Your clasroom in the future

The 2009 Horizon Report describes the continuing work of the NMC’s Horizon Project, a long-running qualitative research project that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, research, or creative expression within Higher Education.

You can also view the reports for 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 and 2004 if you'd like to check how accurate their predictions were.

So expect more of the following in your classrooms in the next:

One year or less:

• Mobiles
  Mobiles are already in use as tools for education on many campuses. New interfaces, the ability to connect to wifi and GPS in addition to a variety of cellular networks, and the availability of third-party applications have created a device with nearly infinite possibilities for education, networking, and personal productivity on the go; almost every student carries a mobile device, making it a natural choice for content delivery and even field work and data capture.

• Cloud Computing
  The emergence of cloud-based applications is causing a shift in the way we think about how we use software and store our files. Educational institutions are beginning to take advantage of ready-made applications hosted on a dynamic, ever-expanding cloud that enable end users to perform tasks that have traditionally required site licensing, installation, and maintenance of individual software packages. Email, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, collaboration, media editing, and more can all be done inside a web browser, while the software and files are housed in the cloud.

Already, cloud-based applications are being used in the K-12 sector to provide virtual computers to students and staff without requiring each person to own the latest laptop or desktop machine; a handful of basic machines, provided they can access the Internet and support a web browser, are all that is needed for access to virtually unlimited data storage and programs of all kinds.

Two to Three years:

• Geo-Everything
  Everything on the Earth’s surface has a location that can be expressed with just two coordinates. Using the new classes of geolocation tools, it is very easy to determine and capture the exact location of physical objects — as well as capturing the location where digital media such as photographs and video are taken. The other side of this coin is that it is also becoming easier to work with the geolocative data thus captured: it can be plotted on maps; combined with data about other events, objects, or people; graphed; charted; or manipulated in myriad ways.

A sampling of location-aware applications across disciplines includes the following:

Literature
Geotagging and virtual geocaching can be used to create annotated maps and real-world locations related to works of literature, enhancing the experience of reading the story. For instance, out of personal interest, one reader created a map of the course described in The Travels of Marco Polo, including passages from the text, photographs of the places mentioned (historical and contemporary), annotations and links, and other information
Medicine.
The University of Florida has used a 2-dimensional web-based Transparent Reality Simulation Engine to teach students how to operate medical machinery for several years. Recently, the addition of a GPS-enabled tablet device has allowed learners who are spatially challenged to experience the transparent reality visualization overlaid directly onto the real machine, enabling them to use the machine’s controls rather than a mouse as input to the simulation. Geolocation is used to track the tablet and align the physical machine with the visualization on the tablet.
Games-based Learning
The Local Games Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is developing "local games," learning experiences set in real-life neighborhoods and ecological habitats. Combining geolocation and alternate reality games, local games immerse the learner in a physical space as they explore the unique characteristics of the location and its inhabitants.

• The Personal Web
  Armed with tools for tagging, aggregating, updating, and keeping track of content, today’s learners create and navigate a web that is increasingly tailored to their own needs and interests: this is the personal web.

The tools that enable the personal web are also ideal toolsets for research and learning. The ability to tag, categorize, and publish work online, instantly, without the need to understand or even touch the underlying technologies provides a host of opportunities for faculty and students. By organizing online information with tags and web feeds, it is a simple matter to create richly personal resource collections that are easily searchable, annotated, and that support any interest.

Four to Five Years:

• Semantic-Aware Applications
  The idea behind the semantic web is that although online data is available for searching, its meaning is not: computers are very good at returning keywords, but very bad at understanding the context in which keywords are used.

The capability of semantic-aware applications to aid in searching and finding has implications for research, especially in light of the rate at which web content is being created. As semantic search tools continue to develop, it will be more common to see highly relevant results that display desired information in the hit list summary itself, saving time that is now spent clicking through to each page in turn. Semantic search also promises to reduce the number of unrelated or irrelevant results for a given search and to facilitate natural-language queries, both potentially useful features for researchers.

