College of Information and Computer Science, Long Island University
Published by July 19th, 2008
in education.
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As part of its Innovative Digital Education and Learning initiative (IDEAL-NM), New Mexico is launching a statewide program to standardize on a single electronic learning platform–Blackboard–spanning K-12, higher education, adult education, and government. The initiative will also support a new statewide virtual high school.
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Published by July 19th, 2008
in education, economics and publishing.
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College students, already struggling with soaring tuition bills and expenses, are encountering yet another financial hit: Publishers and schools are working together to produce “custom” textbooks that can limit students’ use of the money-saving trade in used books. And in a controversial twist, some academic departments are sharing in the profits from these texts.
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Science-oriented master’s degrees provide a pathway into emerging careers for students who aren’t interested in completing a PhD, a new report says. The report calls for the creation of more professionally oriented master’s degree programs that would give students broad-based science knowledge and a dash of business and communications skills to boot.
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Published by July 12th, 2008
in education and economics.
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For a sense of how deeply the oil-price story is woven into the fabric of life in 2008, Buzzwatch compiled a list of 50 things being attributed, at least in part, to high fuel costs. Quite a few are relevant, among them: schools cutting back on field trips, community colleges cutting Friday classes, the return of the bookmobile, and longer waits for the campus bus.
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Published by July 12th, 2008
in education, software and open source.
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Educational institutions have rushed to put their academic resources and services online, bringing the global community onto a common platform and awakening the interest of investors. Despite continuing technical challenges, online education shows great promise. Open source software offers one approach to addressing the technical problems in providing optimal delivery of online learning. Open source refers to both the concept and practice of making program source code openly available. Users and developers have access to the core designing functionalities that enable them to modify or add features to the source code and redistribute it. Extensive collaboration and circulation are central to the open source movement.
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Published by July 12th, 2008
in education, books and reading.
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This summer reading list features titles on improving teaching and learning at the college and university level, most from a national association of faculty developers.
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Published by June 29th, 2008
in libraries, education and e-books.
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Ebook provider ebrary this week released its third survey in two years of attitudes toward ebooks, this one measuring students’ perception and use of the emerging medium. Completed this May, the survey reveals few major surprises for librarians, confirming the continuing rise of web-based resources in students’ lives—and also suggests that the book on the book is not closed when it comes to print. “Print books still command respect,” noted Allen McKiel, dean of library and media services at Western Oregon University. In fact, a passion for print books emerged from the survey. That surprised McKiel, who has analyzed all of the recent ebrary surveys. “Lack of interest is perhaps too mild a characterization for the reaction that some students have to ebooks,” McKiel noted in his analysis. “The loss of print books is personal. Books are loved. Ebooks threaten them. I think it is important to acknowledge that for many students, faculty, and librarians, perhaps most acutely for librarians, e-books threaten the loss of something approximating the loss of a personal friend.”
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Published by June 29th, 2008
in education, digital, publishing and e-books.
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Digital content services provider Ingram Digital has announced a new survey of e-book users conducted by its Education Solutions unit. The survey is seen to confirm the top three factors driving a surge in adoption of digital textbooks that led Ingram’s January-May sales to surpass 2007 results by more than 400 percent. Data from the survey’s 680 respondents revealed that when deciding whether to purchase a digital title, 47 percent believe that ‘cost in relation to print copies’ is very important. A similar proportion of respondents identified the convenience of e-books and interactive features as also being very important.
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Published by June 29th, 2008
in education and green.
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In a push driven initially by students, the environmental fervor sweeping college campuses has reached beyond the recycling and organic food and is transforming the curriculum, permeating classrooms, academic majors, and new research institutes.
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Published by June 29th, 2008
in education and social networking.
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In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers have discovered the educational benefits of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. The same study found that low-income students are in many ways just as technologically proficient as their counterparts.
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Published by June 21st, 2008
in education.
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Professors venturing into online education are discovering that shorter lectures work better outside the lecture hall, and some professors are taking that lesson back and applying it to traditional classroom teaching.
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Published by June 7th, 2008
in education, plagiarism and United Kingdom.
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A study has found that only 143 students caught cheating were expelled out of 9,200 cases, despite almost all British universities threatening expulsion as a sanction. The study of 86 UK universities also found a much higher rate of plagiarism among postgraduate students.
