Home About Us Media Kit Subscriptions Links Forum
EDUCATION UPDATE BLOGS
Homeroom: September 2011 Archives

September 2011 Archives

Here are some notable responses from our readers.

By Homeroom on September 27, 2011 3:50 PM   |   Comments   |   Bookmark and Share
From: Raymond
Date: Friday, September 23, 2011
Location: Los Angeles, CA

RESPONSE: This piece I just read on prison studies is great this is one of the 10 resources I need for my English 28 class research paper and I will use this info to get me going the right direction and I thank the person for writing it helped me a lot  on getting started on my paper.


From: Bruce Miller
Date: Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Location: Charlotte, NC

RESPONSE: Lorna, perhaps you will remember my wife and me:  Janet and Bruce Miller.  You may remember also that we are the parents of Paul Miller who is now an OB/GYN and director of Repro/Endo at Greenville Mem. Hosp. in Greenville, S.C.  We saw the Dr. Oz program today and we were so pleasantly surprised to see you again--- on his show! We have told Paul that you are at Columbia Presby. in N.Y., and he said he will be in touch with you soon.  Our best to you, Lorna. (remember the time, by happenstance, that we met up with you at the Nassau Inn in Princeton? That was the last time we got to see you, until today!) Hope we see you again sometime, either in person or on Dr. Oz's show. 


From: Romelia Vivas
Date: Saturday, September 10, 2011
Location: Portales, NM

RESPONSE: What a powerful article. As the country moves toward the right, is becoming more xenophobic and English Only politically motivated. The fear of becoming cornered (in their minds) creates groups of people who fear their own future and that is when they lash out with racial and hate crimes against the "other". This is the "other" that they created.

Jane Goodall Reflects on Early Childhood Education Through the Lens of Chimps

By Catherine Rolfe on September 23, 2011 10:00 AM   |   Comments   |   Bookmark and Share
Jane Goodall is holding her stuffed chimpanzee...

Image via Wikipedia

Renowned anthropologist Jane Goodall will make an appearance in theaters next week during a live event promoting a new biopic about her life.

The event, Jane Goodall Live!, will be broadcast in real time to movie theaters across the country, and will include a showing of the new biopic Jane’s Journey chronicling the animal rights activist’s long and successful career. Event organizers hoped that teachers could use the show as an extra credit opportunity for students, with the goal of getting more young people involved and interested in the animal sciences.

Goodall also runs a program through the Jane Goodall Institute which is designed to educate students about environmental and conservation issues around the globe. Her “Roots & Shoots” program is intended to help students realize that science doesn’t have to be “cold and objective”. Instead, she said, these types of programs “can lead to new ways of interacting with animals and the environment”.

Goodall also reflected on some of the lessons her studies of chimpanzees have taught her about humans over the years. In particular, Goodall said she noticed “the importance of early experience” for chimpanzees.

“Good mothers and bad mothers make a difference in adult behavior,” Goodall said of chimpanzees. “This is the same with human children.”

The live event will feature more of Goodall’s insight from her years of experience as an anthropologist, as well as personal appearances by Angelina Jolie, Charlize Theron and the Dave Matthews Band.

Matthews is a longtime fan of Goodall, and has often voiced admiration for her contributions to science.

“When I think of people that have changed the world—Gandhi, Mandela, Einstein, Mother Teresa—she’s in there,” Matthews said.

For more information about Jane Goodall Live! and how to purchase tickets, visit www.fathomevents.com/jane .

Bilingualism

By Homeroom on September 20, 2011 4:16 PM   |   Comments   |   Bookmark and Share
Synopsis
Bilingualism (multilingualism) is a common human characteristic.  Understanding the bilingual individual from the perspective of the cognitive neurosciences requires an appreciation of the conditions that accompany the use of multiple languages in society: its relationship to social status, compartmentalization of functions of languages, literacy, immigrant generation, and other historical circumstances. Bilingual individuals also vary in significant ways with respect to age of acquisition, language proficiency attained, participation in a bilingual speech community, and the particular languages involved. Current knowledge of psycholinguistic processes and brain organization that address differential representation of bilingualism is summarized.

Introduction
Bilingualism (multilingualism) refers to the co-existence of more than one
language system within an individual, as contrasted to monolingualism. The question of how the two languages interact at the cognitive and behavioral levels has been of longstanding interest to psycholinguists as well as to neurologists, clinicians and educators. There has been great anticipation that developments in cognitive neuroscience could shed further light on important fundamental questions in the understanding of bilingualism.

Bilingualism as an individual condition is nested within a distribution of broader societal circumstances that cause language contact. There are many different manifestations of this variability. Bilingualism may be the result of growing up in a bilingual community, such as a bilingual neighborhood of an immigrant community in New York. But that is different from bilingualism that results from growing up in an officially bilingual country such as Canada, where its two official languages are separated by geographical regions. Bilingualism that is accompanied by literacy in both languages is different from bilingualism in which schooling is available in one language (the one
that also carries social prestige) but not the other. While the interest of the cognitive neuroscientist in bilingualism may be in understanding the neural bases of the distribution of the two linguistic systems in the bilingual, the reality is that research subjects and clinical patients invariably come from a sampling from the social distribution. It is thus necessary to begin an understanding of bilingualism from its social bases.

Reprinted from the 2008 Encyclopedia of Neuroscience by Kenji Hakuta of Stanford University

Bilingualism.  In L. Squire (ed.) New Encyclopedia of Neuroscience.  Elsevier.

Gray matter volume changes following reading intervention in dyslexic children

By Homeroom on September 20, 2011 3:36 PM   |   Comment   |   Bookmark and Share

Abstract


Studies in children and adults with the reading disability developmental dyslexia have shown behavioral improvements after reading intervention. It has been shown that intensive training in a variety of cognitive and sensorimotor skills can result in changes in gray matter volume. Eleven dyslexic children underwent an eight week training focused on mental imagery, articulation and tracing of letters, groups of letters and words, which resulted in significant gains in reading skills.


Reprinted from the August 2011 NeuroImage

Volume 57, Issue 3, 1 August 2011, Pages 733-741

Special Issue: Educational Neuroscience

« August 2011 | Main Index | Archives | October 2011 »
Education Update, Inc. All material is copyrighted and may not be printed without express consent of the publisher. © 2011.