Apple Revolutionizes Education, Again

Online education and traditional education have been a seemingly unintentional collaborative endeavor of late, and today’s announcement by Apple, Inc., of it’s new iBooks 2 textbook service will serve to blur the lines between tradition and innovation even more.  iBooks 2 promises to deliver movies, links, multitouch gestures, faster than light searches, photo galleries, visual quiz sections, and 3-D models among other interactive elements to textbooks.  Available for download starting today, iBooks 2 is a free app. So, what about the textbooks themselves?  Where will they come from? (more…)

Apple Revolutionizes Education, Again
Jan19

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Education Opens

Last week, the esteemed Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced plans for free online courses that will allow participants in the program to earn official certifications from MIT.  While the courses themselves will be free, heralding what is likely to become a historic step forward for the open education movement, the certificate at the end of the course of study will be available to students for a “modest fee.”  In an open and free society, many people have begun to adopt libertarian attitudes towards the availability of knowledge and information.  Such information should be free to anyone who wishes to learn it, and there should be some recognition given for the successful completion of independent studies.  The same can recently be said for our society’s increasing intolerance of draconian legislation such as SOPA (or, the Stop Online Piracy Act) scheduled for debate in the House early next year.  Although these two fields are starkly different — education, and digital ownership of copyrighted materials and media — the fundamental change in the attitudes of free people regarding both matters is evident in each forum. (more…)

Education Opens
Dec26

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Equipment for Online Education

It’s only the end of June, but before you know it, high school graduates and returning college students will all be clamoring for back to school bargains as they get ready to pack up and move onto campuses across the United States.  They are the “traditional” students, who will be moving away to school, living on or near campus, and are in need of a dorm fridge, hotplate, and coffee maker for the apartment or dorm room.  Not to mention a small television, a laptop or other computer, special sized bedding, towels, toiletries, maybe a few new outfits, and a car (if the student doesn’t already have one.)  Costs for outfitting a college student for a move to a faraway campus can quickly soar out of control.  They are costs in addition to the ordinary room and board, and tuition payments due to the school. (more…)

Equipment for Online Education
Jun27

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Online Learning in Public Schools

Some state school systems around the United States are embracing e-learning more readily and quickly than in other states.  There are several reasons for a delayed adoption of online education in public schools, and most of them involve money.  Money is always in short supply in public education.  Federal funding often arrives with hefty strings attached that end up costing more than the original funding supplied, and state funding often depends on matched federal dollars to help bolster it along.  This cycle often results in the loss of potentially helpful programs for furthering the use of technology in classrooms — and now, in cyber classrooms. (more…)

Online Learning in Public Schools
Jun13

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