There is a growing academic and societal need for the integration of academic activities among themselves and with Society, including private and public sectors. An increasing number of academics have noticed the importance of integrating Research, Education, and Problem Solving among themselves and with societal and corporate real life problems. Information and Communications Technologies enabled different ways of supporting these kinds of integration processes. Informing Science is at the heart of academic activities (research, education, and consulting).

More information at: http://www.iiis2011.org/demset/website/default.asp?vc=51

Interesting upcoming conference news...

By Claire Gordon, Posted Sep 14th 2011 @ 1:33PM

Today the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released some hard numbers that confirm this startling decline of the West and the rise of the rest. Although the West that's declining is almost exclusively America.

By JUSTIN POPE   09/14/11 11:08 AM ET  

- Scores on the critical reading portion of the SAT college entrance exam fell three points to their lowest level on record last year, and combined reading and math scores reached their lowest point since 1995.

The College Board, which released the scores Wednesday, said the results reflect the record number of students from the high school class of 2011 who took the exam and the growing diversity of the test-taking pool – particularly Hispanics. As more students aim for college and take the exam, it tends to drag down average scores.

Still, while the three-point decline to 497 may look small in the context of an 800-point test, it was only the second time in the last two decades reading scores have fallen as much in a single year. And reading scores are now notably lower than scores as recently as 2005, when the average was 508.

More information at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/14/sat-reading-scores-fall-t_0_n_962138.html?icid=maing-grid7|ipad|dl25|sec3_lnk1|95626

This premier Arizona eLearning Community Networking event is hosted by GAZeL and sponsored by various vendors.

eLearning Drinks is a vibrant and growing opportunity to socialize and network with others in the field of eLearning i n Arizona, the mecca of eLearning.

If you're an Entrepreneur/Company Owner, Instructional Designer, Job Seeker, Employer, Software Guru, Trainer, BizDev Pro, Tech Manager, Marketer, VC/Angel Investor, Professor,... Student, or even from the "user community" - "eLearning Drinks" is for YOU!

True to the disruptive nature of e-Learning, "eLearning Drinks" isn’t a "structured" event: NO AGENDA...NO SPEAKER...NO "MEETUP" GROUP... just a great exchange of ideas, business cards and banter!

Looking For Employees? Looking For A Job?

Representatives of companies who are hiring may identify themselves with a green dot on their name tag that we provide at each event so that they can be easily identified by those looking for new opportunities.

Thank you to our sponsors:

Tallwave and Today's Campus at Mumbles on 8/17/11.  See photos

In March of 2010, Scholastic and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation released Primary Sources: America’s Teachers on America's Schools, the result of the largest-ever publicly-released teacher survey, in which 40,000 of our nation's public school teachers shared their thoughts on American Education.

More at:  http://www.scholastic.com/primarysources/download.asp

In one of the largest national surveys of public school teachers, thousands of educators agreed that today’s students aren’t college-ready when they graduate from high school. Teachers’ suggestions for solving this problem include clear, common standards; multiple measures of student performance; and greater innovation, including differentiated instruction and more use of digital resources.

The survey, titled “Primary Sources: America’s Teachers on America’s Schools,” was commissioned by Scholastic Inc. and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and conducted by Harris Interactive. More than 40,000 public school teachers in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade participated, and the results were released March 3.

The survey focused on the state of American education, the challenges facing students, and the tools and resources teachers need to face those challenges. Teachers gave honest opinions on issues such as student achievement, performance pay, technology use, and administrative support—and some of their answers might surprise school leaders.

More at: http://www.eschoolnews.com/2010/03/03/teachers-share-their-views-on-how-to-improve-education/?ast=64&astc=4952

An annual report reveals that mobile learning and cloud computing are poised to reach widespread adoption in schools in one year or less, with game-based learning and open educational content not far behind.

The New Media Consortium Horizon Report: 2011 K-12 Edition is the third annual report from the New Media Consortium (NMC) that focuses on emerging K-12 technologies. It is supported by a grant from HP’s Office of Global Social Innovation.

More information about New Technologies.

6 Technologies That Will Change Education

http://thejournal.com/articles/2011/05/17/6-technologies-that-will-change-education.aspx

Purpose

The 2nd Symposium on Academic Globalization: AG 2009, part of the Academic Globalization Project, is being organized in the context of WMSCI 2009, and its collocated conferences.

The purpose of AG 2009 is to bring together scholars, educators and practitioners with the objective of exploring, reflecting and sharing ideas with regards to the impact that the Globalization Phenomena is having or might have on universities (research, teaching and continuing education), and vice versa: the impact that academia is generating, or could generate on the phenomenon of globalization. Questions such as the following are examples of those that could be addressed at the Symposium in order to generate possible answers and/or reflections, as well as possible research: