Literacy Education

Special Education Acronyms – What Do All Those Letters Mean?

admin — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:45:08 +0000

Do you sometimes wonder what some of the Acronyms in special education mean? Do the acronyms make your head spin? This article will discuss common special education acronyms and what they mean. This will make it easier for you to actively participate in your child with disabilities education.

1. FAPE: stands for Free Appropriate Public Education. Each child has the right under IDEA to receive a free appropriate public education.

2. IDEA: stands for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act; which is the federal law that applies to special education.

3. IDEA 2004: This is the federal law that was reauthorized in 2004. If you see this in an article, it usually means that something was changed in IDEA, by the reauthorization in 2004.

4. LEA: stands for the local educational agency, which is your local school district.

5. SEA: stands for the state educational agency, which is your states board of education.

6. IEP: stands for the Individual Educational Plan, which must be developed for every child that receives special education services.

7. LRE: stands for Least Restrictive Environment. LRE means that children with disabilities need to be educated in the least restrictive environment, in which they can learn. LRE starts at the regular classroom, and becomes more restrictive.

8. NCLB: stands for the No Child Left Behind Act.

9. IEE’s: stands for an Independent Educational Evaluation. These are initiated and paid for by parents, to help determine their child’s disability or educational needs.

10. IEE’s at Public Expense: stands for an IEE where the school district pays for it. There are rules that apply to this, that you must learn before requesting an IEE at public expense. Many special education personnel try and do things that are not allowed under IDEA, so you need to educate yourself.

11. ASD: stands for Autism Spectrum Disorder, which some school districts use in their paperwork.

12. ADD: stands for Attention Deficit Disorder.

13. ADHD: stands for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

14. PWN: stands for Prior Written Notice. Parents must be given PWN when the school district wants to change things in the child’s IEP. (such as eligibility, change services, refuse to change services etc.).

15. ABA: stands for Applied Behavioral Analysis that is an educational treatment for Autism.

16. SID: stands for Sensory Integration Disorder. A lot of children with Autism have difficulty with sensory integration.

17. SPD: stands for Sensory Processing Disorder which is the same as above, but some people in the special education field, call it different names.

By understanding the acronyms used by special education personnel, you can be a better advocate for an appropriate education for your child.

By: JoAnn Collins

Complete Online Casino Games and Guides

admin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:48:41 +0000

There are a lot of online casino website addresses that offering online casino for US player, but some of them unable to offer great games inside. The customer would feel unsatisfied whether they are not able to find their favorite one game such as roulette, slots or even blackjack. If you are considered as US citizen and do not want to end up in such online casino, you may try to visit the Gamblingpub.com. This website address is quite well known with its ability in accepted US player but also offer several great games inside the main page.

The offered online casino games are available in the free casino account. If you do not have any experiences in playing online casino games before, you may open the casino games account that full with online casino guides. You will easily found any type of your favorite online casino game’s guide. For example you love to play online roulette. Then all you need to do is just open the online roulette guides and simply read the available guides inside.

The other favorite game that quite often needs a guide is online slots. If you want to play the existed game, it would be better if you understand and learn the guide from the available account.

Role of Computers in the Promotion of Environmental Education

admin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:42:24 +0000

Computers have caused a revolution in education, but the tremendous changes seen in the last decade may be surpassed in the next as those computers are connected in a global education network.

Teachers and high school students sample the water in Lake Baikal in Siberia while at other lakes around the world, other teachers and students take similar samples from local lakes and subject them to the same simple water-quality tests. Via their school computers, they exchange their results and their observations about how water pollution problems are the same around the world. They are part of a “global laboratory” project that includes scientists specializing in water pollution.

A similar computer network pins citizen activists, joined with students, teachers and scientists, in “sister watershed” groups throughout the world.

Amateur birdwatchers and biologists pool their rare bird sightings in a North American computer network that is linked with bird researchers in Central America and South America.

The differences between classroom and community education are blurred on the global computer networks. Voluntary organizations, government agencies, students and teachers are all involved in a real that has become, for many, a virtual classroom, without walls, and increasingly without borders.

Already, pilot projects have high school students sharing the methods and results from field studies of environmental quality, using computer telecommunication to leap national boundaries. Elementary school children share their life experiences end visions of the future the same way. Their messages to one another, passed with tremendous speed and shared simultaneously among many classrooms, provide strong, personal lessons in science, geography and human relations.

Environmental education curriculum development, pursued independently and often in isolation by teachers, school districts and universities over the past two decades, is now linked in a global forum that can respond immediately to the ever more complex and urgent environmental problems the world faces. Teachers the world over are connecting with their counterparts to discuss how they can do their jobs better. Co-ordination of international education projects is less burdened by the constraints of time and travel budgets as computer networks provide forums for collaboration.

The technology for this exchange takes advantage of the personal computer’s ability to communicate over standard phone lines using a modem. The simplest networks connect personal computers in a “store-and-forward” system that echoes messages from one to the next, until all have copies. These least-cost networks are linked to larger, faster computers that act as central information storage banks and relay stations. They in turn exchange information with one another and tap the power and data in computer systems at major research and educational institutions.

In many ways this vast new sea of information presents its own challenges, often akin to “drinking water from a fire hose.” The enormous glut of fact and opinion is impossible to take in, and has forced those who would taste its power to devise new ways for organizing and sampling the information flow.

