Review of Walden University website

For this blog post, I thought that I would review the Walden University website: WaldenU.edu.As a warning, I do get paid for some of the posts that I write for this blog, and this post happens to be among them. However, my getting paid to review a website would never affect my review of said website, either positively or negatively for Walden University's online degree programs.

From my initial pass through the website, I can tell that their site is very clean and looks very professional. It is relatively easy to navigate, with a large pull down menu on the homepage and a nice layout that directs me to different parts of the website. So, I give them high marks for this feature. Below is a screen shot of the homepage:

The part of the website I am most interested in is the degrees that they offer. So, I click on that link and check out the doctoral programs that they offer on the site. This directs me to the following page:

The doctoral degrees that they offer seem to be geared more towards education professionals, which makes sense for an online university and is probably a good thing. After all, you wouldn't want to drive on a bridge built by someone with an online degree, now would you?

After seeing the program for a doctorate degree in Education, I am curious how much this would cost me. So, I click through the Tuition and Fees tab and find the cost per semester hour in a table.

Wow!!! A quick calculation reveals that 770$ per semester credit hour times 54 credit hours minimum plus fees easily puts a student over 42,000$ for a Ed.D. degree. To me, that seems like a lot of money.

I guess that, if the student is able to get a good job after with an online degree, then it's fine. However, as I said before, I am not sure who would hire a person with a Ed.D degree from an online university over someone from a brick-and-mortar college.

So, I am impressed overall with the website, at least in terms of the technical aspects of the site. The site is easy to use and easy to navigate. I'm not sold on the programs they offer, however.

Click here to learn about Walden.

Cool Science: Robots Playing Shuffleboard, Throw Eggs

I found this video on Youtube, and I thought that it was so amazing that I had to share it with everyone. Here you have some teams from Oregon State University that actually have built a robot (more like a computer controlled puck launcher) to play the famous retiree game of shuffleboard.

It's impossible to tell exactly how good the robots are, but they're probably better than I am -- considering I've never played before.





In a lot of ways, it's pretty amazing how far computer and robot technology have advanced in the last 20 years. Science is really starting to do even more amazing things. Even though this is a cute example of artificial intelligence, similar robots and similar competitions take place in mechanical engineering departments in colleges all across the country.

Here is an example from the University of Utah where students built a robot to throw eggs into a basket.



In some ways, the University of Utah robots are even more impressive than the robots that play shuffleboard because of the delicate touch that is required when handling an egg.

So, what does the future hold for humanity? I think that I agree with Ken Jennings, Jeopardy player extraordinare that, "I for one welcome our new computer overlords."(i.e. Watson)

Related articles

• Robots Playing Shuffleboard (w/ video) (physorg.com)
• How robots will teach us who we are as humans (kevinmd.com)
• What Type of Communications Can Our Cells Achieve? (georgefebish.wordpress.com)
• Tiny transforming beer can robot (hackaday.com)
• Human sized robot that can read developed (news.bioscholar.com)
• Born to be Viral: Pool-playing robot rivals humans (newscientist.com)