• Smart Objects
  Smart objects are the link between the virtual world and the real. A smart object "knows" about itself — where and how it was made, what it is for, who owns it and how they use it, what other objects in the world are like it — and about its environment. Smart objects can report on their exact location and current state (full or empty, new or depleted, recently used or not).

There are very few examples of smart objects in use in academia, although significant research is being done into how to create and track smart objects and how they might eventually be used. A sampling of applications for smart objects across disciplines includes the following:

Archaeology.
The way that a single smart object connects to a network of information is useful for many disciplines. Consider a student or researcher examining a group of objects from an archaeological dig. A tag attached to the label of each object, when scanned with a mobile device like a camera-enabled phone, would instantly bring up photographs of other objects from the dig, video of the dig site, maps, and any other media or information associated with the area.
Health Care.
Researchers and students at the University of Arkansas have created a simulated hospital environment in the virtual world of Second Life to test the practical and social implications of tagging and tracking patients, hospital staff, supplies, and locations.
Oncology
At Purdue University, researchers have developed a tiny smart object designed to be injected into a tumor. Once placed there, the device can report on the doses of radiation received at the site where it is implanted and indicate the exact location of the tumor during treatment.

How technology will impact HE

The future of higher education: how technology will shape learning is an Economist Intelligence Unit white paper, sponsored by the New Media Consortium.

Here is the executive summary:

Technological innovation, long a hallmark of academic research, may now be changing the very way that universities teach and students learn. For academic institutions, charged with equipping graduates to compete in today’s knowledge economy, the possibilities are great. Distance education, sophisticated learning-management systems and the opportunity to collaborate with research partners from around the world are just some of the transformational benefits that universities are embracing.

But significant challenges also loom.

For all of its benefits, technology remains a disruptive innovation—and an expensive one. Faculty members used to teaching in one way may be loath to invest the time to learn new methods, and may lack the budget for needed support.

This paper examines the role of technology in shaping the future of higher education. The major findings are as follows:

* Technology has had—and will continue to have—a significant impact on higher education. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of survey respondents from both the public and private sectors say that technological innovation will have a major influence on teaching methodologies over the next five years. In fact, technology will become a core differentiator in attracting students and corporate partners.

* Online learning is gaining a firm foothold in universities around the world. More than two-thirds of respondents from academia say that their institutions offer online courses. Many of them, especially those with a public-service mandate, consider online learning key to advancing their mission, placing advanced education within reach of people who might otherwise not be able to access it.

* Corporate-academic partnerships will form an increasing part of the university experience, at a time when locating funding and controlling costs are key concerns, and when only one-quarter of university chief information officers (CIOs) have a place at the table when it comes to setting strategy. To attract corporate partnerships, institutions will need to demonstrate a commitment to advanced technologies.

* University respondents view technology as having a largely positive impact on their campuses, but acknowledge that operational challenges may hinder the full benefits from being realised (for example, tenure, promotions and other organisational practices may need adjustment to encourage faculty members to adopt new technologies). In addition, technology may be disruptive in ways not intended: respondents note a rise in student plagiarism, cheating and distractability, which they attribute to easy and ready access to mobile technologies.

* Higher education is responding to globalisation. Respondents say that having an overseas presence will be the norm for the majority of universities over the coming years, and 54% of academic respondents say their institutions either already have foreign locations or plan to open them in the next three years. Distance education is also becoming increasingly global, with universities in the US and overseas leveraging advanced technologies to put education within reach of many more individuals around the world.

Looking towards the future

Copyright:Marzie

Every year The Futurist makes some forecasts on changes and trends we can expect in the following year. This year they have released an article: OUTLOOK 2009: Recent Forecasts from World Future Society for 2009 and Beyond .

The forecasts is not “predictions” of what the future will be like, but rather glimpses of what may happen or proposals for preferred futures.

