Sunday, May 18, 2014

Are dietary supplements needed?

Mayo Clinic Health System Health Note on Supplements vs. Whole Foods:

It is important to meet your nutritional needs mainly through your diet, but what if you struggle to get the nutrition you feel you need? Is it ok to take a supplement instead? Some supplements may be a useful way to get the nutrients you may be lacking, but they cannot measure up to the benefits and nutrients of whole foods. 

Therefore, before you start ingesting supplements, it is very important to know and understand what they will and will not do. If you are usually healthy and eat a wide variety of foods each day, you probably do not need to take a supplement. On the other hand, if you do not consume enough calories each day, are a vegan or vegetarian and do not eat a wide variety of foods, are a woman and have heavy bleeding during your menstrual cycle, or have a medical condition in which your body does not properly absorb nutrients, you could consider talking to your doctor about what supplement would be best for you.

From:
Amy Every
Senior Communication Consultant, Marketing Communications
Mayo Clinic Health System Franciscan Healthcare
mayoclinichealthsystem.org

Friday, May 16, 2014

Bronze Boys Of Prairie Du Chien

From http://www.teamusa.org/News/2014/May/14/Bronze-Boys-Of-Prairie-Du-Chien

Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, is a portrait of small-town America. It’s the type of place where everyone waves to each other, where people marry their high school sweetheart, where blue-collar men work at the local factory. Set along the eastern banks of the Mississippi River, the town is home to less than 6,000 people — making it highly unlikely, by just about any statistical calculation, that even one Olympic bronze medalist would come from there. Imagine the odds of two.

More than that, imagine that those two just happened to have graduated in the same class of less than 130 kids. Such is the case for Matt Antoine, 2014 Olympic bronze medalist in skeleton, and Joe Delagrave, 2012 Paralympic bronze medalist in wheelchair rugby. Their stories are the same. Their stories are very different.

Click on the picture below to read the rest of the article

http://www.teamusa.org/News/2014/May/14/Bronze-Boys-Of-Prairie-Du-Chien

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Digital Library on Formative Assessment Tools and Practices is coming

Excerpt from memo from Troy Couillard; Wisconsin DPI Director Office of Student Assessment

Digital Library Rollout: June 3

The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium is committed to creating an integrated, balanced assessment system that provides actionable information to help teachers prepare students for college and careers. This system includes next-generation summative and interim assessments aligned to the Common Core State Standards. The Digital Library on Formative Assessment Tools and Practices is also a key component of this system. The Digital Library is a searchable, interactive online tool composed of instructional and formative assessment resources that have been selected by educators and screened against a set of Quality Criteria established by experts.

For more information on the Digital Library, see the webinar “Quality Criteria for the Digital Library,” available at: http://www.smarterbalanced.org/resources-events/webinars/.

Smarter Balanced invites district and school staff in member states to preview the Digital Library from June 3 through September 30, 2014. During the preview, the Digital Library will contain initial functionality and a limited set of initial resources that will help educators understand the future utility of the Digital Library.

The process for districts to register users for the Digital Library preview includes filling out a template of user information and uploading it to a secure site. The template and instructions for preparing it for user registration will be available in mid-May. At that time, districts may use the template to prepare the list of users whom they want to be able to access the preview beginning on June 3, 2014.

This preview is an exciting opportunity to try out user rating, review, and comment features on the Digital Library resources, as well as collaboration features that encourage conversation among educators from across the Consortium. Smarter Balanced welcomes widespread participation in this preview and encourages districts to register all interested educators and promote their use of the Digital Library this summer and during professional development activities at the start of the next school year.