Major Update to Children of the Code – Two New Video Chapters

Dear friend of Learning Stewards and the Children of the Code Project,

Season’s Greetings!

I hope all is well with you and yours and that 2013 will be your happiest, healthiest, and most successful year so far.

In this Update:

1 – Major Children of the Code Site Upgrade

2 – Learning Steward’s Posts

3 – End of 2012 Summary, Next Steps, Important Requests

1 – Major Children of the Code Site Upgrade

• Every video (100+) on the Children of the Code site has been upgraded. The new videos have all been re-edited and are now available in much higher quality that can be run on virtually every kind of device including your tablets, smartphones, etc.
• We’ve released a new chapter, “What is Reading?” (12 Videos). The chapter challenges our society’s views about reading, offers COTC’s animated definition of reading, and includes some interesting dialogue segments with leading thinkers in the field.
• We’ve released a new chapter, “Paradigm Inertia in Reading Science and Policy” (8 Videos). This chapter tells the story of attempts to reform the code. From Ben Franklin’s revised alphabet, to how Teddy Roosevelt’s advocacy of spelling reform caused congress to pass a law forbidding reform, it’s an important back story to understanding the literacy challenges we face today.
• New social media features added to every page.  Each and every interview transcript and video on the site now has buttons that will allow you to Tweet about the page, “LIKE” the page on Facebook, or email the page (via your personal email system). PLEASE “LIKE” and Tweet about COTC’s resources.

In the next couple of months, we will add the final chapters “The Brain’s Challenge” and “Changing Trajectories”. As we do, we will begin a new phase of the project. So far, we have focused on providing resources for people already interested in learning about the ‘code’ and the ‘challenge of learning to read it’. With your help we want to use our resources to support advocates of children and activists engaged in education reform. It’s time to focus our efforts on  changing the ways our children learn to read.

2 – Learning Stewards Posts

Just in case you missed them, here are the major posts since our last update:

• When Learning Hurts – Toxic Learning – What and how students learn can have toxic effects on how well they learn thereafter. It’s vitally important that educators understand this.
• Neuroscience: Neural Correlates of Math Anxiety – Math anxiety is the just tip of the iceberg. The effects of anxiety on other learning challenges are harder to measure, but arguably just as devastating, and affect an even greater number of students.
• Our government is what our population has learned it to be – Our national political conversation is devoid of even mentioning the central issue that, within two decades, will most determine our nation’s fate: our most distinctive competency – our only long-term competitive advantage – our collective intelligence.
• Re: Microsoft’s ‘National Talent Strategy’ & “Race to the Future’ = Greater Investment in STEM. I am all for STEM, but I think we’d have a greater net number of STEMers if we focused our main efforts on getting more kids READY to learn their way into STEM.

3 – End of 2012 Summary, Next Steps, Important Requests

2012 was COTC’s highest traffic year so far. Two hundred thousand visits, 1.3 million pages viewed. Most heartening is the traffic from students in colleges of education around the world.

In addition to adding the final chapters and beginning our next phase of activism, 2013, with your support, we will be conducting new interviews and keeping you up-to-date with research coming in on the frontiers of the reading and learning sciences. We will also be focused on creating tablet and smartphone “Educator Apps” that allow teachers and school counselors to easily and quickly find and play COTC clips and “jewels” during parent conferences. We will also create “Parents Apps” that enable parents to find and play the resources on their phones and tablets that will help them better advocate for their children.

As 2012 comes to a close we ask for your support.  If you appreciate our work, then please donate whatever you can.  There is still time to benefit from the tax deduction you could receive for a 2012 donation. Learning Stewards is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that depends on your donations. Your donations are TAX DEDUCTIBLE.

Or send your tax deductible donation check to:

Learning Stewards
P.O. Box 2536
Anchorage, KY 40223

Reminder:  We’ve added “Tweet”, “Like” and “Email” buttons on all of the key pages of the Children of the Code and Learning Stewards sites. You can now tweet individual pages to your followers, or add comments about any of our interviews or videos and post the comments to your Facebook page, Linked-In, and Twitter Feeds.  Next time you are on the COTC or Learning Stewards site, be sure to use these new tools and help spread the word about our work while you help others learn about the wonders and tragedies of reading and learning. If you are a member of the LinkedIn community, invite me to connect with you. I now have over 1000 connections – mostly with leaders in learning – let’s connect!

Thank you again for interest in and support of our work and for all you do to help ‘steward the HEALTH of our children’s learning‘.

Happy Holidays and all the best in 2013!

David Boulton

Learning Activist
Director, Children of the Code
A Project of Learning Stewards, a 501(c)(3) Non-Profit Organization
P.O. Box 23536 Anchorage,
KY 40223 Blog – Twitter – LinkedIn

We can no longer assume that what we think children should learn is more important than how well they can learn.”
‘mind-shame’ is our nation’s most wide-spread learning disability’
Stay tuned to your learning.

The most cost-optimal, high ROI, way to improve education (and our nation’s future) is to focus our efforts towards upgrading the mental models through which parents and educators understand and experience learning and through which parents and educators understand their purpose as parents and educators. After all, how parents and educators think about ‘learning’ and their ‘mission and purpose’ affects, everything about how they understand and experience children (as well as what they are trying to ‘put into’ and ‘bring forth’ from them).

In addition to providing free online learning resources, we create high impact learning events that conduct parents and educators into realizing the distinctions critical to understanding learning in general and reading in particular. Our events use video clips from our 100+ interviews with world leading scientists and scholars, as well as rich multimedia slides and key point participant dialogues to create the conditions that lead to understanding and, more importantly, deeply realizing, these distinctions.

Keynotes, Seminars, Workshops, Thought-Leader Dialogues, Leadership Coaching & Consulting. 

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