College admissions officers have a new challenge on their hands, according to a recent article from the Chronicle of Higher Education.  In the past, college admissions officers have been able to familiarize themselves with the rigors of high school programs in their region, making it relatively easy to determine the preparedness of candidates.  Now, however, the rise of online education in secondary schools has made it more difficult to evaluate the coursework listed on a student’s transcript.

Knowing what programs a high school offers and what kinds of students it serves provides crucial context for weighevaluating applicants’ preparation. But the fast-increasing array of virtual programs poses a challenge. As a leader of one such program, Jan Keating, said at the conference: “How would you know when you see an online course on a transcript that it’s a high-quality program?”

Ms. Keating is headmaster of the Education for Gifted Youth Online High School at Stanford University, which offers computer-based distance-learning courses to high-achieving students. More than 50,000 students from 35 countries have taken courses through the program. To help admissions officials understand how to assess the quality of online programs, Ms. Keating described what questions they should ask.

Does the program have a clear mission? What are the educational backgrounds of its instructors? Do the instructors ever have face time with students? Can the program’s organizers provide information about student outcomes? And is it fully accredited?

The rest of the article can be found here.

In a recent article for the Guardian, Umberto Eco muses on the decline of handwriting skills.

Recently, two Italian journalists wrote a three-page newspaper article (in print, alas) about the decline of handwriting. By now it’s well-known: most kids – what with computers (when they use them) and text messages – can no longer write by hand, except in laboured capital letters.

He goes on to note some reasons for this decline, which he believes began even before the advent of computers.  He also muses on the importance of the art of writing by hand in general–the hand-eye coordination it teaches and the opportunity it provides to simply slow down and think.

An article from Wired magazine provides an alternative viewpoint to the idea that the advent of the internet has been bad for writing.  According to a study by Stanford professor Andrea Lunsford, student writing has actually improved because they’ve been forced to write more than ever before.

“The first thing she found is that young people today write far more than any generation before them. That’s because so much socializing takes place online, and it almost always involves text. Of all the writing that the Stanford students did, a stunning 38 percent of it took place out of the classroom—life writing, as Lunsford calls it. Those Twitter updates and lists of 25 things about yourself add up.

It’s almost hard to remember how big a paradigm shift this is. Before the Internet came along, most Americans never wrote anything, ever, that wasn’t a school assignment. Unless they got a job that required producing text (like in law, advertising, or media), they’d leave school and virtually never construct a paragraph again.”

What do you think?  Has use of the internet improved your writing?

This article tells the story of StraighterLine, an online resource offering college classes, tutors, podcasts, and study groups, for only $99 a month.  Students are allowed to move through the material as quickly or slowly as they choose, unlike traditional college classes, which move according to a preset schedule and syllabus.  Services like this one, according to Kevin Carey, may wind up providing competition to more than just online universities.  The article questions whether the modern higher education system in general is in jeopardy because of today’s internet technology.

In recent years, Americans have grown accustomed to living amid the smoking wreckage of various once-proud industries—automakers bankrupt, brand-name Wall Street banks in ruins, newspapers dying by the dozen. It’s tempting in such circumstances to take comfort in the seeming permanency of our colleges and universities, in the notion that our world-beating higher education system will reliably produce research and knowledge workers for decades to come. But this is an illusion. Colleges are caught in the same kind of debt-fueled price spiral that just blew up the real estate market. They’re also in the information business in a time when technology is driving down the cost of selling information to record, destabilizing lows.

In combination, these two trends threaten to shake the foundation of the modern university, in much the same way that other seemingly impregnable institutions have been torn apart. In some ways, the upheaval will be a welcome one. Students will benefit enormously from radically lower prices—particularly people like Solvig who lack disposable income and need higher learning to compete in an ever-more treacherous economy. But these huge changes will also seriously threaten the ability of universities to provide all the things beyond teaching on which society depends: science, culture, the transmission of our civilization from one generation to the next.

Click here to read on about the obstacles faced by online education services like StraighterLine, as well as Carey’s grim forecast for institutions of higher education.

An article in USA Today discusses the role of Smart Phones and PDAs in education.

“In St. Mary’s, Ohio, a school district of 2,300 students is continuing a pilot program where third-, fourth- and fifth-graders are assigned PDAs for use as a learning tool in the classroom, and at home. They use applications created by a company called Go Know! to draw pictures and create sketches, journal and write essays, said Kyle Menchhofer, the district’s technology coordinator. Other applications create flash cards for spelling and math.”

At the same time, cell phones can also provide distractions in class and aid in cheating on exams.  Some schools ban cell phone use entirely.

What do you think? Do the benefits outweigh the risks?

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting article about a Southern Methodist University dean who is encouraging his fellow professors to “teach naked.”  No, he’s not suggesting they dispense with their clothes; rather, he has challenged his colleagues to instruct without the crutch of technology, especially PowerPoint, the slide show tool that many university professors use to create lectures.  According to Jose A. Bowen, PowerPoint is being used as a crutch by professors, eliminating creativity rather than contributing to it.

“Class time should be reserved for discussion, he contends, especially now that students can download lectures online and find libraries of information on the Web. When students reflect on their college years later in life, they’re going to remember challenging debates and talks with their professors. Lively interactions are what teaching is all about, he says, but those give-and-takes are discouraged by preset collections of slides.”

Mr. Bowen contends that technology should be used differently: rather than relying on PowerPoint, professors should pre-record lectures to be viewed by students as podcasts or online videos.  That way, class time can be used to promote discussion and debate.

What do you think?  Do your teachers use PowerPoint lectures?  Do you find them interesting?  Or do you wish class time were more interactive?