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Take a Virtual Tour of Tate Modern's Andy Warhol Exhibition

The show ran for just five days before the London museum closed due to COVID-19




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Take a Virtual Tour of Two Recently Excavated Homes in Pompeii

Pompeii Archaeological Park Director Massimo Osanna narrates stunning drone footage of preserved daily life in the ancient city




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Take a Virtual Tour of This Belgian Sourdough Library

Sourdough librarian Karl De Smedt has traveled the world to gather more than 120 jars of starters




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Take a Free Virtual Tour of Five Egyptian Heritage Sites

The sites include the 5,000-year-old tomb of Meresankh III, the Red Monastery and the Mosque-Madrassa of Sultan Barquq




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This Free Game Lets Users Build Their Own Virtual Art Museums

"Occupy White Walls" allows players to design their own art galleries—and explore others' out-of-the-box creations




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Nostalgic for the North? Take a Virtual Dogsled Ride in Fairbanks, Alaska

Armchair travelers can also enjoy 360-degree views of the city's famed Northern Lights




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How to Watch the National Air and Space Museum's Free Virtual Concert

Catch the musical event, featuring Sting, Death Cab for Cutie front man Ben Gibbard and other artists, on YouTube tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern time




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This Week's Best Livestream Learning Opportunities

From doodle sessions to zoo tours, here's a week of online activities to keep your kids learning during the school shutdown




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LeVar Burton Reads Stories on Twitter and Other Livestream Learning Opportunities This Week

Learn hip-hop dance or do citizen science without leaving home this week, thanks to the internet's many intrepid artists and educators




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A Read-Along With Michelle Obama and Other Livestream Learning Opportunities

Schools are shuttered, but kids can dance with New York's Ballet Hispánico and listen to a story from a certain former First Lady




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New Virtual Exhibition Showcases the Healing Power of Art

“Care Package” showcases Asian American and Pacific Islander artists, writers and scholars as sources of solace during the Covid-19 pandemic




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How to Virtually Explore the Smithsonian From Your Living Room

Tour a gallery of presidential portraits, print a 3-D model of a fossil or volunteer to transcribe historical documents




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$612K award to Giant Mine contractor overturned

In a written decision released Thursday, a panel of three appeal court judges said the judge who granted the award to McCaw North Drilling and Blasting Ltd. misinterpreted a clause in the contract for the cleanup.



  • News/Canada/North

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Canada Day goes virtual in Thunder Bay, while Canadian Lakehead Exhibition is cancelled

Canada Day celebrations and Live on the Waterfront programming will be delivered virtually in response to Ontario government orders, and physical distancing mandates, the City of Thunder Bay announced in a written release Thursday.



  • News/Canada/Thunder Bay

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Seizing every opportunity

Buenos Aires, Argentina :: Maintenance crew share Christ's love with local welders helping repair Logos Hope.




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Aprovechar cada oportunidad

La tripulación de técnicos del Logos Hope sabe que el mantenimiento del barco es una forma de hacer ministerio.




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Diggin' up bones: Edmonton AM takes virtual road trip to the Badlands

Much like a prehistoric pest trapped in amber, our summer plans remain in suspended animation.



  • News/Canada/Edmonton

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Understanding the Pandemic: New Virtual Programs Announced

The National Book Festival Presents series was created to provide a book festival experience to lovers of the event on a year-round basis. Because these programs can no longer be held at the Library, we are offering a virtual multipart series, with authors who have written books about widespread diseases and the worldwide response to them.




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How fintech can promote financial inclusion - a new report on the opportunities and challenges

CPMI Press release "How fintech can promote financial inclusion - a new report on the opportunities and challenges", 14 April 2020




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These California Wineries Are Hosting Virtual Wine Tastings

Sheltering in place doesn’t mean you have to give up the best of wine country's offerings




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How a New Jersey Farmers' Market Went Virtual

The Metuchen Farmers Market, like many others, has moved to online orders and drive-thru pickups during the coronavirus pandemic




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Raptors' Davis would be 'devastated' if team misses opportunity for playoff run

If the NBA can't salvage the remainder of the season, Terence Davis said he won't be sad for the illustrious complete rookie year that could have been. But he would rue a missed post-season run.



