Ed Roberts from the Podsafe Christmas show graciously allowed us to syndicate the Podsafe Christmas 2006 show, so for your fill of holiday music, here it is!
Listen live:

Direct MP3 file

Play List
+ “Give Me a Second Chance for Christmas” - Candy Butchers
+ “Some Christmas Huggin and Kissin” - Geoff Smith
+ “Making Angels” - Adrienne Pierce
+ “Christmas in Your Heart” - David Hoffman
+ “Walk a Thousand Miles” - Matthew Ebel
+ “Silent Night (Noche Del Paz)” - Mike Del Ferro (with Carla Novitus)
+ “The First Christmas Tree” - Karmyn Tyler
+ “Christmas Wish” - Gidgets Ga-Ga
+ “Re-Gifting for the Holidays” - The Alice Project
+ “1941″ - Jimmie Bratcher
+ “White Christmas Will be Blue” - Beatrice Ericsson
+ “Grown Up Christmas List” - Ayla Brown
+ “Not So Silent Night” - Charlie Crowe
+ “Christmas Here” - Wednesday Week
+ “Best Part of Christmas” - American Angel
+ “For Christmas’ Sake” - Sounds of Blackness

Original show notes from Ed Roberts
Did you like today’s show? If so, please consider subscribing for free to get it delivered to you. Subscribing for free means you don’t have to remember to download it every day.
+ Click here to subscribe for free by email

+ Click here to subscribe for free in iTunes

Reminders
+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com.
+ Discuss this episode at the Financial Aid Forum!
+ FAFSA form tutorials and free help at FAFSAonline.com
+ Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com
+ Student loan consolidation at StudentLoanConsolidator.com
+ Private student loans available at any time - visit AlternativeStudentLoan.com
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.
I want to hear from you! Email me at financialaidpodcast {at} gmail {dot} com, visit http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com, or call 206-350-1208.
Technorati Tags: financial aid financialaidpodcast

At VON Boston, I had the opportunity to record Matthew Ebel playing live at the Roxy. This is a segment from that show, the song Goodbye Planet Earth from the album of the same title.

Get the album: Goodbye Planet Earth

Did you like today’s show? If so, please consider subscribing for free to get it delivered to you. Subscribing for free means you don’t have to remember to download it every day.
+ Click here to subscribe for free by email
+ Click here to subscribe for free in iTunes

Direct Quicktime file download: MOV file

Reminders
+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com.
+ Discuss this episode at the Financial Aid Forum!
+ FAFSA form tutorials and free help at FAFSAonline.com
+ Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com
+ Student loan consolidation at StudentLoanConsolidator.com
+ Private student loans available at any time - visit AlternativeStudentLoan.com
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.

I want to hear from you! Email me at financialaidpodcast {at} gmail {dot} com, visit http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com, or call 206-350-1208.

Technorati Tags: financial aid financialaidpodcast

SREB GoAlliance 2007 Meeting Followthrough

Last week I had the opportunity to speak as a general session speaker before the SREB GoAlliance, a great privilege, as the GoAlliance focuses on ways to help more kids get into college. Given how competitive the world is becoming, America needs more groups like the GoAlliance to keep our country moving forward.

Some followthrough from the meeting:

+ My slides as a 19.1 MB PDF slide deck
+ The “Did You Know” movie shown during the state updates
+ YouTube version of Did You Know
+ Podcasting presentation delivered to MASFAA
+ Mitch Joel - presentation at PodCamp Toronto (Quicktime movie, about 45 minutes) - Mitch is pretty much one of the most brilliant people I know, especially on the topic of branding and marketing.

