An Empty Planet

We have been told for years that the earth is suffering from overpopulation.  However, new research indicates that the world's population is shrinking with significant economic impacts. Read more...

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Great Gift Idea for Kids

If you treasure your children's drawings turn them into stuffed animals
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Distance learning and blended education: The future course

The planet is a more objective oriented environment these days. With the concepts of institutional learning and the definition of the term ‘traditional student’ changing all the time, so is the approach towards how educational instruction and training can be delivered in such a way as to make the learning process as individualized and effective, with a deeper emphasis on direct-party attention and the accommodation of more students with specific responsibilities and needs which would render them powerless to pursue classroom based learning.
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Informal Learning Networks

A new trend in corporate America is the emphasis on informal learning, often called just-in-time learning. Informal learning is nothing new but with training budgets being slashed a renewed focus on how corporate knowledge transfer occurs is causing many to better appreciate that most people learn through informal social networks.  For example, the use of Wikipedia, search engines, and social media platforms are a common ways employees access information and pass it along to co-workers. 

The use of online learning tools coupled with social media platforms can provide on-demand interactive training capabilities at a fraction of the cost of traditional stand-up classroom instruction. Informal learning with web-based technology has been proven to increase workplace collaboration and the free exchange of ideas to improve work team effectiveness. However, what happens to all of this shared information once it is collected and passed around?  Most people away articles in email in-boxes, or folders on the corporate server.  This becomes the equivalent of the electronic dust bin. What is needed is a learning management system that can curate this information so that it is readily accessible to anyone on in the organization.  The same learning management system that delivers online training can be used to curate shared information. Since the system is cloud based it can accessed 24/7 anywhere in the world.  This is critical for any entity that wants to become a learning organization.

Blended Learning Approach Opens Possibilities for Juvenile Offenders

The United States has one of the largest per capita incarceration rates in the world, averaging 743 prisoners per 100,000 people.  While statistically crime has dropped over the last twenty years, the prison population has swelled.  This is primarily due to mandatory sentencing laws that have passed in most states and an increase in illegal aliens entering the country.  Currently 27% of the federal prison population is made up of individuals who are not citizens of the United States.  Estimates indicate that when these inmates are released, 67.5% will be re-arrested within three years.  Juvenile offenders make up an even more tragic statistic.  The U.S. incarcerates more youth than any other country in the world. Approximately 500,000 youth offenders are detained each year in the U.S. At least half of these offenders (200,000 – 250,000) are sent to adult prisons. Approximately 94,000 are sent to juvenile detention facilities. The rest are sent to community-based rehabilitation centers, such as group homes or half-way houses. Many of these juvenile offenders have a lack of education, few job skills, and substance abuse problems.  Each of these risk factors contributes to a potential life of crime. 

Research indicates that the sooner an offender can be turned around, the greater the chances they will not return to a life of crime. Therefore, targeting youth offenders so as to stop this cycle and rehabilitate the individual is critical.  Identifying risk factors early on is effective at preventing juvenile delinquency and future criminal behavior.  One important correlation between recidivism rates of these youth is their lack of education.  The number of youth who did not receive vocational training and committed additional crimes rated 78.3% versus a 51.2% recidivism rate for youth who did receive vocational education.  Therefore, society benefits both economically and culturally by educating youth both before and after they enter the juvenile justice system. 

However, educating these individuals is not easy.  A traditional class room approach is not always successful. Blending traditional class room instruction and online learning is based on the notion that learning is not a onetime event but a lifelong process. Students need to receive information more than once and in more than one medium in order to turn that information into knowledge.  Additionally, the online medium allows the student to review lessons multiple times and at their own pace.  This improves retention and student achievement. Class room instruction can focus on critical skills building and achieve a more efficient allocation of scarce resources.

Approximately one fourth of the juvenile offenders arrested by police were either in foster care or had an active preventive services file with a local agency.  Over half of these individuals were reported to have suffered abuse or neglect at home.  These at-risk factors contribute to juvenile delinquency that ultimately leads to incarceration.  Thirty to forty percent of youth growing up in poor urban areas will be arrested by their eighteenth birthday. Each of those youth that commit repeat offenses will dramatically increase their potential for arrest. Each time a juvenile offender is incarcerated, they fall further behind in their education and skills development.  This process continually feeds upon itself: Offenders that are released without the critical skills that could provide them with a job turn to crime to support themselves. 

The causes of juvenile delinquency vary, but most offenders come from families that are disrupted by spousal conflict, break-up of marriages, single parent households, or negligent parents. Foster youth could fall into many if not all of these categories. 

Currently all states are required to provide education to the offender population while they are detained. These educational programs vary from state to state and offer a minimum level of course offerings. A study done by Casey and Keilitz determined that 12.6% of juvenile offenders had developmental disorders and 35.6% had learning disabilities. This poses a significant challenge in educating youth offenders with effective training programs.  Nearly half of juvenile offenders do not return to school once released from a detention facility. Those that do return to school two-thirds to three quarters will drop out within twelve months of being released. Either due to behavioral issues or the fact that these individuals have fallen behind their peers in educational skills juvenile offenders have trouble with traditional class room settings.  An online approach coupled with hands on skills development may be an ideal solution.

Evidence has been collected from research studies that online learning can be completed by students in half the time as traditional classroom instruction.    Thus training costs can be reduced by not having to run multiple classroom sessions.  The blended learning approach does not eliminate classroom instruction but instead refocuses the classroom for critical skills building. This also allows teachers to spend more time helping students who are having difficulty in problem areas.

Studies indicate that students improved learning outcomes by 10% or more when a blended learning approach was used. For juvenile offenders who have learning disabilities having a self-paced program that works in unison with mentoring and classroom instruction is a much more successful strategy. 

Providing programs to youth in neighborhoods that have a high rate of juvenile delinquency is one solution. Programs, such as family support services, parenting education, transitional skills training, and case management can go a long way to changing the direction in which many of these youth are heading. However, a consideration of educational needs is critical to this process, as youth without job skills or life skills will potentially face unemployment, homelessness, and poverty.

A study done by the Central Education Association (CEA) indicated that prisoners who participated in educational programs had lower re-arrest rates, lower rates of re-conviction, and lower rates of re-incarceration. The study demonstrated that educational programs focused on job readiness, post-secondary education, parenting, health education, and general life skills was essential in determining the success of individuals once released from prison. A blended learning approach can be the most successful strategy for achieving this goal.