elementary Education (DTA) upon completion of a two-year program. This degree transfers to four-year university programs in Elementary Education. This degree also allows students to work as education paraprofessionals in the K-12 school system.
- Pre-School Teacher or Assistant
- Child Care Provider
- Child Care Center Teacher
- Child Care Center Director
Washington Scholarships are available for students who are currently working in childcare and early learning settings.
Students may begin their study in the ECE programs in any quarter. A placement test offered by the Student Development Center must be completed prior to admission to the program.
WSP criminal background check is required to enroll in the program. READ 088 is the minimum level recommended to enroll in ECE courses above 100 level and is required at degree completion. Some courses require permission of the faculty advisor to enroll.
Early Childhood Education coursework is typically offered in late afternoon, evenings and on weekends to accommodate students who are working. WAOL courses are available every quarter.
For additional information including regional employment data, completion rates, student characteristics, and employment see http://www.wtb.wa.gov/etp.


Promoting Literacy Development:Fifty research-based literacy strategies designed for busy K-8 classroom teachers
Organized around 10 key areas for teaching and learning literacyâ€”phonemic awareness, phonics, reading fluency, vocabulary, story comprehension, comprehension of informational text, questioning for understanding, discussion for understanding, narrative writing, and writing to learn-Promoting Literacy Development offers 50 clearly written, step-by-step strategies for developing proficient readers and writers. The authors also include suggestions for differentiating instruction for English language learners and for students with special needs.
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Rent Promoting Literacy Development 1st edition today, or search our site for Patricia A. textbooks. Every textbook comes with a 21-day "Any Reason" guarantee. Published by Sage Publications, Inc.


This is especially true today, with seemingly unlimited distractions to take up attention spans. Learning a musical instrument is just not at the top of many children’s priority list of preferred activities. In order for a child to truly become interested in playing an instrument they need to be engaged, they need to be motivated and they need to have fun!
Not only is learning to play an instrument a rewarding experience, but research from Brown University shows that children who play an instrument perform better on standardized tests and have overall higher IQ scores than their nonmusical counterparts. This is because learning music stimulates brain function used to understand math, science and engineering.
So how do you get your child excited about learning music?
Choosing the right instrument is perhaps the most important way of getting children interested in playing music. If possible, have your child test out a few instruments before they choose a final one. While your child may think a certain instrument looks cool, a difficult instrument might intimidate them at first, so try something more basic when first starting out.
Be actively engaged in your child’s music lessons. Ask to hear what piece your child is working on, if they learned any new skills recently or if they know facts about the composer they are playing. Make sure they are staying committed to their practice time and reassure them that their hard work will pay off!
Choose a teacher that encourages and inspires your musician-in-training. A good music teacher will get kids even more interested in playing and practicing, as well as make sure that your child is receiving proper instruction needed to master their craft.
Choose music that your child will enjoy playing. Yes, the classics are vital, but let’s face it — your child would rather play the latest chart-topping pop song. The more they relate to a piece of music the more likely they will be driven to perfect playing that piece. JoyTunes’ two piano apps, Piano Dust Buster and Piano Mania, both feature a wide variety of songs ranging from Beethoven to One Direction — and everything in between.
Set aside special times for your child’s performances — even if it’s just for one song in the living room. Create a system of rewards to encourage your child. Anything to encourage more practicing will help your child improve his or her skills, which in turn will make them more excited to continue to learn.
Investing time and energy into your child’s music education takes effort and patience but is most certainly worthwhile. Sticking to their lessons, improving their skills and mastering an instrument will be something your children will thank you for in the future. Even during the frustrating times, don’t let your child give up. Imagine if Mozart’s parents let him throw in the towel, we may have lost one of the greatest talents the world has ever known!
Let us know — how do you encourage your child to practice their instrument?
About the author
Yuval Kaminka is the founder of JoyTunes, the developers of award-winning interactive apps that help children and adults alike discover and enhance their love of music.
