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Comment Re:yes, half-time, one day, cooperatives. Many opt (Score 1) 700

by smalltalker (#48978833) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Pros and Cons of Homeschooling?

Your state or county rules may offer a part-time choice as well - when we lived in Iowa, you could do a part time enrollment, which we did to pick up classes that are harder to do with just one student, such as band or a full chemistry lab. My brother in North Carolina has his kids in a charter school part time so they can do athletics

Comment Bring interesting data too (Score 1) 223

by smalltalker (#48391331) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Programming Education Resources For a Year Offline?

If you want to motivate yourself, bring some data for a problem that interests you. Data.gov ( http://www.data.gov/ ) or your national equivalent, financial data from Yahoo, something that you find though an Open Data ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ) site. Then develop your skills while working on real data. I code best in conjunction with unit tests, and for anything above a trivial exercise I like an actual data sample.

Submission + - These Drones Hold the Key to Understanding How Fast Greenland Is Melting

Submitted by merbs
merbs writes: Thank glaciologist Jason Box for the Arctic bird’s-eye view of one of the most serene, alien landscapes on the planet. Box spends much of his time in Greenland, where he uses drones to measure 'dark snow'—snow that has accumulated soot and dust, thanks to human activity—which absorbs more sunlight and melts faster. Drone photography, then, may hold the key to understanding just how fast Greenland is melting.

Submission + - Colleges Face New 'Gainful Employment' Regulations for Student Loans 1

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Education Secretary Arne Duncan says the Education Department wants to make sure that loan programs that prey on students don’t continue their abusive practices. Now Kimberly Hefling reports at PBS that for-profit colleges that don’t produce graduates capable of paying off their student loans could soon stand to lose access to federal student-aid programs. In order to receive federal student aid, the law requires that most for-profit programs, regardless of credential level, and most non-degree programs at non-profit and public institutions, including community colleges, prepare students for "gainful employment in a recognized occupation." To meet these “gainful employment” standards, a program will have to show that the estimated annual loan payment of a typical graduate does not exceed 20 percent of his or her discretionary income or 8 percent of total earnings. "Career colleges must be a stepping stone to the middle class. But too many hard-working students find themselves buried in debt with little to show for it. That is simply unacceptable," says Duncan . "These regulations are a necessary step to ensure that colleges accepting federal funds protect students, cut costs and improve outcomes. We will continue to take action as needed."

But not everyone is convinced the rules go far enough. "The rule is far too weak to address the grave misconduct of predatory for-profit colleges," writes David Halperin. The administration missed an opportunity to issue a strong rule, to take strong executive action and provide real leadership on this issue" The final gainful employment regulations follow an extensive rulemaking process involving public hearings, negotiations and about 95,000 public comments and will go into effect on July 1, 2015

Submission + - Facebook Sets Up Shop On Tor (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Assuming that people who use the anonymity network want to also use Facebook, the social network has made its site available on Tor, Facebook software engineer Alec Muffett said in a post on Friday. Facebook also decided to encrypt the connection between clients and its server with SSL, providing an SSL certificate for Facebook's onion address. This was done both for internal technical reasons and as a way for users to verify Facebook's ownership of the onion address. Since it is still an experiment, Facebook hopes to improve the service and said it would share lessons learned about scaling and deploying services via an onion address over time.

Comment Re:Some are good (Score 1) 428

by smalltalker (#33047886) Attached to: Your Online Education Experience?

I have had 2 children use online courses as part of their college education, but the courses were online offerings by traditional universities (NC State and BYU). Their experiences were good and they got to interact with the instructors, not as much with classmates.

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