Chicago—ALA Publishing eLearning Solutions announces a new eCourse bundle, Working with Children of All Ages. R. Lynn Baker and Brooke Newberry will serve as the instructors for three, 4-week eCourses starting on Monday, September 10, 2018.
Save 20% when you purchase the bundle!
When you work in youth services, you’re serving a large community of users—from babies and toddlers to preteens. Children of different ages have different needs and perspectives and require different types of expertise. If you want to learn a practical approach to working with children of all ages, our new eCourse bundle is for you. Over a three-month period, you will work closely with expert instructors that will take you from creating baby storytimes all the way through to readers’ advisory for grade-school kids. Courses included in this bundle are
Creating Meaningful Programs for Infants and Caregivers with R. Lynn Baker – 4-week eCourse; begins Sept. 10, 2018
Early care expert and education trainer R. Lynn Baker’s teaches you how to create a school readiness program that prepares children for a successful transition into kindergarten.
Planning Programs and Services for Toddlers and Preschoolers with Brooke Newberry – 4-week eCourse; begins October 8, 2018
In this course, learn the basics of storytime and programming, best practices for serving children ages 2-5, how to build a strong collection, and the basics of child development for toddlers and preschoolers.
Practical Library Services for Grade School Kids (Kindergarten through second Grade) with R. Lynn Baker – 4-week eCourse; begins Nov. 5, 2018
Learn how to create intentional, literacy-based programs for children in kindergarten through second grade.
By participating in this group of three courses, you’ll earn a Certificate of Professional Development in Childhood Development and gain a broad set of skills that will serve you throughout your career.
You can purchase for these eCourses individually or as a bundle.
eCourse outline
Creating Meaningful Programs for Infants and Caregivers with R. Lynn Baker. Starts Monday, September 10, 2018
Week 1: Infant Development—Birth through 18 months
Week 2: Choosing Interactive Activities for Infants and Caregivers
Week 3: Choosing Developmentally Appropriate Books for Babies
Week 4: Creating an Effective Program Plan for Your Infant-Caregiver Program
Planning Programs and Services for Toddlers and Preschoolers with Brooke Newberry, Starts Monday, October 8, 2018
Week 1: Child Development for toddlers and preschoolers
Week 2: Storytime
Week 3: Beyond Storytime
Week 4: Collection Development
Practical Library Services for Grade School Kids (Kindergarten through second Grade) with R. Lynn Baker, Starts Monday, November 5, 2018
Week 1: Beginning Reading Skills that Grow from Early Literacy Practices
Week 2: Types of Programs for Children in Grades K-2
Week 3: Field Trips, Outreach, and Specialized Programs for Children
Week 4: Creating an Effective Program Plan for a K-2 Program
About the Instructors
R. Lynn Baker is the author of Counting Down to Kindergarten: A Complete Guide to Creating a School Readiness Program for Your Community and Creating Literacy-Based Programs for Children: Lesson Plans and Printable Resources for K-5. With a background in early childhood education and library programming for children, Baker provides training to early childhood educators and librarians. She holds her bachelor’s in Interdisciplinary Early Childhood Education; a trainer’s credential; and her Master’s in Library and Information Science. Baker is an adjunct professor for Northern Kentucky University, teaching Library Programming for Children.
Brooke Newberry holds a Master’s Degree in Library Science from Indiana University, and is the Collaborative Consultant for the Winding Rivers Library System (West Salem, WI). She currently teaches a course dedicated to serving babies in the library, previously was the Early Literacy Librarian at the La Crosse (WI) Public Library, served as chair for the Early Childhood Programs and Services Committee for the Association of Library Services to Children (ALSC), and co-wrote the Collaborative Summer Library Program Early Literacy Manual for three years.
Registration for this ALA Publishing eLearning Solutions facilitated eCourse bundle, which begins on September 10, 2018, can be purchased at the ALA Store. Participants in this course will need regular access to a computer with an internet connection for online message board participation, viewing online video, listening to streaming audio (MP3 files), and downloading and viewing PDF and PowerPoint files.
ALA Publishing eLearning Solutions (ELS) produces high-quality professional development events and materials for the library profession. ELS events cover modern issues on a wide variety of topics in formats that include live workshops, asynchronous eCourses, and print publications. We help ensure that today’s library employees have access to the professional development opportunities they need, whether they are brushing up on the basics or expanding their horizons with cutting-edge tools. Contact us at elsmarketing@ala.org.
ALA Store purchases fund advocacy, awareness, and accreditation programs for library professionals worldwide.
I am convinced that the foundation of a good education is about the concept of building—building a school, building a community, building relationships, and building a sense of self. School works for many students to provide a pathway into the future. It offers a foundation of rich experiences that inspire and form the basis of students’ life stories. Education and schools, however, can never be fully responsible for the outcomes that our students achieve. We cannot blame schools and teachers for the very complex mix of factors that result in any one person’s success in life.
