Cuts hit classes that lead to jobs

via The Seattle Times When it comes to cutting millions of dollars out of state community- and technical-college budgets this spring, perhaps the most vexing issue is that the very programs that could kick-start new careers won’t be available for all the students who want to enroll.

The Legislature last month sliced $84 million from the community- and technical-college budgets for the next biennium, while authorizing 12 percent-a-year tuition increases for the next two years.

Even before the cutbacks, classes at many of the state’s two-year schools had waitlists. Now, as the schools look for ways to trim further, it’s becoming likely that those waiting lists will grow still longer as classes are cut from the schedule. And some programs will be phased out altogether. [Continue reading at The Seattle Times]

Recruiting with Technology

via Campus Technology “James Maraviglia remembers a time when California Polytechnic State University relied on a paper-based system to keep track of its prospective and new students. The year was 1991, and this associate vice provost for marketing and enrollment development was a new hire at the San Luis Obispo, CA-based institution.

‘I was immediately concerned by the fact that admissions applications were being processed by hand,’ recalled Maraviglia. The Web hadn’t developed into a viable entity for business yet, so the school created an electronic, disk-based application to track such records. The system was superior to the paper-based approach but still lacked efficiencies and required much human intervention, according to Maraviglia.

In 1999, with the Web movement at full throttle, Maraviglia looked around at the solutions that were available on the market. Finding nothing, the university developed its own ‘modern day version of a customer relationship management (CRM) system,’ he said. ‘We launched it in 2000, and have been expanding on it ever since.'” [Continue Reading at Campus Technology]

The Classroom Is ‘Distance Learning’; the Web Is Connected Learning

via Campus Technology “Some lament the isolating or distancing affects of the Web; yet, for educators, the Web can actually reconnect us with the natural, holistic process of learning. The Web, in fact, brings us closer to how humans learned for millennia before the five-century-long print disruption that truly was isolating and distancing.

From the first bits of clothing and the first sharpened stones, humans have augmented their capabilities with technologies. Our civilization now is so built-out that we literally live within our technologies: our homes, clothing, cars, infrastructure, even our human-developed language. These technologies mediate our reality: keeping us warmer or cooler than the atmosphere but also mediating between each other, as language does. We think of language as a way to connect, but it can also be a way to distance, to carefully avoid physical combat through negotiation, and even to separate us from each other. Considering all of the technologies humans live with or within, it is easy to understand the power of the simple phrase “what we make, makes us.”” [Continue Reading at Campus Technology]

A Fistful of Challenges for Ed Tech

via The Journal “A new report has identified key challenges facing education technology in the coming years, ranging from changing economics to instructional practices that have failed to adapt to the evolving technology landscape. But the No. 1 challenge in ed tech, according to the report, is with teachers themselves and the inadequacy of their preparation and ongoing training.

The report, released Tuesday, is the latest in an annual analysis of the outlook for education technology. Conducted by the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), the Horizon Report focused primarily on emerging technologies that will impact education in the near term, as we reported Tuesday. But it also addressed opportunities and challenges facing technology’s adoption in America’s K-12 schools.

For the 2011 Horizon Report K-12 Edition, researchers identified five “key” trends and five “critical” challenges.” [Continue Reading at The Journal]

The Case For Making Online Textbooks Open Source [INFOGRAPHIC]

via Mashable “As companies compete to digitize the textbook market, there is one approach that shakes the traditional publishing business model: open source textbooks, whose proponents believe online educational tomes should be free.

Many universities, including MIT and Carnegie Mellon, post course lectures online for free use. A New York Times article last year explained some of the barriers to applying the same approach to textbooks.

For one thing, the textbook authors must agree to have them distributed online without charging royalties — something that may work well in the software world, where engineers often work on projects while keeping a day job, but typically avoided by writers who put their sweat equity into one book at a time. Also, books for K-12 classrooms must meet state standards, and most states don’t have procedures in place for approving open source textbooks.

But there’s no arguing that having at least a few open source textbooks (even when purchased through companies like Flat World Knowledge that charge for downloading or printing them) would cut down on the average $900 per year that the average student spends on textbooks. Online School has compiled this infographic to explain the cost savings.” [Continue Reading at Mashable]

6 Reasons Why Tablets Are Ready for the Classroom

via Mashable “Since the debut of the iPad, tablets have captured the imagination of consumers. In just one year, the iPad surpassed even the most optimistic of projections to define a brand new product category and become the best-selling gadget of all time, and Forrester analysts project that in 2011, tablet sales will more than double.

