What would it take to create wildly profitable, culturally effective online education system? How could the system reflect the marketplace demands of an era of technology, and provide tangible resources for students to find and create opportunity? What would that look like?

Chances are it would not look quite like either the online education kingpin, University of Phoenix, or the many startups in the space. But there are elements from each that might make their way into a truly effective online educational system.    The Atlantic

Please join the Elk Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce and Tina L. Wheelock, owner of What a Stitch, for a Ribbon Cutting Ceremony on April 24 from 5 to 7 p.m.  What a Stitch is.

What a Stitch,  located at 114 River Street in downtown Elk Rapids, is the place to find personalized and unique gifts.  Creating balloon bouquets for every occasion and balloon works of art, What a Stitch will also do clothing alterations and they also carry handcrafted jewelry made by local artists.

Be sure to stop by and welcome Tina at What a Stitch.

If you would like more information about What a Stitch or on opening a business in the greater Elk Rapids area please contact the Elk Rapids Area Chamber at 231-264-8202.

Creators of a new website want to highlight the importance of small businesses to Michigan’s economy.  On Tuesday, the Small Business Association of Michigan and the Traverse City Chamber of Commerce announced the launch of MichiganJobsInsight.com — an online resource that documents job growth in small businesses throughout the state.  Record-Eagle

There is useful data on this site. Note above that Traverse City and mid-Michigan lag in small-business job creation. Even the U.P. does better as a percentage. And a chart that I did not post shows that a top sector for this job growth is the Hospitality industry – typically the lowest paying sector. Above it, though, is IT, which typically pays well. Note that IT usually has high-skills jobs available while Hospitality typically has low-skills jobs.

So Elk Rapids has to do better as a community than just continue the old gripes about lack of a pro-business attitude here. We live in a low-paying, lack-of-jobs region. If T.C. can’t generate lots of jobs, how can Elk Rapids? Let’s pull together and figure out how to improve our existing situation, not promote a fantasy future.

The U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services have announced that $133 million will be made available to states through the 2012 Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge.

The two federal agencies have invited Colorado, Illinois, New Mexico, Oregon, and Wisconsin, all of which participated in the last year’s challenge but did not receive awards, to apply for grants totaling up to 50 percent of their potential 2011 award amount to increase access to high-quality programs for disadvantaged children and provide more children under the age of five with a strong foundation to succeed in school and beyond. The five states were chosen based on the strength of their 2011 applications.    Philanthropy News Digest

It appears to me that Federal grantmakers are now acting more like private foundations — by establishing guidelines for grants and sticking to them. If true, this takes the politics off the table somewhat.

Michigan electricity providers are making good progress toward meeting the state’s 2015 renewable-energy mandate, mainly because of a sharp drop in wind-power generation costs, a recent state Public Service Commission report found.      MLive