Gatlin Education is attending the annual NCCET conference.

Gatlin Education Services will be attending and co-presenting at the National Council for Continuing Education and Training (NCCET) annual conference. The conference is being held in Louisville, Kentucky. The conference dates are Oct. 7 - 9, 2007. To view the conference schedule click here.

Exploring the key themes for corporate learning in Europe.

This post comes from Online Recruitment. Serious games, mobile learning and virtual learning worlds were the key themes at the 'Training in Action. Innovate to Compete' conference, held in Sestri Levante, Italy, and hosted by Giunti Labs, Europe's leading vendor of e-learning and mobile learning content management solutions (LCMS).

Some 150 of Europe's top learning technologies specialists gathered in Sestri Levante, on the Italian Riviera in June for the 'Training in Action' conference. Click here to read the rest of this article.

Online education expands in the Republic of the Philippines.

This article is from the Iloilo Sun Star. The Department of Education (DepEd) will introduce an online teaching wherein students will listen or download lectures and reading materials for particular subjects as well as take examinations as part of the curriculum next year. DepEd Secretary Jesli Lapus said the program and the computers will be set up by the Xing Hua University, which is the best in distance learning program worldwide.

"Our children cannot afford to wait any longer. We need to provide immediate solutions that can be felt not only by a few but by all Filipino children" Lapus stressed, noting that “this can only be done with the use of technology.” The online education project aims to address the need for the Philippine education system to catch up with the demands of the times to compete globally and respond to the challenge of basic education. Under the program, students will listen or download lectures and reading materials for particular subjects as well as take examinations as part of the curriculum. To read the rest of this article click here.

Dutchess Community College announces new partnership with Gatlin Education.

This post comes from Newswire Today. Dutchess Community College has partnered with Gatlin Education Services to provide online career training courses. Online career training courses are in heavy demand. Staying on the cutting edge of this popular educational methodology, Dutchess Community College recently partnered with Gatlin Education Services to provide online career training courses in the fields of healthcare, business, construction technology, Internet, design and technical, networking and CompTIA certification and video game design and development.

Accessible at http://www.gatlineducation.com/dcc, the non-credit courses can help individuals at any stage of their career. Whether the student is interested in switching career paths, obtaining advanced training and certificates, or a first-time job seeker in need of specialized training, DCC and Gatlin provide the necessary resources for workforce, corporate, vocational rehabilitation or individual career training, all from the convenience of your own home or office.Gatlin programs blend various types of instruction in a unique format that provides a logical, comprehensive and effective education. The typical course combines online instructional content, traditional textbook material and instructor-facilitated lessons. Though the courses are self-paced, personal instructors are available to guide every student. This blended learning differentiates DCC and Gatlin courses from ordinary online courses. Each course is open enrollment and takes an average of 90 days to complete.

Web-based instruction is growing in popularity. Gatlin’s enrollments with their partner institutions have increased by 100 percent in the last year. The company has strategic partnerships with more than 600 institutions of higher learning worldwide.“Between juggling a job, a home, a family and a social life, there isn’t always a lot of time left to attend an on-campus class,” said Stephen Gatlin, founder of Fort Worth-based Gatlin Education Services. “Online training offers the convenience of working from your personal computer and at your own pace.

It’s a viable tool right now as evidenced by the growing number of people utilizing it, and is the way of the future.”Established in 1989 by Stephen Gatlin, Gatlin Education Services is the largest provider of Web-based, instructor-supported training to community colleges and universities. Gatlin’s online career training courses are open enrollment, allowing interested students to start their desired training immediately. Gatlin’s courses are designed to provide the skills necessary to acquire professional caliber positions for many in-demand occupations.

For program and course descriptions, go to gatlineducation.com/dcc. For enrollment information, contact Lynette Patrice at (845) 431-8913 or patrice[.]sunydutchess.edu.

Gates Foundation Gives WebJunction $12.6 Million.

This post comes from the American Libriaries Association. On June 21 as the American Library Association Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., was opening, Ohio-based library cooperative group OCLC announced that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s U.S. Library Initiative would give $12.6 million to its online community portal WebJunction. The five-year grant “will help us to sustain the programs that many library professionals are really beginning to depend on,” Bob Murphy of OCLC told American Libraries.

