Keely Drukala is Heartland’s New Media Specialist. She is responsible for online marketing, media, and other video and audio products. Prior to joining Heartland in 2007, Keely worked as office manager for the Cook County Republican Party. She co-chaired the 2006 Cook County Republican Convention, the first county convention in more than 20 years. In 2007, Keely ran for Illinois State Representative, and although unsuccessful, she was endorsed by the Chicago Tribune over the incumbent. Keely received a dual bachelor’s of arts degree in international politics and international communications from the American University of Paris. Keely is a Northern California native but has lived in Chicago since 2005.

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Keely Drukala

Heartland Institute’s Weekly Podcasts

Welcome to the Heartland’s podcasts. This week, listen to a discussion on how to defend freedom in our personal and economic lives. Click the links below to listen, and subscribe on iTunes so you get the latest podcasts as soon as they are produced. (Search for “Heartland Institute” in the iTunes store.)

ON EDUCATION: While education reformers focus on big schemes like Common Core standards and teacher evaluations, little over the several past decades has seemed to change about American education. Author Beverlee Jobrack, a long-time textbook editor for SRA-McGraw Hill, explains in Tyranny of the Textbook that some of the reason why is that textbooks have not changed. Teachers keep teaching the way they always have, and publishers print books that make them happy, whether it’s based on research about how children learn best or not. Jobrack also explains why the Khan Academy and crazes over much education technology are non-research-supported fads. Listen here.

ON TECHNOLOGY: Eric M. Fraser discusses his extensive research and writing on municipal wi-fi systems, finding them to be more expensive and less effective than promised by governments willing to put taxpayers on the hook to pay for them. Fraser also addresses the technical and regulatory limitations of municipal wi-fi systems. Listen here.

ON ENVIRONMENT: International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) executive director Tom Harris explains how ICSC is turning Earth Hour into Energy Hour. Listen here.

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Heartland Institute’s Weekly Podcasts

Welcome to the Heartland’s podcasts. This week, listen to a discussion on how to defend freedom in our personal and economic lives. Click the links below to listen, and subscribe on iTunes so you get the latest podcasts as soon as they are produced. (Search for “Heartland Institute” in the iTunes store.)

ON EDUCATION:  Is the American Educational Research Association is advancing a political agenda over actual social science? The American Enterprise Institute’s Rick Hess thinks so, and joins the podcast to explain why the nation’s largest professional education research organization should stop playing politics or stop receiving public funds. Read his blog post on Rick Hess Straight Up for the backstory. Listen here.

ON TECHNOLOGY: Detroit record store owner Warren Westfall discusses how he uses the Internet to supplement his bricks-and-mortar retail operation, and how online sales now represent 20 percent of his business. Listen here.

ON ENVIRONMENT: Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo explains why meteorologists are skeptical of alarmist global warming predictions. Listen here.

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Heartland Institute’s Weekly Podcasts

Welcome to the Heartland’s podcasts. This week, listen to a discussion on how to defend freedom in our personal and economic lives. Click the links below to listen, and subscribe on iTunes so you get the latest podcasts as soon as they are produced. (Search for “Heartland Institute” in the iTunes store.)

ON EDUCATION: The waning days of Virginia’s 2012 legislative session are packed with unfinished education bills, which include far-reaching changes to charter schools, virtual schooling, teacher tenure, and a tax credit for private school tuition. Chris Braunlich, a Virginia board of education member and vice president of the Thomas Jefferson Institute, joins the podcast to outline what’s at stake, how bills have endured the legislative meat grinder, and the politics in play. Listen here.

ON TECHNOLOGY: James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy, discusses the recent report that crowd funding site Kickstarter will disburse more money to arts projects this year than the National Endowment for the Arts. Listen here.

ON ENVIRONMENT: Energy economist Donn Dears discusses the economic benefits of natural gas fracking and its outstanding environmental record. Listen here.

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Heartland Institute’s Weekly Podcast

Welcome to the Heartland’s podcasts. This week, listen to a discussion on how to defend freedom in our personal and economic lives. Click the links below to listen, and subscribe on iTunes so you get the latest podcasts as soon as they are produced. (Search for “Heartland Institute” in the iTunes store.)

ON EDUCATION: With wickedly funny, deeply poignant prose, Providence College Professor Anthony Esolen‘s new book dissects how current approaches to education and parenting squash children’s imaginations and cheapen childhood. Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child discusses forming a child’s mind and heart to wonder at the world around him. “Imaginative children are by nature difficult to herd,” he says. “Schools are built for a certain kind of efficiency and anonymity; they look like factories, and serve many of the same functions.” Esolen both explains why and discusses what to do about it. Listen here.

ON TECHNOLOGY: Author and consultant Larry Downes discusses the spectrum crunch, as well as Federal Communications Commission opposition to legislative efforts to alleviate it by conducting auctions. Listen here.

ON ENVIRONMENT: Emergency medical physician Dr. John Dale Dunn explains how EPA is misrepresenting data regarding lives allegedly saved through regulation. Listen here.

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Heartland Institute’s Weekly Podcasts

Happy 2012 and welcome to the Heartland’s podcasts. This week, listen to a discussion on how to defend freedom in our personal and economic lives. Click the links below to listen, and subscribe on iTunes so you get the latest podcasts as soon as they are produced. (Search for “Heartland Institute” in the iTunes store.)