FAP672: Facebook privacy, Scholarship Search Secrets Preview

Listen live:

Student Financial Aid News
+ Inside Higher Ed: A new loophole was inserted with little notice into federal law last year to provide “financial aid for the rich,” according to U.S. News & World Report. The measure changed the way wealth is calculated to determine financial assets by excluding the assets associated with small businesses with up to 100 full-time employees. The measure is similar to provisions that protect farm owners from having to sell their farms to pay for college, but businesses with up to 100 full-time employees can be much more valuable, allowing some to shelter considerable wealth while qualifying for aid, the magazine said.
+ We actually covered this tip a while back in our interview with Reecy Aresty
+ From the Chronicle: There are hundreds of plug-ins for Facebook, the popular social-networking platform. One lets you display your picks for upcoming college basketball games. Another can help you determine “What Kind of Drunk Are You?”
+ And one of the newest Facebook tools can apparently send your college application to any of hundreds of major institutions (using the Common Application). It’s called the College Planner tool, made by Embark as a way to drum up business.
+ A quick look at the Facebook tool, though, shows that Embark’s experiment in viral marketing might be backfiring with some students. Each Facebook tool allows people to post comments on it, and one student wrote: “this thing doesnt even work, i dont trust applying to college through this.” Others complain that the tool’s drop-down menus don’t contain the college majors they are considering.
+ Embark is also a company acquired this year by student loan lender MRU Holdings - so be aware if you use the Facebook application that you are turning over your college admissions data to a company owned by a student loan provider.
+ “We may share some or all of the information we collect, as described above, with affiliated companies and with third parties (i.e. nonaffiliated companies) as permitted by law. For example, we may share some or all of the information we collect with the following types of affiliated companies and third parties:
+ Companies with whom we conduct joint marketing campaigns;
+ Companies that provide products and/or services, such as companies engaged in banking, credit cards, consumer finance, consumer computer products, travel, insurance, as well as other direct marketers and retailers;
+ Companies that perform services on our behalf; and
+ Other third parties as required by law, such as in response to a subpoena.
+ I’m not saying don’t use it, I’m saying know what you’re getting into.

Scholarship Update
+ Minority Scholarship Awards for College Students
+ Applicants must be AIChE national student members at the time of application, undergraduates in chemical engineering during the 2007-2008 academic year, and members of a minority group (i.e. African-American, Hispanic, Native American, or Alaskan Native) that is underrepresented in chemical engineering. Students may apply who will complete the chemical engineering baccalaureate degree requirements in mid-year (i.e., after one semester, or one or two quarters), but such applicants, if successful, will receive prorated awards. The selection of recipients will be based on the applicant’s academic record, participation in AIChE student and professional activities, career objectives, and financial need.
+ Deadline May 15 of each year
+ $1,000 award x 10 awards
+ Details at our free college scholarship search site

Scholarship Search Secrets Preview
+ Tip #3 - constructing your scholarships portfolio
+ From the upcoming eBook, Scholarship Search Secrets Fourth Edition

Did you like today’s show? If so, please consider subscribing for free to get it delivered to you. Subscribing for free means you don’t have to remember to download it every day.
+ Click here to subscribe for free by email
+ Click here to subscribe for free in iTunes

Direct MP3 file download: MP3 file

Reminders
+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com.
+ Discuss this episode at the Financial Aid Forum!
+ FAFSA form tutorials and free help at FAFSAonline.com
+ Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com
+ Student loan consolidation at StudentLoanConsolidator.com
+ Private student loans available at any time - visit AlternativeStudentLoan.com
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.

I want to hear from you! Email me at financialaidpodcast {at} gmail {dot} com, visit http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com, or call 206-350-1208.

Technorati Tags: financial aid financialaidpodcast

So, the big announcement in today’s show is that podsafe music will no longer be a part of the daily Financial Aid Podcast, at least for a little while. There are six key reasons for this, from least important to most important.

1. Music, due to its very nature, was only 30% of the show but 50% of the file size. Using LAME and a mostly-voice show, a 14 minute show is now down to 8 MB. The smaller and shorter I can make my shows, the more likely it is someone can carve out a small part of their day to tune in.

2. I’ve received several pieces of feedback from audience members, some students, some financial aid professionals, who have said that my taste and selection in music is not theirs, and so they’re somewhat less likely to tune in.

