Diane Auer Jones is a former Bush administration department of education official who is now employed in for-profit education world. In this aggressive post to The Chronicle's blog, Brainstorm, she takes on some regulatory changes by the Obama administration and posits them as mostly about hindering the uses of information technology. The entire piece includes no mention of her employment or of the fact that the new regulations are intended to cope with quality control issues by some major for-profit competitors.

It will not be long before students in brick-and-mortar classrooms will be required to have clickers in their hands so that they can press the button every 15 minutes to prove they are awake and in the room, and so that a computer can record each time they raise their electronic hand to ask or answer a question. Faculty members will need to preserve thousands of e-mails to show that they interacted with a student, even if he or she missed class on a given day. I guess faculty will be required to keep electronic logs of who visited during office hours, too. ...

You are absolutely correct, Mr. President, that the world has changed. So maybe it is time for your Department of Education to realize that the students of tomorrow will not be educated with chalkboards and overheads, no matter how much those of us who are over 40 wish to relish the glory days of our own college past. I challenge anyone who questions the quality of online education to sign up for an online course to see first hand just what it is like. Go ahead. Do it. Come back and tell us how it was. But for those who have never experienced online learning or teaching first hand, perhaps it is time to stop parroting hearsay and start making some evidence-based observations of their own.

Thank you, Mr. President, for recognizing that technology has changed our world. It is now time to allow technology to change higher education.

Rather than analyzing second-hand accounts of last week's summit, we've decided to share with you a set of links to various reports.

• The first item is a 2-minute YouTube video from the Associated Press of President Obama addressing the summit.
• The White House Community College Website
• Inside Higher Ed: Praise But No Cash
• Inside Higher Ed: Community Colleges' Day in the Sun
• The Chronicle of Higher Education: At the White House, Praise and New Challenges for Education's 'Unsung Heroes'
• The Christian Science Monitor: Gates Gives $35M to Obama's Community College Overhaul
• The New York Times: White House Plans Job Training Partnership
• Community College Week: Summit Leaves Leaders Wanting More
• Community Colleges Inside the Beltway: White House Summit on Community Colleges Ends With a Consensus on Challenges

One reporter captured some of the event's cynicism:

In the East Room, I asked a White House press corps regular how the event ranked, one to ten, in terms of stops the White House could pull out. "A five," he said, though "you didn't hear it from me." The East Room wasn't set up for cramming in as many people as possible. "Half-day event, all day spin. The Big Man isn't going to the wrap up. That's definitely a five." We press were roped off in the back third of the East Room, and the 100 or so of us didn't fill the space.

I counted four empty seats among the guests. (Among the guests, unlike my community college classes, no piercings other than earlobes. No Jordans. No Nikes.) As a matter of proportionality, the President of the United States has the whole world and parts of outer space in his hands, and he showed up to speak, not wave. The White House is The White House is The White House. Five out of ten? Plenty generous for community colleges.

On September 20-21, a Sustainability Education Summit: "Citizenship and Pathways for a Green Economy" was held at the Washington Plaza Hotel in DC. The meeting was a legislatively mandated invitation-only summit of about 300 green and sustainability leaders from within and around education, and featured appearances by subject matter experts as well as by various representatives from the US Departments of Education; Labor; and Housing and Urban Development.

SCUP was there, and captured some YouTube quality video excerpts so that you can experience some of the summit. We will be sure to share with you the summit outcomes when they become available.

Here is Secretary of Education Arne Duncan beginning his address to the group, in which he notes that his department is a bit late to the realm of sustainability education, but that this is a start.

Here is Tony Cortese of Second Nature and the ACUPCC. Warning, he starts out with a lightbulb joke that is not about energy.

Martha J. Kanter is the Under Secretary of Education, the position reporting to Secretary Arne Duncan in the realms of adult and higher education and federal student aid. These are some of her remarks at the opening of the first Sustainability Education Summit, "Citizenship and Pathways for a Green Economy."

Michael Crow is president of Arizona State University These are some of her remarks at the opening of the first Sustainability Education Summit, "Citizenship and Pathways for a Green Economy." He speaks here of the "design aspirations" at ASU and how those guiding principles affect its striving for sustainability. There is also more from Michael Crow, below.

One the meatiest sessions was on Tuesday, when a panel of experts moderated by yet another expert, discussed the presentations from Monday, as well as the outcomes from the small group visioning sessions at the end of Monday.

Below is Jim Elder of the Environmental Literacy Campaign, who moderated this panel.

Panelist Tom Kelly of the University of New Hampshire.

Panelist Leith Sharp of the Illinois Green Economy Network.

Panelist Debra G. Rowe of Oakland Community College (MI), as well as DANS, HEASC, and the US Partnership.