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"Young Audiences, Woodruff Arts Center (YAWAC) is Georgia's leading provider of arts-in-education programming. Part of the prestigious 31-chapter national Young Audiences organization, YAWAC brings the power of live arts experiences to Georgia students from pre-school to high school. From a small organization of nine artists in 1983, YAWAC is celebrating more than 25 years of service and has grown into a force in arts education, with more than 65 professional roster artists and ensembles that reach nearly 640,000 students each year in 50 counties statewide. We fulfill our mission - to transform the lives and learning of young people through the arts - by providing a dazzling and culturally diverse array of curriculum-based assemblies, workshops and residencies in music, dance, theatre, literary and visual arts. From Chinese dance to Russian gypsy folk music, from fabric collage to classic fables, YAWAC offers children a world of possibilities for learning through the arts."

"Young Audiences Arts for Learning, founded in 1952, is the nation's leading source of arts-in-education services. Our mission and goal is to help make the arts an essential part of young people's education. We advance the artistic and educational development of children and youth by bringing them together with professional artists of all disciplines to learn, create and participate in the arts."

"Jennifer Harris Edstrom , founder and principal consultant of Edstrom Educational Consulting, has a decade of assessment experience garnered from work with individual classrooms, state accountability programs, and national shelf products. After graduating from Wellesley College, she was certified to teach in the public school systems in Needham, Massachusetts, South Brunswick, New Jersey and Glencoe, Illinois. As a consultant for ETS, Ms. Edstrom was trained by Grant Wiggins's CLASS organization to author material for their Assessment Wizard program, a software program that assists teachers in developing authentic performance assessments. In 2002, Ms. Edstrom joined Riverside Publishing Company, where she oversaw the content development of high-stakes testing programs at all grade-levels and in all subject areas. Most notably, she worked closely with the Assistant Superintendent of Schools for Assessment and Arts Supervisor for the State of Washington in researching, developing, and implementing their Goal 2 authentic performance assessments in the areas of Art, Music, Drama and Dance, now being used across the state at the elementary, middle and high school grades. Ms. Edstrom left Riverside Publishing to found Edstrom Educational Consulting in 2005. Through her leadership, EEC has grown a large client base that includes notable educational publishing divisions, including Riverside Publishing, Holt-McDougal, and CTB/McGraw-Hill. In her role as principal consultant, Ms. Edstrom has acted as an advisor in the best practices of assessment, as well as authored assessment materials of the highest quality with attention to specifications. She has instructed educators in both small and large-group settings with a focus on all aspects of assessment, from testing best practices, types of assessment and creation of rubrics."

"A worldwide leader in interactive professional education, the University Alliance Online provides unprecedented access to the nation's top universities - offering you the skills and credentials you need to take your career to the next level. Through the University Alliance, these accredited universities bring the classroom to you with instructor-led, multimedia programs and comprehensive, high-quality curricula. Choose from a variety of professional certificates in high-demand disciplines, or earn your associate's, bachelor's or master's degree. You'll gain skills you can apply immediately on the job, while enjoying the freedom to complete your coursework anytime and anywhere Collaborating with the University Alliance, nationally recognized universities provide classes via state-of-the-art interactive delivery - offering a "better-than-live" learning experience. This allows you an easy work-life balance, as you schedule your classes around your busy lifestyle. No actual classroom attendance is ever required, yet you'll receive the same top-notch education as on-campus students - and degree candidates will have the option to walk with their graduating class. All University Alliance partners are consistently rated among America's best universities in national publications such as U.S. News & World Report and BusinessWeek. Interactive Online Technology Through a state-of-the-art e-learning system, you'll be immersed in a multimedia environment that lets you study at your convenience, around your busy schedule. And you won't be alone. Each course is carefully designed to maximize your interaction with fellow students and instructors alike. In fact, many students find they participate and enjoy themselves more in this online format than they ever did in a traditional classroom. It's the easiest, most convenient way to balance work, school and family. Interactive Classroom Tools Keep You Connected Our online classroom is se

