Archive for October 14, 2007 - October 20, 2007

 The Federal Communications Commission issued its first fines for a station airing Armstrong Williams’ Department of Education–paid–for plugs for its No Child Left Behind initiative. Station owner Sinclair Broadcast Group doesn’t plan to pay the fine and said it will take the commission to court. The revelation of those payments caused a firestorm of criticism and a dressing–down of the DOE, and it led to payola complaints by Free Press at the FCC. The FCC Thursday fined Sonshine’s WBPH-TV Bethlehem, Pa., for airing five episodes (a total of 10 times) of The Right Side with Armstrong Williams, and Sinclair a total of $76,000 for airing America’s Black Forum. Both were cited for violating the FCC’s sponsorship–identification rules. Read the article at broadcastnewsroom.com.

When Palo Alto resident Carrie Karnos landed the latest Harry Potter book minutes after its midnight release, the first thing she did was chop off its spine. Then she scanned, proofread and uploaded the book onto Bookshare.org, where by about 4:30 a.m. about 600 blind or dyslexic people immediately began reading it. Users download the books as digital files and listen to them with a voice synthesizer or read them on special Braille computers or via enlarged type.

This week, Palo Alto–based technology nonprofit Benetech announced it will be expanding its Bookshare.org project, the world’s largest collection of scanned books and periodicals, through its first federal grant. The U.S. Department of Education has awarded Bookshare $32 million over five years to open up its collection of more than 34,000 volumes free of charge to all blind or dyslexic students from kindergarten through graduate school.

The 5-year-old Bookshare already has 6,000 to 7,000 users, but that should increase to about 100,000 as a result of the grant, said Bookshare CEO Jim Fruchterman, who last year won a MacArthur Fellowship for his work. For details, go to MercuryNews.com.

In a rare cross–industry accord, a consortium of media and Internet companies led by Walt Disney Co. and Microsoft Corp. have agreed to a set of rules they will abide by in the contentious area of posting copyright material on the Web. Notably absent is Google Inc., which had been in discussions about possibly joining the group. The copyright holders in the group have agreed not to pursue Internet companies for infringement claims if their sites adhere to certain principles. Those principles include eliminating copyright–infringing content uploaded by users to Web sites, and blocking any infringing material before it is publicly accessible. Read more in The Wall Street Journal.

The International Reading Association has launched two audio podcast series. Class Acts draws on IRA journals and books to present research-based, classroom tested teaching techniques appropriate for different grade levels. Five Class Acts are currently available and provide ideas for instruction in phonics, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and fluency.

IRA Insights, the other series, features interviews and commentary on a range of literacy issues. The first two podcasts in this series are interviews with Dick Allington on Response to Intervention (RTI) and Peter Afflerbach on assessment.

IRA podcasts in MP3 format are available for free download on the IRA website. The podcasts also are available at the iTunes store.

Schools are becoming part of a "total marketing environment" in which commercialism pervades virtually the entire experience of growing up. That is the conclusion of Adrift: Schools in a Total Marketing Environment, a report released this week by the Commercialism in Education Research Unit (CERU) at Arizona State University. Adrift is the 10th annual report by CERU director Alex Molnar.

The 2007 report identifies three broad trends in the advertising and marketing industries.

1. Advertising is becoming more pervasive.
2. The boundary between advertising and editorial content is becoming less distinct.
3. The relationship between marketers and consumers is becoming more interactive.

For further information, access the full report.

As ideas go, they don’t come much bigger: Digitize the accumulated wisdom of humankind, catalog it, and offer it for free on the Internet in seven languages. The first phase of that simple yet ambitious dream is about a year away from being realized, according to a group of international librarians, computer technicians and United Nations officials who yesterday (October 17, 2007) unveiled a prototype for the project, called the World Digital Library, in Paris. “In essence, what they are doing is building an intellectual cathedral, and it may never get finished,” said Paul Saffo, a long-time Silicon Valley technology forecaster. “But this is a good effort even if it fails, because it is going to inspire a lot of other efforts, and if it succeeds it will be a wonderful resource.” Read about it in The Washington Post or visit www.worlddigitallibrary.org.

At the John Silber Early Learning Center in Chelsea, Massachusetts, where most students come from low–income homes with little or no English spoken, gaps in language and vocabulary pose the biggest instructional challenge. But thanks to a recently awarded three–year $1,738,087 Early Reading First federal grant, the center’s preschool reading and language–development programs are about to get a major upgrade, principal Jacqueline Bevere Maloney said. Maloney said she has already used the money to hire two literacy coaches, a language development teacher, and consultants from the Hanson Initiative for Language and Literacy, founded in 2000 by a communications disorders program in the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions. The $1.7 million will be spread over three years, she said. Read more in The Boston Globe.

