Tarleton told of $137,500 fine for inaccurate crime reporting

Tarleton State University's failure to disclose information about campus burglaries and drug and sex offenses has prompted the U.S. Department of Education to propose a $137,500 fine for violating The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act.
It is believed to be the first fine levied against a Texas university under the Clery Act.
In a prepared statement released this week, the university said it had "recognized that unintentional mistakes had been made in its reporting under the Clery Act."
The Clery Act is a federal law that requires universities to annually disclose information about serious crimes, such as murder, robbery, sex offenses and burglary.
A Department of Education report, released following a request by The J-TAC under the Texas Public Information Act, states that Tarleton underreported the number of forcible sex offenses, drug law violations and burglaries between 2003 and 2005.
The J-TAC
Tarleton State University, Stephenville, TX

U.S. Solicits Input for New Ed-Tech Plan

Federal education officials are soliciting input for a new plan for educational technology that would put student learning at the center of the nation’s strategy for transforming schooling in the digital age.
But even though today’s Web 2.0 tools can spread information broadly and quickly and foster collaboration on such projects, the effort has apparently been slow in attracting recommendations from educators and ed-tech experts that could help guide its development, some people in the field say.
“The new plan is a critical component to moving education forward in the digital age,” said Donald G. Knezek, the executive director of the International Society for Technology in Education, or ISTE, based in Washington. “The draft is shaping up to have all the right placeholders focused on learning and effective and competent teaching.
Education Week

Fulbright applicants, fellowships expected to rise at Lehigh

The Fulbright Commission sends about 1,000 college graduates to 140 countries each year, he added.
There are two types of Fulbright Programs. The first is a more traditional program, which allows selected applicants to obtain their masters or do research in a foreign country. In the second type of program, those selected go to a foreign country and teach English at the high school or college level.
The program was set up by Senator J. William Fulbright after World War II in an attempt to expose American scholars to a global education, Aronson said. Now, the grant program promotes an exchange of faculty and students.
Because there are only a limited number of grants per country, the increase in candidates nationwide is likely to make the process more competitive for all applicants, especially those who apply to countries that are in high demand, like Japan, Israel and Western Europe.
The Brown & White
Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA

Friday 13th Fears Stem From History

About 21 million Americans suffer from paraskevidekatriaphobia, the fear of Friday the 13th, or Black Friday.
They avoid daily activities that could potentially put them in harm's way and some are too afraid to get out of bed in the morning.
But why? Where did the superstition come from?
One theory suggests 12 is the most complete number. It occurs in common cultural references - 12 months in a year, signs of the Zodiac, labors of Hercules, tribes of Israel, gods of Olympus and apostles of Jesus Christ. Thus, 13 is considered irregular.
Friday has been considered unlucky, and therefore a bad day to start a new journey or project - stemming from the Canterbury Tales. Also, according to Christian scripture, Jesus was crucified on a Friday.
The Red and Black
University of Georgia, Athens, GA

Race To The Top: Funding for Common Assessments Poses Challenge

Near the end of a public meeting held here Thursday, the director of the Race to the Top Fund competition at the U.S. Department of Education, Joanne Weiss, asked a group of assessment experts to summarize their thoughts about how the federal agency could work to improve the country’s assessment systems.
“Good luck,” deadpanned Lauress Wise, a scientist for the Alexandria, Va.-based Human Resources Research Organization, a nonprofit evaluation group.
The remark drew laughter from the researchers, federal officials, state assessment directors, and test vendors in attendance. But it also underscored the challenges the department faces in spending $350 million in economic-stimulus money to aid consortia of states in developing common assessments in reading and mathematics.
Three common messages emerged from the testing experts convened for the first of three meetings being held to advise the federal officials on how to design the competition for those funds:
• State consortia should consider devising assessments to aid instructional practices, in addition to the annual accountability tests now required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
• Teachers must be much more involved in the development, use, and possibly even the scoring of assessments.
• The Education Department should seek to structure state consortia in such a way that the one-time infusion of cash will leverage sustained work.
Education Week

