This article describes one school district department's efforts to train and support teachers in providing effective curriculum, instruction, and assessment methods to their students. This large, K-12 district embraces the spectrum of low to high SES schools, a large number of gifted students from diverse populations, and a variety of gifted…

Traditionally, graduate study includes a research component, requiring library skills to locate relevant literature. Upon matriculation into graduate programs, many students are underprepared in library research skills, making library instruction a priority for the success of graduate students. This qualitative study, utilizing emergent design,…

Tertiary education in Australia has long been associated with the integration of developing technologies as a vehicle for distance education. As personal access to the Web has become more affordable, tertiary institutions have implemented wholly online courses to create flexible elearning spaces for students. While there are tangible benefits…

This time-saving program planner for librarians and classroom teachers alike includes everything you need to get started--reading lists, flannelboard patterns, poems, songs, easy crafts, even take-home activities to extend the learning process. The many creative ideas packed inside include: (1) Activities keyed to popular classroom themes, with…

The landscape of early childhood education and care is changing. Governments world-wide are assuming increasing authority in relation to child-rearing in the years before school entry, beyond the traditional role in assisting parents to do the best they can by their children. As part of a social agenda aimed at forming citizens well prepared to…

Although social stratification usually calls to mind the hierarchical ranking of individuals, sociology often broadly considers it the ranking of any social objects. The Treiman Socio-Economic Index (SEI), for example, provides a quantitative assessment of the hierarchical ranking of occupations. This dissertation considers the hierarchical…

The National Literacy Trust's Young Readers Programme has always worked successfully with schools and libraries in areas of deprivation for over 15 years. The Trust staff have recently started some pilot work with looked-after children both in residential and foster care. As part of this work they undertook some desk-based research to assess the…

An imperative to develop the social experience of learning has led to the design of informal learning spaces within libraries. Yet little is known about how these spaces are used by students or how students perceive them. Field work in one such space is reported. The general private study practice of undergraduates was captured through audio…

To assume the role of technology leaders and information literacy specialists in their schools, librarians need access to the most current information. And, they do this by helping each other. There are many definitions, but professional learning networks (PLNs) involve sharing work-related ideas with a network of colleagues via various digital…

Libraries have been increasingly concerned with data creation, management, and publication. This increase is partly driven by shifting metadata standards in libraries and partly by the growth of data and metadata repositories being managed by libraries. In order to manage these data sets, libraries are looking for new preservation and discovery…

The original concept of information literacy (IL) identifies it as an enabler for lifelong learning and learning-to-learn, adaptable and transferable in any learning environment and context. However, practices of IL in electronic information and learning environments (e-environments) tend to question the origins, and workability, of IL on the…

Fluency is a critical skill of adept readers. As listening to read alouds and performing Readers Theatre scripts are two prevalent strategies that can increase students' fluency skills, this article provides suggestions in using these strategies with digital texts through free, online resources. Digital texts can be accessed using a desktop,…

Harmony Middle School educators recently undertook a project that combined poetry and real-service action for students. The students worked with a published poet and wrote beautiful poems and then blogged with art students in the district. The art students made ceramic bowls that represented the poems. The combined project was done for True Light,…

In this study, I investigated the effectiveness of the knowledge map (k-map) instructional strategy compared to a text-based presentation in an online environment. K-maps consist of node-link representations of concepts that together form the content of a topic or domain. The benefits of using k-maps are that concepts and ideas are represented as…

As educational and research needs have changed, libraries have changed as well. They must meet ever-increasing demand for access to online media, subscriptions to archives, video, audio, and other content. The way a user/patron accesses this information has also changed. Gone are the days of a few hardwired desktops or computer carts. While…