Craig Chamberlain, Education Editor
News Bureau, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
(217) 333-2894; cdchambe@uiuc.edu

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Parents, teachers and caregivers of young children have plenty to worry about, and the approach of another school year often heightens their anxiety. They know a child's early years can be key to development and school success.

What they're looking for is easy-to-get, to-the-point advice, by Web site, e-mail or phone. So much the better if it's directly tied to a state's learning standards, offered in several languages, and based on years of experience providing research-based information to teachers and parents.

The Illinois Early Learning Project (www.illinoisearlylearning.org) is such a place, according to its team of developers, who also operate the ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education, based at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The project was initiated and funded by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), working with Futures for Kids, an initiative of Lura Lynn Ryan, the wife of Gov. George Ryan. The University of Illinois team won the $320,000 grant to develop IEL.

Since going online last November, IEL also has gone on the road. Staffers travel throughout the state to conduct presentations and workshops. They also work through schools, health centers and other agencies to promote the Web site and other services and materials. Included among those are periodic online chat sessions with experts on topics of interest and IEL's short, easy-to-read tip sheets.

"All of our experience leads us to believe that for Web sites to become part of the household set of resources, you need more than just a Web site, you need print materials, you need this face-to-face introduction of it," says Dianne Rothenberg, co-director of the ERIC clearinghouse along with Lilian Katz, a professor emerita of education at Illinois and an oft-cited expert on early childhood issues.

The tip sheets deal with topics of wide interest to caregivers of young children: "Is My Child OK?" "He's Teasing Me!" "Getting Ready to Read," "Getting Ready for Kindergarten."

Most of the tip sheets, as well as many of the project's other resources, are written in Spanish as well as English, for the benefit of Illinois' many Spanish-speaking parents, Rothenberg said. IEL also employs a Spanish translator part-time to deal with questions that come in by phone or e-mail. Materials are being translated into Polish, for use by the Polish-speaking population in Chicago.

The early learning project fits well at the University of Illinois because it builds on similar efforts at the ERIC clearinghouse over the past 35 years, all directed at making information readily available to teachers, parents and caregivers.

The clearinghouse, for instance, is the home of the National Parent Information Network (http://npin.org), itself almost a decade old and the winner of numerous awards for its parenting-related resources. NPIN produces a bimonthly online newsletter, "Parent News," and recently published a "Violence Prevention Resource Guide for Parents."