Today, kindergarten is the new first grade with much more of the school day spent on reading readiness and learning how to add and subtract. When did play become a dirty word? "Play is important because it helps to build skills that everyone's looking for in 21st-century learning. It doesn't take away from their learning," says Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, professor of psychology at Temple. "It's more consistent with how the human brain works."

A new Temple website, Civil Rights in a Northern City: Philadelphia, brings together 1,500 items — newspaper clippings, photographs, TV news coverage, oral histories, correspondence and other materials — to tell the stories of the struggle for civil rights in the city. Brenda Galloway-Wright, associate archivist at the university's Special Collections Research Center, said the website grew out of brainstorming sessions and a $24,000 state grant. "It was a heavily researched topic by our students, faculty, historians, writers and filmmakers," Galloway-Wright said.