*** MEDIA ALERT ***

58th Opening Minds Conference to Commence at McCormick Place

Premier Event for Educating Educators Now Open to All Interested in Early Education Trends and Raising Happy and Healthy Children

WHAT: The 58th annual Opening Minds Conference, the premier early childhood conference that brings together 5,000 early childhood professionals for four days of workshops, seminars, focus groups and special events. Topics range across 15 areas of concentration including the most recent research and thinking on all the literacies (reading, writing, talking, listening, financial, and computer literacy), math and science; social and emotional skill development; technology; identifying and addressing special needs; English Language Learning, and the many changes in the accreditation and education systems working to ready young children for Kindergarten and beyond.

In addition, Opening Minds will also name this year’s Innovation Award recipient for excellence in early childhood education on Friday January 31 from 7-9 pm at an event sponsored by Follett Early Learning. Tickets are $50 per person; $25 for registered conference and expo participants.

WHEN: Conference- January 29 to February 1, 2014, Innovation Awards- January 31, 7-9 pm.

WHERE: Hyatt Regency McCormick Place, open to public, tickets for Innovation Awards must be purchased in advance at: http://innovationawards.openingmindsusa.org.

WHY: Opening Minds USA CEO Gail Conway saw a need for the conference to serve a bigger community besides professional education professionals and to open it up to a bigger community that also includes parents of young children. Guests can see featured speaker Filippo Yacob, U.K.-based Solid Labs Ltd. CEO introducing Primo, an open source project that challenges how programming is introduced to children, while catering to the need for early introduction of the topic to pre-literate children in schools and in homes. Yacob is a part of the Innovation Showcase on January 30 and 31.

WHO: The Opening Minds USA conference features such speakers as Dr. Peter Andersen, professor of Communication at San Diego State University on the Power of Touch, Carmen Schmidt, Education Outreach Director for WTTW/ PBS Chicago, and Brian Puerling, Author of “Teaching in the Digital Age.”

As a special offer to parents who would like to attend, Opening Minds is offering the special parent promotion rate of $125, a 20 percent discount off the full conference rate. Interested parents who wish to attend should RSVP to with “parent promo” in the subject line.

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