Education+Research+Resources


 * [|Cartoon Cat Teaches Kids It's Okay To Be Different] **

Floppy Cat isn’t like all the other cats. Instead of strolling and running, he flips, flops and sways when he walks. But instead of treating his oddball crawl like a hindrance, he treats it like a gift, making his story a metaphor for any child who isn’t like everyone else. Kari Kay, author of Floppy Cat, from the Floppy Cat Company (www.floppycat.com) based her children’s book on the life of her real cat, Floppy.

** [|Teaching Kids To Accept Being Different]  **

Children don’t have the same filter between their brains and their mouths that adults do, and if you need evidence of that, just think back to any moment of embarrassment caused by your child’s ultra-honesty. It’s one thing for an adult to see someone who is obese and think, he’s fat, but children are more than likely to point and say in a loud, non-indoor voice, Wow, Mommy, he’s fat!

** [|Kids Are Smarter Than We Think]  **

Illiteracy isn’t just an inconvenience, according to the National Literacy Institute. It’s a national emergency. According to recommendations recently made to President-Elect Obama’s education advisors, the U.S. is facing an unprecedented literacy crisis that reflects a need for the nation to invest in early education programs and make language development a primary focus of every preschool.

** [|New book explains the crisis in the public schools, and how we fix it]  **

I’ve been writing about education more than 25 years. It’s been a fascinating but puzzling journey. So much in education is counterintuitive. We would expect that there are quicker, more pleasant ways to do any task; conversely, there must be slow, inefficient and unsuccessful ways to do everything. It’s the second kind that our elite educators (the ones who run the system) gravitate toward. = = = [|China's boxed itself in]  =

Its emphasis on math and science has certainly fueled its rapid economic growth, but its lack of creative thinking could rob it of an innovative edge. ** [|Cry for freedom]  **

He is hard of hearing and his right hand shakes. But Liu Daoyu, in his seventies, still works four hours a day, offering his thoughts on the weaknesses of higher education in China. His latest bombshell was a 7,000-word thesis in China's most influential newspaper, Southern Weekend, in which he called for an overhaul of the country's growing number of universities.


 * [|Malaysia: ICT education for a creative society] **

Malaysia Higher Education Ministry is studying how to develop a creative and innovative Malaysian society through human capital development.

[|YouTube's education portal well received in Hong Kong]
YouTube’s launch of a global education portal has been greeted with enthusiasm by educators in Hong Kong, which now have access to videos of lectures, seminars and conferences from more than 100 schools but so far only from English-speaking countries in the West.

[|Fiji: School exam system to go online]
Republic of the Fiji Islands has announced that schools and students will soon have the opportunity to register for examinations and check results online, says the Ministry of Education.

[|SWJU installs China's largest campus wireless network]
China’s Southwest Jiaotong University ( SWJU ) is installing a wireless network to digitally connect the campus. The project is believed to the largest of its kind in the country.

[|Downturn drives popularity of e-books in Asia]
The popularily of e-books is on the rise in Asia as the region’s schools and universities look to make cost-savings and save on storage space.

[|World’s largest virtualised desktop deployment in Brazil’s schools]
Brazilis to install 356,800 virtualised desktops to schools in all of the country’s 5560 municipalities, allowing millions of schoolchildren to access information technology across the country.

[|Building a comprehensive e-learning solution to enhance the student experience]
Are you equipped with the right tools to help your students succeed? Pearson eCollege shares insights on key challenges Asian universities’ CIOs are facing this year and how they can capitalise on technology to move ahead of their peers.

[|Education moves online in India]
Arjun Singh, Minister of Human Resource Development, has launched the country’s first e-education programme in Tirupati, the temple town of Andra Pradesh, India.

[|ICT links 18,000 Indian colleges]
The central government in India has approved a new scheme to use IT in providing personalised and interactive knowledge modules to students.

[|Pakistan province to spend US$624m on education]
Lahore, the capital of Punjab province in Pakistan has termed the promotion of education as the topmost priority for the provincial government. Raja Riaz Ahmad Senior Minister has said that the government will introduce IT education to secondary and higher secondary schools.

[|Technology for engaging England’s pupils]
Commissioned by the UK government’s technology agency Becta, new research by Manchester Metropolitan University shows that online learning has been useful in engaging students who have become disaffected by education, and is helping to re-engage those who are not succeeding in school or are not learning by traditional teaching methods.

