Daily Digest

Today's Digest takes a look at a new grant program in Utah aimed at improving STEM education, the forecasted increase in federal spending on big data related expenses, a bold move from the state of Wyoming in rejecting to use a new set of sceicne standards that have been developed for K-12, a look at why many manufacturing firms should and are considering moving factories back to the U.S., and a proposal from the universities in Ireland to create a unified brand for selling online courses. 

Today we will look at a unique teacher apprenticeship program that is helping mid-career professionals become teachers, a new report that will provide guildelines to help schools improve the efficiency of their spending, the school levy results from Tuesday's primary election, new funding from the Board of Regents to develop workforce training programs, and efforts from some of Ohio's school districts to expand their vocational education offerings. 

The Digest for today looks at the increasing amount of time students spend taking and preparing for standardized tests, a series of new online courses to be taught by the Smithsonian Institute, a new supercomputer that will be owned and operated by a collaboration of colleges and private companies, Google's pledge to stop scanning student emails for advertising purposes, and an open letter from renewable energy companies discussing their impact on the state's economy. 

In today's Digest we look at some of the key findings from the White House's Big Data and Privacy report and what these findings might mean for big data. We also look at a new Ohio bill that will provide clearer standards for how to award college credit to returning veterans, the impact that the improving economy is having on student loans, an international robotics competition for students of all ages, and some best practices for keeping online students engaged in thier coursework. 

South Carolina is following Indiana's lead and is working on a bill that will remove the Common Core standards over the next year. In NYC the MOOC providor Coursera is partnering with the library system to provide space for MOOC discussion groups, A major diversity gap between teachers and students has been found, a Northeast Ohio school district is creating a new STEM project based school, and Race to the Top's impact on education is looked it.

The digest for today we examine a new way at looking at MOOCs low completion rates and how these low figures may not represent how effective MOOCs actualy are, a new grant program for minority students pursueing STEM degrees that is funded by the Air Force, the addition of an HPC cluster to help researchers at Rutgers University, the role that major industrial firms are playing in the growth of additive manufacturing, and a new breakthrough in the quest to develop the first fully functional quantum computer. 

The digest for today we look at a new law in Georgia that will provide full tuition coverage for some students at technical colleges, Google's progress towards developing a fully autonomous vehical, a new hands on science lab at the University of Maryland that will also serve as a research lab for the Howard Hughes Medical Center, a new supercomputer contract between Cray Inc. and the Dept. of Energy, and considerations one should take when looking at online tutoring. 

The digest for today examines the potential impacts that big data could have on the poor, a look at what colleges can do to improve the way STEM subjects are taught, a study that shows why students have not adopted tablets as the industry had predicted, the addition of a job application kiosk to the Queen's library, and a $30 million investment from Chevron to improve project based STEM education.

The digest for today highlights the use of big data by small businesses to improve customer loyalty, the collapse of a major ed-tech start-up, a festival that celebrates science and engineering achievements, a scholarhip program funded by the Cuyahoga County Council, and a panels thoughts on how to improve STEM education at the middle school level. 

The digest for today look at efforts by the U.S. Dept. of Education to improve teacher training, the rising cost of tuition at Ohio's Public Universities, efforts to improve the efficiency of computers, the increased oversight of charter schools in Ohio, and the issue of attrition in STEM degree programs