Knowledge in the Public Interest (KPI)

By Nathaniel Irons, published in CoolTools, Mar 22, 2010. Review of an offsite data backup option called CrashPlan.

By Dakaria I. Aarons in Education Week, March 25 2010. The New Leaders for New Schools principal-training program has launched a new version of its online portal for the Effective Practice Incentive Community (EPIC). The article reports that the portal is a "Web-based compendium of professional-development resources for principals, staff-development coaches, and teachers." The article links to the database. Full article is subscription only. For access, contact your local library.

Published by Center for Community College Student Engagement, 2010. This report looks at the Survey of Entering Student Engagement (SENSE), launched fall 2006. From the report, "To date, more than 91,000 students from 197 colleges in 37 states have participated in SENSE, thereby helping to create a wealth of new and actionable data about the entering community college student experience."

By Alissa Gardenhire-Crooks, Herbert Collado, Kasey Martin, and Alma Castro with Thomas Brock and Genevieve Orr, published by MRDC in March 2010. The overview page (bookmarked) provides links to the Executive Summary and the full report (both available as PDFs). \nFrom the overview: "This study draws on the experiences of 87 African-American, Hispanic, and Native American men who were enrolled in developmental math courses at four Achieving the Dream institutions to find out more about what affects the success of men of color in community college."

By Scott Jaschik, from the News section, Inside Higher Ed, March 30, 2010. Katrina Nichols, Rosemary Arca, and Marisa Klages took part in the annual meeting of the League for Innovation in the Community College. This article describes their presentation and the GSCC project more generally. Links to the GSCC blog.

Edited by Terry Freedman and published on Informations and Communications Technology (ICT) in Education: The Educational Technology Site, March 2010. This is a really great e-book (free, downloadable PDF) which organizes Web 2.0 education projects by grade level, including a section for adult learners, and a section of resources. There are links to all projects and analysis and self-reflection by the project creators.

By Andrea Fuller in the Government section of The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 20, 2010. At North Virginia Community College, President Obama signs legislation that ends the bank-based lending system for student loans. The savings from ending this program will be used to provide spending on education. The president also announces that Jill Biden will lead a community-college summit at the White House in the fall.

By Simon Mackie of GigaOM, in the New York Times, April 2, 2010. Here are 10 great tricks to try when searching in Google.

By Alan Greenblatt on NPR, March 29 2010. Greenblatt reports that there was initially great promise for community colleges in the health care reconciliation bill that was passed at the end of March. However, "Congress ultimately took a pass on restructuring the mission of the nation's community colleges." The $12 billion American Graduation Initiative recognized the important role that community colleges could play in producing more college graduates, but the initiative was not included in the final law.

By Tara Siler on All Things Considered, NPR, March 31, 2010. Siler reports that students miss out on financial aid, particularly in community colleges, because they don't understand the system. Pell Grants can be particularly useful to low income students, if they understand how, when, and why to apply.

By Rosemary Luckin, published by Routledge (UK), April 2010. Luckin is Professor of Learner-Centred Design at the London Knowledge Lab. This book has just been released in the UK, and may not yet be available in US markets or libraries.

By Joshua Kim of the blog BlogU, part of Inside Higher Ed, March 29, 2010. Kim reflects on the more successful online learning experiences that he's taken part in, and points to three attributes that made these experiences successful. The comments section also provides some interesting links.

Published by SETDA (State Educational Technology Directors Association), April 21 2010. This report summarizes a national survey of the 50 "states' implementation of the technology sections of the ESEA [Elementary and Secondary Education Act], Title II, Part D (Title II-D) Act."

By David Nagel, in Policy & Advocacy section of THE Journal, April 23 2010. The article announces the newly published National Educational Technology Trends: 2010, Innovation Through State Leadership report, published by State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA). Trends include "enhancing teacher effectiveness" through professional development and "scaling up success" by expanding innovative programs that have worked. Report is bookmarked as well, see trends_edtech tag.

By Garry Boulard in Community College Times, published May 4 2010. The article looks at the finding that, the more times a student takes a specific developmental math course, the less likely he or she is to pass it. Quotes Paul Nolting, learning specialist, enrollment services advisor, and author of Winning at Math: Your Guide to Learning Mathematics Through Successful Study Skills.

Presented by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, April 2010. This guide, "is the result of a year-long cross-foundation effort to develop common principles, approaches, and taxonomies to help staff decide how best to allocate time and resources for data collection and analysis." Link to the PDF of the full guide from this page.

This special issue of the London Review of Education, 8 (1) 2010, looks at virtual learning. Co-editors are Gwyneth Hughes and Martin Oliver (affiliated with London Knowledge Lab). Full text articles are available for purchase from this page (publisher site). Check with your local library for full text articles.

Interesting academic opportunity in London, an MSc in Learning Technologies offered by the London Knowledge Lab. The program directors are Diana Laurillard and Alex Poulovassilis. The program focuses both on computer science and on learning theory. Link to application details on this page.

By Andrew Bonamici, Steven G. Huter, and Dale Smith in EDUCAUSE Review, 45(2), March/April 2010, pp 10-11. Those of us in the "developed" world (North America, Europe, etc.) rely on cyberinfrastructure to gain access to the vast amounts of information available on the Web. But what about students and researchers in the rest of the world?

From Education Week, April 21 2010. This article is not available for free, online. If you are not an Education Week subscriber, check with your local library for full text of this article.