I’ve been thinking recently about how we can alter the school experience for students and staff to better meet the needs of our learning communities. Some of the very structures and experiences that harken back to an earlier era in education may in fact be part of the future of teaching and learning. While it may be counterintuitive in our sophisticated high-tech world, building, manipulating, and creating inside the physical spaces of our school environment are essential in future learning.
“Some of the very structures and experiences that harken back to an earlier era in education may in fact be part of the future of teaching and learning.”
So what is in store for students, teachers, administrators, policymakers, and the taxpaying public that supports public education in the decades ahead? I suggest five steps for how school learning communities must move forward to build a better school.
Read full article click here, may require ED Week Subscription
Hand-wringing about the low science achievement of American students is a favorite activity of policymakers, business leaders, and others worried about economic potential and job growth in this country. Educators also are worried about the leaky pipeline to higher levels of science achievement and potential STEM jobs—particularly among underrepresented student groups, such as girls and nonwhite students. Where are the students with the ability and interest to pursue academic coursework in the sciences? Why are so few pursuing sciences at our colleges and universities? Two recent studies hold some answers and point to possible solutions.
As a researcher who spoke to many parents for the most recent of these two studies, I began to wonder: Is this situation different from that of past generations of children, parents, and teachers? After listening closely to what parents had to say, I believe it is. We have created a slowly escalating science crisis in this country through narrow education policy, limited funding, low regard for teacher professional development, and a lack of respect for early-learning professionals. The result is a generation of parents who have not benefited from the early-learning experiences in science that would help them shape their own children’s science understanding.
“Like educators, parents need guidance on how to engage their children in science activities and exploration…”
Read full article click here, may require ED Week subscription
In Spring 2018, students at Burke High School (BHS) came together with two BHS teachers, Amelia Little (Navarrete) and Chopper (Edgar) Johnson, to create a unique project about untold stories of disenfranchised, marginalized societies called Finding a Voice. This past weekend, Burke was honored at the national New Tech Conference in St. Louis, Missouri for their outstanding work.
Through support from the ECMC Foundation, Burke High School was awarded a grant to participate in the New Tech Network (NTN) program for the 2017-18 school year. With over 20 years of impact in improving teaching and learning through project-based learning, the New Tech Network, a non- profit organization, supports schools and districts throughout the country in ensuring college and career success for all students.
Community members, school administrators, and staff were excited about the doors this partnership could open for students at Burke. As it turns out, the administrators, staff, and students were ready to walk through those doors together and did so in a way that earned them NTN’s 2018 Best in Network award. The Best in Network honor is given to an NTN project that exemplifies the goal of successfully combining active exploration, application, authenticity, and academic rigor.
Finding a Voice was a Burke project across the dual content areas of world literature and government. The project involved research and collaboration, and asked students to design graphic novels about disenfranchised and marginalized groups around the world. To assist with the graphic novels, Little and Johnson reached out to the local public library system, which enthusiastically joined the team.
Students reached the project’s final creative product through conducting independent research on living conditions for various marginalized societies across the globe and interviews with student refugees from other countries, including a student of similar age from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
To demonstrate and share their research and findings, students wrote first-person narratives and storyboarded the plot of their graphic novel.
BHS sophomores, Trinity Frost and James Snipes, along with Little and Johnson presented Finding a Voice at the conference on Saturday, July 14, 2018. Snipes and Frost led the presentation in front of hundreds of teachers, administrators, and educational leaders from across the country, expertly and enthusiastically discussing their project, findings, and fielding questions from the audience. At the conclusion of their presentation, the group representing Burke High School received a standing ovation from the audience.
London and Philadelphia — Is virtual reality finally ready to make inroads in K-12?
Technology companies are making a fresh push, and some market dynamics could provide them a tailwind. But there’s plenty of reason to remain skeptical.
That’s the takeaway from Education Week’s reporting from two conferences last month: Bett, a global ed-tech trade show hosted in London, and EduCon, a gathering of progressive educators and technology enthusiasts in Philadelphia.
Reasons to be bullish include new hardware advances, falling prices, and a wave of districts that will soon be looking to replace their existing computers and laptops. As a result, more than 15 percent of U.S. schools will have virtual-reality classroom kits by 2021, predicts Futuresource Consulting, a U.K.-based market-research firm.
“You’re going to see increasing adoption of this immersive technology,” said Ben Davis, a senior analyst for the group.
Read the full article here: May require an Education Week subscription.
Last month, a pair of Apple shareholders demanded in an open letter that the company address growing concerns about children’s addiction to their products. In light of research on the detrimental effects of electronic-media use, investment firm JANA Partners and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System argued, parents need better resources to make sure children are using devices “in an optimal manner.” While Apple defended its parental controls and protections for children, the letter was proof that more people are starting to realize what many in the scientific community have been saying for years: Overuse of screen-based technology is bad for children’s health.
