2011年9月8日星期四

Facility opens new identity at U.

The petals from the cherry blossoms across campus draped Livingston yesterday afternoon as Cheap Rosetta Stone Software University President Richard L. McCormick cut the red ribbon to officially unveil the new student center. Also present were Sen. Bob Smith, D-17, Piscataway Mayor Brian C. Wahler, Vice President for Student Affairs Gregory S. Blimling, Livingston College senior Victoria Rowlands and Executive Director of Student Life Elizabeth O'Connell-Ganges."There has yet to be an institution on campus with as many spaces to utilize," O'Connell-Ganges said. "We're having an open house to showcase all the new technology." The grand opening celebration highlighted the new facilities and technology now available. One aspect O'Connell-Ganges spoke of was the high-tech collaborative learning center, where students can connect their laptops to computer-projection systems at each workstation to do group work. Jason Goldstein, board member of the Rutgers University Alumni Association, played an active role in getting the expansion in the student center. "I spent years with undergraduates and graduates to see this moment," he said. "I can sense the dedication of all the people over the years who helped to put this together."While eating at Sbarro and Dunkin' Donuts, members of the community can bask in the light beneath a high-ceiling sunroom with three large-screen televisions playing news and entertainment programming.Of the many new features in the center, the Rutgers Zone, which will open officially on Monday, stands out as an Rosetta Stone Spanish Latin ultra-modern lounge. "Student Life and the Livingston Campus Council had a lot of input as to the games and what students would like out of this room," said Adam Helgeson, a School of Arts and Sciences first-year student. "Virtual put-put has to be tried it's so unique, such a perceptual experience."The Rutgers Zone will also be a hub for signature sundaes and rush events for fraternities and sororities, he said."Hopefully, lots of people will hold their events here," Helgeson said. "It's such a cool hangout place. Once they're done with class on Livingston campus, students can come here to play pool or just sit at the bar for a soda or two." The Rutgers Zone will also remove the pressures associated with drinking or dressing up at bars or clubs, he said.The Rutgers Zone is outfitted with its own scarlet knight statue, complete with its signature scarlet cloak. Skee ball, basketball, baseball and football games, air hockey, billiards, pinball and a comfortable lounge area complete the room, which faces a bar with five large-screen televisions.A jukebox nearby played oldies, like Simon and Garfunkle's "Mrs. Robinson" and The Eagles' "Hotel California." "We arranged with a third party company to license all the music to really provide the best atmosphere for our students to hang out in," Helgeson said.The multipurpose aspect of the Rutgers Zone and state of the art audio-visual equipment will be of great use, Director of Student Centers and Programs Kathryn Kuhnert said."We're all certainly excited for the new open-floor plan, flexibility of space and the new technology," she said. "We have multipurpose and state of the art audio-visual equipment that we'll be sure to Rosetta Stone Software utilize to the fullest extent."Livingston Hall, in which the guest speakers gave their speeches, seats 330 and has several large projection screens and an audio-video station, from which a multitude of lighting environments can be controlled."Really, this is a spectacular center that students, faculty, staff, alumni and members of the community can utilize for daily events," O'Connell-Ganges said. "It offers multiple functionalities and opportunities for student and faculty connections with a bold arrangement of events."

James McAvoy steps into Patrick Stewart’s blockbuster shoes in X-Men: First Class

