School Community

   Folsom, also a PACT Board member, got an opinion from the attorney general’s office that said any mail-outs from PACT, which is overseen by Ivey’s office, could include the website address for Save Alabama Pact.

   The statewide grassroots group was credited convincing the Legislature to appropriate nearly $548 million over the next 17 years go to keep the state’s promise to pay tuition for 44,000 students.

   Huckaby and Lambert were both leaders in the Save Alabama Pact movement before they were appointed to the PACT Board.

   Huckaby said today that Ivey had fought the group at every step in gaining access to communicate with PACT contract holders through the treasurer’s office.

   “We asked her many many many times,” he said. “She had her general counsel write us and tell us she could not provide private information (in mail-outs),” he said. “We asked to be included in mailings and were denied that.”

   Finally, Huckaby said Folsom asked for the opinion from King’s office, which gave approval for Save Alabama Pact to have a link on the PACT site and be listed on all PACT mailings.

   Chip Hill, a spokesman for Folsom, said the lieutenant governor twice made motions that were approved by the PACT Board to include Save Alabama Pact’s contact information in all future PACT mailings.

   “I think everyone was under the impression that the treasurer would abide by the decision of the board,” he said. “I don’t understand why she continues to antagonize these parents.”

   Ivey is the Republican nominee facing Folsom in the lieutenant governor’s race in November.

   Huckaby said a critical financial report on the status of PACT that was mailed earlier this year did not include the Save Alabama Pact information, nor did an Aug. 21 mail-out on “New PACT Rules.”

   “Nothing has changed,” he said. “How critical is that in this point in time I don’t think she (Ivey) is attuned to PACT holders needs this year. Kay Ivey just doesn’t want to follow the lead set down in a motion passed by the Board of Directors.”

   Ivey did not immediately return a phone call, but Deputy Treasurer Vickie Locke said the office opted for a postcard size mailing to save money, limiting space for information.

   While the postcard did not carry the Save Alabama Pact website address, it did carry the website address for the PACT program, she said.

    “When a PACT purchaser follows that link, they are immediately directed to a page that has the Save Alabama Pact address prominently featured,” Locke added.

   Huckaby said he continues to receive e-mails daily from PACT-holders who don’t understand the impact of the new legislation.

   He said many of those questions could be answered by Save Alabama Pact, which will be returning to lobby the Legislature again in 2011.

   Lambert said she was disappointed in the treasurer’s inaction.

   “We fought hard for that and they used every excuse in the world,” she said. “It’s just kind of heartbreaking to me. Just another thing . . .”

    Huckaby and Lambert predicted the legislative fix in 2010 would be short-lived, mainly because of continuing double-digit tuition increases at Auburn University and the University of Alabama. Sixty-five percent of PACT-holders attend those two schools.

   Huckaby said under current conditions, tuition is probably guaranteed only through the 2014 or 2015 school year unless the Legislature makes further revisions in the 2010 law.

Happy Labor Day! Well here in the US anyway. Technically a public/work holiday and I do plan to spend most of it relaxing. Unless my wife has other plans that is. I spent yesterday doing some early fall yard work for example. But it looks good so it was worth it. I have spent some time collecting some of the more interesting links and bits of information I saw over the last week though. You can follow me on Twitter (@AlfredTwo) and see a lot of this sort of  thing as I find it during the week. Also some conversation/chat with other interesting people about educational technology and other topics. Hope to see you on Twitter sometime.

Starting with a couple of community outreach pieces of news. One is that Microsoft has become a major sponsor of National Day of GiveCamp (on Twitter @GiveCamp) Give Camp is a weekend event where volunteer tech people from various companies get together to build tech solutions for non profits. Think of it as a computer age barn raising. Previous events have already helps a good number of organizations.

Also for nonprofits: Microsoft has launched its Elevate America grants program.

[…] the Elevate America community initiative, a new grant program that will support nonprofit organizations offering employment services, including technology skills training and job placement, in local communities across the United States. To support this initiative, we are committing $4 million in cash, $6 million in software and technology skills training curriculum over the next two years.

