New copyright exemption may help your teaching

A recent article from Inside Higher Ed highlights increased ability to use excerpts from DVD's for educational purposes...
"The U.S. Copyright Office on Monday promulgated a number of new exemptions* to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, including one allowing university staffers and students to hack DVD content and display it for educational purposes. If a university or student lawfully obtains copy of a DVD, the agency says, they can bypass the encryption so long as "circumvention is accomplished solely in order to accomplish the incorporation of short portions of motion pictures into new works for... Educational uses by college and university professors and by college and university film and media studies students." The exemption applies when professors or students want to use excerpts of the hacked DVD in documentary films or "non-commercial videos." Tracy Mitrano, director of I.T. policy at Cornell University and a technology law blogger for Inside Higher Ed, called the decision "very big news," and "good news," for higher education, noting that advocates in academe have been lobbying for an expansion of fair use exemptions for some time. One campus that might take heart is the University of California at Los Angeles, which an educational media group threatened to sue last spring for copying and streaming DVD content on course websites. The university had refused to stop the practice, and a UCLA spokesman said the group, the Association for Information and Media Equipment, has not followed through. He said UCLA is reviewing the new rules."

*See item #1 midway down the page here.

Fewer Latino students attend 4-year colleges

According to a recent article in Education Week, "When Latinos go to college, they are less likely than any other major racial or ethnic group to attend a four-year college or university, according to an unpublished analysis of federal education data by the Pew Hispanic Center." Recent trends suggest that the higher education prospects for students from low-income families are getting worse--"Overall, the proportion of college-eligible, low-income students across the nation who are going to four-year colleges or universities is declining, according to a federal report sent to the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Department of Education last month by the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, which gives Congress advice on student financial aid policy" But Latinos seem to be particularly vulnerable--"48 percent of Latinos who are first-time, full-time college freshmen enroll in four-year institutions. That’s the lowest proportion of any major racial or ethnic group, Richard Fry, a senior research associate for the Washington-based Pew Hispanic Center, found in an analysis of 2008 data from the federally administered Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. Meanwhile, the proportion of students enrolling in four-year institutions is 69 percent for Asian or Pacific Islander students, 66 percent for whites, 54 percent for blacks, and 53 percent for American Indians or Alaska Natives." However, a recent study conducted in California find that fairly low-cost mentoring interventions can significantly increase the percentage of such at-risk students attending college.

Using Library Experts Wisely - Inside Higher Ed

Using Library Experts Wisely - Inside Higher Ed
This article today describes a collaboration between faculty teaching a writing course and their library liaison. Thought it might be of interest to get a non-librarian's perspective!

PowerStats: New analysis tool from NCES for Post-Secondary Education Data

"PowerStats, a data analysis tool, provides access to nine NCES postsecondary education datasets and the thousands of variables they contain. PowerStats includes the two most recent National Postsecondary Student Aid Studies (NPSAS), the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS), the Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study (B&B), and the National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF).

Users create tables and regressions with a visually intuitive drag and drop interface, receiving their results in a range of formats, including Excel and PDF. As the replacement to the NCES Data Analysis System (DAS), PowerStats provides helpful new features for users, including an improved capacity to search for variables, and saving recoded variables for future use. In addition, PowerStats allows users to build an online library of their work and to share their work with other PowerStats users."
Access PowerStats at http://nces.ed.gov/datalab

The recession will impact children for years to come

According to a report just released by the Foundation for Child Development, numerous indicators of child well-being are headed in a negative direction as a result of the recession. Education Week notes, "More children will live in poverty this year. More will have two parents who are unemployed. Fewer children will enroll in prekindergarten programs, and fewer teenagers will find jobs. More children are likely to commit suicide, be overweight, and be victimized by crime." The full report, "Child and Youth Well-Being Index," is available here: http://www.fcd-us.org/usr_doc/FINAL_2010_CWI_Annual_Release.pdf
Project director, Kenneth Land, is sociology and demography professor at Duke and a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, the Sociological Research Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, and the American Society of Criminology.

2007-2008 Data on HS Graduation Rates

This newest data from NCES shows Nevada with the lowest high school graduation rate in the nation: 51%. Tthe only other jurisdiction with a graduation rate in the 50's is Washington, D.C. at 56%.

"Nationwide, 75 percent of public high school students who started as freshmen in the fall of 2004 graduated high school in 2008—up from 74 percent who graduated on time in the spring of 2007.

This First Look presents findings associated with public high school graduation and event dropout counts for the 2007–08 school year. These data were collected as part of the Common Core of Data (CCD), a universe survey of public schools operating in the United States and associated other jurisdictions by the National Center for Education Statistics."
To view the full report please visit
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2010341

Common Core Standards issed

Links to downloadable versions of the Common Core Standards are available here: http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards