Paths of Learning Resource Center News: March 2000
Helen Hegener
Forwarded FYI:
Paths of Learning Resource Center News: March 2000
----------------------------------------------------
This newsletter is the first of a series of bi-annual announcements about
the growing Paths of Learning Resource Center. You are receiving this email
because at some time you expressed an interest in Paths of Learning,
holistic education, or corresponded with Robin Martin (the coordinator of
the Resource Center) about education issues. By being on this mailing list,
you will also receive occasional Book Reviews throughout the year about new
resources being added to the Paths of Learning Resource Center.
If you would like to be removed from this mailing list, simply reply to
this email with the word "unsubscribe" at the top of your message, and you
will be immediately removed.
If you enjoy this newsletter, we encourage you to pass it on to your
friends. If you've received this from a friend and would like to subscribe,
please send an email to: news@... with the word "subscribe"
in the body of the message.
Also, please let us know if you find this newsletter useful, or if there
are other kinds of information that you feel should be included in future
issues.
CONTENTS
December Launch
Resource Highlights
Tips on Using the Resource Center
Priorities for 2000
Expanding Partnerships
Conferences in May and June
Other Clearinghouses in Education
About this Newsletter
***********************************
December Launch: The Grand Opening
***********************************
As you may know, in December the Paths of Learning Resource Center
officially opened its arms to the wider Internet community at
http://www.PathsOfLearning.net
After seven months of initial research, design, and development, the Center
now contains summaries of over 300 innovative educational publications. The
Center is a free online tool for anyone making decisions about
education--choosing between student-centered alternatives, seeking more
ways to nourish different learning styles, or wanting to know more about
social/political issues involved with systemic change in education. If you
or your organization have not already linked to our web site, we welcome
you to do so. On your "links" page, simply place the following information:
http://www.PathsOfLearning.net - a magazine and *free* online resource
center to help parents, educators, researchers and policymakers who wish to
learn more about holistic, democratic, or learner-centered approaches to
teaching and learning.
If the content or focus of your web site revolves around education,
educational change, school alternatives, or related topics, we also invite
you to paste a free search tool of the Center's resources directly into
your web site. Then, your visitors can look for relevant education
resources from our Resource Center directly from your own web site. To see
how this search tool works on other web sites and to access information on
how to set it up on your own site, please visit the sample currently posted
at the Center for Inspired Learning:
http://www.inspiredinside.com/learning/
*******************
Resource Highlights
*******************
As a searchable database, the types of materials indexed by Paths of
Learning Resource Center that you will not often find in other databases
include:
* Tables of contents to back issues of such journals as the Holistic
Education Review, SKOLE: The Journal of Alternative Education, and Radical
Teacher magazine.
* Summary reviews of such directories and guides as the Almanac of
Education Choices, The Parents' Guide to Alternatives in Education, and A
to Z Home's Cool Homeschooling Web Site.
* Carefully selected summaries from the Department of Education's resource
clearinghouse (ERIC) of resources especially pertaining to learner-centered
and holistic education options.
* Current as well as out-of-print books that have significantly impacted
how holistic education practices are implemented which are often overlooked
by mainstream resource clearinghouses. For all books, we try to include
direct links to the publishers (or out-of-print book resellers). This
allows you to purchase the book more easily and also support small
publishers rather than Amazon. Currently, our database contains over 90
publishers.
Coming soon (in April), we encourage you to visit the Summary Reports
section of our web site, where you will find reports highlighting resources
of special interest to families (parents and students), teachers,
administrators, and researchers.
*********************************
Tips on Using the Resource Center
*********************************
Based on the feedback we receive from you, the users of the Center, we may
soon add new tools for searching and browsing our reviews and indexes of
educational resources. Currently, on our main "simple search" page, you
can select the search method that best reflects the type of information
that you are seeking. Below is a general guide that describes our primary
search options. (Please let us know which search options you find most
useful or most frustrating.)
* Search by Keywords - when you have a number of words that you wish to
search across various fields (title, descriptors, or summary). Or, use
Keywords when you want to do a quick search about a particular concept and
are wondering whether our Resource Center suggests anything about it. Since
this option scans several fields (title, descriptors, summary, and biases),
it may often yield more results than you wish. Please see
http://www.PathsofLearning.net/help.htm#narrow for tips on "Narrowing Your
Search" to help you avoid this dilemma.