Rules Set for $4 Billion 'Race to Top' Contest

For a good shot at the $4 billion in grants from the federal Race to the Top Fund, states will need to make a persuasive case for their education reform agenda, demonstrate significant buy-in from local school districts, and develop plans to evaluate teachers and principals based on student performance, according to final regulations set for release Thursday by the U.S. Department of Education.
Those three factors will rank as the most important to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and his staff as they weigh states’ applications based on more than 30 criteriaRequires Adobe Acrobat Reader, including how friendly their charter school climates are and how well they use data to improve instruction.
At stake for states is a slice of the biggest single discretionary pool of education money in the economic-stimulus package passed by Congress in February—a $4.35 billion prize, of which $350 million has been pledged to help states develop common assessments as part of a separate nationwide effort.
Education Week

PDC 2009: Tune in for our live blogging frenzy next week

Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2009 kicks off the week of November 16. Like we did last year, a handful of us Microsoft watchers will be live blogging the keynotes as a group.
Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie; Server and Tools President Bob Muglia; Kurt DelBene, Senior VP of Microsoft’s Office Business Productivity Group and more talk about what’s coming for developers in the next year.
The PDC keynotes are slated for Tuesday November 17 from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. PT and Wednesday November 18 from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.
ZDNet

Keeping Pacemakers Safe from Hackers

Manufacturers have started adding wireless capabilities to many implantable medical devices, including pacemakers and cardioverter defibrillators. This allows doctors to access vital information and send commands to these devices quickly, but security researchers have raised concerns that it could also make them vulnerable to attack.
Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control have now developed a scheme for protecting implantable medical devices against wireless attacks. The approach relies on using ultrasound waves to determine the exact distance between a medical device and the wireless reader attempting to communicate with it.
The potential risks of enabling radio communication in implantable medical devices were first highlighted by Kevin Fu, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Tadayoshi Kohno, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Washington. They showed how to glean personal information from such a device, how to drain its batteries remotely, and how to make it malfunction in dangerous ways. The two researchers stress that the threat is minimal now, but argue that it is vital to find ways to protect wireless medical devices before malicious users discover and exploit vulnerabilities.
ASM Newswire

IFC Supports Private Sector Education in Rwanda

IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, is helping increase quality education opportunities in Rwanda by training representatives from private schools to help improve their management skills and business models.
IFC’s Africa Schools Rwanda Program, in collaboration with IFC’s Rwanda Entrepreneurship Development Program ( REDP ), conducted two workshops in October to train representatives of 16 private schools. The first workshop was the Strategic Planning and School Vision three-day session. This was followed by a four-day session on Financial Management and Accounting.
The trainings have helped schools write long-term business plans, increasing their chances of accessing finance. The IFC training sessions featured specially-designed tools, including IFC’s Small and Medium Enterprise Toolkit and Business Edge, which are interactive learning programs that help managers run more efficient businesses.
Media Newswire

MSU begins Green Certification Program

Departments, programs and people at Michigan State University will soon have the opportunity to be recognized for the work they do that helps reduce the university’s environmental footprint.
Beginning Nov. 9, departments and on-campus students can earn green certification by completing an online form showing the steps they take to reduce MSU’s impact on the environment through energy efficiency and conservation, waste reduction, water conservation and purchasing.
In addition to reducing MSU’s environmental impact, there will be several other benefits to earning green certification:
Recognition for units, departments and students at an Earth Day event April 22, 2010.
Use of the green certification seal on departmental communications, recruitment and other materials.
Buildings where all departments earn green certification will have a tree planted or a plaque recognizing the building as “green certified.”
Media Newswire

Is Facebook the future of micropayments?

