Education Learning Issues

TEACHING BRIGHT FUTURE ENGINEERS? NASA has initiated a competition where high school teams will design software to program small satellites as a part of MIT's Zero-Robotics investigation. The first 100 teams to register by September 10th will be selected and then deliver proposals. Twenty of those teams will compete. Find out more.

NAGC IS MOVING. If you interact with NAGC, know that they'll be moving August 27th and back in business in their new location the following Monday. New address: 1331 H Street NW, Suite 1001, Washington, DC 20005.

SENG WEBINAR COMING UP. They're calling it a "SENGinar," and it will feature Jane Hesslein discussing "What Your Kids Want You To Know: Perspective for Parents and Teachers." The content is based on insights from gifted fifth-graders. Find out more.

COLLEGE ADMISSION AND LD. The Washington Post offered a blog on "navigating admissions with a learning disability," in which the president of Dean College provided seven pieces of advice for parents of college-bound kids with learning difficulties. Find the blog.

GIFTED STUDENT, GIFTED ATHLETE. A former high school co-valedictorian with a 3.55 grade average at Stanford is also the team's star quarterback. The interesting thing: the quarterback, Andrew Luck, is an architectural design major, presumably dependent on good visualization skills, and the job of quarterback would also seem to depend on a talent for analyzing visual patterns on the field. That's our interpretation, anyway. Read more about this athlete/scholar.

"ASPIRE" FOUNDED BY ASPIE. A UK young man with Asperger's, frustrated at not being able to use his degree in journalism in a mainstream job, has launched a magazine titled Aspire which is "specifically written by and for people on the autistic spectrum. Aspire provides a platform for the autistic community to discuss issues which affect them, their supporters and friends," according to an article about the publication. Read more.

DEPRESSION IN PRESCHOOLERS is the topic of a long article in the New York Times Magazine section last weekend. If you want one more thing to worry about in your young person, read the article.

READING PROBLEMS AND SELF-ESTEEM. A retired teacher in Canada who now runs a reading center describes the link between reading problems and self-worth, noting how the end result is often "acting out." Read the article.

We find items for this blog from our own reading, from press releases, and also from aggregators such as CEC SmartBrief, Science Daily, and EdNews.org.