These days, with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube penetrating most of our lives, we need to take special care to keep our private lives just that—private! Just last week, Kaplan Test Prep released the results of a survey that found that 24% of college admissions officers check applicants Facebook or other social networking pages to learn more about them good and bad. And although the MBA admissions committees probably have better things to do than troll the Internet for your private information, you can never truly know if an alumni or student interviewer has taken a few minutes to find out a little more about you online.

While your pages on these sites are likely innocuous, it is still important that you ensure your pages are private so you can exclusively control your content—and thus your interviewer’s perception of you. You don’t want your interviewers first impression to be drawn from your vacation photos, but rather from your confident demeanor as you walk in the door and shake his/her hand. So, take a moment and make sure that only those you invite to your pages can learn about you and your life through them.

Because of the role that the internet plays in our life, it’s not just where people from distant places can meet up, it’s also a marketplace.

However, for you to be prosperous in your online business, you have to generate traffic for your site. What I mean by this is that you must get people to frequent your website.

The real effective way of generating serious traffic to your site is by way of releasing relevant articles. It’s because when people use the internet, they often do so to retrieve information and they get these information from articles.

Although the solution sounds simple, article writing can be a difficult task for some people.

The first step that you have to do when writing articles is to do research. Especially if you have limited knowledge on the topic, you really have to do research in order for you to write sensible articles.

And then there’s the actual writing. We all know that not a lot of people can do this.

Some internet marketers have tried to get rid of all those by employing an article writing program. But, more often than now, these programs create articles that are bordering on ridiculous and absurd.

These articles are better known as simple keywords strung together to reach an appropriate length even if they sound grammatically wrong and incoherent.

Fortunately, not all programs are like that and there are some like instant article wizard that can stand up to the challenge of writing decent articles.

You only need to type in the keywords and then the program will automatically do a search for all the texts related to your topic. From this, you will be able to write an article from start to end.

The reason for why posting sensible articles is still the best way of generating traffic is because even if these articles have long been in the internet, they can still generate traffic. Everyday, these internet marketers submit articles in different directories and blogs.

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Student of history: Pauline Pearce attempted to shame rioters in Hackney by appealing to a sense of black culture and community 

History is the most inescapable of subjects: we inherit it, we make it, and we are fated to become part of it. In our education system, however, its study is increasingly neglected: indeed, in a large number of British schools, the end of history is already a reality.

Last year, a total of 159 secondary schools did not put a single pupil forward for history GCSE. In state comprehensives, the number of pupils taking the subject has fallen to 29.9 per cent; in private schools, it has dipped to 47.7 per cent. The only sector where numbers are rising is state grammars, where it is taken by 54.8 per cent.

What the statistics suggest is that the least well-off pupils are also fated to be the most ignorant both of their personal cultural history, and that of the country in which they live. This is, in part, because history is perceived as a “hard” subject. Eager to shine in the league tables, schools with an academically problematic intake shepherd pupils towards “softer” subjects, in which higher marks can more easily be guaranteed. I cannot think of a more depressing illustration of the gulf between “performance” and education.

The pitiful irony is that it is children from poorer, and often more dysfunctional backgrounds that have the greatest need – and thirst – for history. For history, whether of family or nation, is the story of identity, the construction of which is the most primitive, deep-seated urge there is. If you cannot articulate where you came from or what you believe in, and are given few intellectual or emotional tools with which to do so, you are fated to become the most unstable, combustible human material of all.

For an example, one need only look to the recent riots, and that memorable moment in Hackney when a furious 45-year-old grandmother and jazz singer, Pauline Pearce, confronted young rioters against a background of blazing cars. “Get real, black people,” she admonished them, “We’re not all gathering together and fighting for a cause, we’re running down Foot Locker and stealing shoes.”

A report in the Detroit Free Press today finds nearly one in three Michigan teachers feel pressured — from parents, superiors or others — to change students’ grades on standardized tests.

From the story:

At schools that don’t meet federal standards, the tension is higher: About 50% say pressure to change grades is an issue, and 46% say pressure to cheat on the tests is a problem.

Some cave in — about 8% say they changed grades within the last school year, and at least 8% admit to some form of cheating to improve a student’s standardized test score.

