(Source: epicallyepicepicosity, via thelifeguardlibrarian)
“Raise a reader this summer,” is the invitation from the PBS Parents’ website. When parents and children enjoy reading together, children develop a love for books and reading that can last a lifetime. PBS Parents offers a number of programs to encourage kids to read. Scholastics’ Summer Challenge is a program where kids can log reading minutes and earn rewards. 99 days of Summer is a program (run with parents.com) that provides fun learning tips and ideas to give your child, “a summer to remember.” PBS Kids Raising Readers is a national effort to use the power of public media to help children (ages 2 to 8) to improve their literary skills. See all of what PBS Parents has to offer at: www.pbs.org/parents/read/
(Source: Likeoftheday.org, via fuckyeahreading)
The Wikipedia Education Program’s vision is to mobilize and empower the next generation of human-knowledge generators to contribute to Wikimedia projects. Based on the learnings from the Public Policy Initiative, a pilot program to use Wikipedia in university classrooms in the 2010–11 academic year, the Wikipedia Education Program strives to expand Wikipedia’s use as a teaching tool worldwide.
Professors who participate in our program assign their students to edit Wikipedia articles as part of their coursework. Students are assisted by trained Wikipedia Ambassadors, who help both in the class and on wiki.
Cool Fact: Toni Morrison was the first African American writer to receive the Nobel Prize in literature.
(Source: inspiredbylit, via inspiredbylit)
Confirmed: The Internet Does Not Solve Global Inequality
If you live in a rich country, the Internet has probably changed the way you consume (and produce) information. But when you look at global-scale knowledge production, things are as they ever were: the Anglophone world dominates with the United States doing the lion’s share of academic and user-generated publishing.
Those are the messages of the Oxford Internet Institute’s new e-book, Geographies of the World’s Knowledge, from which the above graphics were drawn. The book’s authors, Corinne Flick of the Convoco Foundation and the Institute’s Mark Graham and Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, reluctantly conclude that the Internet has not delivered on the hopes that it would make knowledge “more accessible.”
“Many commentators speculated that [the Internet] would allow people outside of industrialised nations to gain access to all networked and codified knowledge, thus mitigating the traditionally concentrated nature of information production and consumption,” they write. “These early expectations remain largely unrealised.”
We’re not only talking about publishing in academic journals or Wikipedia. The researchers also sampled user-generated content on Google and found that rich countries, especially the United States, dominate the production of user content.The fact of the matter is that people without money can’t afford to get the education necessary to publish in academic journals, Internet-enabled or not. The other fact of the matter is that the vast majority of people in very poor countries don’t spend their time producing content for free. Hope as we might, the Internet isn’t a magic wand that makes the world more equal.
Read more. [Image: Oxford Internet Institute]
(via thelifeguardlibrarian)
Book smugglers bringing ‘banned’ books to Arizona schools
Tucson’s ethnic studies quandary just won’t go away. Months after the school board suspended its Mexican American studies program rather than lose more than $14 million in state aid, a caravan of writers and activists brought an “underground library” to town.
The small but substantial collection of books by Mexican American, Chicano and other minority authors was banished from Tucson classrooms after the board’s January vote.
“We wanted to hand these love letters in the form of books to these students,” said Tony Diaz, a literature professor at Houston Community College, who led the weekend protest. “We’re defending our culture and freedom of speech.”
Diaz coined the term librotraficante, or “book smuggler,” for the movement. Activists started in Houston last week, making stops in Texas and New Mexico along the way to collect books and supporters.
A letter from Dr. Seuss to the children of Troy, Michigan, before the opening of their first library.
(Source: brainpickings.org, via writersrelief)
"Children are made readers on the laps of their parents."
– Emilie Buchwald (via writersrelief)
(Source: facebook.com, via writersrelief)
(Source: brainpickings.org, via writersrelief)
"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing."
– Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (via thelifeguardlibrarian)
(Source: mylifeinbookpages, via writersrelief)
(via inspiredbylit)
(Source: themodernstitch.bigcartel.com, via writersrelief)
