Teaching online can either be a big headache or a pleasure. It really depend on how your approach things and manage your time - as it is slightly different than the traditional classroom.

Kaye Shelton has posted some great tips on the Sloan Consortium's blog to help online teachers better manage their time and make things run smoother. These Time Saving Tips for Teaching Online help you utilitze education technology to reach students all over the world to help them learn whichever subject you're teaching. These tips include:

1. Carefully Develop Online Materials
2. Course Schedule
3. Write a Welcome Note
4. Print out Student Introductions

...and more.

Blackbaud, an education software solutions provider, has many programs available to help you manage and teach courses online.

Check-out the Kaye's full post here for all the tips along with more in-depth explanation of each.

Simplify administrative tasks and make grading a breeze with teacher grading software and online student information solutions from Blackbaud.

Registrar's Office software from Blackbaud is a comprehensive student information system for both teachers and administrators, who can easily look at attendance, discipline and academic records all in one place. Criteria can be pre-determined to automate class scheduling.

A good report card software component makes short work of printing grade reports. And, this K-12 information system integrates with other Blackbaud products, avoiding duplicate information.

This integration also allows certain components of this online student information system to be used over a network. Teachers can access a web version from anywhere with an Internet connection and avoid full licensing fees.

Check out these and other benefits of Blackbaud's Registrar Software solutions...effective management of your school can free up time and resources to do the most important job, educating.

As part of an economic stimulus plan, President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to initiate sweeping efforts to modernize school buildings and equip more classrooms with computers and broadband Internet access. This has brought a new sense of optimism among ed-tech advocates, despite current budget restraints.

In his campaign for the presidency, Obama and his team made pervasive use of the Internet and technology to bolster participation in the political process, which is credited for his landslide victory on November 4th.

Along with indications that he will create a chief technology post in the new administration, Obama is heralding a new era that will revolutionize the way technology is viewed and used in the United States.

Rather than a luxury, Obama views education technology as an infrastructural necessity. In recent years, math and science performance has been on a downward trend. To be competitive in the 21st century, math and science instruction must be world-class and education technology plays an important role.

To reverse this trend, affordable broadband access is necessary to give schools the tools they need to do the job.

In addition to improving education technology, the new president has pledged to bolster professional development for teachers. "Without the right professional-development component, technology resources alone won't be efficient" says Ann L. Flynn, director of education technology at the National School Boards Association.

Obama will be sworn-in as the nation's 44th president on January 20th.

Interact with developers and other users of education management solutions from Blackbaud and keep up to date with goings on at the company while enjoying your favorite social networking utility.

Informative technical posts from strategic education software blogs managed by Blackbaud are linked to Blackbaud's home on Facebook. But it's mixed in with happenings at the company, such as their charitable activities at company headquarters in Charleston, South Carolina.

Pics from company events and Blackbaud employees helping to make the world a better place around the world, from Charleston to Sydney to Indianapolis to London are there.

But the biggest benefit of all is the opportunity to interact with other Blackbaud users and developers and get to know their lighter side too!

Next time you're on Facebook, become a fan of your favorite enrollment management software company.

That depends on who you ask. Some believe those born between the mid-1980’s and 2000 suffer from digital overload, making them dumber while others believe this generation has intellectual skills and assets made available through education technology solutions that prior generations did not have, in turn making them the smartest yet.

These points were debated at a September 29th luncheon hosted by the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. Emory University English professor Mark Bauerlein argued that obsession with social networking and video games among students has led them to abandon leisure reading in large numbers. To bolster his claim, statistics from college-admissions tests and other sources were shown as evidence of an intellectual decline.

Bauerlein asserts that the relatively short high school and college years are individuals precious chance to build the foundation of their intellectual lives and careers through acquiring the conceptual skills and background knowledge to build upon.

To counter this argument, historian, economist and demographer Neil Howe explained how youngsters leisure pursuits today are more sophisticated than their elders. For example, the show Gunsmoke was a one plot show while today’s Law & Order is a multilayered drama.

Howe also cited statistics that today’s teens are reversing the trend when it comes to self destructive behaviors such as drug use and teen pregnancy. Also, kids today engage in much more elaborate activities at school than their parents did such as building robots, writing software programs and entering science fairs.

Both scholars agree that millennial are showing positive trends such as reduced violence and greater professional ambitions. Access to education technology has led to a higher availability of cultural and historical resources, thanks to the Internet and more libraries and museums which both scholars point to as a positive development.

In the end, Howe asserts that the millennial generation gets a bad rap, especially by those like Bauerlein who are using a baby boomer yardstick to measure their progress. Generations have characteristics reflective of their times, thus acting as a corrective force to their parents much like the boomers did with theirs according to Howe.

The new school year is upon us and teachers, students, and parents are busy with shopping for all the needed items. Computers are a heavy consideration for many, particularly for students in middle school or higher, as education software solutions continue to provide further integration of technology and education.

A computer is like many machines and even the human body, requiring regular maintenance to provide maximum performance. They are quite expensive, but with a regular routine your investment can be a reliable asset for a long time.