The survey results show the pressures on educators as the state moves toward making student progress and test scores a major factor in teacher evaluations starting in 2013. The comments left by survey-takers reveal frustration with reliance on standardized tests to judge both students and teachers.

The Free Press analyzed survey responses from more than 3,000 teachers, the majority of which came from the metro Detroit area. The survey of educators took place in May and June, and was conducted by the Free Press along with the Michigan Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers-Michigan and the Detroit Federation of Teachers. Read more about the methodology here.

The paper mentions the survey is in response to its discovery of too-good-to-be-true test scores throughout the Detroit area earlier this year, but it’s a nationwide issue. Earlier, this month, for example, a report uncovered widespread test-score-inflation in the Atlanta public school system.

The reason for the problem is obvious, writes Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein, but there’s no easy solution:

(T)he reality is that if you create high-stakes competitions of any sort, youre eventually going to get a certain irreducible level of cheating and abuse.

This has been true in corporate sales, with its long history of bribery and kickbacks. It has been a reality in politics and elections. It has been the case in major league and top-level amateur sports. Lord knows it has led to lots of problems on Wall Street. And if we continue to rely on high-stakes testing in education, it will also be a factor there as well.

The right reaction to the cheating scandals in Atlanta, Washington and elsewhere isnt to declare testing a failure. It is to string up, metaphorically, the worst offenders as a lesson to anyone else who wants to give it a try. It is to spend the money on software and investigations to create a very credible threat that if you do this youll get caught. And it is to reaffirm, absolutely, our commitment to accountability in education and continuous improvement in the ways we measure success of students, teachers and principals.

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HUNTSVILLE, Alabama — A federal judge has granted Huntsville City Schools’ request to bus sixth-graders from Providence School to Williams Middle when the new school year begins in two weeks.

Court documents indicate, however, that the longer bus rides for those students raised some concerns within the federal government. The documents also give details of the school system’s long-term plans for Providence students.

Dr. Casey Wardynski, superintendent of the school system, said he appreciated the swiftness with which the judge ruled, allowing the students to be at their new school when classes begin on Aug. 8.

He also praised the teamwork between the district, the U.S. Department of Justice and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. As parties to the 1970 court order ending the city’s race-based dual education system, both agencies can object to any school zone changes proposed by the district.

“We worked pretty closely with the Justice Department, the NAACP and the courts from day one,” Wardynski said. “They quickly saw the wisdom in what we were doing and were very responsive in crafting a package that could go to the court.”

U.S. District Judge Inge Prytz Johnson’s order was filed Wednesday, the day after a joint motion was filed by all three parties.

Despite the immediate solution for overcrowding, the court documents show that the construction of a new Providence Middle remains a long-term goal of the school board.

“When such a middle school is constructed, the Providence students who are assigned by this order to attend Williams will be reassigned to Providence,” the motion states.

The motion also gives the school board a deadline of Jan. 15, 2014, to let the Justice Department, the NAACP fund and the court know where those construction plans stand.

If the new middle school is not available for the 2014-2015 school year, all three parties must make a recommendation to the court on how to proceed with alternative assignments.

The alternative could be continued assignment to Williams Middle, the document said.

Though the move to Williams was unopposed, the Justice Department did express concern over the amount of extra time some students would spend on the bus. Some children will catch buses from their homes about 30 minutes earlier than other students and be taken to Providence, where they will then catch another bus to Williams.

Though Wardynski stated earlier this month that the 12-mile trip to Williams would take about 24 minutes, that estimate does not account for traffic congestion the buses could encounter as they travel over several major arteries through the city.

The motion states, in part, that “the United States reserves the right to raise this issue with the other parties and, if necessary, with the court after full implementation of the reassignment plan herein described and after final bus routes and times have been determined.”

Wardynski proposed the transfer of incoming sixth-graders from Providence to Williams to alleviate overcrowding. Providence last year was operating at about 139 percent capacity.

Williams Middle was operating at about 41 percent capacity.

Williams was also chosen because the black-to-white student ratio is similar to that at Providence. Last year, the Providence population was approximately 66 percent black and the Williams population was about 67 percent black, the court documents state.