"The Exploratorium is a museum of science, art, and human perception located in San Francisco, California. We believe that following your curiosity and asking questions can lead to amazing moments of discovery, learning, and awareness, and can increase confidence in your ability to understand how the world works. We also believe that being playful and having fun is an important part of the process for people of all ages. We create tools and experiences that help you to become an active explorer: hundreds of explore-for-yourself exhibits; a Web site with over 25,000 pages of content; film screenings; workshops for lifelong learners including day camps for kids and family investigations; evening art and science events for adults-plus much more. We also create professional development programs for educators, and are at the forefront of changing the way science is taught. We share our exhibits and expertise with museums worldwide."

"A teenager's hands flew in the air as he walked under a cedar tree on the GSD campus. I asked the Superintendent, "What was he saying?" He responded, "Oh nothing, he walked through a spider web." My first day on the job and I didn't know the difference between brushing off a spider web and sign language. I vowed to learn this poetry in motion. As the only art teacher in 1970, I would teach almost 700 students every week in an old civil war era building across the street from the main campus. Talk about total immersion! Students ranged in age from 5 to 21 with a high percentage who had deaf family. Maybe my interest in sculpture and drama helped me pick up the nuances of ASL for in a short time I was interpreting for teacher meetings and then college classes."

"In2Books was created in 1997 to enhance the intellectually stimulating work available to students in low-income neighborhoods. A basic tenet of In2Books is that all children are capable of deep learning. Children cannot fully develop their learning potential without challenging learning experiences. In2Books promotes ambitious literacy learning in grades 2-5 by having students engage in authentic reading and writing experiences with adult pen pals. The pen pal experience is complemented by the classroom study of genre and genre-related literacy. From its inception, In2Books has focused especially on under-resourced neighborhood where many students come from low-income, culturally diverse backgrounds. The thought-provoking In2Books curriculum includes carefully-chosen, high quality diverse books and research-proven teaching strategies. The strategies are aligned to grade-level literacy standards and science, social studies, and language arts instruction."

"What Is The New York Times Knowledge Network? Building on The Times's decades of active involvement in education, The New York Times Knowledge Network offers a wide range of distinctive adult and continuing education opportunities, including online courses, programs and Webcasts. Some of our programs are offered directly by The Times, while others are presented in collaboration with universities, colleges and other educational institutions. Students in our online continuing education classes benefit from the expertise and experience provided by the faculty of renowned educational institutions, and from the full resources of The New York Times. Some courses are supplemented by The Times' articles and multimedia. Others have The New York Times' editors or reporters as guest speakers or instructors, sharing their timely insights and informed perspectives. In areas ranging from art to business, writing to politics, journalism to science, online programs from The New York Times Knowledge Network are as rich and varied as The New York Times itself."

"The mission of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (RPA) is to help donors create thoughtful, effective philanthropy throughout the world. The organization, a 501-(c)-(3) nonprofit, was developed by the Rockefeller family as its private philanthropy service, and traces its antecedents to John D. Rockefeller, Sr., who in 1891 began to professionally manage his philanthropy as if it were a business." RPA provides research and counsel on charitable giving, develops philanthropic programs, and offers complete program, administrative and management services for foundations and trusts. It also operates a charitable gift fund through which clients can make gifts outside the United States, participate in funding consortia, and operate nonprofit initiatives. The organization is governed by a 17-member board of directors representing the fields of philanthropy, finance, venture capital, education, the arts, broadcasting and medicine (list available upon request, or via BPA currently serves more than 160 donors in advising on giving to more than 60 countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, Latin America and North America. As a whole, the organization has facilitated over $3 billion in grant making and advised last year on nearly $180 million. Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors is one of the world's largest philanthropy services, with 40 full-time staff in our New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco offices. We also work with a group of carefully-selected expert affiliates. Our senior staff members offer an average of 20 years each in grant making experience with major foundations, both U.S. and international, including the Ford Foundation, the Levi-Strauss Foundation, the SmithKline Beecham Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, the New York Community Trust, the Wallace Fund and the John A. Hartford Foundation. Senior staffers are frequent speakers and are quoted often in national publications and media."