  • Sports/Basketball/NBA

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11 startups to pitch at NEXT Canada’s virtual Venture Reveal – BetaKit

11 startups to pitch at NEXT Canada's virtual Venture Reveal  BetaKit



  • IMC News Feed

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Cyber Actors Take Advantage of COVID-19 Pandemic to Exploit Increased Use of Virtual Environments




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Ottawa teen's 7th annual run for missing and murdered Indigenous women goes virtual

Teenager Theland Kicknosway's annual run for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls is being turned into a virtual event this year, and he's calling on people from across North America to join him.




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Communitech virtual job fair connects people with 350 tech jobs across Canada

More than 1,000 people looking for work in the tech industry are signed up for a virtual job fair on Thursday afternoon.



  • News/Canada/Kitchener-Waterloo

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Patriots not drafting QB after Brady departure 'wasn't by design', says Belichick

New England head coach Bill Belichick said not taking a quarterback in the Patriots' first post-Tom Brady draft "wasn't by design."



  • Sports/Football/NFL

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Windsor students gearing up to attend national virtual prom

With proms cancelled across Canada, an online resource for kids called the Student Life Network has organized a national virtual prom.



  • News/Canada/Windsor

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Virtual cross-Canada dart league hits bullseye amid isolating pandemic

Carving out a section of low-hanging basement ceiling was a small price to pay to give Travis Bondy the space he needed to play in the Isolation Dart League.



  • News/Canada/Windsor

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Seizing every opportunity

Buenos Aires, Argentina :: Maintenance crew share Christ's love with local welders helping repair Logos Hope.




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NHL reportedly proposing virtual draft in early June

The NHL is hoping to convince teams the league should move the 2020 draft to early June and hold it virtually, according to a report.



  • Sports/Hockey/NHL

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McMaster University plans for virtual student residences amid 'unprecedented' challenge

McMaster University is planning for fewer international students, more deferred acceptance offers and online teaching for the thousands who are attending as the start of a new school year looms in the near future and in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.



  • News/Canada/Hamilton

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2020 Special Olympics Summer Games canceled, will shift to virtual games

The 2020 Special Olympics Summer Games, slated for June 11 to 13, are being canceled due to concerns related to coronavirus. The games will shift to virtual events, with details to be announced in the near future.




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This ministry is hosting a virtual retreat for infertile people on Mother’s Day

Denver Newsroom, May 8, 2020 / 05:29 pm (CNA).- Mother’s Day is going to look different for most families this year, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

For Catholics, some churches are in the process of slowly re-opening public Masses, but the dispensation from the Sunday obligation continues to stand, as the virus has not gone away and a cure or vaccine has yet to be found.

While most Catholics are eager to return to Mass, a small group of Catholics are relieved that they will not be sitting in a public pew this Mother’s Day.

“We actually heard from one woman who said, ‘I kind of feel badly about saying this, but I'm sort of glad that we won't be in the pews this year for Mother's Day,’” Ann Koshute, founder of Springs in the Desert Catholic ministry, told CNA.


“That's something that we hear and that everybody I think on the team has experienced at one point in this journey,” she said - the desire to avoid Mass on Mother’s Day. That’s because Koshute, along with other members of her ministry, have had painful experiences with infertility, and the customary Mother’s Day blessing given to mothers at many parishes that day can bring their grief and sense of loss poignantly to the fore.


“I think that so often people in our own families, our friends, and even our pastors don't really understand the full extent of the pain and the grief or even the full extent of the issue of infertility, of how many couples are really dealing with it,” she said.


The pain of infertility, and the lack of resources available to Catholics on the subject, was why Koshute and her friend, Kimberly Henkel, founded Springs in the Desert, a Catholic ministry to spiritually and emotionally support women and couples experiencing infertility and infant loss. Originally, Henkel and Koshute, who have both experienced infertility, thought they might write a book. But they decided to start with a ministry website and a blog that could bring people together and allow for other women and couples to share their experiences. The group is relatively new, and held its first retreat in Philadelphia in December. They were set to hold a second one this weekend - Mother’s Day weekend - in the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, when, well, the pandemic hit.

Now, they’ve moved the retreat online and opened it up to Catholics across the country - and they’ve been overwhelmed by the response.

