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This post is from The New York Times. Several major research libraries have rebuffed offers from Google and Microsoft to scan their books into computer databases, saying they are put off by restrictions these companies want to place on the new digital collections.

The research libraries, including a large consortium in the Boston area, are instead signing on with the Open Content Alliance, a nonprofit effort aimed at making their materials broadly available.

Libraries that agree to work with Google must agree to a set of terms, which include making the material unavailable to other commercial search services. Microsoft places a similar restriction on the books it converts to electronic form. The Open Content Alliance, by contrast, is making the material available to any search service. Click here to read the rest of this article.

This post comes from Inside Higher Ed. As information technology leaders convened for the Educause meetings Thursday in Seattle, they talked about some of the same issues that are attracting attention in higher ed outside of technology circles: links to K-12, making courses more engaging and measuring what students learn.

Looming over the proceedings was the stepped-up pressure from state governments, accreditors and the Department of Education that has led in recent years to a greater focus on assessment and learning outcomes. The implication of the accountability movement on information technology is clear in an example offered by Blackboard’s Peter Segall, the company’s president for higher education in North America: The two-year public colleges in Mississippi have adopted the company’s outcome system to track student progress against specific goals, he said. The reason? To “demonstrate accountability” to the citizens of the state. Click here to read the rest of this article.

Eduventures, the leader in collaborative research and consulting for higher education, has launched a new member-based research consortium – the Schools of Education Learning Collaborative – designed to help education schools address the challenges associated with recruiting and serving students, demonstrating accountability, and managing faculty and operations.

Members of the Schools of Education Learning Collaborative will be provided with a wide range of collective and individual opportunities that take advantage of shared data. As with Eduventures other Learning Collaboratives, members will have access to custom analysis, implementation support, and networking events.

“In the prevailing climate where critical attention is being paid to public P-12 education, schools of education are facing scrutiny of a great many of their policies and practices,” said Eduventures’ Executive Vice President Peter Stokes, Ph.D. “The goal of this collaborative research program is to assist deans of Schools of Education in defining meaningful success measures and demonstrating their performance relative to those measures en route to making the right decisions for today – and the future.”

According to Stokes, Eduventures analysts are preparing the first collaborative research study for members of the Schools of Education Learning Collaborative – Common Indicators for Schools of Education. The report, which focuses on core program success measures and analyzes productivity at peer institutions, is designed to put the responsibility for defining these success measures back in the hands of the deans of Schools of Education.

Charter members of Eduventures Schools of Education Learning Collaborative include Fordham University, Lesley University, University of Pittsburgh, and University of Southern California.

About Eduventures

Eduventures is the industry leader in collaborative research and consulting for higher education. Eduventures is committed to providing colleges and universities with cost-effective, data-driven research and analysis designed to improve critical operations and practices. More than 300 higher education institutions participate in one or more of Eduventures’ six Learning Collaboratives: Continuing and Professional Education, Development, Enrollment Management, Online Higher Education, Schools of Education, and Student Affairs. These collaboratives provide members with research reports on current trends and issues, custom analysis and implementation support, including opportunities to network with fellow professionals. More about Eduventures can be found at www.eduventures.com.

This posts comes from The Wall Street Journal Online Edition.

The use of technology in the classroom has changed the way children learn, allowing both students and teachers to unlock their creativity. Tim Magner, director of the office of educational technology for the U.S. Department of Education, remembers the impact a simple computer program had on his eighth grade geography class when computers were first becoming main stream.

“I saw the power it had,” he says. “It gave us the opportunity to engage the students in a thoughtful discussion that until that time had been static facts in books.” Now as technology continues to evolve and children become more tech-savvy, the computer is an even more powerful learning aid that enables collaboration and communication in the classroom, Mr. Magner says.

We asked Mr. Magner to recommend books on the intersection of technology and the classroom. Here are his picks.

• “Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms,” by Will Richardson
A public school teacher looks at how to take these Web 2.0 tools and begin to use them in the classroom. The book is more practitioner-focused but gives a nice overview of what Web 2.0 and social collaboration models are, how they facilitate types of interactions and how to use them in school.

• “Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative,” by Ken Robinson

Robinson identifies and explains what he feels is the creation of an unnatural separation between arts and sciences, and creativity and intelligence. He believes this separation is enforced in formal education. He addresses how we need to re-engage with kids in different ways to encourage them to tap into their creativity. Robinson spends a lot of time talking about finding your medium, and we are seeing that digital tools are the medium of choice for a lot of students.

Click here to discover the rest of his recommended picks!

This post is from The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The company that owns the University of Phoenix announced on Monday a venture with the Carlyle Group, a private-equity firm, that will invest up to $1-billion in education institutions and services abroad. The parent company, the Apollo Group, will control 80.1 percent of the joint venture, to be called Apollo Global Inc.

The venture is likely to focus on regions with a profitable mix of robust young populations and government-financed universities that are slow to expand, such as Latin America and Asia. The deal has yet to announce any investments.

