Saturday, December 22, 2012

6 Habits to Keep Your Teeth Healthy

Poor dental health can make you miserable in more ways than one. A bad tooth can cause pain that will envelope half your head. You could experience temporary loss of function and even tooth loss if problems are unchecked. There are even links between gum disease and other serious problems including heart disease, diabetes, respiratory problems, and failed pregnancies.

Keeping your teeth healthy means maintaining good habits and being quick to take care of problems as soon as they appear. Here are some important ways you can keep your mouth healthy.

1. At home dental care
The most important thing you can do for your teeth is to keep up good hygiene habits including brushing at least twice a day, flossing once a day, and rinsing with mouthwash regularly. If you aren't able to brush immediately after eating, chewing a sugar free gum will help prevent growth of bacteria.

2. Pay attention to your gums too
Most of the things you are doing to care for your teeth will maintain gum health as well and help prevent gum disease, which can cause receding gum lines, bone loss, and tooth loss not to mention other health problems. But be careful not to brush on your gums too hard. Use a soft bristle tooth brush and up and down rather than side to side motions to avoid damaging your gums.
 
3. Regular dental checkups
Even if you have great oral hygiene habits you can still get cavities and infected gums. So it's important to see your dentist regularly for checkups. They will be able to find the first signs of problems even before you can. Also brush your tongue to remove bacteria that causes decay and bad breath.
 
4. Look for signs of trouble
Pay attention to your mouth. Look for dark spots in your molars and indentions or holes in all your teeth. Over sensitivity to cold, sweet, or pressure may also be signs of cavities. Also watch for inflamed, painful, or receding gums, which are signs of gum disease.

5. Act immediately when you notice a problem
Don't delay seeing a dentist hoping your problems will just go away. By the time you notice a problem, it's probably worse than you think. Dentists have a lot of tools in their belts to find and correct problems and minimize damage. But the longer you wait, the fewer your options become.

6. It's never too late to start taking care of your teeth
Maybe you haven't been taking care of your teeth as well as you should have. You may think because you haven't seen any signs of trouble you're OK. But by the time you start feeling pain, damage has already been done. Maybe you think you're destined to dentures already. But you might be surprised what dentists are capable of now.

Whatever the reason, know that the longer you wait, the worse things will be. A filling is a lot less painful than a root canal. A root canal is a lot less painful than pulling a tooth. Even at that point you have options. Today's dental implants function and look just like real teeth. But if your bone or gum tissue is too deteriorated, that may not be an option for you. Go see your dentist, start to brush and floss and commit to keeping these habits up. The only guarantee you have is that if you do nothing you'll lose them all.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

A Shortcut To Finish Your Assignment

If you are still confused finding the quickest way to finish your java project  you may consider finding professional assignment assistance. Instead of only getting mad because you just stuck solving the problems, you can get a shortcut from assignment assistance. Therefore, there are, at least, two options of assignment assistance you can take.

The first option is forming a study group. You can ask four or five friends to form a study group. Then, you can schedule a routine meeting to discuss a lesson or to finish an assignment together. It is very effective as you can share and exchange understanding over a lesson. What is more, you can be helped to finish any difficult problems on your assignment by the help of your friends. In addition, it is very cheap and also fun.

The second option is finding professional assignment assistance. You may visit www.assignmentexpert.com to get professional assistance for your assignment. There will be an online tutor who will help and assist us finishing your assignment. Through online tutoring, you will be given smart shortcuts to solve your problems in a shorter time. If you have a specific difficulty learning a lesson, you will be assisted to master it properly.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Rubrics and Rough Drafts Help Young Writers

There are two things of great importance to learning to write well that many home-school parents may not have considered. Those two things are Rubrics and Rough Drafts. No paper is written at one go. Effective papers require a minimum of three completely separate drafts, tackled with time in-between each. Each of those drafts is written against a clearly laid-out plan, called a rubric.

In my college classroom, I mark and grade all drafts according to a rubric. A rubric is a chart with 10 grading areas worth 10 percent of the grade each. Each draft has a different rubric. For each draft completed, the student receives back from me a blank rubric with scores and comments filled in.

Your teenager at home should begin writing each draft knowing what it must contain in order to do well. However, the rubric is used strictly. If something is not listed on the rubric, then it is not considered as part of the grade. For instance, spelling is not listed in any draft 2 rubric, therefore spelling is not considered in the grade. On the other hand, if the rubric calls for dialogue and your child's paper has no dialogue, then 0 points will be awarded for that category.

One of my students, Jackie, made this comment: "I learned from Mr. Yordy's writing class to follow the rubric. The rubric is the instructions on how to write the essay he wants to read. If you don't follow the rubric, you will have problems! In a similar way, building a bike is harder if you don't follow the instructions."

