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Psychology courses can benefit your career immensely and give a boost to the company's progress.

I saw this on Fran Drescher's Twitter account from the Cincinnati Business courier and am quite floored by it. Am I the only one who doesn't know this? How about all of the little kids I see where parents are handing them their ipad and smart phones for play purposes. I jusst need to know more but it is based on a study presented at the Pediatric Academic societies meeting in DC. Of course, they recommend hand washing. But pregnant women should be careful - a 10x increase in maternal PBDE's is associated with a 4 point IQ deficit. Of course, we also have the age old question here of causation or correlation.  I do think we need to know more and also if the equipment we're purchasing to use with young children has PBDEs in them.  If you know more, please leave comments. It does say that some manufacturers are voluntarily phasing these out. "Small children should not touch electronic items such as TVs, mobile phones, computers and other products, according to University of Cincinnati researchers. Chemicals found in such items and in many other products, including older carpets and furniture, can cause behavioral and cognition problems, they have found."

"In this course, author and educator Chris Mattia demonstrates how to use the Apple iBooks Author application to create and publish your own iBook, without extensive design or publishing experience." Very Comprehensive. You can follow the course step by step or you can use the table of contents to skip to the specific skill you want.  There are video screen casts for everything. 

How AP courses enhance stratification within schools between AP versus non-AP courses.

This is a course for Spring Branch ISD which uses a blog as the framework. I also love how 9 hours of professional development is being given for the educators in this course. We need more embedded PD that gives teachers an opportunity to embed their learning in their daily activity. Embedded PD is the key to transformational learning. While there is a time and place for getting away, we have traditionally only used that "away" method when we also need to use the "learn right here" method of delivery as well. Take a look at what Karen is doing here as you evaluate your pd delivery methods.

Overview of the use of efolios in the Expository Writing course at the University of Washington. along with some sample portfolios. Currently the electronic portfolios are optional although having a portfolio is not. "The six TAs who chose to teach with electronic portfolios discovered many advantages to introducing this technology. They found that students learned to write for a wider audience and were able to better connect to the course outcomes by showing a greater variety of examples such as graphics and links to relevant Web pages. The electronic portfolios also simplified some logistics, allowing the instructors to easily show examples of online portfolios and students to review each other's work. "

MIT will launch MITx in Spring 2012 credentials. Certificates will be offered for those who pay for an MITx course with NO admissions requirements. (wonder how they will confirm someone is actually taking the course and not have it taken for them by another.) Fascinating developments that should have all universities standing up and taking note.

MITx prototype course opens for enrollment Online-learning initiative's first offering, '6.002x: Circuits and Electronics,' accepting registrants now.

We are a social entrepreneurship company that partners with the top universities in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free. We envision a future where the top universities are educating not only thousands of students, but millions. Our technology enables the best professors to teach tens or hundreds of thousands of students. Through this, we hope to give everyone access to the world-class education that has so far been available only to a select few. We want to empower people with education that will improve their lives, the lives of their families, and the communities they live in. Our Courses Classes offered on Coursera are designed to help you master the material. When you take one of our classes, you will watch lectures taught by world-class professors, learn at your own pace, test your knowledge, and reinforce concepts through interactive exercises. When you join one of our classes, you'll also join a global community of thousands of students learning alongside you.

Carl Anderson's Open Course for Personalized Professional Development. The course is being offered by Hamline.

Now this is what a call teaching writing-the course should be named...writing for real!

Current comparisons of computer science and introductory computer science courses from the Computer Science teachers Association. I find it interesting that only 33% of schools require such a course and that the #2 choice for professional development for Computer Science teachers is now online networking.

Interesting results comparing the last two years of computer science teachers association surveys.

Open Education Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials freely available online for everyone to use, whether you are an instructor, student, or self-learner. Examples of OER include: full courses, course modules, syllabi, lectures, homework assignments, quizzes, lab and classroom activities, pedagogical materials, games, simulations, and many more resources contained in digital media collections from around the world.

Great post by Ben Grey on his participation in Constructing Modern knowledge - he hits several things including the fact that many at the conference said that computer programming should be mandatory for all students and a presenter who said that the problem with today is that too many people have a voice. My comments from Ben's blog are below. Great conversations happening here! Programming - OK, on the programming thing, here are my thoughts. In our curriculum our objective is not as much a specific LANGUAGE. One year I may use HTML with Javascript, this past year I used LSL - what I want kids to know that when they encounter programming and coding that there are certain conventions. Some are case sensitive, some are not. How do you find out how to add to what you know about programming? Do you know where to go to find prewritten code? Can you hack it to make it work to do what you want it to do? We spend about a week - two weeks but I require they know how to handcode hyperlinks and images - they are just too important. But to take 12 weeks or 6 weeks to learn a whole language - yes maybe some value - but to me the value is HOW is the language constructed or built. What are the conventions and how do I educate myself if I am interested in pursuing. What comes out of this time is kids who say either "I never want to do that" or "this is really cool, I love coding." They are doing very simplistic work (although the LSL object languages were pretty advanced) but since we don't have a full course nor time in our curriculum, I do see this as an essential part of what I teach. I'm not teaching it for the language sake but for the sake of understanding the whole body of how languages work - we talk about the different languages and what they are used for as part of Intro to Computer science and have an immersive experience. To me, this is somewhat a comprimise between leaving it out entirely or forcing everyone to take 12 weeks of it. I

What is N-Gen Course Redesign™?

What is N-Gen Course Redesign™?

This website provides tutorials and sample course content so CS students and educators can learn more about current computing technologies and paradigms. In particular, this content is Creative Commons licensed which makes it easy for CS educators to use in their own classes. The Courses section contains tutorials, lecture slides, and problem sets for a variety of topic areas: AJAX Programming Algorithms Distributed Systems Web Security Languages In the Tools 101 section, you will find a set of introductions to some common tools used in Computer Science such as version control systems and databases.

This is the main page for EC&I 831: Social Media & Open Education, an open access graduate course from the Faculty of Education, University of Regina. This course is available to both for-credit and not-for-credit students. It features openly available, live, and recorded presentations from notable educators & theorists.

This site provides an overview of Understanding Media Literacy: Inside Plato's Cave, a 13 unit, 3-credit course for those wishing to know more about the nexus between children and media literacy. The course is especially designed for those who teach at the grades 7 - 12 levels,

In today's world of advanced technology, preparation for employment after completing High School often means pursuing an additional course of study for a minimum of one to two years. Be this in a Technical School, Junior College, College or University, the bottom line is that our students generally need to further their education in order to secure employment. Readiness for college therefore is an important issue facing our schools. College preparation takes foresight and planning and involves more than college preparatory courses. How can we insure that our students are college prepared?

The Department o Labor reports that Formal Education Beyond High School Is Not Required for 66% of the 2008-2018 Job Openings . See page 15 of http://www.bls.gov/opub/ooq/2009/winter/art02.pdf . Who will fill these jobs? The report also states that 22% require a four-year degree or more. Won't the over supply just od degree holders continue to push down the real wages of college graduates as it has for over ten years?