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Hits: 322
NYT: Google and Verizon threaten 2-decades-old "Net Neutrality"
The New York Times of 10-08-05 reports that super-large telecommunications companies Google and Verizon are close to finalizing an agreement which would seriously threaten, if not destroy, the 2-decades old "standard operating conventions" of the Internet called "Net Neutrality". In short: Net Neutrality means everyone who uses the Internet gets the same "Internet experience" in terms of speed as everyone else. If they succeed in finalizing the agreement and implement their planned multi-tiered Internet services, then different classes of their Internet-using customers will pay different prices for higher/faster or lower/slower bandwidth (speed) with which their web site content gets to their web site users. If that happens then (1) the FCC's ability to regulate large companies like Google and Verizon will become seriously weakened and (2) all kinds of Internet activity -- especially any emerging higher value to students, genuinely educational activities -- will become more easily and flexibly "monetizeable" according to the "class" of the producer and consumer of these services and their ability to pay. Also the Internet services, especially new genuinely and explicitly educational services, will become increasingly costly, exactly like cable TV services have risen in price for decades, and the quality of those Internet-delivered educational services will become segregated into wealth-based "classes" of the producers and consumers of those Internet services. Thus the under-privileged, the poor, and the uneducated and under-educated will remain "where they are" for decades to come.
Hits: 296
DN: Google, Verizon and Net Neutrality
An excellent overview of why "Net Neutrality", and a more genuinely progressively liberal USA FCC agency, are important to citizen access to the Internet and important to "Open Education" as well. This is a 10+ minute interview broadcast on Democracy Now, 10.08.06. The interview is between hosts Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez with subject matter expert Josh Silver, president, CEO, and executive director of Free Press (www.freepress.net), Chicopee, Massachusetts, USA.
Hits: 430
NYT: Cheaper Textbooks - buy overseas!
In a New York Times article published in October 2003, author Tamar Lewin wrote how new college textbooks can be found for half price from overseas (not in the USA) sellers.
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NYT: $200 Textbooks vs. Free: You Do the Math
In a Technology Section article of July 31, 2010, the New York Times reported on the problem of price-gouging in textbook publishing, i.e. over priced textbooks for students. And that means educational materials are priced so high that only the children of the rich can afford them. But online textbooks can be free. The article quotes celebrity "thought leader", co-founder and CEO of Sun Microsystems, Scott McNealy.
Hits: 383
NYT: Cheaper Textbooks - The Textbook Price Scam
In the New York Times "Book" Section online, date 10.08.03, Tara Siegel Bernard advises US parents and their college students how and where to find cheaper college textbooks. Some cheaper books and textbooks are free and online, but very old. In her article she also summarizes the publishers' inflated pricing scam, how students and the parents who pay their bills are exploited, and notes recent federal rule changes which begin to confront the problem.
Hits: 318
NYT: EBooks Frighten Booksellers
Hits: 334
NYT: Learning Curves on the Career Path
In the 1990s some "futurists" predicted that professionals in the 21st century would have several careers in their longer healthier life-times. Professional Development historically assumes the professional has the money to pay for the development classes. However in the global "recession" since Fall 2008, that may no longer be the case for a larger percentage of professionals and may remain the case for years to come. In their "Continuing Education" special section, the New York Times of 10.08.26 offered four (4) articles about how some professionals are keeping up and "staying current" with their knowledge and skill sets. But professional development can also be intended as cross training to become qualified to work in a related or different field. And in the more obvious global economy, some professionals are learning a second language.
Hits: 426
NYT: Private For-Profit Schools in NYC
The New York Times of Sept. 22, 2010, reports how the private for-profit British International School of New York offers elite education in elite surroundings.
Hits: 317
NYT: Private Company Takes Over Libraries
As of Fall 2010, a private company, LSSI, in Maryland has taken over the running of public libraries in California, Oregon, Tennessee, and Texas, renewing a debate about outsourcing of public serices to private for-profit organizations.
Hits: 337
NYT: 4100 Students Prove "Small Is Better" Rule Is Wrong
In 2000 Brockton, Massachusettes (USA), Susan Szachowicz and a handful of fellow high school teachers persuaded administrators to let them organize a school-wide campaign that involved reading and writing lessons (added to) every class in all subjects, including gym. The students' higher success rates 10 years later disprove the "rule" that small classes yield better results -- (jgw:) or that more frequent repetition and instructor-led student use of the learning material does.
Hits: 368
DN: Waiting For Superman and privatized schools - a progressive critique
Since the Reagan administration, 1980, there there has been a campaign in the USA to replace public schools with charter schools and private for-profit schools and universities. The 2010 movie "Waiting for Superman" promotes this point of view. Appearing on the international progressive news show, Democracy Now, educator Dr. Rick Ayers formerly of Berkeley High School (Berkeley, California, USA) and currently an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco discusses the hidden agendas in the movie. He also gives a progressive point of view of the corporate led privatization of public schooling (USA) that threatens to reduce higher education "for the masses" (USA, the potentially world wide) to little more than vocational education for job training and re-training.
Hits: 338
NYT: In Digital Age, Students Still Cling to Paper Textbooks - WHY ?
