SORRENTO, Fla. – College golf coaches rarely make bold predictions. Kim Evans, a veteran coach of 25 years, dodged the “How good can you be?” question as if it were kryptonite. Like so many of her peers, she prefers to stay in the present, looking no further than the next event. For the record, at least.

“I know that’s boring,” Evans said, moments after her Auburn Tigers held off Baylor on Feb. 14 for a two-stroke victory in the UCF Challenge at RedTail Golf Club.

It’s hard to blame Evans, though for once it would be fun to hear a coach say something like, We’re gunning for UCLA. They’re overrated, especially now that Stephanie Kono is gone.

What Evans did say is that her team is legit. And after the Tigers won the SEC Championship and then failed to advance to the NCAA Championship last season, they have much to prove.

“This team is hungry,” Evans said. “I think we left a lot out there last year.”

Freshman Victoria Trapani won her first college title on the strength of an opening 4-under 68 on the coldest day this winter in central Florida. The south Florida native then held steady in a whipping wind on the final day to shoot 73 and finish one stroke ahead of Tulane teammates Ashley McKenney and Gemma Dryburgh.

Auburn, No. 3 in the Golfweek/Sagarin College Rankings, entered the final round tied with No. 24 Baylor. The Tigers took a sizable lead early on and held it until the nerves kicked in on the back nine, where the Bears cut the difference to one stroke.

“We folded down the line the last four or five holes, so we’ve got a lot to work on,” Evans said. “We’re young.”

Trapani is the third Tigers player to win this season, after Carlie Yadloczky and Marta Sanz won in the fall. Trapani also tied for second at The Landfall Tradition. Evans said the first time she saw Trapani walk across a green at a junior tournament, she thought Trapani carried herself like a champion.

Evans also gave credit to sophomore Diana Fernandez for her breakthrough second round, a 5-under 67, the low round of the tournament.

Jay Goble, in his first year as coach at Baylor, inherited a gutsy team. An injured Chelsey Cothran hadn’t played a round of golf in 10 days when she showed up to this rural area north of Orlando. Goble told the senior to treat Day 1 like a practice round. She opened with a 77 and followed with a 68-70 to tie teammate Hayley Davis and Auburn’s Fernandez for fourth place at 1-under 215. Cothran’s final round included seven birdies and a back-nine 32.

“We played with Auburn yesterday, and I know that they’re the No. 3 team in the country and they’re awesome,” Goble said, “but I feel like we hung really well with them. I think our games match up pretty close.”

Baylor won twice in the fall – Dick Maguire Invitational and Price’s NMSU Invitational – and finished second at the Alamo Invitational. The Bears will face stronger competition this spring.

As for Auburn, the Tigers have yet to finish outside the top 3 in five events.

PISCATAWAY – Jordan Theodore scored 24 points as Seton Hall took a 59-54 win over Rutgers on Wednesday night to snap a six-game losing streak.

Herb Pope had 12 points and 12 rebounds for the Pirates and hit a 3-pointer with 2 minutes, 52 seconds remaining to put Seton Hall up for good at 51-50. Brandon Mobley added 10 rebounds for the Pirates.

The Scarlet Knights , who lost their third straight and fifth in their last six games, got 14 points from Mike Poole and 13 from Eli Carter.

In a game that had eight lead changes and four ties, Rutgers took a 50-48 lead on Dane Miller’s 3-pointer with 3:08 remaining.

Pope answered with his 3-pointer for the final lead change, starting Seton Hall on a 10-1 run that gave the Pirates their largest lead of the game at 58-51 with 19 seconds remaining.

The game was halted for five minutes with 3:26 remaining when an altercation between the teams resulted in a personal and two technical fouls on Seton Hall and one technical on Rutgers. Television replays showed that Pope head-butted Carter during the skirmish, but no further action was taken beyond the technicals.

Once everything was settled, Rutgers made 3-of-4 free throws to cut it to 48-47 before Miller hit his go-ahead 3-pointer.

With the Super Bowl champion Giants’ star receiver Victor Cruz sitting in the front row, Seton Hall won for the first time since beating DePaul on Jan. 10. The Pirates shot just 42.9 percent with 19 turnovers, but held Rutgers to 31.5 percent shooting and just 29.6 percent in the second half.

Seton Hall led for nearly the entire first half, opening its largest advantages at 8-2 and 19-13. With the Pirates up 24-19, the Scarlet Knights closed with a 9-2 run for a 28-26 halftime lead.

Rutgers held the edge despite shooting just 33.3 percent and committing eight turnovers in the half. Seton Hall shot 47.4 percent but had 13 turnovers.

The second half went back and forth until Seton Hall’s late run.