"Games for Change (G4C) is a non-profit which seeks to harness the extraordinary power of video games to address the most pressing issues of our day, including poverty, education, human rights, global conflict and climate change. G4C acts as a voice for the transformative power of games, bringing together organizations and individuals from the nonprofit sector, government, journalism, academia, industry and the arts, to grow the sector and provide a platform for the exchange of ideas and resources. Through this work, Games for Change promotes new kinds of games that engage contemporary social issues in meaningful ways to foster a more just, equitable and tolerant society"

"Macmillan is an internationally recognised publisher of encyclopedias, dictionaries and reference works. The award-winning Macmillan English Dictionary was first published in 2002. Crafted by teams of lexicographers in Britain and the United States, it has as its source a corpus, a database containing millions of examples of English as used around the world. Extensive analysis of this corpus of real spoken and written text, using state-of-the-art software, has allowed the dictionary writers to reveal fresh information about how and when words are used. The dictionary has been regularly updated, and the latest edition, presented free online for the first time, includes a thesaurus , fully integrated into the entries. MacmillanDictionary.com also offers unique treatment of metaphor, showing how many ordinary familiar words and phrases have metaphorical meanings, although we do not usually realise this when we use them. MacmillanDictionary.com is the perfect free online dictionary - a one-stop reference for English speakers around the world."

"The Associated Press is the backbone of the world's information system serving thousands of daily newspaper, radio, television and online customers with coverage in all media and news in all formats. It is the largest and oldest news organization in the world, serving as a source of news, photos, graphics, audio and video. AP's mission is to be the essential global news network, providing distinctive news services of the highest quality, reliability and objectivity with reports that are accurate, balanced and informed. AP operates as a not-for-profit cooperative with more than 4,000 employees working in more than 240 worldwide bureaus. AP is owned by its 1,500 U.S. daily newspaper members. They elect a board of directors that directs the cooperative. AP supplies a steady stream of news around the clock to its domestic members, international subscribers and commercial customers. It has the industry's most sophisticated digital photo network, a 24-hour continuously updated online news service, a state-of-the-art television news service and one of the largest radio networks in the United States. It also has a commercial digital photo archive, a photo library housing more than 10 million images. AP has received 49 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other news organization in the categories for which it can compete. It has 30 photo Pulitzers, the most of any news organization. The Associated Press is the essential global news network, delivering fast, unbiased news from every corner of the world to all media platforms and formats. Founded in 1846, AP today is the largest and most trusted source of independent news and information. On any given day, more than half the world's population sees news from AP."

To preserve the legacy of the unprecedented and heroic work of the men and women who served in the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives ("MFAA") section, known as "Monuments Men," during World War II, by raising public awareness of the importance of protecting and safeguarding civilization's most important artistic and cultural treasures from armed conflict, while incorporating these expressions of man's greatest creative achievements into our daily lives. The Monuments Men respected the cultures of others. They risked their lives to preserve that culture. Two Monuments Men were killed in action protecting treasures. As a group the Monuments Men changed the course of history by returning more than 5 million cultural items after the war. Help us preserve the legacy of the Monuments Men and put it to use in protecting cultural treasures from future armed conflict.

