The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which was founded in 1994 and known for its charitable contributions in and out the United States to help create and spread innovations in education, technology and world health, recently donated a total of  $12.9 million dollars to several community colleges towards virtual learning improvements.

Among the college recipients were Carnegie Mellon University; Monterey Institute for Technology and Education; Global Skills for College Completion; and National Center for Academic Transformation who received $2.5 million, $5 million; $3.6 million; and $1.8 million respectively.

The Carnegie Mellon University will use its $2.5 million for the improvement and developments of web based and open learning environments of its Community College Open Learning Initiative. Carnegie Mellon aims to improve their course completion rates by 25 percent.

Monterey Institute for Technology will utilize its $5 million grant from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to create developmental math course material that will be available as an open educational resource. They will also use the grant to increase the number of students who can meet math standards so they can move into post-secondary educational programs.

On the other hand, Global Skills for College Completion who got $3.6 million will establish ways to teach math and writing skill using social media and technology and the National Center for Academic Transformation will make use their $1.8 million grant to do outreach to community colleges to convince them to incorporate technology-based learning into their math programs.

The newsletter also shared that Lamar online students who are taking Masters in education got higher scores than most campus-based students who have taken the same exam. In fact, 96% of Lamar’s online master’s degree students passed the principal exam. Interesting isn’t it?

This simply implies that online students are not inferior to campus based students. And I was impressed with the quality of online education of Lamar because their passing margin became higher since their online Master’s of Education degree through Lamar University’s Academic Partnership with Higher Ed Holdings was offered two years ago.

So if you want to obtain a top quality Masters in education, why not check out the online programs of Lamar University? They offer over than 100 bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs than can be taken in-person and through online classes. Lamar University is known as comprehensive public university in Beaumont, Texas. This university is a member of The Texas State University System and duly accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

Preparing an online learning tool is one of the best way to combat the unexpected delays in teaching and by doing this, educators are assured that learning will transpire even the students cannot go to school physically.

I experienced the difficulty of being unable to attend classes because of severe bomb threats when I was in college and whenever there were transport strike in our areas; and I can say that these problems can be easily solve if only our college has a stand-by online learning system during those times.

Recently, the H1N1 caused panic all over the world and it made many schools to temporarily suspend classes to avoid the possible spread of the virus among students.  But if schools have a ready online learning tool, there will be no more delays in class schedules. Students and teachers can still hold classes and go on with their class schedules without interruption if the school will publish their lectures in an online portal.

And I hope that the educational institutions will consider the request of government to set up online learning tools for students who have to stay home.

This report details many considerations  that policy makers should consider for online learning such as the programs that vary widely in comprehensiveness, reach, delivery methods, locus of control, and other important aspects.  This report is created by John Watson and Butch Gemin from Evergreen Consulting Associates. The report is published by iNACOL to investigate some of the approaches being taken by practitioners and policymakers in response to key issues in online learning.

By publishing this report, they hope to guide policy makers toward more effective choices to support the high-quality online and blended learning environments potentially available to every child today. May this initiative be successful and may appropriate funding be granted to online learning institution to help many online learners complete a quality online education.

Whereas, for those people who are high school graduates and does not have an Associate Degree, unemployment rate is over 4 percent. Employers prefer to hire applicants who at least have an Associate Degree.

In fact, between 2000 and 2010, employers are requiring an Associate Degree from their employees. On top of this, workers who have an Associate Degree earn more compared to those whose highest educational attainment is a high school diploma. Those with bachelors or associate degree earn 65 percent more than those who graduated from high school.

Hence, in two years, one can already make it to the entry point to one of the fastest growing industry, increase earning and open the door for further advancement. So, if you feel you are not anymore fitted to go back to school, think again.

Do you know that 27.5 percent of the US population has bachelor’s Degree? This is an opportunity for you and your family. This could open vast possibilities for you to improve yourself and your family’s’ economic status.