* Search for an Author - when you're looking for resources created by a
specific person (includes editors for works by multiple authors).
* Search for a Title - when you know specifically the name of the resource
you are seeking.
* "What do you wish to accomplish?" provides you multiple options that
summarize the primary purposes, intended or unintended, of the materials
indexed in this Resource Center.
* "What learning options do you would to learn more about?" lists the types
of educational alternatives which are the primary focus of this Resource
Center.
* "Whose viewpoints would you like to learn more about?" lists any
resources written ABOUT the perspectives of a particular population, such
as students, teachers, parents, etc. (For materials written FOR a specific
audience, please see the our Summary Reports at http://
www.PathsofLearning.net/reports.htm )
For more help on customizing the Resource Center to your search needs,
please visit our Search Help page at
http://www.PathsofLearning.net/help.htm, or write to us directly with your
questions at help@.... We promise to respond as soon as we
can (usually within 48 hours).
*******************
Priorities for 2000
*******************
As we continue to expand the content in the Resource Center, the kinds of
informational materials that you'll find later this year include:
* Resources that critically examine more learning options, such as
democratic schools, folk education, home schooling (unschooling model),
Montessori schools, teacher education, Waldorf (Steiner) schools, higher
education (progressive), and specific well-known alternatives (such as
Summerhill, Sudbury, and many others) for which we have been accumulating
many leads into lesser known but greatly valued materials.
* Resources that cover an array of purposes, such as differences between
schooling options; outcomes of education (what really gets learned in
school), including alumni studies; money matters: effective funding
strategies; improve schools through reform and organizational management;
program development within or beyond schools; ideas to integrate parenting
and educating.
For more input to share your educational research and resource needs, we
encourage you to visit our feedback page:
http://www.PathsofLearning.net/feedback.htm
On this page, you can sign our guestbook, complete a survey about your
content needs, or participate in an online forum about the Center's ongoing
development.
**********************
Expanding Partnerships
**********************
In addition to many excellent small publishers around the globe who have
begun to share their materials with us, we wish to extend special thanks to
some of the organizations whose directors or coordinators have been so
friendly and forthright in offering their frank feedback and ongoing access
to their resources.
Alternative Education Resource Organization (AERO), Jerry Mintz
Center for School Change, Joe Nathan
Down to Earth Books, Mary Leue
EnCompass, Ba and Josette Luvmour and Scott Forbes
Folk Education Association of America, Chris Spicer
Great Ideas in Education, Psychology Press / Holistic Education Press,
Charlie Jakiela
Holt Associates/Growing Without Schooling, Patrick Farenga
Home Education Magazine, Helen Hegener
National Association for Core Curriculum (NACC), Gordon Vars
National Coalition of Alternative Community Schools (NCACS), Alan Benard
National Coalition for Education Activists (NCEA), Debi Duke
Research for Action, Kia Moore
Rethinking Schools, Michael Trokan
Although we have not yet fully reviewed and indexed the resources made
available to us by all of the organizations listed above, we are in deep
gratitude to them and many others for offering to help us grow our
database. In addition, special thanks to: Jean Reed (BrookFarm Books) for
her many friendly comments and tips on great homeschooling resources, Ann
Zeise for her homeschooling and web resource help, and Sunny Gulati for his
help with the web site graphic.
Every quarter or so as we become more aware of the innovative projects and
resources in which our partners are actively engaged in creating, we will
be sharing and highlighting them in the "Other Great Resources" section of
our web site.
*****************************************
Conferences in May and June: Sign Up Now
*****************************************
If you like meeting "alternative" folks in education, the National
Coalition of Alternative Community Schools is sponsoring an excellent "Hope
for Our Children" Conference in May, which you are each warmly invited to
attend. Among other workshop leaders (including Joseph Chilton Pearce and
Herb Kohl), I will be making some small presentations on using the Internet
for information and networking in educationÖto help people unfamiliar with
the Net to begin sorting the chaff from the grain (realizing that it's
mostly chaff). The conference is at Antioch College in Yellow Springs,
Ohio, May 10-14. For more information, please visit:
http://www.ncacs.org/Conf2000/
And if you do attend the conference, be sure to introduce yourself to me!
