If you are thinking about enrolling your child in public school, here are some things to consider:

1. Do a thorough search of local private institutions. Some of the smaller or more elite schools are not widely advertised. In addition to checking the phone book, public school system, and board of education, you also may want to make personal inquiries of neighbors, friends, and coworkers. Try a Web search for private schools in your area.

2. When you’ve compiled a list, start making phone calls or check the Web to eliminate those that won’t work for your family. Reasons may include transportation distance, school hours that conflict with job schedules, tuition fees, curriculum concerns, and personal values.

3. After whittling your list to those that meet your initial criteria as indicated in Number 2 above, make a telephone inquiry to ask more detailed questions like the following:

-Which curriculum is followed?

-How does student performance compare to public school student performance?

-What are the grading criteria?

-How many children are enrolled?

-What is the teacher to student ratio?

-Are there volunteers or teacher aides that help?

-Which extracurricular activities are provided or are available for individual students? (Music, art, foreign languages, creative writing, etc.)

-What is the school’s discipline policy?

-Are parents required to volunteer a certain amount of time each month?

-What happens if tuition payments fall behind?

-Are uniforms required?

4. Reviewing your list of responses with spouse and child (if applicable), schedule visits to the top three or four schools for a tour and to meet with the administrator. Try to go when school is in session. As you go through the school tour, consider these points:

-Is the facility functional, neat, and attractive?

-Are students respectful and well behaved?

-Do teachers appear to be confident and in control?

-Is the setting conducive to learning?

-Is student work posted for display?

-Are honors, awards, and trophies in evidence?

5. During your meeting with the administrator, be prepared with focused and open-ended questions:

-What is the drop-out rate?

-What is the average grade point accumulation of a graduating student?

-What percentage of students go on to college after graduation and successfully complete a degree or commence a career training program at the vocational school level or as an apprentice?

-What is the communication network between teachers and parents or the school and families like? Is there a monthly newsletter or Website in addition to take-home handouts?

-Are there field trips or other off campus outings?

-Are values taught or practiced? If so, what are they?

-What advantages does this school offer to public school or other private institutions?

5. Follow your instincts. Try to observe students at lunch, on break, and in the classrooms. Get a sense of how well this system seems to work. If you have doubts, visit other schools until you find one that you feel good about. If possible, bring your child for a visit before making the decision to enroll.

Private school can offer an attractive alternative to public school these days. But take time to find one that meshes with your family’s academic goals.

The art of note-taking means that you do just that: you capture the “essence” of a speaker’s remarks rather than try and recount the entire event. But how do you boil it down to basics? Here are some tips that may help:

1. Look for the main idea of the presentation. The title, the speaker’s credentials, and the program outline may provide an overview of the main ideas. Of course it will be impossible to record everything the speaker says unless you plan to use a tape recorder. Instead, plan to jot down a few ideas beside each main point. Some speakers provide PowerPoint handouts or an outline with headings and subheadings. Use these for adding your own ideas.

2. Link main ideas together. As you note patterns that emerge from the presentation, like numbered points between one and five, for example, take notes about these linkages and what they suggest about the overall thesis, or main point. If your handout does not list subpoints, add some of your own, and write a brief explanation for each. In this manner a consistent thread of related meaning can be traced through the entire event.

3. Jot down key words and phrases rather than complete sentences. If you quote the speaker’s comments randomly, use double quotation marks around them to show they were his or her precise words. If time permits, you may want to write a few sentences of summary after each section or following the presentation to help you recall the theme or main idea later.

4. Organize your notes methodically. For example, you may choose to number them using Arabic or Roman numerals. Or you may simply write out main ideas followed by a list of dashes leading to support details. Draw a squiggly line between sections of notes or between speakers’ comments’ notes, if there is more than one presenter. If you use shorthand, be sure you will be able to interpret it later.

5. Consider typing out your notes following the presentation. Unless you have used a laptop during the session, you may find you have several pages of notes that may be hard to decipher. If the session was important for your job or school, you can prepare a typed edition with condensed or expanded notes that come to mind as you rehearse it in your mind again. Then keep the notes on file for future reference, which will optimize the value of the presentation for a long time to come.

Taking notes is not just for secretaries. If you plan to attend an event where someone will be speaking about a topic that is important to you, be prepared to jot down key ideas in a form that you can use later.

People born in another country who want to learn English generally have good reasons for wanting to do so. Some of them plan to move here or have immigrated already, while others know that English is the primary language of international business.

