Media Development

Free parenting & child development courses online, or just simple instructional learning if not classes?

I don’t know about online, but check out your local library. I know Parenting With Love and Logic has a tape set that you can work through on your own.

None whatsoever

i am looking into setting up a youth center in my country, Nigeria. i want to help the youth in my town development wise

A good move
Check the web
Check teachers
Check students who are studying the area
Check the government plan
Check students/youth from other culture for what they need
Check the youth in your community for their needs and that will help you with what materials you need

(African Americans, Whites, Latinos, etc.) are due to ?
race.
genetics.
cultural mores.
socio-economic levels.

not race or genetics

i think SES
When SES is controlled groups are pretty similar.

Probably child development.

Probably child development.

I spent this past spring studying in Oxford, UK, and would like something different, but safe and with opportunities to travel similar (although I realize this may be hard) to those in Europe. I was thinking Eastern Europe, but have only very basic speaking skill in Italian and Spanish. Any suggestions? No civil wars, please!

Your choice of destination should involved the quality of the program. There are some very good and safe programs in Asia and Africa. My suggestion is to worry less about the traveling (eurorail pass style) and to invest yourself more in the particular destination that you select. You will gain much more by longer more involved exposure to a particular culture and region. Program selection will also depend on the policies of your home college or university as many institutions accept credit from only "approved programs."

There are development programs that incorporate travel into the program so that the issues are approached in a comparative way.

One organization that is widely regarded as a leader in this type of education is The School for International Training http://sit.edu/studyabroad/index.html. They even have a traveling program in Spanish speaking South America – The Southern Cone program which looks at Regional Integration, Development, and Social Change. This program takes students to Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay. You might also look at University of Minnesota’s MSID (Minnesota Studies in International Development) programs http://www.umabroad.umn.edu/programs/AFRICA/msidSenegal/index.html

Finally, there are a series of programs offered by The International Honors Program http://ihp.edu.

Good Luck!

I’ve been studing web design for a few months, but have found myself in a rut.

How many hours should I be studying a day? In order to be really really good at it?

The best way of getting into web design and development, is to first design some websites, that you can use as references. Then go to some company, and say, this is what I can do for you.

Once you have a job, with people screaming at you, "We need this or that" or, "it doesn’t look right in this browser or that browser" is when you will learn the most.

I’m not sure of an exact name, but this site sells them:

http://www.realityworks.com/

I don’t know if this strictly falls strictly under human development. But the American Psychological Association has been pushing the study of "Positive psychology." The feeling is that current psychology is geared too much toward treating mental illness and not enough toward maximizing happiness and optimism.

So now there are a number of new studies underway to determine what happiness is, what kind of personalities are happiest, etc.

It may be associated in part with the aging of the boomers. The geriatric population tends to be less happy, so psychologists may be bracing for ways to improve the quality of life for the boomers as they age.

Martin Seligman, a past president of the APA, started the new movement:

"In 1946, the Veterans Administration was created, and practicing psychologists found they could make a living treating mental illness," he wrote last year in the American Psychological Association Monitor. "In 1947, the National Institute of Mental Health was created, and academic psychologists discovered they could get grants for research on mental illness." Two of psychology’s original missions — nurturing greatness and making life fulfilling — were lost, according to Mr. Seligman.