In the ongoing saga of paid content on the Web, Rupert Murdoch is once again threatening to pull his Web sites from Google's search results.
In a Sky News interview posted online this week, he said "There's not enough advertising in the world to make all the Web sites profitable. We'd rather have fewer people coming to our Web sites, but paying."
Meanwhile, social game maker Playfish, with estimated revenues of up to $75 million from selling virtual goods in its games on Facebook and other platforms, has been acquired by Electronic Arts in a deal worth up to $400 million.
The company is not alone in turning virtual goods into gold: Playfish rival Zynga reportedly brings in over $100 million in revenue (a proportion of which, admittedly, is driven by schemes in which users receive virtual currency when signing up for questionable special offers).
Even The New York Times is heralding the "real paydays" being delivered by virtual goods on Facebook; such stories run counter to the common wisdom that social networking sites are difficult to monetize.
CNN

California could get up to $700 million in U.S. education funds

Guidelines for the Race to the Top money for states will be released Thursday. State legislators will have to scurry to make the application deadline.
California could be eligible for up to $700 million in federal education stimulus funds under guidelines scheduled to be released today by the U.S. Department of Education.
Earlier this year, the Obama administration proposed a series of reforms, including abolishing charter school caps and using student test score data to evaluate educators, as part of a $4.35-billion competitive grant known as Race to the Top. The administration accepted public comment for several months before finalizing the regulations.
...States will be judged on a 500-point scale that will measure their plans to enact a variety of reforms, including implementing data systems, turning around low-performing schools and paying effective teachers and administrators more.
States now have 60 days to apply for federal funding, which puts more pressure on California Assembly members, who are currently in a special legislative session focused on education. The deadline to apply for the first round of federal dollars is in mid-January...
Los Angeles Times

Hofstra's School of Education, Health and Human Service Receives Accreditation from the Teacher Education Accreditation Council

Hofstra's School of Education, Health and Human Service Receives Accreditation from the Teacher Education Accreditation Council
The School of Education, Health and Human Services has received accreditation by the Teacher Education Accreditation Council ( TEAC ). The TEAC accreditation is effective between September 11, 2009 and September 11, 2014.
Dean David Foulk, Ed.D., said the TEAC encourages and rewards program innovation and creativity in its accreditation process.
"After our extensive preparation for the TEAC audit, the School of Education, Health and Human Services is honored to have earned this credential," said Dean Foulk. "This is validation of the quality of work being done at Hofstra University's School of Education, Health and Human Services that we are accredited by the same body as many other prestigious institutions regionally and nationally. This accreditation is the result of thorough and collaborative work on the part of faculty, staff and administrators in our School."
Among the other institutions that have TEAC accreditations are: New York University, Rutgers University and Johns Hopkins University.
"The recent accreditation from TEAC confirms the School of Education, Health and Human Services and Hofstra's success in preparing competent, caring and qualified educators," said Hofstra President Stuart Rabinowitz. "This recognition demonstrates the quality programs we provide and the high caliber of our faculty and students."
Media Newswire

Green Career Opportunities Available in Surprising Fields

Clean technology is a growing industry. As the world grapples with the energy crisis, jobs in sectors such as wind power, solar, biofuels and biomaterials, conservation and efficiency are in higher demand. But college students don't have to study science or engineering to work in green industries. At Penn State, a wide variety of students are preparing to work in green professions in some surprising areas.
Vivienne Wildes, an assistant professor of hotel, restaurant and institutional management, teaches a course at Penn State called "Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility," which highlights sustainability. She said green jobs are universal.
"If you choose to work in a green environment, you can," she said. "People working in sustainable jobs are working in teams across every discipline."
Media Newswire

U.S. School Sells Students Grades for Cash

A middle school in North Carolina is selling better test scores to students in a bid to raise money.
The Raleigh News & Observer newspaper reported Wednesday that a parent advisory council at Rosewood Middle School came up with the fundraising plan after last year's chocolate sale flopped.
The school will sell 20 test points to students for $20. Students can add 10 extra points to each of two tests of their choice. The extra points could take a student from a B to an A on those tests or from a failing grade to a passing one.
Principal Susie Shepherd said it's not enough of an impact to change a student's overall marks.
Officials at the state Department of Public Instruction said exchanging grades for money teaches children the wrong lessons.
The Canadian Press