[|Free laptops for New South Wales students]
Starting 2009, every New South Wales public school student in years nine to 12 in Australia will receive a lightweight mini laptop, otherwise known as a netbook, after the state government recanted its opposition to the Commonwealth’s computers in school programmes.

[|Laos harness education to reduce poverty]
Laosseeks to raise its world standing by embracing education programmes that reduce local poverty.

[|UNESCO helps Iraq launch educational TV channel]
Iraqi children who are unable to attend classes due to security concerns will now be able to continue their studies through distance learning thanks to a new educational television channel launched by UNESCO and the education ministry in Iraq.

[|**Mobile education launched in Indi**a]
In line with its Education anywhere and anytime vision, the Indira Gandhi National Open University will soon impart student courses on public health, art, music and various other subjects through mobile phones.

[|**Revolutionising the face of educatio**n]
New technologies have dramatically transformed the way people teach and learn, with characteristic high-speed delivery, visually engaging and interactive content, and customised experiences.

[|Uganda's education needs internet subsidy]
High internet connectivity costs remain a major handicap to the widespread integration of IT in teaching and research at Ugandan educational institutions.

[|Future education in Singapore]
With the advent of Singapore’s FutureSchools project whereby the next generation of students will be equipped with ICT in every area of their studies we interview a leading secondary school in the country to get an insight to these students’ lifestyles come the invasion of technology into classrooms.

[|Green management makes sense for polytechnic]
One of Singapore’s tertiary education institutes has a long-standing commitment to go green, shares Andre Ahchak, Deputy Director, Nanyang Polytechnic.

[|The Creative Classroom]
Future schooling in Singapore from educational computer games to virtual field trips.

[|Singapore teachers get web 2.0 resources]
A new joint project between the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore and the country’s Ministry of Education aims to provide teachers with all the information they need to leverage web 2.0 technologies for new approaches to learning.

[|Australian students reject paying for ‘virtual’ lectures]
A student petition at the University of Western Sydney ( UWS ) in Australia is demanding cuts in fees to match cuts in face-to-face teaching time as the university extends the virtual classroom.

[|Hands-free access for disabled children at a UK college]
NationalStar Collegeis a registered charity and national independent specialist college that helps young disabled students to achieve their potential through innovative programmes of education and independence training.

[|How e-exams help provide speed and security]
A school in one of India’s smallest states is pioneering the use of e-exams to help create a consistentcy, security and ease of use in its examinations system.

[|**Programme helps teachers make better use of ICT in learning**]
Twenty-eight teachers are expected to graduate from a post-graduate degree programme on integrating information and communications technology ( ICT ) in education this coming September.

[|Singapore school leverages ICT for global immersion]
Technology is making the world a virtual classroom at Nanyang Girls High School.

[|Out of Work in Finance, They Turn to Teaching]
A new program, Traders to Teachers, financed by a federal grant, will retrain dislocated workers and also ease the state’s shortage of math teachers.

= [|A Cautionary Video About America’s ‘Stuff’]  =

The video is a cheerful but brutal assessment of how much Americans waste, and it has its detractors. But it has been embraced by teachers eager to supplement textbooks that lag behind scientific findings on [|climate change]  and pollution.

= [|A Hit in School, Maggots and All]  =

It’s a sight that might make your skin crawl if the chicken weren’t already doing it for you. Projected onto the classroom screen was live-action footage of putrefying poultry, the image blown up to festively pulsating proportions by way of a digital microscope.

But did the students in Scott Rubins’s advanced [|forensic]  science class at New Rochelle High School shriek or go Ewww gross! or even so much as wrinkle their noses with revulsion? Not over their dead bodies.

Middle school teachers often lack expertise in subject matter and the mysteries of the adolescent mind.

** [|Taking Middle Schoolers Out of the Middle] **
Schools debate whether to extend the nurturing cocoon of elementary school or to rush students into high school.

Middle school is a netherworld between elementary school and high school, and teachers can be the key.

More American students are heading overseas not just for a semester abroad, but for their full degree program.

Northeastern is using Kaplan Inc. to find students for, and help run, a special program for international students.

EducationCity, the largest enclave of American schools overseas, has become the elite of Qatari education.

The American system of higher education, long the envy of the world, is starting to become an important export.