"Stree free school"-helping us improving academic achievement!

In my previous post "Do children and teens are affected by stress, anxiety and trauma?", I mentioned that like adults, children and teeens have anxiety in their lives, and as a result they suffer from anxiety disorders. And as research shows if children are not treated, their performance in school would be poorer.

To help our children keep safe from stress, depression, anxiety and similar mental disorders, we as a parent and teacher can take some action in this regard by first getting the knowledge of these conditions and then look for proper treatment process.

Stress free school.org is a site which provides Transcendental Meditation (TM) program for this purpose. It showcases 40 years of scientific and class room experience with TM method. I am also a regular practitioner of meditation, but I don't believe that only "Transcendental Meditation" technique can be a only solution for these kind of mental disorders. As to my personal experience, I participated in a "Quantam method meditation" 40 hours long course, and results were astonishing. I was very stressed and felt that I was losing my interest in life, before doing that meditaiton course. But just after completing it and practicing it on regular basis proved that I could get rid of my anxiety, depression and stress conditions. I could feel myself happy, satisfied, energetic and more creative than before. I was really feeling sick and physically exhausted before it, but gradually I could overcome these symptoms also. This post and review of the site is only an effort to create an awareness that we can help our children improving academic achiements. Mostly the mental disorder symptoms are not taken seriously, and results are poor performanc in schools, social behavior problems and so on.

What the organization does?

Education & Transcendental Meditation Research on improving Academic achievement by preventing and treating stress, anxiety and depression, and learning disabilities.

What is Transcendental Meditation?

The Transcendental Meditation technique is thousands of years old—it comes from an unbroken tradition of meditation instruction from ancient India.

What is the evidence that the TM technique works?

During the past 30 years, hundreds of scientific studies validating the benefits of the Transcendental Meditation technique have been conducted in 33 countries at 210 independent research institutions and universities, including Harvard, Stanford, and UCLA Medical School.
This research found that the TM technique produces a physiological state of restful alertness, distinct from ordinary waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. During practice of the TM technique, the physiology becomes deeply rested, as indicated by significant reductions in respiration, minute ventilation, tidal volume, and blood lactate, and significant increases in basal skin resistance (an index of relaxation). At the same time, the physiology is alert rather than asleep, as indicated by an increased abundance of alpha waves in the EEG.

More about the topic: Frequently asked questions

* For further posts go for their blog

More research links:
* University of California at Irvine Study Finds Transcendental Meditation
Reduces the Brain’s Reaction to Pain

* University of Michigan study finds improved emotional development in
early adolescent African children practicing Transcendental Meditation

"Child Study Center"- Giving children back their childhood

Being a foundation stage teacher, every session has some new challenges for us, as we have to deal with many kind of studensts. Many children show some "hype" attitude, where we use techniques provided by the school to treat these kind of children, but I really needed some more information about the children who are "hyper" or in other words have symptoms of "Attention Deficit Syndrome".
My only son was showing the same symptoms at foundation stage years, and as a parent, I was adviced to acquire some methods to help my son. Its been 3 years, and my son is better than before. Still I feel like that I should have some knowledge and research based study help to deal with the children with mental disorders. I was really amazed to know about "NYU child Study Center" which can help a lot to teachers and parents in this connection.

Research shows that over 75 percent of mental health disorders have their roots in the childhood and adolescent years, though fewer than one quarter of children or adolescents needing services receive treatment. Millions of children are never properly diagnosed or treated.

About our kids.org is a site by NYU Child Study Center, which was founded in 1997 to improve the treatment of child psychiatric disorders through scientific practice, research, and education.

Through their professional education programs, they provide physicians, educators and mental health professionals the tools and knowledge needed to promote the mental health of the children they serve.