3. I did a SurveyMonkey survey of show listeners recently, and out of all the segments on the show, music was rated close to the bottom for favorite parts of the show. This is YOUR show, really, not mine, and you, the audience, have spoken. In case you were wondering, the daily scholarship, Free Stuff Fridays, and news are the top three segments.

4. Finding new, good podsafe music is a very time-intensive task, taking me a couple of hours every Sunday to do research and listening - time I could be spending instead researching financial aid and college affordability. For every gem of podsafe music, there’s an increasingly large quantity of garbage.

5. One of the key business reasons I’ve included music in the show in the past is to garner additional inbound links to the podcast’s web site. Google, of course, loves links and views them as votes of a site’s legitimacy and authority. By a rough back of the envelope calculation, of the approximately 300 musicians I’ve played on the show, only 5% - 10% have ever linked back to the show or even made mention of it - making for, from a business perspective, a terrible return on social currency investment.

In the early days, receiving an email and a link was commonplace, and there are still musicians such as Matthew Ebel, Rich Palmer, and Anji Bee who generously link back to the show (I’ve provided direct outbound links to every musician I’ve played) but the vast majority do not, and since the business reason for playing music is not operating, it’s another reason to discontinue the practice.

6. The most, most, most important reason of all: this is a show about financial aid. I would presume people tune in to hear about, learn about, and get info about financial aid, and not necessarily music. For music, I would presume people would tune into great music shows like Accident Hash, Binary Starcast, High Orbit, In Over Your Head, or any of the other major music shows out there.

Will there ever be music on the Financial Aid Podcast again? Sure - in the form of the Student Loan Radio shows on the weekends. These will remain around, and will be music and entertainment focused. I think this works better, actually, because if you want to tune in for the music, you know exactly what you’ll be getting. During the weekdays, the Financial Aid Podcast will deliver impactful, no frills financial aid and scholarship information. On weekends, during leisure time, and when I’m out of the office on vacation, Student Loan Radio will deliver leisure-quality entertainment.

Are you a podcaster? What do you think of this change to the show?
Are you a podsafe musician? Does this change matter to you?
Are you a listener of the show? What’s YOUR take, since as a member of the audience, your opinion counts the most?

FAP671: College costs, FAFSA tips for the end of the year, Charlie Crowe

Listen now:

Student Financial Aid News
+ Inside Higher Ed: With debate over college costs intensifying, a report being issued today is likely to infuriate higher education leaders. “Over Invested and Over Priced: American Higher Education Today” is from the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, and charges that additional government funds for colleges support “frills” that don’t support education or economic growth — items like “fancy recreation facilities, larger university bureaucracies, and higher salaries for personnel.” The center is led by Richard Vedder, who was a member of the Spellings Commission.
+ Short summary of the 12 reasons why college costs are spiraling out of reach - colleges are non-profit, which means greater operational inefficiencies and a lesser focus on bottom line profits and efficiency
+ While financial aid and student loans are not explicitly mentioned, they are counted in the overall reason for college costs
+ Chronicle: Americans aren’t just reading fewer books, but are reading less and less of everything, in any medium. That’s the doleful conclusion of “To Read or Not to Read,” a report scheduled for release today by the National Endowment for the Arts.
+ Unlike the 2004 study, “To Read or Not to Read” examined not just literary reading but all kinds of reading, including online. And it tapped a far wider range of sources, notably statistics from the Department of Education and the Department of Labor, as well as academic and corporate studies.
+ None of it adds up to good news for the written word. Just how reading-averse have Americans become? In 2006, the study found, 15-to-24-year-olds spent just seven minutes on voluntary reading on weekdays— 10 minutes on Saturdays and Sundays. They found time to watch two to two-and-a-half hours of television daily.
+ Older and presumably wiser— or at least more bookish— generations didn’t do much better. In 2006 people ages 35 to 44 devoted only 12 minutes a day to reading. Even the best-read group, Americans 65 and older, logged less than an hour each weekday and just over an hour on weekends.