Hispanic Higher Education Closing the Gap

THE University of Texas-El Paso (UTEP) is one of the most binational of America’s big universities. Some 90% of its students come from the borderplex—the Texan city of El Paso and its much larger sister-city, Ciudad Juárez, on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. More than 70% of its students are Mexican or Mexican-American.
And that, in turn, means that the El Paso campus is rather different from the University of Texas’s flagship campus in Austin. More than half of UTEP students are among the first in their families to go to college, and roughly a third come from families with incomes below $20,000 a year. Diana Natalicio, UTEP’s president, says that for many of her students trouble at work, or an unexpected expense, can derail a whole year of college. UTEP tries to help, offering after-hours advice and instalment plans for tuition fees. Such measures have helped it to become one of the country’s leading sources of degrees for Hispanic students.
The Economist

Australia announces new visa measures for students

The Australian government is introducing new measures to assist overseas students, including many Indians, affected by the closure of an international education provider, a minister said Monday.
Minister for Immigration and Citizenship Senator Chris Evans said that from Jan 1, 2010, overseas students who require a new visa to complete their studies at another school or college will be exempt from paying the A$540 (approx. Rs.22,500) student visa application charge.
Just this year alone, 12 education providers have closed affecting about 4,700 students.
Evans said that although most students will be able to complete their studies on their existing student visa, some may need to enrol in a new course that finishes after their existing student visa expires and will require a new visa.
Prokerala

First in India, university offers scuba diving course

Scuba diving is much more than an adventure water sport. Realising this, a university is offering, for the first time in India, a certificate course in scuba diving for marine biologists and researchers to study the impact of global warming on marine life.
The 15-day course offered by the Suganthi Devadason Marine Research Institute (SDMRI), Tuticorin, affiliated to the Manonmaniam Sundaranar University in Tamil Nadu, will focus on marine biodiversity assessment, underwater photography and monitoring of coral reefs and sea grass.
As of now, Indian marine researchers have to go to private scuba diving centres here or abroad to learn the diving skills, which is a must for those studying sea biodiversity.
The institute will soon be applying for recognition from Australia-based Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) to run level one and level two courses in scuba diving.
Prokerala

AMU ties up with Holland varsity for promoting research

Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the INHolland University of Amsterdam for undertaking joint activities in educational and cultural research and training, an official said Tuesday.
"As per the MoU, the two universities can go for the exchange of students and academic staff and launch programmes in the area of course development, student internships and higher research," AMU's official spokesperson Rahat Abrar told reporters.
The MoU would provide opportunities to the students of both the universities to learn each other's language, culture, religion and the sociology of home and host countries.
AMU has already discussed some areas of interest with a delegation of the INHolland University that the two varsities will soon explore higher learning and research.
Prokerala

Make Better Decisions: E-Learning That Advances Business Goals

Most organizations today are developing competency models that have defined proficiency levels for specified jobs and career paths. You can look at these, in conjunction with the methods and tools for e-Learning, and start making better decisions that will help learning to advance business goals.
Competency models and proficiency scales should be defining the performance of the workforce and giving us methods, or at least good clues, as to how we can measure performance. That means that training professionals should have a better opportunity to train toward better performance. In this article, I’m only addressing online learning, but I’m sure the comparisons to other learning environments will be clear.
Learning Solutions Mag

