My boyfriend is constantly on Reddit.com, so I finally caved and decided to check out the website that has a cute little alien as its mascot. Like most websites whose content is user-generated, there are a lot of cute pictures of animals, funny videos, and…oh wait, that’s not normal…a free university where you can learn about anything from art to languages to philosophy.

The University of Reddit is a new website that was created from a sub-Reddit. On UReddit, users can create their own courses and teach other users about whatever they want to teach. Some of the classes are introductory type classes (example: Hindi 101), while others are more advanced and specific (example: Vertebrate Palentology – The History of Vertebrate Life).

According to the creators, UReddit is “the product of free intellectualism and is a haven for the sharing of knowledge. Teachers and students are free to explore any subject that interests them. Unlike a convential university, University of Reddit strives to make its course offerings free, varied, and easily accessible. …Students don’t have to worry about attendance, grades, or tuition – this isn’t a regular university.”

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High school students in Camdenton, Missouri, can access Exodus International and People Can Change from their school computers. These websites are published by anti-gay organizations that offer advice for men and women who do not want to be gay. Essentially, they are telling people how to deny their natural feelings and pretend to be heterosexual.

The fact that students can access these controversial websites from a school computer is one thing, but when you take into consideration the websites that the school blocks, this becomes much more disturbing. Although students at Camdenton High School can access anti-gay websites, they cannot access websites that are supportive of LGBT people due to a Web filter that the school has been using.

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One Alabama high school will have to put its production of “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” on hold due to the crack down on immigration.

Pelham High School had to put a stop to its spring musical because a New York licensing house, which owns the rights to the play, didn’t sign a document obligatory under the immigration law.

However, following inquires from the Associated Press, Tams-Witmark Music Library Inc. conceded and signed the necessary document.

As part of the immigration law, all companies working with local or state governments in Alabama must sign sworn documents that maintain employers don’t knowingly hire illegal immigrants.

Even though the necessary documents were finally signed by Tams-Witmark Music Library Inc., the school will a face another road block. It will still have to purchase the rights to the play, which could cost over $1,200.

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Kate Baker is a celebrity of sorts. Every day when she walks into her place of employment, she is greeted by delighted screams from her fans: a group of elementary school students at Beacon Hill’s Maple Elementary in Seattle, Washington. Why is Baker so popular with her students? It’s very simple: she’s the art teacher.

“They’re always so excited,” Baker said about her students. “They want to know if they have art that day. Because they get joy from it.”

So it seems somewhat wrong and confusing that one of the most popular teachers at Maple Elementary is fearful for her job due to budget cuts in the district. Also, many schools are feeling the pressure to place more emphasis on math and reading skills, which means that any extra funds go to these programs instead of to the art programs.

“If your school has money or if you have a principal who’s a real proponent of the arts, then you get it,” said Baker about which schools have arts departments. “And if you’re not in one of those two groups, then you don’t.”

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How much time do you spend doing homework each night? If your answer is less than two hours, you might want to start studying more until you reach that number.

According to a study from the UK that followed 3,000 students during the past 15 years, students who spend two hours studying each night do better in English, math and science. The study by the United Kingdom’s Department of Education found that studying between two and three hours had the best results for students.

“That’s one of the reasons Indian and Chinese children do better [in school],” said Pam Sammons, an education professor at University of Oxford, about the findings of the study. “They tend to put more time in. It’s to do with your effort as well as your ability.”

So does this mean that you should start studying for 10 hours every day? After all, if a little bit is good, then a lot must be better, right? Well, not exactly.

“What we’re not saying is that everyone should do large amounts, but if we could shift some of those who spend no time or half an hour into [doing] one to two hours [it would be better],” Sammons continued. “One of the reasons private schools results are better is that there’s more expectation of homework.”

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Many students think of the ACT and SAT as tests they have to take to get into college. They study a little bit, take the test, and then apply to the schools where their scores are deemed acceptable. However, the world of college admissions is changing and these tests might not hold as much sway in the future.