A high school principal in Halifax County is taking an unusual approach in an effort to get more of his students to go to college.

Marvin Bradley, who is in his first year at Northwest Halifax High School, has renamed the 11 buildings on the Littleton campus after state colleges – East Carolina University, North Carolina State University, North Carolina Wesleyan College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to name a few.

It’s part of a bigger effort to change the culture of the school, which has had a graduation rate of less than 75 percent for several years.

Last year, 73.8 percent of seniors graduated up from 57.8 percent two years earlier. Of every student who graduates, about two-thirds go on to a college or university.

Over the next two years, Bradley says, his goal is to see 80 percent of seniors graduating and going on to college.

“I think what our students need, more than anything else, is the guidance and the leadership,” said Bradley, who comes from Chicago Public Schools, where he specialized in turning schools around.

Halifax County Schools – one of three school systems in the county – is in the midst of a three-year, intensive program aimed at boosting student performance.

A Superior Court judge ordered the state to intervene in 2009, calling the district’s test scores “academic genocide.”

Nearly half of the state’s 13 lowest-performing schools have been in Halifax County, according to the state’s 2011 ABCs of Education report, and state numbers last year showed six of the district’s 11 schools didn’t improve student performance as expected – including Northwest.

That’s where Bradley comes in with his mission to change the school’s culture.

A makeover is also in store to give students more confidence about their school. He plans to repave the school’s parking lot and sidewalks.

He’s also placed a mission statement in the front of the school to get students to take their studies more seriously. The mission: “to offer a diverse education curriculum that will assist students on their path to individual, community and global success.”

And he’s engaging more with students.

“I believe the students need the opportunity, and they can make a difference,” he said. “Once we change the individual, we can change minds. Once we change minds, we can change our creation and where we are.”

Parents and students alike are excited.

“I think he’s doing a great job,” mother Sherri Patterson said.

Student body president Carissa Manley says she’s noticed a change in students’ attitudes and hopes Bradley’s efforts will help get more students like her to college and to achieve her dreams.

“Halifax has instilled in me to push for that, push forever forward.” she said.

And Bradley says he’ll keep pushing forward to meet his goal.

Which Ed Next articles were most popular in 2011? What follows is a countdown of our top 20 articles, measured by page views.

Several of the articles take readers inside classrooms to see how some much-vaunted policies and innovations (e.g. differentiated instruction, blended learning) are working in practice. Several other top articles look at how the performance of U.S. students compares to that of students in other countries. Quite a few relate to teacher effectiveness and compensation. Only two of the top twenty articles focus on technology and learning.

Which Ed Next authors penned the most articles in our top 20 list? Eric Hanushek leads the pack with 4, followed closely by Ludger Woessman with 3 articles. Paul Peterson, Mike Petrilli, June Kronholz, and Michael Podgursky all wrote 2 articles in the top 20.

While most of the articles on our list were published in 2011, some are oldies that generated new interest this year (including two articles from our archives about teacher pensions and other benefits).

Here are the top 20 articles for 2011:

20. Gender Gap: Are boys being shortchanged in K-12 schooling?” by Richard Whitmire and Susan McGee Bailey In this forum, two experts consider whether, after years of concern that girls were being shortchanged in male-dominated schools, boys are now the ones in peril.

19. “Merit Pay International: Countries with performance pay for teachers score higher on PISA tests,” by Ludger Woessman This study finds that student achievement is significantly higher in countries that make use of teacher performance pay than in countries that do not use it.

18. “The Turnaround Fallacy: Stop trying to fix failing schools. Close them and start fresh,” by Andy Smarick This article reviews the evidence on school turnaround efforts and concludes that they are not the solution for the nation’s failing schools.

17. “Academic Value of Non-Academics: The case for keeping extracurriculars,” by June Kronholz This article looks at links between student involvement in afterschool activities and academic achievement.

16. “An Effective Teacher in Every Classroom: A lofty goal, but how to do it?” by Kati Haycock and Eric Hanushek In this forum, two experts debate the best ways to identify effective teachers and to increase the number of effective teachers in high-poverty schools and communities.

15. “Teacher Retirement Benefits: Even in economically tough times, costs are higher than ever,” by Robert Costrell and Michael Podgursky This study documents the growing gap between high employer pension costs for public school teachers and lower employer pension costs for private sector managers and professionals.

14. “,” by Paul Peterson, Ludger Woessman, Eric Hanushek, and Carlos Xabel Lastra-Anadon This study found that U.S. students rank 32nd among industrialized nations in proficiency in math and 17th in reading.

13. “Fringe Benefits: There is more to teacher compensation than a teacher’s salary,” by Michael Podgursky This article examines the ways in which simple comparisons between teacher salaries and salaries of other kinds of workers can be misleading.

