Thursday, October 30, 2008

Children's HEALTH & safe INTERNET use

Two articles about important services
Flu Shots PTA Pushes Flu Shots for Kids
Richard Kanowitz told me a story that is every parent's nightmare: He and his
wife put their 4-year-old daughter, Amanda, to bed sick one night, and "in the
morning, she was gone." Amanda had died of influenza B, the plain old seasonal
flu...Kanowitz's Families Fighting Flu group has launched a "say boo to the flu!" campaign,
which is offering to vaccinate the whole family at events in cities around the
country
before Halloween. After that, there's the Parent Teacher
Association's "Let's Fight Flu Together!" program, in which local PTAs can schedule a shot clinic at school, with parents paying $30 per vaccination. (Some health plans cover the cost of flu shots, but not all.) Kanowitz, a lawyer in New York City, is unapologetic about the fact that vaccine maker Novartis is helping fund the PTA
clinics. "Until they create a vaccine to stop me from asking" for money to promote childhood flu vaccinations, "I'll ask," he says... Go to the hyperlinked article for more details
Children's ePals Education and Community 2.0
Posted: 29 Oct 2008 02:05 PM CDT
Community 2.0 has entered the Education space with ePals, which encourages collaboration between classrooms. Growth of this new community has been significant with over 16 million members, in conjunction with 5,000 new classroom joining in as mentioned here. Recently the company was awarded with the 2008 Education Software Review Award granted from the ComputEd Gazette. Edmund Fish, CEO of ePals had this to say regarding their growth:"Increased awareness of safe and effective web-based learning tools, and ePals' decision to provide these services without cost to schools, are important factors in this unprecedented growth. Our members have told us they have chosen ePals because of a combination of a safe, purposeful learning environment; powerful communication tools enhanced for collaboration; meaningful learning opportunities designed to build reading, writing and problem-solving skills that are easily implemented in classrooms; and a large, diverse community of like-minded users so that classroom 'matches' can be global or local, but always productive. This combination makes ePals unique, satisfies user needs and delivers meaningful learning outcomes."

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