Author Archives: Eric Kelderman

November 23, 2010, 4:08 pm

Black Colleges Are Slowly Adding Online Degrees

Online education has become the fastest-growing segment of the higher-education market, driven by booming enrollments at for-profit institutions and steadier efforts at nonprofit colleges to cut instructional costs and reach more students with electronic courses.

But historically black colleges are moving more cautiously toward adopting online-degree programs, according to a new report from the Digital Learning Laboratory at Howard University.

Researcher Roy L. Beasley found that 19 of the nation’s 105 historically black colleges now offer an online-degree program—an increase of seven institutions since 2006.

More than two-thirds of the online programs are found at public black colleges, and a dozen of the 20 largest black institutions offer such programs, Mr. Beasley concluded. And he found that among the 20 black colleges with the highest graduation rates, only seven offered…

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March 4, 2009, 2:09 pm

A Concert Where the Cellphones Are On

By Eric Kelderman

Cellphones have traditionally been the bane of concert halls and other performance venues. But the researchers at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics are challenging that taboo, at least for the performers on the stage.

Ge Wang, an assistant professor of music who previously founded a laptop orchestra at the center, has now organized a Mobile Phone Orchestra (MoPhO) that takes advantage of the iPhone’s multiple built-in technologies to create a powerful performance device.

“Mobile phones are becoming so powerful that we cannot ignore them anymore as platforms for creativity,” Mr. Wang said in a university press release.

The idea of the cellphone as a performance device isn’t entirely new: Gil Weinberg and computer programmers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed software that allows cellphone users to create music using a…