[YL] YouthLearn Newsletter, Issue 162

Tue Sep 8 22:08:26 EDT 2009

 YouthLearn
Newsletter, Issue 162 - September 8, 2009

The YouthLearn Newsletter compiles the latest entries to the YouthLearn News Blog. This innovative service to the YouthLearn community highlights youth, education, and technology news, tools, and resources. We hope this assists you in your important work. Please feel free to share this resource with friends and colleagues, and visit the News Blog often! http://news.youthlearn.org

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News

Go Healthy Month 2009
"Each September the Alliance for a Healthier Generation's empowerME Movement engages, educates and activates kids across the nation to motivate themselves, their families, and friends to eat better and move more. Here are a few simple ways you and youth you know can get involved and make your community a healthier place. 5 Simple Ways Adult Allies Can Encourage Youth to Get Involved: JOIN the Movement! ONE: Put an empowerME web banner on your site, blog or social networking page. If your organization has a Facebook group page, newsletter or website, send your network a message about Go Healthy Month. INSPIRE with Your Story - TWO: Encourage youth to share their own story at empowerme2b.org. ORGANIZE or ATTEND a Go Healthy Month Event in Your Community - THREE: Work in partnership with youth to organize a Youth-Hosted Forum or Recess ROCKS! Event – download Playbooks for ideas and support. FOUR: Distribute empowerME materials at schools, community centers or events. FIVE: Add your local Go Healthy Month event to the empowerme2b.org event list so we can spread the news - contact us at empowerme at healthiergeneration.org to tell us the details." See the empowerME website for ideas on how youth can get involved.
URL: http://www.empowerme2b.org/gohealthymonth

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Funding

State Farm's Youth Advisory Board Service-Learning Grants Program
"The State Farm Youth Advisory Board is a group of thirty diverse youth that helps create and oversee a State Farm-funded grantmaking initiative for student-led service learning projects in the United States as well as Alberta, New Brunswick, and Ontario, Canada. Grants are available for projects that address the issues of environmental responsibility, natural and societal disaster preparedness, driver safety, financial education, and accessing higher education/closing the achievement gap. All nonprofit 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations as well as Canadian charitable organizations, educational institutions, and governmental entities are eligible to receive grant funding. The primary applicant should be either an educator who currently teaches in a public K-12, public charter, or higher education institution; or a school-based service-learning coordinator whose primary role is to coordinate service-learning projects in a public, charter, or higher education institution. Nonprofit organizations are eligible if they are able to demonstrate how they plan to actively interact with students in public K-12 schools. Grants will range from $25,000 to $100,000 each." Deadline is October 2.
URL: http://www.statefarmyab.com/apply.php
Referred by: Foundation Center

Young People Invited to Submit After-School Projects for Do Something Grants
"Do Something and JCPenney have teamed up to support youth-led afterschool programs and projects across the United States. The program partners will award ten grants of $500 each and five grand-prize grants of $1,000 each to young people who have started afterschool activities that help youth in their community. Visit the Do Something Web site for complete program information and project posting guidelines."
URL: http://www.dosomething.org/grants/afterschool
Referred by: Foundation Center

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Resources

Integrating Web 2.0 into Youth Programming
By Anthony Brunner, Peter Kirschmann, Mary Pumphrey and Oanh Vu "If you work with youth, you know that they are interacting online. They are creating and posting content and remixing, commenting on, and mashing up content created by others. New Web 2.0 tools, which encompass sites allowing for collaborative, dynamic, user generated content, are quickly becoming ubiquitous in everyday life. Our interest in these tools came about through reflection on our own programs and those of our peers, which include varied views and uses of Web 2.0 tools at different youth serving organizations in the Twin Cities. Many sites are using Web 2.0 tools for outreach and marketing; however, we found that many of our Americorps co-workers were utilizing Web 2.0 tools within their organizations in ways beyond general program outreach. Contributors to this article are members of a newly emerging generation of youth workers, who have grown up with these technologies and are aware of the possibilities surrounding them. To better inform our colleagues in the field, we interviewed a few of our peers as we identify the field's unique position to integrate Web 2.0 as a critical component in the process of youth-produced media."
URL: http://www.youthmediareporter.org/2009/08/integrating_web_20_into_youth.html

A nation of diverse talents or of test-takers?
"National standards will 'cause irreversible damage to an education system already suffering from No Child Left Behind,' writes Professor Yong Zhao of Michigan State University in The Detroit Free Press. No evidence shows centralized standards lead to higher achievement, he contends, and plenty indicates the opposite. 'A child who does not read or do math at the level and time point stipulated is deemed at risk, regardless of other strengths, which may actually be more valuable in future life.' This child is then put in remedial classes, and deprived of opportunities to develop her strengths 'to have a dream.' National standards also discourage innovation by forcing educators to focus exclusively on standards. As a parent and educator, Zhao writes that he wants his children 'to have an education, not preparation to take tests. I want my children to be able to have dreams even if they did not meet the state standards. I want my children's teachers to be educators, not implementers of government mandates. [President] Obama and the nation's governors should preserve the legacy of our Founding Fathers and build a nation of diverse talents and creative entrepreneurs rather than a nation of standardized test-takers.'"
URL: http://www.freep.com<http://www.freep.com/article/20090830/OPINION01/908300438/1069/OPINION01/National-education-standards-can-end-up-hurting-students>
Referred by: PEN Weekly NewsBlast

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Research

Media Multitaskers Pay Mental Price, Study Shows
"People who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information do not pay attention, control their memory or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time, a group of Stanford researchers has found. High-tech jugglers are everywhere – keeping up several e-mail and instant message conversations at once, text messaging while watching television and jumping from one website to another while plowing through homework assignments. But after putting about 100 students through a series of three tests, the researchers realized those heavy media multitaskers are paying a big mental price. 'They're suckers for irrelevancy,' said communication Professor Clifford Nass, one of the researchers whose findings are published in the Aug. 24 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 'Everything distracts them.'
URL: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090825113133.htm

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Activities

"Building Blocks of Peace" Teaching Resources
"The Institute for Economics and Peace recently released the third annual Global Peace Index. The 'Building Blocks of Peace' is a downloadable lesson plan for educators offering teaching material which surrounds global peace. The materials are available free of charge at www.economicsandpeace.org. Unlike traditional peace education materials, these modules go beyond conflict resolution to explore the broader meaning of global peace and its impact on our daily lives. By working through each module and the extensive supporting information provided, students will learn how to define peace for themselves and gain an understanding of the key factors that encourage peaceful society."
URL: http://www.economicsandpeace.org/Education
Referred by: GlobalEdNews

We welcome your feedback!

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YouthLearn
http://www.youthlearn.org<http://www.youthlearn.org/>

This newsletter is produced by the YouthLearn Initiative at EDC especially for
members of the YouthLearn discussion group. Every two weeks, the newsletter is
compiled from the entries in the YouthLearn News Blog<http://news.youthlearn.org/>, including summaries
from various sources that YouthLearn staff periodically review.

Past newsletters are archived at http://www.youthlearn.org/resources/newsletter/index.html.

YouthLearn is a project of the nonprofit Education Development Center, Inc.<http://www.edc.org/>
Designed for youth development professionals, teachers, educators, and other
caring adults, YouthLearn provides resources and tools for developing effective
learning programs enhanced with technology, particularly in out-of-school settings.

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