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Why More and More Families Are Choosing Home Education

Just a decade ago home educating was still considered a rogue alternative but today it is almost mainstream. How their children will be educated is a very personal choice for every family. However, some of the reasons families are choosing home education are:

The Educational Choices in Your City are Less Than Ideal

All public schools are not created equal. First and foremost, each family needs to evaluate if the public school in their area is meeting the needs of their child.

If your child is falling behind academically, being bullied at school or generally not thriving in the public school environment it may be time to closely evaluate what is going on at school.

Many teachers have a large number of students in their classroom and are not able to meet the needs of each child. In some cases, the classroom atmosphere itself may be hard for very kinesthetic children to adjust to. In the traditional public school setting, young boys are 2.5 times more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD.

Parents Want to Customize the Learning Environment for Their Child

Children almost always benefit from having one on one instruction. Daily interaction with your child will uncover his strengths and weaknesses and can greatly encourage him over a learning hurdle.

Many home educating families also realize that certain curriculum choices can have a huge impact in how well your child processes the information. We observed this first hand with all of our children. What curriculum worked for one may not necessarily work for the others.

In a traditional school setting the teacher must find the best teaching approach to reach the greatest number of children. However, if your student is not able to respond well to that teaching approach, your child may end up falling behind.

Academic Performance

Scoring 15 to 30 percentile points higher on standardized achievement test than their public school counterparts, homeschooled students typically do better academically.

This also holds true on the ACT and SAT tests used by college admissions. Homeschool students score above average.

An interesting fact from the National Home Education Research Institute ( NHERI ) states, "Homeschool students score above average on achievement tests regardless of their parents' level of formal education or their family's household income."

Social and Emotional Health


Home educating children also do above average when being measured for emotional, social and psychological development. Leadership skills, peer interaction, self-esteem, family unity and community service were among the research measures evaluated.

This research also shows that homeschool students are regularly participating in educational and social activities outside of their homes. Scouting, 4-H, sports teams, church programs and volunteering in the community expose children to many people outside of their immediate families.

Friday, June 22, 2012

The History Of Home Schooling

Home schooling is also known as home education, and is a method of teaching children in the family home, rather than at an institution, such as a public school. Originally, all schooling was done in the family home, or informally within small communities. Very few children ever went to school, or had private tutelage. Children who did have this type of education were considered to be privileged, and were mainly from wealthy families.

Informal education, mainly conducted in the home, was the only way for children to gain an education. In the US, there were books dedicated to home education, such as "Helps To Education in the Homes of Our Country" authored by Warren Burton. Parents were the main teachers of their children, although, where possible, local teachers would assist parents, and take classes. It is said that before schooling was institutionalized, the US was at its height of literacy skills.

The 19th century saw many significant changes to the way education, and schooling was conducted with the introduction of compulsory school attendance laws. It is now considered a human right that children are given an education provided by the government.

Over the years, there has been much controversy over the effectiveness of institutionalized schooling, and some people have even gone as far as saying that the compulsory schooling system is damaging to younger children, especially boys who are slower to mature.

In the early 1970s, Ray and Dorothy Moore, who later become well known home schooling advocates, researched the bearing that early childhood education had on the mental, and, physical development of children between the ages of 8 to 12 years of age. Through these studies, the Moores produced evidence that formal schooling was damaging to children, and a cause for some behavioral problems commonly found in school aged children.

According to these tests, illiterate tribal mothers in Africa had children that were more socially, and emotionally advanced than children in the western world. The Moores believed that this was largely due to the bond between parents, and their children being broken when children were institutionalized in schooling systems.

In some English speaking countries, it is still an option for parents to home school their children rather than to send them to an institutionalized school. There are a wide variety of home schooling methods available to families who choose to home school their children, rather than send them to schools, including methods such as classical education, Waldorf education, and the Montessori method.

Home schooling can also refer to schooling done in a home environment, with supervision by teachers through correspondence schools. While children are schooled at home, they must still complete compulsory educational subjects, and take tests.

One of the main reasons that parents choose to home school their children is that they feel the schools are unable to offer their children the same quality of education, or social environment that can be taught at home.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Education in Schools

Raban's special interest was the prairie. His book 'bad land' is beautifully crafted, and completely unputdownable.

Jonathan Raban recaptures and tries to recreate the unique ninety-year history of the Montana plains. 'bad land' is part history and part memoir. He reconstructs the whole scene so vividly - people who had read the propaganda, believed it, uprooted themselves from their villages and towns, and came to eastern Montana was with a dream, determined to put down their roots. They learnt how to farm the unforgiving land, deal with inclement weather, and create a society. After a few successful years, though, life became near nigh impossible with conditions becoming harsh and raw, forcing them to move again...

