The Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) has received a $250,000 grant from The Hawn Foundation to develop an online professional development companion to MindUP, a PreK-8 social and emotional learning curriculum. Teachers College will also participate in the grant and will receive a portion of the grant. The online curriculum will be used to train teachers in the MindUP program starting in the fall 2011.

MindUP is a suite of social, emotional, and attention-related self-regulatory strategies and skills, developed to cultivate well-being and emotional balance in children and ultimately improve behavior and learning. MindUP skills, including focused attention and non-reactive monitoring of experience from moment to moment, create the potential for long-term impact on brain function and social and emotional behavior of children. The MindUP online learning platform will feature real-life video examples of the curriculum's principles being incorporated into classroom practice. These videos, combined with explanatory text, images, and activities will provide teachers with the materials and support they need to successfully implement MindUP in their classrooms. Scholastic, Inc. also recently published three volumes of the MindUP Curriculum.

"We are excited to work with The Hawn Foundation to bring this unique curriculum to school teachers and believe that the prototype we are developing will be an excellent model for a platform that can be scaled up for nationwide dissemination," said Frank Moretti, CCNMTL's executive director.

Nov 25, 2012: This project was canceled before completion. -Ed