12. “Challenging the Gifted: Nuclear chemistry and Sartre draw the best and brightest to Reno,” by June Kronholz This feature story takes readers inside the Davidson Academy, a public school in Nevada for highly-gifted students.

11. “Sage on the Stage: Is lecturing really all that bad?” by Guido Schwerdt and Amelie Wupperman This study finds that students score higher on standardized tests in math and science when their teachers spend more class time on lecture-style presentations and less time on group problem-solving activities.

10. “When the Best is Mediocre: Developed countries far outperform our most affluent suburbs,” by Jay Greene and Josh McGee The first-ever comparison of math performance in virtually every school district in the United States finds that even the most elite suburban school districts produce results that are mediocre when compared to those of international peers.

9. “The Flipped Classroom: Online instruction at home frees class time for learning,” by Bill Tucker This article traces the development of “flipped instruction,” in which students view video-taped lessons or access online material at home and then use class time to work through problems and engage in collaborative learning with their teachers.

8. “Valuing Teachers: How much is a good teacher worth?” by Eric Hanushek This analysis considers the economic impact of replacing ineffective teachers with effective ones, and estimates the gains to U.S. gross domestic product that would result from boosting academic performance.

7. “Time for School? When the snow falls, test scores also drop,” by Dave Marcotte and Benjamin Hansen This article examines the evidence that expanding instructional time is as effective as other commonly discussed educational interventions intended to boost learning

6. “Creating a Corps of Change Agents: What explains the success of Teach for America?” by Monica Higgins, Wendy Robison, Jennie Weiner, and Frederick Hess This study examined the work histories of people leading entrepreneurial organizations in education and found that Teach for America alumni were heavily overrepresented.

5. “Teaching Math to the Talented: Which countries—and states—are producing high-achieving students?” by Eric Hanushek, Paul Peterson, and Ludger Woessman This study compares the percentage of U.S. students with advanced skills in math to percentages of similarly high achievers in other countries, and finds that 30 of the 56 other countries participating in PISA have more students scoring at an advanced level.

4. “All Together Now: Educating high and low achievers in the same classroom,” by Mike Petrilli This feature shows how one school is making differentiated instruction workchallenging every child while avoiding segregating classrooms.

3. “All A-Twitter about Education: Improving our schools in 140 characters or less,” by Mike Petrilli This article looked at the role Twitter was playing in education policy debates and ranked the top 25 education policy/media tweeters and the top 25 educator tweeters based on their Klout scores.

2. “Future Schools: Blending face-to-face and online learning,” by Jonathan Schorr and Deborah McGriff This feature, an early article on blended learning, profiled several charter schools using the hybrid approach.

1. “Evaluating Teacher Effectiveness: Can classroom observations identify practices that raise achievement?” by Tom Kane, Amy Wooten, John Tyler, and Eric Taylor This study of Cincinnati’s teacher evaluation system finds that the teachers who receive high ratings from trained evaluators who observe them are also more effective at promoting gains in student test scores.

Congratulations to all of our authors, and stay tuned next Friday well post the top 20 blog entries from 2011.

ECG technicians operate complex machines to monitor heart activity of a patient. Today many institutions offer EKG technician training teaching students how to perform this procedure and other health related topics.

Training programs for an ECG technician

While there is an option to get on workplace training, many people choose certificate programs in a community college or vocational school. There are echocardiography, electrocardiography, medical terminology, bedside manner, physiology, phlebotomy, legal issues for the EKG technician and other courses, future EKG techs will learn.

Students learn how to interact with patients and other stuff, interpret graphs, use Holter monitor and identify heart rhythms. They are provided with hands on experience that teaches them how to operate EKG equipment.

Certification

Although passing a certification exam may not be the main criterion, many employers require ECG technicians to be certified. EKG technicians are certified through several nationally recognized organizations. To be eligible to pass an exam, you need to learn a program of training and get some experience.

Career opportunities for EKG Technicians

ECG technicians perform electrocardiograms to measure and record heart activity as a way to diagnose and treat heart disease. Some technicians are trained to perform Holter monitor or stress tests, both of which involve connecting the electrodes on the patient’s body to obtain a read-out. The Holter monitor tracks the patient’s heart over one day, while the stress test is required to use a treadmill to see how a patient’s heart responds to exercise. EKG technicians work in a variety of places, such as clinical cardiology hospital, cardiac rehabilitation centers, doctors’ offices and emergency rooms.

Career and salary

According to the latest statistics EKG technicians are in demand due to the aging population and generation of baby-boomers and the increasing rate of heart disease. Specialists with training in stress testing and Holter monitoring will get more job opportunities.