If you want to help a non-native person learn to speak English, here are some easy ways to help him or her:

1. Practice informal conversation skills. Most people who are trying to learn English are eager to speak the language with a native. They will try out a few words or an expression, hoping to make a good impression and draw you into conversation so they can learn more. If that happens, speak naturally but distinctly so that the person can understand to the best of his or her ability. Use basic conversational words while avoiding slang or regional expressions, which the non-native may not know.

2. Offer help with grammar drills. If the non-native person is not already in an English class, you may want to write out a few basic grammar drills. For example, write a verb at the top of a page, and below it, conjugate the verb’s usage with all the singular and plural persons of speech:

To Talk:

I talk

you talk

he or she talks

it talks

we talk

they talk

Repeat each expression, encouraging the other person to say it after you.

3. Suggest television viewing. Thirty-minute weekly television programs are helpful because they set up a situation that is ongoing and easy for the viewer to follow in terms of understanding context and learning names. If possible, watch the show together and point out characters’ names, along with basic traits or actions in simple terms the non-native speaker can follow. Try to discuss the show afterward, beginning with easy phrases or comments:

“Funny, wasn’t it?”

“Did you like it?”

4. Pass along newspapers and magazines to read.

Even if the person has limited English skills, becoming familiar with the shape of English letters and print of common words will help the non-native begin to identify them. If you have time, point to a word or sentence and pronounce it, encouraging your friend to say it after you.

5. Visit public places. Go shopping, see a museum, stop by the park, or take the bus in order to experience new sites together. Use simple expressions to name or describe each location or main features. Your friend will begin to learn these as you say them, and the time spent together will hopefully prove mutually enjoyable.

In addition, you can recommend that your friend look up English grammar skills on the Internet, or pick up a grammar guide at the bookstore. Many of these are geared to people from other cultures. Remember to be patient, and consider referring your friend to the local International Institute or other agency that provides free or inexpensive English classes or tutoring.

1. Make sure you have a signed, valid passport and visas, if required. Also, before you go, fill in the emergency information page of your passport!
2. Read the Consular Information Sheets (and Public Announcements or Travel Warnings, if applicable) for the countries you plan to visit.
3. Leave copies of your itinerary, passport data page and visas with family or friends at home, so that you can be contacted in case of an emergency. Keep your host program informed of your whereabouts.
4. Make sure you have insurance that will cover your emergency medical needs (including medical evacuation) while you are overseas.
5. Familiarize yourself with local laws and customs of the countries to which you are traveling. Remember, while in a foreign country, you are subject to its laws!
6. Do not leave your luggage unattended in public areas and never accept packages from strangers.
7. While abroad, avoid using illicit drugs or drinking excessive amounts of alcoholic beverages, and associating with people who do.
8. Do not become a target for thieves by wearing conspicuous clothing and expensive jewelry and do not carry excessive amounts of cash or unnecessary credit cards.
9. Deal only with authorized agents when you exchange money to avoid violating local laws.
10. When overseas, avoid demonstrations and other situations that may become unruly or where anti-American sentiments may be expressed.

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think – rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men.  ~Bill Beattie

The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.  ~Sydney J. Harris

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.  ~Albert Einstein

The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize.  ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

It’ll be a great day when education gets all the money it wants and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy bombers.  ~Author unknown, quoted in You Said a Mouthful, Ronald D. Fuchs, ed.

An educational system isn’t worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn’t teach them how to make a life.  ~Author Unknown

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.  ~Attributed to both Andy McIntyre and Derek Bok

It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.  ~Robert G. Ingersoll

Education… has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.  ~G.M. Trevelyan

To the uneducated, an A is just three sticks.  ~A.A. Milne

Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education.  Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization.  We must make our choice; we cannot have both.  ~Abraham Flexner

Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.  ~Edward Everett

Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.  ~Ezra Pound

Education should be exercise; it has become massage.  ~Martin H. Fischer

The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives. ~Robert Maynard Hutchins

He who opens a school door, closes a prison. ~Victor Hugo

Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail.  What you gain at one end you lose at the other.  It’s like feeding a dog on his own tail.  It won’t fatten the dog.  ~Mark Twain

My idea of education is to unsettle the minds of the young and inflame their intellects.  ~Robert Maynard Hutchins

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.  ~Will Durant

Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?  ~Erich Fromm

Education aims to give you a boost up the ladder of knowledge.  Too often, it just gives you a cramp on one of its rungs.  ~Martin H. Fischer

Education would be much more effective if its purpose was to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they do not know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it.  ~William Haley

I read Shakespeare and the Bible, and I can shoot dice.  That’s what I call a liberal education.  ~Tallulah Bankhead

A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.  ~George Santayana

Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.  ~Malcolm S. Forbes

An educated person is one who has learned that information almost always turns out to be at best incomplete and very often false, misleading, fictitious, mendacious – just dead wrong.  ~R. Baker

What does education often do?  It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.  ~Henry David Thoreau

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught.  ~Oscar Wilde, “The Critic as Artist,” 1890

To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil’s soul.  To Miss Mackay it is a putting in of something that is not there, and that is not what I call education.  I call it intrusion.  ~Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

If I had learned education I would not have had time to learn anything else.  ~Cornelius Vanderbilt

Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity.  ~Aristotle

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.  ~G.K. Chesterton

In the education of children there is nothing like alluring the interest and affection; otherwise you only make so many asses laden with books.  ~Michel de Montaigne

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.  ~Robert Frost

Children have to be educated, but they have also to be left to educate themselves.  ~Abbé Dimnet, Art of Thinking, 1928

Learning, n.  The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.  ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

The modern world belongs to the half-educated, a rather difficult class, because they do not realize how little they know.  ~William R. Inge

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.  ~Aristotle

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.  ~Mark Twain

When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course.  ~Peter Drucker

If a man is a fool, you don’t train him out of being a fool by sending him to university.  You merely turn him into a trained fool, ten times more dangerous.  ~Desmond Bagley

Education is the movement from darkness to light.  ~Allan Bloom

Much education today is monumentally ineffective.  All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants.  ~John W. Gardner

There is nothing so stupid as the educated man if you get him off the thing he was educated in.  ~Will Rogers

Education is not filling a pail but the lighting of a fire.  ~William Butler Yeats

Education, n.  That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.  ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

A good teacher must know the rules; a good pupil, the exceptions.  ~Martin H. Fischer

With just enough learning to misquote.  ~George Gordon, Lord Byron, “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers”

There is only one Education, and it has only one goal:  the freedom of the mind.  Anything that needs an adjective, be it civics education, or socialist education, or Christian education, or whatever-you-like education, is not education, and it has some different goal.  The very existence of modified “educations” is testimony to the fact that their proponents cannot bring about what they want in a mind that is free.  An “education” that cannot do its work in a free mind, and so must “teach” by homily and precept in the service of these feelings and attitudes and beliefs rather than those, is pure and unmistakable tyranny.  ~Richard Mitchell, The Underground Grammarian, September 1982

The regular course was Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with; and then the different branches of Arithmetic – Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.  ~Lewis Carroll

Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve.  ~Roger Lewin

They say that we are better educated than our parents’ generation.  What they mean is that we go to school longer.  It is not the same thing.  ~Richard Yates

I think everyone should go to college and get a degree and then spend six months as a bartender and six months as a cabdriver.  Then they would really be educated.  ~Al McGuire

The tragedy of education is played in two scenes – incompetent pupils facing competent teachers and incompetent teachers facing competent pupils.  ~Martin H. Fischer

A gentleman need not know Latin, but he should at least have forgotten it.  ~Brander Matthews

If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin, they would never have found time to conquer the world.  ~Heinrich Heine

You send your child to the schoolmaster, but ’tis the schoolboys who educate him.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

One attraction of Latin is that you can immerse yourself in the poems of Horace and Catullus without fretting over how to say, “Have a nice day.”  ~Peter Brodie

The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with truths for which Archimedes would have given his life.  ~Ernest Renan, Souvenirs d’enfance et de jeunesse, 1883

Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.  ~John Dewey

Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.  ~John Maynard Keynes

Education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know.  ~Daniel J. Boorstin, Democracy and Its Discontents

I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.  ~Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Education is the process of driving a set of prejudices down your throats.  ~Martin H. Fischer

It doesn’t make much difference what you study, as long as you don’t like it.  ~Finley Peter Dunne

Do you know the difference between education and experience?  Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don’t.  ~Pete Seeger

We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Intelligence appears to be the thing that enables a man to get along without education.  Education enables a man to get along without the use of his intelligence.  ~Albert Edward Wiggam

The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas.  ~George Santayana

The founding fathers… provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called education.  School is where you go between when your parents can’t take you and industry can’t take you.  ~John Updike, The Centaur, 1963

You can get all A’s and still flunk life.  ~Walker Percy

The more that learn to read the less learn how to make a living.  That’s one thing about a little education.  It spoils you for actual work.  The more you know the more you think somebody owes you a living.  ~Will Rogers

My parents told me, “Finish your dinner.  People in China and India are starving.”  I tell my daughters, “Finish your homework.  People in India and China are starving for your job.”  ~Thomas L. Friedman

All the learnin’ my father paid for was a bit o’ birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.  ~George Eliot

Education is the transmission of civilization.  ~Ariel and Will Durant

The one real object of education is to have a man in the condition of continually asking questions.  ~Bishop Mandell Creighton

