learning: October 2006 Archives
The leaders of higher education's main technology association have written a powerfully worded letter urging Blackboard to relinquish the rights it gained under a
controversial patent of online learning technologies in the public domain and to drop a patent infringement lawsuit it filed in August against a Canadian competitor, Desire2Learn.
"We believe this action would be in the best business interests of Blackboard and in the best interests of higher education," Brian L. Hawkins, the president of Educause, and the group's Board of Directors said in a letter to Blackboard this month. "We do not make this request lightly or underestimate the courage it will take to implement. However, we believe it is the right action for your corporation and our community."
10.26.2006 - Of God, justice, and disunited states
"I try to keep a balance," Bellah explains, taking a break from research and writing at his home near Memorial Stadium for a visit to Barrows Hall, where he served on the faculty for 30 years before retiring in 1997. "Criticism without any substance ultimately is self-destructive. It undermines everything and leads to nihilism. But substantive belief without any critical perspective also suffers the fate of disaster, because it tends toward actions which are out of the control of reason."
As an example of the latter, Bellah points to President Bush and the war in Iraq. "It's more the religion of neoconservatism than any kind of biblical religion, though Bush himself uses biblical language," he observes. "I think they were so ideologically convinced that they felt they didn't need to look at any data. They were just so sure they would be greeted with roses and were going to create a happy, democratic, capitalist society that would love Israel. Overnight. Without any notion of the history of this country? It's unimaginable."
Bush's family profits from 'No Child' act - Los Angeles Times
A company headed by President Bush's brother and partly owned by his parents is benefiting from Republican connections and federal dollars targeted for economically disadvantaged students under the No Child Left Behind Act.
With investments from his parents, George H.W. and Barbara Bush, and other backers, Neil Bush's company, Ignite! Learning, has placed its products in 40 U.S. school districts and now plans to market internationally.
At least 13 U.S. school districts have used federal funds available through the president's signature education reform, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, to buy Ignite's portable learning centers at $3,800 apiece.
This doesn't happen every day, but it is cool when it does. I was recently quoted in the New York Times.
Leaving Prison Doors Behind, Some Find New Doors Open - New York Times
"In 1994, Congress removed prison inmates from eligibility for Pell Grants, a major federal program of aid to low-income students that was the financial backbone of most in-prison college programs. Many states, including New York, followed the federal lead and removed prison inmates from their own college aid programs.
As a result, about 25,000 inmates taking part in such programs with Pell Grants had their "education abruptly ended," according to a study by Kenneth Mentor, an associate professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. By 1997, only 8 college prison programs remained active nationwide, compared with as many as 350 in previous years, Mr. Mentor said."
What the Amish are Teaching America
On October 2, Charles Carl Roberts entered a one-room schoolhouse in the Amish community of Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. He lined up eleven young girls from the class and shot them each at point blank range. The gruesome depths of this crime are hard for any community to grasp, but certainly for the Amish - who live such a secluded and peaceful life, removed even from the everyday depictions of violence on TV. When the Amish were suddenly pierced by violence, how did they respond?
The evening of the shooting, Amish neighbors from the Nickel Mines community gathered to process their grief with each other and mental health counselors. As of that evening, three little girls were dead. Eight were hospitalized in critical condition. (One more girl has died since.) According to reports by counselors who attended the grief session, the Amish family members grappled with a number of questions: Do we send our kids to school tomorrow? What if they want to sleep in our beds tonight, is that okay? But one question they asked might surprise us outsiders. What, they wondered, can we do to help the family of the shooter? Plans were already underway for a horse-and-buggy caravan to visit Charles Carl Roberts' family with offers of food and condolences. The Amish, it seems, don't automatically translate their grieving into revenge. Rather, they believe in redemption.
eSchool News online - Open-access bill divides schools, publishers
Universities and publishers of scholarly journals are at odds over a recently proposed Senate bill that would require institutions conducting research funded with federal tax dollars to publish their findings free of charge online, no more than six months after their publication elsewhere.
If passed, the open-access legislation could put an additional strain on campus IT infrastructures, as colleges and universities would be forced to post many of their research results on the web. But universities and education groups overwhelmingly support the bill, believing it will further the advancement of knowledge worldwide.
Publishers of scholarly journals, on the other hand, fear the bill will undermine their business.
Back to the "Old Ways": Getting Students and the DCC involved in Activism | critcrim.org
Those involved in founding the marxist/radical/critical criminology of the late 1960s and early 1970s, were also often members of groups that engaged in various acts of protest designed to stimulate social change. These criminologists spent much of their time being activists. Their activism was shared with and by the college students they taught, and they spent at least part of their time engaged in activities that brought their social change theories to life.
