EDUCAUSE: Mobile Computing 5-Day Sprint Summary

The EDUCAUSE 5-Day Mobile Sprint, held on April 25–29, demonstrated how mobile computing is changing higher education.


Now, you can view a full summary and revisit the resources from the week. If you participated, please take this short evaluation and give us your feedback on this pilot experience.

During the 5-Day Sprint, innovative ideas were explored via web seminars, online conversations, Twitter, and blog posts. The Sprint community assembled a foundation to build continuing best practices in areas such as:


Faculty experimentation
Immediate feedback
Innovative and enterprise mobile apps
Cybersecurity and privacy-related threats

EDUCAUSE: Mobile Computing 5-Day Sprint Summary

Campus Technology: Google Beefs Up Online Storage for Apps for Education

By David Nagel06/24/11


Google is increasing the amount of storage it provides to institutions that use its free Apps for Education platform.

Google Apps for Education is the widely deployed, free, hosted application suite that includes communications tools like as Gmail, voice and voice chat, Google Calendar, and instant messaging; collaboration apps, such as Google Docs, Google Sites, and Google Groups; and various administration features and APIs for integration with existing systems. According to a Google spokesperson, there are "12 million students, faculty and staff actively using Google Apps for Education" at present.

According to a blog post today, e-mail storage space for Apps for Education users is being increased from 7 GB to 25 GB for each mailbox. Mailboxes for current users will be expanded automatically "over the course of the next few weeks."

Google also highlighted 25 recent institutional additions to its hosted service, including eight school districts and 17 colleges, universities, and business schools. MORE

Campus Technology: Google Beefs Up Online Storage for Apps for Education

Dr. Education, PhD: Top 50 Blogs By Education Professors

Top 50 Blogs By Education Professors


Written by Rachael at 07:00 am on 29th June, 2011 Education, Education Administration

As you strive for a Ph.D. in education, it can help to have access to a number of different resources. The education of the next generation is an important duty, and you can make it a career. If you are stuck for ideas and inspiration, you can usually look online for a number of resources. One of the best resources is the large number of blogs on education.

If you are interested in education, you can learn from education professors. Those who teach about educating others can be a wealth of information — especially if they are professors teaching on a college level. You can get access to ideas, insights and more. If you are interested in reading about what’s happening with education today, here are 50 great blogs by education professors:

General Education

These professors blog about general topics in education. You might find a number of topics addressed, related to education. These can make great resources for news, research and more. Includes English education and more.

1.English Education Professor: This professor blogs about teaching English, and includes edtech resources for professors and teachers.

2.Professor Josh’s Blog: Takes a look at educational technology, and helps instructors design courses.

3.The Teaching Professor Blog: Great insights from one of the foremost education experts.

4.Critical Mass: This research fellow at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni is a former professor who blogs about education in America.

5.WorldWise: Various professors and researchers contribute to this look at global education.

6.Pedablogue: This professor looks at the scholarship of teaching.

7.Sherman Dorn: Addresses issues of traditional education.

8.The Classroom Conservative: English professor looks at education and the system.

Educational Technology
These blogs include professors who teach about educational technology. Plenty of interesting insights about what’s next for education.

9.Educational Technology Professor: Looks at education, technology and issues in education.

10.Educational Technology Newsletter: The folks at UMass Boston take a look at edtech.

11.OLDaily: Working with the National Research Council of Canada, looking at education and the Internet.

12.Mama Musings: The Internet, technology and education.

13.EdTechPost: Scott Leslie is the Research Coordinator for Educational Technology at the Centre for Curriculum, Transfer and Technology in Canada.

14.Professor Merryman: Looks at virtual world language learning.

15.Leigh Blackwell: Aussie professor looks at technology and learning.

16.open thinking: Another great edtech blog from a Canadian professor.

17.Educational Technology: Learn more about technology in education.

18.TechTicker: University of New South Wales technologist offers insights into edtech.

19.Using ICT in Further Education: Improving education through technology.

20.Adobe Education Leaders: A look at technology in education, from multiple authors, some of them professors.

Education Administration
If you are interested in becoming a principal, or working as a higher-up in a school district, these professors who blog about education administration can help. Learn about what it takes to be an education administrator.

21.Dangerously Irrelevant: Looks at leadership and technology, and the future.

