Education Vault: Jul 14, 2009

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

LectureShare

This new web tool makes it easy for instructors to share text, audio, and video with students. Registration is required, but free. Use the FAQ and About sections to orient to the resources. Also look at Ezra Katz's sample course LectureShare 101 (once registered). ____JH

(Thanks to Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day for this reference.)

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Give students access to course materials without the burden of maintaining your own webpage or the hassle of complex web-based solutions
Post audio and video content easily
Make class announcements that your students will actually read—via e-mail, RSS (coming soon), or SMS
Effortlessly make your course available to anyone if you choose

SciTalks/HumTalks/GovTalks/BusiTalks

These four sites collect video lectures on scientific, humanities, government, and business topics by prominent thinkers. I've sampled a number of the talks and found them to be extremely valuable. These sites could be very useful to instructors who want to supply supplementary materials for their courses. _____JH

School levy failure highlights challenges for big districts

School levy failure highlights challenges for big districts
Rowland Unified gained a majority of votes but couldn't get the required two-thirds support. Experts say larger districts like L.A or Long Beach could have trouble reaching that level as well.

Many wealthy communities across Southern California have recently passed parcel taxes to help their beleaguered schools. But the defeat this week of a similar levy in a less affluent, larger school district in the San Gabriel Valley offers a look at the challenges that could face parcel tax proposals in big-city school systems in Los Angeles and Long Beach.