The campus tsunami: Online education is the wave of the future, even at elite universities

May 7, 2012 By David Brooks Online education is not new. The University of Phoenix started its online degree program in 1989. Four million college students took at least one online class during the fall of 2007. But, over the past few months, something has changed. The elite, pace-setting universities have embraced the Internet. Not long ago, online courses were interesting experiments. Now online activity is at the core of how these schools envision their futures. Last week, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology committed $60 million to offer free online courses from both universities. Two Stanford professors, Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller, have formed a company, Coursera, which offers interactive courses in the humanities, social sciences, mathematics and engineering. Their partners include Stanford, Michigan, Penn and Princeton. Many other elite universities, including Yale and Carnegie Mellon, are moving aggressively online. President John Hennessy of Stanford summed up the emerging view in an article by Ken Auletta in The New Yorker, "There's a tsunami coming."... For complete article please see: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/perspectives/david-brooks-the-campus-tsunami-online-education-is-the-wave-of-the-future-even-at-elite-universities-634705/

THE BILINGUAL BRAIN IS SHARPER AND MORE FOCUSED, STUDY SAYS

April 30, 2012, 5:01 PM Wall Street Journal Blog / Health Blog By Robert Lee Hotz The ability to speak two languages can make bilingual people better able to pay attention than those who can only speak one language, a new study suggests. ...Through this fine-tuning of the nervous system, people who can master more than one language are building a more resilient brain, one more proficient at multitasking, setting priorities, and, perhaps, better able to withstand the ravages of age, a range of recent studies suggest. Indeed, some preliminary research suggests that people who speak a second language may have enhanced defenses against the onset of dementia and delay Alzheimer’s disease by an average of four years, as WSJ reported in 2010. The ability to speak more than one language also may help protect memory, researchers from the Center for Health Studies in Luxembourg reported at last year. ... See: http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2012/04/30/the-bilingual-brain-is-sharper-and-more-focused-study-says/?mod=dist_smartbrief

Momentum Builds for Dual-Language Learning

.....Experts say the interest in dual-language programs now is driven by an increased demand for bilingual and biliterate workers and by educators who see positive impacts on academic achievement for both English-learners and students already fluent in English.... Still, several studies in recent years have demonstrated that ELL students and other frequently low-performing groups, such as African-American students, do well in dual-language programs. ... http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/03/23/26duallanguage_ep.h31.html?tkn=SVRFiB%2BHyniCxugGb6XDd7Fwu6eYTyd1p%2FQd&cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS1

NEALLT 2012 CONFERENCE

Teacher Roles and Practices in Technology-Enhanced Instruction March 30 - April 1 Carnegie Mellon Pittsburgh, Pa See http://www.neallt.org/

Adventures of a Teenage Polyglot

NY Times Article By JOHN LELAND Published: March 9, 2012 SOME people pick up a little Hebrew before their bar mitzvahs, or learn Spanish from their mothers, or can speak some Japanese from a semester abroad. Timothy Doner, 16, is not one of those people. In the fall of 2009, after studying for his bar mitzvah, he decided he wanted to learn modern Hebrew, so he continued with his tutor, engaging in long dialogues about Israeli politics. Then he felt drawn to learn Arabic, so after eighth grade he attended a summer program for college students at Brigham Young University. It took him four days to learn the alphabet, he said, a week to read fluidly. See complete article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/nyregion/a-teenage-master-of-languages-finds-online-fellowship.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

U.S. Ethnic Mix Boasts German Accent Amid Surge of Hispanics

The U.S., first populated by Native Americans, rediscovered by Europeans and colonized under the flags of the Spanish, English and French, is now filled with Germans. More than half of the nation’s 3,143 counties contain a plurality of people who describe themselves as German-American, according to a Bloomberg compilation of data from the Census Bureau’s 2010 American Community Survey. The number of German- Americans rose by 6 million during the last decade to 49.8 million, almost as much as the nation’s 50.5 million Hispanics. (Click here to explore an interactive county-by-county map of U.S. ethnic groups.) see entire article at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-06/u-s-ethnic-mix-boasts-german-accent-amid-surge-of-hispanics.html

ACTFL announces revision of Proficiency Guidelines and support materials.

Important news for everyone who tests proficiency! The ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines have been revised for 2012 with updated descriptions of what individuals can do with language in terms of speaking, writing, listening and reading. A new feature of the Guidelines is their publication online, supported with glossed terminology and annotated, multimedia samples of performance at each level for speaking and writing, and examples of oral and written texts and tasks associated with each level for reading and listening. See....http://actflproficiencyguidelines2012.org/