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Keeping Notes Afloat in Class
21st Century Skills
Educators and business leaders agree that it's not enough to prepare children for repetitive, low-skilled jobs. Today's workforce requires creativity, higher-order thinking skills and teamwork. "These are things you learn in music programs," said Michael Blakeslee, senior deputy executive director for the National Association for Music Education.
The ability to work well with others is something that can be learned by playing with an ensemble. Improvisation, an important musical skill, is key to navigating a fast-changing environment. "If we are ever going to climb out of this economic downturn, we need a flexible and goal-oriented workforce," he said. Music trains people in this way.
Math and Reading
Some researchers say music can help students achieve in other academic fields. A study by Frances Rauscher, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, helped popularize the term "Mozart effect" by showing that adults performed better on some parts of an IQ test after listening to classical music.
Rauscher said the narrow results of that study were widely misinterpreted and misapplied, with musical products being marketed to make people smarter, for example. But she has continued her research, turning her focus to young children and how music instruction affects their learning.
In one study, she found that math test scores for preschool-age students rose for those who received instruction in piano, rhythm or singing. The students who studied rhythm had the biggest gains, and she was not surprised. Rhythm is, after all, "the subdivision of a beat," she said. It's about ratios and proportions, the relationship between a part and a whole -- all material from math classes.
Now, Rauscher is studying how children learn to read and process the sounds of words after receiving music instruction.
A Passion at School
Still, music's role in academic achievement is highly debated. Wayne D. Parker, director of research and evaluation at Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust, has researched music instruction and math performance and found a negligible connection. He is not compelled by arguments that people should invest in music for the sake of math or reading. "You don't hear math people saying you should study calculus because it will help you be better at the violin."
Rather, he said, people should invest in music education because it teaches students to meet a challenge and instills confidence, or because it is a class that will appeal to some students.
"Kids do best when they can do something with joy. Most kids don't love math, but there are those who do love math and have a passion for it. And kids in our schools need as many opportunities as possible to be passionate about an area of learning. The more we divorce the arts from our schools," he said, "more and more, kids are going to be cut off from having something within the academic system that they are passionate about."
Equity and Opportunity
Music and other arts education can give an especially powerful boost to students who live in poverty, music advocates say.
Tomhave, the Fairfax schools fine arts coordinator, said that's one reason why the school system seeks to ensure that the cost of an instrument is not a barrier to participating in a musical group at school. Anyone who qualifies for free or reduced lunch can rent an instrument from the school for $20 a year. Last school year, such students rented nearly 7,000 instruments, including clarinets, flutes, trombones and violas.
Budget cuts and the federal No Child Left Behind law's focus on testing in reading and math have winnowed the amount of time devoted to music in many schools. But music education remains popular with the community and the School Board. About 50,000 students in Fairfax participate in elective instrumental or band programs. That's nearly 30 percent of the county's 169,000 students. Put another way: That's more than the entire enrollment for many local school systems, from the District to Southern Maryland to Arlington County and Alexandria.


This article emerges from Future Tense, a partnership of Slate, the New America Foundation, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies and their effects on policy and society. On Thursday, Aug. 9, Future Tense will host an event called “Getting Schooled by a Third Grader: What Kids’ Gaming, Tweeting, Streaming, and Sharing Tells Us About the Future of Elementary Education” in Washington, D.C. To learn more and to RSVP, visit the New America Foundation website.
Whether you’re at a restaurant or on an airplane, you can’t miss changes in adult-child interactions from just a generation ago. Everyone is plugged in. It seems almost quaint to see kids and adults engaged together in screen-free play. Four-year-olds now consume three hours of media per day, and fourth graders more than five hours. And it is not just youth—adults are also increasingly finding it difficult to turn off their digital lives. This has inspired a tremendous amount of philosophizing about how smartphones, iPads, and gaming consoles may be hurting both childhood and parenting.
But given that the number and variety of digital options will only increase, wouldn’t it be more productive to explore how we can effectively transform media consumption into quality family time? What if we viewed the digital deluge as a new opportunity to tap into the potential of interactive technologies to help reunite generations in playful learning together? In recent years, a great deal of attention has been paid to the potential of video games for good—President Obama has even appointed an expert adviser who is fashioning the first national policy initiative on video games’ role in education, health, the environment, and numerous other areas. But a vital component of games in the public interest has remained largely overlooked: intergenerational gameplay.
