P-16/P-20 Councils

The Education Commission of the States has yet another good page, P-16/P-20 Councils.  These councils attempt to “develop a seamless system of education with aligned expectations from the earliest years of a child's development, through the K-12 system, and into and through postsecondary education.”  The ECS site includes individual state reports for those states with established councils (38 of them).  It also includes 50-state information on topics and aspects of the councils, like funding, scope of initiative and others.  [URLs:  http://www.ecs.org/html/educationissues/HighSchool/highschooldb1_intro.asp?topic=p-20]

Discovering Antarctica

The Royal Geographical Society maintains the Discovering Antarctica web site.  The site is packed with information on this frozen continent.  There’s multimedia available, interactive games and terrific images.  [URLs:  http://www.discoveringantarctica.org.uk/]

Teaching History

George Mason University has created the National History Education Clearinghouse.  This is a terrific site for new and experienced history teachers in all grades.  It provides lesson plans, links to useful web sites, articles and research on teaching history and professional development resources.  You can also register for their email newsletter.  [URLs:  http://teachinghistory.org/]

This Week’s Reports

The Department of Education has issued Evaluating Online Learning: Challenges and Strategies for Success.  It is a guide offering evaluations of several types of online learning opportunities.  It’s designed for administrators and program leaders. 

[URLs:  http://www.ed.gov/admins/lead/academic/evalonline/evalonline.pdf]

Newsworthy

The Richmond Times-Dispatch carried the results of a study of local schools in Study: laptop use tied to higher student scores.  The laptops seem to be assisting students in several subjects and teachers find them useful learning tools.

At the same time, however, Educators wrestle with digital-equity challenges, according to eSchool News Online.  “Despite gains in the number of households that are online and the number of computing devices in the hands of students, making sure all learners have equitable access to technology resources continues to be a challenge in the United States and worldwide,” panelists at the Digital Equity Summit said.

The Smart Television Alliance reports on the results of a survey done by The N (Nickelodeon).  Survey Says?  Girls today are happy, anxious, love Mom, and, uh, look up to “themselves” reports that over 60% of girls between 13 and 24 say they are happy, although 43% say they are stressed out.  An odd finding is that girls don’t seem to have a role model.  25% said their mother was their role model; but over one-third said they are their own role model.

Technology reshapes America’s classrooms is a recent article from Reuters that appeared in the New York Times.  It looks at companies like K12 and Apex Learning and how they are benefiting from the increasing importance of technology in education.

[URLs:  http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2008-07-06-0214.html, http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=54429;_hbguid=3ee76aac-60d0-4651-a669-608fa438b83d, http://news.smarttelevisionalliance.org/news/2008/06/27/survey-says-girls-today-are-happy-anxious-love-mom-and-uh-look-up-to-themselves/, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-usa-education-technology.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&oref=login&oref=slogin]

Harry Haiku

Education World looks at an editor at Infoplease.com, who wanted to get kids to use the site, Harry Potter Haiku.  She created a page on Infoplease, posted a few haikus she extracted from the books and encouraged kids to offer their own.   [URLs:  http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/lesson/lesson180.shtml, http://www.factmonster.com/spot/haikuharry.html]

Library Stuff

We have a couple of interesting items on how libraries are remaining relevant in their communities.  Libraries mash up content, services and ideas is an article from the newsletter of a library consortium, OCLC.  The article looks at how local libraries are using the mash-up concept from the web to combine services and content for their customers to great effect.  Of course, libraries have been doing similar things for years.  We just didn’t have a fancy name for it.

PNWLocalNews.com, an online news site from the state of Washington, described the activities of a local library, Vashon Library offers ways for teens to keep out of trouble.  The Library becomes the Saturday night meeting place for local teens six times a year.  Late Night @ the Library offers music, games, food, and raffles.  The kids seem to enjoy it.   [URLs:  http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/009/1.htm, http://www.pnwlocalnews.com/lifestyle/24081339.html]

Boys & the Subway

Our last offering today may be a bit New York-centric for some of our readers.  But we thought it was charming and wanted to share it with you.  Christoph Niemann, an illustrator, has posted this written and illustrated story about his sons and their love of the New York City subway.  [URLs:  http://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/01/post-title/]