Sat 14 Aug 2010

Learn Something!

Posted by Becky Washington, MPA under Uncategorized
1 Comment

Are you in need of some brain stimulation?  Why not learn something.

Whether you want to spend 20 minutes or months or years, these resources will keep your neurons creating new connections.

200 Free Online Classes to Learn Anything | OEDb, http://oedb.org/library/beginning-online-learning/200-free-online-classes-to-learn-anything
“it’s possible to take classes from big names like Yale, MIT, and Tufts without ever submitting an application or paying a cent in tuition. We’ve compiled 200 online classes from these and other respected institutions, and you can take all of them with no strings attached.”

2010 Horizon Report, http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2010-Horizon-Report.pdf project established in 2002 that identifies and describes emerging technologies

250 Free Online Courses from Top Universities | Open Culture, http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses
Free online courses from top universities

About – About U. – Free Online Courses, http://u.about.com/
“A collection of free online courses from About.com. Each online course is sent to you via email on a daily or weekly basis and is designed to help you learn a specific skill or solve a particular problem. There are no grades or degrees, only a whole lot of free online learning.”

Academic Earth | Online Courses | Academic Video Lectures, http://academicearth.org/
“Academic Earth now helps connect you to degrees and certificates that can be earned online from highly-respected universities.”

Academy of Achievement, http://www.achievement.org/
“The Academy of Achievement brings students face-to-face with the extraordinary leaders, the visionaries and the pioneers who have helped shape our world.”

AcaWiki, http://acawiki.org/Home

Annenberg Media, http://www.learner.org/resources/browse.html
Incredible resource for free videos for classroom and professional development

Apple – iTunes U – Learn anything, anywhere, anytime. http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/

BBC – Languages – Homepage, http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/

CCOTC Textbooks by Subject, http://collegeopentextbooks.org/thetextbooks/textbooksbysubject.html

Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources, http://oerconsortium.org/

Educator.com – e-Learning Service Site, http://educator.com/Einztein – Find free online courses http://www.einztein.com/

FEMA Independent Study Program, http://training.fema.gov/IS/crslist.asp
The Emergency Management Institute (EMI) offers self-paced courses designed for people who have emergency management responsibilities and the general public. All are offered free-of-charge.

FORA.tv – Videos on the People, Issues, and Ideas Changing the Planet, http://fora.tv/

HP Learning Center, http://h30187.www3.hp.com/
Free online classes for home, home office, business and IT

JEA Digital Media | Journalism Education Association Digital Media http://jeadigitalmedia.org/

Justice with Michael Sandel (Harvard), http://www.justiceharvard.org/
Justice is one of the most popular courses in Harvard’s history. Now it’s your turn to take the same journey in moral reflection that has captivated more than 14,000 students, as Harvard opens its classroom to the world.

Keppler Speakers Video Channel, Keppler Speakers Bureeau, Motivational Speakers, Celebrity Speakers, Professional Speakers, Campus Speakers http://www.kepplerspeakers.com/video_index.aspx

Khan Academy, http://www.khanacademy.org/
The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization with the mission of providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere. See report on PBS Newshour, 02/22/10 “Math Wiz Adds Web Tools to Take Education to New Limits”: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/north_america/jan-june10/khan_02-22.html

Kutztown Small Business Development Center, http://www.kutztownsbdc.org/course_listing.asp
Free, on-demand entrepreneurial training resources

Learning on Demand Online – Education in the United States, 2009, http://www.sloan-c.org/publications/survey/pdf/learningondemand.pdf

Learning with ‘e’s, http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/

Links Browse: Free Software/Web Tools http://www.clrn.org/weblinks/browse.cfm?id=763

Marketplace Whiteboard | Marketplace from American Public Media, http://marketplace.publicradio.org/collections/coll_display.php?coll_id=20216
Marketplace Senior Editor Paddy Hirsch explains complex economic terms and topics so the rest of us can understand them.

Marketplace Whiteboard | Marketplace from American Public Media http://marketplace.publicradio.org/collections/coll_display.php?coll_id=20216

MIT World | Distributed Intelligence, http://mitworld.mit.edu/
MIT World is a free and open site that provides on demand video of significant public events at MIT. MIT World’s video index contains more than 700 videos.

