United States

Are Phone Books on Life Support

At one point or another in our lives we have seen or used a phone book. With cell phones, navigational systems, and the internet, could the phone book be as extinct as the dinosaurs?

In 2009, some states on the East Coast, such as New York City for example, have eliminated that use of White Pages! On the other hand Yellow Pages are still being delivered at this present time. Many other states around the country are looking to follow in the same footsteps.

Although about 70 percent of people still use the Yellow Pages as a reference guide to look up numbers on local businesses, more are turning to technology to research this information. Meaning this current percentage is due to decrease significantly. In the long run this could be good news for the environment. Approximately, over 20 thousand tons of paper is used to create phone books. Aside from the increase of technology, landlines are become non-existent in homes these days. This means that people don’t have a need for a phone book if they do not have a phone to use. Plus, with more Americans on the go, they don’t have time to sit down to thumb through a reference book. Dictionaries and Thesauruses are also effect by this. Looking up the meaning of words can be done via internet or cell phones. The new generation prefers this way to be faster and more efficient when studying!

By the early 1920 s New York issued over a million phone books in circulation. It took an estimated six hundred delivery men to distribute these books to residents. Of course this was the only means to look up information in those days because there were only landline phones. In almost 90 years, the phone book could be a thing of the past. It may not be a choice of preference, but a common way of living our lives for the future.

Are Phone Books on Life Support

In the Department of Education back in 2009, studies show that students who opted to take classes online did better then students who took traditional class! It was also discovered that students who took regular class along with online courses had higher test scores. It was reported that 10.5 million students took classes online in the fall and winter of 2009! These numbers were predicted to double as of 2012.

The reason behind this is due to many students who are pursuing their education today having grown up in an area where the computer age has taken over. It is natural that the new generation would feel comfortable around what they are familiarized to.

Believe it or not, students are able to focus better when taking course online! It draws them in to wanting to learn more and avoid being distracted by peers. It puts them in a mind frame of having one on one attention, somewhat like have a tutor. For those who are discovering the online education avenue that comes from traditional ways of learning, has found they are drawn in because of time and flexibility. It is a fresh approach to lean online verses having to run to a lecture halls or a classroom at a set time! Stay at home moms are discovering this especially appealing so they are able to take care of home and get their degree at their own pace.

Another factor is that the majority of us use a computer on a daily basis. The average person spends at least five to eight hours a day on the computer. That means it is easier for people to log on to a site and take their courses, including having the support of online research to help with writing papers and taking exams. Within the next 20 to 30 years everyone will be taking online courses in some way for their education!

The Stats on Education Online

It’s pretty clear that education has changed leaps and bonds due to the computer age. How are the schools around the country affected by this change? Are schools up to speed with the ever changing times?

When it comes to the internet generation, schools are indeed lagging behind. It is obvious that the school systems are going to have to change to keep up with the technology and the way students are learning these days. Students are no longer learning the way they did 15-20 years ago by going to libraries and doing things manually like writing. This method worked over hundred years ago, but now with our fast pace world education must be upgrade like computer systems! Students are living in the computer age where it’s all about data entry and online research.

Thus, teachers are in need of getting an upgrade as well. Many instructors are in the dark about teaching methods when it comes to technical education. This means that many schools are going to have to take a part in coming up with ways to bring the net-generation style of teaching into the classrooms. Most schools have already taken this approach; such as requiring students to have laptops, but it’s still a long way from where schools ought to be. Schools are really no different then businesses, as upgrades come to past, they must be implemented to stay competitive. This in turn brings up how schools that do keep up with the net-generation, the students are more competitive in work studies and in life overall. They score better on test, exams, and are most likely to get into top schools in the country.

School administrations around the country are learning themselves that it is no longer about lecturing the students to learn, but about studying how kids are learning these days and adapting to it.

Educators Keeping Up with the Times

More and more career hunters these days are looking at online education! What are the most popular courses that are being taken today? Just about every subject that you can think of from developing computer programs to creating designer jewelry is being fulfilled online, but here are some occupations that are out ranking others!

Studies have shown on virtual education that as of June of 2010, one of the hottest treads today for online classes is nursing or doctor’s aid. Since the mid 1990 s the demand has been high in this area, causing for more online college to implement course centered on the growing popularity for a higher turnover rate!

For those who desire to get into this field most states require that an individual take a state exam to be qualified to work in the industry. Taking online courses can make this easier for the individual by gain a certificate in a few short months! Once this is obtained, they can study for the state exam so they can be certified to work in any hospital or doctor’s office. In most cases, there are prep exams that can be taken online or the virtual institution may offer this once a student receives his or her diploma. Keep in mind that a student is required to do the state exam and clinical observation for certification.

Other areas that are on a steady rise for online education are business and technology! Business courses for management and finances are leading due to the weakness of the economy and challenges to maintain organizations. Masters of Bachelors Degree is most common when applying in the job market. This can be obtained within a year’s time with online education. Inspiring computer techs or those in the field can use online courses to earn degrees or to brush up on the latest technology. This way, they are able to stay on top of the latest information in the forever growing computer age

The Demand for Online Careers

The system of online education has made the process of learning easy and simple. You don’t have to buy books or borrow them from a library. They are available for free online in the form of ebooks. Ebooks are nothing but printed books in electronic format. Ebooks are becoming popular nowadays because they are more easy to obtain than printed books are. You can go to any website that sells or offers them for free, and after payment with your credit card where required, you can download it. The work of selecting books too is much easier if you do it online. You simply browse through the categories in the directories in any of these sites and take your pick. So you don’t have to spend hours searching your book among library shelves.

