Elisabeth Harrison

The New England Institute of Technology (NEIT) is one of the best places in the country to study video game design, according to the Princeton Review. The college and university ranking organization has placed NEIT at number 14 on its list of the top 15 undergraduate institutions for video game design.

The ranking puts NEIT in the company of schools like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which earned the number two slot, and the University of Southern California, ranked 5th. The top-ranked school for video gaming programs was the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

Last week news broke that the weekly alternative paper, the Boston Phoenix, was stopping the presses after 47 years of publication. The news caught most media watchers off guard and has left some in Rhode Island wondering about the future of the Providence Phoenix. Here with insight into what happened in Boston and what’s ahead for Providence is the associate publisher of the Providence Phoenix Steve Brown.

A group of Providence students is asking prominent Rhode Islanders to take the standardized test known as the NECAP this weekend, as they work to demonstrate why it should not be used as a graduation requirement.

"We hope to lend a deeper perspective to debate about the new high stakes testing graduation requirement," says 16-year-old Classical High School student Cauldierre McKay, a member of the Providence Student Union. The group has been pushing state officials to reconsider their policy on graduation requirements that go into effect for the class of 2014.

Brown University kicks off a lecture series on gun violence today with a talk from Carl Bogus, professor of law at Roger Williams University Law School. Bogus will discuss efforts to reduce crime and the effects guns and gun crime have on communities.

We continue our series on aging in Rhode Island with a look at the fastest growing student group at Rhode Island College and the University of Rhode Island: students 50 and older.

RIPR Education Reporter Elisabeth Harrison takes us to the RIC campus to find out why these students are returning to college, and what challenges they face when they get there.

The Rhode Island Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has released a report deeply critical of internet filtering software used in many public schools, saying it is tantamount to censorship. The report found that software blocks a wide variety of web sites including the Smithsonian Institutes and sites with information about anti-government groups.

“The excessive use of Internet filters by schools has seriously infringed on the First Amendment rights of students and teachers on a daily basis,” said the report’s author, Hillary Davis, in a written statement.

Rhode Island has the largest percentage of people age 85 and older in the nation, and the number is only going to grow as baby boomers begin to join that group. This week, Rhode Island Public Radio takes an in-depth look at older Rhode Islanders in a new series we’re calling The Silver Boom: Aging in Rhode Island.  To start us off, RIPR Morning Edition Host Elisabeth Harrison spoke with Catherine Taylor, Director of the State Division of Elderly Affairs.