Fintelo : Online Solution

Source: washingtonpost.com By: Jose Antonio Vargas When it comes to swine flu, the Feds are maintaining full online alert. As news about the epidemic has burned up all corners of the Web, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services have been using Twitter and YouTube, among other sites, to disseminate information. Three agency heads -- HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Richard Besser of the CDC and Janet… Continue reading

There's a significant disconnect between students and educators when it comes to perceptions of technology in K-12 education, according to Julie Evans, CEO of Project Tomorrow. Evans discussed results of the latest Speak Up Survey Thursday afternoon at the FETC Virtual Conference & Expo. Among the findings: There's a trend toward students using technology to take hold of their own educational destinies and act as "free agent learners." The Speak Up 2008 report, released late last month, is the latest annual survey focused on the national discussion about 21st century education. The survey this year polled more than 281,000 students, 29,000 teachers, 21,000 parents, and 3,100 administrators and involved 4,379 schools from 868 districts in all 50 states. (According to Project Tomorrow, since 2003, more than 1.5 million K-12 students, teachers, school leaders, and parents from more than 10,000 schools have participated in the survey.) Continue reading

Team-based learning, an educational method primarily conceived for business schools, was developed in the early 1980s by Larry K. Michaelsen, now a professor of management at the University of Central Missouri in the United States. An alternative to traditional lecturing, this method uses a mix of individual and group processes to solve problems. In recent years, some medical schools have recognized the advantage of active learning that encourages critical thinking and have started to experiment with Professor Michaelsen’s techniques. Now, the Duke-N.U.S. Graduate Medical School, in Singapore, has gone a step further, applying this method to its entire basic science education. “Learning is both about memorizing and thinking about what you’ve memorized; the hardest question in education is to figure out the right balance between the two,” said Robert K. Kamei, vice dean of education at Duke-N.U.S., a partnership between Duke University, based in Durham, North Carolina, and the National University of Singapore. “We’ve decided to apply this teaching method to its fullest extent because we feel it’s a better way for our students to learn.” Continue reading

After a slow start, mobile Web access has finally taken off, thanks in large part to better technology, and it will drive growth in Internet use in the future, industry leaders say. "More people in the world will have their first interaction with the Internet with mobile than with laptop," said Internet co-founder Vinton Cerf at a five-day Web conference which wrapped up Friday in Madrid. There are about three and a half billion mobile telephones in the world, and a growing proportion of them are equipped to access the Internet, he added. Continue reading

When American forces in Iraq wanted to lure members of Al Qaeda into a trap, they hacked into one of the group’s computers and altered information that drove them into American gun sights. When President George W. Bush ordered new ways to slow Iran’s progress toward a nuclear bomb last year, he approved a plan for an experimental covert program — its results still unclear — to bore into their computers and undermine the project. And the Pentagon has commissioned military contractors to develop a highly classified replica of the Internet of the future. The goal is to simulate what it would take for adversaries to shut down the country’s power stations, telecommunications and aviation systems, or freeze the financial markets — in an effort to build better defenses against such attacks, as well as a new generation of online weapons. Continue reading

Source: nytimes.com By: Paul Boutin On Friday, Oprah Winfrey fumbled her way to her first tweet live on TV, assisted by humble, lovable Twitter C.E.O. Evan Williams. For Internet hipsters, it was the end of an era. For Twitter, it was only the beginning: Oprah’s co-hosts immediately spotted the service’s potential for neighbors to alert each other to escaped convicts and sexual predators on the block. But mainstream Twitter fans face a hurdle… Continue reading

Public television may be non-profit and government-sponsored, but it has many of the same problems as commercial broadcasters when it comes to the Web. More and more viewers want to watch “Nova,” “Frontline,” and “Antiques Roadshow” online, but the public broadcasters worry that that if everything were available on the Internet, they could lose some of their traditional sources of funding: corporate sponsors, viewer donations, and DVD sales. Nonetheless, the public TV stations are taking more risks, and on Wednesday they introduced a fancy new video portal at PBS.org/video. It replaces a hodgepodge of sites, with different features, run by the producers of each of the network’s programs and by its member stations. The sleek animation and the features of the site will be familiar to users of Hulu, the NBC-Fox joint venture. You can search and browse among thousands of programs, contributed both by PBS and its member stations. You can watch full episodes, and also search for clips and segments. Continue reading

With college enrollment rates among the lowest in the nation, California will face a shortage of 1 million college graduates needed for the state's workforce in 2025, a report released Thursday warned. Unless policy changes are made, only 35% of the state's working-age adults will hold a four-year degree that year, even as a college education will be required for at least 41% of job-holders, the study by the Public Policy Institute of California found. Continue reading

The U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis had a 50 percent jump in applicants this year, eclipsing both the Military Academy at West Point and the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, which also experienced significant increases. The lure of a free education in a difficult economy might be a factor, but Navy spokeswoman Judy Campbell credited the Naval Academy's two-year-old outreach program to minorities and high school students who live in parts of the country that have been underrepresented for much of the increase. One result of that outreach, she said, is that the current freshman class is the most diverse in the school's history, with 27 percent of its members counted as minorities. Continue reading

President Obama and his team have alternated praise for the goals of President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law with criticism of its weaknesses, all the while keeping their own plans for the law a bit of a mystery. But clues are now emerging, and they suggest that the Obama administration will use a Congressional rewriting of the federal law later this year to toughen requirements on topics like teacher quality and academic standards and to intensify its focus on helping failing schools. The law’s testing requirements may evolve but will certainly not disappear. And the federal role in education policy, once a state and local matter, is likely to grow. Continue reading