Teri Talan facilitates group discussion at the Early Childhood Educators Academy.


Early Childhood Educator’s Academy 2006

The 2nd Annual Early Childhood Educator’s Academy was held on Saturday, April 1st at Rio Salado College’s Conference Center in Tempe, AZ. Jill Bella and Teri Talan, national trainers from the McCormick Tribune Center for Early Childhood Leadership, presented the ‘Program Administration Scale’ (PAS) as an evaluation tool for early childhood program administrators, with specific focus on using the PAS to benchmark quality and improve administrative practices, the director’s role as a change agent, and the nature of individual and organizational change. The Academy was attended by nearly 100 representatives from early childhood programs, non-profit organizations, community colleges and the Chase Early Education Emergent Leaders Program. This event was sponsored by the Governor’s Office for Children, Youth and Families, Chase Early Education Emergent Leaders Program, Southwest Human Development, The National Center for Teacher Education, Mesa Community College, Glendale Community College and Rio Salado College.


The RWLO Library

Real World Learning Objects (RWLO’s) are concise core instructional internet-based activities focused on discrete topics in higher education mathematics, science, educational technology, teacher education, and language arts.  Through a PT3 grant partnership project, faculty members from the Maricopa Community Colleges have developed and contributed many RWLO’s to this online resource library.

RWLO’s are intended to facilitate the engagement of learners in technology-rich, constructivist, and inquiry-based experiences.  They utilize unique and compelling (real time data, collaborative, primary source, or web publishing) resources that are easily used in similar courses at other institutions of higher education and focus on inquiry-based and/or problem-solving activities that are relevant to students.

The RWLO library may be found at: www.ciese.org/pathways/rwlo

These Real World Learning Objects were developed for the PT3 Pathways Project with funding from the U.S. Department of Education.


Future Educators of Arizona Conference

The Arizona Department of Education, Maricopa Community Colleges/NCTE, Arizona State University and Future Educators Association sponsored the Future Educator’s of Arizona Conference on Monday, April 17th. The event was hosted by the Arizona Science Center in Phoenix, attended by over 250 students from 20 high schools and 8 community colleges, and included sessions on resume development, attending college, student teaching, early childhood education, special education and science instruction.

Two of the most attended sessions were facilitated by Maricopa Community College representatives. Christie Colunga, PVCC Early Childhood Education Program faculty, and Rosemary Hooper, PVCC Early Childhood Center Supervisor, presented Opportunities in Early Childhood Education. Participants were particularly enthusiastic about how the hands-on activity was used to demonstrate stages of cognitive development. Vivian Miranda, EMCC Director of Early Outreach Programs, presented What You Need to Know and Do to Succeed in College. According to Ms. Miranda, “(High school students) have so much energy and hope. The key to presenting to a group of 16-18 year old teenagers is to make a connection with their world.” Without a doubt, both of these sessions achieved that goal.