If you can judge a man by the vehicles he owns, Scots actor James McAvoy is a cross between Rosetta Stone Languages early Marlon Brando and vintage Richard Briers – The Wild One meets The Mild One. The everyday Mr McAvoy owns a big old family car, is dad to a one-year-old son, husband to fellow actor Anne-Marie Duff, lives in north London, doesn't want to move to LA, but can see himself mooching along happily in the Trossachs some day. His alter-ego has a Triumph Street Triple motorcycle, described by its makers as oozing agility and attitude, and a career that's currently registering 100mph on the speedometer. After a taster of high-octane action in Wanted, the actor now has what every boy racer covets a starring role in a superhero blockbuster. X-Men: First Class takes the Marvel Comics characters back to their 1960s beginnings. McAvoy, star of films such as Atonement and The Last King Of Scotland, plays the young Charles Xavier, aka Professor X, the man who will become mentor to mutants who want to use their superpowers for the common good. Directed by Matthew Vaughn of Kick-Ass fame, and weaving in epochal events such as the Cuban missile crisis, X-Men: First Class is being seen as the first part in an ambitious trilogy. There's a lot, in short, riding on the kid from Drumchapel. It's just as well the 32-year-old likes jumping off tall buildings, a tale we'll return to later. For now, McAvoy is explaining how he first got into the X-Men as a teenager. The cartoon was really fun. Exciting and daring and action packed, but fun. That's what these films should be. Not that there's anything wrong with them being serious and worthy at the same time, he adds. I like to jump off things. Any situation in which you are nervous is like jumping off something Rosetta Stone V3 so just do it quickly' The PS is typical of McAvoy in interview mode. Never dull, always charming, but in the manner of his Celtic hero, Jimmy Johnstone, he jinks his way through answers without straying too far off course or revealing too much. But now and again he'll make a daring run down the wing and, in the blur, you catch a glimpse of the private McAvoy, boy and man. (How private are McAvoy and Duff? It took almost a year before Duff revealed that their son's name was Brendan.) We meet in London a few days after the Baftas, an occasion when he stood before an audience of fellow stars and directors and fluffed his lines, repeating the line the nominees are when he should have launched into and the winner is. But he bounced back immediately and generally looked about as relaxed as if he was at his granny's for tea. He's hugely confident in a most un-Scottish way. Always has been, it seems. Asked if he'd ever felt like one of the X-Men outcasts, he says once, when as a teenager he went to a fancy ball in Rosetta Stone Spanish Glasgow. I felt completely out of my depth. They were all very nice, but it was just all very posh. I'd never met kids with that much money before. I had to wear a tie and a suit, so I wore my school trousers, a stripy Levi shirt, which I thought was really cool, a burgundy felt sports jacket, and I borrowed my friend Peter's yellow and green pineapple silk tie. When he walked in the door he found the event was wall to wall kilts, tuxedos and ball gowns. Rather thank slink away he got stuck in socially. Totally. I was sitting at a table, chatting away, all that kind of stuff. Most people were nice but most people were kind of laughing at the way I was dressed. McAvoy was brought up by his grandparents and mother after his parents split when he was seven. Despite reports of his being Rosetta Stone Languages estranged from his father, his life in Glasgow surrounded by other family and friends must have been happy, judging by the wrench he felt when he left. He reveals this when I ask if he'd ever go to the US to live. No. I've already moved from one country to England. I don't want to do it again, [that] was hard enough. It took me about three years to get used to London.

2011年9月6日星期二

People You Know Have Stuff You Want: Community-Based Classified Ads Network Connects You to The Communities You’re Already a Part Of

Using the newly-launched Ad Communities, Rosetta Stone V3 individuals and groups gain a new level of control and safety when posting classified ads online. Within Ad Communities there are two distinct kinds of communities:1. At the town or city level, users will find pre-built communities for every municipality as well as any private school, junior high, high school or college near them. These are open to all local users by default, though a verified school official may request control of all administrative functions to add an additional safety factor for school-based communities.2. At the organization level, anyone can create a community for their company, office building, dormitory, apartment complex, church or even a school’s PTA or any group of people sharing a common bond. User-created communities can be completely open and public, invite-only or can be locked down by requiring each subscriber to register an email address from a particular domain.By creating a classified ads network that is fully customizable and Rosetta Stone French V3 controlled by local entities, transactions can be facilitated between people who already know each other and live and work within the same community. "Maybe the guy you rode the elevator with this morning has the playoff tickets you’re looking for or the woman you parked next to would be able to carpool three days a week," said Sean Anderson, Ad Communities founder. "Ad Communities lets you easily connect with any group to get what you need while also developing your own real-world networks, because these are people you already know or are very likely to run into again. And when given the right tools and a measure of safety and security, we believe they've got plenty of things to buy, sell and share."While the focus is on user-created communities, Ad Communities also has over 100,000 town and city-based communities developed worldwide, allowing users to reach a broader and more anonymous audience if they prefer. Additionally, users can belong to as many communities as they’d like, with the universal Ad Communities interface allowing them to create an ad that will run in multiple communities in a single step, or to search or browse for what they’re looking for within a single organization, Rosetta Stone Software throughout their town, or around the world.Launch-time languages include English and Spanish, with several additional languages ready for deployment soon. About Ad CommunitiesAd Communities is a technology service allowing any group of people to create and manage their own free and secure classified ads network. To learn more about Ad Communities, visit us at adcommunities .

