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NEW EDUCATORS PILOT PROGRAM

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[From Education Programs | Second Life Grid]

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LL and ISTE have launched a new pilot program for sl.

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this is just the thing to make my research better.....scan, Untitled

At a charter school in California, fourth and fifth graders study rare insects using an electron microscope via a fiber-optic link to a nearby university. At an elementary school in Washington, fourth graders learn reading, writing, math, science and technology while learning about lizards. And at a Seattle high school, 10th graders work on deadline with local architects to design “schools of the

Fifteen student tutors will be embedded in the classroom this year, working with students to improve writing as part of a pilot program this year. The Technology, Research, and Communication Writing Fellows Program, or TRAC, teaches students the skills necessary for developing research papers. The TRAC program places 15 tutors in classes where they work with 15 to 20 students. Throughout the

Beneath the desk, agile fingers flit across the keypad. Above, eye contact with the teacher never breaks. The cell-phone text message is sent, unnoticed. Or noticed. Then it's up to Twin Cities teachers to offer a warning, or confiscate the cell phone, and almost unavoidably disrupt class time -- yet another text-messaging distraction that teachers and administrators see as a growing nuisance.

I was sure I had mentioned this project before - Web 2.0 and Emerging Learning Technologies. However, I can't find record of it. So, rather than ignore this valuable resource (put together by Curt Bonk and a global group), I'll risk linking more than once :). The last year has brought about a tremendous surge in interest in emerging technologies. I don't fully understand why. What's different this year than in the previous 8? Oh well, whatever it is, resources like the one listed above will become increasingly valuable as more educators discover the opportunities of extending interaction and content creation to the network.

The summer holidays are in full swing as millions of children across the UK have broken up from school. More time at home means more time spent on facebook, chatting to friends online and downloading music – but are parents actually monitoring what their children are doing online? According to a survey* from BroadbandChoices.co.uk, the answer is a resounding “No.” The research found that 84% of

Stockport College is aiming to become a 21st Century ‘College of the Future’ with Carillion IT Services commencing work on an innovative £1.4 million contract with the OFSTED ‘Outstanding’ and Beacon status college. The project forms part of the college’s £100m state of the art new build flagship campus. As Stockport College’s technology partner, Carillion IT Services is providing design

This 41 minute podcast features a session from the EDUCAUSE 2007 Annual Conference entitled, "Extending Enterprise Authentication and Authorization in Higher Education: Building on the Success of Project METEOR". A PowerPoint slide show is also available for this session.

Enterprise authentication, authorization, and federated trust are increasingly important in enabling access to a wide swath of applications that use campus-based credentials. Their use makes access easier and more secure. A review of the successful METEOR federation and the EA2 Task Force work offer insight on how to move forward.

This session features:

• Timothy Cameron, Project Manager, The METEOR Project, NCHELP
• Charles F. Leonhardt, Principal Technologist, Georgetown University

 

BBC Motion Gallery together with JISC and the London Metropolitan University has announced the winner of the “BBC Motion Gallery Clip Creativity Challenge 2008” The challenge, issued in May to London Metropolitan University students, aimed to highlight the importance of students as the next generation of media and film talent and demonstrate their creative ability in responding to a commercial

The History Engine site is an online resource for students to search and browse written tidbits — what historians behind the project call “episodes” — and to contribute their own entries to a growing online ecosystem that is connected via semantic links, time stamps and geographic tags (with mapping functionality on the way).

The Jane N. Ryland Fellowship program is an EDUCAUSE grant program that helps build future leaders by supporting IT professionals' attendance at EDUCAUSE events.

Applications for 2009 awards are due November 3, 2008.

• Hear past recipients share their experiences with the Fellowship program and tips for future winners (podcast, time: seven minutes)
• Learn more about the Fellowship program.
• View the list of eligible EDUCAUSE events.

This seven-minute podcast features information about the Jane N. Ryland Fellowship program. This EDUCAUSE grant program was established to expand opportunities for information technology professionals with a financial need to attend EDUCAUSE events, thus helping to build future leaders.

Awards are made on an annual basis, in amounts that will substantially or fully meet the costs of attending one EDUCAUSE educational event that aligns with the professional needs of the applicant and the strategic directions of his or her institution. Fellows select the event of their choice from among the eligible EDUCAUSE offerings described in this brochure. Grant monies are applied first to registration fees, then to transportation and housing costs.

Institutions need not be EDUCAUSE members. While more than one candidate from the same institution may be considered in a single award year, priority will be placed on distributing fellowship opportunities broadly. The selection committee will consider applications from outside the United States, but grant resources and event programming limit our ability to support international needs.

The application deadline for 2009 awards is Monday, November 3, 2008.

Music by Kelly Walker - "Study for Organ Quartet and 100 Piece Orchestra (Silent)"

How environmentally friendly is your college or university? Well, it all depends on whom you ask.

As higher education has become more conscious of issues such as sustainability, a number of independent assessments have arisen from both nonprofit and for-profit sources. For better or for worse, they all have different methods of evaluation and serve disparate audiences — and many of these assessments rely on self-reporting. As these green ratings have proliferated, many college officials have said they would prefer a national standard. And some experts think a new environmental rating being created may become one.

A new survey of students found that about a quarter of them reported hunting for an illegal copy of a textbook from pirate Web sites.

The survey was small—only about 500 students from two colleges—but it is one of several indicators that downloading unauthorized textbooks is becoming commonplace at college campuses.

Textbook sales are headed downward at many university presses, and the negative trend has accelerated in the last couple of months. That's the word from press directors anxious about the decline but unsure what's causing it or what to do to stop it

The Copyright Evidence Registry [OCLC] was recently launched. The effort promises a big step forward for those struggling to come up with ways to identify works for whom owners cannot be identified or located -- orphan works. The effort also enables those with information about the owner of a work to contribute that as well.

September is National Emergency Preparedness Month, an opportunity to raise awareness about the importance of emergency preparedness in homes, workplaces, colleges and universities, and communities. Institutions of higher education across the country are fine-tuning and test-driving their emergency preparedness plans, testing their emergency notification systems, and conducting awareness sessions for students, faculty, and staff. They are also exploring how they can better leverage information and communications technologies to help them address every phase of emergency management: prevention-mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. The University of Maryland is taking a comprehensive approach to protecting its human, physical, and cyber assets and is exploring the use of social networking to enhance communication with stakeholders.

Pew Internet has released an interesting study on how people blend online and traditional media. I rarely read a physical newspaper or watch a news program. Apparently that's not the norm. While traditional media has declined (newspaper readers has dropped from "40% to 34% in the last two years alone"), it certainly hasn't been abandoned. In the report we're introduced to new terms: integrators, net-newsers (ugh), traditionalists (largest group), and disengaged. We're still at that interesting crossroads of serving the the function of the old with new media and beginning to recognize new opportunities.

I'm almost done posting links to the course on this blog...I'll continue the posting on the course blog. A short presentation introducing massive open online courses (MOOCs) is now available here.