ON EDUCATION: Many states are implementing merit pay and value-added assessments for teachers, but Mike Ford of the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute says they’d do better to follow a different approach: freeing districts and schools to set their own policies. Gov. Scott Walker’s limits on collective bargaining allow Wisconsin school districts to dispatch the traditional step-and-lane teacher pay systems for something better, and Ford’s new report advises how to create some excellent alternatives. He suggests encouraging teacher and principal collaboration with, among other policies, schoolwide per-pupil bonuses for improving student achievement. Listen here.

ON TECHNOLOGY: Defense Attorney James Egan discusses the lawsuit brought against him by the City of Seattle for subpoenaing police squad-car dash-cam footage. Listen here.

ON ENVIRONMENT: Heartland Institute Senior Fellow James M. Taylor explains why the Keystone XL pipeline was a win-win proposition for our environment and the economy on The Mike Siegel Show. Listen here.

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Heartland Institute’s Weekly Podcasts

Happy 2012 and welcome to the Heartland’s podcasts. This week, listen to a discussion on how to defend freedom in our personal and economic lives. Click the links below to listen, and subscribe on iTunes so you get the latest podcasts as soon as they are produced. (Search for “Heartland Institute” in the iTunes store.)

ON EDUCATION: Researchers are just now quantifying what we’ve known for ages: great teachers are supremely important to students’ intellect, earnings, and character. Vicki Alger has just released a study applying such research to Nebraska, where legislators are joining others across the country in attempting to compose teacher evaluation systems. Listen here.

ON TECHNOLOGY: In his latest white paper, Joseph P. Fuhr Jr. Ph.D. discusses the multiple and significant economic drawbacks of government-owned and operated Internet networks. Listen here.

ON ENVIRONMENT: Columnist Alan Caruba explains why President Obama made a big mistake blocking the Keystone XL pipeline. Listen here.

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Heartland Institute’s Weekly Podcasts

Happy 2012 and welcome to the Heartland’s podcasts. This week, listen to a discussion on Obamacare’s interim final rules and regulations. Click the links below to listen, and subscribe on iTunes so you get the latest podcasts as soon as they are produced. (Search for “Heartland Institute” in the iTunes store.)

ON EDUCATION: The current media and government scrutiny of for-profit higher education’s weaknesses often ignores the potential for these institutions to innovate beyond their current startup stages, says Ben Wildavsky, a senior fellow for the Kauffman Foundation. He has recently released a report of in-depth interviews he held with those leading such firms, outlining their experiences in traditional and for-profit higher education and comparing the two. Listen here.

ON TECHNOLOGY: In this week’s podcast, Randolph J. May, president, The Free State Foundation, discusses his newly published collection of essays, which call for free-market reforms of U.S. communications policy. Listen here.

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WatchDog talks Education with Bruno Behrend of The Heartland Institute

Ken Capron, of the Maine Center for Constitutional Studies and host of “The Watchdog” radio program, interviews Heartland’s Bruno Behrend on Standards-Based Education and other newfangled fads floating around America’s education bureaucracy.

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Heartland Institute’s Weekly Podcasts

Happy 2012 and welcome to the Heartland’s podcasts. This week, listen to a discussion on hydraulic fracturing. Click the links below to listen, and subscribe on iTunes so you get the latest podcasts as soon as they are produced. (Search for “Heartland Institute” in the iTunes store.)

ON EDUCATION: A Florida vouchers program for disabled students is under fire for instances of fraud and abuse. Special-education lawyer and former teacher Allison Hertog joins the podcast to analyze the John M. McKay scholarships, special education, and abuses of public funds. She notes that Florida has reached the second phase of widespread school-choice reforms: refinement and discovering better accountability mechanisms. Listen here.

ON ENVIRONMENT: Todd Wynn, director of the Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force at the American Legislative Exchange Council, explains why hydraulic fracturing is a environmentally friendly means of producing natural gas. Listen here.

ON TECHNOLOGY: Two bills looming in Congress aim to curtail copyright infringement but go too far by violating Internet users’ freedom of speech. Parker Higgins, an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, explains why the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act are bad legislation. Listen here.

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Heartland Institute’s Weekly Podcasts

The year is near its end, but Heartland’s podcasts keep chugging along. This week, listen to a discussion about the EPA’s ‘facts’ on lives ‘saved’ through emission restrictions, and other interesting conversations on public policy. Click the links below to listen, and subscribe on iTunes so you get the latest podcasts as soon as they are produced. (Search for “Heartland Institute” in the iTunes store.)

ON EDUCATION: Patricia Siroky’s 12-year-old daughter was failing core classes, acting out to her parents and teachers, and calling herself “stupid” while attending her local public schools. Now, half a year into a small private school she can attend thanks to Indiana’s new school vouchers program, the seventh grader is happier, engaged in after-school activities, upping those grades in her hardest subjects, and once more delighting her parents. Listen Here.

ON ENVIRONMENT:  Dr. John Dale Dunn explains how the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency distorts the facts on lives allegedly saved through emissions restrictions. Listen Here.

ON TECHNOLOGY: In this weeks Infotech and Telecom News podcast, Matt Howard, CEO of ZoomSafer, discusses safe, legal and handsfree use of mobile phones while driving. Listen Here.

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