To understand why intergenerational gameplay is so important, let’s go back a half-century. In the 1960s, a generation of parents worried that children were being hypnotized by the television. Policymakers, educational psychologists, and parents were all concerned that the “boob tube” was hurting kids’ development. FCC Chairman Newton Minow famously referred to television as a “vast wasteland” when challenging broadcasters to embrace programming in the public interest.
This call-to-action prompted pioneers such as Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett to pursue a simple but revolutionary idea: use TV to teach the basic skills and values that children would need to begin school. Their response to Minow’s challenge was Sesame Street. World-class creative talents like Jim Henson joined leading educators to create television content that would engage both the child and the parent. In addition to providing great entertainment grounded in research, the programming fostered “co-viewing.” Children who watched Sesame Street with their parents learned more from the show than those who watched it alone. Parents encouraged their kids to apply their own background knowledge to what they saw onscreen—so when they saw a word or a number they might count further or recite the alphabet.
Now, more than 40 years later, Sesame Street remains a preschool staple, positively impacting youth throughout the world. In fact, the success of the format has stimulated an entire media industry sector with tens of thousands of engaging educational programs on various platforms that parents and children enjoy together.
In many ways, today’s video games are analogous to television in the 1960s. The perception of many policy makers, educators, and parents is that video games are “a vast wasteland.” Certainly video games have become ubiquitous; 80 percent of 5- to 8-year-olds regularly play games. The number increases to 97 percent for teens.
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Do the Celebrities Whose Nude Photos Were Stolen Have a Case Against Apple?
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How to Order Chinese Food
First, stop thinking of it as “Chinese food.”


Grade Level: 5 through 8
Subject Area: Science
Estimated time of Completion: Activity and discussion can take up to 2 90-minute blocks depending on the amount of research
Food webs show the interaction of different producers and consumers in an ecosystem. They are a good visual organizer to show the different flows of energy among the organisms. They can also be used to demonstrate how each organism is important to the survival of the ecosystem.
The Living Edens: South Georgia Island shows examples of organisms that live on South Georgia Island and how they get their energy. After watching the video, students can construct a food web showing the interactions among the organisms on the island and in the ocean.
By the end of this activity, students will be able to:
National Science Standards:
This lesson addresses the following national science standards for grades 5 through 8 as established in the National Science Education Standards at http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/nses/html/:
Procedures and Activities:
Ask students to list several organisms found in the region. These should include animals and plants. (Students might begin by listing things they've eaten in the past 24 hours.) List these organisms in different places on a blackboard. Ask students to draw lines representing "who eats what" among the organisms listed. Afterwards, fill in any blanks or clear up any confusing relationships. Explain that organisms in every environment are part of a food web; students will be looking for such a web in the South Georgia Island video. (*The teacher may show the entire video so students can see the complete variety of organisms represented; however, teachers may want to screen the program first due to a few graphic scenes of seals fighting.)
Completed food webs could be used to measure the students understand of how energy flows in the ecosystem.
Student participation in discussion could be observed. Students could also individually answer the discussion questions on paper.
Have students research various ways Antarctica and surrounding islands have been affected by humans (egg harvesting, oil spills, hunting, over fishing, and loss of habitat). How have these actions changed the populations of organisms of the ecosystem/food web? What can be done to prevent humans from destroying the South Georgia ecosystem?
Students could examine an organism in the food web and determine how it is adapted to hunt and eat its food. They could also examine how they camouflage and protect themselves from predators.
Web Resources: (Note: these links will take you away from PBS Online.)
Pete and Barb's Penguin Page
Seal Conservation Society: Antarctic Fur Seal
Life in Antarctica: British Antarctic Survey
USA Today: Work and Daily Life in Antarctica
About the Author:
Kathleen Taylor is a 6th grade Science and Computer Science Teacher at George Mason Middle School in Falls Church, VA. She graduated from the University of Mississippi with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Elementary Education.
