intodimensions.com

ADWC instated new programs:

A source at the Abu Dhabi Women’s College (ADWC) announced that the college has instated an additional three programs during the second semester of the current year, Khaleej Times reported.

He further pointed out that ADWC’s Applied Communications Department recently introduced a Diploma in Graphic Design/Interior Design to prepare students for entry-level positions in the interior design field.

ADWC students will sit for courses in drawing, color theory, design principles and digital software applications and upon graduation and will be qualified to create exhibition and promotional displays.

The second program being introduced is the Diploma in Health Office Technology, by the Health Sciences Department and will give graduates knowledge and skills to support administrative and management duties in the field of healthcare.

ADWC will further start offering a Software Engineering Concentration in its Higher Diploma in Information Technology (IT), which aims to answer the demand for engineers in the UAE.

Brian and I have been working on this idea for a project for a while and it’s coming together nicely. Just in the last few days we’ve got over some major hurdles and now have a working prototype system. The basic idea is that a teacher should be able to create a multiple-choice quiz with a web interface. Students should then be able to take those quizzes on their mobile phones using a Flash Lite client. As I said, we now have a working prototype and all parts of the system are on a basic level working, which is very nice. There is a ton of work still left to do though, like creating a nice web interface, polish up the Flash Lite interface, and make all the connections much more robust, with error handling, and more.

What we want to do is clearly to take advantage of the fact that all our students have mobile phones. With catch words like “e-learning” and “m-learning” floating around, if students can learn on the go - whenever and wherever - that should be a good thing. It gives them more opportunities to revise learning content and it allows teachers more opportunities to compliment the in-class teaching.

As crazy as it may seem, a similar thing to this happened to me once in the US. A student submitted a floppy disk with his assessment files on it together with number of photos that could only be described as very graphic porn. Thank goodness, in my case it was not child porn.

Silicon Valley Business Journal:

Stanford University-related audio programs are now available through Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes online music store, the school announced Thursday.

Stanford on iTunes will give alumni and the general public free access to faculty lectures, campus events, performances, book readings, music recorded by Stanford students as well as podcasts of Stanford football games.

Stanford said that the service will contain close to 400 distinct audio programs, and the university will continue to add new content as it becomes available.

In addition to public content targeted at alumni, the project includes audio related to academic courses exclusively for Stanford faculty and students.

Now also supporting video, I’m sure the new iTunes/iPod features will catch on with a lot more colleges and universities.

[posted with ecto]

CNet:

Incoming college students seem to have developed an allergy to computer science during the past four years–with women particularly being uninterested in the field.

That’s the gist of a new report from Computing Research Association (CRA), a group made up of academic departments, research centers and professional societies.

The study could fuel concerns that the United States may be losing its edge in the realm of information technology, especially when measured against emerging powers such as India and China. The dot-com bust and offshore outsourcing have been mentioned as factors to explain declining interest among Americans in computer science.

Citing research from the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles, the report says the percentage of incoming undergraduates indicating they would major in computer science declined by more than 60 percent between the fall of 2000 and the fall of 2004, and is now 70 percent lower than it was during its peak in the early 1980s.

We made a presentation at the Horry County First Steps/SCAEYC conference in Myrtle Beach today. The presentation [PDF] had the title “Free and open-source software in education”. We gave a handout with some sites on it, here are the sites:

http://www.earlychildhood.com/: A great website where you can find many free resources and articles. You can also receive the site’s free magazine.

http://www.drjean.org: Dr. Jean gives ideas for activities; you can find all of her neat cd’s and other things.

http://www.rif.org/: A cool website for ideas and games for reading. This website also has a neat coloring book section.

http://www.abcteach.com/: A website with a lot of templates and activities for the teacher. All free…

http://www.teach-nology.com/: A website just for teachers. They have over 23,000 lesson plans and ideas. All free…

http://www.familyeducation.com/: This website is geared toward families and students of all ages.

http://www.dltk-teach.com/: Great website for templates. This website also has a favorite character page where you can print coloring pages of the students’ favorite storybook characters, make birthday cards, or just play games with their favorite character.

