ChildControls.com - Keeping one step ahead!

A study released this week found the more time a child spent in daycare the more likely they were to be disruptive once they started school. If parents do not have a choice, how can they make sure their daycare is the right one?

Ralph Nader - Al Lord is thinking about building his own private golf course. Not bad for an ex-corporate socialist. The former CEO of Sallie Mae is worth about a quarter of a billion dollars, running a company that Uncle Sam virtually guarantees against any losses while it makes enormous profits in the college student loan business.

In 2003 Mr. Lord told a public audience that "it would be very hard for me to tell you that what I make is not a lot of money." But the company he ran has been making it very hard for tens of thousands of students and blocking any reforms in Congress that would make his company less hard on American taxpayers.

Pierre Tristam - Gifted education is based on the idea that a very small, very smart proportion of students needs more challenging attention to flourish intellectually and otherwise. That's about as much agreement as you'll get from any two people discussing the matter. What criteria decide who's gifted, where the cut-off should be (the top 2 percent of a given group? the top 5 percent?), what to do with the gifted once they qualify, who to mingle or not mingle them with, what to feed them at breakfast and what thread-count linen they should sleep in -- those questions can be more divisive than all the debates about the transubstantiation of Christ and fat-versus-thin Elvis put together.

Amid an intensifying national debate on immigration, the Colorado Children's Campaign released a report Tuesday saying the majority of children born into the state's immigrant families are U.S. citizens.

It also found immigrants' children are more likely to live in poverty and have trouble speaking English than other children, but that more of them live in two-parent households.

It was the first time the nonprofit research and lobbying group had included immigration data in its annual report on the well-being of Colorado's children. It will likely add fuel to a contentious battle over how many public services immigrant families, especially illegal immigrants, should receive.

Recently, Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, warned a class of 7th and 8th graders against illegal downloads.

"I hope you never have the misfortune to deal with me as a result of engaging in something you shouldn't be doing," he told the kids assembled at Windmill Springs Elementary school in San Jose, California.

Gospel Champions(TM) is a new video game based on the various stories found in the Gospels. The action/adventure game will have instant messaging, email, repetitive play and other nifty features.

"We are excited and honored to partner with Silver Burdett Ginn Religion to create an innovative educational game for Gospel and Catholic learning," said Brian Mitchell, President of Third Day Games and a Catechist teacher. He added, "This partnership is a significant step in realizing our goal of using the popularity of games to keep our children connected to the Catholic faith in their daily lives."

This article from MSNBC details the evils of kids and money... sortof anyways. I did not know that more than 11 percent of teenagers are carrying credit cards, and some of them are as young as 13 or 14 years old. In addition, three out of 10 teenagers have checking accounts, many linked to ATMs through debit cards.(Junior Achievement Poll)

Some pointers on how to educate kids about money matters:

Don’t teach, just talk.

* Know when your children will be tested by visiting the district's Web site, www.usd259.com, and look under "Curriculum and Assessment."
* Make sure they get plenty of sleep the night before and eat breakfast the morning of the test.
* Encourage them to relax before the test. Jackie Lugrand, supervisor of the Parent Teacher Resource Center, said parents should talk to their kids about any anxieties they have.
* Don't put too much pressure on them. "The results of this test aren't going to be the end-all, be-all," Lugrand said.

While being born in a poor family does not guarantee a future of poverty, it does put significant roadblocks in the path, experts on poverty think.

Experts think that early childhood education and supportive parents are the key to the economic success of kids born in poor families. There are points of intervention throughout the cycle, but the most effective time period is when kids are very young.

PC Advisor, UK is running a story on the 14 year old who discovered gmail vulnerability. Earlier this week, a group of students designed and implemented a working model of a car which accelerates from 0 to 60mph in 4 seconds, runs on soya bean oil and gets 50 miles to the gallon!.

BBC News Service - In a welcome development, audio technology is being used by profoundly deaf children to hear music for the first time.

School teacher Sian Aubrey believes the experience was invaluable in helping to develop the children's self confidence.

She said: "Some of the children who wouldn't go up to the musicians when we came in are now queuing up without any support for their second and third try at an instrument."

"Fears that the United States is falling behind in science and engineering are overblown, but there are things we can do to prevent a future technology gap."

Also from the article, "Hard work, imagination and business practices also matter. Here the United States has some significant strengths: widespread ambition; an openness to new ideas, especially from the young; an acceptance of

For part 1 of Treat them like Rats, click here.

From the article ...

"On Jan. 6, Martin Lee Anderson, 14, died hours after an altercation with guards at the Bay County Boot Camp in Panama City. On Tuesday:

• Bay County Sheriff Frank McKeithen decided to shut down the boot camp, which his office runs under contract with the state Department of Juvenile Justice, within 90 days. DJJ said it will decide what to do with the 22 juveniles at the camp.

According to plans, kids could have a say in the layout, color schemes and facilities of a planned hospital in Glasgow, Scotland.

"At Yorkhill staff ran workshops with children to ask them which services and facilities the hospital should provide. "

"We got the usual responses - Play Stations and DVDs - but also some unexpected ones: a quiet room for reading and beds for parents to stay over at night."

The guardian (uk) is running an interesting story about the sudden popularity of camps like 'Brat Camp' where kids are routinely 'broken down' as an educational method.

The author argues that this is very similar to the idea of 'positive reinforcement'. Not only are the kids exposed to wilderness and tough life, food and freedom deprivation are also often used to enforce behavioral changes.

This story appears in Children and Computer Technology magazine,
VOLUME 10, NUMBER 2 - FALL/WINTER 2000

Margie K. Shields and Richard E. Behrman
An analysis of the research on how computer use affects children's development, whether it increases or decreases the disparities between rich and poor, and whether it can be used effectively to enhance learning, including recommendations to improve children's access to and use of computers both at school and at home.

"Creating a system that lets children talk to computers instead of using mouse or keyboard controls won a "Best Paper" Award for the USC Viterbi School of Engineering's Shrikanth Narayanan and a collaborator."

During the study, kids preferred playing games using voice commands over playing the game using only the keyboard and the mouse. The new techniques employed made it poss

In a new poll, 57 percent of parents say "things are fine" with the amount of math and science being taught in their child's public school. High school parents seem particularly content, as 70 percent of them say their child gets the right amount of science and math.

Only half of children in grades 6 to 12 say that understanding sciences and having strong math skills are essential for them to succeed in life after high school.

ST. LOUIS, Missouri (Reuters) - "American scientists fighting back against creationism, intelligent design and other theories that seek to deny or downgrade the importance of evolution have recruited unlikely allies -- the clergy."
Some interesting quotes from pastors include, "We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests ..."

For the first part of choices, click here
Gene Castelli from Columbus, Ohio writes: Life is based on choice. It is one of the most powerful single forces that guide our every step throughout our lives. You wake up, you choose what to wear. You choose what to eat for breakfast. You choose which shoe to put on first. So many choices.

With such obvious evidence that life is full of choices, it is amazing that so many people forget that they always have a choice.