If you are the person who aspires  opportunity for yourself and  for your family; if you are in search for an advance academic study; why not take an Associate Degree or an Bachelor Degree?  Any of the two degree is now possible in online degree studying, so start planning now and elevate your career soon!

Students who are accepted in this online school will be provided with a late model laptop computer, printer/scanner, headset and microphone  as well as reimbursement for Internet service. And when students graduated from any Insight School, they have incremental benefits because they can choose from multiple academic options: AP, Honors, and College Prep which are specifically designed to achieve the goal of getting into college.

Another online school to watch for is the St. Mark’s Academy which will be completely online when it opens this coming fall. St Mark’s Academy will be offering a 24/7 on-demand access to e-instructors of whom are masters or Ph.D.-level educators. They will be offering a digital curriculum that will provide range of solutions to support students, from pre-high school foundations level courses through college-level Advanced Placement courses.

But completing any post-secondary degree would not be possible for the young lad without the emergence of online universities or colleges. Fostorian Zack Ickes availed of post secondary option that which allows high school students to take college online classes while in high school.

In the case of Ickes, he began this education journey with an online class each semester. Attending online classes are convenient and can be done even at home. This approach didn’t interfere in his normal high school life; in fact, Fostorian Zack Ickes is very active in their high school activities, band and sports including football and cross country. But of course, the real secret in this wonderful achievement of this young gentleman is his capability in managing his time.

The Post Secondary Option that Ickes availed is being offered in Owens Community College since 2002. This is open to students in grades 9 through 12. Students who want to avail of Post Secondary Option need to have at least 3.0 GPA in the subject area they want to study.

The University of Utah currently teaches only about 5 percent of credit hours in fully online courses but with the booming trend in online degree studying, the University of Utah is now planning to accommodate that growth, especially now that the proposals for online courses had tripled this spring.

Well, we are excited to see that University of Utah will soon offer Tech Therapy courses and other in-demand degree programs in fully online approach to accommodate more the students who want to complete their degrees even beyond the regular school hours.

The technology is rapidly changing and the number of students who prefer studying at home are increasing every year and it would be very nice for an accredited and well-established university like University of Utah to offer degree programs that can be completed in entirely online approach.

I just read here that college textbooks are soon to be converted to be viewed in Kindle. In fact, Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland have plans to utilize Kindle this coming Fall. They will be conducting a comparative study between student’s experiences in using Kindles and those who will use regular textbooks.

And with the growth of online students, there will surely be a lot of online schools who will offer this alternative to their students as e-books are more convenient than regular text books especially that the soon-to-be-release Kindle will feature bigger screen that is optimized for viewing newspapers, magazines and textbooks in a format similar to their paper predecessor.

On the other hand, Kindle is also advantageous for regular students because the use of Kindle will surely reduce the weights of school bags. There will be no need to carry books that roughly weigh 800 grams to 1.5 kilograms each. We can also save from using paper and thereby, waste from old and used textbooks will be reduced.

I just wish that the cost of Kindle will become more affordable even to the average earners and I also hope that the cost of e-books will not increase drastically if educators switch from paperback text books to Kindle.

But wait, there’s a nice review of Kindle by a Kindle user… it featured the pros and cons of Kindle and according to him, Kindle is not that good for students especially if you will use it for research purposes. The article is worth reading and you will definitely know where Kindle is best and worst to use.

Valerie McCullough, the Executive Director of Insight School of Minnesota said that more parents and students are now discovering the benefits of a student-centered learning experience that provides all the rigor of brick and mortar schools.

On the other hand, the Department of Public Instruction has notified the virtual schools that there appears to be more interest in online instruction than what’s allowed by law. So the various virtual schools are now appealing to law makers to eliminate the 5,250 enrollment cap set by the Legislature and Gov. Jim Doyle last year.

So we can expect that graduate of online high schools will definitely increase in the next coming years as more and more parents switched from traditional to online schooling. The economic status of the country even trigger parents to choose online schooling or home-based schooling for their children to save more of their finances.  And with the advance technology of online high schools, these virtual schools are confident to provide the same quality education that regular students get from their brick and mortar schools.