The combination of higher education and The Office? Genius.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Say what you will about Bill Gates:

He’s loaded. (All rich people are bastards! They don’t even recycle! You know, probably!)

He’s bossy and may want to take over the world. (Gaaah! That was my plan!)

He’s too smart to be human. (That guy freaks me out and forces me to deal with feelings of inferiority!)

Yes, I totally understand how upset people get with regard to Mr. Gates. He lives a few lakes away, I pay attention to the media reports, and I know some Microsofties. This city is full of them. You can’t take your recycling bins out to the curb without elbowing one. They all complain about how working for him takes away their souls, one sliver at a time, but the benefits are too awesome to give up.

What was that entertaining factoid someone came up with a few years back? Something along the lines of: Gates makes so much money every moment of every day that if he sees a $100 bill lying on the ground it’s not worth his time to stop and pick it up.

I don’t work for him, and I don’t plan to. I’m also not someone he plans to crush someday. I don’t actually have any issue with the fact that he has enough money to go buy his own country. My view is therefore possibly more objective. Plus, I can’t not respect a guy who got where he is using grey matter and a blatant disregard for the opinions of others.

The two points that make it impossible for me to dislike Bill Gates are these: he gives a huge amount of time and money to good causes, including creating entire programs in order to actually find solutions; he has so much money he’ll never be able to spend it all and he still wears cubicle-geek chic and apparently refuses to wear cool glasses. How can you not be happy knowing a person like that is in the world?

Once again, Bill’s using his powers for good:

The Microsoft Corporation chairman says he’s a fan of the movement to publish course materials free online. He seems especially impressed with online systems that gauge students’ knowledge and give them specific feedback, a specialty of the Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University. But while he acknowledges the work of open-content aggregators like Academic Earth, Mr. Gates wants to see better organization of the vast course materials on the Web.

“The foundation has made a few grants to drive online learning, but we are just at the start of this work,” Gates writes. “So far, technology has hardly changed formal education at all. But a lot of people, including me, think this is the next place where the Internet will surprise people in how it can improve things—especially in combination with face-to-face learning.”

Further Reading:

AcademicEarth.org
Carnegie Mellon University: Open Learning Initiative
2010 Annual Letter from Bill Gates: Online Learning
Grant Writers, Get Ready—Bill Gates Is Fired Up About Online Learning

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Studying for the California Bar exam? Have an extra $1000 burning a hole in your freshly-law-degreed butt-pocket? Then by all means check out BarMax: California Edition. One of the only iPhone apps to cost that much money, its creator, Mike Ghaffary, a JD/MBA ‘06 Harvard grad, says it has everything one might require to study up for the bar.

Ghaffary has an MBA and as of December 2009, is a member of the California Bar; so he’s got that whole I’m business savvy and I studied for and conquered the bar exam thing going for him.

As with all things iPhone, it’s portable and weighs a lot less than the fifty pounds of books you’d be buying and dragging around town if you were to go the dead-tree route. So handy! Also, if you contact BarMax, they’ll send you a free trial version so you can evaluate the materials before forking over a decade’s worth of ramen money.

BarMax: California Edition, available now in the iPhone’s App Store for $999.99, is a study guide for the California Bar Exam. Harvard lawyers oversaw development of the app, which weighs in at 1 GB and includes outlines, lectures, a study calendar, and real questions and essays from previous exams. The only comparable app available now is from BarBri, but you must be enrolled in the company’s $3000 to $4000 classes to use most of the features.

TechCrunch reports that Mike Ghaffary, a former law student and current director of business development at TrialPay, envisioned BarMax as an alternative to BarBri’s pricey classes and digital offerings. Ghaffary partnered with successful app developers in Los Angeles, and enlisted some fellow Harvard Law alumni to guide development. More…

Posted by Alexa Harrington

In case you missed it the first time, CourseSmart’s eTextbooks App for the iPhone is working the tablet-device angle for the gadget-licking college students. Their backs will have fewer problems (less textbook carrying) but they’ll all have freakish thumb issues down the line (there is no need to punish the buttons! And slow down!).