Her current interest is developing curriculum that allows her to students to explore the earth sciences in creative ways. She has the most fun teaching oceanography, meteorology, and geology because she feels kids are naturally fascinated by understanding the physical world around them.


Weekly Class Instruction
Class Instruction for Beginners
These small classes provide an introduction to study in an engaging and supportive group setting. Students learn the fundamentals of first-year study, including instrument technique and music reading. Classes explore a variety of music styles through group and solo playing or singing and participate in Diller-Quaile concerts. Teachers facilitate the transition to individual study in the second year.
Boys Vocal Class
The Boys Vocal Class focuses on the study and performance of solo and ensemble repertoire written specifically for the unchanged boy’s voice, as well as works traditionally performed by boy singers. Class members build a foundation of vocal technique with an emphasis on posture, breath, tone production, and diction. Sight-reading and ensemble listening supports the development of critical musicianship skills. Members of the class perform in Diller-Quaile concerts throughout the year.
Secondary Piano Instruction (Age 10 and up)
Non-piano majors students learn the fundamentals of piano study in this engaging and supportive group setting. Students develop piano technique through the study of scales, keyboard harmony, and mastery of repertoire. This class is designed to enhance students’ understanding of the structure and processes of music, thereby supporting their comprehensive music education.
Piano Ensemble Class
Students participate in repertoire written for 4-hands, 6-hands, or 8-hands ensembles. This class provides an opportunity for pianists to study chamber music, exploring a range of repertoire from Baroque through Contemporary composers. Students learn strategies for sight-reading and how to work collaboratively. Ensembles perform in school concerts.
Extended Techniques for Violinists and Cellists
These classes for intermediate and advanced violinists and cellists are an exploration of contemporary classical and non-classical genres, including jazz, bluegrass, folk, rock, and funk. Students will learn to play works from these styles and will learn new skills and techniques such as improvisation, swing bowing, chopping, and more.
|Extended Techniques for Violinists||Wednesday||7:00-7:45 p.m.|
|Extended Techniques for Cellists||Wednesday||7:00-7:45 p.m.|
|Intermediate and Advanced Players (audition required)|
|Grades 3-5||Tuesday||5:15-6:00 p.m.|
|Grades 1&2||Thursday||4:00-4:45 p.m.|
|Grades 5-7||Thursday||5:00-5:45 p.m.|
Harmony and Improvisation
Young Children’s Chorus
|Grades 1&2||Wednesday||3:45-4:30 p.m.|
|Grades 3-6||Wednesday||4:30-5:15 p.m.|
The Diller-Quaile Chorus
|Grades 5-8||Monday||4:40-5:40 p.m.|
The Diller-Quaile Orchestra
To inquire about enrolling in lessons or classes for the 2013-2014 school year,
please contact 212-369-1484, ext. 26 or firstname.lastname@example.org.


| Posted: September 23rd, 2013
My recent blog post on the resegregation of American schools generated some controversy. With school segregation back to 1960s levels, why are so many people eschewing desegregation efforts? Some readers thought I was arguing that desegregation doesn’t improve the education and life opportunities of poor students and students of color. It absolutely does. Those benefits, for white and non-white students alike, have been well documented. Ample research also documents the harms of racially isolated schools.
However, the Supreme Court has made it increasingly difficult to achieve school desegregation. In fact, I think it’s virtually impossible in many communities. The three examples below illustrate that point, and show why researchers and advocates must explore alternative solutions to the ever-widening achievement gap.
1. City-to-suburb desegregation is nearly impossible to achieve through litigation. A profoundly influential case deterring desegregation was 1974’s Milliken v. Bradley, which created nearly insurmountable legal barriers to desegregating schools across city and suburban school districts. In the 1970s and ‘80s, white flight from declining cities, combined with housing discrimination, created majority-white suburbs and majority-black cities. Suburbanites’ desire to protect their school districts’ autonomy generated an immense backlash to desegregation plans that mixed city and suburban students.
