RESEARCH General Education

EARLY LEARNING
Web site puts preschool teaching advice and materials online

Craig Chamberlain, Education Editor
(217) 333-2894; cdchambe@uiuc.edu

12/1/2001

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Parents, caregivers and teachers of preschoolers in Illinois and beyond have a new online resource to help them educate children and prepare them for school.

The Illinois Early Learning Project, which went online last month, was initiated and funded by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), working with Futures for Kids, an initiative of Lura Lynn Ryan, the wife of Gov. George Ryan. The Web site (www.illinoisearlylearning.org) officially was announced by Mrs. Ryan and Illinois State Superintendent of Education Glenn W. McGee on Nov. 6 in Springfield.

The designer and builder of the site is the University of Illinois-based ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education, which won the $320,000 project grant. It was such an obvious match with clearinghouse expertise and other projects, "there was no way we could pass on it," said Dianne Rothenberg, co-director of the clearinghouse along with UI professor emerita Lilian Katz.

The clearinghouse is one of 16 in the federally funded ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) system, and since 1967 has specialized in making early childhood research accessible to educators. Since 1993, the clearinghouse also has been the home for the National Parent Information Network (NPIN), designed to make the same research readily available to parents and the public.

Parents need all the help they can get, said Kay Henderson, ISBE’s division administrator for early childhood education. The new project, she said, is intended to provide parents and caregivers with the best-researched, most-important information for helping children get the most from their early years.

Accessibility will be a prime focus, since one key goal is to reach even those not easily reached by other means, Henderson and Rothenberg said. The materials on the site will be written in
non-academic language, in both English and Spanish, with some materials also in other languages common in Illinois. On many topics, tip sheets will be available in a form that’s easy to print out and distribute. And at least a dozen workshops and training events already have been scheduled around the state, mostly in underserved areas, to introduce the service to people who can use it.

"We believe that the more information that people have that’s tailored to what they need, at the time they need it, the more likely they are to take advantage of that information and do a better job with the kids," Rothenberg said.

Another goal of the project, which will continue under development through next summer, is to tie the material to Illinois events and issues. Already in place is a calendar and state map through which users can find workshops in given months and given regions. Eventually, all the state’s early learning standards will be listed and defined on the site, with links to related material. Even inexperienced child-care workers and preschool teachers will have teaching material at their fingertips.