Great news for schools in New Jersey and New York seeking exciting an anti bullying school assembly this year!
Finding the right school assembly or enrichment program for your school can be tough. There are a lot of performers, acts and companies from which to choose. How do you know which is best for your needs? How do you know who is professional and who is not, who is talented and who is not, who will meet your needs and budget, and who will not?
Schools across the country have in recent years pondered the problem of how to turn children into moral individuals and good citizens. Many have exerted much effort to introduce good character education into the daily lives of children. Concepts such as respect, responsibility, honesty and so on have been crafted together into various character building programs. Many schools now utilize these concepts on a daily basis to help turn today's children into the good citizens of tomorrow. And this is a great thing!
We are rapidly approaching the start of the 2011-2012 school year. In some states classes start as early as next week while in other areas school does not commence until after Labor Day.
Big news for our client schools on the East Coast! Crime Scene Science, our fabulous forensic science school assembly, at long last will be visiting the East Coast in 2011-2012!
Mobile Ed’s new anti bullying school show - Stronger Than a Bully - is selling out quickly! Many states are now sold out.
It seems that the Appalachian region of the United States has the greatest diversity of salamanders in the world. Apparently more than 70 different species live there in parts of Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky. And in some ways, this makes the Appalachians a key place in the study of global temperature fluctuations and the possible effects of these fluctuations.
Here is a great piece from Smithsonian Science:
http://smithsonianscience.org/2011/07/hellbender/
It seems that one particular type of salamander, the Hell Bender, breathe through their skin making them particularly sensitive to changes in the environment. Which makes them a particularly good point of study for scientists interested in the effects of global warming.
Kids love this stuff! And an example such as this provides several different opportunities to teach. You can use a story like this to lead into a discussion of reptiles and amphibians and natural science in general. You can use it to talk about the interaction between different species and the environment. And you can use it to begin an examination of global warming patterns and the effect on living organisms.
In fact, information like this is exactly what we use in a couple of our science assemblies. Either makes for a great educational supplement but also a very entertaining time for the entire school.
Animals and The Environment deals specifically with how different environmental issues affect different species around the globe. We have two presenters for these programs. Jon is based in Michigan and works across the Midwest and on the East Coast teaching kids through school assemblies about the animals of the world and introducing them to the great “critters” that travel with him. Meantime, Dick is resident in the Chicago area and dazzles kids in Chicago land and lower Wisconsin with his thirty years of knowledge, enthusiasm and excitement, as well as his great bunch of animals and reptiles.
Our Changing Climate is a school assembly that examines the conditions we describe as “global warming” and some of the possible causes. The presenter is Jeff who is also based in Chicago but who makes regular forays into Texas, Ohio, Michigan and out East. So schools in New York or New Jersey looking for great school assemblies in this area have just as much opportunity to view one of these programs as do schools in Michigan or Ohio or Illinois.
Regardless of where you live, these are interesting times we live in. Did you ever expect to hear that the North Pole was expected to be ice free one summer very soon?
It is important that our children learn about these issues. Finding teachable moments is one way to inform them. Great school science assemblies provide another!
Geoff Beauchamp is the Regional Manager of Mobile Ed Productions where "Education Through Entertainment" has been the guiding principal since 1979. Mobile Ed Productions produces and markets quality educational school assembly programs in the fields of science, history, writing, astronomy, natural science, mathematics, character issues and a variety of other curriculum based areas. In addition, Mr. Beauchamp is a professional actor with 30 years of experience in film, television and on stage. He created and still performs occasionally in Mobile Ed's THE LIVING LINCOLN.
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Here is a great piece from Smithsonian Science:
http://smithsonianscience.org/2011/07/hellbender/
It seems that one particular type of salamander, the Hell Bender, breathe through their skin making them particularly sensitive to changes in the environment. Which makes them a particularly good point of study for scientists interested in the effects of global warming.
Kids love this stuff! And an example such as this provides several different opportunities to teach. You can use a story like this to lead into a discussion of reptiles and amphibians and natural science in general. You can use it to talk about the interaction between different species and the environment. And you can use it to begin an examination of global warming patterns and the effect on living organisms.
In fact, information like this is exactly what we use in a couple of our science assemblies. Either makes for a great educational supplement but also a very entertaining time for the entire school.
Animals and The Environment deals specifically with how different environmental issues affect different species around the globe. We have two presenters for these programs. Jon is based in Michigan and works across the Midwest and on the East Coast teaching kids through school assemblies about the animals of the world and introducing them to the great “critters” that travel with him. Meantime, Dick is resident in the Chicago area and dazzles kids in Chicago land and lower Wisconsin with his thirty years of knowledge, enthusiasm and excitement, as well as his great bunch of animals and reptiles.
Our Changing Climate is a school assembly that examines the conditions we describe as “global warming” and some of the possible causes. The presenter is Jeff who is also based in Chicago but who makes regular forays into Texas, Ohio, Michigan and out East. So schools in New York or New Jersey looking for great school assemblies in this area have just as much opportunity to view one of these programs as do schools in Michigan or Ohio or Illinois.
Regardless of where you live, these are interesting times we live in. Did you ever expect to hear that the North Pole was expected to be ice free one summer very soon?
It is important that our children learn about these issues. Finding teachable moments is one way to inform them. Great school science assemblies provide another!
Geoff Beauchamp is the Regional Manager of Mobile Ed Productions where "Education Through Entertainment" has been the guiding principal since 1979. Mobile Ed Productions produces and markets quality educational school assembly programs in the fields of science, history, writing, astronomy, natural science, mathematics, character issues and a variety of other curriculum based areas. In addition, Mr. Beauchamp is a professional actor with 30 years of experience in film, television and on stage. He created and still performs occasionally in Mobile Ed's THE LIVING LINCOLN.
It is July 8, 2011 and as I write this it is a little before 9 AM Eastern Standard Time. In a few hours the space shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to lift off on it’s final mission, and what will be the last mission of the thirty year old space shuttle program.
As things stand, bad weather may delay the launch. There is currently a 70% chance of a delay. Weather is crucial as the conditions must be right not only at Cape Canaveral where the launch is to occur, but also at all of the possible landing sites around the globe. It is a logistically difficult arrangement.
Regardless of whether the launch occurs today or not, it will occur at some point and when Atlantis subsequently returns to earth the entire shuttle program will be over.
In some ways this is a sad moment in our history. Though the shuttle program was created with the express purpose of enabling the construction of the International Space Station, and though this task is now complete, to many of us this seems to signal the end of the era of United States space exploration.
With a poor economy and tightening government budgets the entire NASA program is being examined and some believe we can no longer afford the luxury of venturing into space with humans.
Personally, I hope they are outvoted and that human colonization of space continues, for a multitude of reasons, too lengthy for this article.
But in another way, I worry about the future of American dominance in science and technology. Every year our colleges and universities churn out thousands of scientists and engineers, but many and possibly most are of foreign origin and many of these return to countries such as China, India and Japan upon completing their studies. There they contribute to the rising power of their own nations in Science and technology. While in the meantime our own young people find less and less interest in these crucial fields preferring sports or entertainment as possible careers. Science is not “cool”.
What makes a person a good person? This question has puzzled philosophers since the earliest ages of mankind and continues to produce debate today. But there are certain virtues we commonly agree upon today and we also agree that teaching these virtues to our children is a good and desirable thing.
We have written recently about using science school shows or a school assembly based in history or social studies to entice kids to visit the library over the summer or on holidays. Well, here is an article about a pair of librarians in two completely different parts of the country collaborating on a series of projects to achieve the same end.