So what can you expect?

In a nutshell: more sex, fewer antidepressants; more religious influence in China, less religious influence in the Middle East and the United States; more truth and transparency online, but a totally recorded real life.

The forecasts are divided into sections:

• Business and Economics

China will most likely become the world’s largest economy within the next three decades.

Tourism is expected to nearly double worldwide, from 842 million international tourist arrivals in 2006 to 1.6 billion in 2020

Retirees in the United States will increasingly return to the workforce. (The report is large US-based, however, this is a global trend)

Socioeconomic disparities will become more pronounced in aging societies.

Social safety nets will get cut. Governments across the industrialized world will pare down or scrap altogether their pension and health-care programs for retirees.

• Computers

Watch out! HAL from 2001 is on the way. Selfaware machine intelligence could be achieved by midcentury.

Search engines will become humanlike by 2050. With the “semantic” Web, AI-based search engines will comprehend users’ questions and queries just like a human assistant.

Rainbow traps may improve computing abilities.

“Serious gaming” will help train tomorrow’s health workers.

• Demography

Urbanization will hit 60% by 2030.

Workforces on the move will exacerbate social conflicts. Increased migrations of workers from developing countries to developed countries will help offset worker shortages in host countries.

• Energy

Access to electricity will reach 83% of the world by 2030.

Architects will harness energy from the movement of crowds.

Pursuit of alternatives to oil could help stabilize gas prices.

• Information Society

Everything you say and do may be recorded. By the late 2010s, ubiquitous unseen nanodevices will provide seamless communication and surveillance among all people everywhere.

Identity theft and other Internet crimes will increase at a faster pace.

You’ll have more friends whom you’ll never meet, and cyberfriends may outnumber real-life friends. (This has already happened in places like Facebook and MySpace, even perhaps Linked-In?)

• Technology and Science
  

The Internet will become more factually reliable and more transparent.

TV in 3-D.

Optical clocks may enable us to measure time much more precisely.

• Transportation

The car’s days as king of the road may soon be over.

Mobility is becoming a priority to more people in rising economies: More people will travel farther faster. Personal mobility is increasing in rapidly expanding economies.

Research labs are coming closer to “beaming” us up. Star Trek–type transporters may soon be possible for data transmission, but not for sending people places.

• Values and Society

People will have more sex. With women’s growing economic power around the world, arranged marriages are becoming less likely. As a result, women will feel freer to express their sexuality.

U.S. cultural hegemony may be over. The days of U.S. and First World dominance over the world’s culture and economy may soon be over.

New generations, new values. Self reliance and cooperation will become prevalent societal values as Generation X and Generation Y replace the baby-boom generation.

More people will consume ethically.

• Work and Careers

Succeeding in future niche careers may mean choosing an unusual major.

Tomorrow’s high-tech cowboys will telecommute.

Professional knowledge will become obsolete more quickly.

• World Affairs

The world’s legal systems will be networked. The Global Legal Information Network (GLIN), a database of local and national laws for more than 50 participating countries, will grow to include more than 100 counties by 2010.


Militaries will use neuroscience breakthroughs to win future wars.



Climate change is already spurring armed conflict.

Cause related ads can raise sales by 74%

According to the 2008 Cone/Duke University Behavioral Cause Study there is a very strong link between the choices consumers make and cause related marketing.

The Study consists of a two phase research methodology. The first phase was conducted throughout October and December 2007 in a behavioral lab study at Duke University among a random sample of 182 participants, ranging in age from 18- to 62-years-old. The second phase, conducted online in July 2008, consisted of a demographically representative U.S. sample of 1,051 adults, including 625 women and 426 men.

