Kids' Guide to Disease and Wellness Wins Mom's Choice Award

April 13, 2011, 2:31 pm / Posted By: Village Earth Press
We at Village Earth Press are proud that The Mom's Choice Awards® has given its gold award to the 13-book series, The Kids' Guides to Disease and Wellness: Why People Get Sick and How They Can Stay Well, published by Village Earth Press. Written by author Rae Simons with Elise DeVore Berlan, MD, MPH, FAAP, these books empower young readers with ways to safeguard their own health.

The Mom's Choice Awards® (MCA) is an awards program that recognizes authors, inventors, companies, parents, and others for their efforts in creating quality family-friendly media, products, and services...   READ MORE

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A Federal Policy Shift Plus a New Survey Indicate that e-Learning is Gaining Support

January 28, 2011, 3:01 pm / Posted By: Zachary Chastain
In the fall 2010 issue of Digital Directions, Kevin Bushweller wrote an article about the changing perspectives in educational technology. Increasingly, administrators are warming to the use of mobile devices and e-learning in school. Bushweller points out that this perspective shift is evident in recent policy changes at the federal level, as well as in the results of a survey of 400 high school principals...   READ MORE

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The Virtual Classroom is Leading the Way for Personalized Education

January 27, 2011, 1:14 pm / Posted By: Zachary Chastain
In the world of education, there's no doubt that personalization is an emerging trend. Theorists and on-the-ground teachers alike are sounding the call for a "personalization revolution" in the classroom. And for many, that revolution begins in the virtual classroom.

A few months ago, Michelle Davis wrote an article for Environmental Kids Clubs to be a fantastic resource...   READ MORE

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E-Learning, Part 3

January 5, 2011, 3:01 pm / Posted By: Bill Hunter
Another nice thing about Moodle is that since it is web-based, you can link your students to anyone that has an Internet connection, anywhere in the world. My students' forum posts can be accessed and read by anyone that has access to the site. All I need to do is make contact with someone, and we have global perspectives being exchanged. Imagine linking your classroom to classrooms in Japan or India, for nothing more than the cost of the Internet connection that you already have! Exciting, I know...   READ MORE

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E-Learning, Part 2

January 4, 2011, 2:48 pm / Posted By: Bill Hunter
One of the most basic uses of Moodle is a great time-saver for educators: automatically scored assessments! Yes, the software allows you to design and administer tests and quizzes to your students. Questions that are automatically graded include multiple choice, fill in the blank (yes, it reads the answers, but you may need to work a little with it to get the software to recognize misspellings), matching, true/false, and more...   READ MORE

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Video Series Encourages Educators to Prepare for the Future by Embracing Technology

January 4, 2011, 1:19 pm / Posted By: Zachary Chastain
The Pearson Foundation recently teamed up with The Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) to tackle the issue of incorporating technology into teaching practices. They've created a series of public service announcements that bring together a wide range of voices on the topic. Superintendents, CEOs, teachers, school directors and other education-thinkers express the need for a new approach to technology in schools...   READ MORE

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E-Learning, Part 1

December 9, 2010, 9:48 am / Posted By: Bill Hunter
E-learning is a term that is tossed about these days, usually referring to any of a number of electronic course management systems available to educators. Many schools provide these tools to their teachers, and given a little time and elbow-grease, anyone can develop and deploy a very useful and educational website for their students to use and learn from. School curriculum programs can vary widely, but one thing is pretty much universal in schools: a desire for an increase in the use of technology...   READ MORE

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Is Mediocrity Hardwired Into the Textbook Publishing Industry?

December 7, 2010, 3:11 pm / Posted By: Zachary Chastain
Tamim Ansary, a former schoolbook editor, recently wrote an exposé of sorts for Edutopia.org on the inherent flaws in the massive textbook publishing industry today.

Ansary has some pretty harsh criticisms of the corporate giants that create the textbooks for most of America’s schools:

“In fact, most of these books fall far short of their important role in the educational scheme of things...   READ MORE

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Podcasting for Education

December 1, 2010, 12:54 pm / Posted By: Bill Hunter
In modern high school classrooms, one of the major challenges for teachers is the constant battle with technology. Students have devices small enough to fit in their pockets, and they’re not afraid to use them in the middle of a lesson, sending text message after text message to friends or family. This problem will not go away anytime soon, but it shows the sort of minds students have these days...   READ MORE

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New Technology Gives Closer Look at the Young Brain and Language

October 26, 2010, 2:02 pm / Posted By: Zachary Chastain
A thought-provoking article at Education Week tells how recent developments in brain scanning for small children has revealed new information on how humans learn new languages. The technique, called agnetoencephalography, or MEG, maps the brain by measuring the magnetic fields it creates. With the recent addition of a system that corrects for the head movements of babies, the MEG is more accurate than ever.

Researchers are interested in how the brain learns new languages in the first year of life. “Babies start out as citizens of the world; they can discriminate the sounds of any language,” says one researcher...   READ MORE

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Women in Science

September 17, 2010, 11:50 am / Posted By: John Howell
I challenge you to name as many female scientists as you can in the next 10 seconds. On your mark, get set, go!

How did you do? If you were like me, you probably didn't do so well.

Did you know?
"According to the survey Women, Science and Success: The New Face of Innovation, 65 percent of American adults cannot name a single famous female scientist, and 74 percent of Americans believe that women are underrepresented in science-related fields...   READ MORE

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