Teaching and Learning!

Celebration of teaching and learning to bring together educators from around the world to explore science and global awareness March 23-24 in New York City! Presented By New York Public Television Stations Thirteen/WNET and WLIW21 Featured Speakers Include: * Former Vice President Al Gore * Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings * News Anchor Tim Russert * PEARL World Youth News Reporters * Lost Boy of the Sudan John Bul Dau * Astronaut Mae Jemison Thousands of teachers and education professionals will converge on Manhattan later this month for the second annual Celebration of Teaching and Learning, a landmark education conference presented by Thirteen/WNET and WLIW21, the public television stations of the New York, New Jersey, Connecticut tri-state area.
Dubbed by many as the World’s Fair for Educators this year’s event will focus on Science and Global Awareness to recognize the 50th anniversary of the historic launch of Sputnik as well as the present-day influence of globalization and its effect on families and communities. The Celebration of Teaching and Learning will take place Friday and Saturday, March 23 – 24, 2007 at Pier 94 in New York City. Headlining the featured speakers at this year’s event is former Vice President Al Gore who will give the closing keynote address a discussion of climate change and the work he is doing around that topic. Mr. Gore’s best-selling book, An Inconvenient Truth, deals with the threat of and solutions to global warming, and his Academy Award-winning film of the same name is the third-highest-grossing documentary of all time. The Celebration of Teaching and Learning will offer workshops that model effective integration of science and global issues awareness in teaching and learning and provide educators with concrete examples to bring to the classroom. Special in the Classroom sessions will demonstrate best practices for using media in teaching, highlighting Thirteen’s well-known programs, such as P.O.V., Nature and Wide Angle.
In addition to Al Gore, featured speakers include U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings; astronaut and physician Dr. Mae Jemison; John Bul Dau, a survivor of a Sudanese massacre who was the subject of the acclaimed documentary God Grew Tired of Us; and Meet the Press anchor Tim Russert, who will host a Town Hall Meeting. Fifteen PEARL World Youth News reporters from eight countries will also be on hand to cover the Celebration of Teaching and Learning. In addition to reporting on the event, the young journalists themselves will be featured in a panel discussion led by internationally acclaimed journalist Daljit Dhaliwal, host of Wide Angle, BBC World News and CNN’s World Report. Other special guests include NPR’s Math Guy Dr. Keith Devlin; physicist Brian Green, author of The Elegant Universe and host of NOVA on PBS; zoologists Chris and Martin Kratt, hosts of the PBS series Kratt’s Creatures; astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, host of NOVA scienceNOW and the Origins miniseries; and Dr. Nalini Nadkarni, star of The Second Voyage of the Mimi and co-founder and president of The International Canopy Network. Keynoting the conference is Dr. Mel Levine, recently featured in the PBS program Misunderstood Minds.
Dr. Levine is the co-founder and co-chair of All Kinds of Minds, a nonprofit institute that develops programs to help parents, teachers, clinicians, and children address differences in learning. We heard from our partners at the New York City Department of Education and the United Federation of Teachers that science and social studies particularly courses with an international focus are priority subjects for students and teachers alike said Ronald Thorpe, vice president and director of education at Thirteen/WNET. Public television has delivered quality programming and educational content in those two areas from the beginning. So this theme was a natural fit for the Celebration. William F. Baker, chief executive officer of Educational Broadcasting Corporation, said, Public television goes well beyond what you see on the screen. Our key mission is to educate and serve the community. As the participation of Al Gore and other internationally renowned experts will attest, the Celebration of Teaching and Learning project is an unprecedented outreach to teachers, administrators, policymakers, and others who support education.
For more information and continuing updates on the Celebration of Teaching and Learning, log on to http://www.thirteencelebration.org .
The site has information for educators, exhibitors and sponsors. Founding Sponsor of the Celebration of Teaching and Learning is JP Morgan Chase. Premier Sponsors are Educational Testing Service (ETS), Prudential Foundation, and United Federation of Teachers (UFT). Major Sponsors are Adobe, The Council of School Supervisors and Administrators (CSA), EF Educational Tours, Fordham University, Friends of Thirteen, Inc., Kumon Math & Reading Centers, The Louis Calder Foundation, National Education Association (NEA), New Jersey Education Association (NJEA), New York State Union of Teachers (NYSUT), and Smart Technologies. Presenting Sponsors are Apple, Inc., Bank Street College of Education, Borders, Dell, Pearson Education, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Teachers College, Columbia University.
Event Sponsors are Adelphi University and Iona College. Media Sponsor is Edutopia. Educational Broadcasting Corporation, headquartered in New York City, is the parent company of public broadcasters Thirteen/WNET and WLIW21 New York. Thirteen is America’s most-watched public television station and WLIW21 has the fourth-largest public television audience in the nation. Both stations are major producers of programming for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) seen on public television stations across the country. In addition to its well-known analog channels, EBC is the provider of a number of digital public television services, including Thirteen HD, Thirteen World, Kids Thirteen, WLIW Create, Thirteen On Demand, and Thirteen/PBS Kids On Demand. EBC also creates, manages and distributes a wide range of educational outreach and online programs, projects and services that extend the power and relevance of public television programming at the local, national and international levels.