The Apollo Group, whose University of Phoenix is the largest university in the United States, has dabbled in international investments before, putting money into a small company called Apollo International that was formed in 1998 (The Chronicle, August 11, 2000). That company has quietly been dissolved, and most of its personnel and investments have been brought into the Apollo Group, said Trace A. Urdan, an education-industry analyst with Signal Hill Capital Group.

Apollo International sought to use Apollo’s U.S. model, which is aimed at working adults, and adapt it to full-time students at traditional universities overseas, primarily through preset curricula. One venture in South America created a private college with standardized lectures, in partnership with a Brazilian company (The Chronicle, June 27, 2003).

The new Apollo Global group may operate under a similar strategy, said Mr. Urdan, but it would receive greater contacts and investment discipline from the Carlyle Group, which has experience in structuring successful international deals. The Carlyle Group also has experience in investments involving higher education. In 2005 it acquired the Universidad Latinoamericana, a private university with campuses in Mexico City and Cuernavaca, Mexico.

“The money is more like a headline because the reality is you’re only investing it one investment at a time,” said Mr. Urdan. “It’s going to be a while before they spend $1-billion.”

The Apollo Group also announced Monday that Ann Kirschner, dean of the Macaulay Honors College at the City University of New York, will join its board of directors on November 1.

We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of our new Administrative Professional with Microsoft 2007 with Microsoft Certified Application Specialist Training. This online course and training program teaches the skills that students must acquire to be successful as an Administrative Professional using the Microsoft® Office 2007 suite of programs. Students receive training on the most popular Microsoft Office 2007 programs including Word, Excel, Access, Power Point, and Outlook as well as the new Vista operating system. Upon successful completion of this program students will be prepared to sit for the MCAS certification offered by Microsoft®. An introduction to QuickBooks is also provided.

National School Boards Association Annual T+L conference — Blackboard Inc. (NASDAQ: BBBB) a leading provider of enterprise solutions for the education industry and Project Tomorrow, a national education nonprofit group, today announce the release of Learning in the 21st Century: A National Report of Online Learning. The report underscores the importance and value which online learning plays in increasing student and teacher achievement. Key findings from the report include:

• 47 percent of surveyed students in grades 9-12 and 32 percent of students in grades 6-8 would pursue online learning to secure courses not offered at school.
• One in five student respondents in grades 6-12 have taken an online or distance learning course at school or on their own, and one in three students selected online classes as a component of their ideal school.
• 77 percent of teachers believe that technology makes a difference in learning and 28 percent would like to see online courses offered as an alternative in their district.
• 42 percent of parents believe that online classes are a good investment to improve student achievement and to track their child’s progress.

“As schools are exploring new ways to engage today’s students, online learning options are crucial,” said Julie Evans, CEO of Project Tomorrow. “Increasingly, students, teachers and parents say that online learning is an essential component of the ideal 21st century school environment.” The findings of Learning in the 21st Century are based upon data collected as part of the Speak Up 2006 survey conducted from over 250,000 students, teachers and parents representing almost 3,000 schools in the United States. Click here to read the rest of this article.

This post comes from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

Al Turgeon knows turf.

The Penn State University professor of turf grass management is world-renown, but students don’t have to travel to University Park to learn from him.

Some of his classes are as handy as the nearest computer, whether it’s in Pennsylvania or China, at home or in a war zone in Iraq.

Since Dr. Turgeon began offering Penn State’s first online course in 1998, the Penn State World Campus has grown from the initial 15 students to more than 5,000 enrollments from all 50 states and more than 40 countries.

Penn State’s not the only one with a burgeoning enrollment in online classes. Over the past decade, online education has been growing throughout higher education.

Nationwide in the fall of 2005, nearly 3.2 million students at degree-granting institutions were taking at least one course with at least 80 percent of its content delivered online, according to the most recent available survey by the Sloan Consortium, which helps schools improve online education.

That’s nearly double the number doing so just three years earlier.

Two-thirds of the schools surveyed had at least some online programs. Click here to read the rest of this article.

This post comes from the Texas Engineering and Extension Service. TEEX’s Emergency Services Training Institute WMD/EMS Program has been approved for Organizational Accreditation by the Continuing Education Coordinating Board for Emergency Medical Services (CECBEMS). Of some 80 training providers recognized by the board, TEEX is one of only 25 providers nationwide approved for CECBEMS Organizational Accreditation.

“We can now use this accreditation to review and approve both online and hands-on EMS and other TEEX courses for continuing education credit,” said Kathy Wall, TEEX Associate Training Specialist. “We are approved to review a course and see if it meets the standards, and then assign continuing education credits and hours.” Any TEEX rescue and disaster medical course may be eligible for continuing education credit, she added.

CECBEMS is a national accrediting body for EMS continuing education courses and course providers. To be approved, TEEX had to meet or exceed criteria established by CECBEMS for educational planning, implementation and evaluation as well as demonstrate a commitment to excellence in EMS continuing education.