One of the grant’s goals is to ensure WebJunction’s self-sustainability within OCLC by strengthening its revenue-generating activities and creating additional services to assist all types of libraries. “The self-sustaining aspect is important,” Murphy emphasized, “because we want WebJunction to continue on and on, and to be a place that library professionals can count on for their continuing education needs.”

The Gates Foundation will also fund software upgrades that will include new content- and learning-management systems—improvements that WebJunction Executive Director Marilyn Gell Mason said in a prepared statement are part of “the functionality and flexibility that partners and users tell us they need.” Click here to read the rest of this article.

Cameras to watch online test-takers.

This post is from eSchoolNews. New technology to be used by Troy University's eCampus program starting this fall will place cameras inside students' homes to ensure that those taking exams online don't cheat.

The number of students taking courses online is surging, creating a dilemma for educators who want to prevent cheating.

Do you trust students to take an exam on their own computer from home or work, even though it might be easy to sneak a peek at the textbook? Or, do you force them to trek to a proctored test center, detracting from the convenience that drew them to online classes in the first place?

The quandary is one reason many online programs do little testing at all. But new technology that places a camera inside students' homes might be the way of the future--as long as students (not to mention educators and parents) don't find it too creepy.

This fall, Troy University in Alabama is scheduled to begin rolling out the new camera technology for many of its approximately 11,000 online students, about a third of whom are at U.S. military installations around the world. To read the rest of this article click here.

Where and how to find work that matters in the second half of life.

This article comes from Dow Jones Market Watch. Many Americans long to work in the job of their dreams after they retire from their first career. But what do these "encore" jobs look like and how does one find one?

Those are the questions that millions upon millions of preretirees must answer if they ever hope to find work that matters in the second half of their life. Or at least so says Marc Freedman in his new book "Encore."

According to Freedman, the founder of Civic Ventures, all is not yet rosy for those who want to keep working after they retire. Age discrimination still exists, there are not enough flexible jobs in the nonprofit or public sectors, and continuing education and retraining is neither commonplace nor affordable.

That said, the best way to find an "encore" job is to ask some basic questions. Those include:

How would you like to spend the next five or 10 or 20 years?

What community or national or global problems motivate you to act?

How much income do you need to earn?

Do you want to stay in the same field or explore something new?

Do you want to start your own organization or work for an existing one?

Are you willing and able to go back to school or get other training?

Freedman says preretirees must consider whether they want to be a career recycler, career changer or career maker. In addition, he says preretirees should think long and hard about their own motivations and what makes them happy. To read the rest of this article click here.

Californian online education bill zips through state senate.

This post comes from the Santa Maria Times. After unanimous approval by the California Senate, Senate Bill 155 is on its way to the Assembly for a vote that would create an online classroom pilot program for high school students.

No more than 50 schools would be eligible to participate in the program, with courses limited to teachers who are concurrently teaching the same course in a traditional classroom.

“This would allow for a leveling of the playing field,” said state Sen. Abel Maldonado, R-Santa Maria. “This allows more opportunities and access to learning for students in rural schools particularly.”

“This bill would help all students, particularly those with special needs,” said Nancy Meddings, Hancock College director of learning resources. “There are students who need to learn at their own pace. This is a good option to the traditional classroom setting." To read the rest of this article click here.

Eduserv to fund research into eLearning in new Virtual Worlds.

Eduserv in the U.K. a not-for-profit IT services group, has announced that its Foundation has awarded grants totalling £333,000 to fund four research projects, each of which involve investigations into the use of virtual worlds in learning and education. The Foundation’s grant programme is designed to drive the effective application of IT in education.

The projects, conducted by Oxford University, Kings College London, London Knowledge Lab and University of Paisley, will investigate how educators can develop effective means of incorporating 3-D virtual worlds into teaching and learning.

Diane Carr, post doctoral research fellow in media and education at the London Knowledge Lab, will use the grant to analyse the effectiveness and appropriateness of learning in online worlds such as World of Warcraft and Second Life. Courses will be taught in Second Life and the outcomes assessed.

Daniel Livingstone, lecturer at the University of Paisley’s school of computing, will research and develop pedagogical theories relevant to multi-user 3-D virtual worlds and develop Sloodle (an open source project integrating Second Life and Moodle) to provide the tools required for the support and management of student’s learning.

At Kings College London, Prof. Richard Beacham will also explore learning in Second Life by developing replica models of 19 European theatres from different historical periods and investigating how they can be used in practical teaching situations.

