Blog Juice for Educational Technology

The General Accounting Office began asking a random group of 100 colleges this month to answer a survey about peer-to-peer file sharing on their campuses. The survey is in response to complaints from Congress and the entertainment industry that colleges are not doing enough to curb illegal file sharing among students. The American Council on Education is warning colleges that the accounting office is not granting anonymity to institutions that answer the survey.

“In other words, congressional staff will know exactly who provided what information, insights, or evidence and will be able to determine who is doing what to limit illegal peer-to-peer file sharing. Obviously, schools would want to be particularly careful about what they tell a federal agency in that situation,” the council wrote in an e-mail message to college officials. —Andrea L. Foster

In its latest report on employers’ views of online colleges, The New York Times offers some news that will encourage the Phoenixes and Kaplans of the world—and some that should give them pause.

More and more online learners are applying for hotly contested jobs, the Times reports. The Central Intelligence Agency, for example, estimates that between 5 and 10 percent of its new recruits have taken at least some courses over the Web.

But online education’s reputation still suffers: Stories of diploma mills and the University of Phoenix’s allegedly over-the-top student-recruiting tactics (The Chronicle, October 8, 2004) have left many employers reluctant to hire virtual learners. In one recent study, 96 percent of employers said they would choose an applicant who went to a bricks-and-mortar college over one who obtained his or her degree online. —Brock Read

EDUCATION: COLLEGE: PROFESSORS: CREDENTIALING:
Ted Tedrick:
Temple University Professor:
School of Tourism and Hospitality Management

This post is two fold in purpose. The first purpose is to document the
excellent academic work of a dear colleague in the Tourism and Hospitality
program here at Temple University which includes recreation, leisure
studies and sports management as additional parts of that program. The
professor is Ted Tedrick who not only has contributed a number of first
rate publications to the literature in his field, but also provides
excellent teaching and counseling to both undergraduate and graduate
students here at this university.

Many faculty needing to credential their publication work, use Web of
Science or its print counterparts, Science Citation Index, Social Sciences
Citation Index and Arts and Humanities Citation Index. These are of
course excellent resources but at smaller colleges with limited budgets
these tools may not be part of the library collection, so that access to
these sources to demonstrate the impact of a faculty member's publications
through who and how many have cited their works may be a difficult task in
terms of individual faculty gaining such access to these tools at these
small or under budgeted academic institutions. Secondly, Web of Science
includes a very limited and specific group of journals that may not
provide substantial coverage in some disciplines or in those frequented by
the publications of an individual faculty member.

The second purpose of this post is to demonstrate, using Ted Tedrick as an
example, the usefulness of certain free tools on the internet to provide
at least a listing of some publications by a faculty member and some of
the citing of these publications by other scholars.

Since the purpose of this bibliography is to make the reader aware of the
kind of faculty credentialing that is possible through internet sources,
this document does not pretend to be complete or exhaustive, but rather to
provide knowledge by example as to how this type of documentation is
possible with the internet.

These sources are presented in the order found using internet search
tools, namely Google Scholar, Google Books and Google.

read more

Acting on the advice of the nation’s Ministry of Human Resource Development (The Chronicle, July 27), government officials in India have decided to pass on Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child project. Mr. Negroponte had hoped to sell one million of his $100 laptops to India, but national officials derided the program as “pedagogically suspect” and argued that splurging on the machines would prevent the country from spending money on classrooms and teachers.

Fiscal pragmatism may in fact have been just one of the factors that led India away from One Laptop Per Child, reports ZDNet UK. Mr. Negroponte, the Web site recalls, was the founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab—which opened an outpost in Mumbai before shutting the operation down, amid considerable criticism, last year. According to ZDNet, “bad feelings left behind are still strong enough to render Nicholas Negroponte…persona non grata within the subcontinent—and guarantee the rejection of any project with his name attached.”

Despite the unpromising news from India, One Laptop Per Child continues to push forward. Earlier this month Nigeria paid for one million of Mr. Negroponte’s cheap laptops, according to Vanguard. —Brock Read

In its latest report on employers’ views of online colleges, The New York Times offers some news that will encourage the Phoenixes and Kaplans of the world—and some that should give them pause.

More and more online learners are applying for hotly contested jobs, the Times reports. The Central Intelligence Agency, for example, estimates that between 5 and 10 percent of its new recruits have taken at least some courses over the Web.

But online education’s reputation still suffers: Stories of diploma mills and the University of Phoenix’s allegedly over-the-top student-recruiting tactics (The Chronicle, October 8, 2004) have left many employers reluctant to hire virtual learners. In one recent study, 96 percent of employers said they would choose an applicant who went to a bricks-and-mortar college over one who obtained his or her degree online. —Brock Read

Schoolteachers in Shanghai have fallen in love with blogging: About one in ten now uses the medium to post course content and administer discussions outside the classroom, according to the Shanghai Academy of Education Sciences.

But students, it seems, aren’t so enamored of the technology. Most of them simply ignore their teachers’ blogs, reports the Shanghai Daily. The Daily notes that the blogs “aren’t very attractive to students,” but offers little in the way of specifics. So here is a pair of questions that could easily be extended to professors who blog: What flaws can keep a classroom blog from getting off the ground? And once students begin to lose interest in a blog, how can it be reanimated? —Brock Read

Congress has passed a bill that some are calling the most extensive piece of child safety legislation in the last decade. Under the measure, convicted child molesters would be listed on a national internet database and w…

We’re working in at a Web 2.0 Summit in a primary school in Lumberton, near Beaumont. Summit delegates have posted their first reflective blog, and I want to invite 2¢ Worth readers to poke their heads in and read what folks are saying. If you see something to comment on, a reflection, an […]

I read the following via Doug’s Borderland blog.
Send your message in opposition to DOPA by going to the US Senate website Find Your Senators dropdown menu in the upper right corner of the page. and locate your senator with the Find Your Senators dropdown menu in the upper right corner of the page.
This […]

EDUCATION COLLEGE STUDENTS :

INFORMATON LITERACY:

Most Youths may be Tech Savvy, but They Lack 'Digital Literacy,' Report Says

Most Youths may be Tech Savvy, but They Lack 'Digital Literacy,' Report Says

By LEILA FADEL STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER Star Telegram

<http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/15131207.htm>

"Like most 22-year-olds, Ghida El-Hajj-Sleiman could surf the Web.

read more

Seems that Vermont Senator Pat Leahy has agreed to slow DOPA down so to speak and that the bill is now going to the Senate Commerce Committee. Here is a list of members of that group that you might want to contact. 

technorati tags:dopa, education, social_software

Via Brian at
Bump on the Blog
, just couldn’t resist this.

Will Richardson posted a short note yesterday pointing to an article in the Wall Street Journal about how Israelis and Lebanese are reading each other’s blogs — probably the only way that they have of interacting with each other within a civil context. Read his post and his quote from the article.
I’ll double-click on […]