Semester Online – a consortium of 10 schools offers for-credit online courses to its students and the world

The New York Times, Inside Higher Ed, and The Chronicle of Higher Education today all reported on Semester Online, a collaboration between 10 top-tier universities that, starting fall 2013, will offer fully online, credit-bearing undergraduate courses through a partnership with 2u (formerly known as 2tor). The institutions currently in the consortium are Duke, Emory, Washington …

Multiuser geodatabases anyone?

Greetings from your friendly neighborhood GIS guy! I’m pleased to announce that the Keck GIS Commons is now hosting and supporting an ArcSDE for Server Workgroup environment for use in long term research projects.  SDE, short for Spatial Database Engine, is a core component of a GIS server platform that aims to enable the usage of Relational …

Google Releases “Course Builder,” an Open Source Platform for Building Your Own Big Online Courses

Adding to the theme of “online courses” Google releases Course Builder, “[their]experimental first step in the world of online education.” But beware, in the video below the 70’s-styled-gentleman in the cerulean blue video mentions “Web Master” and their skill-set to set up a course. I think it’s a great start and it’s a testament to the direction …

A compiled list of free online courses

If you’re interested in trying a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) head over to Open Culture where you can find over 550 free online courses from great universities. In addition, Open Culture has compiled a list of free courses offering certificates, here. Most of these courses offer “certificates” or “statements of completion.” (See their key to understand …

Why is [Technology] So Hard?

Vinton G. Cerf, one of the fathers of the Internet, recently wrote about software accessibility in Communications of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), November 2012. He explores why it’s so difficult to get software engineers to create software that is accessible to people with various disabilities. This is similar, I think, to technology and …

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