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News & Broadcast - World Bank Frees Up Development Data - 0 views

web.worldbank.org/...:437376~theSitePK:4607,00.html open data Hans Rosling World Bank
shared by Nils Peterson on 20 Apr 10 - Cached
  • April 20, 2010—The World Bank Group said today it will offer free access to more than 2,000 financial, business, health, economic and human development statistics that had mostly been available only to paying subscribers.
  • Hans Rosling, Gapminder Foundation co-founder and vigorous advocate of open data at the World Bank, said, “It’s the right thing to do, because it will foster innovation. That is the most important thing.”He said he hoped the move would inspire more tools for visualizing data and set an example for other international institutions.
  • The new website at data.worldbank.org offers full access to data from 209 countries, with some of the data going back 50 years. Users will be able to download entire datasets for a particular country or indicator, quickly access raw data, click a button to comment on the data, email and share data with social media sites, says Neil Fantom, a senior statistician at the World Bank.
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What Makes A University Great? - Forbes.com - 3 views

www.forbes.com/...k-opinions-colleges-salmi.html higher_education
shared by Joshua Yeidel on 07 Oct 09 - No Cached
  • Joshua Yeidel on 07 Oct 09
     
    What it takes to be "World Class", from a World Bank economist
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How would you design an ICT/education program for impact? | A World Bank Blog on ICT us... - 0 views

blogs.worldbank.org/...what-to-do
shared by Nils Peterson on 21 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Country x has, in various ways, been host to numerous initiatives to introduce computers into its schools and, to lesser extents, to train teachers and students on their use, and schools have piloted a variety of digital learning materials and education software applications.  It is now ready, country leaders say, to invest in a rigorous, randomized trial of an educational technology initiative as a prelude to a very ambitious, large-scale roll-out of the use of educational technologies nationwide. It asks: What programs or specific interventions should we consider?
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 21 Jul 10
       
      World Bank Sr. Policy Wonk asking for help thinking through this quesion in a WB branded blog.
  • What would be a useful response to such inquiries?  How would you design a program for measurable impact in a way that is immediately policy-relevant for decisionmakers contemplating large investments in the use of technology in the education sector, and what would this program look like?
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Would You Like Credit With That Internship? - Students - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 0 views

chronicle.com/...65434 learning
shared by Kimberly Green on 10 May 10 - Cached
  • Kimberly Green on 10 May 10
     
    Students pay tuition to work for free ... unpaid internships are growing in this down economy, favoring the wealthy who can afford them. But internships are generally valuable for students, administrators say. The complementary courses involve journals, essays, oral presentations, or work portfolios. Independent studies lean toward academics. Companies often see academic credit as substitute compensation that qualifies interns as legally unpaid trainees and keeps them on their colleges' liability insurance. Advertisements specify: "Candidates must be able to receive academic credit." That makes some campus officials bristle. "What they're saying is holding the institution hostage," says Kathy L. Sims, director of career services at the University of California at Los Angeles. Employers don't know colleges' academic standards, she says. "It's really not their call whether their experience is creditworthy." Colleges have dealt with that quandary in various ways. Some, especially those with traditions of experiential learning, vet and monitor internships, enrolling students in courses designed to complement their real-world work. Others let professors sponsor independent studies based on internships. More and more have devised some form of noncredit recognition to try to satisfy employers without altering academic philosophies or making students pay tuition to work free. At Bates College, the game is up. "We're quite adamant about our refusal to play along," says James W. Hughes, a professor of economics. As chairman of the department eight years ago, he got dozens of calls from students, parents, and employers asking for credit for unpaid internships, mainly in the financial industry. "Why is it that we have to evaluate this experience," he says, "just so some multibillion-dollar bank can avoid paying $7.50 an hour?" But the law is vague, and arguably antiquated. In the for-profit sector, guidelines for legally unpaid internships come from a 1947 U
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Urgent Evoke » About the EVOKE game - 0 views

blog.urgentevoke.net/...about-the-evoke-game
shared by Nils Peterson on 18 Mar 10 - Cached
  • About the EVOKE game Posted by Alchemy on 27 Jan under Behind the scenes EVOKE is a ten-week crash course in changing the world. It is free to play and open to anyone, anywhere. The goal of the social network game is to help empower young people all over the world, and especially young people in Africa, to come up with creative solutions to our most urgent social problems. The game begins on March 3, 2010. Players can join the game at any time. On May 12th, 2010 the first season of the game will end, and successful participants will form the first graduating class of the EVOKE network. Players who successfully complete 10 game challenges will be able to claim their honors: Certified EVOKE Social Innovator – Class of 2010. Top players will also earn online mentorships with experienced social innovators and business leaders from around the world, seed funding for new ventures, and travel scholarships to share their vision for the future at the EVOKE Summit in Washington DC.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 18 Mar 10
       
