March 2 is Dr. Seuss's birthday, or, rather, the day 111 years ago when Theodor Seuss Geisel, the famous children's author, was born, and for years, thousands of schools around the country have celebrated the day with book readings ("Cat in the Hat, "Green Eggs and Ham," etc.) and Seuss character costumes. This year, some of those celebrations have been changed. Why? It's the start of the spring 2015 testing season, and at many schools students will be taking PARCC Core standardized tests instead.
Illinois
Joe Wikert is Publishing President at Our Sunday Visitor (www.osv.com). Before joining OSV Joe was Director of Strategy and Business Development at Olive Software. Prior to Olive Software he was General Manager, Publisher, & Chair of the Tools of Change (TOC) conference at O’Reilly Media, Inc., where he managed each of the editorial groups at O’Reilly as well as the Microsoft Press team and the retail sales organization. Before joining O’Reilly Joe was Vice President and Executive Publisher at John Wiley & Sons, Inc., in their P/T division.
A recently published article featured on Phys.org suggests that tablet-based computers are no longer a distraction but a useful supplement to students when used in an educational setting.
"With technology in education becoming the new normal, it's increasingly important for educators to understand how ubiquitous mobile technology such as tablets can enhance learning instead of being classroom distractions, says Dilip Chhajed, a professor of business administration at Illinois and co-author of the study," according to the article.
Chhajed's paper was based on research that concentrated on effects of mobile technology on students
The digital content industry is infatuated with a paywall pendulum that keeps swinging back and forth, from one extreme to the other. Remember when paywalls were considered a roadblock to achieving the broadest reach possible and all the revenue problems could be solved with advertising?
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Banned and challenged books get a lot of press during Banned Books Week, but I think it's important to discuss issues like censorship year round and not just for one week at the end of September.
Since most challenges involve material read in schools or marketed to young adults and librarians who serve teen patrons are often at the center of these issues, I thought an overview of books that were challenged in 2013 would be of interest to Hub readers. Of course, this isn't meant to be an exhaustive list,
There's only one thing that comes between the grade school kids hopping off the afternoon bus near Eve Pulver-Johnson's Aurora house and their after-school snacks - the Little Free Library on her family's front lawn. The children like to take an extra minute near the stop to peek inside the free-standing blue and white box full of books, some of them grabbing a book to go. Who knows? Maybe somebody put one of Mo Willems' popular children's stories in there.
November 8, 2012, Tinley Park, Illinois. SPi Global, through its subsidiary Laserwords, has acquired Tighe Publishing Services, a full-service educational development house in the K-12 educational marketplace.
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