Finally after 15 months of debate we jumped in and added an iPad to our family of technological gadgets. I say “we” because it was a collective family effort. Every family member received a Best Buy gift card and when we went there none of us found anything that we had to have. So we agreed to keep looking. I started thinking that maybe I needed to get an iPad so I can be more up on the various educational Apps, or this would make a nice alternative to lugging a laptop when I go to Europe this spring; allowing me stay connected to my online class. My kids were an easy sell – they thought it was great. My husband was the one I had to work over – because he wanted to know why this would be different from the laptops, desktop, kindle, iPods and smartphones that we already have. The selling point for him was how the iPad could interface with Direct TV he could take the game outside with him when he grilled and it could act as a remote if he can’t find where the kids left it.Read more...

I recently came across an interesting article regarding the increasing problems with thieves targeting schools for identify theft.

The article mentions an incident where a hacker broke into a database at a school in El Paso, and managed to retrieve 63,000 Social Security numbers (SSNs) of students. 

This is a gold-mine for an identity thief.  SSNs can be used to get credit cards, take out loans, and generally "create" money for the thief.  Furthermore, the SSNs of young people are generally "clean", meaning they have no credit history attached, making it far easier to get credit with them.  Finally, if the SSNs used are those of very young students, it may be years before that student actually tries to use it to get credit legitimately, and thus years before the identity theft is detected. Read more...

I have been taking and teaching online courses since 2000. Over the past 11 years I have heard many questions regarding online learning and so I thought it would be a good idea to address some of those that are frequently asked.

What would you say the number one reason students are not successful in a virtual classroom or online course?

Time. Many students take online courses because they are drawn to taking a class that they can do anytime from anywhere.  But what they don’t do is schedule time into their schedule.  I tell all of my students to block calendar time for an online class every week.  It doesn’t have to be at the same time or from the same location each week – but they do need to include time to do course work and to go online each week.

How do you know how much time each student is spending online?  What is the minimum of they should spend online? Read more...