Here’s a quick video showcasing the college student experience with eTextbooks on tablet devices. It’s cool. (If you’re into that sort of thing.)

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Have I mentioned the awesomeness that is Flat World Knowledge? I’m fairly certain that I have. They were doing good things in the textbook world back in September of 2008, and now they’re teaming up with Bookshare to provide alternative textbook options to students requiring non-traditional textbook modalities.

Students who are blind, have low vision, or have a learning disability that requires computer-generated speech and highlighted text soon will have more resources after publisher Flat World Knowledge announced Dec. 14 that it will make its content available to Bookshare, the largest web-based library for people with print disabilities.

Bookshare, which has 75,000 members worldwide, will add 11 new digital textbooks to its online library, which has been bolstered in the past year by contributions from colleges and universities hoping to bring reading material to students who can’t see standard print or can’t turn a page. More…

Further Reading:

Partnership a Boon for Alternative Textbooks
Bookshare.org: Books Without Barriers
FlatWorldKnowledge.com
Flat World Knowledge
Buying Textbooks: New, Used, Rented or Digital
Custom: Cool for Sneakers, Not for Textbooks

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Even technophobic me is a little awed by the digital media moment we’re in. It’s like balancing on top of one of those gigantic earth balls and it’s about to roll forward. It’s going to be nutty is what it’s gonna be.

Every generation, upon reaching responsible-adult status, suddenly looks around in alarm and is certain that the world is going straight to the hot place where all the interesting people are.

Which means I’m caught between panic (when I think about the life expectancy vs. social security and the retirement non-options for my Gen-X cohort), and almost unbearable giddiness and curiosity (when I watch the technology and the digital media wave starting to crest).

I’m excited to read more of AcademHack’s posts on the University of Texas at Dallas’ new media literacy program, Emerging Media and Communications. As he explains below, they didn’t slap some higher-tech digital stuff onto an existing media studies program. They’re starting from scratch and it sounds mightily intriguing.

From AcademHack’s Post:

“A new kind of digital divide ten years from now will separate those who know how to use new media to band together from those who don’t.”

Now Rheingold wrote this in 2003, so we are over half way to his projected ten year horizon. And so, this is what I lie awake at night thinking about. There is a new type of literacy developing, one between those who will understand the digital network media landscape, and who use it to produce, to organize, to take ownership over their lives, responsiblity for their community, to be critical of it, to engage with it . . . and with those who merely consume it. A divide between those who will be passive consumers at best, victims at worst, and those who will be active participants. There is a lot of nuance in this argument that gets glossed over when I reduce it this way, but I think it is essentially true. We are at “the changeover” a moment when culture is changing, will look completely different than it does now. What that is I have no idea, but I am sure it is going to be profoundly heterogenous to what we have now (think printing press change but on steroids).

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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I prefer old-school paper and ink for myself, but I’m in complete agreement with his statement. And I envy the generation that came into the world right after my Gen-X cohort; they were born already marinated in tech-savvy. They knew it because the collective consciousness had just finished learning it. Anything beyond word processing I had to figure out as a twenty-year-old in 1993.

Technology doesn’t evolve backwards; computers aren’t going to go away, and the kids who are comfortable swimming through the digital landscape will have an easier time now and a decade on. Teach them how to be safe and smart on the Net the same way you taught them to ride a bike, cross the street, and deal with strangers. Keep in mind that newness is usually met with fear and anger. Suck it up and let your kids learn something.

Scott McLeod from Dangerously Irrelevant wrote this:

dear parent
teacher
administrator
board member

don’t teach your kids to read
for the Web
to scan
RSS
aggregate
synthesize

don’t teach your kids to write
online

pen and paper aren’t going anywhere
since when do kids need an audience?

no need to hyperlink
make videos
audio
Flash

no connecting, now

no social networking
or online chat
or comments
or PLNs
blogs and twitter?
how self-absorbed
what a bunch of crap

and definitely, absolutely, resolutely, no cell phones

block it all
lock it down
keep it out

it’s evil, you know
there’s bad stuff out there
gotta keep your children safe

don’t you know collaboration is just another word for cheating?
don’t you know how much junk is out there?
haven’t you ever heard of sexting?
of cyberbullying?

a computer 24-7? no thanks
I don’t want them
creating
sharing
thinking
learning
you know they’re just going to look at porn
and hook up with predators
we can’t trust them

don’t do any of it, please

really

’cause I’m doing all of it with my kids

can’t wait to see who has a leg up in a decade or two
can you?

