American Graduate Champions celebrated at Austin Chamber of Commerce

Posted on September 13, 2016 by Ben Kramer

A packed house at the Austin Chamber of Commerce on Sept. 12th honored four Austin-area American Graduate Champions. In addition, KLRU was able to preview PBS Spotlight Education Week and point attendees to the local American Graduate resources to help educators, parents, and youth. The following Champions were recognized:

Denise Hernandez – Attorney and Mentor, Con Mi Madre
Bavu Blakes – Musician and Teacher, Decker Middle School, Manor ISD
Chaka – Musician and Mentor, E4 Youth
Cortney Jones – Youthbuild Counselor, American Youthworks

See the video shorts of all four Champions

See KLRU’s list of over 200 local Champions

The event coincided with PBS Spotlight Education Week, a series of programs that highlight the current challenges and promises of education in America. Our four local Champions will be featured throughout the week on-air; in addition, Saturday at 1 pm marks the fifth annual American Graduate Day, a four-hour block of national programming with a particular focus of recruiting mentors to assist students on the road to high school graduation and beyond. Following the broadcast, KLRU will premiere AISD Champions, a one-hour showcase of student-created films celebrating peers, teachers, coaches, and counselors who are making a difference in student lives.

Local support for Spotlight Education Week comes from Austin Community College. The national multi-year American Graduate initiative is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

KLRU Summer STEM Resources

Posted on July 18, 2016 by Ben Kramer

KLRU is a proud partner of many summer STEM camp providers in Central Texas. We have built this collection of PBS and other amazing and fun resources for participants in these camps and for anyone to use!

Audiovisual and interactive resources available through PBS MediaLearning site:

Web platforms and interactive games outside PBS that can be used in learning activities:

Code Studio (coding)
Code Academy (coding)
Game over Gopher (elementary math)
Ratio Rancher (secondary math)
Tinker (coding)
Zeega (cinema + digital storytelling)

Software resources outside PBS that can be downloaded and installed on local computers:

Foldit (biology/secondary math)
Scratch (coding/game design)

Summer Learning Day with KLRU Kids!

Posted on July 15, 2016 by Ben Kramer

KLRU Educational Services visited three partner sites yesterday to deliver summer learning fun to kids. All received an armful of fun summer learning materials, including PBS Kids activity books, picture/chapter books, puzzle cubes pointing to free KLRU/PBS Kids apps and websites, and Pete the Cat headbands!

Summer Learning Day is a national event led by the National Summer Learning Association designed to highlight the importance of keeping kids learning, safe and healthy every summer.

#keepkidslearning #klrukids

Resources for the dog days

Posted on July 1, 2016 by Ben Kramer

If you have been hearing this as of late (or maybe since school let out), realize that letting kids remain bored for a while can actually lead to them developing their own creative solutions. If you have given that a try and a) your home is damaged as a result; or b) they really need help finding something new to do, check out this link:

http://www.pbs.org/parents/summer/

KLRU Kids Cake

Posted on April 28, 2016 by Ben Kramer

We are amazed at this three-tier “chocoflan” from the kitchen of Anacleta and her daughter Adriana. They made it to help celebrate their graduation from KLRU’s Play to Learn program at Padrón Elementary in Austin.
This school year, we have had over 200 participants in Play to Learn, a ten-week program for adults and their children ages 2-4 in which they explore a variety of ways to have fun together in activities that are great preparation for future school life. Along the way, they pick up lots of resources to continue the fun at home and on the go, including books, paints and markers, and a Samsung Galaxy Tab loaded with educational apps.

We love Play to Learn, we love Anacleta and Ana, and we love cake!

Sesame Street’s FREE Reading Adventures

Posted on April 28, 2016 by Ben Kramer

¡Books, books, books! Sesame Street announced today a new FREE collection of stories in English and Spanish called “Reading Adventures.” You can get to them from this link – they work on computers, phones and tablets: http://www.sesamestreet.org/games…
‪#‎klrukids

Austin Teacher Receives National PBS Recognition!

Posted on April 12, 2016 by Ben Kramer

PBS LearningMedia has just announced its 2016 National Digital Innovators, and for the second consecutive year, an outstanding faculty member from Westlake High School is on the list. Lisa Johnson is Westlake HS’s Educational Technologist, helping teachers fold cutting-edge digital media into instruction and student creations. Her passion for teaching + technology has resulted in her alter ego “TechChef.” As TechChef, Lisa maintains a TechChef4u blog, Co-hosts “Appy Hours 4 U” and “iVengers Radio”, and has co-authored the professional development ebook “Hot Apps 4 HOTS” with close to 20,000 international downloads.

