RESOURCE: Arts Education Resources

Arts Education Resources

http://www.artsedresources.com/

Arts Education Resources is a website aimed primarily at Sacramento area teachers. Its goal is to provide teachers with resources for arts education and to connect them professionally through Social Networking with its Ning community. While this site is tailored specifically for the Sacramento area, many of these resources will be beneficial to teachers, parents and arts supporters from outside of this area. It is our hope that this website will be a crucial tool in aiding teachers with the knowledge and power they need to teach the arts in their classrooms and to demonstrate its importance to a child's education.

In an effort to keep this website up-to-date, please send any information that you feel crucial to this site to info@artsedresources.com.

Suggestions and new information are always welcome!

RESOURCE: Expert Voices Gateway

Expert Voices Gateway

 

http://expertvoices.nsdl.org/

 

Expert Voices is a "science teaching information exchange" sponsored by the National Science Digital Library (NSDL). The topics covered are science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and it's geared towards teachers of all levels, as well as students. The blogs are divided up into three sections: "Recent Posts", "Who Says", and "Hot Topics". "Recent Posts" are, as they sound, the most recent entries added to blogs, with a description of the entry, as well as the blog to which it was posted. "Who Says" lists the names of active blogs, sorted by audience level including "K12 Teachers", "University Faculty", "Librarians", "NSDL Community", and "Informal Learners". Some of the blogs fall into more than one of the aforementioned audience categories. Helpfully, there a "Larger Text" option is provided on the top of the far right hand side of every page.

To find this resource and more high-quality online resources in math and science visit Scout's sister site - AMSER, the Applied Math and Science Educational Repository at http://amser.org.

RESOURCE: U.S. Department of Education: Doing What Works

U.S. Department of Education: Doing What Works

http://dww.ed.gov/

Educators across the United States are always looking for compelling new resources to use in the classroom, and this fine website sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education delivers high-quality resources for just that purpose. The Doing What Works website contains content based on the Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences' "What Works" clearinghouse. First-time visitors can orient themselves by playing the informational video featured on the homepage. After that, they can click on the "Find What Works!" area to learn about resources in the fields of early childhood education, English, math and science, and the psychology of learning. After making a foray into those areas, visitors can click on the "Featured Content" section, and then maybe take a guided tour of the features on the site. Visitors are also encouraged to sign up for updates and to sign up to access the Digital Teacher Workshop.

RESOURCE: Transforming America's Community Colleges: A Federal Policy Proposal to Expand Opportunity and Promote Economic Prosperity

Transforming America's Community Colleges: A Federal Policy Proposal to Expand Opportunity and Promote Economic Prosperity

http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2009/~/media/Files/rc/reports/2009/0507_community_college_goldrick_rab/0507_community_college_brief.pdf

Community colleges are the bedrock of American higher education, and young and old alike use their facilities to gain specific technical skills and explore the world of the liberal arts. This May 2009 policy brief from the Brookings Institution's Blueprint for American Prosperity series offers a few policy suggestions on how the federal government might reinvest in community colleges across the nation. The twelve-page brief was authored by Sara Goldrick-Rab, Douglas N. Harris, Christopher Mazzeo, and Gregory Kienzi. The brief offers a number of concrete suggestions for the federal government, including the recommendation that they should establish national postsecondary goals and also devote a significant portion of existing funding to improve and evaluate teaching practices in these institutions.

RESOURCE: Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology

Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology

http://www.cjlt.ca/index.php/cjlt

A number of organizations have created peer-reviewed journals to investigate the world of educational technology and learning in the past several years. The Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology is certainly one of the better journals on this subject, and they publish peer-reviewed pieces on topics that include online learning, gaming, and learning theory and technology. Over the past several years, the journal has been published three times a year, and their editorial board includes professors from Simon Fraser University, Queen's University, and Athabasca University. Visitors can browse through the articles by language, issue, title, or author. Additionally, visitors can sign up to receive their RSS feed and learn a bit more about the submission process. Recently published pieces include "Comparing students' perceptions of paper-based and electronic portfolios" and "Encouraging self-regulated learning through electronic portfolios".

ANNOUCEMENT: The University of California Center for Special Education, Disabilities, & Developmental Risk

The faculty steering committee has constituted itself with the charge of leading the UC system in establishing a California-wide Center for Research in Special Education, Disabilities, and Developmental Risk (SPEDDR) as a Multi-Campus Research Unit that will unify and solidify UC resources. Primary aims of the Center are to enhance the University of California’s ability to attract from a national pool of talented students, win large extramural grants, improve national visibility of UC efforts, and enhance the doctoral preparation of the next generation of research, teacher education, and other related public service doctorates. Already, UCSB, UCR, UCSD, and UCLA and the UC Office of the President have each made ongoing financial commitments to the Center, and UCD and UCB have indicated their support.

http://ucspeddr.education.ucsb.edu/

RESOURCE: From Pi Beta Phi to Arrowmont

From Pi Beta Phi to Arrowmont

http://www.lib.utk.edu/arrowmont/

A fraternity for women, Pi Beta Phi, built a settlement school in Tennessee to honor the 50th anniversary of the fraternity. This website has digital collections of letters, diaries, and scrapbooks related to the founding of the school, as well as historical photos of the surrounding community and an interactive gallery of artwork that resides at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, the institution that the settlement school has become. Near the top of the page is a link to a "Timeline" that puts the fraternity's founding and the opening of the school in the context of major world events. Visitors can start there to read a brief synopsis of each event on the timeline. To get look into what the school was like from a teacher's' perspectives, visitors should check out the beautifully digitized scrapbooks they made by clicking on the "Scrapbooks" link near the top of the page. Visitors should not miss the 360-degree image gallery to see every angle of some beautiful artworks that include a turned ash bowl and a raku vase. Click on "View Interactive Image" to start the art object turning, and then to slow it down or stop it or reverse direction, just drag the hand cursor onto the object. A zoom feature can also be accessed with the "+" or "-" at the bottom of the viewer.