Dr. Kenneth Michael Kahn, senior researcher at Oxford University’s Learning Technologies Group, will focus his research - ‘Modelling4All’ - on developing ways in which creating computer models for use in learning and research no longer has to be limited to those with extensive programming skills.

Andy Powell, head of development at Eduserv Foundation, comments: “It is clear from the recent Eduserv Foundation Symposium, "Virtual worlds, real learning?", that there is a significant amount of interest within the education community in the use of virtual worlds. By funding this research, we are helping to evaluate the potential of online learning and deliver a better understanding of how we can use such developments for education."

Established in July 2003, the Eduserv Foundation develops and supports programmes that drive the effective application of ICT in education. These schemes include research grants, assistive technology licences, tutor guides for vocational education and information literacy initiatives.

The Foundation delivers its mission with a mix of external grants and internal projects through:

*A programme of groundbreaking research> Promotion of best-practices within the community.

*Development of UK and international interoperability standards.

*Development of demonstrator and prototype services and open source software toolkits.

Setting Learning Free.

This article comes from Tech News World. In the late 1990s, when everybody wanted to take advantage of the moneymaking opportunities offered by the Internet, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) decided that it too wanted a slice of the action. MIT was, and still is, one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Couldn't it use some of the intellectual property it was creating on its campus to generate some additional revenue?

A committee of faculty members looked at the issue but decided, after careful consideration, that the Internet didn't offer much of an opportunity to make money, after all. Why not, the committee suggested, focus instead on the university's core mission: "to advance education and serve the world"?

That refocus led MIT to a radical new proposition. In the words of Anne Margulies, now executive director of MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW), "They decided that the best way the Internet could be used to fulfill that mission would be to give the materials away." To read the rest of this article click here.

Report sees online schools as models for reform.

This article is from eSchool News.The growing popularity and success of online learning is an important but "largely unnoticed" trend that reform-minded educators and policy makers could use to much greater advantage as they seek to improve public education in general, says a new report from Education Sector, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C.

Titled "Laboratories of Reform: Virtual High Schools and Innovation in Public Education," the report urges reformers to recognize that long-sought improvements in teaching and learning already are being applied successfully in online education. To read the rest of this article click here.

A Library Makes Its Debut, in Second Life.

This article comes from the Chronicle's Wired Campus Blog. Santa Clara University's new library building won't be completed until the autumn of 2008. But people on the campus can experience what it might be like inside the building, and offer advice to its designers, by exploring a three-dimensional model of the library in the online virtual world Second Life.

A model of the library was created by the New Media Consortium, a higher-education-technology group. "Santa Clara decided to let people use the virtual interior before the inside was actually built," said Larry Johnson, the consortium's chief executive, to a gathering of college-technology leaders today at the group's annual conference, in Indianapolis.
About 400 people are attending the four-day event, which ends Saturday. Mr. Johnson also showed slides of the virtual library.

Online communities transform teacher development.

This post is from eSchoolNews. Professional development is central to the effective use of technology, but it often conjures up images of inconvenient and time-consuming meetings and workshops. Now, a new crop of online, "anytime, anywhere" resources is changing the way schools approach staff development--and changing how educators view the concept, too.

These new online professional "learning communities" allow teachers to network, ask questions, and share ideas with colleagues on their own time--something teachers have precious little opportunity to do while at school. They also give educators on-demand access to videos, tutorials, and other how-to advice as needed, resulting in the kind of ongoing, "just-in-time" training that research shows to be most effective.

One such resource is Discovery Education's Discovery Educator Network (DEN), an initiative that seeks to establish a global community where innovative teachers can trade best practices and work together to improve the quality of learning in their classrooms, wherever those might be. Click here to read the rest of this article.

Eduventures Launches New Learning Collaborative for Student Affairs Professionals.

Eduventures, a leading collaborative research and consulting firm for higher education, has announced the launch of its member-based Student Affairs Learning Collaborative.

The Student Affairs Learning Collaborative provides members with insights and direction to identify best management practices, benchmark performance and improve core processes through research, analysis and networking opportunities. The initial focus of the research will be on common challenges faced by student affairs professionals such as diversity programming, health and mental health care, organizational and staff development and learning outcomes measurement. To read the rest of this press release click here.

Professors add life to courses through Second Life.

This post comes from the Demoines Register. He's a stud with a ponytail, his name is Gut, and he's your professor.