The Milliken precedent made the school district line a sacrosanct barrier that desegregation plans could not cross. In effect, the ruling locked millions of poor students and students of color into inner-city schools, protected resource-rich suburban schools from desegregation plans linking them to cities, and further incentivized white flight. Although the Court’s decision left open the possibility of within-district desegregation, such efforts would have little effect, given that an estimated 84 percent of segregation is between (not within) school districts.
2. Court-ordered desegregation plans are being dismantled. After Milliken, three Supreme Court cases in the 1990s significantly reduced court oversight and weakened the requirements of desegregation orders imposed on cities that had previously maintained segregated schools. Under these rulings, a school district can be released from a court-ordered desegregation decree without proving that it has become integrated or narrowed racial achievement gaps. As long as the district maintains some aspects of its desegregation plan—including elements unrelated to student assignment, like equal resources, transportation, and desegregated staff—and do not overtly discriminate, a school district can be declared “unitary,” at which point it can return to de facto segregation practices such as neighborhood-based school assignment.
As a result, more than 200 of the 483 school districts that were under court-ordered desegregation orders in 1990 have been granted unitary status and released from court oversight. In the years since release, these districts experienced substantial increases in segregation.
3. Voluntary desegregation plans can no longer be race-conscious. Even metropolitan areas that voluntarily choose to integrate their schools find it difficult to craft effective desegregation plans. In 2007, the Supreme Court struck down voluntary integration programs in Seattle and Louisville, ruling that a student’s race or ethnicity cannot be used to determine school assignment in voluntary desegregation plans. This means school districts must use proxies for race (like family income or other indicators of socioeconomic status), which are less effective in producing racially integrated schools.
Barriers to desegregation shouldn’t prevent us from closing the education gap
School integration is a worthy endeavor. A preponderance of evidence demonstrates that poor and minority students benefit greatly when they attend desegregated schools. The problem is that the Supreme Court has dismantled active desegregation programs while making new court-ordered plans nearly impossible to win and weakening the tools available to voluntary plans. As a result, public schools today are just as segregated as they were in the late 1960s.
Wherever desegregation is legally and demographically feasible, it should definitely be pursued. But with the political and jurisprudential barriers to large-scale desegregation so great and the racial achievement gap as wide as ever, I think education and civil rights activists must look beyond litigation strategies for remedies to achieve educational equality.Adolescents and Youth, Children, Education and Training, Federal urban policies, Head Start and elementary education, Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center, Neighborhoods and youth, Neighborhoods, Cities, and Metros, Race, Ethnicity, and Gender, Racial and ethnic disparities, Racial segregation, School-based partnerships and services, Schooling, Secondary education |Tags: education, race, schools, segregation, Supreme Court, Urban Institute
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Communications Office: Stephen Mease
A group of 40 third-grade students from South Burlington, Vt., visited Champlain College on Friday, May 23 to learn from Software Technology professors how to do basic code using the program Scratch. Scratch allows user to tell stories, create games and animations within a creative learning community.
Nicole Bauman, a teacher at Orchard School, says that coding almost comes naturally for the students, and those who usually have trouble focusing in a normal classroom setting are enthralled by the integration of technology. "We often code in the classroom - a predetermined setting where students can manipulate the characters to make them move." She cited the example, Angry Birds. "Now the students are creating their stories from scratch," hence the name of the free online program.
Students in Bauman and Erin Bahrenburg's third grade classes were learning how to integrate characters, settings, motions, dialogue, and sounds, working within Scratch's catalog of "sprites," or clip art, and library of backdrops and sounds.
The two classes were divided into two state-of-the-art computer labs in Foster Hall and Miller Information Commons. The groups worked with professors in the Champlain College division of Information Technology & Science, Wei Kian Chen and Brian Hall, and then regrouped to share their stories later that morning.
"The students feel successful when they share their work," said Bauman. They can tell their story with a visual supplement and see that they created something. Throughout the entire coding process, students were working together to help and inspire each other's stories.
"The biggest success for the event was that when the classes regrouped and showcased their work, the children were very proud of their accomplishments," said Chen.