For families pages provdes more links to:
- The Child Study Center offer you a comprehensive library of articles dealing with all the crucial elements you need to know for Keeping kids healthy

* Disorder treatments page provides advice on these areas:

- Their experts provide a wealth of information on common childhood psychiatric disorders. Learn the signs, symptoms, and treatment options.
Link:

-It can be hard to keep up with rapidly changing and jargon-filled vocabulary regarding mental health. This dictionary can help you make sense of some of these terms and participate in the discussion. The staff of the NYU Child Study Center has compiled this glossary to help you learn more about children’s mental health and disorders. Scroll down or click on the appropriate letter to find an easy definition of the term you are interested in.
Link:

- NYU Child Study Center provides an overview of most of the comon medications used to treat psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents. This guide is intended to be informative and useful, but it is not comprehensive. Children should take these medications only under the careful supervision of their physicians.
Link: Guide to Psychiatric Medications for Children and Adolescents

* Success stories

Read the Testimonial page before browsing the site, which says:
"Viewers of this website are advised that materials contained on this site are made available solely for educational purposes and as part of an effort to raise general awareness of the mental health issues affecting children. These materials are not intended to be, and are not, a substitute for direct professional medical or psychological care based on your individual condition and circumstances or those of your child."

Interested in inventions, innovation and creativity?-Let's explore!

If you are interested in invention, innovation or creativity then you might enjoy browsing Invention At Play.
For students it's a fun but learning site, as you can search, learn and explore a lot at the site.

For teachers, "Invention at play" can be good source of learning and telling our students the stories of inventions.
Invention At Play deals in providing the information about creative plays and skills among children and adults. It also focuses on creative processes used by innovators in science and technology.

Resources link give you more links to sites about invention, innovation, and exploration.

What you can find at the site?
* You may explore the stories of invention, both famous or little known.
* There is a lot to read and learn

Each invention shed some light on the good intentions of the inventor and their quest to improve the quality of life.


* According to TIME: Best inventions of 2006

* The great idea finder was created to promote the progress of science and useful arts by providing a showcase for innovation.
Mission: "to provide inspiration to the "inventor" in all of us".

The site is developed and maintained by Vaunt Design Group, an Internet consulting company.

- History of inventions at "The Great idea finder.

For Teachers: FREE Edicational material(publications) about innovation and invention ,at:

The Lemelson Center, which is for the study of Invention and innovation

"Education World" -A resource for educators!

As this blog is created by an educator, I try to include as many useful links, articles, sites or blogs, reviews which could help kids, students, parents and teachers in getting most from the world of internet. Internet is full of oppportunities for everyone, only need is to use the resources provided in a constructive way. So let's discover the world wide web:

Education World is FREE resource site for teachers and a search engine for educational web sites. It is a place where educators gather and share their ideas. What more you can get from "Education World"?

- a search engine for educational Web sites only, a place where educators can find information without searching the entire Internet;
- original content, including lesson plans, practical information for educators, -
- information on how to integrate technology in the classroom, and articles written by education experts;
- site reviews;
- daily features and columns;
- teacher and principal profiles;
- Wire Side Chats with the important names in education;
- employment listings.

Education World [www.educationworld.com], the Educator's Best Friend, offers teachers, parents, students, administrators, and school technologists a place where they can start each weekday of the school year with a wealth of new, practical content. Education World now incorporates SchoolNotes [www.schoolnotes.com], the leading school-to-home communications platform.

Mission: Education World's goal is to make it easy for educators to integrate the Internet into the classroom. With 98 percent of the nation's public schools connected to the Internet, the need for a complete online educational guide is evident.
More about the site:
About page

Site was created in 1996.

"Education World" has a lot to for teachers, just take time to search the site. Starting from lesson plans to school issues, there are tons of information to discover.

Link: Education World

Start from this page:
Site Guide

* Lesson planning
* Teachers tools and template

"Study Sphere"- providing learning resources!

I have been writing posts about resources and links which might be helpful in learning for students, teachers and parents. Mostly I review the sites or educational portals, where I find that source really valuable or free to access. And usually I include the important page links at each of my post to search fast.
Today's site is Study Sphere.com which is a search engine based learning portal for students, families and teachers.


Mission and goal: "StudySphere provides fast, easy and free access to a wide variety of research-quality child-safe websites organized for education online from home, school, study abroad and home school. StudySphere’s goal is to help students, teachers, librarians, and other researchers find both highly targeted and closely related information quickly."
StudySphere categorizes over 100,000 research-quality child-safe websites.

It is very easy to search for your favourite topic sites, as home page provides topic catagory, where you would get number of site links. For example I searched for
teachers resources and at the Teaching resources page there were a lot of site links divided into further catagories.

