The Kept-Up Academic Librarian

Google And Microsoft Battle For Future Generation

With the recession taking a bite out of university endowments and public school budgets alike, the competition between Google and Microsoft to convert the nation's colleges, universities and schools to the companies' free e-mail and other IT services that run on the Internet "cloud" — outsourcing that can save a large university hundreds of thousands of dollars a year — has only grown more fierce. With the two companies fighting to baptize a future generation of computer users with their products, the stakes for both are significant. The battle has already reshaped classroom technology. Read more at:
http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_13921041?source=rss&nclick_check=1

Never Too Early For A Test Preparation Course

Test preparation has long been a big business catering to students taking SATs and admissions exams for law, medical and other graduate schools. But the new clientele is quite a bit younger: 3- and 4-year-olds whose parents hope that a little assistance — costing upward of $1,000 for several sessions — will help them win coveted spots in the city’s gifted and talented public kindergarten classes. Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/nyregion/21testprep.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

School Counselors Overloaded On College Admissions Work

The struggling economy has taken a toll on those directly responsible for advising students about the college admission process. Nearly half of public schools have raised the caseloads of high school counselors this year, compared with last year, with the average increase exceeding 53 students, according to a study by the National Association for College Admission Counseling. In many respects, the report, “2009 State of College Admission,” seeks to quantify the extent of the frenzy engulfing many of today’s college applicants. Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/education/20college.html?_r=2&hpw

Digital Resources Likely To Replace Textbooks In Schools

Textbooks have not gone the way of the scroll yet, but many educators say that it will not be long before they are replaced by digital versions — or supplanted altogether by lessons assembled from the wealth of free courseware, educational games, videos and projects on the Web. But the digital future is not quite on the horizon in most classrooms. For one thing, there is still a large digital divide. Not every student has access to a computer, a Kindle electronic reader device or a smartphone, and few districts are wealthy enough to provide them. So digital textbooks could widen the gap between rich and poor. Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/education/09textbook.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

Program Gives Minority Teens College Experience

Winona Grandison will be a high school sophomore in August, but on Sunday she was setting up her own dorm room at Drury University. She is one of about 50 black students from seventh to 10th grade invited to spend a week taking classes on campus, designed to give students a taste of what college is all about. This is the second year for Drury's Summer Scholars program for black teens. It was started by three professors -- Bruce Callen, Peter Meidlinger and Mark Wood -- who wanted to reach out to black youths living in their neighborhood around Drury. Read more at:
http://www.news-leader.com/article/20090706/NEWS04/907060368/1007/NEWS01/Program-gives-black-teens-taste-of-college

Rutgers Future Scholars Have A Shot At A Tuition-Free Education

A group of Camden eighth graders took a tour of Cooper University Hospital last week and caught a glimpse of what their futures could hold. They weren't just any eighth graders. All were members of the inaugural class of Rutgers Future Scholars, a program launched by the university a year ago to help more youngsters from low-income communities graduate from college. Over 80 percent of the Future Scholars maintained a B average or higher in their core subjects. Their parents have become more involved in the students' academic activities, said the administrators, and the students have increased their extracurricular participation. The students, in turn, have been given the chance of a lifetime - a shot at four years tuition-free at Rutgers. Read more at:
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front_page/20090615_Rutgers_helps_keep_future_scholars_on_track.html

California May Go With E-Textbooks For All High School Students

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is taking a page from high school science books in an effort to shrink California's $24 billion budget gap. In fact, he wants to take the entire book -- and do away with it. By next fall, Governor Schwarzenegger intends to make free, open-source digital textbooks available for high school math and science classes throughout California, a move that he says will help reduce the more than $350 million the state spends annually on educational materials. Read more at:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Economy/story?id=7827997&page=1

Common Core State Standards Will Help Prepare Them For College

Fifty states, 50 different sets of academic standards. Right? Maybe not for much longer. Dismayed that students are slipping further behind their international peers, 46 states have agreed in principle to develop a set of rigorous criteria — the Common Core State Standards Initiative — designed to prepare high school graduates for college and the workforce. Kids who are taking algebra I, for example, would be expected to learn the same material whether they're in

Massachusetts or Mississippi. Read more at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-06-01-state-standards_N.htm

US Students Hold Their Own On International Tests

While they're not in first place, U.S. students generally hold their own on international tests. They spend more time in school than the Obama administration would have you believe. And their college graduation rates stack up better than reported. That is not to say the critics are totally wet, that the U.S. can't do better. Only about one-third of U.S. students could read and do math at current grade levels on national tests in 2007, the most recent figures available.  And the high school dropout rate is dismal — 1 in 4 kids. But it's all made to look worse than it is by international comparisons, which at best tend to be misleading and at worst are deeply flawed. Read more at:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5husRstDOy6YVktMTCOP-pknQw7pAD988GTU00

Blending High School And College

A school that officials are billing as a kind of hybrid between a high school and a community college is set to open in Brooklyn this fall. At the five-year secondary school, called the City Polytechnic High School of Engineering, Architecture and Technology, graduating students would receive both a high school diploma and an associate’s degree. Students will begin taking college material in their third year at City Polytechnic, and attend classes at the College of Technology in later years. Read more at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/nyregion/19cuny.html?_r=1