Chen had the opportunity to work with his son, who is in Bauman's class. "My youngest students at Champlain are usually 18," he said, "And these students are under the age of 10, and yet they were able to translate their story into code after a 15-minute tutorial and an hour of work."
Each child was sent home with a USB drive that contained their work so they could show their parents. Research shows that only 4 percent of children know what a programmer does, and Chen was excited to teach 40 students how to program and integrate community outreach into his job.
Another way the College hopes to integrate this program in the future is to teach Early Childhood and Elementary Education Majors how to teach with Scratch and other programs. Since Champlain opened its MakerLab as an extension of the Emergent Media Center in the Miller Center at Lakeside Campus, an Educational Technology specialization for these programs has been in the works. "This kind of teaching should most certainly be integrated into the program," agreed Bauman.
About Educational Technology Specialization
The Educational Technology specialization is an optional part of the Early Childhood/ Elementary Teacher Education program. This specialization will give students the opportunity to focus on integrating technology into the classroom as a tool for teaching and learning, allowing them to be well versed in technology.
The important skills students develop through the 15-credit Educational Technology specialization sequence of courses will give them a tremendous advantage in the marketplace when they begin their job search, setting them apart from other prospective teachers. They can focus on Web Development, Game Design, Graphic Design, Audio/Visual, or Computer Systems. Learn more at http://ow.ly/xjxjc.
Since 1878, Champlain College has provided career-focused education to students from its hilltop campus in Burlington, Vt. Champlain's distinctive educational approach embodies the notion that true learning only occurs when information and experience come together to create knowledge. Champlain offers traditional undergraduate and online undergraduate courses, along with online certificate and degree programs and 11 master's degree programs. Champlain offers study abroad programs at its campuses in Montreal, Quebec and Dublin, Ireland. Champlain College is included in the Princeton Review's The Best 379 Colleges: 2015 Edition. Champlain was named a "Top-Up-and-Coming School" by U.S. News & World Report's America's Best Colleges and is ranked in the top tier of 2014 Regional Colleges in the North. For more information, visit www.champlain.edu


Music is a vital component of humanity and culture, and every human being has an aptitude for music. Music is one of the most accessible and universal languages, spanning all cultures and ages. It is a mode of expression that captures what is inexpressible through words in a meaningful and positive way. Because of this, music education is essential in the school curriculum, teaching students a combination of life skills in a way no other subject can emulate.
As a teacher, I hope to inspire a love for many different types of music in my students, foster critical thinking skills that apply to the music they play and to which they listen, facilitate the acquisition of lifelong learning skills (developing confidence to overcome obstacles, discipline, and basic coordination), and prepare my students to function effectively in groups.
In order to fulfill my philosophy, I hope to incorporate learning through a variety of methods. I will treat each of my students as individuals, tailoring my instruction to their needs. I will try to consistently remain animated and enthusiastic, offering motivation and encouragement rather than constant criticism. Also, I will maintain an organized and stimulating classroom environment. By giving clear, simple instructions (embedded with repetition) and respecting my students, I hope to foster relationships through music. Overall, I will support my students’ musical efforts and emphasize the process more than the product, and through doing so, I hope to dispel an intimidation of music so that students can learn to study music, discover its value, and find it to be fun and meaningful.
During private lessons, I focus on improvement in technique, tone, and expression as a foundation for musical understanding. My goal is to increase students’ appreciation and understanding of musical concepts and performance, inspiring them to become independent musicians.
Tunes for Tots is designed to prepare children to become musical in three ways, according to the First Steps in Music curriculum:
- “Tuneful” – to have tunes in their heads and learn to coordinate their voices to sing those tunes.
- “Beatful” – to feel the pulse of music and how that pulse is grouped in either twos or threes.
- “Artful” – to be moved by music in the many ways music can elicit an emotional response.


