The United States has a long history of entrepreneurship, and it currently ranks third in ―entrepreneurial friendliness‖ behind Denmark and Canada, and just ahead of New Zealand and Australia. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, small businesses in the U.S. generate more than half of our nation’s gross domestic product, currently employ more than half of the private workforce, and create more new job opportunities than large businesses each year. If entrepreneurship, then, is so important to our nation and to our students’ futures, why does it receive so little attention in the classroom?

Aside from providing families with endless hours of entertainment and debate, genetics and heredity are an important part of every student’s science education. Our genes are like little blueprints that provide instructions to our bodies and determine our physical traits. Humans, for example, have between 20,000-25,000 genes. Most organisms encode their genes on long strings of DNA called chromosomes, and there are hundreds (or sometimes thousands) of genes in each chromosome. In school, students learn about genes and patterns of inheritance by using Punnett Squares or other diagrams to help predict the likelihood of certain traits being passed down from parents to offspring. It’s a nice, visual way of keeping track of dominant and recessive traits, and of making sense of what can initially be intimidating material to learn.

JES & Co announced today that they are collaborating with WGBH to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1961 Freedom Rides and support a special Oprah Winfrey show. Oprah will dedicate her entire show today to honoring the Riders and has invited all the living participants in the original Freedom Rides to Chicago for a taping of the show. The original Riders will be joined by five participants in the 2011 Student Freedom Ride, who will recreate the seminal 1961 civil rights milestone from 5/6 to 5/16.

Freedom Riders, a production of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, premiers on PBS May 16th at 9 EST. More than 400 Americans risked their lives as Freedom Riders in the summer of 1961, deliberately violating Jim Crow laws in the Deep South.

Breaking Down the Walls Between the Library and the Classroom

Diny Golder, the Executive Director of JES & Co, will be speaking at the IMS Global Learning Consortium international Learning Impact conference on Wednesday May 18, 2011 in Long Beach, California. Ms. Golder will be speaking on “Breaking Down the Walls Between the Library and the Classroom.” Presenting with Ms. Golder will be Dr. Fred Stielow representing the American Public University System and Marc Kelberman from Oracle.

The Global Learning Resource Connection (GLRC) is an international collaboration of world class companies, organizations, education agencies, and nations. The GLRC is making resources correlated to learning objectives available for use in the classroom with the help from many of our Premier Sponsors and Partners including The American Association for the Advancement of Science, The American Association of School Librarians, Cengage/Gale, Center for Natural language Processing, Cisco, Education Services Australia, IMS Global Learning Consortium, Library of Congress, Michigan eLibrary, Microsoft, National Education Association (NEA), National Science Foundation, Teach Engineering, Teachers Domain, and WGBH (PBS- Boston).