(You can recognize me...as I'll be the one passing out Paths of Learning
magazines.)
Another upcoming conference that we'd like to recommend is IPEA 2000:
Institute for People's Education and Action. This conference is June 26 -
June 30, 2000, in Deerfield, MA, and is sponsored by the Folk and People's
Education Association of America. The FPEAA's 3rd annual Institute for
People's Education and Action will bring together students, teachers, and
community leaders to deepen their knowledge of and extend their practice of
people's education: popular, folk, and community-based learning for the
purpose of building more just and sustainable communities. "People's
education" is defined as "inclusive learning among peers, based in culture
and experience, that builds democratic communities through dialogue and
action." For more details on this conference, please see:
http://www.peopleseducation.org/
*********************************
Other Clearinghouses in Education
*********************************
Finally, if you can't find the educational materials that you are seeking
in our Resource Center, we have also compiled a list of other
clearinghouses that offer everything from curriculum ideas to conventional
educational research. You will find this list of recommended sites at:
http://www.PathsOfLearning.net/other.htm
While we certainly hope to develop our database over the next few years so
that most of what you need for diverse ideas in holistic, alternative
options in education can be found at Paths of Learning, we can not be all
things to all people.
----------------------------------------
ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER
The Paths of Learning Resource Center News is a bi-annual and freely
distributed newsletter dealing with learner-center and holistic options in
education. If you would like to contribute something for the next
publication, send it to robin@...
Copyright 2000 - Foundation for Educational Renewal.
You may redistribute this newsletter for noncommercial purposes. You may
also redistribute individual articles in their entirety, provided you
reference the Paths of Learning Resource Center web site at
http://www.PathsOfLearning.net and attach this paragraph.
--
Robin Ann Martin, Coordinator
Paths of Learning Resource Center
http://www.PathsOfLearning.net
mailto:robin@...
Paths of Learning Resource Center News: March 2000
----------------------------------------------------
This newsletter is the first of a series of bi-annual announcements about
the growing Paths of Learning Resource Center. You are receiving this email
because at some time you expressed an interest in Paths of Learning,
holistic education, or corresponded with Robin Martin (the coordinator of
the Resource Center) about education issues. By being on this mailing list,
you will also receive occasional Book Reviews throughout the year about new
resources being added to the Paths of Learning Resource Center.
If you would like to be removed from this mailing list, simply reply to
this email with the word "unsubscribe" at the top of your message, and you
will be immediately removed.
If you enjoy this newsletter, we encourage you to pass it on to your
friends. If you've received this from a friend and would like to subscribe,
please send an email to: news@... with the word "subscribe"
in the body of the message.
Also, please let us know if you find this newsletter useful, or if there
are other kinds of information that you feel should be included in future
issues.
CONTENTS
December Launch
Resource Highlights
Tips on Using the Resource Center
Priorities for 2000
Expanding Partnerships
Conferences in May and June
Other Clearinghouses in Education
About this Newsletter
***********************************
December Launch: The Grand Opening
***********************************
As you may know, in December the Paths of Learning Resource Center
officially opened its arms to the wider Internet community at
http://www.PathsOfLearning.net
After seven months of initial research, design, and development, the Center
now contains summaries of over 300 innovative educational publications. The
Center is a free online tool for anyone making decisions about
education--choosing between student-centered alternatives, seeking more
ways to nourish different learning styles, or wanting to know more about
social/political issues involved with systemic change in education. If you
or your organization have not already linked to our web site, we welcome
you to do so. On your "links" page, simply place the following information:
http://www.PathsOfLearning.net - a magazine and *free* online resource
center to help parents, educators, researchers and policymakers who wish to
learn more about holistic, democratic, or learner-centered approaches to
teaching and learning.