2011年9月5日星期一

Daley school plan fails to make grade

Six years after Mayor Richard Daley launched a bold initiative to close down Cheap Rosetta Stone Software and remake failing schools, Renaissance 2010 has done little to improve the educational performance of the city’s school system, according to a Tribune analysis of 2009 state test data.Daley school plan fails to make gradeRenaissance 2010 officials defend efforts to upgrade education for Chicago students over last 6 yearsSix years after Mayor Richard Daley launched a bold initiative to close down and remake failing schools, Renaissance 2010 has done little to improve the educational performance of the citys school system, according to a Tribune analysis of 2009 state test data.Scores from the elementary schools created under Renaissance 2010 are nearly identical to the city average, and scores at the remade high schools are below the already abysmal city average, the analysis found. The moribund test scores follow other less than enthusiastic findings about Renaissance 2010 that displaced students ended up mostly in other low-performing schools and that mass closings led to youth violence as rival gang members ended up in the same classrooms. Together, they suggest the initiative hasnt lived up to its promise by this, its target year.There has been some good and some bad in Renaissance 2010, but overall it wasnt the game changer that people thought it would be, said Barbara Radner, who heads the Center for Urban Education at DePaul University. In some ways it has been more harmful than good because all Rosetta Stone Chinese the attention, all the funding, all the hope was directed at Ren10 to the detriment of other effective strategies CPS was developing.Turning around public schools is the core of Daleys efforts to keep the city vibrant. But the outcome of his ambitious education experiment is as important to the nation as it is to Chicago. The architect of Renaissance 2010, former schools CEO Arne Duncan, is now the U.S. Secretary of Education and hes taking the Daley-Duncan model national as part of his Race to the Top reform plan.Duncan is using an unprecedented $4.35 billion pot of money to lure states into building education systems that replicate key Ren10 strategies. The grant money will go to states that allow charter schools to flourish and to those that experiment with turning around failing schools all part of the Chicago reform.Illinois education officials hope to get a piece of the pie and are preparing an application for Tuesdays deadline. Renaissance 2010 was launched in 2004 after decades of school reforms failed to fix chronically underperforming schools. City leaders promised to close the worst schools and open 100 innovative ones that would rely heavily on the private sector for ideas, funding and management. Central to the plan was an increase in charter schools, which receive tax dollars but are run by private groups free from many bureaucratic constraints.Daley and Duncan credit the program with injecting competition and invigorating a stagnant system and say it has laid a foundation the district can build on.We havent looked at all the data, but our belief is that Renaissance 2010 dramatically improved the educational options in communities across Rosetta Stone Software Chicago, said Peter Cunningham, Duncans spokesman, who followed him from Chicago to Washington. We believe that it is contributing to Chicagos overall success. Renaissance 2010 and Race to the Top both reflect a willingness to be bold, hold yourself to higher standards and push for dramatic change, not incremental change.Cunningham and other supporters argue that many new schools, mainly in low-income and high-crime neighborhoods, are outperforming nearby traditional schools.