As a LEAD Innovator, Johnson will travel to Denver to meet with Digital Innovators from across the country in order to share practices and advise PBS LearningMedia on effective uses.

Johnson’s own boys have grown up with Dinosaur Train, WordWorld, and Curious George. Her latest LearningMedia favorite is the Masterpiece Collection, both the original version and the Pinterest variation.

View the complete list of 2016 Digital Innovators here.

PBS LearningMedia provides PreK-12 educators with access to free digital content and professional development opportunities designed to improve teacher effectiveness and student achievement. Currently, the site has over 100,000 resources from the PBS Archives and other important sources such as the National Archives. Learn more about this program at klru.pbslearningmedia.org

Update (April 13, 2016): An additional five local educators have been named Digital Innovators as well for 2016-2017. They are:

Mitch Fairchild – Sci-Tech Preparatory, Austin
Claire Grant – Lanier High School, Austin ISD
Diane Hance – Grisham Middle School, Round Rock ISD
Angela Tackett – Harmony School of Political Science and Communication, Austin
Ryan Torbey – Harmony School of Science, Austin

This group will receive one free year of online professional development options from PBS LearningMedia.

Austin student wins Emperor Science Award

Posted on February 8, 2016 by Ben Kramer

KLRU is thrilled to announce that Mathilda Nicot-Cartsonis, a LASA High School (Austin ISD) junior, has been named a winner of the national Emperor Science Award, a joint initiative by Stand Up to Cancer and PBS LearningMedia.

In addition to receiving a cash award and a Dell Chromebook, Nicot-Cartsonis will be working this summer with Dr. Jenny Chang, Director of the Methodist Hospital Cancer Center in Houston, TX. Chang’s primary work investigates how to target then eradicate chemotherapy-resistant, tumor-initiating cells.

Nicot-Cartsonis, a self-professed fanatic of viruses since the age of 11, has an additional motivation for this quest. Her longtime ballet instructor and mentor, Alexandra Nadal, a co-founder of the Slavin Nadal School of Ballet and 2009 inductee into the Austin Arts Hall of Fame, died in 2015 of a type of cancer being researched by Dr. Chang. Nicot-Cartsonis plans to keep her dual scientist/dancer roles in her university studies.

The Emperor Science Award contest received almost 1,200 applications from 10^th and 11^th grade students from 40 states. Nicot-Cartsonis is one of 100 inaugural winners.

Update: Mathilda’s socks

KLRU’s Work Impacted by New Every Student Succeeds Act

Posted on December 10, 2015 by Ben Kramer

Today President Obama signed into law the Every Student Succeeds Act, the first major national education overhaul since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001. KLRU’s Educational Services work is impacted in two specific ways by the passage of this law.

First, the ESSA Act includes funding for Ready to Learn, the PBS Kids endeavor which leads to the production of high-quality educational shows, apps, online games, and additional resources, and which includes funds for KLRU and 10 other stations nationwide to pilot implementation and distribution of these assets.

Second, one of the new features of the ESSA is that high schools must use graduation rates as one of several measures of progress. KLRU is a participant in the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s American Graduate initiative, and as such, we have been working over the last two years to assemble a body of knowledge and resources about how to enable more students to stay in school and graduate, especially in those schools and among demographic groups with chronically high dropout rates.

In fact, tonight at 5:30 pm, KLRU is taping a student town hall, in which we have gathered well over 100 middle and high school youth for a televised forum on their perspectives on key issues – what challenges do they face on the road toward high school graduation, what resources have they found meaningful, and where do we adults continue to miss opportunities to support them in their journeys? You can RSVP for this event here. Plan to watch Stop The Drop: Engaging Students In Their Futures on December 17 at 9pm.

www.klru.org/americangraduate

Green School Carnival $500 Scholarship – Apply Now!

Posted on October 6, 2015 by Ben Kramer

In Spring 2015, KLRU-TV, Austin PBS worked with Campbell Elementary of Austin ISD, the Austin ISD Sustainability Program and Keep Austin Beautiful to create a “Green” school carnival. Funds to support these efforts came from a PBS Kids Explore the Outdoors grant. Using remaining funds from the grant, we would like to help three schools interested in putting on their own “green” carnival this fall with three $500 grant opportunities. Watch the video for a glimpse of what Campbell did, then think about what you can do to “green up” your carnival. Proposals will be accepted on a rolling basis.

Whether you receive a grant or not, consider contacting Keep Austin Beautiful for free resources and activities.

Go to the application here