Professors can now customize textbooks by editing, rewriting, or deleting various sections of them through new online software. Macmillan, one of the largest publishers of textbooks, is creating a new digital textbook program called DynamicBooks. This program will be like a Wikipedia version of textbooks, according to The New York Times. Many professors use generic textbooks and assign various outside-of-the-book readings and assignments. Also, professors typically ignore certain chapters or sections of the textbook and correct other sections in their lectures. However, this process can be facilitated with Macmillan’s DynamicBooks read more...

Dear high school seniors, when you sit in a cubicle for the next 50 years of your life for nine hours a day, what do you want to do? Think about it, and let yourself know in a few years. The earlier one can declare a major the better. However, it is very important for students not to pigeon-hole themselves into majors before college even starts. Choosing a major is one of the most important decisions students can make, and they need to choose carefully. After all, it very well could be what you do every day for the next 50 years. Carefully choosing a major does not entail typing “Economics Jobs” into Google or asking al read more...

This post is being written while listening to Professor Jim Newton’s Communication Studies 187: Journalistic Ethics from the University of California Los Angeles for free. The lecture is an hour-long video clip from YouTube. The U.S. News and World Report states that many college professors are uploading their lectures to online sites, extending higher education past students and teachers to all people. Their lectures are publicly available to anyone interested. This trend started in 2001 with the University of California – Berkley’s launch of webcast.berkley.edu and Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s launch o read more...

"When will I ever need this?" "Why would I ever need to know this?" Questions like this from students are often met with an answer like, "Well...when you're in the real world..."Wrong answer. This represents the loss of a great learning opportunity. Instead of referencing some ambiguous state called "the real world," educators could instead find applications with which the students can directly relate. Merely just saying that they will need this specific piece of knowledge in some future "real world" also unnecessarily devalues the student's current lives. Are they not living very real moments every day? So how can educators turn this questio read more...

The Advance Placement program is increasing in high schools throughout the nation, bringing more opportunities to students, according to The New York Times. The A.P. program was originally created to allow top students to take college-level classes and earn college credit. Most high schools offer A.P. classes in a variety of different subjects. A.P. students take the A.P. exam, and they can earn college credit at most institutions with a passing score of 3, 4, or 5. The exam is scored 1-5, with 5 as the highest possible score. The higher one scores, the more credit he/she can earn. The A.P. expansion is allowing more students to take A.P. read more...