At least that's who he is online. In real life, he's a bald white guy named Brian Mennecke whose wife won't let him grow a ponytail.

This summer, he will hold discussion sessions for Iowa State University students studying e-commerce led by his beefier online self (Gut), a cartoon character who can fly. The classes will be held in Second Life.

Second Life is a 3-D, online world that is increasingly attracting the attention of professors nationally and in Iowa who are using the virtual landscape to hold classes, create simulations of what they are studying, and hold online experiments. Professors at ISU, the University of Iowa, and the University of Northern Iowa are all exploring ways to incorporate the game into classes this summer and in the fall semester. Click here to read the rest of this article.

Big Ten joins Google’s book project.

This post comes from Yahoo News. Twelve major universities will digitize select collections in each of their libraries — up to 10 million volumes — as part of Google Inc.'s book-scanning project. The goal: a shared digital repository that faculty, students and the public can access quickly.

University of Chicago and the 11 universities in the Big Ten athletic conference (yes, there are 11): Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Northwestern, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue and Wisconsin.

"We have a collective ambition to share resources and work together to preserve the world's printed treasures," said Northwestern Provost Lawrence Dumas.

The committee said Google will scan and index materials "in a manner consistent with copyright law." Google generally makes available the full text of books in the public domain and limited portions of copyrighted books. Click here to read the rest of this article.

PodCasts are gaining popularity in the classroom.

The Chronicle has put together an excellent Podcast discussing how more schools are turning audio from classes into Podcasts. Click here to watch this informative presentation.

To maximize classroom learning, quiz early and often.

This article comes from The Chronicle. In the late 1930s, an ambitious graduate student named Herbert F. Spitzer asked thousands of Iowa sixth graders to read a short article about bamboo — an article he later described as "highly factual, authentic, of the proper difficulty, and similar in type to the material that children read in their regular school work."

He divided the students into 10 groups and gave them long multiple-choice quizzes ("What usually happens to a bamboo plant after the flowering period?") at varying intervals. One group, for example, was quizzed immediately after reading the article, then again the next day, and then a final time three weeks later. Another group was quizzed only once, three weeks after reading the article. The students did not know when they would be quizzed, and they did not keep the article, so they had no chance to study on their own.

The results were striking: On tests three or nine weeks later, students performed far better if they had previously been quizzed within 24 hours after first reading the article. When Mr. Spitzer wrote up his work in the Journal of Educational Psychology in 1939, he made a recommendation that might have made millions of students — and their teachers — groan: "Immediate recall in the form of a test is an effective method of aiding the retention of learning and should, therefore, be employed more frequently in the elementary school." To read the rest of this article click here.

Mobile Learning in China.

This post comes from The Wired Campus Blog. Students of all ages in China will soon be able to use Nokia cellphones to tap into English lessons, test-prep training, and other courses from New Oriental Education & Technology Group, a leading Chinese educational company, the companies announced this week. "The idea of mobile learning is that it will allow students of all ages to access course materials through a mobile phone, maximizing time by providing learning on the go," said Michael Yu, New Oriental's chief executive.

Would-be mobile learners can buy one of the newer Nokia models with educational programs already installed, and they can also download courses from Mobiledu and New Oriental's online-learning site, Koolearn.com. The project is not the first time that courses have been offered via cellphone, but it's part of what is sure to be a growing trend.

An inside look at Google's algorithm and their "search quality" department.

We are going to switch tracks a little today. Google seldom offers insights into how their search algorithm works. We came across the fascinating article that provides great insight into how their "search quality" team continues to enhance and improve the results that Google delivers to web surfers. Click here to read this fascinating article.

Feds solicit ed-tech feedback.

This post comes from eSchoolNews. The U.S. Department of Education is asking school stakeholders to comment on the use of technology in schools. While advocates of educational technology say they welcome this latest request for comments, some question whether the department will act on any of the advice it receives, given how little importance it placed on the last National Educational Technology Plan.

The U.S. Department of Education (ED) is asking school officials and education stakeholders to submit comments on the use of technology in schools. This latest outreach initiative comes as U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings is holding a series of roundtable discussions in several cities on technology in education, with educators, business leaders, information technology professionals, and others invited. (The sessions are closed to members of the press.) The goal, according to ED, is to explore specific actions to improve education outcomes through targeted applications of technology and to find a renewed perspective on the role of technology in education reform. The first of these roundtables took place in late March. Click here to read the rest of this article.