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December 11, 2001

Evaluating Your Learning Style According to this learning styles test, I am mostly a visual learner, very conceptual, very independent, mostly creative and about equally balanced between a spatial and verbal orientation. About right. Now there are those who say that learning styles have no bearing on learning, but I have to say: put me in a situation with spoken instructions telling me exactly what to do in a step by step fashion, while making me work with a group or partner, and watch my scores drop... which is why I never did well at chemistry lab. I think the Javascript behind this learning styles test could be more elegant, but it's a nice illustration of the concept. By Unknown, CCTC Learning Assistance Center, undated.[Refer]

Fun Trivia Trivia is popular on the internet. Really, really popular... By , , .[Refer]

Stumpers Of course, the more educationally minded may prefer this site. Stumpers are learning tools using television game show formats in which participants assume the roll of contestants in a game show. There is a game board to provide categories and "dollar" amounts are assigned to the trivia-type questions and answers. Stumpers are usually done as a presentation with the presenter as the game show host. This site focuses on medicine, but you can see how the practice could be more widely applied. By Robyn Latessa and Frank Wartman, Mountain Area Health Education Center, Undated.[Refer]

Peterson's Selected to be Primary College Search Provider for Yahoo! Education On the one hand, Thomson Corporation is heavily involved in the provision of e-learning through a variety of alliances and projects, including Universitas 21. On the other hand, there is this press release that states that Peterson's, part of the Thomson Corporation, has been selected to be the primary provider of college search and selection information for the College Essentials area of Yahoo! Education. Now I ask: what are the odds that peterson's will provide balanced information to people selecting college and university courses? That's what I thought. Another reason to go Google. By Press Release, Peterson's & Yahoo!, December 10, 2001.[Refer]

New Wave of Schools Offer High-tech, Hands-on Training Now is the sample school described in this article successful because it is a charter school, because it employs online learning, because it is non-traditional, or because it got a $90,000 grant from Johnson & Johnson? By Staff, eSchool News, December 10, 2001.[Refer]

Debating the Demise of NYUonline The demise of NYUonline - documented last week in OLDaily - is debated in this Chronicle article. NYU administrators argue that the slumping economy was the cause, but this is hard to maintain in the face of such successful institutions as the University of Phoenix. Critics argue that the NYUonline business plan was flawed, that the school simply didn't offer useful courses. I think that the failure is best explained by the following tidbit: "During three years of operation, NYUonline spent about $25-million of New York University's money, administrative sources say. That investment produced seven courses on the company's Web site..." I don't care who you are, you aren't going to make money producing only seven courses for $25 million. By Scott Carlson and Dan Carnevale, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 14, 2001.[Refer]

Re-engineering Scientific Credit in the Era of the Globalized information Economy Something to think about: "the more science is commercialized under the new regime, the more previous research practices and protocols are threatened. The paper closes with three classes of examples to illustrate this claim: legal moves to suppress criticism and debate; restrictions on database access; and, the transformation of scientific journals into infomercial outlets." By Philip Mirowski, First Monday, November 9, 2001.[Refer]

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