Progress

I am very excited about my paper and find my topic of Preschool very interesting. I am find a lot of facts that I was very unaware of and also finding out how important early education really is.  I am making good progress.

Guest Speaker

I thought the speaker was knowledgeable in his subject area and an entertaining to listen to and watch.  He kept my attention for the majority of the time because of his enthusiastic voice and he also moved around a lot.  His visuals also kept my attention

Cyberliteracy

I believe the most interesting part of Cyberliteracy was the part about Purple Moon.  When I was about nine I was OBSESSED with Purple Moon. There were two different games, Rockett’s New School and Secret Paths in the Forest.  These games involved narrative structure, social emotional issues, and the development of personal character. Purple moon was started in 1996 by Brenda Laurel.  She had spent many years researching how girls play on the computer and discovered the sequence is "play, die, start over."  I really liked reading about this section because it brought back a lot of good childhood memories and it was interesting to know the story behind one of my favorite things of the past.

Annotation

Temple, Judy A., and Arthur J. Reynolds. "Benefits and costs of investments in preschool education: Evidence from the Child–Parent Centers and related programs." Economics of Education Review 26.1 (2007): 126-144. Education Research Complete. EBSCO. Web. 20 Sept. 2010.

            This article discusses the benefits of preschool programs but looking into 3 different types.  It gives strong evidence that the consistently positive economic returns of high-quality preschool programs exceed most other educational interventions, especially those that begin during the school-age years such as reduced class sizes in the elementary grades, grade retention, and youth job training.

Top 3 Research Ideas

1. Preschool matters

2. Childhood depression

3. The importance of early education

Second Chance Summary: The southpaw's secret semantics

Vecchio, Rick. "On Their Own Time: In Peru, Punctuality is a Myth." Psychology Today July/Aug. 2007: 31. Print.

The southpaw's secret semantics is an article written by Shannon Brownlee.  This article tells about how come experts claim that left-handers conceive language is a very different way than right-handers. Many scientists argue over whether language is the result of environment or genes. Other scientists believe that children learn language by hearing language continuously and they absorb the meaning of words and their infinite uses. The article then goes on to say that researchers have long known there are vast differences between left and right handed people.  For right hander’s, the left side of the brain is dominant and for left hander’s the right side of the brain is dominant.  Whatever happens to during the brain development to produce left-handedness also makes an uncommon mix of mental assists and deficits.  Evidence shown in this article is what makes scientists believe that genes for handedness is possibly linked to the brain's organization of language, and that psychologists hope to one day be able to use PET scans to prove or disprove this theory. Understanding different cognitive styles may help pin down the roles nature and nature play in the ability that defines us human language.