Here are some of the highlights:

• 85% say it is acceptable for companies to include causes in their marketing (compared to 66% in 1993)
• 79% would be likely to switch brands if the other brand has a good cause associated with it
• 38% had purchased a product associated with a cause in the previous 12 months (compared to 20% in 1993)

Future trend they have identified include:

• Social Consciousness Elevation

Companies will serve as a catalyst in increasing understanding and fostering empathy among mainstream consumers about the ways in which complex, often unfamiliar global issues, such as access to clean water, human rights and gender equality, impact business and the health of society.

• Product Innovation

Companies will increasingly create new products or market existing ones with an eye toward manufacturing responsible goods that meet the everyday needs of their customers.

• Widespread Collaboration

Companies will look beyond NGOs as the sole source of their credibility halo.

• Global Customization

Multinationals will steer away from focusing on a single issue to creating global citizenship platforms, tailoring their efforts to meet the needs of key markets.

• Stakeholder Customization

To harness the passion and actions of their stakeholders and to deepen engagement, companies will identify legitimate opportunities to co-create cause efforts.

• Transparent Operation

To effectively build trust among even the most skeptical stakeholders, companies will disclose not only the details of a specific cause program, but also of the peripheral business issues that impact their actions

• Business-to-Business Translation

Business-to-business companies will become more accountable to their unique stakeholders, including employees, customers and vendors, and will brand, package and communicate their citizenship efforts.

• Measurement and Justification

Companies will be forced to redefine measurement metrics no longer based on outputs, but on the outcomes for society and their business.

SA fifteen year on

Almost halfway through South Africa’s second decade of freedom, government is taking stock of how far it has gone in achieving the objective of improving the quality of life of all South Africans in their report Towards a Fifteen Year Review .

The review brings particular focus to the past five years, building on conclusions of Towards a Ten Year Review, published in 2003.

The 2008 review aims to answer 3 question:

1. To what extent has the Government achieved its policy objectives?
2. Are these the appropriate policy objectives?
3. What have the past five years brought in terms of progress towards these objectives?.

The themes covered are:

• Governance
• Social sector
• Economic
• Justice, crime prevention and security
• International relations, peace and security
• Targeted groups
• Major transversal post-2004 initiatives

You’re Invited to the SCIP Women’s CI and Leadership Symposium

Connect with your competitive intelligence peers at the SCIP Women’s Leadership and CI Symposium, an invitation-only experience, that promises to enthrall and inform through exciting speakers and sessions tailored to the professional CI woman.

Cost: $695 for members, $895 for non-members
When: Nov. 13-14
Where: Crowne Plaza, Chicago, Ill.
Deadline for registration: November 11, 2008.

The symposium will encourage an open exchange of thoughts and professional development through education sessions, panel discussions, and social interaction.

Invited guests will hear distinguished keynote speakers:

• Jenny Fisher, vice president of executive leadership at Motorola, will provide her perspective on dealing with senior management and maintaining or expanding your department in lean times.
• Ava Youngblood, president and CEO of Youngblood Executive Search, former manager of CI in the Corporate Strategy division of Amoco, and former SCIP president, will speak about finding good employees and evaluating CI talent.

The symposium will encourage an open exchange of thoughts and professional development through education sessions, panel discussions, and social interaction. Content for this highly interactive symposium include:

• Managing Senior Management Expectations
• Ways to Maintain or increase your department in lean times
• leadership issues in competitive intelligence
• Demonstrating CI Value in the Organization
• How to position CI within your company
• How to demonstrate leadership within your organization
• How to build and grow the CI function
• Demonstrating CI Value in the organization
• The future of CI
• Cutting edge tools and techniques
• Cooperative intelligence

If you do plan on going dress warmly! Chicago drops to -19C in November and rarely rises to more than 10C.

PetroSA wins international award

Copyright: je1196

PetroSA together with its joint venture company, GTL.F1, has won the prestigious Petroleum Economist Award for Project Innovation of the Year 2007 for its Gas-To-Liquids (GTL) technology.