http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/: A website for teaching ideas in many areas. They also have ideas on special needs activities. This is a UK website.

http://www.ncrel.org/: Literacy activities for Kindergarten.

http://www.ed.gov/: A government website for teachers, parents, & students.

http://www.tlsbooks.com/: A website that is trying to sell you things, but it does have free “printables” (as they call it).

http://www.reviewcorner.com/: This website reviews educational products, including computer software, books, music, videos/DVDs, and games. You can find out what other people think of something, before you buy it for your classroom.

http://readyweb.crc.uiuc.edu/: An article called “Helping children learn about reading” by NAEYC.

http://www.webenglishteacher.com/: Many ideas at this website for reading and reading activities.

http://www.kn.pacbell.com/: Ideas for kindergarten classrooms.

http://www.kn.pacbell.com/: This site is for teachers and directors of centers. The website has ideas for classrooms to have to get grants for your program.

http://www.kidscom.com/: A wonderful website that students can use themselves.

http://www.child.net/: National Children’s Coalition website that has a lot of links to other website for students.

http://www.telenaut.com/: Show and Tell website that shows children’s artwork from around the world.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/: Students can check out the White House and other neat things at this website.

http://www.ed.gov/: Ideas for learning science.

http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/: Checkout the nine planets at this website. It will show you the planets and all the info on the planets.

http://www.worldvillage.com/: Another good site for free-ideas and templates for teachers.

http://kidshealth.org/: A good website that promotes good health for students.

http://www.monarchwatch.org/: Great for a science unit.

http://www.fi.edu/: Another great website for science where teachers and students can go explore.

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/: Picture Dictionary for English and with English names and other Languages.

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/l: Maps of the World.

http://www.sass.ca/: Games and Activities about staying safe for children.

http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/: Web site about space, with different activities for children.

http://my.unidata.ucar.edu/: Web site about rainbows, and all the questions that come from seeing a rainbow.

http://my.unidata.ucar.edu/: A website for children, that is filled with fun activities for them.

http://www.funschool.com/: A fun website for children

http://richmond.k12.va.us/: Free activities and lesson plans for teachers.

DIAJ..org:

Welcome to the Directory of Open Access Journals. This service covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals. We aim to cover all subjects and languages. There are now 1530 journals in the directory. Currently 385 journals are searchable at article level. As of today 71908 articles are included in the DOAJ service.

SFGate.com:

American universities — once the dominant force in the information technology world — fell far down the ranks in a widely watched international computer programming contest held this week.

The University of Illinois tied for 17th place in the world finals of the Association for Computing Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest. That’s the weakest result for the United States in the 29-year history of the competition.

This year, the contest was held in Shanghai, where a home team, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, won. Two Russian institutions, Moscow State University and St. Petersburg Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics, came in second and third. Canada saved North America’s honor, as Ontario’s University of Waterloo took the No. 4 spot.

NYTimes:

A computer program developed at the University of Missouri may take some of the tedium out of teaching–it grades papers and offers students writing advice.

Ed Brent, professor of sociology at the Columbia, Mo., university, spent six years developing the program, which is called Qualrus, and has been testing it on his pupils for the past two. It works by scanning text for keywords, phrases and language patterns. Students load papers directly into the system via the Web and get nearly instant feedback.

How can a cold, mechanical computer comprehend the art and nuance of writing? The program is actually quite sophisticated, Brent said. It’s not enough to just throw keywords into an essay willy-nilly. The program analyzes sentence and paragraph structure and can ascertain the flow of arguments and ideas. It gives each work a numeric score based on the weight instructors place on various elements of the assignment.

The computer-generated scores count for about a third to a quarter of students’ final grade for Brent’s class. Students have challenged the scores, but if they don’t use the right lingo in their papers, they’re out of luck. “In sociology, we want them to learn the terms,” Brent said.

Cnet:

Duke University students will be able to get a free iPod next year, but only if they enroll in certain courses, the school said Wednesday.