Site link:
Study Sphere.com

Effective use of Blogging in education

There is a wide usage of blogging in learning sector. I was really surprise to know that "blogging" is very effectively been used in education sector. Here are some links for teachers to create blogs for them or for their students. There are some article links which can guide you if you are in doubt to use "blogging" for educational purposes.

Education blogs are becoming a means for educators, students, and education administrators to interact more effectively than ever before. Technorati currently tracks 63.1 million blogs. Over 5,000 of them are about education.
There are over 30,000 blogs hosted at edublogs.org alone.
Link with 100 educational blogs list:
Top 100 Education Blogs

*** The largest education community on the internet, Edublogs was started on the 31st of July 2005 in Melbourne, Australia.. Now hosting over 100,000 blogs.
Edublogs.org

How?

* Sign up for a free education blog in seconds
* Use it to transform your teaching or talk to other teachers
* Powered by WordPress, the best blogging tool on the web
* Safe, secure, supported and free of any advertising
* Providing entirely free tools with no advertising, no fees and no limits on elements like bandwidth.They can even give you 100MB of upload space, completely free of charge.

* "Blogs in Education" is a page to provide you some resources if you want to start using blogs for yourself or your students. Options for instructors using blogs are:
- Content-related blog as professional practice
- Networking and personal knowledge sharing
- Instructional tips for students
- Course announcements and readings
- Annotated links
- Knowledge management
Stedents can use blogs in:
- Reflective or writing journals
- Knowledge management
- Assignment submission and review
- Dialogue for groupwork
- E-portfolios
- Share course-related resources
For resources and more details: Blogs in Education

*** Educational blogger network(eBN) is a community of teachers and education professionals and supporters who use weblogs for teaching and learning. The network assists members to advance weblog integration in education.
Mission:

"eBN is a collaborative of teachers and organizations using weblogs in education. Its purpose is to help its members, kindergarten through university, to access and use weblog technology for the teaching of writing and reading across the disciplines. The network provides a forum for educational professionals who use weblogs, an array of opportunities for teachers to continue their professional growth, and a framework for cooperation to deal with issues that affect the integration of weblog and other digital technologies into teaching and learning."

*** epals.com's motto is "Where Learner's Connect"
"ePals" is making SchoolBlog available at no cost to schools, districts, and learners globally.

What they say about themselves: "Our Global Community™ is the largest online community of K-12 learners, enabling more than 325,000 educators and 126,000 classrooms in over 200 countries and territories to safely connect, exchange ideas, and learn together. Our award winning SchoolBlog™ and SchoolMail™ products are widely used and trusted by schools around the world."

*** This is a pdf report which you can download by clicking right mouse button and then choosing "save as" for your hard disk drive: Blogging to learn

Read same report in html version: HTML version

*** E school News
A report published at "E school news:
Blogs are changing education (Winners of the first-ever 'Best of the Education Blog' Awards discuss blogging's impact on teaching and learning )

What is "eSchool News"?
"eSchool News" is a monthly print newspaper providing the news and information necessary to help K-20 decision-makers successfully use technology and the internet to transform North America's schools and colleges and achieve their educational goals.
The print newspaper is read by more than 300,000 school leaders, and a companion web site—eSchool News Online (http://www.eschoolnews.com ) is visited by more than 300,000 unique visitors each month, including 135,000 registered members.

Mission:
eSchool News — helping educators succeed by;

- Providing the latest news, resources and reports on the applications of technology to improve learning
- Providing resources and tools to evaluate the funding, purchasing and the evaluation of technology in the education systems.
- Assisting educators in forming collaborative alliances and providing a valuable resource bank for the exchange of information, ideas and best practices.

Few education blogs and articles:

* Brian's Education blog

* Dave's Educational Blog
About David: Dave is a Tech Coordinator at the University of Prince Edward Island. He is also the Education coordinator for the Worldbridges family of websites and cohost of edtechtalk.

* Adventure in educational blogging Susan Sedro is Technology Coordinator in Woodlands,Singapore.