If the content or focus of your web site revolves around education,
educational change, school alternatives, or related topics, we also invite
you to paste a free search tool of the Center's resources directly into
your web site. Then, your visitors can look for relevant education
resources from our Resource Center directly from your own web site. To see
how this search tool works on other web sites and to access information on
how to set it up on your own site, please visit the sample currently posted
at the Center for Inspired Learning:
http://www.inspiredinside.com/learning/
*******************
Resource Highlights
*******************
As a searchable database, the types of materials indexed by Paths of
Learning Resource Center that you will not often find in other databases
include:
* Tables of contents to back issues of such journals as the Holistic
Education Review, SKOLE: The Journal of Alternative Education, and Radical
Teacher magazine.
* Summary reviews of such directories and guides as the Almanac of
Education Choices, The Parents' Guide to Alternatives in Education, and A
to Z Home's Cool Homeschooling Web Site.
* Carefully selected summaries from the Department of Education's resource
clearinghouse (ERIC) of resources especially pertaining to learner-centered
and holistic education options.
* Current as well as out-of-print books that have significantly impacted
how holistic education practices are implemented which are often overlooked
by mainstream resource clearinghouses. For all books, we try to include
direct links to the publishers (or out-of-print book resellers). This
allows you to purchase the book more easily and also support small
publishers rather than Amazon. Currently, our database contains over 90
publishers.
Coming soon (in April), we encourage you to visit the Summary Reports
section of our web site, where you will find reports highlighting resources
of special interest to families (parents and students), teachers,
administrators, and researchers.
*********************************
Tips on Using the Resource Center
*********************************
Based on the feedback we receive from you, the users of the Center, we may
soon add new tools for searching and browsing our reviews and indexes of
educational resources. Currently, on our main "simple search" page, you
can select the search method that best reflects the type of information
that you are seeking. Below is a general guide that describes our primary
search options. (Please let us know which search options you find most
useful or most frustrating.)
* Search by Keywords - when you have a number of words that you wish to
search across various fields (title, descriptors, or summary). Or, use
Keywords when you want to do a quick search about a particular concept and
are wondering whether our Resource Center suggests anything about it. Since
this option scans several fields (title, descriptors, summary, and biases),
it may often yield more results than you wish. Please see
http://www.PathsofLearning.net/help.htm#narrow for tips on "Narrowing Your
Search" to help you avoid this dilemma.
* Search for an Author - when you're looking for resources created by a
specific person (includes editors for works by multiple authors).
* Search for a Title - when you know specifically the name of the resource
you are seeking.
* "What do you wish to accomplish?" provides you multiple options that
summarize the primary purposes, intended or unintended, of the materials
indexed in this Resource Center.
* "What learning options do you would to learn more about?" lists the types
of educational alternatives which are the primary focus of this Resource
Center.
* "Whose viewpoints would you like to learn more about?" lists any
resources written ABOUT the perspectives of a particular population, such
as students, teachers, parents, etc. (For materials written FOR a specific
audience, please see the our Summary Reports at http://
www.PathsofLearning.net/reports.htm )
For more help on customizing the Resource Center to your search needs,
please visit our Search Help page at
http://www.PathsofLearning.net/help.htm, or write to us directly with your
questions at help@.... We promise to respond as soon as we
can (usually within 48 hours).
*******************
Priorities for 2000
*******************
As we continue to expand the content in the Resource Center, the kinds of
informational materials that you'll find later this year include:
* Resources that critically examine more learning options, such as
democratic schools, folk education, home schooling (unschooling model),
Montessori schools, teacher education, Waldorf (Steiner) schools, higher
education (progressive), and specific well-known alternatives (such as
Summerhill, Sudbury, and many others) for which we have been accumulating
many leads into lesser known but greatly valued materials.
* Resources that cover an array of purposes, such as differences between
schooling options; outcomes of education (what really gets learned in
school), including alumni studies; money matters: effective funding
strategies; improve schools through reform and organizational management;
program development within or beyond schools; ideas to integrate parenting
and educating.
For more input to share your educational research and resource needs, we
encourage you to visit our feedback page:
http://www.PathsofLearning.net/feedback.htm
On this page, you can sign our guestbook, complete a survey about your
content needs, or participate in an online forum about the Center's ongoing
development.