For nearly a decade, pundits have been predicting the imminent rise of the e-book as a major force in the publishing industry. To date e-books have not really captured much of the market. All that may soon change, according to an article by Daniel Lee appearing on the website of the Telegraph in London. Lee quotes several experts in the publishing field who predict that e-reading will soon take hold in a big way.

Still, just as television did not kill the cinema, the experts do not believe that new forms of publishing will kill printed books. "The new forms of publishing will be complementary with traditional books," says Stephanie Duncan of Bloomsbury.

For further information, read the full article.

In 1998, Microsoft’s 35-year-old Director of Business Development for the Greater China Region took a vacation that changed his life. Trekking through a remote Himalayan village, he was invited by a local teacher to visit their school. John Wood was shocked to see the school’s 20 tattered books were locked away to protect them from the students. “It was an experience I’ll never forget,” says Wood, who founded the award-winning, nonprofit organization Room to Read to give the world’s children the lifelong gift of education. Since Room to Read’s inception in 2000, 1.3 million in kids in Vietnam, Laos, India, Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Zambia now have access to enhanced education infrastructure. As Wood says, “Education is the ticket out of poverty. Who hasn’t had one relative in their family that broke the cycle of poverty by betting educated?” Read more or visit www.roomtoread.org.

The United States Board on Books for Young People (USBBY) Hans Christian Andersen Award committee has chosen three titles to represent the U.S. on the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) Honour List. Committee members chose titles published over the past two years that exemplify excellence in three categories: writing, illustration, and translation. The IBBY Honour List is a unique biennial survey of what is best in children’s literature worldwide.

The committee chose Each Little Bird That Sings by Deborah Wiles (Harcourt, 2005) in the author category; Jazz (Holiday House, 2006), written by Walter Dean Myers and illustrated by Christopher Myers, in the illustration category; and Emil and Karl (Roaring Brook Press, 2006), written by Yankev Glathteyn and translated by Jeffrey Shandler, in the translation category.

Members of the 2008 USBBY Hans Christian Anderson Awards Nominating Committee are Sharon Deeds, chair, Julie Cummins, Jennifer Smith, Susan Golden, and Christina Desai. The secretariat for USBBY is housed at IRA Headquarters in Newark, Delaware. For further information about IBBY and its projects, visit the IBBY website.

While other ideas for revamping the No Child Left Behind Act are taking center stage, a quiet debate is unfolding over proposals to tinker with the law’s definition of what constitutes “scientifically based research” in education. The phrase is sprinkled through the federal education statute more than 100 times. Leaders of the House Education and Labor Committee, in a draft proposal for reauthorizing the NCLB law circulating since late summer, would tone down that emphasis on scientific experiments by stipulating that studies aimed at determining whether an educational program or practice works may include—but are not limited to—random-assignment experiments. Read the article and what experts are saying in Education Week online.

 The tests that states use to measure academic progress under the No Child Left Behind Act are creating a false impression of success, according to a new report created by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the Northwest Evaluation Association. A few of the major findings in "The Proficiency Illusion" include the following:

* States are aiming particularly low when it comes to their expectations for younger children, setting elementary students up to fail as they progress through their academic careers.
* The central flaw in NCLB is that it allows each state to set its own definition of what constitutes "proficiency."
* By mandating that all students reach "proficiency" by 2014, it tempts states to define proficiency downward.

For further information, visit the webpage for the report.

While applauding what the Internet and digitization have done for research and classroom learning, some academics are also expressing concern that the technology has changed the way students read, according to an article by Bill Schackner appearing in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Some students have trouble distinguishing between what information is credible and what is not, and many students tend to piece together nuggets of information quickly gleaned from various sources rather than gaining the knowledge that would come from reading a complete work on a given subject.

Still, educators interviewed in the article agree that technology has made available to students a wealth of knowledge that was not available to them a decade or so ago. For further information, read the full article.

An online tool designed to help local literacy organizations evaluate their programs, make changes to produce better results, and help increase national literacy rates, was unveiled this week at the National Literacy Summit at Georgetown University. The evaluation program, known as the Verizon Literacy Program Self- Assessment Tool, was created by the National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL) and funded by the Verizon Foundation. It is free and available to all literacy programs at Thinkfinity.org. The assessment tool provides a detailed online questionnaire that asks about a literacy program’s methods, the education level of its students, parental involvement, and current tools used to assess the program’s success. Read more at CNN Money.com.

