Online Education Trends

This post comes from eSchoolNews. Schools, libraries, and other organizations that aim to improve students’ reading skills have a new online tool to help them evaluate how well their literacy programs work: the Verizon Literacy Program Self-Assessment Tool (VLP-SAT).

Developed by the National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL) with funding from the Verizon Foundation, VLP-SAT is available free of charge to all literacy programs from one location, the Verizon Foundation’s Thinkfinity.org.

“Thousands of people give their time and effort daily to advance the cause of literacy, but unfortunately, despite those great efforts, literacy rates in our country are still not where they need to be,” said Sharon Darling, president and founder of NCFL.

“We believe this self-assessment tool can play a tremendous role in improving literacy rates,” Darling said. “It provides a roadmap with more scope and depth than any other tool currently available.”

This “roadmap” incorporates the latest scientific research on the effectiveness of literacy programs that serve populations from birth through childhood, its makers say. The online tool provides a detailed questionnaire that asks about a literacy program’s methods, the education level of its students, parental involvement, and current methods used to assess the program’s success.

Based on answers to the questionnaire, the literacy provider is given a grade of 1 to 5 in each of several areas. These grades describe whether the organization is using proven, research-based methods and achieving the best possible results.

For schools and other organizations that receive a score of “3″ or lower in any particular area, the tool provides a list of recommended resources created by literacy and education experts. All of these resources are available free of charge at Tghinkfinity.org as part of the Thinkfinity Literacy Network.

Thinkfinity.org is the Verizon Foundation’s free online portal, where visitors can access more than 55,000 standards- and research-based educational resources. These include free online courses, K-12 lesson plans, best practices, program assessment tools, teaching and learning tools, model programs that demystify technology for parents, and abundant research highlighting the importance of literacy development.

Ideally, program staff will use the VLP-SAT as a benchmark to evaluate current literacy practices, seek out resources to improve key areas, and return to the VLP-SAT to assess program improvement, its creators say.

The tool was unveiled last month as part of the Verizon Foundation’s National Literacy Summit.3, held at Georgetown University.

“We asked ourselves at the last summit where our philanthropy dollars should go, and we answered: to help leverage each other’s assets and skills and to start some sort of measurement … here are some measurements!” said Kathy Brown, senior vice president of public policy and corporate responsibility for Verizon. Click here to read the rest of this post.

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The Economist is sponsoring a series of online debates. The first debate will be on education. You can vote on their five education propositions. Judge them carefully. Issues center on education and the role of technology, corporate initiatives, social networking, limits on foreign students and the digital divide. To review the propositions and vote for your favorite one click here.

Source: Gatlin Education Services

This post comes form The Chronicle.

Many college athletes are used to waking up before sunrise for workouts, but most aren’t used to competing at that hour.

Enter the exploding intercollegiate sport of bass fishing, where the biggest catches often come before breakfast.

“Collegiate angling is spreading like a brush fire,” said Troy J. Heckaman, commissioner of the Collegiate Bass Anglers Association, which acts as a governing body for the sport.

While Mr. Heckaman admits the sport is “still in its infancy,” he said that students from more than 150 colleges and universities have contacted his group with interest in forming a team, or have already started one.

And more growth means more competition. Click here to read the rest of this article.

Source: Gatlin Education Services

Las Vegas International Airport is now experimenting with using RFID Technology to track luggage. Watch a video segment about this from the Today Show by clicking here. If you find this segment interesting and you are looking for a new career take a look at Gatlin’s RFID Online Training Course. You can get RFID certification in as little as 90 days.

Source: Gatlin Education Services

This post comes from the Newark Advocate. Jason Hetterscheidt, like many 31-year-old men, has an extremely demanding schedule. He has been married for five years, has a 1-year-old son and works at Ruth’s Chris Steak House to support his family. While this scenario might not seem remarkable, Hetterscheidt also is a full-time student in the Associate of Applied Science Registered Nursing Technology Program at Central Ohio Technical College. Hetterscheidt admits that “the only way that he can remain in the nursing program [due to his hectic family life and his odd work schedule is to take online courses whenever possible.”

