In this integrated inquiry, students in an elementary teaching methods class investigate a real-world problem outside the classroom. The students use the Cognitive Research Trust (CoRT) thinking strategy to find the causes of, impact of, and possible solutions to the problem. They present their findings and then discuss implementation of this…

Purpose. The purpose of this study was to reveal differences between Program Improvement (PI) middle school scripted program and nonscripted program teachers' perceptions of their schools as professional learning communities (PLCs). The concept of PLCs is framed by Hord's (1997) 5 attributes of successful PLCs: supportive shared leadership, shared…

In 2007, the United Animal Nations (UAN) launched the Humane Education Ambassador Readers (HEAR), an innovation that focused on mitigation of animal suffering through education. In the HEAR program, adult volunteers read carefully selected story books to children in grades 3-6 in schools or other educational settings, and hold discussions with the…

The "Census in Schools Educator Update" is sent to educators and educational organizations periodically to keep them informed about current and upcoming census data and to provide ideas about how to use data in the classroom. This issue of the "Census in Schools Educator Update" newsletter focuses on the following topics: (1) New Web Site for the…

The "Census in Schools Educator Update" is sent to educators and educational organizations periodically to keep them informed about current and upcoming census data and to provide ideas about how to use data in the classroom. This issue of the "Census in Schools Educator Update" newsletter focuses on the following topics: (1)…

The network society has a major impact on knowledge systems, and in agricultural and rural development. It has changed relationships between actors such as farmers, extension workers, researchers, policy-makers, businessmen and consumers. These changes require different language, concepts and tools compared to the time that it was thought that…

This article discusses the benefits of and processes for implementing experiential activities into guidance curricula to assist in developing awareness, knowledge, and skills related to diversity for the promotion of multicultural competencies in adolescents. The importance of such activities is discussed, as well as significant considerations…

You may not think of engineering and squirt guns in the same sentence. However, like many examples of engineering design, the squirt gun pump mechanism is uncomplicated, yet elegant, and very inexpensive to manufacture. The design is widely used because of its simplicity and low cost. With only a few moving parts, it is able to deliver a stream of…

As a philosopher and an art historian, the authors decided to record their experience after discovering they shared similar journeys changing their courses. They had both been dissatisfied with their students' learning outcomes and their own tired patterns of teaching. After learning about Dee Fink's (2003) integrated course design (ICD) and his…

Old textbooks are one resource for teaching about the evolution of historical interpretation. Some libraries contain collections of U.S. history textbooks spanning multiple years and some schools even keep older textbooks used in past years. Recently, the author used a book by Kyle Ward entitled "History in the Making: An Absorbing Look at How…

By far, the tastiest technology learning activity that the author's students work on is the development of the design of a chocolate candy bar. This article describes how the author implemented the candy bar activity. The activity gives students an opportunity to design a product and to take it from concept through to production.

Any curriculum consists of several components: goals, disposition, duration, needs analysis, learners and teachers, exercises and activities, resources, ways of learning, skills to be acquired, lexis, language structure, and ability assessment. Before setting up a program or course of study, these components should be determined and described in…

This article describes the Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD) process and its application in the field of educational data mining (EDM) in the context of a digital library service called the Instructional Architect (IA.usu.edu). In particular, the study reported in this article investigated a certain type of data mining problem, clustering,…

This study aims to examine the oral communicative activities found in the Saudi EFL third year secondary textbooks and to determine the role they play in influencing the learners' oral communication in English. A questionnaire of 52 items based on four domains is utilized to explore the perception of Saudi EFL teachers regarding the oral…

"Language, Literacy and Early Childhood Education" is a comprehensive textbook for all students studying literacy and language subjects in early childhood education and primary degrees. Covering an age range from 0 to 8 years the book encompasses the four main early childhood contexts of: the family and community; childcare; the pre-school years,…