In recognition of African-American History Month, we would like to highlight a few of the many organizations working to create a better future by providing students with higher education opportunities:
The United Negro College Fund “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
The United Negro College Fund administers over 400 scholarship and internship programs at its 39 member colleges. Each year, the UNCF provides financial assistance to over 60,000 college students to help further their education. The organization hosts an annual Evening with the Stars, which is the nation’s largest televised fundraiser for minority education. The event has raised upwards of $200 million dollars to date. Two of the fund’s key programs are the Gates Millennium Scholars Program and the UNCF-Merck Science Initiative.
The Thurgood Marshall College Fund “Changing the World . . . One Leader
I got an E-mail recently from Silvester Draaijer of Open Virutal University of Amsterdam (ond.vu.nl) asking me whatever had happened to CloudSocial (www.cloudsocial.org) and I realized that it has been well over a year since I had talked publicly about my grand visions for the future of the Learning Management System.
If back in 2009, you listened to my vision speeches as part of Apple Academix, I liberally sprinkled words like CloudSocial, CloudCollab, and the Tsugi framework throughout my talks. But I have become strangely silent about these lately.
I got CloudSocial to a working prototype stage and then realized that it was a good idea – but something I had come up with too early.
A $1.8 million computer system that was supposed to give parents and teachers easy access to student records has turned into a major headache for Fresno Unified School District. ATLAS – which stands for Achievement, Technology, Learning and Assessment System – was developed by Fresno Unified and Microsoft. But it has been plagued with problems since it was introduced on a limited basis this school year. Parents and teachers have struggled to log onto the system and often have difficulty accessing basic information such as grades. The school district has been trying to fix the problems and recently appointed a committee to recommend solutions.
All claws were out on the court tonight as the Occidental College Tigers traveled to face off with the University of La Verne Leopards. The Black and Orange pushed a 26-19 lead at halftime to a 61-49 Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference victory tonight to stretch their win-streak to three behind solid execution and another strong defensive showing
In the opening half, six of the seven players who stepped on the hardwood scored as the Tigers combined to shoot 48 percent from the field. Deshun McCoy led all players with a 10-point effort while Drew Dockweiler added six.
A feisty home crowd got loud as the Leos opened the second stanza on a 7-0 run to knot things at 26-26. With 15:05 to play the home team took a 30-28 lead, their only advantage of the game.
This is just about where state lawmakers left off nearly two years ago: facing a shortage of billions of dollars and battling over the possibility of new taxes.
As the 2011 Nevada Legislature prepared to convene Feb. 7, members of the state Assembly and Senate scrambled to find common ground with businesspeople, special interest groups, Gov. Brian Sandoval and one another.
Nevada is facing a budget shortfall of as much as $2.5 billion over the next biennium. Under the governor’s two-year, $5.8 billion budget plan, the state would return to 2007 spending levels. That would chop about $402 million from current spending. That’s a 6.4 percent reduction, but Democrats say the true overall cut is closer to 30 percent. Read more…
A couple of weeks ago, Texas AM University ran an integrated (mashed up?) social media campaign on campus using not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 of the most popular social media platforms, namely Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Foursquare.
When I watched the YouTube video announcing the campaign (on Patrick Powers blog), I was impressed by its production quality and decided to learn more about it.
Diane C. McDonald, Director of Social Media (cool job title) at Texas AM University was kind enough to answer my questions so we can all learn from her experience planning and running this social media campaign.
1) You’ve decided to use almost all the social media platforms under the sun with this campaign. Can you tell us why you took this innovative approach?
We decided to take an integrated social media approach to leverage our strong presence on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and the location-based service Foursquare. W
New Wake County schools Superintendent Tony Tata has accepted an offer to meet with the state NAACP, a group whose complaints have led to a federal civil rights probe of the school system.
In a letter Friday, Tata said he looked forward to having “an open and honest conversation” during a private meeting with the Rev. William Barber, president of the state NAACP. Tata, who was hired by the Republican school board majority that eliminated Wake’s diversity policy, has already met with groups who object to the district’s move toward neighborhood schools.
“I’ve said I would meet with anyone who wants to talk with me,” Tata said. “Why shouldn’t I meet with him?”
In an open letter to Tata on Wednesday, Barber wrote that the civil rights group would like to meet with him as soon as possible.
“We trust we can establish a strong working relationship as we address the critical problems many children in the Wake County Schools face,” Barber writes.
Barber said the NAACP can help Wake with initiatives such as improving student achievement and graduation rates and stopping the school-to-prison pipeline.