Forex Education

There is lot's of Forex education online that you need to avoid but look hard enough and you will find some great sources which will get you on the road to Forex trading success. Let's look at where to find the best Forex trading advice.
First let's look at Forex advice you should ignore and let's start with Forex software. There are a vast amount of these cheap "get rich quick" systems, all promising you financial freedom for a hundred dollars or so and even better you do no work, you just plug it in and sit back as the cash rolls in! Anyone who thinks they will get rich using one is going to be dissapointed - none of them work.
Other education you should ignore includes, advice in forums, the only people who have time to hang around forums are losers, who make themselves feel better for not making any money, by dispensing their supposed wisdom or the other group in forums, are affiliates trying to get you to buy a get rich quick system and make a few dollars commission.
You get lots of news online, all well put together and convincing but it reflects the majority opinion and the majority lose. People who trade news stories forget, that the news is not by itself important, its how traders view the news that is and that's why markets always collapse when the news is most bullish and rally when it's most bearish. Don't waste your time trying to trade news stories.
Good Forex Education Sources
Now let's look at how to win and the advice you can get online which can lead you to success.
If you want to win the best way to trade is by using Forex charts, you need know nothing about the news, all you need to do is to learn to spot trends and lock into and hold them and this is a learned skill so anyone can do it.
There is plenty of information on the chart formations that occur and reoccur and plenty of information on all the Forex indicators you can use with charts. learn them, then use basic chart formations and a few confirming indicators, to filter your trading signals. Keep your method simple, simple systems always work best as they have fewer elements to break than complex ones and you can get all this information for Free.
Learn with No Risk
You can, if you want to cut your learning curve further and not have to devise your own strategy, buy a Forex course with a ready made strategy which you can learn to apply. These courses teach you the skills you need to win, provide daily trading support and classrooms and best of all, they all have 100% money back guarantees, so you can learn with no risk.
Winning at Forex Trading
Anyone can learn to win at Forex because everything about Forex trading can be specifically learned, so you can devise your own strategy or buy a course - the choice is yours but if you make a little effort with either method, you could soon be making a great second income in 30 minutes a day or less.

College Rankings and US News and World Report

The current college ranking systems provide an easy way for prospective students to see how one institution ranks against another. This can make for a simple way to see which colleges will provide the best education. At least that is what the ranking system is supposed to do, in recent years though there has been some criticism regarding the methodologies used to rank colleges.

What are Admissions Rankings

Before we talk about what is good about the current system and what is not, it is important to understand how colleges are currently ranked in the United States. It is also important to know that there is more than one ranking system available.

The methodology that most of us are familiar with is the ratings that are given by the US News. This system has been around since 1983, and each year the ratings for colleges change. The US News ranks scores each institution with a score between 1 and 100, with 100 being the best, and they separate the schools into 4 tiers. The best schools are listed as tier 1.

The ratings are based on gathered data that take into account the following factors:

• Peer Assessment - Reputation of the school based on a survey of presidents, provosts, and deans from other institutions

• Retention - The graduation rate over a 6-year period, and the retention rate of first year students

• Student Selectivity - A combination of data based on: test scores of students, the percentage of top percentile students admitted, and the student acceptance rate as a whole.

• Faculty Resources - Data that includes the student-faculty ratio, the average salary of faculty members, and the education level of the faculty

• Financial Resources - Average tuition rates per-student

• Graduation Rate Performance - The difference between what the expected rate of graduation was and what the actual graduation rate turned out to be

• Alumni Giving Rate - The amount of money received from donations by alumni

The first four elements on the list account for 80% of the total score. Peer assessment alone makes 25% of the rating, and that is where the criticism of the US News ranking system comes in.

The Good and the Bad

In recent years there has been some criticism of the current rating system. It has been said that with the weighting given to peer assessment, student selectivity, and faculty resources that it becomes easy to pick which schools will come out on top. The largest schools and the richest schools will win out over the smaller colleges every time, regardless of the actual education that a student can expect to receive from the institution.

Looking at the historical data, these statements are true to a certain degree. Schools like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton always end up on top of the list. Some suggest that, to get a true measure of school performance, the ratings should give a larger weighting to factors related to graduation rates, salaries after graduation, and student performance in the long run.

Even with the criticisms, the current college ranking system does provide a method for students to see how their chosen (or prospective) institution ranks against similar colleges in the country. It provides a simple method to see where they can expect a top-rated education, and where they will be getting a second tier education.

With other ranking systems popping up each year it is also possible to use the US News rankings in conjunction with a different rating system. It may be worth comparing the rankings in America to those of the Academic Rankings of World Universities, or data based on the G-Factor methodology (such as Webometrics). Using more than one ranking system will provide a better overall picture when looking at any college.

