Now that going to college online is a widely accepted practice, choosing the right online college is more important than ever.  Previously schools that weren’t accredited were fairly prevalent, there to take your money and deliver an education that won’t be recognized by any reputable employer.  You have to find the right school for you, and the one that will set you on the correct career path.  Remember, you’re looking for an online college to set you up for professional success, and only the best accredited options will do, to that end.

So, the first step is looking at the schools you are interested in, and checking their accreditation.  There are two types of college accreditation, regional accreditation and national.  Regional accreditation is the most important, as regional accredited schools are recognized by all employers, and their credits are transferable from school to school.  So if you find that you don’t like this school as much as you thought you would, from a regional accredited school you can transfer your course credits to a new school.

Now after you have a list of schools that interest you, with regional accreditation, you can move on to the next step.  Here you want to compare all the important factors.  Cost being a major one, think about how much the schools cost, because this student debt will take you some time to pay off.  Now you want to look at student population and student teacher ratio.  Schools with fewer students are usually more desirable, as are schools with a higher number of teachers compared to students.

Also make sure to look at the school’s graduation rate and how many credits are necessary to earn either an Associate’s or Bachelor’s degree.  You want a school with a higher graduation rate, and with an acceptable amount of credits required.  The more credit’s a school requires, the longer it will take you to earn them, or the more money they will cost.  So take that into account when picking an online college.

Now you should have a fine tuned idea of which schools interest you the most.  From here you should get into contact with a school representative and discuss your interest.  Contact all the schools you’re interested in, and make sure you don’t make a decision until after you’ve voiced your questions and concerns to every school individually.

The first and eventful decade of the 21st century has come to an end. And in this decade not only we have recovered from the dotcom bust, but we have also marched ahead to add expert layer to the web (web 3.0).

What changed in the 1st decade?

• In the decade that is passing by, Blogging, video sharing, pod casting, and rich media content has come huge.
• Web which was nothing but a cheap imitation of broadcast media in the beginning of the decade has changed, and now it is more of a conversational media.
• Top-down approach of communication of web 1.0 (web in the beginning of 2000) gave way to two way communication.
• Comments and feedback become a huge force on the Internet.
• People became social.
• Friendster went out and got replaced by Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn.
• People felt the power of 140 characters as twitter, plurk, identi.ca, and like flourished.
• Sharing has become a new nature
• People started voicing their concern with click of a mouse.
• Broadband become ubiquitous.
• Computer is not only medium for web access. More and more people started using handheld devices to access the net.
• Techcrunch, lifehacker, boingboing, and the likes become more popular on the net then AOL, Times and other biggies.
• Being on the first page of Digg has become cooler than being on the top 10 list of the New York Times.
• Social bookmarking became a huge force.
• Search engine became more intelligent.
• Cloud computing is a serious business now.

This is in no way a complete list of what has changed in the first decade of the twenty-first century.

What to expect in

• Authority will rule.
• People with real knowledge about their field will become more important.
• Web will go semantic
• Search engines will become more intolerant of shoddy SEO practices
• Web will become personal and portable
• Big content sites like ehow, about.com will become prominent.
• Broadband will become more popular.
• You will be more important as an individual than as member of tribe.
• Technology will go open source.
• Chrome OS will see the light of the day.
• Wolfram Alpha will become a default search engine for hard data.
• Bing will put a big dent in Google search.
• More and more SEO will happen for Bing.
• Search result will become more personal and local

These and several other changes will happen in 2010. Let’s wait and see how it unfolds, but for now let’s bid adieu .

A feedback is important. It plays a crucial role in our personal or professional development, but it works only if we get a proper feedback. An improper feedback like, “things look good to me” does not do any good. Therefore, the real challenge is to know how to get a proper feedback from people around us.

In this article, I have tried to provide a workable “feedback seeking system” which you can use to get a proper feedback. You can also modify the system, if you feel something is missing.

Step 1: Define your feedback goal

Why you want a feedback and on what? The answer to this question matters a lot. A generic feedback like, “all is good” or “there is some problem here and there, but the rest is good” will not do any good. Set a target for why you want a feedback. If you have written something then the feedback you can seek could be related to your writing style, coherence, grammatical and punctuation errors, or overall understandability. You can subdivide your work in this way and ask for feedback about the particular thing you want to know.

Step 2: Qualify your feedback source

Do not seek feedback from anyone and everyone. It will do no good. A proper feedback should come from a qualified source. Ask your senior, your client, your boss, your teacher, or anyone who is more qualified than you are on the subject for the feedback. A washerwoman’s feedback on the structure of your SQL database will serve nothing.

Do not ask your family or the closest friend who knows everything about your project for the feedback. Good or bad, it will never give you the feedback that you can use.

Step 3: Ask targeted question

Ask questions relevant to the feedback goal you set in step one. Do not pose generic question, as it will not fetch desired answer. Ask a targeted question and listen patiently for the answer.

Step 4: Promise anonymity

If feedback sought is for something or someone else then assure your source that his or her identity will be kept hidden if he or she wishes to do that. And if the feedback is about you then tell the feedback source that his or her honest opinion will not tarnish your relationship. This is very important.

Conclusion

Do not lose heart if you do not get positive feedback from all quarters. No matter how smart your source is, he or she can still be short-sighted or wrong. Show confidence in your ability.