Students at Indian Hills Elementary in Topeka, Kansas, will soon get help improving their reading skills from Sophie and Jules. Sophie is a golden retriever. Jules is a miniature schnauzer. Both are therapy dogs in the Reading Education Assistance Dog (R.E.A.D.) Program. The purpose of R.E.A.D. is to improve the reading skills of children using certified therapy teams as literacy mentors. In the program, dogs sit with children while the children read aloud. The dogs provide a calming, nurturing presence and serve as patient listeners to children who may be struggling to reach their reading potential. Read more at The Topeka Capital-Journal online.

October 15-21 has been designated as Give Kids Good Schools Week. This project of the Public Education Network is designed to boost public involvement in and support of public education. For further information, visit the project website.

The National Vocabulary Championship, a nationwide academic competition that offers high school students the opportunity to win money toward college tuition is under way. In-school test taking runs from October 15 through November 2. A national online exam may be taken from November 1 through November 30, and citywide contests take place through January 17, 2008. The competition is open to eligible high school students in the 50 United States and the District of Columbia. It is part of the “Win with Words” public service campaign of GSN, the Network for Games, in partnership with The Princeton Review, that aims to improve language arts skills in high schools by promoting the value of an enhanced vocabulary. Fifty finalists will compete for $40,000 towards college tuition in the finals of the contest. For information, visit www.winwithwords.com.

 At some high schools in the East Side of Los Angeles, fewer than 10 percent of students can do grade-level math or English, according to an article by Diana Jean Schemo in The New York Times. The No Child Left Behind law prescribes drastic measures for schools such as these: firing teachers and principals, shutting schools and turning them over to another operator, or a major overhaul in governance. But given that more than 1,000 of California's 9,500 schools are branded as chronic failures, are these practical solutions?

Furthermore, the article points out, California is not the only state that is being overwhelmed by growing numbers of failing schools. For further information, read the full article.

Wayman Early Learning Academy sits across the street from the Eureka Garden Apartments, a subsidized, drug-plagued housing complex on the west side of Jacksonville. Many of Eureka's low-income youngsters attend the child care center on the grounds of the Wayman Chapel AME Church. It’s no wonder that when the bright blue, green and yellow backpacks of Mayor Peyton’s Book Club arrive, “it’s like Christmas time,” says Regina Lee, the center’s director. Stuffed with books, a hand puppet, reading blanket, flash cards, T-shirt and other items, the backpacks go to any 4-year-old in Jacksonville who wants one, rich or poor. In its fourth year, the program is beginning to be emulated in other cities as part of a growing effort to improve early literacy. Read about the successful program at usatoday.com.

The literacy rate in Kenya continues to be one of the lowest in the world. Lack of libraries reflect the dismal numbers: 68% for males and 58% for females, according to the American Friends of Kenya organization. But the most unlikely candidates—two 16-year-old high school juniors who live a world away—could help change that. Megan Adams and Danielle Rodriguez, who have never been to Africa, are on a mission. They searched online for an organization to work with and were impressed by the programs American Friends of Kenya sponsored. After talking with the executive director, they created their own fundraising initiative called Literacy Leads to Hope. Now, the teens are trying to raise $120,000 to help build a library in Thika, Kenya. Read about their efforts at The St. Petersburg Times website.

Ever been inspired by a great book? Teachers TV, a London-based free-to-air channel available on digital satellite and digital cable television, is conducting a Great Books survey to find the top 10 education books that have inspired teachers and others involved in education. The survey results will form the basis for a Teachers TV program. For further details and to take part in the survey, visit the Teachers TV website. The survey closes on October 26.

Saadia Jan, 19, bites her nails uncertainly, as she perches on the window sill of her parent’s house in Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province. Till a few days ago, Saadia had her future neatly chalked out in her mind. “I had decided to become a teacher. In fact, since I was 12 years old, I knew I wanted to be one,” she told IRIN. But, Saadia’s plans are now in shreds. “My family says it is too unsafe to teach and that I should opt for something else,” she said. The reason for her concern is the killing of a local teacher, Khatoon Bibi, 40, who was killed September 29 in the Mohmand Agency. According to eyewitness accounts, the teacher, who taught at a girls’ community school in the Atokhel area, was shot dead on her way home from school by unidentified assailants on a motorcycle. Read about the situation at IRIN News.