One of the easiest things you need to do according to TuneUp Utilities co-founder Tibor Schiemann is defragment your hard drive every two to three months. Windows includes a defragment utility and the process takes around an hour. The more fragmented a hard drive is, the slower the computer runs.

Another step that can be taken to make your computer run smoother is to remove unnecessary files and programs. Many new computers include new programs that may never even be used. Schiemann cautions however to not simply delete program files since registry problems may arise but to use the "Add/Remove Programs" utility in Windows.

For unnecessary files, a disk cleaner utility program is a simple and the best way to remove those without having to manually search for them. Windows includes a disk cleaner utility that can be easily accessed from the start menu.

These steps however can leave code, etc. on the registry, which is the central database for the Windows operating system. All installed programs are kept and run from the registry so it needs to be in good order. Manual registry maintenance is a bit technical so you should either have a professional do it, or use a Windows-certified program.

In addition, internet connection, visual, and sound settings can have impacts on a computers performance. Developing a maintenance routine can save you many headaches, and allow you to take full advantage of the many educational software solutions available.

Blackbaud, the education software solutions leader, is also a leader in providing timely news and information topics for nonprofit organizations. Through their Resources for Nonprofits section on their website, fundraisers and educators can find up-to-date news, statistics, current trends, and new tools to help make the world a better place.

Newsletters for Nonprofits is one way Blackbaud helps those in education and philanthropy stay current. Users subscribe at no cost and the newsletters, organized into 4 categories, provide perspective on a wide range of issues, from donor management to technical support for Blackbaud products.

Another resource available is informative guides, or white papers, that provide detailed information on a wide range of nonprofit related issues. Papers can be downloaded directly to your computer in .pdf format and include such topics as fundraising, prospect research, and more technical things relating to their education and fundraising software products.

Beside the above mentioned, Blackbaud also provides annual reports on the state on the nonprofit industry as a whole in addition to podcasts from company officials discussing many topics. Another neat tool is the Gift Range Calculator, which can help fundraisers plan a successful fundraising campaign.

The Associated Press is reporting the U.S. Department of Education's decision to allow six states to develop their own plans when dealing with failing schools in order to comply with the No Child Left Behind Act, a key part of President Bush's education policy.

The six states, which include Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Illinois, Maryland, and Ohio, presented plans to the Education Department that were tailored made to focus on individual schools' problems and direct resources to where they're needed most.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings commented that up to 10 states will be allowed to participate in the pilot programs. Other proposals are planned to be reviewed this fall.

In an interview, Spellings commented that activities in these states will be closely monitored and will be used to shape any future reauthorizations of the No Child law.

With this new flexibility, school administrators in these 6 states and any others approved in the future will be able to better utilize various enrollment management and online learning solutions to improve their schools.

"We're trying to set the table for a strong and sensible reauthorization," Spellings said. "We're going to learn some things."

The Internet, along with other education technology solutions, is becoming the best resource for teachers to enhance their teaching. Hundreds of sites populate the web with suggestions for lesson plans, test strategies, and collaboration, most for free.

Education World is one such site that is general in nature but has many articles of interest to school administrators, teachers, and IT personnel. There's also a wealth of information for professional development.

Dr. Bernie Poole, associate professor of education and instructional technology at the University of Pittsburgh, suggests several different free websites that offer free resources for educators.

- 4teachers.org provides platforms for creating quizzes, rubrics, and even classroom architecture, which provides help in the layout of the classroom.

- Web Collaborator is a free, web-based tool designed to help students work as a team on group projects. It takes the headaches out of communicating with different people working on the same task.

- Citation Machine from the Landmark for Schools project helps students correctly cite sources they use for research papers and projects.

Of course, this only scratches the surface of what is out there. EDTECH, an online discussion group for educators, is an excellent way to find resources and exchange ideas, etc.

In the 2009-10 school year, public school enrollment will surpass 50 million students for the first time in the nation's history according to The Condition of Education 2008, a recently released report from the National Center for Education Statistics at the U.S. Department of Education.

The center is projecting through 2017, expecting numbers of elementary and secondary school students to grow to just over 54 million. Educational software solutions will need to keep pace with this growth in order for their to be effectiveness in administering the education system

At a May 29 news conference, NCES commissioner Mark S. Schneider provided a summary of the report's finding, one of which is the growing diversity of the student population.

In 1972, 22% of public of school students were considered to be from an ethnic or racial minority group. That number had nearly doubled to 43% by 2006. And while the number of students whose second language in English swelled from 9% of the school-aged population in 1979 to 20% in 2006, the proportion of those that has difficulty speaking English outside the home decreased from 34% in 1979 to 25% in 2006.

Another highlight of the report was the decrease in students enrolled in special education programs, private schools, but an increase in the proportion of students whose parent(s) has obtained at least a Bachelors degree.

While the report is strictly figures and numbers and does not address the issues surrounding the state of the education system, it can be helpful for school administrators and school management software professionals in developing technology solutions to meet growing demands.