**********************
Expanding Partnerships
**********************
In addition to many excellent small publishers around the globe who have
begun to share their materials with us, we wish to extend special thanks to
some of the organizations whose directors or coordinators have been so
friendly and forthright in offering their frank feedback and ongoing access
to their resources.
Alternative Education Resource Organization (AERO), Jerry Mintz
Center for School Change, Joe Nathan
Down to Earth Books, Mary Leue
EnCompass, Ba and Josette Luvmour and Scott Forbes
Folk Education Association of America, Chris Spicer
Great Ideas in Education, Psychology Press / Holistic Education Press,
Charlie Jakiela
Holt Associates/Growing Without Schooling, Patrick Farenga
Home Education Magazine, Helen Hegener
National Association for Core Curriculum (NACC), Gordon Vars
National Coalition of Alternative Community Schools (NCACS), Alan Benard
National Coalition for Education Activists (NCEA), Debi Duke
Research for Action, Kia Moore
Rethinking Schools, Michael Trokan
Although we have not yet fully reviewed and indexed the resources made
available to us by all of the organizations listed above, we are in deep
gratitude to them and many others for offering to help us grow our
database. In addition, special thanks to: Jean Reed (BrookFarm Books) for
her many friendly comments and tips on great homeschooling resources, Ann
Zeise for her homeschooling and web resource help, and Sunny Gulati for his
help with the web site graphic.
Every quarter or so as we become more aware of the innovative projects and
resources in which our partners are actively engaged in creating, we will
be sharing and highlighting them in the "Other Great Resources" section of
our web site.
*****************************************
Conferences in May and June: Sign Up Now
*****************************************
If you like meeting "alternative" folks in education, the National
Coalition of Alternative Community Schools is sponsoring an excellent "Hope
for Our Children" Conference in May, which you are each warmly invited to
attend. Among other workshop leaders (including Joseph Chilton Pearce and
Herb Kohl), I will be making some small presentations on using the Internet
for information and networking in educationÖto help people unfamiliar with
the Net to begin sorting the chaff from the grain (realizing that it's
mostly chaff). The conference is at Antioch College in Yellow Springs,
Ohio, May 10-14. For more information, please visit:
http://www.ncacs.org/Conf2000/
And if you do attend the conference, be sure to introduce yourself to me!
(You can recognize me...as I'll be the one passing out Paths of Learning
magazines.)
Another upcoming conference that we'd like to recommend is IPEA 2000:
Institute for People's Education and Action. This conference is June 26 -
June 30, 2000, in Deerfield, MA, and is sponsored by the Folk and People's
Education Association of America. The FPEAA's 3rd annual Institute for
People's Education and Action will bring together students, teachers, and
community leaders to deepen their knowledge of and extend their practice of
people's education: popular, folk, and community-based learning for the
purpose of building more just and sustainable communities. "People's
education" is defined as "inclusive learning among peers, based in culture
and experience, that builds democratic communities through dialogue and
action." For more details on this conference, please see:
http://www.peopleseducation.org/
*********************************
Other Clearinghouses in Education
*********************************
Finally, if you can't find the educational materials that you are seeking
in our Resource Center, we have also compiled a list of other
clearinghouses that offer everything from curriculum ideas to conventional
educational research. You will find this list of recommended sites at:
http://www.PathsOfLearning.net/other.htm
While we certainly hope to develop our database over the next few years so
that most of what you need for diverse ideas in holistic, alternative
options in education can be found at Paths of Learning, we can not be all
things to all people.
----------------------------------------
ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER
The Paths of Learning Resource Center News is a bi-annual and freely
distributed newsletter dealing with learner-center and holistic options in
education. If you would like to contribute something for the next
publication, send it to robin@...
Copyright 2000 - Foundation for Educational Renewal.
You may redistribute this newsletter for noncommercial purposes. You may
also redistribute individual articles in their entirety, provided you
reference the Paths of Learning Resource Center web site at
http://www.PathsOfLearning.net and attach this paragraph.
--
Robin Ann Martin, Coordinator
Paths of Learning Resource Center
http://www.PathsOfLearning.net
mailto:robin@...