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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In today’s Daily, the University of Washington’s campus paper, there’s an opinion piece that makes some persuasive arguments for increasing the online-ness of UW’s two online learning options, the College of Engineering’s EDGE Program and UW Online Learning. While the EDGE Program—which was kicking online education ass before online education was cool (since 1984, thank you very much)—has a solid list of online graduate degrees in engineering, UW Online Learning offers a few Master’s degrees and certificate programs, and nowhere at UW is an online undergraduate degree to be found.

The UW is ahead of the curve in the area of digital education. The College of Engineering’s EDGE program offers more than 50 online courses and 10 degrees, and numerous courses and certificates can be obtained via UW Online Learning.

However, UW distance-learning programs fall short of a comprehensive approach to online education. There are numerous core classes missing from the list of course offerings, and only graduate degrees are available online. There are rules limiting the number of online courses that can apply to an undergraduate degree and the amount of courses that can be taken during a quarter.

While the Daily’s columnist, Mr. Noon, is arguing for an increase in online learning options at UW, he’s fair in pointing out that not every course is conducive to an online platform. I, myself, have never been able to figure out how some of the messier science-lab courses could be done away from campus. I’m as adventurous and curious as the next science-geek gal, but I’d prefer it if cadavers and chemistry experiments stayed on campus.

There’s also the question of the technological upgrade UW would have to invest in should online education be expanded. College students tend to be among the more spoiled and savvy tech-users, and they won’t stick around for long at a school that has less than badass technology. And have we forgotten that this is the age of instantaneous information? One whiff of a school’s sub-par technology, and it will be shouted virally from the Twitter rooftops. Keep up, people.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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While I’m usually one to veer away from technology, I have always maintained that it does have its place in the education realm. Kids these days (is there any way to avoid sounding like my grandmother when I use that phrase?) rarely separate themselves from technology, and as much I adore a Ticonderoga #2, they tend to see paper and writing implements as inefficient and old-fashioned. It’s fortunate that I’m a confident enough girl to not take umbrage at what that may imply about me and my doddering 35-year-old-ness.

Technology is not my favorite item on the menu, but I absolutely see its usefulness, especially in terms of educating the tech-savvy younger generations. Kaplan has just launched a Facebook application for their SAT prep tools that melds nicely with the whole education/technology/whippersnappers-glued-to-their-laptops era. It saves trees, and users can challenge each other with the “Challenge a Friend” feature.

I’m not a proponent of standardized testing, but as long as the tests are being used, the technologically adept teenagers of today may as well have access to as much digital test prep as possible.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

For college students interested in pursuing nursing degrees, their timing couldn’t be better. The shortage of nurses is starting to reach acute proportions, and the people in charge are starting to freak out. To make matters worse, last year 50,000 applicants couldn’t get into nursing programs because there wasn’t enough room.

In an effort to educate more students in the ways of the nurse, new, online versions of the accelerated BSN programs are being launched:

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the nursing shortage has severe national implications, with approximately 1 million unfilled nursing positions projected by 2020. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), has reported that nursing schools must increase the number of graduates by 90 percent in order to combat this shortage.

This fall, Marian College students will begin classes in an online accelerated BSN program that blends the convenience of online learning with on-site clinical education at St.Vincent Indianapolis Hospital. Individuals who currently hold a baccalaureate degree in a non-nursing field will be eligible for the program. Marian College has offered a more traditional, classroom-based accelerated BSN program for several years, and this program will continue to be offered on the Marian College campus.

Resources:

American Association of Colleges of Nursing
American Nurses Association
National League for Nursing
Bureau of Labor Statistics: LPN and LVN
Bureau of Labor Statistics: RN
Nursing School Education Resource Center

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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