Musiklärares val av undervisningsinnehåll. En studie om musikundervisning i ensemble och gehörs- och musiklära inom gymnasieskolan
The way in which music teachers choose and use the subject content in ensemble and music theory in the upper secondary school is focused in this study. The point of interest is the everyday classroom teaching of music teachers. The intentions that music teachers have with their teaching is also studied. This thesis is a study of music teaching and is a subject-didactic investigation, inspired by variation theory. The overarching aim of the thesis is to study how music teachers in upper secondary school choose teaching content when teaching ensemble and music theory. The teachers’ use of the teaching content implies that they choose to focus and teach certain parts in their teaching. This choice of content and how it is used is in focus in this study. The research questions are: How do music teachers choose teaching content when teaching ensemble and music theory in upper secondary school? How do music teachers use the teaching content in their teaching? The data collection includes video-documented lessons and qualitative interviews with five music teachers in upper secondary school in 2004. The analysis reveals two different choices of content. When the teachers have music and theory as the content of their teaching, it is the content that guides the teaching methods, where the teacher uses a fixed content, which is then presented in different ways; this was mainly in music theory. When the content is music activities, the music teachers adjust the activity-based content in accordance with the level of the pupils’ skills in ensemble. The differences that occur in the variation theory results are closely related to the teaching content. The foundations of the two different choices of content that are made by the music teachers, as well as the significance of the learning objects, are finally discussed.
Source Type:Doctoral Dissertation
Keywords:HUMANITIES and RELIGION; Aesthetic subjects; SOCIAL SCIENCES; Social sciences; Education; music education; upper secondary school; music didactics; variation theory; music teaching; teaching ensemble; teaching music theory; choice of teaching content; learning object
Date of Publication:01/01/2009


Culturally Relevant Arts Education for Social Justice
A Way Out of No Way
Edited by Mary Stone Hanley, Gilda L Sheppard, George W. Noblit, Thomas Barone
Routledge – 2013 – 244 pages
A groundswell of interest has led to significant advances in understanding and using Culturally Responsive Arts Education to promote social justice and education. This landmark volume provides a theoretical orientation to these endeavors. Examining a range of efforts across different forms of art, various educational settings, and diverse contexts, it foregrounds the assets of imagination, creativity, resilience, critique and cultural knowledge, working against prevailing understandings of marginalized groups as having deficits of knowledge, skills, or culture. Emphasizing the arts as a way to make something possible, it explores and illustrates the elements of social justice arts education as "a way out of no way" imposed by dominance and ideology. A set of powerful demonstrations shows how this work looks in action. Introductions to the book as a whole and to each section focus on how to use the chapters pedagogically. The conclusion pulls back the chapters into theoretical and pedagogical context and suggests what needs done to be done practically, empirically, and theoretically, for the field to continue to develop.
"It is vitally important for arts teachers to read the many articles contained here and to realize the importance of their various constituencies." -G.A. Clark, emeritus, Indiana University
Introduction: Culturally Relevant Arts Education for Social Justice
Mary Stone Hanley
Section I: Models of the Arts as Social Justice
1 Storytelling for Social Justice: Creating Arts-Based Counter-Stories to Resist Racism
2 Theater as Ritual for Healing and Social Change
3 Scratching the Imagination: Siglo XXIII and the AHA-AJA Museum for Planetary and Global Citizenship
4 Documentary Theatre in Education: Empathy Building as a Tool for Social Change
5 What the Music Said: Hip Hop as a Transformative Educational Tool
6 The Arts and Juvenile Justice Education: Unlocking the Light through Youth Arts and Teacher Development
7 Pushing Against the Water: Artists and Sense of Place Museum Residency Program in New Orleans
8 Picturing Equity in City Schools: Using Photography to See What Justice Means to Urban High School Students
9 Editing Lives: The Justice of Recognition through Documentary Film Production
10 Tackling Homophobia and Heterosexual Privilege in the Media Arts Classroom: A Teacher’s Account
11 Exploring Arts-Based Inquiry for Social Justice in Graduate Education
12 Narrowing in on the Answers: Dissecting Social Justice Art Education
13 From the Plantation to the Margin: Artful Teaching and the Sociological Imagination
14 The Beauty Parlour Within Me
15 African American Children, Arts of Africa and the Diaspora, and the Right to Freedom of Thought
16 Closure: A Critical Look at the Foreclosure Crisis in Words and Images
17 The Studio: an Environment for the Development of Social Justice in Teaching and Learning
18 Embody the Dance, Embrace the Body
Closing Gilda Sheppard
About the Authors
Mary Stone Hanley is Assistant Professor in Initiatives for Transformative Education, George Mason University.