Electronic mail services and computer “conferencing” let students and teachers communicate with each other privately, or publicly as members of large discussion groups. Computer conferences are organized much like those where people meet face-to-face, except that the meeting rooms are inside each participant’s computer. Computer conferences transcend time zones, since participants review and comment on each others’ written postings as their time and interest allows. Everyone gets to read and think about questions or statements posed in a conference, and everyone has a co-equal opportunity to reply.

Computer networking is making classroom walls disappear. Real environmental problems are entering the classroom with immediacy via computer nets, and students are jointly seeking understanding and solutions with scientists, citizen activists, journalists, government officials and community leaders of all kinds. While access to computer networks is still remote for most people on the planet, it is becoming more and more available to the gatekeepers and opinion-leaders who help shape common understanding of the global situation. The increasing abundance of the multiple information sources available via computer networks, if viewed as a well-stocked marketplace, may also stimulate demand for more and better goods by the world’s information consumers.

Citizen participation in the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), for example, has been ccoordinated via computer networks on seven continents, giving NGOs access to complete text of the preparatory committee documents, and providing public forums for news and issue discussion. This availability of information has a dramatic effect on how an event such as UNCED permeates the mass media everywhere.

Underlying the often chaotic view presented by the mass media, structures are developing to channel the new rivers of information to empower this and coming generations to deal with the issues it describes. A variety of efforts at computer networking for environmental education provide some great models. At the root, these efforts are all based on the same notion: that environmental problems must be viewed with a global perspective, but responded to by individuals acting locally, in their own communities or homes.

All of this new technology is not without cost, and the developed countries are clearly ahead in providing computer access for education. But even in the United States, where computer telecommunication is becoming commonplace, profit rather than educational reform is a dominant force in determining who gets access.

The harsh reality has motivated citizen computer networks to band together in the international Association for Progressive Communications (APC) to make computer network access broadly available. The APC hosts several promising educational efforts on its partner computer networks that now extend to more than 90 countries around the globe. These services may be tapped by anyone with a personal computer and modem, often via a local call, at costs roughly equivalent to a newspaper subscription or monthly telephone bill.

The education projects offered on the APC networks are examples of how low-budget computer communication can fit into community programs and classrooms.

By: Mathew Simond

Arizona Schools Focus on Literacy

admin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:06:30 +0000

Teaching a child to read is the foremost goal of any school. Some would say it’s the most important thing anyone will ever learn; this is most definitely true. Schools across the nation strive to achieve excellence in reading education, known as literacy to those in the biz. These institutes of learning want to turn out students who read and read well, and some are recognized for these efforts. Arizona Public Schools are among them.

Several different corporations exist who, in part, recognize and award Arizona Schools who have gone above and beyond when devising a program or curriculum to help students achieve literacy. Arizona Schools have worked hard to ensure that its students have the opportunity to learn to read, and to take that knowledge to another level.

But what is literacy? It is being literate – which is so much more than just being able to sound out words and read aloud slowly. Being literate is even more than being able to read aloud with clarity and adequate flow. Literacy encompasses all manner of skills that many of us, as adults, are unaware we even have. We do not remember learning them, we just know them! As the teachers of Arizona Schools know, achieving literacy is mastering the following list of skills:

* Understanding and identifying the main idea
* Grasping cause and effect
* The ability to pick out the details that support the main idea
* Mastery of basic grammar – nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns
* Knowing how to use punctuation correctly – periods, commas, question
marks, etc…
* Recognizing the beginning, middle, and end of a story or passage
* The ability to identify setting (time and place the story occurs) and plot
* Being able to differentiate between main and supporting characters

Arizona Schools students learn all these skills, and practice them on a daily basis. They work to become well-read – literate. Arizona Schools teachers follow proscribed curriculum and design lessons to help them achieve this goal. Many Arizona Schools have been recognized for their excellence in literacy education.

Fifteen Arizona Schools were recently awarded $1,000 cash prizes by the McDonald’s Readers Are Leaders Award program. This program, available to Arizona Schools provides funding for the books and reading materials for school libraries to enhance book collections and offer titles that will make the students of Arizona Schools want to drop everything and read. Applications were judged on creativity, ability to make good use of books, and solid strategy for long-term reading promotion activities.

As you can see, excellent literacy programs help students achieve the literacy they are working towards. And, for some Arizona Schools, that effort pays off; in cash and recognition for their admirable efforts.

Distance Learning Firefigher Degrees – Online Fire Science Education

admin — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 09:06:15 +0000

Distance learning or online college classes for a degree in fire science is making it easier for firefighters to obtain entry-level and advanced degrees in fire science. As the fire service progresses and becomes more science based, many departments are requiring additional education and degrees for promotion of firefighters.

An online fire science degree is ideally suited for the professional firefighter who wishes to be promoted into officer positions. Because of a firefighters typical work schedule, it is difficult for the potential student to attend a traditional or campus based college or university. Geographical location is also a road block to obtaining a formal degree in fire science. If the fire house has computer access or wireless capabilities, the firefighter can get and complete assignments online during down time at work.

Depending on the level of degree the student is seeking, classes will include fire behavior, fire suppression, incident command, fire prevention, fire inspection, fire investigation, public safety, hazardous material operations and command, personnel management and other general classes.

An online or distance learning college degree website can provide the student with specific information about schools, fire related classes and specialities that are available. Information about financial aid, requirements, tuition costs, and college support services will be available. Usually an advisor is accessible for further questions.

Promotion up the career ladder will more and more be influenced by the education level of the officer candidate. The forward thinking firefighter can take advantage of this by obtaining an advanced degree in fire science through a distance learning program.

By: Tara Peterson