Judging criteria for the category was as follows:

Nominees should be able to demonstrate:

• The use of new technology in developing and completing the project
• The application of revised procedure to accommodate unusual developments and tackle challenges
• The completion of at least one stage of the project, which commenced in 2007
• A multi-disciplined team approach or a significant cross-border involvement
• Plans for further innovations and investment in the project area

SA Development Indicators 2008

This 2008 edition of Development Indicators summarises data on trends mainly for the period up to the end of April 2008.

Like the previous edition, this year’s publication contains information sourced from official statistics, government databases and research by local and international institutions, which has been clustered into ten broad themes:

• Economic Growth and Transformation

Incl. GDP, FDI, CPI, Bond points spread, SA's competitiveness, Knowledge-based economic outlook etc

• Employment

Incl. Employment/Unemployment and Expanded public works programme (EPWP)

• Poverty and Inequality

Incl. Per capita income, Living standards, Inequality measures, Poverty gap analysis etc

• Household and Community Assets
Incl. Water, Sanitation, Electricity etc.

• Health

Incl. Life expectancy, Mortality, HIV prevalence etc.

• Education

Incl. Educator - learner ratio, Enrolment, Senior certificate pass rate, Matriculants with mathematics passes etc.

• Social Cohesion

Incl. Strength of civil society, Voter participation, Confident in a happy future for all races,
Identity based on self-description, Pride in being South African etc.

• Safety and Security

Incl. Number of all crimes, Contact crime, Property crime, Detection rate, Charges referred to court, Conviction rate, Inmates, Road accidents etc.

• International Relations

Incl. Peace operations, Democratically elected governments in Africa, Real GDP growth in Africa, Tourism, Mission operations and diplomats trained, International agreements

• Good Governance

Incl. Tax returns, Audits, Corruption perceptions, Budget transparency, Public opinion on delivery of basic services, Ease of doing business, Green house gas emissions, Demographic data

Each indicator is summarised in terms of policy goal, data table and/or graph, and trend analysis.

Turning research into rewards

Copyright barunpatro

Which universities get the most bang for their research buck? Forbes Entrepreneurship assembled a list of the top 15, based on a 2006 survey (the most recent data) of 189 schools by the Association of University Technology Managers, which tracks university-born patents and licensing revenues. (Stevens came in at number three; Stanford, number nine.)

Total research-related income generated by all 189 schools: $1.5 billion.

Another HE report released

This time it is the OECD which has released their Education at a Glance 2008:OECD Indicators report enables countries to see themselves in the light of other countries’ performance.

It provides a rich, comparable and up-to-date array of 28 indicators on the performance of education systems and represents the consensus of professional thinking on how to measure the current state of education internationally.

The indicators look at who participates in education, what is spent on it and how education systems operate and at the results achieved. The latter includes indicators on a wide range of outcomes, from comparisons of students’ performance in key subject areas to the impact of education on earnings and on adults’ chances of employment

Highlights include:

• Meeting a rapidly rising demand for more and better education is creating intense pressures to raise spending on education and improve its efficiency.
• The total amount of public spending on educational institutions rose in all OECD countries over the last decade, on average by 19% between 2000 and 2005 alone, and in Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland and Korea by more than twice that amount.
• Another visible indication of the efforts governments are making can be seen in the fact that, over the last decade, the share of public budgets devoted to education grew by more than one percentage point – from 11.9% in 1995 to 13.2% in 2005

Higher Education Inflation Index for the USA released

Copyright yirsh

The Higher Education Price Index (HEPI) is an inflation index designed specifically to track the main cost drivers in higher education in the USA.

It is an essential planning tool for educational managers, enabling schools to project the future budget and funding increases required to maintain real purchasing power and investment. HEPI is issued annually by Commonfund Institute and is distributed free of charge to educational institutions.

HEPI is a more accurate indicator of changes in costs for colleges and universities than the more familiar Consumer Price Index. It measures the average relative level of prices in a fixed basket of goods and services purchased by colleges and universities each year through current fund educational and general expenditures, excluding research.

