As Arts in Education Week concludes, it is a time to recognize the importance of the arts a well-rounded education for all students. Through dance, music, theatre and the visual arts, young children explore the world through sight and sound, creative movement and drama. Through the arts, young persons acquire invaluable cognitive abilities and social skills — […]
Students sit on the floor, attentively listening as the storyteller reads aloud. Several hands shoot up, without further prompting. Students took on the various roles in the story, dramatizing what they were reading and now they are talking about how acting out the story helped them feel the narrative and understand it better. Thoughtful answers […]
The theme of this year’s American Alliance for Theatre and Education (AATE) conference was “Looking Back and Charging Ahead.” On the one hand, the nearly 400 conference attendees recently gathered in Lexington, Ky., to celebrate the 25 years AATE has served its membership of teachers and teaching artists, postsecondary educators and researchers, youth theatre companies, […]
My intern experience at the Department of Education was one that I will never forget! I never thought that as a high school senior I would have an opportunity to intern in a Federal Government agency, editing videos, creating stories, doing live video streams, and plenty of other media-related activities that I desire to pursue […]
As a high school history teacher gazes up at an enormous mural, he begins to plan an activity that engages his students in careful analysis of both the image and its historical context. Listening to a drum beat while she walks in the footsteps of a Civil War soldier, a fourth-grade teacher gains an appreciation […]
April 2012 marks the celebration of the 11th annual Jazz Appreciation Month (JAM). The U.S. Department of Education is joining forces once again with the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History as well as more than 25 governmental, cultural, and community organizations to support this important cultural and educational initiative.
[home_left_column heading='no'] Divisions The Office of Innovation and Improvement (OII) is a strategically designed group of program offices, each serving specific education constituencies with grants, services and information. More than 20 competitive grant programs are administered by five program offices. Additionally, OII also serves as the Department’s liaison and resource to the nonpublic education and military communities through the Office of Non-Public Education and Military Affairs. Lastly, OII is home to ED’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) initiatives team. Office of Education Innovation Programs The Office of Education Innovation Programs administers four grant programs: Education Innovation and Research (EIR); […]
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, in addressing the “new normal” schools are facing – tight budget times that call for doing more with less and finding ways to innovate, increase efficiency and effectiveness, and accelerate reform – released promising practices last March to help states, districts, and schools meet this extraordinary challenge. The Department, in furthering the […]
As 2012 unfolds, the Department of Education continues to pursue an important question for closing the achievement gap: How can online communities of practice (COPs) best address some of the most pressing challenges in P-12 education? For the past year, a multi-pronged effort by the Department’s Offices of Innovation and Improvement (OII) and Educational Technology […]
Inventor and artist. A genius of “hip.” These have been some of the words used to describe Steve Jobs – a 21st-century visionary and innovator whom the world lost on the heels of National Arts and Humanities Month. His iPods, iPads, iTunes, Macs, and apps unleashed exciting new ways of communicating and learning for millions of […]