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July 1, 2009
Health
Just in time for the Fourth of July weekend — one of the busiest on American roads — the World Health Organization has issued a report that examines the state of road safety in 177 other countries....
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June 29, 2009
Civil and Human Rights
A new report from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force summarizes findings from an early 2009 discussion among California religious leaders about the passage of Proposition 8....
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June 27, 2009
Education
The Delta Cost Project report What Does a College Degree Cost? Comparing Approaches to Measuring Cost per Degree finds wide variations in direct and indirect costs for each degree given....
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June 25, 2009
Arts and Culture
The new second edition of Foundation Grants for Preservation in Libraries, Archives, and Museums is designed to help the nation's preservation community save at-risk historical and cultural artifacts for future generations....
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More Connections
The Economic Future Just Happened (Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation Report) June 23, 2009
Latino Children: A Majority Are U.S.-Born Offspring of Immigrants (Pew Hispanic Center Report) June 21, 2009
Pride Choice Awards 2009: The Nation's Best LGBTQ Organizations June 19, 2009
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Milton Chen, Executive Director, George Lucas Educational Foundation
PND recently spoke to Chen, executive director of the George Lucas Educational Foundation, about the roles of technology and assessment in student learning as well as his hopes for the future of the U.S. education system.
Philanthropy News Digest: The George Lucas Educational Foundation focuses in part on encouraging technological innovation in public education. Why has the education system in the United States been so slow to adapt to new technologies, and what is your organization doing to change that?

Milton Chen: Well, there are many reasons why the education system has been so slow to adapt. In fact, I sometimes say that if you wanted to create a system that was perfectly designed not to change, you would create the American education system: a system in which information about technological innovation is not widely distributed among the many decision-making bodies and in which there is very little incentive for change.

I think the solution to all of this lies in fundamentally changing the way people think about education. Just say the very word education and people think about a teacher in front of a classroom with students sitting at desks. What's needed for education to succeed in this century is radically different from that.

Our task isn't going to be easy. Education is a very old tradition, and people hold very deeply entrenched beliefs about how best to go about it. There's a strong anti-technology camp — particularly educators who came up through the system in the 1950s and '60s — that believes technology doesn't work or is just a distraction. They worry that if we embrace technology, students will spend five hours a day in the classroom on Facebook. But there's another camp, which we fall into, which argues that we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water. Just because a particular medium or technology — Facebook, cell phones, YouTube, Twitter — can be used for distraction doesn't mean those technologies can't also be used for educational purposes. It's all about how the technologies are used....

Read the Q&A»
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Foundation Center SVP Larry McGill looks at the nature of data and its uses; Kaye Pyle reports from the annual Robert Flaherty film seminar; Susan Herr dramatizes four scenarios for the future of journalism; and our own Regina Mahone wonders what others are doing to navigate the digital flood of information....

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The PND message board is open, and here's a sample of what we're talking about...
Q: Would you accept a buyout from your employer?
A: I think it depends on one's stage in life. For someone on the 60 side of 50, a buyout would just mean a more immediate inevitable. Even so, many of us in the 50+ age bracket remain employed for access to group health coverage. As a matter of perspective, those who take a buyout often fare better financially in the long run than those who hang on only to be laid off six to nine months down the road....
Posted 6/17/2009

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Conference Calendar

Connections Health, Civil and Human Rights, Education, Arts and Culture

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Milton Chen, Executive Director, George Lucas Educational Foundation

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Young Musicians Foundation

YMF works to preserve the classical mu- sic tradition by supporting education and performance opportunities for young people in Southern California and beyond....
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Changemakers
An initiative of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, Changemakers is a global on- line platform that connects volunteers with social inno- vators through open source competitions.... More» |
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July 15 - July 17, 2009
2009 Alliance Annual Conference
Alliance for Nonprofit Management
Palm Springs, California
July 24 - July 25, 2009
5th Annual Conference
BlogHer
Chicago, Illinois
July 28 - July 28, 2009
Ready to Educate All Children?
Nellie Mae Education Foundation/CAYL Institute
Cambridge, Massachusetts
July 29 - August 1, 2009
Inspiring Excellence
APRA
Boston, Massachusetts
August 7 - August 11, 2009
Annual Meeting: Green Management Matters
Academy of Management
Chicago, Illinois
September 14 - September 16, 2009
2009 Annual Conference
Philanthropy Northwest
Stevenson, Washington
For more conference listings, visit our Conference Calendar.
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