HEPI is compiled from data reported and published by government and economic agencies. The eight categories cover current operational costs of colleges and universities. These include salaries for faculty, administrative employees, clerical employees, and service employees, fringe benefits, utilities, supplies and materials, and miscellaneous services.

HEPI has been calculated every year since 1983 and includes inflation data going back to 1961. Since fiscal year 2002, HEPI has been based on a regression formula. In 2005, Commonfund Institute assumed responsibility for maintaining HEPI and calculating its annual rate of change.

Know what your consumer is thinking

Keeping up to date with consumers and consumer attitudes is critical for business success, but how do you know what consumers are thinking? (Short of asking everyone you see...)

Nielsen's Global Consumer Reports are quite helpful as it provides statistics and commentary on global consumer/marketing issues.

Here is a list of some of the newest reports:

Consumer Confidence, Concerns, Spending and Attitudes to Recession: A Global Nielsen Consumer Report

Consumer confidence has fallen to its lowest level in several years, according to the Nielsen Global Consumer Confidence Index, the definitive gauge of consumer sentiment around economic and social concerns across 51 countries.

Consumers and Designer Brands : A Global Nielsen Report

The latest Nielsen survey on designer brands reveals that consumers remain enraptured by the allure of luxury, and there are generous payoffs for designer brands that dare to diversify

Packaging and The Environment : A Global Nielsen Consumer Report

There's no doubt about it: Green is the new black. With publicity surrounding the threat of global warming on the rise, environmental friendliness has fast become a marketer's dream.

Dual careers in academia - what you need to know

Meeting the needs and expectations of dual-career academic couples— while still ensuring the high quality of university faculty—is the next great challenge facing universities. This according to Standford University's report: Dual-Career Academic Couples: What Universities Need to Know (August 2008)

Academic couples comprise 36 percent of the American professoriate—representing a deep pool of talent. The proportion of academic couples (i.e., couples in which both partners are academics) at four-year institutions nationally has not changed since 1989.

What has changed is the rate at which universities are hiring couples. Academic couple hiring has increased from 3 percent in the 1970s to 13 percent since 2000. And universities in the US are being to take notice and devoting attention to dual-career issues. In recent years, a number of conferences and collaborative efforts have sprung up, and university hiring practices are evolving to keep pace.

There are three key reasons for taking a new look at couple hiring:

Excellence. The study suggests that couples more and more vote with their feet, leaving or not considering universities that do not support them. Support for dual careers opens another avenue by which universities can compete for the best and brightest.

Diversity

The new generation of academics is more diverse in terms of gender and ethnicity than ever before. With greater diversity comes the need for new hiring practices - and one of these practices is couple hiring.

Quality of Life

Faculty today are a new breed determined more than ever to strike a sustainable balance between working and private lives. Couple hiring is part of a deeper institutional restructuring around quality-of-life issues. To enhance competitive excellence, universities are increasingly supporting faculty needs, such as housing, child care, schools, and elder care, in addition to partner hiring.

Higher Education in Europe - beyond 2010

Image copyright thanx

Higher education institutions are being subjected to a variety of pressures that seek, primarily, to enhance higher education’s contribution to the successful creation of so-called ‘knowledge societies’, together with, and receiving only slightly less emphasis, the achievement of greater equity and social justice.

The report Higher Education Looking Forward: An Agenda for Future Research has examined the relevant higher education research literature in terms of its underlying conceptual approaches and empirical findings across a number of selected sub-themes (see below) in order to derive a future research agenda that will address scientific questions of long term strategic concern to the future of higher education.

The five themes that have been addressed are:

Higher education and the needs of the knowledge society
Key questions within this theme will be the adequacy of human capital theory in explaining changing relationships between higher education and work, the balance between initial formation and continuing professional development in knowledge-based economies, and the division of labour between higher education institutions and employers in meeting education and training needs.