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Apple Tuesday expanded the international reach of iTunes U, bringing in 10 universities from the UK, Ireland, New Zealand, and Australia, all of which are providing content via the iTunes education portal free of charge. The initial slate of schools from abroad joining in the service, which provides free content (educational and otherwise) from and for the higher education community, includes Open University (UK); University College, London; Trinity College Dublin; the Australian National University; Griffith University (Australia); Swinburne University of Technology (Australia); University of Western Australia; University of Melbourne; University of New South Wales; and University of Otago (New Zealand).
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Published by June 7th, 2008
in web 2.0 and education.
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A core debate about learning design arises from the fear that, if we allow learners too much freedom, they will not learn the right things. Web 2.0 exacerbates that fear because it is beyond the control of educators.
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Published by June 7th, 2008
in education.
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Nobel Prize winning physicist Carl Wieman says that science educators must learn how to help their students learn, pointing to a growing movement in the sciences to revolutionize how science is taught.
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The latest “incubator classroom” initiatives allow faculty members and IT staff to try out new technologies and new ways of teaching and learning, before rolling out tech tools across campus.
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Published by June 1st, 2008
in education and social networking.
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There has been a lot of recent debate on the benefits of social networking tools and software in education. While there are good points on either side of the debate, there remains the essential difference in theoretical positioning. Can social networking both as an instructional concept and user skill be integrated into the conventional approaches to teaching and learning? Do the skills developed within a social networking environment have value in the more conventional environments of learning?
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Published by June 1st, 2008
in education and India.
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A recent study shows that, at more than 83,000 last year (a number that doubles the previous decade’s), students from India are the largest group of international students in the US.
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Published by May 26th, 2008
in libraries, education and librarians/information professionals.
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If you were just starting library school again, what would you do differently to make sure you were as prepared as you could be for the work world? This was a recent topic of discussion on one of ALA’s listserves. Participants had valuable advice for a poster who is beginning an MLIS program in the fall.
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Published by May 26th, 2008
in education and virtual worlds.
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Cory Ondrejka, the co-founder of the virtual world Second Life who is now a visiting professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, said in a speech today that virtual worlds are here to stay, and that professors are among the most active pioneers. “In my view the academy has been blazing the trail of adoption of virtual worlds far more than gamers or industry,” said Mr. Ondrejka, who spoke at a conference at Case Western Reserve University called Collaboration Technology and Engaging the Campus 2008.
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Published by May 26th, 2008
in mobile/cell phones and education.
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Amid concerns that cellphones in class distract from the educational experience, this brief article offers a checklist of ways cellphones can assist learning in the classroom, with links to the new technologies that make such assistance possible.
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Published by May 26th, 2008
in education and web sites.
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Collection of online tutorials for small businesses. “In general, the courses are all self-paced and should take about 30 minutes to complete. Most of the courses require a brief online registration.” Topics include planning, management, finance and accounting, marketing and advertising, government contracting, risk management and cyber security, e-commerce, international trade, federal tax training, and retirement. Some material also available in Spanish. From the U.S. Small Business Administration.
Small Business Administration Online Courses website
Published by May 26th, 2008
in demographics, education and copyright.
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A spike in notices of alleged copyright violations on campuses prompts speculation that record companies are targeting future, not actual, breaches.
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Published by May 4th, 2008
in demographics, education and economics.
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A teacher tries to shush her young students, telling them to be “as quiet as a mouse.” The familiar idiom sounds harmless, but it might carry a different meaning for children whose families can’t afford garbage service. Their home could be plagued with rats. If they live in a shelter, with disruptive bed checks throughout the night, children often come to school sleep-deprived. Uncertain of where they’ll be living the next week and traumatized by aspects of homelessness, impoverished students and their parents might view education strikingly different than middle-class families.
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Published by May 4th, 2008
in education, environment and green.
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The Sierra Club selected the top ten most environmentally friendly colleges and universities in the country. Results are based on clean-energy purchases, green-building policies, bike facilities, food served in dorms, recognition by environmental organizations, among other factors. Arizona State University, Bowdoin College, Carleton College, Emory University, and Northern Arizona University received honorable mention for their efforts.
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Published by May 4th, 2008
in web 2.0, blogs, education and wiki.