Modern technology is powerfully addictive, especially for the young, developing mind. With teenagers ages 13-18 averaging almost nine hours of entertainment media use a day—that doesn’t include homework or other media use in school—it’s no wonder many parents are starting to notice. (Even two of technology’s most prominent creators, Bill Gates and the late Steve Jobs, famously admitted in interviews that they limited their own children’s screen use.) Psychologists and neuroscientists have shown correlations (and in many cases, causation) between overusing technology and lower grades, trouble sleeping, inability to focus, poor self image, and depression and anxiety. Some research even shows a decrease in gray matter—the brain tissue responsible for sensory perception, memory, emotion, and self-control—in a technology addict’s cerebral cortex.
Read the full article here: May require an Education Week subscription.
Schools are under growing pressure to make sure that students are ready for work or job training, as well as college, when they graduate from high school. But employers say their young hires haven’t learned the reading, writing, and verbal-communication skills that are most important to a successful working life.
That gap between reality and expectations begs a boxful of questions about whether there’s a preparation problem and, if so, how to solve it.
Should K-12 schools add workplace-oriented literacy skills to their already-heavy lineup of classics like the five-paragraph essay? Who should teach young people how to write an environmental-impact report or explain quarterly business results to investors: High schools? Colleges? Or are such skills better learned at work or in job-training programs?
Surveys of employers paint a picture of discontent. Executives and hiring managers report that they have trouble finding candidates who communicate well. Good oral-communication skills, in particular, rank especially high on employers’ wish lists, alongside critical thinking and working in teams.
But do companies’ hiring struggles mean that K-12 schools, colleges, and job-training programs are doing a poor job of preparing students for work?
Some labor economists argue that the much-ballyhooed “skills gap” is caused not by inadequate career preparation but by companies’ refusal to provide the pay and training necessary to get the workers they need. And many educators argue that the primary purpose of schooling isn’t to create a jobs pipeline but to prepare young people to be informed, active citizens.
Education Week‘s new special report on literacy and the workplace won’t be able to resolve these arguments for you. But it can give you a glimpse of how some schools and employers are grappling with the workplace-literacy demands that young people face. Relatively few K-12 schools, it seems, are seriously exploring this kind of work…
Read full article click here, may require ED Week subscription
Nick Gattuso is a computer science teacher at Point Pleasant Borough High School in New Jersey, where his students have developed a suite of learning applications to assist students with disabilities, as well as an emergency-response app for school officials. Last year, his students’ work was honored by the state school boards association.
“This November will be my 15th year at the high school. Prior to coming [here], I worked for 20 years for Bell Labs. It was the pre-eminent research institution of its time…I was scheduled to be in the Pentagon, in its computer center, on 9-11. The reason I wasn’t there was because it was back-to-school night for my daughter, who was in elementary school. After that…I wanted to give back. I was too old to be a cop or a fireman, so I decided to give back by becoming a teacher.
“I took an early retirement package from Bell, and was literally put into a teaching job with no experience. I have a master’s degree in software engineering, and also a bachelor’s degree in English and poetry. I took an almost $100,000 pay cut—no lie.
“When I was at Bell, we had done this work for a guy who was paralyzed in one arm. It was a voice-activation program that helped him do his work. Years later, I was talking to my son Nicholas, explaining this story and how this program had helped this guy, and we had the idea of building real software, something that means something to people. I went down the hall to the teachers in the special-needs programs, and they were like, ‘We’ve been waiting for you!’
Nick Gattuso
“PALS stands for Panther Assisted Learning Software. In our case, my students have a set of customers downstairs, in special needs, and those customers are dependent on us to create programs that are actually meaningful, that help their lives. One of the applications we built teaches them how to go grocery shopping—with a shopping-cart simulator that has them rolling around a 3D store, picking up the bread. Another one helps them count money.
“When this thing started taking off, I went down to my administration and said, ‘We have Programming 1, and we then we have AP Computer Science, but there’s really no place for kids to go after that. So we created Advanced Software Engineering Topics. All we do is project-based, like it would be in college, or in the workplace. There are deadlines, but there are no tests.
“The question is: Did you solve the problem? Did you build something that will enrich the lives of the children downstairs? Did you make their lives better?
Some of my kids are working now for Google, for Apple, for Yelp. They make oodles of money, but they always know that the genesis of their work was building stuff for special needs kids, for doing good for somebody else.”
Hand-wringing about the low science achievement of American students is a favorite activity of policymakers, business leaders, and others worried about economic potential and job growth in this country. Educators also are worried about the leaky pipeline to higher levels of science achievement and potential STEM jobs—particularly among underrepresented student groups, such as girls and nonwhite students. Where are the students with the ability and interest to pursue academic coursework in the sciences? Why are so few pursuing sciences at our colleges and universities? Two recent studies hold some answers and point to possible solutions.
AJ Mast for Education Week
Schools are under growing pressure to make sure that students are ready for work or job training, as well as college, when they graduate from high school. But employers say their young hires haven’t learned the reading, writing, and verbal-communication skills that are most important to a successful working life.