Higher education and the achievement of equity and social justice
Key questions here concern the relationship between higher education’s roles in social reproduction and its roles in extending opportunities for social mobility and the achievement of greater social justice.

Higher education and its communities: interconnections and interdependencies
Key questions will concern whether new function can be performed without detriment to the old and what are the change mechanisms within higher education institutions and systems needed to bring about effective realignments between higher education and its various communities

Steering and governance of higher education
Key questions for this theme are to do with the implications of different forms of decision-making, accountability and funding for higher education’s ability to perform existing and new functions.

Differentiation and diversity of institutional forms and professional roles
The questions raised within theme five relate to the preceding themes and to whether further differentiation within national systems will be accompanied by greater convergence between systems if higher education is to respond effectively to changing social and economic climates in European countries

Download the whole report for or see the Project Summary a quick overview .

University news from Africa

AFRICA: Three universities in global top 500, two out / Karen MacGregor
Two African universities have slipped from the top 500 identified by the Academic Ranking of World Universities, leaving only three - the universities of Cape Town, the Witwatersrand and KwaZulu-Natal - in the elite global list for 2008. South Africa follows Ireland into 25th place in terms of percentage distribution of top universities by country, ahead of Europe's Greece, Hungary, Poland and Portugal as well as India.





ZAMBIA: Students riot over lecturer strike
Nine University of Zambia students have been arrested following rioting aimed at pressing the government to resolve a crippling strike by lecturers at the country's oldest institution. Similar protests two months ago resulted in police shooting and injuring two students.






CAMEROON: New Maroua university due to open
President Paul Biya has fulfilled an 11-year promise and the University of Maroua, Cameroon's seventh, is about to open. The new institution will consist of faculties yet to be created, and two grandes écoles, the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Institut Supérieur du Sahel.


ZIMBABWE: Lecturers warn of university closures/ Clemence Manyukwe
Academics in Zimbabwe have warned President Robert Mugabe that all state-controlled higher education institutions face closure as a result of poor working conditions, the brain drain and other problems arising from the country's political and economic crises. With inflation now at 42 million percent, lecturers said their salaries no longer covered transport costs and that they had not been working since June.


BOTSWANA: Lecturer on Zimbabwe sanctions list deported/ Clemence Manyukwe
The Botswana government has deported a media studies lecturer at the University of Botswana who is on the latest Zimbabwe sanctions list of the European Union. Ceasar Zvayi, former political editor of the Harare-based state-owned newspaper The Herald, had moved to Botswana to take up the lecturing job shortly after President Robert Mugabe's controversial re-election in a one-man poll on 27 June - prompting a public outcry in Botswana.


SENEGAL: Students punished for protest against minister
Fifteen students at the University of Ziguinchor have been punished for protesting against the Minister for Higher Education, Professor Moustapha Sourang, during his visit in July. The most severe penalty was immediate exclusion from the university for up to two years.

Are you PC enough?

According to a study The Social and Political Views of American Professors,” released in 2007 37,2 % of Business Management professors at US universities are politically incorrect, Marketing Management is slightly worse with 43,2% of their professors not toeing the PC line but Management Information is the worst with a whopping 72, 2% of professors surveyed being un-PC.

To be fair I'm not sure if our Information Management is the same as their Management Information, but the results are quite interesting. 2,958 professors were surveyed regarding a wide range of social and political attitudes and views of the university, as well as a full complement of sociodemographic questions.

Here is what Inside Higher Ed had to say:


"The new study was produced by Solon Simmons, co-author of last year’s report and an assistant professor of conflict analysis and resolution at George Mason.
The first thing that Simmons does in the study with the database — which covers a range of disciplines and institution types — is to identify a politically correct cohort, reflecting largely common views on a set of issues that are seen as defining political correctness. He finds a set of issues that produce this cohort.