      Using gaming as a tool to build networked learning skills to solve real problems. Steps seem to include finding real resources on the web and bringing them back to enrich the game site. I found this from a TED talk by Jane McGonigal, Institute for the Future and game designer. Puts a new spin on the DML call for games. This project funded by World Bank
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Does having a computer at home improve results at school? | A World Bank Blog on ICT us... - 0 views

blogs.worldbank.org/...home-access
shared by Nils Peterson on 21 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Does differential access to computer technology at home compound the educational disparities between and rich and poor? and Would a program of government provision of computers to early secondary school students reduce these disparities? In this case, Vigdor and Ladd found that the introduction of home computer technology is associated with modest but statistically significant and persistent negative impacts on student math and reading test scores. Further evidence suggests that providing universal access to home computers and high-speed internet access would broaden, rather than narrow, math and reading achievement gaps.
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 21 Jul 10
       
      so there is some contextualization of computers in the home that is also needed... as I find when my daughter wants to spend computer time dressing up Barbie.
  • A 2010 report from the OECD (Are New Millennium Learners Making the Grade? [pdf]) considers a number of studies, combined with new analysis it has done based on internationally comparable student achievement data (PISA), and finds that indeed that gains in educational performance are correlated with the frequency of computer use at home.
  • One way to try to make sense of all of these studies together is to consider that ICTs may function as a sort of 'amplifier' of existing learning environments in homes.  Where such environments are conducive to student learning (as a result, for example, of strong parental direction and support), ICT use can help; where home learning environments are not already strong (especially, for example, where children are left unsupervised to their own devices -- pun intended), we should not be surprised if the introduction of ICTs has a negative effect on learning.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • On a broader note, and in response to his reading of the Vigdor/Ladd paper, Warschauer states on his insightful blog that the "aim of our educational efforts should not be mere access, but rather development of a social environment where access to technology is coupled with the most effective curriculum, pedagogy, instruction, and assessment."
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 21 Jul 10
       
      specific things need to be done to 'mobilize' the learning latent in the computing environment.
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EVOKE -- When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion | A World Bank Blog on ICT use ... - 2 views

blogs.worldbank.org/...s-unite-they-can-tie-up-a-lion
shared by Nils Peterson on 21 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Question 4 – What happens when you bring 10,000 players together in an open innovation platform? A lot!  There have been many highlights these past 14 days and below are some of the more outstanding unexpected outcomes of how the game has taken on a life of its own
    • Nils Peterson
      Nils Peterson on 21 Jul 10
       
      So the game context mediated some peer-to-peer learning around authentic problems
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Searching for India's Hole in the Wall | A World Bank Blog on ICT use in Education - 2 views

blogs.worldbank.org/...ng-for-indias-hole-in-the-wall
shared by Theron DesRosier on 20 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Theron DesRosier on 20 Jul 10
     
    "The contrast here was for me pretty stark: One the one hand, you had two computers set up outside which received minimal maintenance, and which anyone could use from 9-5 each day. There was no direction on how to use this equipment, but that didn't stop kids from figuring it out via trial and error (or, more often, from other kids). On the other hand, you had a dozen computers locked up in a school just a short walk away, gathering dust for lack of 'qualified teachers' to use them, and direct their use."
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Conference Highlights Contradictory Attitudes Toward Global Rankings - International - ... - 2 views

chronicle.com/...124854 rankings
shared by Gary Brown on 08 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • He emphasized, however, that "rankings are only useful if the indicators they use don't just measure things that are easy to measure, but the things that need to be measured."
  • "In Malaysia we do not call it a ranking exercise," she said firmly, saying that the effort was instead a benchmarking exercise that attempts to rate institutions against an objective standard.
  • "If Ranking Is the Disease, Is Benchmarking the Cure?" Jamil Salmi, tertiary education coordinator at the World Bank, said that rankings are "just the tip of the iceberg" of a growing accountability agenda, with students, governments, and employers all seeking more comprehensive information about institutions
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • "Rankings are the most visible and easy to understand" of the various measures, but they are far from the most reliable,
  • Jamie P. Merisotis
  • He described himself as a longtime skeptic of rankings, but noted that "these kinds of forums are useful, because you have to have conversations involving the producers of rankings, consumers, analysts, and critics."
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Has Accreditation Produced an Ethical Business Climate? - Letters to the Editor - The C... - 0 views

chronicle.com/...49058 accreditation
shared by Gary Brown on 10 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Institutions that choose to seek program accreditation must, in the finite world of budgets, shift funds away from many struggling departments and toward the chosen few to ensure that all criteria, from faculty credentials and salaries to high-tech classrooms and generous support staff, are not only met but exceeded.
  • Last year's economic crisis, fueled largely by the graduates of elite, accredited M.B.A. programs who flocked into banking and Wall Street, suggests a startling ethical blindness, social irresponsibility, and historical ignorance.
  • What good are accrediting agencies that take no responsibility for the behavior of those they accredit?
  • Gary Brown on 10 Nov 09
     
    We might choose to help our accreditors by forwarding a response to this letter in our Rain King write up.
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