Youthlearn News Archive 2006

The Southwest Educational Development Laboratory has developed a versatile online toolkit designed to help AFTER-SCHOOL PROGRAM directors and staff create engaging and academically enriching environments for students." (YouthLearn Director Tony Streit serves as a technology consultant to SEDL on this effort, and is currently helping SEDL develop the Technology Toolkit, featuring a number of resources from YouthLearn and available in early 2007.)

Although public awareness of the need for online safety education has increased recently, there's still more that needs to be done. Teenangels, a program for youth ages 13 to 18, is using the peer-to-peer approach to school others about online safety.
Created in 1999, Teenangels is the brain-child of Parry Aftab, an Internet safety lawyer and executive director of WiredSafety.org, the world's largest online safety organization.

EBSCO Publishing has launched two free Web-based resources for school libraries: History-It's Happening! and It's a Reading Rave!"
""History-It's Happening!" for middle and high school libraries focuses on North American history and special events such as Women's History Month. The site models EBSCO database searches; students can begin their research here or browse key primary source documents, historic video footage, speeches, selected articles and Web sites about notable women and men from Canada and the U.S.

Lack of oversight hinders enforcement
By Laura Ascione, Assistant Editor, eSchool News

"Among its other goals, the federal No Child Left Behind Act says that all students should be technology literate by the end of the eighth grade. Yet, nearly four years after the law was first implemented, states appear to be all over the map in terms of ensuring the technology proficiency of their students, an informal investigation by eSchool News has learned.

TechSoup, the nonprofit technology Web site, has announced that the Philanthropy and Volunteerism Program of the W.K.

Technology has been a valuable tool for the student teams participating in Challenge 20/20. U.S. students and their counterparts from outside the US must work together to come up with practical solutions to global problems.

For any and all folks in the YouthLearn community who work with teens, this is an information-rich publication:
CASEL Connections: SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) Research and Practice Updates from the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago

"In This Issue: Focus on Adolescents

In this issue we turn our attention to the issue of the educational, social, and emotional needs of high school students and the challenges facing educators in helping students to succeed in high school and beyond.

GTECH provides community organizations with state-of-the-art, Internet-ready computer centers. Computer centers are designed to provide inner-city children aged 5-15 with a meaningful learning experience in a safe environment during the critical after-school hours. Eligible applicants include nonprofit organizations. There is no deadline date for applications."

Are you looking for a unique way to bring an awareness of the outside world into your classroom? Would your students like to hear from other young people about issues of pressing relevance to their own lives and studies? Youth Radio, an award-winning producer of youth voices, has released a new curriculum resource called the Fourth R, which adds radio to our traditional line-up of reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic. Each month, the Fourth R provides free, online lesson plan suggestions and standards alignment linked to a radio story written and produced by youth.

Children need to participate fully in digital culture in order to develop the "skills, knowledge, ethical frameworks and self-confidence needed to be full participants in the world around them," MIT Professor Henry Jenkins told members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) recently.
Jenkins, director of the Comparative Media Studies Program, presented a paper at the AAAS annual meeting, which had the overall title "Grand Challenges, Great Opportunities." Held Feb. 16-20 in St.