Debt Consolidation Breaking News

The United States Department of Education is making bold moves toward cleaning house and we will talk about some of those that affect you as a parent of a soon-to-be college bound child directly. We do not want to leave out the millions of Americans that are returning to school and are the students themselves-but the largest percentage of school bound individuals are still under the dependent financial care of the parents. We titled this posting debt consolidation breaking news for a very good reason. That reason is as we go forward towards Halloween in the month of October it is time to start laying the groundwork for the upcoming winter school session in most parts of the United States.
Reformation in America
As debt consolidation is being reformed in America today and with President Obama taken the reins on so many financial concerns it is important that you know something about the debt relief situation going on the country. While you may consider yourself well-versed in the basic modality of what debt relief actually is you need to understand how that relates to the student loan obtainment for your incoming freshman. There are literally millions of freshmen that enter colleges and universities and technical schools all across this great country of ours and it is important that the parents of these soon-to-be college educated children know where to turn to for advice and information about that all-important student loan issue.
Department of Education Enactments
The most breaking news that involves debt consolidation includes the actions of President Obama's administration as well as the Department of Education directly. The administration has mandated through acts of legislation and other such legalities that the middlemen are now cut-out of the equation for all concerns about student loans.
Saving Money
What this does right away is to save you, the American taxpayer, at the very least $500-$1000 a year in monies that was going toward the pavement of the third-party providers for student loans. Now that there is a direct-line of communication between you, the parent of the college-bound child, and the Federal government, which is the Department of Education, the streamlining of this form of financing of a college education is clearing up.
Great Intentions
We wanted to give you some earth-shattering as well as fundamentally groundbreaking news but in reality the debt consolidation world has so much going on it is important that we focus on the present and future and not so much worry about things of the past. If you are a parent of a student who is presently in high school you understand this and you understand that the future belongs to our children. With debt consolidation clearing the household and freeing up cash that would have been spent on credit card revolving debt and other unsecured debt loan accounts you will be that much closer to financing the dream of your child and of yourself of completing a college education in America in the 21st century.

How to Work With Different Types of News Feeds

Here are other options on the webfor RSS feeds that are integrated within social networking sites. Facebook, for example, has it's own version of that that with a news page that puts in all kinds of information on what people in your circle of friends are doing online. This can be exploited to post links to your site, talk about your latest venture, and generally hog the limelight. So, while the majority of people are referring to RSS feeds when they talk about news feeds, there are other ways that term is used in different social networking sites.
As we discussed earlier, the two ways of using RSS feeds is to get subscribers or to use them to provide fresh content to your site. The first way involves an action that has to be taken by the person visiting your site. It isn't something automatic, so that you have encourage people visiting your site to subscribe. Since the mechanics of RSS feeds are still not that well known by the average Internet user, you have to educate your visitors to how to get the latest content using your RSS feeds. The truth is that they may actually be using a news outlet like Yahoo! but not even realize that the content is coming through an RSS feed. So, to get subscribers you must first educate them to what's available.
Educate
You don't have to get too technical about it, but you do want to give them a brief overview of why they want to become a subscriber to your RSS feed. They can get updates more quickly and be notified of when new content is up on the site. They can even set up email to receive it in a format that is easy for them to access. However, you have to educate them on how to do that, otherwise, they will take the path of least resistance, which is to ignore your RSS feed.
Create Buttons
There are a number of ways to make it easy for them to sign up. You can provide buttons for numerous news reader outlets, like Yahoo! Or Bloglines. You will have to get the URL for your news feed and use that to create a button that allows people who are familiar with these larger online news feeds to subscribe to your content. For that you have to have the RSS feed module installed and have it available. It will typically look like this: [http://yoursitename/feed] . Some places like Wordpress automatically install RSS feeds and you can use the address provided to create those subscriber buttons.
Offer A Targetedbie With Your Feed
If you're still having problems getting subscribers, try offering a small targetedbie to get them to sign up. It can be a report of some fantastic tips to save or make money, or it can be a targeted video download. Try to make it something you can deliver instantaneously over the web with autoresponders. That makes this feature very easy. Of course, realize that they may sign up and get your product and leave easily too. So, you want to continue to provide content that will keep them interested and subscribed.
Package Your Own RSS feed
If you have various websites and content and you want to get the word out fast with minimal duplication, you want to package your own RSS feed and promote that with other website owners. You will want to split up your content by categories that others may want to subscribe to. You wouldn't put any recipes on a site you have along with how to get hired on another site, even if they are both blog posts. You have to be clear that whatever you package in the RSS feed package is one topic or focal point of interest for specific news outlets. A way to do that is to separate the categories into feeds for the mainstream media, a feed for your customers, some for potential customers, and even your competition. Or, you can split up the feeds into discrete industries that you can market to specific news outlets.
Promote It To Various Outlets
After you've packaged your own feed, you want to make sure it is available for others to use. Whether that is by agreement to purchase the feed or whether you merely post it on website newsreaders, it's up to you. You can submit your feeds to search engines and directories, just like they were their own pages. They are actually web pages, but they are in XML format which needs the newsreader to decipher and read. Once you're syndicated on a variety of other sites, traffic will pour in non-stop as long as you keep providing content.
Featured Aggregators
To view the RSS feeds, people use aggregators. Some are programs you add to your browser or install on your desktop. Others are websites that allow you to set up an account and use them to read news feeds. Some you can even integrate into you email to get RSS feeds through email format. It doesn't matter what you use, but here are a few that you can find online that you can check out.
My.Yahoo.com
This is a great way to see how easy it is to use an RSS reader through a website. Many people set up a page here and have no clue they are actually using an RSS reader because it's not that technical. You just search for categories of news that area available as RSS feeds and then choose to see them. They put in all the headlines in the various choices you made and you can easily check multiple sites and headlines in the category that you want.
Newsgator.com
This aggregator works with Microsoft Outlook. The Newsgator Online RSS feed is a software package that is targeted to download and use on your desktop. The Newsgator database claims over 1.5 million feeds available. There is even a mobile version available for cell phones.
Yahoo Pipes
This aggregator helps you compile RSS feeds from other RSS feeds. You have the option to search for feeds, combine them any way you like, even filter them, and this is called a pipe. This pipe can then be outputted as another RSS feed that you can use to deliver fresh content to your readers. They have a list of hot pipes that you can see and the ability to put widgets on your website pointing to the pipes you create. You can even geocode the pipe and see it displayed on a map.
Bloglines
This is a popular feed reader that is online. It has a social networking flavor in that you can share your favorite feeds with your friends. You can also set up your blog roll on an external blog using the bloglines news subscriptions you've selected. If you have multiple blogs, this is a great way to update the blog roll in one place and see it updated everywhere you inserted that code.

