www.professorgarfield.org
Muncie, Ind. — At Ball State University, Garfield is clearly
the teacher’s pet.
Ball State, with its nationally
recognized Teachers College and being the alma mater to Garfield’s creator Jim Davis, has joined
forces with Garfield’s creative group, Paws, Inc., and dozens
of world-renowned experts in education to launch a FREE web site
overflowing with educational games, activities, instruction, drills
and demonstrations.
www.professorgarfield.org is
the brainchild of Ball State and Paws, with significant support and
content contributed by Pearson Digital Learning, Charles and Helen
Schwab Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, Scholarship
America, USA Funds, Sallie Mae, Columbia University Teacher’s
College, and Grammy-award winning children’s composer, Red
Grammer.
A visit to the site brings
you to the door of Professor Garfield’s
Laboratory, a space-age classroom with portals to interactive educational
material focused on mathematics, social studies, art instruction,
science and health, and Davis’ personal favorite, reading.
“Over my 27-year career of doing GARFIELD, I’ve heard
countless stories from parents and teachers telling me that the strip
kick-started a child’s interest in reading,” says Davis. “The
comic strip is simple and fun with a logical sequence and word-picture
clues. I began to feel strongly that comic strips were an overlooked,
yet readily accessible learning tool. If you can tickle a child’s
funny bone, you can tickle and stimulate his brain.”
Ball State agreed with Davis’ assessment. Through its Business
Fellows program, backed by a $1.5 million grant from Lilly Endowment,
Inc., five students worked an entire semester developing the section's
content. The students, from the university's Teachers College, developed
material for the site’s reading section, which uses comic strips
and fun interactive challenges to promote reading and reading comprehension.
Through the site, students
can hone reading skills while wrestling Dr. Stripp in the “Reading Ring,” learn to draw with
Jim Davis and his staff artists in the “Art-Bot,” climb
into the “Knowledge Box” to play math, social studies
and language arts games, see how sleeping well means doing well at
the National Institutes of Health’s “Star Sleeper,” and
challenge Professor Garfield in a trivia contest in “G-Cubed.”
“Garfield and Jim
Davis are committed to blending humor with the power of the Internet
as an education tool, and the Teachers College has dedicated its
resources in content development, research and assessment to create
an educational site that’s like no
other in the world,” said Jo Ann M. Gora, President of Ball
State University.
Content on the site is based
on state standards and includes teacher’s
lesson plans and incorporates assessment methodologies. The site
also includes free printable award items for teachers to use as incentives.
Over time, the site will mature into areas of writing, mathematics
and other core areas, first at kindergarten through third grade levels
and systematically expanding to encompass grades K-12.
Backgrounder:
About Paws, Inc.:
Cartoonist Jim Davis’ company, Paws, Inc., located near Albany,
Indiana, was founded in 1981 to handle the creative end of the Garfield
licensing business. Today, Paws is the sole owner of all copyrights
and trademarks for the Garfield property, and controls not only the
creative angle of the fat cat’s flourishing empire, but also
the licensing, marketing, and brand management of Garfield and the
Garfield characters.
In 2004, Paws helped establish the Professor Garfield Foundation,
a not-for-profit entity whose mission is to reach students with entertainment
and education.
About Garfield:
GARFIELD was born on the comics pages on June 19, 1978. The mastermind
of cartoonist Jim Davis, GARFIELD is a humorous strip centered around
the lives of a fat, lazy, cynical orange cat who loves lasagna,
coffee, and his remote control; his owner, the long-suffering Jon
Arbuckle; and Odie, a sweet but dumb dog. GARFIELD was introduced
to the world in just 41 newspapers but quickly became the fastest
growing and most widely syndicated comic strip ever. Today, the
strip appears in over 2570 newspapers and is read daily by 263,000,000
people around the globe. The success of the comic strip spawned
a popular animated TV show, “Garfield & Friends,” which
appeared on CBS-TV from 1988 to 1995, and is currently in worldwide
syndication. Additionally, Twentieth Century Fox invited Garfield
to star in Garfield: The Movie, his first-ever full-length feature
film, released in June 2004. Since then, Fox Home Entertainment
has released the movie DVD, and titles from the Saturday morning
TV show and the Garfield primetime specials
Garfield also takes center stage on his entertainment web site, www.garfield.com.
About Ball State University:
Ball State University, located in Muncie, Ind., is the third-largest
public university in Indiana, with more than 18,000 students. Originally
a private teacher training school when it opened in 1899, Ball State
became a university in 1965. Ball State, with its 1,035-acre campus,
has many nationally ranked programs and highly touted immersion-learning
experiences.
Business Fellows, funded by a $1.5 million grant from the Lilly
Endowment, Inc., gives Ball State Students the opportunity to turn
academic knowledge into business solutions through intense, semester-long
applied work experiences that will benefit an Indiana business, industry
or organization.