“We thought that we would be really excited if maybe a couple dozen people found out about it and came. We are over 100 participants now. And it's free and it's going to be available all weekend,” Koshute said. The retreat is trying to address the emotional and spiritual experience of infertility and loss for a broad range of people, Henkel said - from mothers who have miscarried, to women who are past child-bearing years and still grieving the loss of infertility, to women “who feel like their biological clocks are ticking and just haven’t met the right guy.” But now that it's a virtual, pre-recorded, watch-at-your-leisure retreat, it also has the potential to reach a population that is often more reluctant to gather in groups and talk about their experiences of infertility: men. “It's mostly women who are emailing us (about the retreat), although we know that many of their husbands will watch with them. But we've also had a few men email us,” Koshute said.


“One in particular, it just really touched my heart. And he said that he was searching the web for help for his wife on Mother's Day. And I was just so filled with praise and thanksgiving to God for that, for a husband to see that hurt in his wife and to want to find a way to help her,” she added. Men and women typically experience the grief of infertility quite differently, Koshute noted. “For us women, it's so visceral because life is conceived within us and we carry that life. But for a man, it's so different,” she said.

“(Men are) kind of distant from that experience until the child is actually born. And so I think many times men, the grief and the burden that they carry is their wife's. They really carry her sadness and I think feel at a loss because they want to make everything right. They want to fix this, and they want to make her whole. And the mystery of infertility is that it's not that simple. And that's one of the things that makes it so difficult,” she said. Henkel said she experienced her own difficulties in trying to discuss infertility with her husband. Now that they’ve experienced the joy of growing their family through adoption, she said, he is much more open to inviting other men to share their experiences. Henkel said she is hoping that an additional benefit of this retreat being online is that it will facilitate discussions between couples watching the videos together. Both Henkel and Koshute said that while the experience of infertility and loss is painful, and they want to help couples acknowledge and accept that pain, they also want Springs in the Desert to be a positive and supportive experience for couples and women, where they can find hope and redemption even in their suffering. One of the topics they focus on is how all women are called to motherhood in their lives, whether it is spiritual or biological.

“My experience has shown me that my motherhood is really engaged in so many ways that I never considered before,” Koshute said.

“Not just with my godson or with other children in my family, but with women who are older than I who are friends and who might come to me with a difficulty or problem and I can help them,” or by helping family members in need or through charitable works, she added. “That's one of the messages that we try to get across to women and to couples as well, that those kinds of things, what we would maybe refer to as spiritual motherhood, is not illegitimate,” she said.

“It's not second-place. It's a real way of engaging and living out our motherhood. It's also not a replacement for a baby. So it's not as if you go out and volunteer in your community and now you won't have this longing for a child anymore. But we've really found through our own experience and through talking with other women that the more we kind of put ourselves out there and give ourselves to others, the more that we can begin to see that motherhood enacted in us.”

Henkel said she also likes to encourage couples to look at the ways God is calling them to be fruitful in their marriages outside of biological children.

“We really encourage these couples that they are not forgotten, they're not being punished. That God loves them so much and that he has something amazing for them. He's using this to draw them near to him and to allow them to cry out to him and ask for him to guide them, to lead them, to give them his love and show them what fruitfulness he has for them, what place in ministry and mission he has for them.” Henkel and her husband in particular like to share with couples their experience of foster care as one example of where God might be calling them to be fruitful. After a frustrating and expensive experience with some adoption agencies, Henkel and her husband decided to look into giving a home to children through foster care.

“Here is a situation where these children really need families,” she said. “It's hard because there's no guarantee you're going to get to keep this child, so there's a sense of this new greater level of having to learn how to trust God.” “I think that with a couple discerning that fruitfulness, it's also discerning - where is God really calling you? There's so much need in this world. And he wants to use us.”

Couples interested in the Springs in the Desert Mother’s Day weekend retreat can sign up for free online at the Springs in the Desert website. Content will be uploaded and available for anyone who registers, Henkel said, even if they register late. The retreat team will also be hosting a live talk on Sunday, May 10 at 2 p.m. Eastern on the ministry’s Facebook page.

“There's a place for you in Springs of the Desert,” Henkel added. “There's so many women who have reached out to us in Philly. We added several more women to our group, to our team, our official team, women who came to the retreat. One woman had come there and she said she had had a miscarriage, and neither one of us has experienced that. So we said, please join us. We want your voice.”

“We're trying to really bring the voices of many different women to our team so that people will feel there is somebody that is talking they can really relate to. Because there are all of these different situations, but they've got obviously a very similar undercurrent.”




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New opportunities in Christ

OM Hungary encourages local Hungarian pastors and their congregations through the Bus4Life during the Easter season.