2011年9月4日星期日

How Corrupted Language Moved from Campus to the Real World

- In some quarters I’m viewed as a lawyer with a professional identity problem: I’ve spent half Rosetta Stone Store of my time representing students and professors struggling with administrators over issues like free speech, academic freedom, due process and fair disciplinary procedures.How Corrupted Language Moved from Campus to the Real WorldBy Harvey A. SilverglateIn some quarters Im viewed as a lawyer with a professional identity problem: Ive spent half of my time representing students and professors struggling with administrators over issues like free speech, academic freedom, due process and fair disciplinary procedures. The other half Ive spent representing individuals (and on occasion organizations and companies) in the criminal justice system.These two seemingly disparate halves of my professional life are, in fact, quite closely related: The respective cultures of the college campus and of the federal government have each thrived on the notion that language is meant not to express ones true thoughts, intentions and expectations, but, instead, to cover them up. As a result, the tyrannies that I began to encounter in the mid-1980s in both academia and the federal criminal courts shared this major characteristic: It was impossible to know when one was transgressing the rules, because the rules were suddenly being expressed in Rosetta Stone Cheap language that no one could understand.In his 1946 linguistic critique, Politics and the English Language, George Orwell wrote that one must let meaning choose the word, not the other way around. By largely ignoring this truism, administrators and legislators who craft imprecise regulations have given their particular enforcement armscampus disciplinary staff and federal government prosecutorsenormous and grotesquely unfair power.In my dual capacities as author and attorney, I have written two books, one on each subject. In 1998, I co-authored (with Professor Alan Charles Kors) The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on Americas Campuses. In that book, Kors and I detailed the absurd and decidedly anti-intellectual spread of campus speech codesstudent guidelines often cloaked in harassment vernacular like emotional harm or demeaning effectthat essentially conflate words and conduct. These codes, by their own terms, claim to protect vulnerable or historically disadvantaged students (and even faculty and staff members) from feeling insulted, harassed or marginalized by having to listen to words that, to someones sensibilities, wound. (That some college administrator in 2010 sees these measures as the solution, Rosetta Stone Italian V3 rather than as a part of the problem, is deeply disappointing to one who saw firsthand the drawbacks of a Princeton Class of 1964 with no women and a single American-born black student. I am startled that, so many years after my own graduation from college, such a demeaning attitude toward students in minority groups is so prevalent in higher education, as if they need special protection from words and ideas.)My most recent book examines an analogous phenomenon in the criminal justice system: vagueness of federal law. The U.S. Department of Justice Rosetta Stone began prosecuting people, around the mid-1980s, under statutes and regulations that even I could not understand; whats worse, federal courts seemed not to recognize this obvious unfairness and convicted people of serious crimes carrying harsh sentences.

2011年9月2日星期五

Education News

TodayWider school edicts fought A backlash Rosetta Stone Spanish V3 over national education reforms is growing in Colorado, with some school leaders rejecting what they call a federal intrusion into the classroom. Student fluency woes rising The number of Boston school students identified as lacking fluency in English surged dramatically over the past school year, presenting further challenges for a school district already under federal investigation for failing to provide adequate programs for students trying to learn the language. A new look at Teach for America and the high costs involved Heres a new look at the independent research on the effectiveness of Teach for America teachers. Around the country today thousands of young Teach for America recruits are getting a crash course in how to teach students in low-income urban and rural schools, a job they have promised to do for the next two years. Student avatars could help improve teacher training Monique, the eager-to-please girl with the chirpy alto, is raising her hand again. But Im more interested in drawing Maria who hides in the back row and avoids eye contact out of her shell. Higher Education23,000 university jobs threatened by cutsBritish students face the largest university class sizes in the developed world as thousands Spanish Rosetta Stone of lecturers jobs are threatened by public sector cuts, ministers have been waned. Michigan colleges create joint film instituteNearly two dozen students gathered Wednesday to participate in a program with the states three largest universities to drive Michigans burgeoning film industry, Gov. Jennifer Granholm announced Project Targets Nevada To Improve College SuccessNevada has been chosen as the first state to take part in a project designed to improve the nations college graduation rates and elevate the status of its work force to better compete in a global economy. Students May See Some Gains Through New Textbook RulesRules provide greater transparency on pricing and restrict publishers from bundling books with supplemental materials. With college textbooks costing an estimated average of $900 a year, student and consumer groups say new federal rules taking effect this summer could generate savings for low-income students in the years ahead. Miami University sororities antics spur alcohol debateOXFORD, Ohio (AP) Sorority spring formals call up visions of young women in colorful dresses dancing the night away not vomiting on tables, urinating in sinks or having sex in closets. The drunken shenanigans of three sororities at Miami University in southwest Ohio sound like something out of Animal House and were especially startling for a school that frequently makes the top 50 in a U.S News World Report academic ranking but never makes lists of big-time party schools. CommentariesAn Interview with Neal Mc Cluskey: The Right Reasons Why the Teacher Bailout is Wrong Michael F. Shaughnessy The primary reason taxpayers should oppose the teacher bailout and were really talking about a bailout for both teachers and other public-schooling staffers is that we have increased public-school staffing for decades Rosetta Stone Software and gotten no corresponding improvement in achievement.Small Schools Work After All, A Good Study ShowsPaul Peterson In Chablis-sipping circles, it has become fashionable to condemn the small-school initiative by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