George W. Noblit is the Joseph R. Neikirk Distinguished Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Tom Barone is Professor at Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education, Arizona State University.
Gilda L. Sheppard is Professor of Sociology at Washington State’s The Evergreen State College and Adjunct Faculty member at Antioch University Seattle Teacher Education Program.


STEAM fields is an acronym for the fields of study in the categories of science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics. The initiative began to include arts and design in STEM fields education.
The founder of this initiative is Georgette Yakman, who in addition to raising the idea of adding the arts to the STEM acronym, claims to have found a formal way to link the subjects together and correspond them to the global socioeconomic world. Her defining sentence is: "Science and Technology, interpreted through Engineering and the Arts, all based in elements of Mathematics" - (C/TM 2007).
John Maeda, president of Rhode Island School of Design, has been a leader in bringing the initiative to the political forums of educational policy.
Sara Kapadia has organized a STEAM Journal.
Boston Arts Academy added STEAM programming to their curriculum in 2014, led by Director, Nettrice Gaskins.
- "H. RES. 51 Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that adding art and design into Federal programs that target the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields encourages innovation and economic growth in the United States.". 113th Congress, 2013–2015. 2012. Retrieved 2013-03-15.
- "STEM Vs. STEAM". University of Florida, Online Master of Arts in Art Education. University of Florida. Retrieved 9 March 2014.
- STEAM: A Framework for Teaching Across the Disciplines
- STEM to STEAM
- STEAM Connect
- Steam Not Stem | Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Mathematics
- STEAM Ahead: Merging Arts and Science Education
- The Arts Are Not a Luxury
|This design-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.|


Contact: Science Press Package
American Association for the Advancement of Science
To know when it will snow
Bad weather is coming soon! Supercells are often associated with violent weather.
Credit: NOAA Library/NSSL.
Click here for a high resolution photograph.
Snow holidays may become a bit less of a surprise for kids in some parts of the world, if new research on weather prediction makes its way to weather stations. In a new study, scientists describe how they are getting better at predicting weather ten days or more in the future - especially in winter. They do this by monitoring the layer of the atmosphere just above the highest clouds and storms. This is the part of the atmosphere you zoom through when you ride on a big, commercial airplane.
By measuring the circulation of air in this part of the atmosphere, called the "stratosphere," scientists can better predict one of Earth's climate cycles that influences winter weather. This cycle, the Arctic Oscillation, impacts winter climate from Alaska and Scandinavia to Spain and the Middle East. The Arctic Oscillation helps determine winter weather, including the rain and snow, the path that storms take, and frequency of cold snaps.
Mark Baldwin from Northwest Research Associates in Bellevue, WA and colleagues published their research in the August 1, 2003 issue of the journal Science.
Back to Science for kids
Science is published by AAAS, the science society.


Dual Language Abilities Study of Bilingual Four year old: Initial Findings
Tabors, P.O., Paez, M. M., Lopez, L.M. (2003). Dual Language Abilities of Bilingual Four-Year Olds: Initial Findings from the Early Childhood Study of langauge and Literacy Development of Spanish-speaking Children. NABE Journal of Research and Practice, Winter 2003, pp 70-91.
This article looked at the early literacy skills in Spanish and English for a sample of 344 bilingual children in MA, Maryland, and Puerto Rico and compared then to a control group of children. The results suggest that bilingual children are not different across groups on tasks of phonological awareness. Differences were found for the subgroup of students from MA and Maryland who scored significantly lower in oral language subtests of the Woodcock Language Proficiency battery in both languages when compared to the control group and the Puerto Rico subgroup. On average the children from Puerto Rico scored better that the MA and Maryland subgroup in Spanish oral language skills.
Read more by accessing the journal article. A follow up on this study is soon to come out as well!