22.Ray Calabrese’s Buckeye Blog: This professor of Educational Administration has a lot of insight to offer.

23.TechIntersect: A great blog written by different professors about using technology in education and in administration.

24.Principals of The Future: Wiki written by different educators, including professors, about what’s next in administration.

25.LeaderTalk: Contributors include professors.

Elementary, Secondary and Special Education
There are plenty of people interested in educating the youngest of students. If you are interested in how to educate elementary school children. Junior high and high school students have specific needs, and the techniques that work to teach younger children won’t work on these more sophisticated students. Find out more from elementary and secondary education professors, as well as learn from special education professors.

26.The Miss Rumphius Effect: This blog is aimed at teach children literature and other concepts. Written by the Department of Education chair at the University of Richmond.

27.LTTO: Learn to teach online from this professor teach elementary education at Ball State.

28.Digital Writing, Digital Teaching: This professor aims to help teachers reach their young students through digital methods.

29.Alan Singer: This Hoftra professor blogs about education issues, especially those related to elementary and secondary education.

30.Special Education Today: A look at special education trends, as blogged by different authors.

31.Teach Effectively!: This professor looks to help teachers whose students have disabilities, or whose students are at risk.

32.Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Individuals with Disabilities: An interesting blog from the University of Hawai’i.

33.Dr. Roxanne Henkin’s Blog: Learn more about issues in childhood education.

Higher Education and Adult Education
These professors include those who prepare their students to teach in college, university and technical/vocational school settings. Additionally, adult education professors, including those that specialize in high school equivalency education, adult literacy and continuing education, are featured in this section.

34.A Millenial Professor’s View of Higher Education: This professor focuses on communication technology in higher education.

35.Rick Osborn’s Continuing Education Blog: A look at higher education and adult education.

36.Higher Education, etc.: This blog is written by a doctoral student, who also teaches classes.

37.CEHD News: A blog from the University of Minnesota’s College of Education and Human Development. Interesting news and resources.

38.ProfHacker: Information from two professors on teaching in college.

39.One Ontario College Prof’s Blog: A look faculty relations.

40.Adventures in Canadian Post-Secondary Education: An interesting perspective from this education professor.

41.Adrian Barlow’s Blog: The Institute of Continuing Education at Cambridge has a blog devoted to education.

42.Continuing Education: This adjunct offers great insights.

Educational Psychology and Counseling
Part of any good education program includes some information on school psychology and counseling. Learn the basics of educational psychology, and counseling from these professors who are doing research and teaching about these subjects.

43.TeachingEdPsych: A great wiki/blog from ed psych professors.

44.Education Psychology, 2010: Irregularly updated blog about ed psych.

45.School Psychology Blog with Dr. Gaston Weisz: School psych issues, included development and disabilities.

46.Child-Psych: A look at child psychology and school.

47.Teaching Educational Psychology SIG: A look at how to teach ed psych.

Library and Resource Management
Many educational librarians and resource managers need classes as well. These professors provide great insights and helpful ideas.

48.Information Wants To Be Free: Librarian, and professor looks at combining learning and technology.

49.Costen Children’s Library: Great resources on children’s literature and education.

50.Scott Nicholson: This library sciences professor shares all sorts of information in a LiveJournal blog, YouTube blog and audio podcasts.

Dr. Education, PhD: Top 50 Blogs By Education Professors

The Chronicle of Higher Education: Black Colleges Still Play a Vital Role in Education

June 26, 2011
By Walter M. Kimbrough

This past May, I was invited to speak to a Sunday-school class at a local United Methodist church. I talked about how being a president is a calling for me, and how I have to exercise a great deal of faith to do my job. I am the president of a United Methodist-affiliated, historically black college, so faith plays a huge role in everything that I do.

I also spoke about the radical transformation of Philander Smith College, including our greatly improved retention rates, graduation rates, and rankings, as well as our focus on social justice. And I talked about my admiration for Benjamin Mays, president of Morehouse College when Martin Luther King Jr. was a student there. Mays mentored his students, and I try to connect with mine as he did—through meaningful personal connections.

