Archive for the ‘Online Education’ Category
Perdue visiting kids to highlight preschool needs
February 14th, 2012
North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue is sounding an alarm about early childhood education funding by spending time this week with young schoolchildren.
Perdue planned to visit a Charlotte preschool Tuesday morning to meet students and teachers. She read a story book to preschool students Monday at a Raleigh child development center.
A judge said last year the General Assembly went too far in the state budget and put obstacles in the way of low-income families to benefit from the state’s prekindergarten program.
Legislative leaders have declined to give Perdue $30 million to teach more preschoolers and comply with the ruling, which is being appealed. Perdue said the General Assembly needs to step up and authorize her administration to spend more money. Smart Start also received cuts last year.
Tags: Preschool, Preschool Needs
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Detroit Schools’ No. 1 Mission: Getting Kids To Class
February 7th, 2012
Ask Detroit teachers about their biggest challenge, and many will say, “You can’t teach kids who don’t come to class.” Last year, the average Detroit public high school student missed at least 28 days of school.
Now, as part of its effort to get parents more involved, the district has launched a major initiative to improve attendance. The effort includes parent workshops and attendance agents charged with pushing parents to send their kids to school every day.
George Eason is one of Detroit’s 51 attendance agents. He’s staring at a printout that says a lot about the city’s attendance problems. He flips the pages, counting the absences that one student has racked up only midway through the school year.
“To date, this student has 23 absences,” he says, “and a couple of suspensions.”
As an attendance agent for Detroit Public Schools, Eason covers the city’s border with Dearborn, Mich. He says most parents want their kids in school — they just need a little help. Others need a good strong shove.
“We do take parents to court, depending on the dynamics of the case,” he says.
Tags: Class, Kids Class
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Pre-test scores give clues to students’ readiness
January 22nd, 2012
Most school systems around the country have their students participate in a “pre-test,” before sitting for either the SAT or ACT, which most colleges require. The ACT PLAN is offered to high school sophomores and the PSAT is administered in October to juniors.
What do the scores mean?
Many families are receiving the test results and are confused about how they should be interpreted.
ACT PLAN
As part of its College Readiness System, the ACT PLAN tests students in four areas: English, mathematics, reading and science. The tests measure curriculum-related knowledge, not test-taking strategies. The test results help parents and students select future courses by identifying a student’s current strengths and weaknesses.
Research on the ACT PLAN has determined that success on the PLAN is highly correlated with future success in Advanced Placement courses. The PLAN is as much a tool for parents as it is for guidance counselors and school administrators; helping them determine which courses should be offered.
The PLAN takes almost two hours (115 minutes) to complete, has 145 questions and scores are between 1 (low) and 32 (high).
Tags: Students, Students Readiness
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Classes, Privacy and Professionalism
January 13th, 2012
Tradional outlook sounds bit funny. Well, here in the US one can see peak of professionalism.
None of the schools or instructors have anything to do with someones personal life.
I am in the USA and I am going to school. No one cares about your personal life.
They cannot even disclose your grades to your parents without your authorization.
Reason, they see you as responsible adults in college. Its not high school.
College life in the US is independent and free but beware its not fun stuff like bunking classes or chatting with friends all day or anything you might have seen while studying in India.
Its absolutely not like Kabhi Kabhi Aditi song movie or anything like Wake up Sid. Lol US schools could be far beyond your imagination of you expect stuff like this.
Its real professionalism over here. You come to class, take notes, submit assignments, learn or ask about your subject.
Thats the only relation between a professor and a student. You not gonna have same classmates every semester. Its such a difference experience.
Everyone has their own business to worry about.
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Duke hosts fracking, gas drilling workshop
January 11th, 2012
Duke University hosted a workshop Monday about the environmental and social effects of hydraulic fracturing and shale gas drilling in the U.S.
The workshop, held in Reynolds Theater, focused on environmental, legal and socio-economic components of the debate.
Academic experts from Duke, Cornell, Carnegie Melon and Pennsylvania State universities worked to decipher conflicting data on the environmental challenges.
“In a perfect world, I would slow it down, yes,” said Rob Jackson, a biology professor at Duke.
Representatives from the Sierra Club and Exxon Mobile were also on hand, among others.
Judith Ferster, with the Sierra Club, said fracking seems like “sacrilege for someone who cares about nature.”
“It’s very dangerous, because once you wreck the place, it’s very hard to go back,” she said.
In some states, fracking is in widespread use and has resulted in new sources of energy, jobs and profits for landowners.
In other states, however, lawmakers are considering bans on the process because of worries that the chemicals used in the liquid that splits rocks and releases natural gas could leak into and contaminate groundwater.
“(It’s) just standard supply and demand.
Tags: Gas Drilling, Workshop
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Geeks Fighting Crime: The Best Careers for Criminal Justice Majors
January 10th, 2012
It’s a common misconception that “geeks” can only use their intense concentration and attention to detail in fields like computer science, mathematics or biology. But misconceptions were made to be busted wide open, and we hope to prove that every self-professed “geek” might feel equally at home in a township police department or courtroom.
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
People with a penchant for technology or science automatically enter into similar majors once they hit college. But Criminal Justice Degrees can actually be an even better match. Read more…
Tags: Criminal Justice Degrees
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In Tight Times, Medical Schools Market Themselves
December 29th, 2011
Hospitals stepped up their advertising in 2011, and some newcomers to the national marketing game are academic medical centers. While the coast-to-coast commercials help attract faculty and students, they’re also aimed at getting more paying patients to travel for treatment.
The biggest spenders on advertising are, not surprisingly, the household names in medical care. Mayo Clinic, Mount Sinai and New York Presbyterian led the way for the first half of 2011. Overall, hospitals shelled out 20 percent more during that period than in the previous year, according to the research firm Kantar Media.
One of the newcomers trying its luck on the national stage is Vanderbilt University Medical Center. In one recent ad, the facility promised that “the most amazing part is that the most amazing part is yet to come. That’s the promise of discovery.”
In the last year, the Nashville-based teaching hospital bought sponsorship time on CNN, Fox News and NPR.
Vanderbilt’s chief marketing officer, Jill Austin, says that the marketing campaign has many goals.
“We think of it almost as a service to the public, to get the word out,” she says.
The Vanderbilt ads focus primarily on treatments for cancer and heart disease that are based on an individual’s DNA.
Tags: Market
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