Online Tutorials – Baycon Group provides tutorials on a growing list of computer-related topics, http://www.baycongroup.com/

Online University | Online Degree | Accredited Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees, http://www.wgu.edu/

Open Education Resources – Blogs, http://oerblogs.org/

Open Learning Initiative, http://oli.web.cmu.edu/openlearning/
Open & Free Courses are for independent learners and include self-guiding materials and activities that are freely available for you to use. They are available all the time so you can learn at your own pace.

Open Learning Initiative, http://oli.web.cmu.edu/openlearning/
Open & free classes from Carnegie Mellon

OpenLearn – The Open University, http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/

OpenUW Free Courses http://www.extension.washington.edu/openuw/

p2pu | Learning for everyone, by everyone, about almost anything, http://p2pu.org/

Peter Haberman’s Home Page, http://spot.pcc.edu/~phaberma/

PopTech : popcasts http://www.poptech.org/popcasts/

Technophilia: Get a free college education online – Back To School – Lifehacker, http://lifehacker.com/software/education/technophilia-get-a-free-college-education-online-201979.php

TED: Ideas worth spreading, http://www.ted.com/

Test Prep Online for GMAT, LSAT, and SAT Exams with Knewton, http://www.knewton.com/

Toastmasters International – Home, http://www.toastmasters.org/

Tufts OpenCourseWare, http://ocw.tufts.edu/

UC Berkeley Webcasts | Video and Podcasts: Spring 2010 Courses, http://webcast.berkeley.edu/courses.php

UC Irvine, OpenCourseWare, http://ocw.uci.edu/

University of the People – The world’s first tuition free online university, http://www.uopeople.org/

VideoLectures – exchange ideas & share knowledge, http://videolectures.net/

Welcome | Flat World Knowledge, http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/

Whatcom Online Math Center, http://math.whatcom.ctc.edu/content/Links.phtml?cat=3
Free online classes from Whatcom Community College

Wikiversity:Main Page – Wikiversity, http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Main_Page

Yale Open Courses – Online Video Lectures and Course Materials, http://oyc.yale.edu/

YouTube – Education – YouTube EDU, http://www.youtube.com/education?b=400

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Tue 10 Aug 2010

Student-Loan Debt Surpasses Credit Cards

Posted by Becky Washington, MPA under Uncategorized
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Americans now have a bigger debt burden for student loans than for credit cards.

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/08/09/student-loan-debt-surpasses-credit-cards/

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Thu 29 Jul 2010

Social Media policy for Community Colleges

Posted by Becky Washington, MPA under Uncategorized
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As colleges find more and more uses and issues arising from the explosion of social media, some colleges are grappling with policy discussions and choices.  If you are interested in resources to inform your school’s discussion, here are several:

Holyoke Community College: http://www.hcc.edu/about/pdf/Social%20Media%20Guidelinesv5.pdf

Draft – Social Media Guidelines for Grand Rapids Community College: http://derekdevries.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/grccsmguidelines_draft.pdf

Samples from the private & public sectors: http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php

Happy socializing!

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Mon 26 Jul 2010

Roubini Global Economics – Nouriel Roubini’s EconoMonitor

Posted by Becky Washington, MPA under Uncategorized
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The news from the economic front is not good.

Nationally:

“Whatever…US economic performance ultimately resembles, what is coming will feel like a recession. Mediocre job creation and a further rise in unemployment, larger cyclical budget deficits, a fresh fall in home prices, larger losses by banks on mortgages, consumer credit, and other loans, and the risk that Congress will adopt protectionist measures against China will see to that.”

Roubini Global Economics – Nouriel Roubini’s EconoMonitor.

And in Oreg0n:

“The recession that gripped Oregon and tore a $577 million hole in the state’s general fund budget has also created confusing contradictions.”

http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2010/07/state_budget_oregon_cant_move.html

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Tue 13 Jul 2010

Labor Market Outlook

Posted by Becky Washington, MPA under Uncategorized
[2] Comments

This just in…from Oregon Employment Forecast, Amy Vander Vliet, Regional Economist, State of Oregon.

“…with no foreseeable ‘magic bullet’ in the near future, OEA [Office of Economic Anaylsis]

expects a slow start to the recovery.