Currently, there are 850 colleges and universities in the USA that have an SAT/ACT optional admissions policy. This means that students do not have to take these standardized tests in order to be accepted. Some of the schools that have adopted this policy include Indiana State University, Johnson & Wales University, and Kansas State University.

Some people are in favor of this new trend concerning college admissions because they argue that the tests are “a cocktail of trickery [that do not allow] enough time, and [require] idiosyncratic ways of thinking,” as Anthony Russomanno of the Princeton Review said. The SAT and ACT were originally designed to create a bell-curve distribution of test scores, but opponents say that this does not prove the tests are fair. Instead, they say that the tests would be fair if students could study for them in a similar way that students can study for other tests, such as AP and IB exams. Read the rest of this entry »

Lately, the state of Arizona has been coming out with some pretty conservative laws, such as its immigration laws and definition of when life begins. Now, the state is taking moves that might spread its conservation reach into education.

That state’s Senate approved House Bill 2563 on April 12, 2012. This bill will create a new high school class in public and charter schools where students read and learn about the Bible and the role it has played in Western culture. House Bill 2563 passed in February of this year and is now sitting on Governor Jan Brewer’s desk, where it will either be signed into effect or thrown out.

So will this class just be a lot of Bible-thumping? Not exactly. If the bill passes, the state’s Board of Education must create an elective class that will be offered for high school students called “The Bible and its influence on Western Culture.” Students who choose to take the class would learn the impact the Old and New Testaments have had on history, literature, government, and other aspects of Western society throughout the ages.

According to Republic state Rep. Terri Proud, the teachers who teach this class will only be able to use the Bible “in a very restricted way.” Read the rest of this entry »

Does a little piece of paper ever really mean that much? Usually, the answer has been no, unless that piece of paper is a college diploma. However, according to some, these colleges diplomas that people spend thousands of dollars and countless hours pursuing might become just another piece of paper in the near future, thanks to the advent of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

MOOCs and other higher education courses that are available online are changing the future of higher education.

“Who needs a university anymore?” David Wiley, a professor at Brigham Young University, asked. “Employers look at degrees because it’s a quick way to evaluate all 300 people who apply for a job. But as soon as there’s some other mechanism that can play that role as well as a degree, the jig is up on the monopoly of degrees.”

Wiley thinks that this change will be coming sooner than you might have thought, maybe by the end of the year. He proposed that it will become common place for people who studied through MOOCs to have high-paying jobs at companies like Google.

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Although some students thought their former teacher, Shane Schumert, would return to the school and “do something,” nobody really saw it coming when he did.

On March 6, 2012, Schumert returned to Episcopal High School, a private high school in Florida where he had worked until earlier that morning when he had been fired with an AK-47 assault rifle hidden in a guitar case. He shot and killed the school’s headmistress, Dale Regan, and then turned the gun on himself and committed suicide.

Details concerning why Schumert was dismissed have not been released, but one student, Maria Boyance, told a local newspaper that she heard he had been fired and was escorted out of the school. Boyance described Schumert as being an “awkward man.”

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They say that it pays to know people in the right places, but I didn’t think they meant it quite as literally as a recent scandal at Berkeley is proving. A senior administrator, Diane Leite, was recently demoted after a disciplinary investigation showed that she was giving her lover unfair and undeserved rewards.

A supervising manager at the school reported Leite and her lover, Jonathan Caniezo, a purchasing manager at Berkeley, after the manager noticed that Caniezo’s salary continued to increase for no apparent reason. In fact, between 2007 and 2010, Leite authorized five salary increases for Caniezo that increased his pay from $70,000 to $110,000. After the school heard about this and began an investigation, it was determined that Leite would be demoted to “Director of Research Development” and have her own annual salary reduced by $13,531. However, she will still be making $175,000 each year.

Despite the moral problems that someone might have with this situation, there is also the issue of financial problems that Berkeley University has been dealing with recently. For the past few years, Berkeley has been dealing with budget cuts and has had to increase tuition. Berkeley is already one of the most expensive public schools in the nation, but just last year, they approved a tuition increase that raised the amount of money that students pay each semester by almost $2,000 each year.

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