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Web 2.0 tools sure are nifty and ‘next-gen,’ but are they actually making a difference in the way students and educators collaborate? Everyone seems to have a different definition for “Web 2.0,” but most people agree the phrase describes a second generation of web-based communities and hosted services that aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing between users. Technically speaking, these new technologies include blogs, wikis, folksonomies (collaborative or social tagging), and social bookmarking sites such as Del.icio.us. In the business world, these technologies enable colleagues in different offices to work together on projects, and thus move those efforts ahead quickly and more easily than traveling to an in-person meeting or even teleconferencing. In higher education, however, achieving measurable results with these tools is a bit more challenging. And maybe that’s because-for the academic community, at least-questions continue to swirl around the use of these technologies. Questions such as: What do these tools bring to the table? How can educators be certain students will use them? How does restructuring a curriculum around Web 2.0 actually make a difference in how students learn? Across the country, as more and more colleges and universities consider embracing Web 2.0, the educators and technologists involved feel a certain amount of trepidation, and even ponder the future of the movement.
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Published by May 4th, 2008
in education, children, government and reading.
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President Bush’s $1 billion a year initiative to teach reading to low-income children has not helped improve their reading comprehension, according to a Department of Education report released recently. The program, known as Reading First, drew on some of Mr. Bush’s educational experiences as Texas governor, and at his insistence Congress included it in the federal No Child Left Behind legislation that passed by bipartisan majorities in 2001. It has been a subject of dispute almost ever since, however, with the Bush administration and some state officials characterizing the program as beneficial for young students, and Congressional Democrats and federal investigators criticizing conflict of interest among its top advisers.
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Published by May 4th, 2008
in education, economics and Canada.
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A Statistics Canada report reveals that while twenty-somethings in Canada have more higher education than their parents did in the previous generation, they earn significantly less.
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Published by May 4th, 2008
in education, technology and early adopters.
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A professor at the University of Central Florida challenged her students to unplug and live a technology-free life for five days, and most discovered they were incapable of doing so. “It’s something I’m doing to get us in touch with where our humanity is,” said faculty member Mary Ann Murdoch in coverage in the Orlando-Sentinel. “Are they really in charge of these devices, or are all these devices in charge of them?” Only two of 26 students in Murdoch’s English composition class were able to relinquish cell phones, iPods, portable CD players, text messaging, e-mail, computers, TVs, DVDs, and video games. The rest conceded that they were dependent on technology.
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Published by May 4th, 2008
in education, books and publishing.
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Plenty of professors are thinking about ways of introducing alternatives to traditional textbooks that they or their students deem too pricey. Some are involved in efforts to create material that is online, free and open source in design. A new effort announced Monday aims to help this movement grow at community colleges. As Judy Baker, dean of the distance learning program at the Foothill-De Anza Community College District, sees it, not enough people are focusing on compiling content tailored to two-year college students. “We have more economic and racial diversity than the normal population, so it’s even more important for content to be culturally relevant and meaningful,” Baker said. “It’s important for faculty to be able to localize the information, and because our students are not always as prepared for a college-level textbook that comes from the publishers, we need to provide supplemental information.”
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Published by April 27th, 2008
in education and copyright.
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University of Florida professor Michael Moulton thinks copyright law protects the lectures he gives to his students, and he’s headed to court to prove it. Moulton and his e-textbook publisher are suing Thomas Bean, who runs a company that repackages and sells student notes, arguing that the business is illegal since notes taken during college lectures violate the professor’s copyright.
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Published by April 27th, 2008
in education, copyright and intellectual property.
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The Department of Commerce’s United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today announced the launch of a new, dynamic curriculum that inspires students to be creative and teaches them about the value of patents, trademarks, and copyrights, as well as the importance of respecting other’s intellectual property. The i-©®eaTM curriculum, developed by the USPTO in collaboration with i-SAFE—a leader in Internet safety education—is an interactive and age appropriate unit of instruction designed for upper-elementary, middle, and high school students. “If you own something that is valuable, you want to protect it. Since U.S. intellectual property today is worth more than $5 trillion, it is important that future inventors understand the process of protecting intellectual property, and that we instill an innovative spirit among students to keep the flow of innovation alive,” said Jon Dudas, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO.
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Published by April 27th, 2008
in education and collections.
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E-book technology firm ebrary has announced that it will provide librarians as well as students and faculty in library science and related programmes with complimentary access to its Library Center for one year in support of National Library Week. Subsidised by ebrary, the Library Center includes more than 85 full-text e-books.
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