The Insecurity of Higher Ed Research

Academics are often characterized (and caricatured) as pompous, confident that they are the smartest people in the room and eager to prove it. But arrogance and insecurity are sometimes flip sides of one coin, and the professoriate has seen a rash lately of scholars expressing dismay at their perceived marginalization -- sociologists awaiting calls from the Obama administration, for instance, and political scientists reiterating calls for more grounding for their discipline in "the real world."
When it comes to a field with an inferiority complex, few have it over scholars who study higher education. They, like many of their colleagues in the social sciences, yearn for more attention from and influence with policy makers, as was the subject of numerous discussions at last week's meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education here.
But higher ed researchers also feel as if they get short shrift from other scholars within the academy, several of them argued at a panel called "The Trouble With Higher Ed Research" at the ASHE meeting on Friday. Lisa Wolf-Wendel, a professor of higher education at the University of Kansas, said she was stunned when she went on the job market and an interviewer, impressed, asked her why she had sought a Ph.D. in higher education. "His implication was that I should have gotten a degree in a real discipline," she said.
Inside Higher Education

Fans and Fears of 'Lecture Capture'

If professors record their lectures and put them online, will students still come to class?
That question came up in two different sessions at the 2009 Educause Conference here on Friday. And in both cases, the panelists cited research indicating that students’ likelihood of skipping class has no correlation with whether a professor decides to capture her lecture and post it the Web.
Attendance is much more contingent on whether the professor is an engaging lecturer, said Jennifer Stringer, director of educational technology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, at one of the sessions. “Well-attended lectures were well-watched; poorly attended lectures were not watched,” Stringer said, pointing to research she had conducted at Stanford. "If you’re bad, you’re bad. If you’re bad online, you’re bad in lectures, students don’t come.”
....The technology known as “lecture capture,” which is offered in many forms by more than a dozen vendors, has been getting more and more attention in higher education as the software becomes more sophisticated and studies suggesting it could boost retention and performance continue piling up....
Inside Higher Education

Censorship of LACC Newspaper, Stifles Student Journalism, Free Speech

Los Angeles City College's student-run newspaper, the Collegian, is an award-winning publication that has been in continuous print for 80 years. Its staff of approximately 30 students works tirelessly to publish high-quality content while adhering to rigorous journalistic values. The Collegian is a training ground for writers, reporters, columnists and editors, as are thousands of other student-run publications that hold to the same principles, standards and ethics.
But LACC's president, Jamillah Moore, has made calculated attempts to hinder the students' right to a free press. She has tried to forbid a company working with the college from speaking to the student press; she has tried to pressure student reporters to sign releases for recording public meetings; she has violated California Open Meeting Laws by requesting that reporters identify themselves; and she has attempted to silence the Collegian by slashing its budget by 40 percent - when the budgets of other student organizations were cut only 15 percent. Adam Goldstein of the Student Press Law Center said that if he had to choose the biggest First Amendment offender in the country, he would most likely choose Moore. And now, Moore is attempting to move the Collegian under student services, where the administration would have the option to edit all content, monitor stories and determine the direction of the paper.
An attack on free speech anywhere is an attack on free speech everywhere. That is why we, the undersigned, have come together to universally condemn the actions of Jamillah Moore and the actions of any administration that makes deliberate efforts to break the free speech of student publications.
As students, we have been taught to expect an environment where freedom of speech will go uncontested. And as student journalists, we expect our administrations to understand that we strive to be an objective voice of reason. But we also recognize that any publication that disturbs the comfort of the comfortable will be challenged. Student journalists at the University of Pittsburgh, the University of New Mexico and the University of Oregon, as well as countless untold others, have seen such assaults on their rights. This cannot stand
The Daily Orange
Syracuse University, Syracuse,NY

NSSE changes how colleges judge success, identify weaknesses

Online courses at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., have generated such rich student conversations that some faculty have started using electronic discussion boards in on-campus classes, too.
And after officials at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, N.J., discovered that students who don't interact much with other students outside of class are also among those least satisfied with their experience, and therefore may be more likely to drop out, they made an extra effort this fall to reach out to freshmen who had seemed a bit shy during summer orientation. Those students got an extra phone call inviting them to a campus-sponsored party.
USA Today