Describing life on the prairie, he talks about education, for all children must go to school....As soon as the homesteaders got their homes going, they would put up the school house, and their place of worship. The schoolhouse was actually at the center of their lives, and in a way it took on the importance of the seat of government - all important topics that related to their life on the prairie, were talked about, discussed, and debated here. The schoolhouse also knitted the group that came from widely different backgrounds into a community.

This is what Raban found:

With schools going up all over the prairie, and there being no qualified teachers, teenage sons and daughters of the homesteaders pitched in, for as long as their labor was not required on the farms. The child-teachers were as much in need of instruction as the children they taught. State-approved textbook were detailed, laying out lessons complete with stage-directions and props for the novice teacher. Educating the educators, thus, was an important part of textbook writing. Randall J. Condon, Superintendent of the Cincinnati Schools and general editor of the Atlantic Readers series, deals with this issue. Talking about the criteria for textbooks, he says: "Are these books intended as 'basal texts'? By all means, for they deal with the most fundamental things in life: character, courage, service. These books teach peace founded on justice, but they teach also the beauty of a willingness to die if need be for the sake of truth and honor, for freedom, conscience and of country."

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Is Virtual Education Good?

The process of education is one of the oldest and most universal aspects of society. No matter who we are or where we come from, it seems that human beings, one way or another, develop a way to teach our children about a variety of subjects that they will need to live successful, happy lives. The goals of education rarely change, but the methods and subjects can change quite a bit. As new technology develops and the structure of society evolves, we adjust our practices accordingly, sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse.

In this day and age, the spread of high speed internet connections, and the proliferation of online video has created a very new and exciting, although potentially problematic, option for high schoolers, which is the ability to take high school classes online. Is this a good idea, and a step forward for students and educators alike? It is hard to say at this point, because this sort of thing has only just become plausible and realistic recently, but there are certainly both advantages and disadvantages to be considered when evaluating the efficacy of this new practice.

One great advantage of taking high school classes online is sheer convenience, and that convenience can take a lot of forms. It can mean rural students, or students who access to certain types of classes is otherwise limited, would have the opportunity to take a wider range of classes. Students also have the ability to take the classes at their own pace. In other words, a more advanced student may be able to speed through the material and have some time to learn the more advanced side of a subject, while a student who is struggling can take the time to review lectures and make sure he understands a concept before moving on.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Elementary School Teachers, Counselors, and Career Education

As teachers and counselors, you know that the elementary school years are important. During the elementary school years, your students build visions of what they desire to do in their lives as they contribute to the workforce. With your help, your students remain open to new career ideas and possibilities. As you work with your students, your students do not make premature career choices or career preparations. For your students, elementary school is a time to build awareness.

As elementary school teachers and counselors, you use career education to promote self-worth, skill development, and decision making strategies. Your activities are designed to build self, family, school, community, and career awareness. You use age-appropriate materials that match your students' developmental levels. These activities expose your students to a variety of different jobs, career information sources, and the reasons why people work.

When you prepare to develop age-appropriate materials products, tests and tools, you use career models like the National Career Development Guidelines (NCDG). The National Career Development Guidelines (NCDG) have domains, goals, and indicators. Each domain represents a developmental area. Under each domain, there are goals or competencies. For each goal, indicators highlight the knowledge and skills needed to achieve the goal. The National Career Development Guidelines (NCDG) prepares you to make materials that are suitable for your students.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Push the Limits of Education Grants for Schools

Education is an important aspect of life that allows people to achieve their dreams. Many people, students and parents alike, however, are having a hard time finding funds to sustain their educational expenses. Some of them, if not many, have even gone to the point of giving up their dreams due to high costs of living despite low incomes.

This situation should not have occurred for the reason that there are in fact education grants for schools that may be available to apply for, especially for those who are having economic difficulties at a certain point of their lives.

Why the need?

Many schools across the country are having financial problems at some point of their existence. From then until now, managements of these schools have been maintaining relations with various funding sources so they can be able to pay for operating costs, as well as the compensation of the administration and teaching staff.

Education grants for schools are an important option. The request for funding by various academic institutions and non-profit organizations can be for anything such as tuition, books, school supplies, pieces of equipment, or additional facilities, such as library and classrooms to accommodate a growing student population.

Sometimes, foundations and other funding institutions provide financial aids for organizing out-of-town trips and school events. Some of these funding programs are also offered as in-kind instead of money, such as land, buildings, or some kind of capitalization.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

Higher Education in Third World Countries

It's proven that many third world countries of Asia and Africa are unable to provide the maximum opportunities to their youth. Ultimately it triggers the youth of these countries to seek educational support from foreign institutes and universities. Definitely a student's main aim is to get the quality education and to do so they visit the online information portals of different international universities which are quite capable of providing the traditional and skill based education with the help of their most professional recourse.