2011年9月1日星期四

Education funding solution: tuition for foreigners

Dave Mundy - I have a solution (at least a partial one) to Texas’ educational funding problem. Rosetta Stone Store It’s simple, it’s easy and it’s rational. Charge tuition for foreign nationals attending Texas public schools.? The cost of public education in Texas has nearly doubled since 1995, when the Texas Education Agency was first tasked with publishing statewide educational statistics. We could send a kid to school to be educated for a year for $4,504 in 1995, with $2,637 of that cost spent directly on instruction.? In 2010, that cost had risen to $8,572. The difference? Some 210,000 more educational staff statewide (99,000 teachers) to handle 1.2 million more students — and a sharp rise in the number of students whose first language is not English.? The percentage of Texas students who are listed by the TEA as being “Hispanic” has risen from 36 percent in 1995 to 49 percent last year; the number of African-American students has stayed at the same 14 percent ratio, while the number of white students has plummeted from 47 percent to 33 percent.? In the meantime, the number of students enrolled in special education has tailed off from a high of 12 percent to just nine percent last year, while the number of students requiring bilingual education or English as a Second Language has risen to 16 percent — that’s around Rosetta Stone Cheap one in six students.? Texas has always had a strong Hispanic influence; it’s part and parcel of our unique culture. For many of us, learning the Spanish language was part of going to school — it was required in the Deer Park ISD where I grew up, for example.? But never in Texas history have there been so many “Texas citizens” who can’t speak English — mainly due to the fact that most of those whose first language is Spanish aren’t citizens, aren’t trying to become citizens and aren’t the least bit interested in American citizenship. They’re just here for the freebies, including free schooling.? It’s time they paid their fair share.? There are those who maintain that many of these non-English-speaking drains on the public treasury are “citizens” deserving of the “right” to a “free public education.”?? The prevailing argument is that the 14th Amendment automatically grants citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil. That interpretation is false: using that argument, children of foreign diplomats, for example, are American citizens whether they want to be or not.? The fact is, many of these so-called “citizens” are the products of fraud perpetrated against the American taxpayer — “anchor babies” born to illegal immigrants who cross the border just before giving birth. They use this fraud to circumvent the right of the American people to control their national borders.? Children of illegal aliens are also illegal aliens, whether they were born on the U.S. side of the border or not. And they are a drain on the resources of the American taxpayers.Texas school districts have been told that they cannot reject students based on citizenship status. But nothing says that a simple change in state Rosetta Stone Greek V3 law can’t accomplish what needs to be accomplished — finding a way to offset the massive cost of educating foreign nationals who are in our country unlawfully.? The federal government has already amply demonstrated that it will not live up to its constitutional obligation to protect our national borders. So here’s a solution available at the state level to the problem of foreign invaders bankrupting us.? First, we require all parents enrolling students in public school to show a picture ID to demonstrate their citizenship. That’s not a “racial” thing: everyone has to do it. Those who cannot supply information indicating they are U.S. citizens or lawful foreign nationals are classified as “unapproved resident foreign nationals” and subject to tuition costs.? The tuition I propose to charge is one-half of what the statewide total instructional expenditure was the previous year; thus, this year’s tuition based on 2010 numbers would be $2,488 per student. This tuition would be paid directly to the local school district Steelers Jerseys charged with educating those unlawful foreign nationals.? That still leaves us well short of the total expenditure on each pupil, of course. The remainder of that cost — again, using 2010 figures, that number would be $6,084 per kid — would be charged to the home country of the identified foreign nationals.? So if, say, a hundred thousand of Texas’ 4.8 million public school students were identified as being here unlawfully from, for example, Canada then Texas sends Canada a bill for $608.4 million to educate its citizens currently residing illegally within our borders.? It makes sense, it partially solves our education funding problems and it forces countries which are intentionally flooding Texas with their “unwanted” citizens to reconsider their policies.? Unfortunately, Texas lawmakers have proven time and time again over the years that they’re not willing to do what is necessary to solve public education issues.? When Texans told them they wanted more local control over education back in 1995, for example, State Sen. Bill Ratliff re-wrote the state’s education code to instead hand more power to local and regional administrators while requiring training in “consensus-building” for local school boards to stifle possible dissent.? Evidence has been introduced over and over again that the Texas Education Agency lied to the public about everything from test scores and dropout rates to accepting funding for Soviet-style “school-to-work” programs, but our legislators have never once stepped up to the plate and done their job and held that agency accountable.