4/2/2014

Ready to Learn (RTL) is the federal program that has supported many of the educational television shows for young children that you may have seen on PBS (Word World, Super Why!, Peg+Cat, The New Electric Company, etc.). RTL also supports the creation of other educational media such as learning websites, games, and iPad apps. Our goal is to promote school readiness among young children, especially those from low income families, by using the power of mass media to reach into their homes and communities.

Ready to Learn aims to:

• Create quality educational media via partnerships between professional media producers and early childhood educators
• Focus on the particular learning needs of low-income children to help promote school readiness or to provide additional enrichment outside the classroom
• Conduct research on educational effectiveness
• Conduct community-based outreach programs in settings such as Head Start, libraries, after school programs, and many others.
• Distribute television programs and digital media products via national broadcasters and other mass media outlets.
• Create public-private partnerships that will leverage public investments with additional private contributions.

The Ready to Learn program seeks reviewers who can help us in Summer 2014 with an independent panel review of media products and in Fall/Winter 2014-15 with a possible new round of the Ready to Learn grant competition.

Reviewers may include media producers, researchers, PreK or early elementary teachers, researchers, academics, or others. However, all individuals must have knowledge/expertise in some combination of all three of the following areas:

• Educational media production (including television, games, websites, apps, etc) or the use of educational technology
• Early Childhood Learning (ages 2-5 or 5-8)
• Math/Numeracy or Literacy/Reading

Those interested should send their resume (please no more than 5 pages) with up-to-date contact information to Readytolearn@ed.gov.