Contrary to this, many international universities allow different students from the neighboring and other third world countries to come across the conventional barriers and gain the maximum knowledge. In this regard different scholarship programs are typically introduced to allow them to enter in the domain of higher education. On the other hand different consultancy firms also help out the needy students to take the maximum helps form their educational consultant and make their dreams come true.

No doubt, there is no such thing like free lunch in this materialistic world, and they have to pay a lot of amount to a consultant or a firm to go through the visa and settlement process. Eventually it is the basic requirement of any student to get the maximum information on a very limited amount of time. Moreover, paying a handsome amount to safe their future is not a bad investment. More or less they survive this difficult step.

Definitely, the role of any educational consultant is to provide the ample opportunity and services to those who really intend to go out from their native places and to educate themselves from the world famous universities in UK, USA and Australia.

No matter what happens in the future but initial educational support is quite helpful in terms of gaining the maximum help. No doubt, different countries like India are supporting their young generation in adjusting abroad for better future. And in this regard various education programs and policies have been made to narrow down this gap. Similarly, students are also offered exclusive government scholarships to avail the opportunity to go out and come back with the degree from Oxford University.

Contrary to this different international organizations are also taking serious initiatives to provide the excellent education facilities. For example United Nations is playing a vital role in building a bridge between the students of the third world countries and the most sophisticated universities of Europe and United States of America.

Friday, March 23, 2012

Criticisms, Conformity and the Real World

Home education families and advocates are often criticized for isolating children and sheltering them from the 'real world'. Rare examples of children who have difficulty acclimating to a school environment after having formerly been home educated are used as fodder by critics in an attempt to prove that home education is faulty. Two main points are always raised, that the children are not given exposure to the 'real world' and that they are not properly socialized. I'd like to address these misunderstandings.

It is important that we first understand that the purpose of the modern government school system is indoctrination. This indoctrination process is performed using three main principles: Conformity, Training and Socialization. Once we understand this, we can begin to understand the weakness in the most popular Home Education criticisms.

Conformity

Indeed there are some isolated cases where a formerly home educated kid is plunked into a government school setting and struggles to conform. Immediately we see this as "failure" because we are now holding the child to that public school standard. Let us step outside the thinking box for a moment though, where we can view the forest from outside the tree line and realize that this is not a failure to "perform" it is actually a failure to "conform". The child is not conforming to a very specific and narrow pre-selected and predetermined set of criteria, chosen by those elusive bureaucrats that run that government system. These bureaucrats are at the mercy of the corporate sponsors who provide financial support. So in essence it is the corporate giants that get to dictate what the average child should "learn" (and I use the word loosely here). When child does not smoothly fall into place with that agenda we call it "failure".

As exemplified in popular home education criticisms, the mainstream seems to be caught in this mentality of blindly trusting that the government school system is the high king of learning. We hold children to those standards and very rarely consider who or what industry developed those standards. We don't ponder what they are based on or for what purpose they were developed. We as a society fail to ask ourselves these questions and so we go on thinking that if a child does not fit into that very particular mold then he/she is a failure.

Friday, March 2, 2012

Education in Third World

With the daily challenges posed by economic difficulty and other threats, governments in developing countries are working very hard to ensure that their educational institutions continue to provide a standard of education that can make its citizens at part with the educated people in more economically sound countries. To a certain extent, these Third World countries have succeeded in their crusade for quality education. The problem is that a good education comes with a price and it is often a price that many people in Third World countries are not able to pay. So, although quality education is available, it is still unreachable for a large segment of a developing country's population.

Certainly, it is impressive to see that developing countries have educational institutions that are world-class and which offer education that can rival that provided by wealthier nations around the world. There is a clear recognition of the role that education plays in overcoming hardship and poverty. However elusive it may be, a good education is still viewed as the best way to a better life.

Among the developing countries that have superb educational systems are such "emerging markets" as Mexico, India, Brazil, Turkey, the Philippines, Egypt, South Africa, Malaysia, Thailand, much of South America and several of the Persian Gulf Arab States.

Obviously, the poorest of the poor in these countries will have a hard time getting into the best schools in their vicinity. Of course, there are always scholarship programs available but these are few. Besides, people at the lowest spectrum of the economic scale are more concerned with more pressing issues related to their mere survival such as where to find food and money for clothing and shelter. After these basic needs are met, that is the only time that parents can really focus on their children's schooling. In fact, studies indicate that once their basic economic needs are met, the first priority of most poor families is how to send their children to a good school.