By Claire Webber

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan outlines his plan for schools at an education conference in San Diego.

Speaking at the National School Board Association’s conference this week in San Diego, Secretary Duncan applauded and encouraged school boards across the country in an effort to revamp our education system to match world competitors like China and India.  Our new focus, he said, was overall complete reform.  He also recommended a reintegration of schools and communities in an effort to increase the quality and performance of teachers.

The reaction to Duncan’s speech was overwhelmingly positive, with some board members remarking on how exciting it was to finally have a voice in Washington that they understand and agree with.  According to the San Diego Union Tribune trustees like Zepora Roberts from Dekalb County Schools in Georgia were ecstatic.  “He’s been where we have been,” said Roberts, “It feels like we have one of us in Washington.”

The news could not come at a better time.  For years American schools have been in need of serious adjustment as teacher shortages continue to affect education.  Secretary Duncan encouraged governments to get involved at the City level, saying that bigger City Mayors needed to step up their involvement.  Which was an interesting statement considering that most school boards are opposed to mayoral control.   “You’re welcome to boo,” Duncan said in a jovial tone, “[but] please don’t throw any shoes at me.”

Not afraid to criticize.

And Secretary Duncan had harsh words for the San Diego Unified School district which he criticized saying that the need to “build sustainable leadership” was paramount.  Duncan was referring to the district’s inability hang on to district superintendents; the region has been through five in five years, noting that the constant turnover was sending the wrong message. 

In addition Secretary Duncan also made mention of President Obama’s provisions in the new stimulus package relating to education, encouraging schools to go after funding that had been set aside form them and to increase their efforts to innovate teaching practices.

Duncan ended on a high note, saying that although mistakes have been made in the past it only offers more opportunity for improvement in the future.  “This is less about what you have done historically,” he underlined, “but what you will do tomorrow.”

Online education has become the best option for many students who want to save money during a recession and protect their future career possibilities at the same time.  They do not have to give up on an educational future anymore in lieu of keeping their job, but can now do both for a portion of the cost of most traditional colleges.  Therefore, in an unprecedented move, nearly all online colleges or universities are the best to enroll in during a recession.  The schools that offer both traditional and online courses continue to charge their same rates per course hour, although they do offer financial aid and you do not have to pay high dorm fees!

The biggest benefit of online education is the flexibility that the degree programs offer to their students.  This has allowed students to continue their current job schedule and still take their classes from home after the work day.  While this is still a tedious balance between work and school, cutting down the commute time to classrooms and allowing students the flexibility to take their classes late at night or early in the morning has attracted a wide variety of students.  Additionally, students in the retail or restaurant business who have unpredictable schedules can now continue their erratic work schedules and still attend classes. 

The cost of attending online colleges or universities is also much lower than that of traditional schools.  Despite the recent recession, online colleges have not had to raise their tuition costs like so many other schools have had to, due to their for-profit status.  While we may see an increase in tuition in the future, the costs still remain much lower than any traditional university, thereby attracting students who previously had no opportunity to attend classes.  Some online schools are able to offer incredibly low rates due to their accreditation status: depending on the organization that accredited the school, the cost of their education may be worth more or less.  This is an important fact to keep in mind since you want a program that is well-accredited and can attract a future employer to your resume.

Online education has led to an increase in education for individuals around the nation, one feat which educators have acknowledged and praised, despite their skepticism about online colleges.  The best online colleges are those which offer endless course offerings to students who may be interested in a wide variety of subjects.  It then becomes difficult to choose between all the viable options!

Preschool teachers are in a type of limbo in the education field in the sense that many schools do not require their teachers to have an education degree, but other schools have found it increasingly necessary to hire teachers who have the education background.  With children in the preschool age, it is almost unnecessary to have an extensive educational background requirement for teachers, but many schools require a teacher who can stimulate students at an early age to better prepare them for beginning kindergarten.  However, the “warm, compassionate” spirit that many preschool teachers share cannot easily be learned in the classroom, making it a topic up for hot debate within many education majors.

The birth of online education has made earning a degree that much easier, as potential education degree-holders can earn their degrees online, with much less of a hassle than traditional college campuses.  As a result of this type of easy accessibility, more preschools have found it necessary to require a degree from their teachers and parents have flocked to these schools as well.  However, more questions have developed over the years as to how much education preschool teachers should hold: associates degree or bachelors degree?  And even more vexing is the knowledge that these careers are typically low-paying, meaning that most preschool teachers will not see a good turn around for the amount of time they put into the education. 

It has therefore become more pertinent of a question to ask whether preschool teachers should continue on course for an education degree, especially considering the advances in online education, or whether they should maintain their current status as knowledgeable in dealing with early education.  The traditional mindset of preschool teachers has changed, however, and many state schools now require a higher education and offer competitive salaries compared to the earlier salaries which were comparable to parking attendants.  There is now a greater need for education early education teachers who can help set the course for children early on, and online education degrees seem perfect for this type of advancement. 

This is still a major problem that plagues the early education community: while studies have shown teachers with colleges degrees can provide the best source of education for children, other teachers with no education background have provided the best care for students.  It is all a matter of what you want as a parent.  While this question will not be one which will be easily answerable in the coming years, preschool teachers have a new outlet in the internet to look forward to if they are required to earn an education degree in the coming years. 

