If you’re a member of the International Reading Association (IRA), here’s your chance to be involved in leadership. The IRA is accepting nominations for vice president and for the Board of Directors. The deadline for nominations is July 15, 2010.

If you would like to nominate someone, you can complete the nomination form or mail a letter of nomination to:

2010-2011 Nominating Committee
International Reading Association
PO Box 8139
Newark, DE 19714

When Apple launched the iPad, they promised us they would change the way we consumed media. In the 80 days since the it launched, we’ve already consumed over 3,000,000 iPads!

The iPad is an somewhat interactive media tool. One navigates by tapping or pinching the screen or sliding fingers back and forth. Kindle books, TEDTalks and YouTube videos, and iTunes audio and video content flys nearly effortlessly from the “cloud” in the sky to the iPad, making it unbelievably simple to GET media.

The question is, how will the easy access TO content and the new way to CONSUME content influence reading and reading comprehension skills?

Would you weigh in to share your thoughts on how the iPad might influence reading in your classroom next year?

On June 22, 1944, President Roosevelt signed the G.I. Bill, clearing the way for returning soldiers to go to school. A wonderful description and backgrounder on the Bill and it’s influence on higher education are presented in The History Channel’s article.The article directly attributes the transformation of universities and post-war economic expansion to the G.I. Bill.

What do you think it would take to take another G.I. Bill leap forward in education?

Here’s a little something special for teachers: Teacher Perks. It’s a program to give you a little something extra. Here’s what members get:

• FREE Shipping on all orders of $50 or more.
• Special Private Sales each and every month.
• FREE Gift Offers

There is absolutely no cost to become a member of Teacher Perks! In fact, if you are currently a member of SmileMakers Teacher Club, we’ve automatically updated your membership to the new and improved Teacher Perks. If you are a brand new customer, you can add Teacher Perks to your shopping cart next time you visit SmileMakers.com, and you’ll be a member right away.

With the amazing success of the iPad, Apple predicts the device will change the way we consume information in the future. Who knows what the future will hold? Even if Apple’s right, children of tomorrow will still need to be good readers.

Drs Gisler and Eberts share 10 Ways to Improve Reading Skills in a recent blog entry. The article may be a good one to include in your enews update to parents next year. In it the suggest parents

1. Set aside a regular time to read to your children every day.
2. Surround your children with reading material.
3. Have a family reading time.
4. Encourage a wide variety of reading activities (and more)

Of course, Gisler and Eberts include six more suggestions to round out their “top ten.” If you were to finish the list, what would you add?

Here are a few Smilemakers resources to help you improve reading skills:

Thanks to a $1 million dollar grant from the Verizon Foundation, the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English launched an overhauled Thinkfinity website. The new website will allow you to create your own filing cabinets and save lesson plans and other materials for later use. It will also include expanded social media features so you can more easily connect with your peers around the country.

Education blogger Elizabeth King is a thought-provoker. Her recent post Critical Thinking: What is it anyway? got us thinking: what’s the connection between well-developed critical thinking skills and smiles?

King’s post is thorough, well-worth the study, and has helpful graphics and questions. In the end, it seems critical thinking skills equip students to “navigate the world of ideas” and make sense of one’s own world. The connection to smiles? It could just be that understanding the world around you, and being able to make sense of it, gives you the confidence to act. The action and the results are likely to…create smiles.

What do you think?

Apparently the once famous Gen Xers are being squeezed by the Baby Boomers on one side and the Millenials on the other, according to Elizabeth King. She included an interested chart showing the relative population mass of the three generations on her blog post The Numbers by Generation.

Her main point seems to be, technology is changing the way a generation communicates and is creating an opportunity to craft a different world. Technology, and specifically, social media, is pervasive and will play a significant role in reshaping the world.

When it comes to your experience in the classroom, how is social media effecting your normal day-to-day experience with your students? (We’ll ask about social media and your own peer-to-peer interactions, professional development, recruitment, etc. in a later post; so, please be thinking about that question, too.)

Would you share with us how social media influences communication with your students?

When you’re a student, struggling to sit still in your desk and worrying about the upcoming standardized test, you might not fully appreciate the teacher at the front of the room. Teachers are amazingly creative and teachers like to have fun!

Here’s a group of education professionals at a recent conference in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, showing off their t-shirt creation. Their enthusiasm and optimism were contagious.

“What’s your favorite part of the school day,” the grandparent asked his 4th grader. “Recess,” she replied.

Recess is probably an eagerly anticipated part of your school day, too. Except, that is, when it’s rainy or it’s messy outside. Then what? What DO you do on your rainy days?

Teacher blogger Vodkamom asks the question a little more poignantly, “What do little girls do when they are banned from rescuing worms and snails from the schoolyard wetlands and are forced to play inside because of the rain?” Apparently the remedy she experienced left her with an unwanted collection of pet ants.

Here’s a collection of rainy day suggestions:

• Rainy day fun and boredom buster for kids from AmazingMoms.
• Top 10 rainy day activities from Family Education. (Even though some suggestions focus on what parents at home might do with their children on rainy days, the events might apply in the classroom as well.)
• 12 Rainy day activities: Chase the blues away with fun rainy day activities that get kids up and moving.
• Better Homes & Gardens rainy day projects for kids. (a directory listing of a wealth of craft projects)

“Crafts” made the list of many of the “rainy day” lists we explored. If you’d like a complete selection of economical crafts, please check out the wide variety of SmileMakers rainy day crafts (and sunny day crafts, too) available through our website.