Three Sex Education Lessons From The Teen Pep Stories

One of the oft-repeated comments by characters in my novel, The Sex Ed Chronicles is that, in the absence of sex education, children learn about sex from their friends. However, the novel was based in 1980, before New Jersey high schools started to involve students in peer counseling.
On Valentines Day 2008, I read about a mini-controversy involving peer counseling on a New Jersey radio news Web site. The news coverage came out of one New Jersey high school: Clearview Regional High School in Harrison Township in the southern part of the state. There, parents object to peer counselors, high school juniors and seniors, counseling freshmen on a variety of topics related to sex education. The counseling model comes from a program called Teen Pep. Designed by the Princeton Center for Leadership Training (not affiliated with Princeton University), Teen Pep has been implemented in over 50 Garden State high schools for the past eight years. Therefore, Teen Pep is not a new program and school districts have had time to investigate its merits-only now, one school has made the news.
Teen Pep trains not only students, but also faculty advisors, to work one-to-one, but also as a team in various counseling situations. Schools contracting for Teen Pep work with the Princeton Center for a minimum of two years and there are supervisory field visits by qualified professionals to help ensure the program is running smoothly. A school that engages in Teen Pep makes a considerable intellectual investment, as well as a financial investment, to make it work. Part of this investment is to explain this program to parents.
Which takes me to lesson number one: if you are not ready to take these investments seriously, don't make them.
As I read about the incident at Clearview High, it became clear to me that the fault is not with the program, but with the school administration. It would have been easier for them to consult parents and clergy from the get-go, as they are supposed to do. I realize that teachers have objected to this-they did back in 1980 as well-but sex education is a subject where parents and clergy believe they have important opinions and knowledge.
I found it interesting to read that an advisory board would be formed after parents objected to individual aspects of the program. That should have been in place from day one.
Which takes me to lesson number two: after consulting parents, decide which topics students are qualified to discuss with peers.
Parental objections at Clearview stemmed from the idea that "kids were teaching kids to have sex. But there had to be clear differences between the topics teen peer counselors were allowed to teach, and those that had to be covered by a qualified sex education teacher-but they didn't make it in the press. Parents deserved to know, if they asked before school started. I realize that pro-abstinence organizations also use young speakers; their programs should be subject to the same parental review as the peer-counseling program.
Then I get to lesson number three: make sure you have qualified teachers.
The federal No Child Left Behind Act emphasizes a need for qualified teachers, meaning that a teacher should be certified in the subject they teach. That applies as much to sex education as any other subject. In the example of Clearview High, the program leader was an English teacher. When I reached family life education, I learned that sex education instructors were most likely to come from health education, home economics or social studies as well as nursing. I would also assume that guidance counselors could become qualified sex educators; they handle personal student issues as part of their job description.
It appears Teen Pep is working in most schools; only one school is in the news complaining, but those involved with this program should consider offering an alternative: to use degree candidates in counseling and education to counsel students.
This would not be peer counseling, but it would appease parents who worry about kids teaching kids about sex. It would also help provide professional development for sex educators.

Stuart Nachbar operates EducatedQuest.com, a blog on education politics, policy and technology. He has been involved with education politics and economic development as an urban planner, government affairs manager, software executive, and now as a writer. His first novel, The Sex Ed Chronicles, about sex education and school politics in 1980 New Jersey, earned a coveted "Publishers Choice" selection from iUniverse.