"RJI Vision and Mission Reynolds Journalism Institute: Ideas. Experiments. Research. Solutions. 2009 The Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) exists to develop and test ways to improve journalism through new technology and improved processes. In partnership with media organizations and nonprofits, RJI delivers technological and strategic innovations in journalism and advertising. RJI was launched in 2004 with an initial grant of $31 million from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation . In conjunction with the centennial celebration of the Missouri School of Journalism, it officially dedicated its world headquarters in September 2008. This 50,000 square-foot facility on the University of Missouri campus has state-of-the-art resources to test and demonstrate new technologies, experiment with convergence news production and delivery systems, and conduct real-time and virtual seminars and conferences. RJI's work crosses diverse specialties within journalism, including media convergence, editorial content and methods, the evolution of advertising, innovation in management and the impact of new technologies. It also includes varied fields on campus such as law, computer science, marketing, education and other disciplines. The vision The Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute is a world-class center for researching and testing new models of journalism in this era of technological advances. RJI makes the most of its location in a premier, hands-on journalism school at a research-extensive university and the collective creativity of visiting professionals and researchers. It assumes a leading position among centers devoted to journalism and media studies. Exterior view of the new RJI building on 9th Street in Columbia, MO. The mission The Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute engages media professionals, scholars and other citizens in programs aimed at improving the practice and understanding of journalism in democratic soc

"What is Orchard? Orchard Software provides targeted instruction in math, reading, writing, language arts, and science for grades K-9. Combining formative and benchmark assessments aligned with state standards, motivating instruction, and qualitative data reporting, Orchard Software is the preferred choice for thousands of schools across the country looking to improve AYP. Orchard Software provides schools with a powerful solution that enables educators to adapt and deliver both individualized and whole class instruction that meets the needs of all students, including ELL learners and those with special needs. Orchard has proven effective in helping teachers differentiate instruction in multilevel classes and provides flexible pricing and scalability so that any classroom, school, or district can implement and take advantage of Orchard's research-based and motivating content."

"Launched in the West Virginia school system in 2007, Globaloria is a unique pilot course in public middle schools and high schools where students are creating original Flash-based video games about educational topics and social issues using an online social network for learning. Four WV colleges are also offering Globaloria to their students. Hailed by local, state, and national education leaders as a model for educational transformation, Globaloria increases student mastery of state content standards and objectives and 21st-century knowledge and skills by immersing students in a learning-by-doing, STEM game design and programming curriculum that incorporates the latest social media technology tools. Support for Globaloria is provided by Governor and First Lady Manchin, the West Virginia Department of Education, the WV Department of Education and the Arts, Benedum Foundation, Verizon WV, Knight Foundation, Caperton Fund, West Virginia University, and Marshall University."

"Discovery Communications To Launch New Multimedia, Multi-Year Science Initiative, "Be The Future," Supporting Obama Administration STEM Priorities -- DirecTV Boosts Support of Science Literacy with Move of Science Channel to Total Choice, Offering Millions of Additional Subscribers Access to Quality Science Programming -- November 23, 2009 (Silver Spring, Md.) Underscoring its commitment to leading in science-related programming and education, and answering President Obama's call to action to encourage science literacy, Discovery Communications today announced a new multimedia, multi-year nationwide initiative called "Be The Future." Over the next five years, Discovery will launch a programming block, education curriculum and tools to inspire student learning and careers in the sciences and support the White House's efforts behind science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. "Lifting American students from the middle to the top of the pack in STEM achievement over the next decade will not be attained by government alone," said President Obama. "I applaud the substantial commitments made today by the leaders of companies, universities, foundations, non-profits and organizations representing millions of scientists, engineers and teachers from across the country." "The exploration of science, technology and the natural world is central to the mission and DNA of Discovery Communications and we are incredibly proud to put the full muscle of our content and resources behind this critical White House initiative," said John S. Hendricks, founder and chairman, Discovery Communications. "Through 'Be the Future' we will spark the innate curiosity in school-aged viewers and people of all ages, help drive interest and leadership in science-related careers and inspire a lifelong interest in how science shapes our everyday lives." A sweeping, multi-platform initiative, "Be the Future" will be built on two primary Discovery businesse

As part of the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI), the draft K-12 standards are now available for public comment. These draft standards, developed in collaboration with teachers, school administrators, and experts, seek to provide a clear and consistent framework to prepare our children for college and the workforce. Governors and state commissioners of education from 48 states, 2 territories and the District of Columbia committed to developing a common core of state standards in English-language arts and mathematics for grades K-12. This is a state-led effort coordinated by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).