Large Grant Focuses on the Achievement Standards Network, Common Core State Standards, and New Network Services

JES & Co. is excited to announce that they have received a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to sustain and continue development of the Achievement Standards Network (ASN) and to expand the ASN’s services. The Achievement Standards Network provides access to machine-readable representations of learning objectives published by education agencies and organizations. The National Governors Association (NGA) and Council of Chief State School Officer’s (CCSSO) released Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in Mathematics and English Language Arts. The ASN contains the Common Core standards and as part of the grant, JES & Co. will enable searching by alternate codes published by CCSSO using existing ASN technical services.

The Gateway gets a complete new look and several new features!

JES & Co. announced today the launch of a robust build of the Gateway to 21st Century Skills (Gateway). The homepage (www.thegateway.org) has been simplified with easy to use icons. A daily contribution from Today in Literature provides a daily calendar of engaging stories about literary history. A resource recommendation engine will allow user searches to return a more-like-this list of similar resources. The new Gateway will also feature one click access to current and past weekly educational topics covered by Gateway columnists, Joann and Peggy.

The Achievement Standards Network is Providing Learning Objectives to the Learning Registry

The U.S. Departments of Education and Defense announced the launch of the Learning Registry, an open source community and technology designed to improve the quality and availability of learning resources in education. The launch is an important milestone in the effort to more effectively share information about learning resources, including how the resource meets state and national learning objectives. "JES & Co. is very pleased to be part of the Learning Registry community and we are excited that the Achievement Standards Network (ASN) provides the framework for describing global learning objectives along with U.S. state and national academic standards," explains Diny Golder, Executive Director of JES & Co.

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.