If you sincerely desire a truly well-rounded education, you must study the extremists, the obscure and “nutty.”  You need the balance!  Your poor brain is already being impregnated with middle-of-the-road crap, twenty-four hours a day, no matter what.  Network TV, newspapers, radio, magazines at the supermarket… even if you never watch, read, listen, or leave your house, even if you are deaf and blind, the telepathic pressure alone of the uncountable normals surrounding you will insure that you are automatically well-grounded in consensus reality.  ~Ivan Stang, High Weirdness By Mail

Most Popular Online Programs

Business

Business degrees programs are the undisputed leader, when it comes to online programs. The reason is perhaps the vast opportunities that this field offers. Being highly competitive, there is a constant need for executives to upgrade their skills. Though there are various levels of business-related online courses such as Associates, Bachelors, Masters, etc., but the Bachelor’s and the Master’s stand above the rest.

Criminal Justice

Criminal Justice strives to be one among the top ten courses that students prefer to learn online all over the world. Growing number of people are finding huge interest in jobs related to law enforcement, forensics, security services, etc, because of which, there is a huge spur in the demand of this course.

Arts and Design

Art and Design is a natural choice for students having a creative bent of mind. Jobs involving creativity are well paid and well respected today. Hence, there is high demand for this course. Whether it is Animation, Interior Design, Graphic Design or Fine Arts, there is a lot that this field has to offer to the students.

Computer Science

When it comes to the field of computers, certain courses related to its specific divisions such as Networking, Web Development, Java, etc. are in great demand. In fact, a Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology is also one of the hot favorite programs in distance learning. With the technological boom at its peak, the sector has vacancies in plenty for the computer professionals.

Healthcare

Healthcare is another popular online program that is opted for by many people, for the simple reason that there is more demand for healthcare professionals all over the world. And amongst the various specializations, nursing degree courses score over the others. The reasons are many – the continuous evolution of healthcare industry, availability of well paid jobs in nursing, short supply of professionals in nursing vis-à-vis their demand, etc.

Education

The education program has suddenly got new buyers. The reason behind it is said to be the growing number of opportunities in the administration line. People are rushing to enroll themselves for the Bachelor’s and Master’s online degrees in education.

Engineering

No matter that it is the business program that has been able to gather all the hype, the engineering program is also sought after by many when it comes to distance learning. Though undergraduate engineering programs are not much in demand, but with the foray of graduate online programs in the market, people have grabbed the golden opportunity with both hands.

Psychology

The field of psychology has also made a successful attempt in invoking interest in the minds of online learners to pursue this subject. The focus area in this field is cognitive science. Offering higher levels of learning such as Ph.D and Masters, these courses help in shaping up the career.

Culinary

When it comes to the field of Culinary, the most attractive online course is Bachelor of Arts in Hospitality and Restaurant Management. Offered by various schools of reputed genre, this stream is going to be in great demand in a short time.

Accounting

Accounting is yet another field of study that has made its mark in the top ten online degree programs.

Now that you are aware of the fields of study that have caught the fancy of numerous people like you, select the course that best utilizes your skill set in a positive manner. The demand for online degree courses is on a greater side due to many reasons. The demand for online degree programs changes with a change in the economic trends.

Source: http://populartop10.com/top-10-most-popular-online-degree-courses/

Well, no panic if you do not have all answers to these questions. You will find them in this article! Let us start.

WHAT IS ACTION RESEARCH?

Action research aims at evaluating students’ educational practical training.

WHAT IS AN ACTION RESEARCH PAPER?

An action research paper is a project that presents action research and theory to cover the topic under investigation. Usually, students prepare action research papers after the completion of the educational practical training period. It is a brief review of the work done.

WHY DO STUDENTS NEED TO WRITE ACTION RESEARCH PAPERS?

Well, there are three main purposes of writing an action research paper:

1. To improve knowledge of the chosen field of study;
2. To analyze the work done better;
3. To demonstrate knowledge gained at the classroom.

Here are several research paper tips you may use while writing your action research paper:

• Context:
  • Introduce the place of practical trainings: statistical data (number of students, teachers), general info about the institution, etc.
  • Describe your students: their age, strengths and weaknesses, etc…
• Project:

Present those programs you used during the practical training: techniques, approaches, timetable, etc…

• Data presentation:

You have surely gathered a lot of material. Be ready to analyze, group, and present it in a proper way. You can prepare an interesting action research paper by adding slides, pictures, tables. Thus, you will make this action research paper more involving to read.

It is much easier to write an action research paper using an outline. The outline of an action research paper does not differ from those you write for regular assignments. So, use the tips for preparing a research paper outline presented on our weblog.