ITA Software is helping with a Massachusetts based Aspirations in Computing Award for high school women. See the MACAA Facebook page and follow @ncwitMACAA for more information.

Some interesting news on the Kodu front this week. The @koduteam announced that they have published an official Kodu language grammar. Very cool way to start understanding both what a language grammar looks like and what it specifically looks like for a graphical language like Kodu.

Kodu is also now available in German.  Kodu in deutscher Sprache 

Speaking of languages, there is now a Tutorial de Scratch en español / Scratch Tutorial (in Spanish). And apparently some are using Scratch to blend old and new by having students work with senior citizens.

Speaking of MIT, Scratch and that article above both relate to MIT, a bunch of people tweeted a link to the MIT Guide to Hacking

Sam Stokes writes about Adding shapes to your Windows Phone using some simple XAML and C# code.

See how a student aced his advanced programming course and got a game released for Xbox using XNA and Creators Club BCIT student creates Xbox game.

Most people use spreadsheets for real number, integers  but fractions? How to work with fractions in Excel.

From XRDS (@XRDS_ACM) – the ACM magazine for students a comparison between Punch cards v. Java.

Last week on Twitter @compsciwoman announced a new blog called CompSci Woman and a post titled a minor in CompSci makes you surprisingly employable! Now isn’t that the truth!

Have you heard about the new Clorox grant program? You can win n up to $50,000 for your favorite school. You can play daily. Called Power a Bright Future. Some school is going to win.

Last link for the day  Blue-sky thinking on Kinect and Xbox in education Some interesting thoughts from Anthony Salcito, Vice President, Worldwide Education, at Microsoft.

Learning to navigate those waters will be a part of a talk Alabama A&M University President Andrew Hugine will have with the school’s freshman class on Tuesday.

“I especially welcome opportunities to speak with our freshman students,” Hugine said. “They are new to the collegiate process and, in most cases, are optimistic about the fulfillment of their dreams and the avenues through which their dreams will be achieved.”

College can also be about nurturing the dreams of freshmen, not crushing them.
But while students are undergoing one of the most dramatic changes in their lives by starting college, Hugine wants to impress upon the 1,000-member freshman class their importance in the world.

Trite as it might sound, they are the future.

“This is a prime time to set the tone for their collegiate experience,” Hugine said. “They must know now that their communities, their states and this nation are dependent upon their success.

“Also, they must know that the roads which brought them thus far, at the doors of A&M, are indicative of a pattern of successful steps. Our aim is to inspire them and to remind than that much is at stake.”

I’ve talked about DreamSpark before of course but the start of the school year seems like a great time for a reminder. The Microsoft DreamSpark Program provides students with Microsoft Professional Development tools for free! Lots of tools! The full professional suite including Visual Studio and several server products. It provides access to the XNA creators club as well. It’s an amazing amount of software.

A recent edition is that now students can build and deploy apps to Windows Phone Marketplace for free through DreamSpark (In the US and other selected areas) This is a real value as it lets students create and sell applications without paying the usual marketplace fee.

The part of DreamSpark that gets the most attention is the sign up for college/university students. But high school students can get in on this program as well. The way this works is that someone (an adult who may be a teacher or an administrator) signs the school up and gets up to 200 access codes. This person (called an administrator by the program) then validates that the students they give these codes to are in fact students. The students can then sign up and start downloading software for free. And of course taking advantage of the other program features. Sign up you high school at https://www.dreamspark.com/highschool/

Give students some software and cut them lose to learn on their own. And have them look at the Imagine Cup and to think about entering that as well.

MOBILE, Ala. — The University of South Alabama reached a record fall enrollment with 15,007 students, USA President Gordon Moulton announced today.

In the past decade, said Moulton, the university’s enrollment has risen 30 percent.

“It’s a strong indicator of the quality of the university and faculty,” Moulton said.

Moulton also attributed the increase to the variety of majors USA offers. “Combine that with a great cost factor and you could see how” the school could set another new record enrollment, said Moulton.

The school also set a record number of undergraduate students, 11,658, and a record number of students residing on campus.  

USA’s 2010 fall freshman class came from 200 high schools around the nation.