Schools have changed dramatically in the last two decades with the advancements that have been made in technology. One of teachers' main concerns is the appropriate selection of software for classroom use (Hall and Martin, 1999). In our technology driven world, it is essential for future educators to learn all they can about technology. Teachers use software as a supplement or enrichment for curriculum taught in the classroom. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate software for its most effective use in the classroom. There are many different software applications on the market, and it is crucial that teachers know how to provide input when selecting these for their classrooms. T. Oppenheimer (1997) suggests, based on a 1996 poll taken by U.S. teachers, that computer skills and media technology is more essential than the study of European History, biology, chemistry, and physics. This study was designed to create a checklist for teachers to use when evaluating software specifically used in a balanced literacy program. The purpose is to answer the following questions: 1. Can an instrument be developed for the evaluation of software to be used in a balanced literacy program? 2. What are the results of applying such an instrument to selected software? This paper reviews literature related to software evaluation and observation of software used in elementary classrooms. The checklist is comprised of scoring systems of various related checklists and rubrics that deal with evaluating software, and there are a few original questions based on relevant information about children's learning, literacy in the classroom and technology in the classroom. The software was selected due to my previous observations and seminars attended that related to software usage in the classrooms.

At some point during their education children seem to lose their motivation to read. Teachers are becoming more aware of this phenomenon and realize that just teaching children the skills of reading is no longer a sufficient means of ensuring high quality literacy education. It is equally important to help children learn to value reading. Unfortunately it is becoming ever more prevalent to find children who do not read voluntarily. This group of people who can read but choose not to are known as aliterates. What role does the classroom library play in combating aliterate readers? The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between aliteracy and classroom libraries. The methodology used is a literature review of relevant research articles and scholarly works related to this topic. In the studies reviewed, researchers examined the prevalence of classroom libraries in schools and the characteristics of the classroom library that are most effective in influencing children to read on their own. From the data reviewed, recommendations for the physical set-up, collection, and introduction of a classroom library have been presented.

ABSTRACT Aldous Huxley stated that "Every man who knows how to read has in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full , significant and interesting." For young students learning to read and expand their minds, there is no better time than the present to gain a love of reading. Yet, so many students expend the energy to learn how to read, only to choose never pick up a book. This study serves to show one characteristic of reading: aliteracy. From the mouth of a fifth grade student, aliteracy is "when you spend a lot of time learning how to read, but you just never take the time to do it." After first conducting focus groups with fifth grade students at a public elementary school, the researcher focused on three distinctly different students who posed diverse sides of aliteracy. By conducting interviews with these students, a better understanding of aliteracy can be achieved. Through this understanding, positive changes in our schools and our reading programs can hopefully be achieved.

Values and ethics taught through children's literature can be effective in helping develop good character in students. Actively involving children in learning through art forms helps increase meaning and understanding. Art forms such as creative dramatization, pantomime, creative interpretation, role playing, and reader's theater are concrete learning strategies that extend children's literature. With these hands-on strategies, the outcome is that children will remember the values learned through children's literature and apply them in their own life. This study is designed to select children's literature for teaching ethics and values through use of art forms. The purpose is to answer the following questions: 1. Which children's literature can be used to teach ethics and values? 2. Of that literature (selected for #1), which children's literature can be used to teach ethics and values through use of art forms? The methodologies used are a literature review of relevant research articles and an analysis of children's literature for elementary grade levels (k-6) related to this topic. In the studies reviewed, researchers examine ethics and values in children's literature and the use of art forms. First, books are selected that meet criteria for quality children's literature; then, criteria for ethics and values; finally, criteria for art forms. From the data and children's literature reviewed, specific examples of children's literature, with listed values and suggested art forms, are categorized by genre and presented as a selection of children's literature for teaching values and ethics through use of art forms.

Prominent within various scientific journals, news media outlets, and online publications are conversations surrounding what is dubbed “climate anxiety.” This wide-stemmed social unrest is caused, in large part, by the unrelenting, consistent data from the scientific community reporting rising sea levels, species extinction, and “record-breaking” heatwaves as well as an increasing average of global temperatures, that seem to top the next every year for the past decade. However, an underlying thread to these reports remains largely consistent. Unless serious regard is given to our natural surroundings and how we have come to interact within it, regions of the Earth considered desirable for human life will likely become uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable to humans and other species. When addressed so simply and plainly, it seems that the response to such life-altering implications ought to be simple: do whatever it takes to ensure that a diversity of life, including that of humankind, can continue on the planet Earth. Voices of the scientific community have decreed that a driving force behind the lackadaisical approach to deterring such dire climatological circumstances, is the inability to grasp the immense scope of climate change issues. This thesis, then, aims at proposing a directive to correct this problematic mentality, and a specific generation to combat this nature. Using the lens of ecocriticism, the study of literature and the environment, combined with cutting-edge theoretical findings in the field, I will focus on the literary portrayal of climate change within young-adult dystopian fiction. While regarding the scholarship on the recent increase of YA fiction that takes a critical approach to human ethics and the portrayal of the demise of the natural environment in those texts, I will examine how this trend responds to my ideas of young-adult fiction functioning within Ecocriticism. Moreover, you will see a pattern charting how literature can revolutionize and evolve the mind frame of human ethics on a planetary scale, starting with the young adult readers. Further, I will highlight how these ideologies could and ought to be incorporated into a composition classroom. Composition already has a strong history of grounding itself in the notion of identity, and how contingent factors (social, political, economic, ecological, etc.) are integrated into the construction of that identity. This thesis poses that if we can introduce a sense of how those factors affect our ability to act in the natural world and potential consequences of these actions by way of pop culture outlets like YA Climate Fiction, readers can begin to re-shape our identities and actions, individually and collectively, towards Ecocritical ethics and awareness.

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"A Master's paper submitted to the faculty of the School of Information and Library Science of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Library Science." / Title from PDF title page (viewed on May 21, 2006). Includes bibliographical references (p. 22-23, 28-33).

"It is the purpose of this paper, therefore, to explore some of those books included in several literary selection tools in order to determine whether they present the needs of children and the satisfaction of those needs in terms of experiences showing developmental values of a social and ethical nature. To recognize that a certain youngster needs more self-confidence, to give him a book in which the hero is beset by the same situation and overcomes it, and then to sit back with the calm expectation of seeing a miracle wrought would be optimistic to the point of simple-mindedness. All that the librarian can do is to present the book to the child in the hope that he will absorb some help from his reading and thus be encouraged to solve his problems successfully"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "August, 1958." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science." / Advisor: Agnes Gregory, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 45-47).

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