Traditional schools around the country began offering “open” courses years ago in an attempt to join the online education community and additionally attract a new variety of students.  Open courses are simply lecture notes and sometimes lectures from courses that schools offered a few years ago, but leave online for interested students. These open courses have ranged in subject from engineering to poetry, to the even more surprising topic of music.  We mostly consider music to be a class which cannot be taught through the internet, but online education has taught us that nothing is impossible in education.

MIT jumped on the bandwagon years ago and began offering free online courses to students around the world who were interested in what courses at MIT were like.  While these courses do not count toward any type of degree and are simply offered to any individual, they offer a new peak inside the Ivy League programs and may attract potential students to their programs.  Their most popular programs were ones in the science and math fields (what the school is most known for), but they have offered surprising open courses in music as well.  Their current open courseware offerings in music range from world music courses to introduction to “Composing for Jazz Orchestras.”  With more than twenty courses in music offered at MIT’s online open courseware site, the school has delved into its foray with online education and attracted a new class of students since it posted the courses.

Columbia has also joined the online community through its open courseware listings, although the school currently only hosts one music seminar on its website.  While the course, “Music from the Renaissance and Baroque”, is appealing to many students of music, the wide variety of MIT’s music courses is major competition to the smaller offerings of Columbia. 

Harvard is in the same boat as Columbia, offering minimal open courses, although the school is different from the other two since it continuously updates its site according to the school year.  It currently features classes from the 2008-2009 school year, featuring one music course in the “History of Blues in America.”  Like the other two schools, Harvard offers a wide range of classes in different subjects, focusing on computer science and liberal arts programs.

Open courses are an ongoing experiment, as it has yet to be revealed whether the free lectures attract more students to the colleges.  One thing is for sure though: the many available lectures that can now be downloaded allow interested individuals to gain a more thorough knowledge of a topic which may be difficult to research on their own.  How else would you get the information offered in MIT’s “Schubert to Debussy?”

Information is everywhere. One is assaulted every moment of every day with advertising, online media, email, broadcast television, radio, and even personal phone calls. We cannot escape it. Does all this information really mean we are retaining more data? Are we learning more because of the ubiquity of resources by which to do so? One could assume the answer is "yes." But, one may be wrong in this assumption.
 
What’s most interesting about the current informational landscape is that despite a significant increase in available news and information, Americans are still no better informed than they were in much less information-rich times. For instance, a recent Pew Research study indicated that in 2007, 69 percent of Americans could correctly name the vice-president, down from the 74 percent who could in 1989.
 
So, what’s happening?
 
First and foremost, people become apathetic in the face of too much information. We just stop actively attempting to process it and it falls flat. And, with so much customizable content available, people can be very selective about what they want to hear/see and can ignore everything else. 

Because of this, there’s actually a far greater likelihood of an individual being less informed as they are not choosing to be exposed to multiple news sources. It makes for a very narrow view and a very limited knowledge base.
 
Also, acquiring new information requires specific, prolonged focus and an ability to ignore distractions. In our world of media multi-tasking few, if any, are concentrating for long enough on a single subject to make it stick. 

In order to absorb the information contained in a newscast, for example, we must not only direct our attention to the person talking, but also filter out the running headlines, news updates, and financial ticker on the lower part of the screen.
 
It would seem we’ve come to an age of too much information and this is particularly true for younger people who spend extensive time media multi-tasking. They will have to decide, if, in the future, if the constant barrage of information is worth the forfeiture of true knowledge.

Some studies show that the younger, more technologically savvy generations use their brains in completely different ways than previous generations.  While the jury is still out on the subject and many scientific studies to validate this claim are necessary, the fact is that filtering through the wealth of information is still the reality for everyone involved.
 

The habit of reading is going out, along with those quaint old bookshops on the corner that are making way for fancier malls that are as devoid of character as the goods they house. It’s the age of technology, and people don’t seem to have the time or the inclination to settle down with a good book any time they’re free – they’d rather fiddle around with their gadgets, or if they must read, do a cursory scan of the latest from the blog world. 

But there are some people like me who make it a point to continue their love affair with books, the one that started as a child when words and the stories they wove formed one’s best friends. And then there are others who discovered the pleasures that books could bring, later on in life. There are various reasons why people read, even today when there are numerous alternatives for entertainment, and here are some of them:

    * The right book at the right time: Kids these days are being wowed by the Harry Potter phenomenon – they begin to read just to get a taste of the hype, and once they’re hooked and have finished devouring the series, they move on to other books. A good habit is thus formed for a lifetime. The younger you are, the more likely you are to take to the reading habit. But, while it’s true that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, there are times when adults, who find themselves with nothing else to do, pick up a book that’s lying around only to find that they enjoy the experience much more than they thought they would.
    * An affinity with the characters: How often have you read a book to discover that the lead character is so much like you, that you seem to think, feel and act the same way? How often have you empathized with the situations the hero or heroine finds themselves in, because you have been in similar situations yourself? This reason, at times, forms the basis for liking the book, the author, and the genre, in that subsequent order.
    * A liking for the author, not necessarily the genre: I don’t experiment much in my choice of genre, but there are times that I’m open to trying new authors in the hope that I will like their writing style and so have an infinite stream of books to read. What I’ve discovered in the course of this trial and error method is that though I like a particular author, it doesn’t follow that I like all authors who write the same genre.
    * A taste for the genre: But there are others who read only if the book is of the genre they fancy – romance, mystery and thrillers find more takers than any other kind of books, mostly because of the feel-good factor of boy and girl living happily ever after or justice being done and the criminal getting what he or she deserves.