When preschool teacher Leslie McCollom created the Preschool Gems Twitter feed, it was because precious jewels were slipping through her fingers every day. Jewels like, "My mom lived in the 90's," “I'm feeling poisonous, baby kitty,” and “OK, but I'm still a dragon.” Although she swore she’d remember these gems forever, in five minutes they would vanish, never to be heard by human ears again. So she became a covert anthropologist in the underground world of children, and started carefully cataloging them, and has been gracing the Twitterverse with her findings ever since—such as: “When I went to the chainsaw store I saw someone with REAL bubble gum.” “There's a wolf in my tummy and a porcupine in my bum.” "I don't care about time outs. I only care about my life." "Who are me?” “I love David Bowie. I’m going to marry David Bowie.” Preschool Gems is a collection of the most bizarre, hilarious, jaw-dropping things overheard at Leslie’s school. By turns sweet, sinister, and naively sincere, these treasures prove that kids are really just miniature people who are weirder and a lot less inhibited than their adult counterparts.

When preschool teacher Leslie McCollom created the Preschool Gems Twitter feed, it was because precious jewels were slipping through her fingers every day. Jewels like, "My mom lived in the 90's," “I'm feeling poisonous, baby kitty,” and “OK, but I'm still a dragon.” Although she swore she’d remember these gems forever, in five minutes they would vanish, never to be heard by human ears again. So she became a covert anthropologist in the underground world of children, and started carefully cataloging them, and has been gracing the Twitterverse with her findings ever since—such as: “When I went to the chainsaw store I saw someone with REAL bubble gum.” “There's a wolf in my tummy and a porcupine in my bum.” "I don't care about time outs. I only care about my life." "Who are me?” “I love David Bowie. I’m going to marry David Bowie.” Preschool Gems is a collection of the most bizarre, hilarious, jaw-dropping things overheard at Leslie’s school. By turns sweet, sinister, and naively sincere, these treasures prove that kids are really just miniature people who are weirder and a lot less inhibited than their adult counterparts.

Anyone with an internet connection has the potential to reach millions of people with a single message using Twitter. The 140-character updates and posts, called tweets, allow people to reach as many followers as they can get. Students can use Twitter to their advantage, far beyond talking about favorite sports teams or rock stars. They can use it for creative expression and academics, from research to reporting to a college search. Young entrepreneurs can use Twitter to promote a business. Twenty activities help readers create a portfolio and build a digital footprint that can open doors professionally, academically, and creatively.

Engaged Journalism explores the changing relationship between news producers and audiences and the methods journalists can use to secure the attention of news consumers. Based on Jake Batsell's extensive experience and interaction with more than twenty innovative newsrooms, this book shows that, even as news organizations are losing their agenda-setting power, journalists can still thrive by connecting with audiences through online technology and personal interaction. Batsell conducts interviews with and observes more than two dozen traditional and startup newsrooms across the United States and the United Kingdom. Traveling to Seattle, London, New York City, and Kalamazoo, Michigan, among other locales, he attends newsroom meetings, combs through internal documents, and talks with loyal readers and online users to document the successes and failures of the industry's experiments with paywalls, subscriptions, nonprofit news, live events, and digital tools including social media, data-driven interactives, news games, and comment forums. He ultimately concludes that, for news providers to survive, they must constantly listen to, interact with, and fulfill the specific needs of their audiences, whose attention can no longer be taken for granted. Toward that end, Batsell proposes a set of best practices based on effective, sustainable journalistic engagement.

Written by a respected science educator and advocate for women and girls in STEM fields, this one-stop resource provides a rich overview of efforts to provide women and girls with greater access to educational and career opportunities in traditionally male-dominated STEM fields. Since the passage of Title IX, the numbers of American women working in STEM fields have increased, particularly in the social and biological sciences. Nonetheless, women continue to be underrepresented in STEM disciplines, accounting for less than a third of the current STEM workforce. When the intersection of sociocultural factors such as race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background are examined alongside gender, some demographic groups of women continue to lag in terms of representation in all STEM fields. The reasons cited for this continued state of affairs remain hotly debated, even as efforts intensify to break down longstanding gender barriers and bring women and girls into the worlds of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Women and Girls in STEM Fields provides wide-ranging, complementary coverage of every aspect of the issue, from the historical barriers that confronted generations of American women and girls interested in pursuing careers in various STEM disciplines to the laws and movements that dismantle some of those obstacles. Features include smartly organized chapters on major trends, issues, debates, and historical moments; carefully selected profiles of the key organizations and individuals that have shaped discussions of this subject in Washington, D.C. and across the USA; a suite of original essays from educators, scholars, and women writing about their firsthand experiences in today's STEM world.

Students learn fundamental concepts about matter and overcome common misconceptions through a series of engaging investigations, each followed by a lively discussion based on evidence they have gathered. The activities in this guide help teachers build a foundation of inquisitiveness and develop solid science concepts in students. Activities reinforce an understanding of the states of matter, as students examine real-world materials, some resistant to categorization, and find ways to define each as solid, liquid or gas.

Young children learn about the defensive structures and defensive behaviors of dinosaurs and of familiar animals today.