By Sophia Lin in Wired Campus, The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 28 2010. An online textbook project at the University of Illinois that will also serve Illinois' community colleges. The comments are also of interest.

By Jennifer Brooks, The Tennessean, July 2 2010. Tennessee is looking at revamping their remedial education with hybrid and online classes in community colleges. In four-year colleges, remedial needs are often addressed with extra work/extra time in the regular classroom.

Posted by Gerry in Spectrum > Mobile Learning, Libraries, and Technologies (blog), June 17 2010. Cites Kelly Truong in Chronicle of Higher Ed (June 17 2010) on a study by Ball State University indicating smartphone use among college students has almost doubled in one year.

by Cecelia Foster on Prezi, July 6 2010. This is not the most intuitive presentation to use, but Foster seems to have collected many, many great Moodle resources from across the web.

By Lloyd Armstrong, Jr., in his blog Changing Higher Education, June 15 2010. This post refers to a Georgetown University report titled Help Wanted: Projections of Jobs and Education Requirements through 2010, which argues that there will not be enough people in the workforce with Associate's degrees (or better) to fill the job needs of 2018.

A program of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Statway focuses on helping community college students learn basic skills in statistics, data analysis, and quantitative reasoning as part of a one-year pathway. The ultimate goal of this pathway is preparation for college-level statistics. This home page to Statway also includes links to the project blog (called Pathways Connection) and to the project's mailing list. There are 19 community colleges affiliated with this project.

By Will Richardson, on his blog "weblogg-ed: learning from the read/write web," posted 22 June 2010. Richardson's main focus seems to be K-12 (as is the focus of many of the very interesting comments that this post has received), but the questions he asks are relevant to students of all ages and at all levels: how do we measure more esoteric qualities like the ability to follow "passion," how to "earn...a living solving problems and helping to make the world a better place." It's as much about the quality of education as of assessment.

Part of Edutopia (The George Lucas Educational Foundation), there are some really interesting and inspiring portraits of young people (ages 11-18) and how they use technology. While some have ready access to cell phones and computers, others do not; examples of students who are self-taught, as well as those who have learned in the classroom.

By Jennifer Gonzalez, the Chronicle of Higher Education, August 9 2010. Before an audience at the University of Texas at Austin, Obama called for "the United States to produce and additional eight million college graduates by 2020."

By Ian Quillen of the Digital Education (blog) in Education Week, September 2 2010. This study suggests that "Algebra I teachers who were trained in and used a program that allowed them to monitor students' progress on graphing calculators led to significantly improved achievement by their students on a researcher-designed test." This blog post (and the video link) both stress that it is the combination of technology AND professional development that has provided these positive results. \nNOTE: First link to Summary of Findings is a Texas Instruments report (TI produces the graphing calculator that is part of the study). However, the study was conducted with outside consultants, including SRI.

by Nick Anderson, Washington Post, September 2 2010. As part of the Race to the Top, grants were made to the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers ($170 million) and the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium ($160 million). The Partnership "would potentially replace a single, high-stakes test with a series of assessments to be averaged into one score for accountability purposes." SMARTER "would assess students through computer-adaptive technology..." Both assessments hope to do away with the existing "bubble tests" and hope to roll out in the 2014-15 school year.

The United States Department of Education has recently launched ED Data Express to make some of the Department's data available to the public. There are a variety of "views" of the data (e.g. state "snapshots," state tables), as well as the opportunity to build your own view.

By Katie Ash in the Digital Education blog of Education Week, Sept 1 2010. Ash quotes a study by e-Learning for Educators that finds online PD improved teachers' "instruction and subject knowledge" and "produced gains in student achievement."

This database (launched summer 2010) is a collaboration of various federal agencies (including the Office of Educational Technology, part of the US Dept of Education) that bring together "federal learning resources and primary source materials." Use the learning_registry tag to find background information.

Posted by Steve Midgley to the U.S. Department of Education's ED.gov blog on July 28 2010. In this post, Midgley announces the government's plan to "make its educational resources much easier to find and use through a new Learning Registry." This outline of the plan explores some of the technical issues that had to be addressed in order to build the database. Follow the learning_registry tag for a link to the registry itself.

The site defines "blook" as somewhere between a book and a blog, and on this site, there are interviews with researchers and practitioners in a number of interesting fields, including education, "internet & society," and social media.

According to the site, EduCon, an annual meeting, "iis both a conversation and a conference," with a focus on education innovation. Participants can attend virtually or in person.

By Robin Wilson in the Faculty section of the Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept 5 2010. This article looks at the resistance to measuring learning outcomes -- and the progress that is being made, as well.

Posted to the White House website (whitehouse.gov), unsigned and undated. On October 5 2010, Dr. Jill Biden will chair a White House Summit on Community Colleges, highlighting "the critical role that community colleges play in developing America's workforce and reaching our educational goals." There is both an online forum (see tag whitehouse_cc) and an opportunity to submit videos. The event will be webcast, as well.

By Wick Sloane, in a column called The Devil's Workshop in Inside Higher Ed, September 20 2010. Sloane, previously the CFO of a public university, has embedded himself as a writing teacher at Bunker Hill Community College. In this column, he ties completion to the many varied needs of under-served students, many of whom live in poverty.