Scholarship Update
+ Anne & Matt Harbison Scholarship
+ In keeping with the goals of P. Buckley Moss, who struggled with dyslexia during her school years, this grant represents the artist’s dedication to the field of special education. Students with a learning disability often graduate from high school with no recognition of their hard work and perseverence toward achieving their academic, technical, or artistic goals. When a student does attain and surpass expectations, there is often no extrinsic reward or incentive. The P. Buckley Moss Society - Anne and Matt Harbison Scholarship is intended to help fill that void.
+ $1,500 scholarship to one high school senior with a certified language-related learning difference who is pursuing post-secondary education
* Renewable for up to three additional, consecutive years
* Applications must be postmarked no later than March 31
+ Details at our free college scholarship search site

Focus on Financial Aid
+ FAFSA season is coming up
+ If there’s one number you need to understand for the FAFSA, it’s your IRS 1040 Adjusted Gross Income
+ Things to do now
+ Pay down consumer debts as best as you can
+ Try to avoid carrying credit card debt into the new year
+ Cash on hand will impact your financial aid, so minimize it through paying down debt
+ Take a look at form 8917 - tuition and fees deduction. This is an either/or with the tax credits, but remember that any above the line deduction will also impact financial aid - so do the math carefully
+ If you have an IRA, make the maximum contribution you can, or as much as you can afford within reason
+ If you’re paying student loan interest, make sure you’re keeping your statements

Podsafe Music
+ Ha! It’s Thanksgiving week which means holiday music is back on the table
+ Charlie Crowe, O Holy Night

Did you like today’s show? If so, please consider subscribing for free to get it delivered to you. Subscribing for free means you don’t have to remember to download it every day.
+ Click here to subscribe for free by email
+ Click here to subscribe for free in iTunes

Direct MP3 file download: MP3 file

Reminders
+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com.
+ Discuss this episode at the Financial Aid Forum!
+ FAFSA form tutorials and free help at FAFSAonline.com
+ Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com
+ Student loan consolidation at StudentLoanConsolidator.com
+ Private student loans available at any time - visit AlternativeStudentLoan.com
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.

I want to hear from you! Email me at financialaidpodcast {at} gmail {dot} com, visit http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com, or call 206-350-1208.

Technorati Tags: financial aid financialaidpodcast

Reduce Your Indoor Heating Bill with Humidity

Ever walk outside in the summer on a humid day and start sweating like crazy, then look at the thermometer and say, “It feels much hotter than that!” when it’s only 80 degrees out? (27 Celsius for our metric friends) A huge factor in how you perceive heat is humidity. That same day with low humidity might even feel cool in the shade.

Switch it around in the winter. As we turn on heating systems, we try to keep our houses and ourselves warm, but heating systems tend to remove moisture from the air. If you measured the warm air coming out of duct work, chances are it’s about 10% humidity, which is incredibly dry - about as dry as a desert. You perceive the air in your house as being cooler even if you’ve got the thermostat cranked up high because you’re losing body moisture to the air (which in turn makes you feel cooler - that’s how sweating works).

Here’s a surprising fact. At 20% humidity, a room at 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 Celsius) feels like it’s 64 F (17 C). The exact same room at 70% humidity feels like it’s 71 F. To make it feel like it’s 70 F in a 10% humidity environment, you’d have to crank the thermostat up to 78 F. (source: Infoplease)

Here’s another surprising fact. Depending on where you live and heating costs (which are around $3/gallon for heating oil), a one degree difference in your indoor thermostat could save you 3% on your heating bill. If you kept your thermostat at 70 and now you bump it down to 64 (because it felt that way before humidifying anyway), you’re talking major savings every month.

So how do you do that? Humidity. You don’t have to run out and buy some gargantuan humidifier. There are some very, very cheap ways to keep the humidity levels up in your apartment or dorm room.

