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Federated search inside educational content repositories

Menschen leben wie Federn im Wind. Wir wenig wir selbst in der Hand haben und weil viel von fremden Mächten abhängt, die wir nicht kontrollieren oder fassen können, davon handelt diese Kurzgeschichte. Komm mit auf die Reise…

"The U.S. economy continued to show mixed signals from late November to early January, with improvements in the labor market and consumer spending offset by the drag of a strong dollar and low energy prices, the Federal Reserve said on Wednesday."

Merrilea Mayo, a materials scientist and serious games expert, brings a wide range of public policy, research, fiscal management, and academic experience to the Kauffman Foundation. Prior to joining the Foundation she was the director of the Government-University-Industry-Research Roundtable (GUIRR), National Academies in Washington, D.C. Merrilea led GUIRR in its efforts to define national strategic issues for action by federal science agency heads, industry CEOs and university presidents. During her career she has also served as the founding director of the Alliance for Science and Technology Research in America, and as the Congressional Science and Engineering Fellow for the Office of Senator Joseph Lieberman. Merrilea is a long-time member and past-president of the Materials Research Society and has led workshops and been an advisor for the serious games community. She received her undergraduate degree from Brown University and went on to earn both her Masters and Doctorate in materials science and engineering from Stanford University. She has been an assistant professor and associate professor with Pennsylvania State University. Her work has been published in numerous professional journals, books, and conference proceedings and has earned a U.S. patent and a variety of awards in the materials science field.

Over the last 24 hours, hordes of Twitter-refugees have been signing up with the microblogging service Identi.ca. Open source and federated

take a look at some of the most compelling new sites that have launched in just the few short months since President Obama took office: * Data.gov, providing open access to feeds of valuable facts and figures generated by the executive branch. * USAspending.gov, allowing any of us to drill down into the details of spending from various federal agencies. * Recovery.gov, perhaps one of the best-known of the new sites, offering up details of how resources from the Recovery Act are being allocated. * And of course, there's WhiteHouse.gov. You know about that one. What's remarkable about these sites is not merely that they exist; There had been some efforts to provide this kind of information in the past. Rather, what stands out is that they exhibit a lot of the traits of some of the best tech startups in Silicon Valley or New York City. Each site has remarkably consistent branding elements, leading to a predictable and trustworthy sense of place when you visit the sites. There is clear attention to design, both from the cosmetic elements of these pages, and from the thoughtfulness of the information architecture on each site. (The clear, focused promotional areas on each homepage feel just like the "Sign up now!" links on the site of most Web 2.0 companies.) And increasingly, these services are being accompanied by new APIs and data sources that can be used by others to build interesting applications.

$500 million would be awarded to create online instructional materials that would be available free to community colleges and their students. \n\n"And this will make it possible for a professor to complement his lecture with an online exercise, or for a student who can't be away from her family to still keep up with her coursework. We don't know where this kind of experiment will lead, but that's exactly why we ought to try it because I think there's a possibility that online education can provide especially for people who are already in the workforce and want to retrain the chance to upgrade their skills without having to quit their job."

Obama's plan could be transformative according to distance education expert.

Google Wave has the potential to turn the web on it's head. Amongst other things, it could spell the final death-knell for VLEs, or be their rebirth.