Fintelo : Online Solution

For a generation of students who share every detail of their personal lives in text messages, MySpace pages and other online postings, the college admissions chase is offering a lesson that some things are best kept private. Last December, when Brown University's early admission decisions were released online, students in one classroom at North Hollywood High’s highly gifted magnet program could be heard applauding. In another, there was silence, followed by the sound of someone crying. So today when many Ivy League colleges are expected to render their decisions, magnet students will be rushing home to absorb the news, seniors Kelsey Collins and Joseph Wang said. "That's D-day for everybody," said Joseph, 17. "No one wants to check in public." Continue reading

In the bid for a fat envelope this year, it may help, more than usual, to have a fat wallet. Facing fallen endowments and needier students, many colleges are looking more favorably on wealthier applicants as they make their admissions decisions this year. Institutions that have pledged to admit students regardless of need are finding ways to increase the number of those who pay the full cost in ways that allow the colleges to maintain the claim of being need-blind — taking more students from the transfer or waiting lists, for instance, or admitting more foreign students who pay full tuition. Continue reading

Almost as soon as Guang-Yu Xu was laid off from his engineering post at a Silicon Valley Internet company last month, he visited LinkedIn.com and updated his job status from "current" to "past." Through their interconnected contacts, he soon heard from headhunter Robert Greene, one of more than 530,000 recruiters trolling the professional networking site for job candidates. Within a few weeks, Xu had three offers. He started at Mint.com, a personal finance website, two weeks ago. Welcome to the well-connected recession. As economic woes deepen and more people compete for fewer jobs, personal introductions to potential employers are more important than ever. Millions of Americans are turning to social networking sites such as LinkedIn, which has 37 million members, to seek an edge in landing work. Continue reading

There is no doubt that educators at any level of academia must compete with numerous external distractions within their classroom - the most prevalent of said distractions being technology. Whereas laptops were once an item only the privileged had in their possession, one would be hard pressed to walk into any lecture or seminar and not see a large portion of the class typing away. One-sided conversations heard in passing coming from an individual on their cell phone have become the standard, and in place of conversation in public spaces many have adopted the "they will not talk to me if I have my ear-phones in" theory. One might argue that we are losing touch with one another - that it is just easier to send a text or email rather than actually speaking directly with the person. The response is almost immediate, and it cuts down on the pleasantries that one has to exchange before they actually get what they wanted in the first place. This is not to say that everyone has given in to the 'Crackberries' and constant Internet checking, but, for the most part, society is technology-obsessed. Continue reading

A few weeks ago I received an invite to my five-year college reunion. My reply was swift, unhesitating and final: No, thank you. I have no desire to join the rest of my fellow University of Virginia graduates in sipping mint juleps on the sun-dappled Lawn and taking tours of the Rotunda. Why would I? I already know which of my former classmates spent their post-graduate years planting gardens in the Dominican Republic for the Peace Corps, which took off for the West Coast. I’ve seen photographs documenting medical missions to South Africa, vacations to Ecuador and endless albums of wedding receptions and gurgling babies. Blame Facebook. The social networking tool first became available to my class shortly after we graduated from college. Within months, nearly everyone I knew had joined the service. As we approach the five-year anniversary of Mark Zuckerberg’s invention, the tool has reached critical mass, bordering on ubiquity. As my colleague Brad Stone reported Sunday, it seems everyone and their mother — literally — is on Facebook . Continue reading

As the death toll in the American newspaper industry mounted this month, the German publisher Axel Springer, which owns Bild, the biggest newspaper in Europe, reported the highest profit in its 62-year history. At Springer’s headquarters in Berlin, there has been no desperate talk of how to survive the recession and the digital revolution. Instead, Mathias Döpfner, Springer’s chief executive, said he was looking for opportunities to expand, scouting around for acquisitions in Germany, Eastern Europe and maybe — in what would be a first for the company — the United States. “I don’t believe in the end of journalism,” Mr. Döpfner said. “On the contrary, I think the crisis can have a positive impact. The number of players will diminish, but the strong players may be stabler after the crisis.” In much of the world, American newspapers are seen as journalism’s gold standard. But the American newspaper’s business model appears to be broken. While much of Europe faces many of the same problems, a few newspaper publishers have found innovative ways not only to survive, but thrive in the face of the recession and the Internet. Continue reading

YouTube launched a handy new page last night that aggregates all the videos from more than 100 institutions of higher education around the US. YouTube.com/edu now serves up campus tours, free lectures, research and other college news all in one place. Search queries can be limited to the Edu part of the site as well. This is a great idea and we expect that young people who discover it will appreciate it. At first glance it looks better to us than iTunes University. This could genuinely help young people make more informed decisions about what schools to apply to. There's also a lot of great content on the site for anyone to learn from. Continue reading

Here's what I did: I went to the website for United Teachers Los Angeles, clicked on the union contract and hit "print." The job laid waste to a small forest of trees, producing a 347-page document the size of a fat phone book. So why am I telling you this? Because layoff notices just went out to 5,500 teachers in the Los Angeles Unified schools, and the UTLA contract guarantees one thing: Those notices aren't going to the least effective teachers. Quality has nothing to do with it. It's all about seniority. Continue reading

Are non-smartphones the new rotary phones? Remember the days when you rolled out of bed, turned on your computer and checked the news, weather and your Facebook account? That's so 2008. An increasing number of people are going straight to their mobile phones for all that information, according to a ComScore study released today.  The number of U.S. cellphone users who accessed the mobile Internet daily in January reached 22 million, double that of a year earlier. Continue reading

Participants remember Fintelo as the "festive" booth - strung with four-leaf clovers, green coins, and a pot-o'-gold filled with chocolate. Fintelo would like to thank all participants and exhibitors that stopped by our booth at this years' Innovations Conference in Reno, Nevada. It is exciting to learn how you and others are striving to change the way students learn in… Continue reading