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‘Live with the opportunities’

Participants from a day of outreach to refugee families in Budapest share their experiences.




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Creating an opportunity to talk

Hungarian students learn about dating, sex and marriage during a Bus4Life visit.




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Zimbabwe: Danger and Opportunity




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Closed doors lead to opportunities

An OM worker rediscovers how God can use a difficult situation to accomplish His purposes.




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Missing key leads to opportunity

A short-termer engages people in spiritual conversation while on tour of Israel.




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This ministry is hosting a virtual retreat for infertile people on Mother’s Day

Denver Newsroom, May 8, 2020 / 05:29 pm (CNA).- Mother’s Day is going to look different for most families this year, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

For Catholics, some churches are in the process of slowly re-opening public Masses, but the dispensation from the Sunday obligation continues to stand, as the virus has not gone away and a cure or vaccine has yet to be found.

While most Catholics are eager to return to Mass, a small group of Catholics are relieved that they will not be sitting in a public pew this Mother’s Day.

“We actually heard from one woman who said, ‘I kind of feel badly about saying this, but I'm sort of glad that we won't be in the pews this year for Mother's Day,’” Ann Koshute, founder of Springs in the Desert Catholic ministry, told CNA.


“That's something that we hear and that everybody I think on the team has experienced at one point in this journey,” she said - the desire to avoid Mass on Mother’s Day. That’s because Koshute, along with other members of her ministry, have had painful experiences with infertility, and the customary Mother’s Day blessing given to mothers at many parishes that day can bring their grief and sense of loss poignantly to the fore.


“I think that so often people in our own families, our friends, and even our pastors don't really understand the full extent of the pain and the grief or even the full extent of the issue of infertility, of how many couples are really dealing with it,” she said.


The pain of infertility, and the lack of resources available to Catholics on the subject, was why Koshute and her friend, Kimberly Henkel, founded Springs in the Desert, a Catholic ministry to spiritually and emotionally support women and couples experiencing infertility and infant loss. Originally, Henkel and Koshute, who have both experienced infertility, thought they might write a book. But they decided to start with a ministry website and a blog that could bring people together and allow for other women and couples to share their experiences. The group is relatively new, and held its first retreat in Philadelphia in December. They were set to hold a second one this weekend - Mother’s Day weekend - in the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, when, well, the pandemic hit.

Now, they’ve moved the retreat online and opened it up to Catholics across the country - and they’ve been overwhelmed by the response.

“We thought that we would be really excited if maybe a couple dozen people found out about it and came. We are over 100 participants now. And it's free and it's going to be available all weekend,” Koshute said. The retreat is trying to address the emotional and spiritual experience of infertility and loss for a broad range of people, Henkel said - from mothers who have miscarried, to women who are past child-bearing years and still grieving the loss of infertility, to women “who feel like their biological clocks are ticking and just haven’t met the right guy.” But now that it's a virtual, pre-recorded, watch-at-your-leisure retreat, it also has the potential to reach a population that is often more reluctant to gather in groups and talk about their experiences of infertility: men. “It's mostly women who are emailing us (about the retreat), although we know that many of their husbands will watch with them. But we've also had a few men email us,” Koshute said.


“One in particular, it just really touched my heart. And he said that he was searching the web for help for his wife on Mother's Day. And I was just so filled with praise and thanksgiving to God for that, for a husband to see that hurt in his wife and to want to find a way to help her,” she added. Men and women typically experience the grief of infertility quite differently, Koshute noted. “For us women, it's so visceral because life is conceived within us and we carry that life. But for a man, it's so different,” she said.

“(Men are) kind of distant from that experience until the child is actually born. And so I think many times men, the grief and the burden that they carry is their wife's. They really carry her sadness and I think feel at a loss because they want to make everything right. They want to fix this, and they want to make her whole. And the mystery of infertility is that it's not that simple. And that's one of the things that makes it so difficult,” she said. Henkel said she experienced her own difficulties in trying to discuss infertility with her husband. Now that they’ve experienced the joy of growing their family through adoption, she said, he is much more open to inviting other men to share their experiences. Henkel said she is hoping that an additional benefit of this retreat being online is that it will facilitate discussions between couples watching the videos together. Both Henkel and Koshute said that while the experience of infertility and loss is painful, and they want to help couples acknowledge and accept that pain, they also want Springs in the Desert to be a positive and supportive experience for couples and women, where they can find hope and redemption even in their suffering. One of the topics they focus on is how all women are called to motherhood in their lives, whether it is spiritual or biological.

