October 16, 2006

Senator's Introduce Bill to Create Controversial Student-Tracking Database

"Fourteen U.S. senators formally introduced a bill today to authorize spending to set up databases to track college students’ educational progress—an idea opposed by private colleges—and to produce more scientists and engineers."

Read Full Story from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Posted by vvarvel at 10:39 AM | Comments (0)

September 29, 2006

National Educational Records Database

"The U.S. Education Department’s research division, the Institute of Education Sciences, is developing a database that would track students’ progress through college while protecting their privacy, the division’s director, Grover J. (Russ) Whitehurst, said this week. Speaking to the institute’s board, Mr. Whitehurst said the database would resolve many of the privacy concerns that derailed the Bush administration’s plan to create a “unit record” database using students’ Social Security numbers (The Chronicle, July 7)."

Read full story in the Chronicle of Higher Education News Blog

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September 26, 2006

Growth of Online Education in Traditional Institutions

"The number of courses being delivered to students through the Columbia College online learning program now exceeds the number of students taking courses through the traditional classroom method."

I was unable to tell from the article the percentage of students who take both online v. distance at the same time or at separate times. The quote above cannot be correct either unless you rephrase it as the number of course units taken online now exceeds the same number for traditional classes. The language in the article is convoluted as to actually comparable items, but the statements by President Brouder along with an allusion to future experiments with iPod courses are interesting.

Read the Full Story

Posted by vvarvel at 04:23 PM | Comments (0)

August 04, 2006

Near-Final Report from the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education Released

Although the tone is progressively softer than earlier drafts, the document still calls for immediate improvements, especially in financial aid, accountability, innovation, and global competitiveness.

See Report

Posted by vvarvel at 10:21 AM | Comments (0)

June 01, 2006

Free Music for going to college

Saint Joseph College, a four-year women's college in Connecticut, is offering students 3 free iTunes downloads once they have registered on the admissions site.

Read More

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May 31, 2006

Internet and Computer Core Certification

While looking around Websites dealing with Alaska, I came across this interesting program. The reason that I find it interesting is not so much what it is, but who is offering it. The Alaska State Department of Labor and Workforce Development offers a program for an Internet and Computer Core Certification. I am now curious and plan to see if other states offer similar programs. For more information, see http://www.jobs.state.ak.us/05-11-06-IC3_Flyer.pdf

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May 22, 2006

Congress aims at censoring social networking from schools

Another article has popped up regarding controversial Fitzpatrick's bill called the Deleting Online Predators Act, or DOPA, that would effectively kill social networking online in most schools. For more see the CNet article.

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May 11, 2006

No more social networking in schools receiving government funding

This bill...
"prohibits access by minors without parental authorization to a commercial social networking website or chat room through which minors may easily access or be presented with obscene or in- decent material; may easily be subject to unlawful sexual advances, unlawful requests for sexual favors, or repeated offensive comments of a sexual nature from adults may easily access other material that is harmful to minors."

As such, it could lead to online social networks being blocked on campuses that receive federal Internet subsidies outside of a classroom or mediated context.

For the legislation see http://www.politechbot.com/docs/fitzpatrick.social.networking.051006.pdf. PBS commentary at http://www.pbs.org/teachersource/learning.now/2006/05/new_federal_legislation_would_1.html

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March 03, 2006

Wikipedia now at 1 million

Wikipedia's 1 millionth article, the Jordanhill railway station, has now been posted. Within its first 24 hours, it was also edited over 400 times.

See http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_releases/English_Wikipedia_Publishes_Millionth_Article or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordanhill_railway_station.

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November 08, 2005

2006 Illinois Online Conference

The Illinois Online Conference Call for Proposals runs through December 7th. Below is more information about the conference quoted from http://www.ilonlineconf.org/content/about.cfm. This conference is not affiliated with ION, but I recommend it especially to beginners in online education.

Join your colleagues from around the world in a state-of-the-art conference hosted by Illinois' P-20 education community.

The 2006 Online Conference for Teaching and Learning features keynotes, presentations and discussions based on the topics of: Innovation, Technology, Leadership, Teaching and Learning, Current Issues in Illinois Education.

The conference will be held February 15-17, 2006 (TBA CST), with Preconference January 31, 2006 (TBA CST).

This conference is held entirely on the Internet using: email, the Web, synchronous chats, discussion areas, and other Internet technologies. This premier online conference was created to focus on issues and concerns of K-20 classroom faculty and related technology support, learning resources, student services, and workforce development trainers . We want you to share experiences, successes, and failures with your colleagues from around the State of Illinois. A Conference Community has been created as an online environment in which groups of conference participants, both small and large, can gather electronically to work on, participate in discussions on, or learn about the same thing at the same time.


You can find the call for proposals at http://www.ilonlineconf.org/content/callForProposals.cfm.

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