6 major industries are expected to contract this year

3 will expand & 1 will be flat

 

Construction will suffer the steepest decline by far (-15.0%) in anticipation of continued weakness in the housing market  and tough times for commercial real estate brought on by tight credit, rising vacancy rates, and low demand.

 Manufacturing will decline in step with the nation, although at a slower pace than OEA forecasted earlier in the year.

 The outlook for high tech has brightened; chip sales are up and expected to go higher.

 Financial activities will lose more jobs this year before starting to rebound in 2011.

 The government sector will cut positions as state and local governments struggle to balance their budgets.

 Education & health services weathered the recession better than every other sector. It will be the fastest growing sector this year (+1.9%) due almost entirely to the expanding health care component.

 Professional & business services will show signs of life after suffering sharp losses in 2009.

 Leisure & hospitality should benefit from the consumer slowly relaxing their grip on their wallet.

 The information sector, which includes software, is expected to end this year flat compared to 2009” [emphasis mine.]

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Thu 8 Jul 2010

If Us Budget Deficits are Bad, Loss of Worker Skills are Worse

Posted by Becky Washington, MPA under Uncategorized
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While Congress debates federal deficit spending, the situation for American Workers is troubling.

Unemployment for men is worse than for women and the outlook is not good.

For older workers, the risk that to the federal budget is that more of them will be funded permanently on disability rather than temporarily on unemployment insurance.  Cutting Off Unemployment Benefits Could Worsen Deficit.  It also means that we will permanently loose expertise that could be useful once the economy bounces back.

For young workers, the lack of opportunity to gain skills can have a lasting, even permanent effect on their future prospects.  Something’s Not Working. 

In “Outliers,” Malcom Gladwell gives evidence for his claim regarding the “10,000 hour rule.”  The assertion is that mastery of a skill or task is achieved after 10,000 hours of practice.

If young workers don’t get started on their skill development, how will this impact their potential?

If late career workers cannot find work, does it make sense for them to start over on a new skill very late in their working life?

Job creation now is an investment in our future.  Unemployment is costsly.  Disinvestment now is “penny wise and pound foolish.”

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Wed 7 Jul 2010

Fewer Low-Income Students Going to College – Real Time Economics – WSJ

Posted by Becky Washington, MPA under Uncategorized
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Among the interesting information in this article: “Among the students surveyed who had parents ‘very concerned’ about higher-education finances just 66% applied to a four-year college. Some 90% of respondents with parents ‘not concerned’ about finances applied to college.”

Fewer Low-Income Students Going to College – Real Time Economics – WSJ.

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Mon 28 Jun 2010

How to download a white paper template

Posted by Becky Washington, MPA under Uncategorized
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In the community college setting, white papers are often used to provide information to support a proposed solution to challenges in technology or planning.

If you see a problem and want to propose a solution to a decision maker, it’s easy to download a template to formulate your ideas into a white paper.

Go to: Office.microsoft.com

Click on “Templates”:

Type “White Paper” into the search box.  The result looks like this:

When you download and open it in Word, it looks like this:

You are provided with a Table of Contents which you can change.  It will look like this:

“Praxis” simply means “the process of putting theoretical knowledge into practice.”

If you see a problem and want to propose a solution, why not write a white paper?

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Mon 28 Jun 2010

GED Offers ‘Minimal Value’ – Real Time Economics – WSJ

Posted by Becky Washington, MPA under Uncategorized
1 Comment

University of Chicago researchers have concluded that obtaining a GED provides no labor market advantage to the high school drop out.

If  borne out by other research, this would have a profound impact on our view of the usefulness of the GED.

The research is summarized b y Mary Pilon of Real Time Economics on the WSJ site here:

GED Offers ‘Minimal Value’ – Real Time Economics – WSJ.

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Fri 25 Jun 2010

Using RSS Feeds to stay informed

Posted by Becky Washington, MPA under Uncategorized
[2] Comments

Is your email inbox so full of things that it’s hard to find the gems of information?  Would you like to save time  checking your favorite news information and blogs all at once?  Make use of RSS feeds.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.  If you like Google, you can set up an account which will allow you to create a personalized page of information.

Mine looks like this:

Becky's iGoogle page

Want to get set up?  Here’s a video tutorial.

What are your favorite RSS feeds for women in community colleges?  Post a comment and share.

Happy learning.

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