*** Support Blogging has been set up to provide an opportunity for students, teachers, administrators, parents, and others to help promote an understanding of the benefits of educational blogging.
Explanation of Educational Blogging at "Support Blogging"

Link to the site:
Support Blogging

* An article about usage of internet blogs to enhance classroom communication and collaboration: Classroom blogs and Wikis

* "EDUCAUSE Review" is the association's award-winning magazine for the higher education IT community. Published bimonthly in print (21,000 distributed copies) and online, the magazine takes a broad look at current developments and trends in information technology, how they may affect the college/university as an institution, and what these mean for higher education and society. An article from "EDUCAUSE Review": Educational Blogging

* An article from the "emints": "The eMINTS" National Center is an independent business unit of the University of Missouri. eMINTS offers professional development programs created by educators for educators.
Teaching Tips: Using Online Journals and Blogs

* Edu Blog Insights is an educational blog from Anne Davis who works at Georgia State University in the Instructional Technology Center in the College of Education as an Information Systems Training Specialist.
He is an educator with over 20 years experience as an elementary classroom teacher, an instructional lead teacher, a reading specialist, and an instructional technology specialist.

His EduBlog is a place to reflect, discuss, and explore possibilities for the use of weblogs in education.
His article:
Rationale for educational blogging

* Another useful article from :Lorelle at Word press

* Cool tools for cool teaching-blogging

* Blogging Basics: Creating Student Journals on the Web

"Science Master"-Learning science just got easier

"Science Master.com" is an educational "science learning" site, for students, parents and teachers.

Mission: To provide the best science resources for teachers, parents, hobbyists, and life-long learners. The ScienceMaster web pages include links to research sites, lesson plans, activities, and project ideas.

Goal: to excite young minds about science by integrating information, communication and community with compelling products and services all in a fun-to-use Internet network. The ScienceMaster team includes science professionals, educators, subject matter experts, and technical advisors who work collaboratively to bring you the best science resources.

ScienceMaster provides information, news, links, pictures, products and services, with the best content from NASA, the USGS, the EPA, NOAA & leading colleges & universities. You can learn about the universe, or space, find information on volcanos, and global warming, explore plants, animals or microbes, and study physics or chemistry.

Awards and achievements:
* ScienceMaster is winner of the Excellence in Education for All Best of the Web Award Winner for 2001 by The Education CoffeeHouse. This award is given to 100 websites that provide quality information to students, parents, and educators.
* ScienceMaster's A+ Learning Galleries has received the "Teacher Information Network Gold award" bestowed on sites which are utilizing the Internet as an empowering tool for quality education.
* ScienceMaster has been chosen as a Top Site by "Educating.net"!
Awards & Recognition

Main topic pages you may search:

- space
- Geology and earth page
- Biology and life page
- Physical Science page
- Tech learning
Science Master.com

Read very informative articles from teachers and learning professionals, scientists and parents: Link to Articles

Great images, sound files, software, try-outs all for free at:
Free stuff

Very interesting article about The human mind.

Yoga in an interactive way for children and teens!

It might be surprising to know that yoga can be used as an effective tool for relaxation of children, teens in a very interavctive way. But after searching Adventures of yoga, you would realize that yoga can be a fun, interactive and rewarding activity for parents, teachers and children.

For school teachers Adventures of yoga is a great way to introduce a new educating activity that can reinforce any theme you may be teaching while using story telling, music and movement.

Why yoga for children? (In their own words):
"In the American Heritage College Dictionary Yoga is defined as: "1. a Hindu discipline aimed at training consciousness for a state of perfect spiritual insight and tranquility.
2. A system of exercises practiced as part of this discipline to promote control of the body and mind. Yoga- Union, joining."

While we are not here to promote any type of religion, we have found through our experience that children are able to relax, and meditate, bringing to the awareness of their bodies, feelings and their health.

Many parents are concerned with the cognitive development of their children and spend time teaching them academic subjects. This of course is wonderful but we mustn't forget that their bodies are just as important as their minds and with out the free flow of energy and flexibility our cognitive development is limited as well."

More at this link: What is yoga and how does it benefit children?

The site helps children to concentrate by guiding them through the relaxation and using imagination. Through the imagination and concentration children are actually able to feel their body, or their energy because energy goes where your mind is.
More at: Relaxation and Meditation for kids

There are yoga games, warm up exercises which can be easily adopted as a form of physical light exercise, in a very fun way.