“My experience has shown me that my motherhood is really engaged in so many ways that I never considered before,” Koshute said.

“Not just with my godson or with other children in my family, but with women who are older than I who are friends and who might come to me with a difficulty or problem and I can help them,” or by helping family members in need or through charitable works, she added. “That's one of the messages that we try to get across to women and to couples as well, that those kinds of things, what we would maybe refer to as spiritual motherhood, is not illegitimate,” she said.

“It's not second-place. It's a real way of engaging and living out our motherhood. It's also not a replacement for a baby. So it's not as if you go out and volunteer in your community and now you won't have this longing for a child anymore. But we've really found through our own experience and through talking with other women that the more we kind of put ourselves out there and give ourselves to others, the more that we can begin to see that motherhood enacted in us.”

Henkel said she also likes to encourage couples to look at the ways God is calling them to be fruitful in their marriages outside of biological children.

“We really encourage these couples that they are not forgotten, they're not being punished. That God loves them so much and that he has something amazing for them. He's using this to draw them near to him and to allow them to cry out to him and ask for him to guide them, to lead them, to give them his love and show them what fruitfulness he has for them, what place in ministry and mission he has for them.” Henkel and her husband in particular like to share with couples their experience of foster care as one example of where God might be calling them to be fruitful. After a frustrating and expensive experience with some adoption agencies, Henkel and her husband decided to look into giving a home to children through foster care.

“Here is a situation where these children really need families,” she said. “It's hard because there's no guarantee you're going to get to keep this child, so there's a sense of this new greater level of having to learn how to trust God.” “I think that with a couple discerning that fruitfulness, it's also discerning - where is God really calling you? There's so much need in this world. And he wants to use us.”

Couples interested in the Springs in the Desert Mother’s Day weekend retreat can sign up for free online at the Springs in the Desert website. Content will be uploaded and available for anyone who registers, Henkel said, even if they register late. The retreat team will also be hosting a live talk on Sunday, May 10 at 2 p.m. Eastern on the ministry’s Facebook page.

“There's a place for you in Springs of the Desert,” Henkel added. “There's so many women who have reached out to us in Philly. We added several more women to our group, to our team, our official team, women who came to the retreat. One woman had come there and she said she had had a miscarriage, and neither one of us has experienced that. So we said, please join us. We want your voice.”

“We're trying to really bring the voices of many different women to our team so that people will feel there is somebody that is talking they can really relate to. Because there are all of these different situations, but they've got obviously a very similar undercurrent.”




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Changing the fortunes of the Bayash 

OM EAST helps bring God’s truth to a people who believe they are cursed.




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Andy Murray signs up for virtual Madrid tennis tournament amid coronavirus crisis

ANDY MURRAY will swap a tennis racket for a games controller when he takes part in a virtual Madrid Open later this month.




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Talamanca: a land of opportunity

Puntarenas, Costa Rica :: A group of indigenous people from the Talamanca region have a horizon-expanding visit to Logos Hope.




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Gardening: Discover the best virtual gardens, podcasts and expert advice

If you're yearning for all the gardening shows that have been cancelled, you can still be inspired by exploring gorgeous virtual gardens now and throughout the summer, from the comfort of your armchair.




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Portugal posts mini-pitch project success

The UEFA HatTrick programme has assisted in the construction of over 200 mini-pitches in Portugal since 2007, giving more youngsters the chance to play football in a safe environment.




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Shenango campus to hold virtual celebration after spring commencement

Following the University-wide commencement ceremony on May 9, Penn State Shenango will host a virtual celebration for the Class of 2020.




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Virtual Education Dilemma: Scheduled Classroom Instruction vs. Anytime Learning

K-12 teachers are faced with a question many likely thought they'd never have to ask: How often during the school day do my students need to see me and when?




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SNP MP accused of capitalising on virus crisis following 'brazenly disloyal' remarks at virtual meeting

AN SNP MP has been accused of capitalising on the virus crisis to undermine Nicola Sturgeon and boost their own profile following a series of remarks made in an online party meeting.




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Virtual Teaching: Skill of the Future? Or Not So Much?

Leaders in some districts say remote teaching will now be a skill they will build even more in their existing teacher corps. Others are more skeptical.