But are tablets ready for the classroom? Though tablets have caught on with consumers, the higher education market has been slower to adopt, and understandably so. From grades to degrees to job placement after graduation, the devices that are used in classrooms are tied to important outcomes.

As a result, colleges and universities must proceed carefully when considering whether to adopt a new technology on a large scale. However, reports from recent iPad pilot programs at schools across the country have been positive, and some colleges have even begun distributing tablets to all of their students. As we wrap up the first post-iPad school year, do we know enough to make the “fad, fail, magical” call? I think so.

By looking at all that tablets offer in the context of student behavior and some of the recent trends in education, it’s clear that tablets are ready for the classroom. Here’s a look at the top reasons why.” [Continue Reading at Mashable]

Speaking Up in Class, Silently, Using Social Media

via New York Times ‘Wasn’t it just the other day that teachers confiscated cellphones and principals warned about oversharing on MySpace?

Now, Erin Olson, an English teacher in Sioux Rapids, Iowa, is among a small but growing cadre of educators trying to exploit Twitter-like technology to enhance classroom discussion. Last Friday, as some of her 11th graders read aloud from a poem called “To the Lady,” which ponders why bystanders do not intervene to stop injustice, others kept up a running commentary on their laptops.

The poet “says that people cried out and tried but nothing was done,” one student typed, her words posted in cyberspace.

“She is giving raw proof,” another student offered, “that we are slaves to our society.”

Instead of being a distraction — an electronic version of note-passing — the chatter echoed and fed into the main discourse, said Mrs. Olson, who monitored the stream and tried to absorb it into the lesson. She and others say social media, once kept outside the school door, can entice students who rarely raise a hand to express themselves via a medium they find as natural as breathing.

“When we have class discussions, I don’t really feel the need to speak up or anything,” said one of her students, Justin Lansink, 17. “When you type something down, it’s a lot easier to say what I feel.”’ [Continue Reading at the New York Times]

How Can Cloud Computing Help In Education?

via Cloud Tweaks “Whenever we talk of cloud computing, we always talk about its impact on business. In all my previous articles, I have done the same, speaking about how cloud computing can improve efficiencies, cut costs, save time and in general, give businesses a great return on investment. However, today I am going to speak on something quite different – how cloud computing can help in the noblest human pursuit of all, education.

The worth of human society is not in how much it earns but how much it knows. For it is knowledge that drives advancement, and ultimately, human comfort. And is not comfort the ultimate aim of increased earnings? However, the worth of knowledge goes far beyond the limitations of material wealth. It is knowledge that makes man, Man.

That being said, I believe that cloud computing has a prominent role to play in the classrooms of tomorrow. Let me provide a few examples. Many of our nation’s schools suffer from low graduation rates directly attributable to insufficient infrastructure – shorthanded staff, tiny classrooms, lack of teachers. Cloud computing solutions can solve many of these problems.” [Continue Reading at Cloud Tweaks]

iPad, Tablet Users Prefer Digital Texts

via Campus Technology “Acceptance of digital texts is way up, especially among users of iPads and other tablets. In fact, according to research released this week, time spent reading texts in digital formats now just about equals the time spent on paper-based texts.

According to the report, released by market research firm Gartner, a full 94 percent of iPad users and users of other tablet devices either prefer reading digital texts (52 percent) or find them as readable as printed texts (42 percent).

Contrasted with that were laptop users, a large portion of whom–47 percent–said they find reading texts on screen more difficult than reading paper. (The next-largest group among laptop users, 33 percent, said the experience was about equal to reading printed texts.)

The report, “Survey Analysis: Consumer Digital Reading Preferences Reveal the Exaggerated Death of Paper,” surveyed more than 1,500 end users in the United States, the UK, Japan, India, Italy, and China in the fourth quarter of 2010. It found that the amount of time spent reading digital texts now nearly equals time spent reading printed materials.” [Continue Reading at Campus Technology]

6 Companies Aiming to Digitize the Textbook Industry

via Mashable “The world’s readers purchased an estimated $966 million of ebooks in 2010, and Amazon has been selling more ebooks than paper books since January. But students have yet to catch on to the digital book revolution with the same fervor.

A 2010 study by OnCampus Research found that 74% of college students surveyed still prefer to use a printed textbook.

Where some see non-adopters, others see untapped markets, and thus large and small players alike have long been targeting the digital textbook niche. Here are some of the ways they’re looking to get students to trade their print for pixels.” [Continue Reading at Mashable.com]