Online courses have come a long way in the last 10 years. The first online courses were nothing more than notes on a Web page. They did little to motivate or engage the learner. Today’s online courses are rich with multimedia learning tools such as animations, tutorials, recorded lectures, practice tests and even a set of online flashcards that can be customized to accommodate the individual learning needs of each student. In fact, as the quality of online learning tools has increased, instructors have increasingly incorporated the use of these materials into their traditional courses. To read the rest this article click here.

Source: Gatlin Education Services

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Source: Gatlin Education Services

This article comes from ArticleCrazy.com. As a busy professional, it is vitally important to manage your time. There are some broad principles, approaches, that you need to learn and apply. The first is to take the view that your time is precious, and should not be wasted. By the way, relaxation time, leisure time, relationship time is not wasted, it’s important, valuable time that you need to plan into your life. These broad principles include, you need to take control. That is, to take control of your time and the way in which you approach the activities that you have to be involved in, such as work activities and family commitments, and ensure that there is also time in your life for the personal activities that you wish to be involved in, such as leisure and relaxation activities. You need to plan ahead. This is vital. Being successful means being busy, and to manage being busy you need to plan ahead. You don’t have to perform at genius level. If you work hard and as efficiently as you reasonably can, you are doing well. You need to prioritise. You need to rank activities into an order where you can see which activities, what work, which tasks, are the most important and need urgent attention or a specific amount of time spent on them, and which activities are less important and can be pushed back, or worked on over a longer period, or delegated to others, or even abandoned. Click here to read the rest of this article.

Source: Gatlin Education Services

The Washington Post Co. has acquired CourseAdvisor Inc. for an undisclosed price.

The D.C. media company leveraged a small investment it made last year in the search engine marketing company based in Wakefield, Mass. CourseAdvisor, founded in 2004, matches students skills with college and university programs nationwide.

The move comes as The Washington Post Co. tries to regain advertising, readership and circulation at its publications.

The company also has seen positive results from its education business, Kaplan Inc., which helps people prepare for college and graduate school entrance exams.

In August, The Washington Post Co. (NYSE:WPO) reported its second-quarter earnings dropped to $68.8 million in the quarter ended July 1 from $78.7 million a year ago.

However, total revenue moved up to $1 billion from $969 million.

The education segment grew 23 percent to $503 million in the second quarter, up from $409 million a year ago.

The Washington Post Co. not only owns its flagship newspaper, but also publications including Slate, El Tiempo Latino, The Gazette and Southern Maryland Newspapers, Newsweek magazine and Cable ONE.

CourseAdvisor will act as an independent subsidiary of The Washington Post Co.

Source: Gatlin Education Services

This post comes from The Chronicle. Cornell in Qatar, Michigan State in Dubai. Now it’s New York University in Abu Dhabi. NYU’s announcement today that it is opening a branch campus in the United Arab Emirates makes it the latest, but probably not the last, American university to plant its flag in the wealthy Persian Gulf region.

“NYU Abu Dhabi,” which was described as a “residential research university,” will open its doors to students in 2010. The university hopes to attract as many as 2,000 of them from around the world, not just the Middle East. NYU says that the emirate is providing land and financing for the campus’s development and operations.

Abu Dhabi has made news lately for its efforts to become a cultural hub, which include establishing branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums. —Beth McMurtrie

Source: Gatlin Education Services

This post comes from the Texas Engineering and Extension Service. TEEX’s Emergency Services Training Institute WMD/EMS Program has been approved for Organizational Accreditation by the Continuing Education Coordinating Board for Emergency Medical Services (CECBEMS). Of some 80 training providers recognized by the board, TEEX is one of only 25 providers nationwide approved for CECBEMS Organizational Accreditation.

“We can now use this accreditation to review and approve both online and hands-on EMS and other TEEX courses for continuing education credit,” said Kathy Wall, TEEX Associate Training Specialist. “We are approved to review a course and see if it meets the standards, and then assign continuing education credits and hours.” Any TEEX rescue and disaster medical course may be eligible for continuing education credit, she added.

CECBEMS is a national accrediting body for EMS continuing education courses and course providers. To be approved, TEEX had to meet or exceed criteria established by CECBEMS for educational planning, implementation and evaluation as well as demonstrate a commitment to excellence in EMS continuing education.

Source: Gatlin Education Services