340. College Access and Success News

Here are links to recent news on college access and success.
by
Joe Rottenborn
Executive Director, Mahoning Valley College Access Program (MVCAP)

1. 'Flipped' classrooms take advantage of technology, by Greg Toppo – http://usat.ly/pZBzkm via USATODAY - "Pressed for time and struggling to reach a generation raised on YouTube, Roshan, like a growing number of teachers, digitally records her lessons with a tablet computer as a virtual blackboard, then uploads them to iTunes and assigns them as homework. In class the following day, she helps students work out exercises and answer knotty questions. It's the latest way technology is changing teachers' jobs — in this case it's literally turning their workday upside-down. But teachers say flipped, or upside-down, classes offer greater control of material and more face time with students."

2. Should universities move more aggressively into online education? by Rebecca R. Ruiz - http://nyti.ms/oaczIp - "The authors emphasize that expanding online course offerings at public institutions would expand the supply of seats – the number of students a university might accept – and expand that university’s revenue. But would such an increase in class size – not to mention the challenge of teaching and learning online – demean the quality of instruction?"

3. 25 Colleges With the Worst Professors in 2011, by Lynn O'Shaughnessy - http://moneywatch.bnet.com/spending/blog/college-solution/25-colleges-with-the-worst-professors-in-2011/6830/ via @cbsmoneywatch - "According to an analysis of millions of RateMyProfessors.com evaluations by an education think tank, the following 25 schools have the worst professors among 650 top schools that were surveyed."

4. Apple's Steve Jobs Was a Pioneer in Ed Tech, by Ian Quillen -http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/DigitalEducation/2011/10/apple_founder_steve_jobs_passe.html -"In the less than two years since Jobs stood on stage in his characteristic black mock turtleneck and blue jeans and introduced the iPad, Apple's tablet computer has exploded on the educational scene. In the third quarter of fiscal year 2011, the iPad surpassed all of Apple's educational Mac desktop and laptop computer sales combined. Its popularity with classroom teachers, educators have said, is due to a combination of its portability, long battery life, and intuitiveness of use, especially for young students and students with disabilities such as autism."

5. For Children at Risk, Mentors Who Stay, by David Bornstein - http://nyti.ms/pCGmmd - "Samuel was out of control. He cursed at his teacher, refused to do school work, attacked other kids in the schoolyard — and Samuel was still in kindergarten. His home life was chaotic. He’d never met his father. His mother had emotional and drug problems and was unable to care for him. His grandmother did her best. His older brother was involved in violent crime and had been in and out of jail. He taught Samuel to smoke marijuana when he was 6 years old."

6. Steve Jobs's Legacy to Higher Education, by Marc Prensky -http://chronicle.com/article/Steve-Jobss-Legacy-to-Higher/129297/ - "But what we can't argue about is that as a result of Steve Jobs our environment has permanently changed. His genius in making devices that are beautiful, fun, useful, and that—most of all—students and others wanted to have, essentially remade our institutions of higher learning."

7. Steve Jobs told students: ‘Stay hungry. Stay foolish.’ by Valerie Strauss - The Answer Sheet - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/steve-jobs-told-students-stay-hungry-stay-foolish/2011/10/05/gIQA1qVjOL_blog.html via @washingtonpost - “My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: ‘We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?’ They said: ‘Of course.’ “My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.“And 17 years later I did go to college."

8. 'Net Price Calculators' Give Clearer Picture On College Cost, by Justin Pope - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/06/net-price-calculators-giv_n_998585.html - "It sounds like a simple question: How much is a college actually going to cost?In fact, it's a slippery one. But thanks to a federal mandate, a new tool to help students and families pin down an answer is finally arriving this month: a fairly simple online calculator to estimate what you can expect to pay to attend any college in the United States."