This is an opinion article of the New York Times, published 10.19.10. In this the 6th or 7th decades of the digital "age" (the start of which is debatable), with the latest generation of eBook vendors enjoying a resurgence in interest, students still use their paper textbooks far more often than the digital eBook with equivalent content. This PI asks "why is that so?" and in a separate article to be published here "soon" provides some testable speculations about the likely answers to that question.
Hits: 342
NYT: Rise in Online Classes Flares Debate About Quality
It's about time. The New York Times of 11.04.06 reports that increasing deployments of online classes is stimulating more concerns about the quality of those classes.
Hits: 286
BBC: Global Giants Challenge French Law
The BBC online news reported 11.04.06 that several Internet giants have challenged French law regulating their activities.
Hits: 359
NYT: The Internet is Not (yet) a Human Right
This op-ed article appeared in the Wednesday 12.01.04 New York Times. Along with more liberal copyright laws allowing a great many more educational textbooks and related materials to be web published and freely accessed via the Internet, free access to the Internet anytime anywhere is a likely much needed companion legal change world-wide.
Hits: 331
NYT: Microsoft Invests in Nook EReader
The New York Times of April 30, 2012, reported that Microsoft Corporation invested $300,000 in the Barnes and Noble book sellers Nook EBook Reader project. This creates a "joint venture" with Microsoft having the "much deeper pockets" of the two companies likely in order to ensure that the Nook out performs and takes more market share from Amazon's Kindle EBook Reader project. Microsoft's new 17% share of the Nook project is still far from being a "controlling interest."
Hits: 358
DW-TV: Education for All, interview with UNESCO's Mark Richmond
This is a 1 minute 22 seconds interview with UNESCO's Mark Richmond, a researcher in sociology and education. Deutsche Welle Television (a.k.a. DW TV, www.dw.de), headquartered in Berlin, Germany, offers this interview and a series of online articles supporting and reporting in part on UNESCO's progress to make (affordable or free) Education for All an international, multi-national, cooperative and highly successful goal. UNESCO and these DW TV articles insist that education is a human right, not a special privilege.
Hits: 345
NYT: Web Courses Prove Popular, Profits May Come Later (13.01.07)
This New York Times article of Monday January 7, 2013 (13.01.07) is partly a promotional reminder of the Coursera Massive Open (no-credit) Online Courses now available care of their web site and accepting enrollments, but also an insider's look at the operations of the Coursera operations now funded by over $22 million in venture capital funding. Remember the Netscape browser, based on the originally free, possibly open source, Mozilla browser from NWU of the early 1990s? The Coursera venture of 2013 may be a similar bait and then charge game such as Netscape put on the users of their version of the Mozilla browser after a few years.
Hits: 339
NYT: StudentsFirst Group Gives 12 States Failing Grades (13.01.07)
" In just a few short years, state legislatures and education agencies across the country have sought to transform American public education by passing a series of laws and policies overhauling teacher tenure, introducing the use of standardized test scores in performance evaluations and expanding charter schools. In just a few short years, state legislatures and education agencies across the country have sought to transform American public education by passing a series of laws and policies overhauling teacher tenure, introducing the use of standardized test scores in performance evaluations and expanding charter schools. Enlarge This Image Max Whittaker/Reuters Michelle A. Rhee says her group wants to create an 'environment in which educators, parents and kids can operate.' (jgw: without government regulation and interference?) Such policies are among those pushed by StudentsFirst." These are the opening remarks in the New York Times article reported January 7, 2013 (13.01.07) stating that the advocacy group Students First has given "failing grades" to 12 US states for their failures in public education. The founder of Students First is the controversial, some say dictatorial and union-busting, ex-chancellor of Washington D.C.'s schools, Michelle A. Rhee.
Hits: 341
The edX web site: free college courses online (13.01.07)
As of January 2013, the edX universities are: MIT (Cambridge, MA), Harvard (Cambridge, MA), the University of California at Berkeley (UCB), The University of Texas System (e.g. UT Austin, UT Dallas), Wellesley (Cambridge, MA), Georgetown U. (Washington, D.C.)
Hits: 372
UDacity: free college courses online (13.01.07)
Hits: 383
Udemy: Helping Professors Put Courses Online (13.01.07)
13.01.07 care of New York Times article "xxxx."
Hits: 275
DN: A Tribute to the Late Open Internet Activist, Aaron Swartz
The Democracy Now Progressive News broadcast of Thursday January 17, 2013 (13.01.17) featured this tribute and long obituary to the late 29 y.o. MIT student Aaron Swartz, advocate. He died by suicide in early January 2013 facing 35 felony counts for, in effect, Internet Mis-Use. He was an ardent supporter for a free and open Internet, The Open Library Project and a founder of the Open Commons licensing agreement that can be applied to web-published documents, audios and videos, to allow free access, free copying and derivative uses of them with attribution. His prosecution by the U.S. Justice Department may have been "over reach" and in effect setting up Swartz to be an intentionally terrifying example of what the U.S. Government can and will do to people who break the laws protecting the growing privatization of the Internet, higher prices for access to it, and the reduction in the content web-published on it that can be accessed freely 24x7 without special permissions or fees.
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