The views are the belief that gender gaps in math and science fields are largely due to discrimination; support for affirmative action; and belief that discrimination is a key cause of racial inequities in American society. Generally, members of this cohort see race and gender as fundamental — and share that belief much more than beliefs about the curriculum or scholarship, such that the study says that “multiculturalism trumps postmodernism.”

In an interview, Simmons acknowledged that many people use “politically correct” to imply more than just shared political beliefs, but also an intolerance of other views. He said that his definition did not attempt to group people together beyond their shared political beliefs.
Then Simmons analyzes disciplines, and finds sharp differences — largely consistent with previous studies about disciplines and political leanings. Humanities and social science fields tend to have higher politically correct rankings, while professional and science disciplines do not."

The Future of Media

Each year Future Exploration Network runs the Future of Media Summit, linking Silicon Valley and Sydney with video and crosscontinental discussions, and launches an accompanying report. The Future of Media Report 2008 is now available.

Highlights include that SA is one of the fastest growing advertising markets; the seven driving forces shaping media; the Future of Media Lifecyle (with an explanation here) and some strategy tools (incl. scenario planning, flow economy framework and game theory).

Researching a public USA company with EDGAR

Searching for information on public companies in the USA?

All USA companies, foreign and domestic, are required to file registration statements, periodic reports, and other forms electronically through EDGAR. Anyone can access and download this information for free. Here you'll find links to a complete list of filings available through EDGAR and instructions for searching the EDGAR database.

Here's how to start: Go to the EDGAR home page. You will find a very thorough Quick EDGAR Tutorial and a Description of SEC Forms on the left side of the screen. To begin searching, click “Search for Company Filings” and then “Companies and Other Filers.” This will bring you to the Company Search page.

There are various other ways you can search:

• "Search Companies and Filings" allows you to retrieve real-time filings for a specific company and to find key company information — including its name, address, telephone number, state of incorporation, Central Index Key (CIK) number, Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code, and fiscal year end.


• You can also search for all SEC-registered companies in a particular state.


• Or you can search for all companies with a specific SIC code.


• Once you've found the company you want, you can limit the search results by date (for example, "Prior to 2002-01-01") or by the type of filing (for example, "10-K").


• Latest Filings is the most recent filings on the EDGAR system has received — from all SEC filers, including individuals and companies, paper filers and electronic filers. The list on this page features the most recent real-time filings from a broad range of companies and individuals for the current official filing date

You can also search in the Full Text, retrieve filings made the previous week, view prospectuses or proxy voting records for the mutual fund of your choice using the Mutual Funds Search feature, find Variable Insurance Products and associated filings for new filings with series and class/contract name and find Securities Act registration statements and post-effective amendments declared effective on the most recently completed business day.

Here is what a typical record looks like, it is a search for Microsoft:

In the left corner you will see the company name and below that the SIC code assigned to the company. If you click on the code it will take you to a list of other companies operating in the same industry.

The SEC filings for the company is in the table form numbers, form formats, filing descriptions, and filing dates:
- Form 10-Q (contains unaudited quarterly financial statements)
- Form 10-K (contains audited annual financial statements)
- Form 8-K (current information including preliminary earnings announcements)
- Registration statements including Form S-1 (general registration statement under the Securities Act of 1933,used for new issuers) and
- Form F-6 (registration statement used by foreign issuers of American Depositary Receipts)

Executive compensation:
You can locate information about executive pay in:
- Schedule 14A (annual proxy statement)
- Form 10-K (audited annual report)
- Registration statements filed by the issuer
- Form 8-K (current company information)

Insider Transactions and Beneficial Ownership Interest
The specific forms are:
- Form 3 (initial statement of beneficial ownership)
- Form 4 (statement of changes in beneficial ownership)
- Form 5 (annual statement of changes in beneficial ownership)

For an extensive list on understanding the EDGAR search results, please read through the Researching Public Companies Through EDGAR:A Guide for Investors