After my talk, I invited questions, and the group of mostly elderly white men and women had plenty. They wanted to know more. Then inevitably, toward the end, an audience member asked the question—the one asked, in various ways, of every president of a historically black college or university by people with limited knowledge of black colleges:

Do we still need HBCU's?
In this instance, the audience member phrased his question by asking if HBCU's are a holdover from a previous era, an anachronism incongruent with modern America. I was ready with an answer: I talked about providing options for students, and offering the best fit in order to improve their chances of graduating.

But then I went further and said that even if we eliminated HBCU's, the result would not be greater engagement between races at predominantly white institutions.

Most campuses feature black fraternities and sororities, a black student union, and multicultural-affairs offices. So just because a black student attends a predominantly white college, that doesn't mean he or she will have meaningful interactions with people of other races. In fact, black students can have experiences that are radically different from those of their white peers. I speak from experience, as a graduate of the University of Georgia.

Yet last fall, Jason L. Riley wrote a critique of HBCU's in The Wall Street Journal, suggesting that they are no longer necessary, since there are so many traditional colleges now willing to give black students a chance, and more black students are attending those colleges. A few weeks later, Richard Vedder, writing on the Chronicle blog Innovations, pointedly asked the question in a post titled "Why Do We Have HBCU's?" In the post, Vedder claimed to be disturbed by race-based institutions and the fact that we "subsidize and promote institutions that celebrate homogeneity," and suggested that we should "rethink the public funding of this anachronism from the past."

My wife, a higher-education attorney, is a graduate of a small HBCU, Talladega College. We often discuss articles critical of HBCU's, as well as the frequently weak responses from the HBCU community, which tends to rely on outdated platitudes about providing access, making lemonade from lemons, and so on. The truth is, some criticisms of HBCU's are valid. So we must do a better job: Nothing silences critics like success.

Still, my wife recently wondered aloud, why isn't there the same level of outrage about segregation in K-12 education? Don't we all subsidize homogenous public schools? Aren't we using public funds to maintain segregated schools, which really are supposed to be a relic of the past?

The answer, disturbingly, is yes. Even I, as a homeowner, subsidize segregated schools.

I live in Little Rock, Ark., where the first major test of the decision in Brown v. Board of Education took place one mile from my office. Today, Little Rock is about 55 percent white, but the public schools are almost 70 percent black. My own ZIP code is 51 percent black—yet we are zoned for an elementary school that is 93 percent black. When we tried to get our daughter into a more diverse school through a magnet program, we were denied. Our options were to go out of the way for a desegregated county public school, or pay thousands of dollars for a private school with few students or teachers like her, while our tax dollars support segregated schools.

And yet there is no outrage about the resegregation of public education.

Thomas M. Shapiro, author of The Hidden Cost of Being African-American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality (Oxford University Press, 2004), writes that white students are the most segregated schoolchildren, the result of a purposeful action on the part of their parents to create a competitive educational advantage. Because of the wealth imbalance among races, many white parents are able to avoid high-poverty schools that fail because of economic segregation. Parental resources vary greatly by race, Shapiro points out, adding that "educational quality results primarily from where children live and the resources their parents can provide."

Instead of working to end segregation at K-12 public schools, and fix their systemic failure to educate poor and minority students, some critics choose to attack HBCU's instead. It's been fashionable to label HBCU's as anachronisms while conveniently ignoring the racial and financial realities in America. The real truth is that HBCU's are not a relic of the past, because segregated schooling for our children is not.

When I was asked "the question" that Sunday morning at the church, I was the only black person among the 40 or so people in the room. While the church's pastor is progressive, only two of its 1,200 members are black. After I spoke, I went to my church for service, and of the 200 people there, two were white.

As Americans, we still live in segregated communities and attend segregated places of worship. Our children attend largely segregated schools. We must address the day-to-day reality of residential segregation, which causes us to lead, in many cases, segregated lives, no matter where or if we go to college.

Many people quote King's dream to justify closing HBCU's, but based on where we live, how we educate our kids, and how we worship, few of us live that dream. The fact remains that the man with the dream attended an HBCU and was inspired by his college president to address the social injustices of his time. HBCU's today are mentoring the next generation of leaders in a way that only we can.

That kind of inspiration will never be anachronistic. In fact, we need more of it.

Walter M. Kimbrough is president of Philander Smith College.

The Chronicle of Higher Education: Black Colleges Still Play a Vital Role in Education