Arizona Cardinals name new stadium: University of Phoenix Stadium

The first public article went live at midnight here:

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0926biz-namingrights0926.html

It’s way too late for me to write too much that’s articulate, but I’ve been told that there’s a press conference at 10:00 AM PST to announce details and that we’d all know more then. I’ve got a chat scheduled with the folks who put the deal together tomorrow (today!) afternoon and will hopefully post more about how this came about then.

New Study from Capella Supports Support for Non-Traditional Students

Capella University commissioned a study recently on the value of returning to school. The results lend support for just about everything we’re doing in the industry to figure out the rapidly evolving learning models. You can find the results site at http://www.degreesofopportunity.org. There’s also an interview with the head researcher on the page, Dr. Lyungai Mbilinyi from University of Washington.

Amidst all the brouhaha about quality of education, it appears that the number of people wanting to head back to school in a non-traditional fashion just keeps growing, fueling the fly-by-night programs and extending this sharks v. jets street fight between the traditionals. We need to move past this. From the findings:

• Only one-third of those who would like more education said that they would “probably pursue this.”
• The top two barriers to pursuing higher education were:
• • Finding the time for school amidst work, family, and other commitments.
  • Finding the money for school, including the need to provide for themselves and their family while attending school.

We need to launch a campaign that educates on the realities of education — not just the beyond-the-degree benefits. I was talking with Mark Alexander today about other student services organizations that exist specifically to support the extra-curricular needs of students. This one struck me: Student Resource Services.

What genius, right? With now a full 60% of attendance in higher education coming from a non-traditional age range (from the survey and interview), it should make perfect sense that this group begin to demand the same services they receive at work from their Employee Support Organizations. What are the biggest obstacles for colleges and universities to get into this sort of support business for their students?

Feeling Old? Go back to school!

On the heels of my last post, Joe Cockrell sends me this article from the AOL Research & Learn site. It mentions one of our students, but the sentiment is broader. Take a read — it makes me want to go to class…

And seriously… baby boomers are hitting 60 at a rate of one ever 7 seconds? I guess the more important question is for how long?

Career Comebackers - by Vicki Salemi

Second Life: Second Campus

We have a development group under the Apollo Group umbrella called Apollo Publishing. The team there has mutated over the years a number of times from publishing house to licensing house to dev center. Today, it serves pieces of all of those, and more. The most interesting: it’s a skunkworks for projects in education technology that may — or may not — make it into the classroom.

I was there yesterday visiting Colin Smith, one of the developers there working on a side RSS project for me. We got to talking about Second Life, one of my all-time favorite time sinks, and he introduced me to Second life: Second Campus. It’s the Apollo Group foray into avatar based learning.

Technorati Tags: Second Life, Technology, University of Phoenix

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Audio/Video in Education Content

Robert Scoble has been talking about video blogging, and it’s got me thinking.

As to visuals Jon argues: “If I don’t have any visuals, then I should stick to audio.” Ahh, now I’m starting to get his point. He’s saying if you don’t have anything visual you should just stick with audio. Well, that’s true. But, what is “visuals.” Everything around me has a visual component.

I’ve been using audio and video in my teaching material for the last year. It’s changed the way my students interact with me (for the better, I hope) and I like to think we’re going to be getting better at delivering it institutionally.

But I had lunch today with two of the brains of the place, Bill Berry and George Love (George says he has a blog he needs to revise, Bill should be blogging, and he knows it — I hope he’s sufficiently shamed at his absence from the discussion). Our discussion wandered into the realm of standardizing media content into the classroom. So, before I get into the meat of my point, I have to give a little background.

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Evening at McCarran Airport

So, I’m here in Las vegas. You have to get the image here. There’s a moving sidewalk that leads right into a funnel of double doors off of the A gates — the passage narrows considerably, which shouldn’t be a problem with normal traffic flow. But this is not normal traffic flow. This is post 9/11 traffic flow. Someone just found something terrifying in the big open area on the other side of the double doors and caused a lock-down. The doors shut automatically and this stream of people from the moving sidewalk just sort of… slammed into them. But they’re like lemmings, these people. They didn’t adjust like fluid and move around the moving sidewalk to the sides, back up the hallway. No, these people just dog-piled, letting their luggage and bodies just fall into one another. For five minutes this has been happening and it’s not stopping…

___

OK, so it’s stopped, the doors are open and no one knows what it was, just that it has to do with a security breach at the Burger King.

Say it again. A security breach at the Burger King.

That’s rich.

Apple iTunes FINALLY allows you to create a new Library!

At long last, the release of iTunes 7.0 allows Mac users to create a new iTunes library at launch a la iPhoto. Just option-click the iTunes icon to launch and get a pretty “Choose iTunes Library” window!

Technorati Tags: Apple, iTunes