- If you live in an apartment or house, keep the bathroom door open when you shower. (assuming there are no line of sight privacy issues, that is)
- Buy a clothes drying rack and instead of using the dryer for your laundry, hang your wet wash to dry in your home. It may take a little longer, but you’ll save money on the dryer AND humidify your home.
- Hang up wet towels after you’ve showered to air dry.
- Air dry your dishes.
- When you shower, stop up the drain. After your shower, keep the curtain open and let the tub remain full until cold; any residual heat and humidity will have evaporated into the air. As a bonus, use this water to water your indoor house plants.
- Have indoor house plants.
- Buy an inexpensive cool mist ultrasonic humidifier and turn it on when you’re home - remember these have a modest but real electricity cost.

One last reason to keep humidity levels up - Science Daily recently posted study results indicating that influenza spreads MUCH more rapidly in a low humidity environment. Keeping your home humidified will help - employers, if you want to reduce sick days in the winter, keep the office humidity high, too!

FAP670: College Opportunity and Affordability Act and File Sharing, Free Stuff Friday, Munk

Listen live:

Student Financial Aid News
+ An important blog post about Section 494 of the College Opportunity and Affordability Act which is a handout to the RIAA and MPAA, mandating that colleges enforce copyright instead of being protected like ISPs under the DMCA.
+ I oppose illegal file-sharing. I believe musicians deserve to be paid. I also oppose making colleges spend even a dollar to solve someone else’s problem. That money they’ll be required to spend on the recording industry should be going to financial aid.
+ More about COAA from the Chronicle of Higher Education
+ Before approving the bill on Thursday morning, the committee considered seven amendments that remained from Wednesday’s debate and adopted two of them on a roll-call vote.
+ The first, an amendment by Rep. Jason Altmire, Democrat of Pennsylvania, would provide grants to colleges that team up with local employers to align their programs with labor needs.
+ The second, an amendment by Rep. Robert C. Scott, Democrat of Virginia, would allow recipients of TRIO grants, given to needy students, to challenge the Education Department’s decision not to renew their grants. The amendment was prompted by recent complaints from cut-off grantees in one of the TRIO programs, Talent Search. Mr. Scott’s proposal would allow grantees to argue to an administrative-law judge that the education secretary had improperly scored their applications.
+ The committee rejected five Republican-sponsored amendments, including a pair by Rep. Ric Keller of Florida. One amendment would have required institutions in the direct-loan program to certify loans from lenders in the competing guaranteed-loan program. The other would have authorized the education secretary to penalize institutions that raised their tuition in direct response to Pell Grant increases.
+ The House bill also deals with the recent growth in private lending, requiring lenders to provide multiple disclosures to borrowers about the terms and conditions of their loans. The bill would also require colleges to inform borrowers of their remaining eligibility for federal loans before providing them with information about private loans, and to clearly distinguish private student loans from other sources of financial aid in award materials.
+ I definitely support disclosure and transparency in private student loans
+ Is something unclear in Student Loan Network private student loans? Tell us!
+ This language will not solve overborrowing as we talked about in the DTC marketing interview yesterday with David Sheridan
+ A reminder that private student loans are NOT a substitute for federal student loans - they’re a supplement

Scholarship Update
+ The 2008 FIDM National Scholarship Competition is sponsored by Windsor. Windsor is dedicated to celebrating your unique personality with apparel and accessories created to fit your lifestyle, from everyday wear to special occasion and everything in between. Each of the winners (6 total) will receive a full one-year scholarship to attend FIDM. Scholarships include tuition, fees, books, and most supplies. If the receipt of any federal or state grants for which the student is eligible creates an amount in excess of tuition and fees, students in 2-year programs will have that sum applied to their second-year tuition.
+ Deadline April 30
+ Full tuition scholarship
+ Details at our free college scholarship search site

Free Stuff Friday
+ A very interesting almost-free stuff experiment
+ Giveaway of the Day
+ ToddlerTrap for Windows
+ Keyboard Cleaner for the Mac
+ Google Earth Census Data from Stanford
+ Google Earth Tourism Layer
+ Address Context for Thunderbird
+ Meebo Voice and Video Chat

Podsafe Music
+ Munk, Dirty Work

Did you like today’s show? If so, please consider subscribing for free to get it delivered to you. Subscribing for free means you don’t have to remember to download it every day.
+ Click here to subscribe for free by email
+ Click here to subscribe for free in iTunes

Direct MP3 file download: MP3 file

Reminders
+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com.
+ Discuss this episode at the Financial Aid Forum!
+ FAFSA form tutorials and free help at FAFSAonline.com
+ Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com
+ Student loan consolidation at StudentLoanConsolidator.com
+ Private student loans available at any time - visit AlternativeStudentLoan.com
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.

I want to hear from you! Email me at financialaidpodcast {at} gmail {dot} com, visit http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com, or call 206-350-1208.

Technorati Tags: financial aid financialaidpodcast

Destroy Section 494 of the College Opportunity and Affordability Act!

Ed Roberts pointed this out via Ars Technica:

The House Education and Labor Committee unanimously passed the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007. Among other things, the COAA would require colleges and universities to adopt strict antipiracy policies and possibly offer students access to subscription-based music services like Napster.

COAA went through a markup session yesterday, and despite pressure from higher education groups like the American Council on Education, the copyright-related provisions were not addressed. Indeed, Section 494 looks to have survived unscathed.

As it stands, the bill would put colleges and universities on the front lines of the war against file-sharing. As part of the financial aid administration process, schools would have to inform students about their official policies about copyright infringement, as well as possible civil and criminal penalties. They would also have to “develop a plan for offering alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property as well as a plan to explore technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity.”

Schools would be able to apply for grants to “develop, implement, operate, improve,
and disseminate programs of prevention, education, and cost-effective technological solutions,” to fight copyright infringement on campus.

The bulk of the College Opportunity and Affordability Act is good stuff. Section 494 is most assuredly not. It’s a lobbying money grab from the RIAA and the MPAA that can be interpreted as requiring colleges to pay for campus-wide licenses to the RIAA and MPAA - dollars that will not be available for, you guessed it, financial aid. On top of that, if a school is found to be non-compliant, according to the terms in this section of the bill, they will lose federal funding, meaning that all students attending the institution, regardless of whether they participated in illegal file-sharing, would lose federal financial aid.

Please contact your Senate and House representatives (phone is best!) and let them know that you support the College Opportunity and Affordability Act EXCEPT Section 494 which you feel must be eliminated for the good of colleges, college students, and families.

Contact your Senator at Senate.gov - call them up!
Contact your House Representative at House.gov - call them up!

Don’t send faxes or emails or postal mail - call, call, call, and light up their switchboards. Don’t have the money to pay for a call? Use your 10 free minutes from GizmoProject.com.

While you’re on the phone with your elected reps, please ask them to vote to overturn President Bush’s veto of the FY 2008 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education spending bill, which would have increased the Pell Grant by about $600 per year.

FAP669: Expert interview with David Sheridan on DTC Marketing Practices, Adrina Thorpe

Last day on the road for me as we wrap up the SREB Go Alliance conference here. Today’s show features an interview with David Sheridan of Union County College, who is also on NASFAA’s Federal Issues Committee. FIC has been investigating potentially abusive marketing practices by student loan companies, especially with regard to private student loans. We talk to David to get his insights on what practices are frowned upon, and how NASFAA might address them, as well as how students and families can avoid getting trapped by deceptive marketing practices.

Listen live:

Podsafe Music
+ Adrina Thorpe, Midnight

Direct MP3 file download: MP3 file

Reminders
+ Get the Financial Aid Podcast by email!
+ Financial Aid Podcast Show Notes at FinancialAidPodcast.com.
+ Discuss this episode at the Financial Aid Forum!
+ Private student loans available at any time - visit AlternativeStudentLoan.com
+ Stafford federal student loans at StaffordLoan.com
+ Student loan consolidation at StudentLoanConsolidator.com
+ FAFSA form tutorials and free help at FAFSAonline.com
+ The Financial Aid Podcast is a publication of the Student Loan Network.

I want to hear from you! Email me at financialaidpodcast {at} gmail {dot} com, visit http://www.FinancialAidPodcast.com, or call 206-350-1208.

Technorati Tags: financial aid financialaidpodcast