From: Mustafa Akgul (akgul@Bilkent.EDU.TR)
Date: Sat 10 Sep 2005 - 08:03:35 EEST
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TOP STORIES FOR FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 09, 2005
Katrina Boosts Online Education
Feds Award National Archive Contract
Thirteen Countries Get Behind Open Standards
KATRINA BOOSTS ONLINE EDUCATION
Educators at all levels--from elementary through college--are trying to
figure out how to accommodate the estimated 200,000 students from the
Gulf states who have been displaced by Hurricane Katrina, and some see
the circumstances as a prime opportunity for online education to prove
its worth. Advocates of online learning are working to get federal
authorities to relax rules governing things ranging from obtaining
teacher certification to using public funds to support online schools.
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has committed $1.1 million to the Sloan
Consortium, an organization that works to improve the quality of online
instruction, to provide space for 10,000 students in its program. A
number of online programs for elementary and secondary students are
hoping to persuade government officials to allow public funds to be
used by displaced students in online programs. Julie Young, chief
executive of the Florida Virtual School, one of the nation's largest
online public schools, said, "It's going to be an opportunity to show
the power of online learning." Critics said online programs are a poor
substitute for in-class learning. Nat LaCour, secretary general of the
American Federation of Teachers, said displaced students "need to be in
classrooms with teachers who can provide nurturing experiences."
Wall Street Journal, 9 September 2005 (sub. req'd)
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112622247296335918,00.html
FEDS AWARD NATIONAL ARCHIVE CONTRACT
The federal government will spend $308 million to create a national
electronic archive that Allen Weinstein, the archivist of the United
States, said will be of significant value to academic researchers.
Weinstein, a former history professor, said the Electronic Records
Archives (ERA) will store and make available all federal electronic
documents, which otherwise could disappear entirely or at least be very
difficult to locate. The federal government is increasingly creating
documents onlin in electronic format, and the ERA is vital in
preserving them, said Weinstein. The ERA, which is expected to debut in
2008 and be complete by 2011, could also serve as a model for colleges
and universities that create their own digital archive systems,
according to Weinstein. Rick Barry, a management consultant in archives
and information management, said that the archive itself will not solve
the problem of preservation. Bureaucratic and cultural problems must
also be overcome, he said.
Chronicle of Higher Education, 9 September 2005 (sub. req'd)
http://chronicle.com/daily/2005/09/2005090901t.htm
THIRTEEN COUNTRIES GET BEHIND OPEN STANDARDS
Government officials from 13 countries have developed a report to the
World Bank on economic growth, efficiency, and innovation in which they
argue for the establishment of open technology standards. The report is
quick to point out that open standards are not synonymous with open
source, in which source code is shared and can be modified by anyone.
The open-standards movement advocates defining a set of standards,
available to anyone, that allow various applications, whether
proprietary or open source, to exchange information. The report is the
product of a project led by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society
at the Harvard Law School. According to Charles R. Nesson, law
professor at Harvard and founder of the Berkman Center, the goal of the
report is to make a "rational business case for having a broad base of
open technology standards." The report urges governments to "mandate
technology choice, not software development models."
New York Times, 9 September 2005 (registration req'd)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/09/technology/09open.html
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