"Robby... came in search of understanding and affirmation as well as tea and fried eggs." A beautiful, wise, and humorous reflection on caring for the development of students as whole people.

Researchers use "harvesting feedback" and a uncertainty scale to illuminate how stakeholders use evidence to explain honeybee declines in France.

"Firebug Lite Firebug is an extension for Firefox, but what happens when you need to test your pages in Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari? The solution is Firebug Lite, a JavaScript file you can insert into your pages to simulate some Firebug features in browsers that are not named "Firefox"."

A valuable aid for web designers and developers, now available "for browsers that are not named Firefox"

"Despite those diverging starting points, the discussion revealed quite a bit more common ground than any of the panelists probably would have predicted. Let's be clear: Where they ended up was hardly a breakthrough on the scale of solving the Middle East puzzle. But there was general agreement among them that: * Any effort to try to measure learning in the humanities through what McCulloch-Lovell deemed "[Margaret] Spellings-type assessment" -- defined as tests or other types of measures that could be easily compared across colleges and neatly sum up many of the learning outcomes one would seek in humanities students -- was doomed to fail, and should. * It might be possible, and could be valuable, for humanists to reach broad agreement on the skills, abilities, and knowledge they might seek to instill in their students, and that agreement on those goals might be a starting point for identifying effective ways to measure how well students have mastered those outcomes. * It is incumbent on humanities professors and academics generally to decide for themselves how to assess whether their students are learning, less to satisfy external calls for accountability than because it is the right thing for academics, as professionals who care about their students, to do. "

Assessment meeting at the accreditors -- driven by expectations of a demand for accountability, with not one mention of improvement.

"The Office of the Inspector General (of the Department of Education) prefers auditable measures for performance. It reads the Higher Education Act with its multiple references to credit hours to demand such measures."

How far is accountability from accounting...

"# Google says hackers from China got into its Gmail system # Bruce Schneier says hackers exploited feature put into system at behest of U.S. government # When governments get access to private communications, they invite abuse, he says # Government surveillance and control of Internet is flourishing, he says"

A security expert looks at who's spying on whom... (hint: it's not just China)

Re: Capella U.'s "CHEA" award: it appears that CU is located in Lake Woebegone, where all the children are above average...

The Official Google Blog reports that Google detected a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack" originating in China against them and against at least 20 other large business. Google says they have "evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists." Google says "We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China."

"Google has unveiled plans today to allow Google Docs to store any type of files, and revealed a new tool from Memeo to enable users to access, migrate, and synchronize files between their desktop and Google Docs. " (Snc tool is for Google Apps Premium only). Getting to be a more attractive option...

"If you're wondering what use Google's new Wave tool might have for teaching, one online-learning leader has an answer: combining classes from different colleges."

An article on budget cuts by Ed Lazowska, who holds the Gates Chair in Computer Science and Engineering at UW. Dr Lazowska states that "the principal role of great public universities is to provide socioeconomic upward mobility to the citizens of their states," and claims that the "capacity" of UW and other bachelor-granting institutions is insufficient and shrinking. Many questionable assumptions

"much of the thinking and hype surrounding cloud computing is built upon fallacies while ignoring the market realities. Let me outline those fallacies here." Especially note Fallacy #5, which includes a discussion of "trust".

"The wiki crops up in many companies' internal discussions about process improvements and efficient collaboration, but it is often shot down because so few people have exposure to good models of what a really successful business wiki can do. Ars is here to help with a practical introduction based on real-world examples."

"After searching some public 'waves,' we came across an educational wave. Entitled 'Wave in Class,' the wave was started to explore concepts like "Collaborative Note Taking" and "Wave as a Debate Host." "

So it begins... the usual range of reactrions when a new technology is introduced, and educators begin to spin salvation or doom on top of it. Interestingly, there are already a couple of comments on this blog that use Wave concepts to challenge the context (the "class").

"Skim is a PDF reader and note-taker for OS X. It is designed to help you read and annotate scientific papers in PDF, but is also great for viewing any PDF file. Stop printing and start skimming."

"This paper describes the implementation of a quantitative cost effectiveness analyzer for Web-supported academic instruction that was developed in Tel Aviv University during a long term study."

The king of indirect measures, putting the "count" in accountability via web log analysis.

"The results of the survey [of employers], released Friday, suggest that colleges need to change how they prepare their students for the working world, particularly by reinforcing soft skills like honoring workplace etiquette and having a positive demeanor. " -- Oh, yes, and get rid of the tatoos and piercings.

Relevant to Gary's post about Career Services and Liberal Arts -- can "professionalism" be part of the curriculum?

"No, Social Search isn't yet another social network aggregator. It's a way for you to make your Google search results more relevant by adding a section dedicated to content written by your friends and acquaintances. Though limited, we think it's pretty useful thus far."

A piece of a Personal Learning Network -- searchability.

"But I can't help but think the new software represents the triumph of hope over experience. Drupal looks great in theory: It's a powerful way to govern a Web site that is born out of the collective efforts of the community. In practice, it tends to be a bit of a mess."

Noew that the White House has launched its new Drupal-based site, a Slate columnist weighs in on Drupal's negatives.

" This ECAR research bulletin addresses the data privacy issues that must be covered by contractual language when entering into an agreement for externally provided IT services or for external consulting about institutional systems. It covers instances in which external agents have access to data that is considered confidential and/or where data can be linked to personally identifiable records. It is based on work done at The College of New Jersey between November 2008 and May 2009"