For some online classroom is a better alternative to the conventional classrooms when it comes to attending lectures. Students find it very beneficial. A great advantage with online classrooms is that you don’t have to be present in a tutoring class. You can do it sitting right in your room. Besides you can find tutors from any corner of the world. If you are in America you can take lessons from a tutor who is in India. This is what outsourcing is about.
You can also learn from blogs. Blog writing is getting very popular nowadays. Even some celebrities such as movie stars are known to write blogs. There are blogs on more or less any subject. In blogs people learn from the experiences and views of other blog users. Suppose you have a problem with your PC. You can’t figure out how to repair it. You simple go to a relevant blog, log in or sign up, and ask for a solution. If somebody reading that blog has the solution he will help you.

How to get online education

Many people trying to gain a better life for their children always state that education is the most important factor for future success. A college degree is always set as a goal to help people rise to well-respected fields. Yet, the cost of gaining this piece of paper has grown to staggering amounts.

The cost of education has risen faster than inflation, and in some respects, it has spiked into the hundreds of percentage points. As of 2010, going to college at a typical four-year public institution cost around $15,000 dollars. Private universities are even more costly, with an average cost of $35,000 dollars a year for undergraduate students. These figures take into account room and board but do not take into account other payments, such as car or other loans non-traditional students may have.

Long gone are the days when you could save up your tuition by working during your summer vacation. The staggering rise has especially hit hard in the last decade. Certain schools have hiked tuition up to 10 percent from one year to the next. Not to mention that while paying for school has gotten more expensive, financial aid is harder to get due to budget crunches and a bad economy.

The lack of aid has created a college culture of debt, where it’s not uncommon to hear of students coming out of their studies with over $100,000 dollars of debt attached to them before they even start their professional careers. Previously, this kind of debt was only attributed to the most time-consuming and also lucrative of chosen career professions, such as medical or legal. Now, that amount can be the school debt accumulated by someone wishing to be a social worker.

The increase in tuition shouldn’t stop anyone from going to school. However, it should make you think twice about which schools to apply to.

The High Cost of Higher Education

Online education is a new concept altogether. It has been made possible by the computer and the internet that have revolutionized the institution of education. Today you don’t need to go to classrooms to attend lectures by professors. The internet has brought classrooms into your home. Libraries or schools and colleges not the only places which provide education.
There are many ways you can gather information online. There are online encyclopedias and dictionaries, blogs written by users on specific topics, virtual classrooms, videoconferencing, online tutoring, live lectures found on streaming video sites, online classroom discussions, social networking sites, discussion boards integrated into online education environments, E-mails, and even virtual field trips.
Wikipedia is an example of online encyclopedias. In it you will find exhaustive articles submitted and edited by users on almost any topic. For example, if you type “motor vehicles” on your browser and add the words “wiki” to it, the search engine will take you to a Wikipedia page where you will find a well-researched material containing everything known to mankind about motor vehicles, beginning from the birth of motor vehicles to the latest, the fastest models and the most futuristic designs.

There are blogs and communities on almost anything anyone on the face of earth would care to write on. Be it an interesting global event such as the Olympic Games or opinions on some political or social topic.
Online tutoring is a popular alternative to the conventional classrooms. A student sitting at his home can have his arithmetic sums worked out for him by someone located in another country. This is what outsourcing is all about. This is very popular in first world countries such as the United States of America where students often outsource tutoring jobs to teachers from third world countries.
Thus online education has made the process of learning easier.

What is Online Education

The US education system is strangely top heavy. US graduate and research education is probably the best in the world. Billions are spent, no stone is left unturned in maintaining the highest standards of academia in the graduate institutions in this country.

However, this country sadly lacks in imparting basic, primary education to its young people. The coursework undertaken in our high schools is almost puerile compared to what is offered in the better schools of India, China and other developing countries. People do acquire general literacy here, more than in any developing country, but the level of school education is substandard. Mathematics and the sciences are sadly neglected; which is why American students are often no competition for immigrant or foreign students, especially in the sciences.

Worse still, our schools and high schools are deluged with drugs and premature sex. There are few schools where the average student goes to study. A high school is more a fun place to get high, flirt with boys or girls, as the case may be, and generally do everything that a pampered generation is good at doing.

As a result of this, an unnervingly low percentage of American students actually go on to graduate school. Even those that go on to study graduate science find themselves in stiff competition with foreign students. They find, much to their surprise, that people from developing worlds seem much better at understanding math and science, even when some of them can hardly speak English and lack the young American’s fine social skills. These excellent social skills come in handy in bars and other similar establishments, but have little use in a research laboratory.

We are a generation of pioneers; aggressively living on the frontiers is in our blood. But we also need science and math education for our younger generations.

Education in the US

Do you remember how expensive it was to buy textbooks in college? Maybe you’re still in school and struggling with that expense each year. Depending on whether or not you qualify for financial aid or decide to take out a student loan, the cost may be covered or it may be coming out of your pocket. At the end of the year, you can always try to sell them back to the bookstore, but you rarely get anything close to your original cost even if they’re in pristine condition.

With the growth of e-reading devices, the cost of education might be dropping in just one area. As the price of tuition and dorm rooms continue to rise each year, the new technology that is used to create electronic copies of paper books can cut the cost of textbooks by half or even more. As an added bonus, think about all the backs that will be saved by removing the need to carry pounds and pounds of books from class to class.

Electronic textbooks will also allow the studious pupil to carry their material with them wherever they go. Just think how much extra time you will be able to find each day to study if you could take advantage of that extra 10 minutes or so you spend waiting for things every day. No one will even think you’re a bookworm when you pull out your cool new reading device.

Whether you’re going to school for a business degree or a sports management degree, every type of college program can take advantage of this cost savings opportunity. At this point, only selected textbooks are available in an electronic format, but this is expected to change as the format grows in popularity. The only drawback is that you won’t end up with a whole bookshelf of dusty old textbooks to show for your college life.