12.1 Education Apps from Walt Disney Co.
12.2 Liberal Arts Education
12.3 Ten ways to fix the mess that is kindergarten
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12.1 Education Apps from Walt Disney Co. (6/12/2014)
NEW YORK — Mickey is getting into math — and science, art, reading and even teaching social skills.
The Walt Disney Co. is launching a new line of learning tools designed to help parents encourage kids 3 to 8 to learn outside of school. Disney Imagicademy begins with a series of mobile apps but will later expand into other products such as books and interactive toys. Over time, the target age will also grow to include older kids.
To start, Disney is launching an iPad app called "Mickey's Magical Math World" on Dec. 11, focused on math-based activities such as counting, shapes, logic and sorting. Within the app, there are five add-on activities such as "Minnie's Robot Count-Along" and "Goofy's Silly Sorting." The basic app is free to use, but the enhanced activities cost $4.99 each or $19.99 for all five. Future apps, on subjects ranging from life science using characters from Disney's "Frozen" to creative arts, will be similarly priced. The apps are ad free, keeping with laws that prevent targeting online advertising at kids under 13. ..
http://www.
12.2 Liberal Arts Education (8/12/2014)
There's also very good reason to believe that integrating the arts and sciences leads to creative breakthroughs that would not be possible when either was excluded. Phi Beta Kappa, the nation's oldest academic honor society, reporting on a study published in the Journal of Psychology of Science and Technology notes that "90 percent of Nobel Laureates in the sciences say the arts should be part of every technologists' education. In fact, 80 percent of them can point to specific ways arts training boosted their innovative ability."
The problem with the liberal arts, therefore, isn't with the academic content of what's being taught in colleges and universities. Rather the problem is that the liberal arts are woefully misunderstood by most segments of society. To a large extent the fault for this situation lies with academics rather than with the general public. As Carol Geary Schneider, president of AAC&U, so provocatively said a while back, the academy has fostered a "conspiracy of voluntary silence" when it comes to the liberal arts. We've been fearful of promoting the liberal arts and liberal education because they sound soft and they're easily misunderstood.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
12.3 Ten ways to fix the mess that is kindergarten (16/12/2014)
5. Expect occasional squirrelly behavior. It’s really hard for these little kids to sit still all day doing work—and not all of them have ADHD and need to be medicated. Early childhood educators understand that kids need hours of free playtime from their earliest days to develop healthy sensory systems that enable their brains to learn. Valerie Strauss recently posted a piece on this issue by Angela Hanscom titled, Why So Many Kids Can’t Sit Still in School Today. It’s worth reading Hanscom’s answer, as she is a pediatric occupational therapist as well as an advocate for more creative play in children’s lives...
Why so many kids can't sit still in school today:
I recently observed a fifth grade classroom as a favor to a teacher. I quietly went in and took a seat towards the back of the classroom. The teacher was reading a book to the children and it was towards the end of the day. I’ve never seen anything like it. Kids were tilting back their chairs back at extreme angles, others were rocking their bodies back and forth, a few were chewing on the ends of their pencils, and one child was hitting a water bottle against her forehead in a rhythmic pattern.
This was not a special-needs classroom, but a typical classroom at a popular art-integrated charter school. My first thought was that the children might have been fidgeting because it was the end of the day and they were simply tired. Even though this may have been part of the problem, there was certainly another underlying reason.
We quickly learned after further testing, that most of the children in the classroom had poor core strength and balance. In fact, we tested a few other classrooms and found that when compared to children from the early 1980s, only one out of twelve children had normal strength and balance. Only one! Oh my goodness, I thought to myself. These children need to move!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
12.1 The end of shop class (9/2/2012)
12.1 The end of shop class (9/2/2012)
12.1 The end of shop class (9/2/2012)
12.1 The end of shop class (9/2/2012)
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