Techno-News Blog

by the American Press

At this time 75 years ago, Calcasieu Parish voters were going to the polls to vote on a bond issue to make a junior college possible for Southwest Louisiana. This vote was part of the beginning of what would become McNeese State University. A major part of the motivation for the parents of our area in approving this bond issue, was to make a college education more accessible for their children. Today, in the early 21st century, a college education is being made even more accessible through the wonder of the Internet.

http://www.americanpress.com/AP-Editorial-3-12-13

By Tim Martin, mLive

An organization created by the state of Michigan to advance online learning is releasing a report that calls for more focus on personalized learning for K-12 students. The report released today by the Michigan Virtual University also says the state should take steps to support the transition. The report calls for Gov. Rick Snyder to “appoint an independent authority to evaluate the quality of content providers.” The recommendation applies to online course providers as well as new operators of K-12 school environments, according to the Michigan Virtual University.

http://www.mlive.com/education/index.ssf/2013/03/michigan_online_education_pers.html

By Jake New, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Universities and foundations have poured more than $100-million into creating open-education materials. But according to David Wiley, an open-education advocate for 15 years, faculty members and administrators have been slow to use the resources as alternatives to expensive textbooks. Mr. Wiley helped found Lumen Learning, a new company that will offer guidance and support to institutions looking to use those resources. One of the company’s goals is to collaborate with colleges to develop an associate degree in business administration that can be completed entirely with free open-education materials. Lumen is now testing the model with an unnamed community college on the East Coast, and is also looking for colleges interested in applying the model to general-studies and computer-science degrees. Graduating without ever buying a textbook could shave 30 percent off total tuition costs, Mr. Wiley said.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/open-education-company-helps-develop-textbook-free-associate-degree/42847

By Tom Simonite, Technology Review

A major reason for the popularity of smartphones and tablets is that they don’t require users to think much about security or software updates. That may soon change. The fact that smartphones and tablets don’t need antivirus software or regular software updates is a major reason for their popularity. That could soon change, however, as security companies report evidence that criminals are getting close to finding efficient and profitable ways to compromise many mobile devices at a time. If that happens, many more people would be exposed to mobile malware, and Apple and Google could be forced to regularly push out security updates for their mobile operating systems just as Microsoft does for Windows.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/512021/clues-suggest-malware-is-moving-from-pcs-to-mobile-devices/

By John Pavlus, Technology Review

Mobile computers are getting cheaper, but many people in the developing world can’t afford to get them connected to the Internet. Mobile computing is the fastest-spreading consumer technology in history, but the real change for the technology business is only just beginning. A devout Sikh, Suneet Singh Tuli, 44, has found his own way to live by his religion’s central belief of sarbat da bhala, or “may everyone be blessed.” He wants everyone in India to be on the Internet. To that end, Tuli’s London company, DataWind, is building very inexpensive tablet computers, which it assembles in China or with the help of support staff at its India offices. The idea, Tuli says, is to pair cheap tablets with ad-supported wireless service as a way to bridge the digital divide between poor and rich countries.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/511801/an-anti-ipad-for-india/

By Susan Young, Technology Review

A new wireless brain implant could be an important step toward technology that lets people with mobility problems control a computer or wheelchair with their thoughts. The implant was developed by a team at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. The researchers recently reported in the Journal of Neural Engineering that their fully implantable brain sensor can record the activity of dozens of neurons in freely moving subjects. And they showed that the device continued to work after more than a year in pigs and macaques. The next goal for the team is to test the device in humans. The promise of brain sensors that help paralyzed people regain some mobility is slowly being realized

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/512161/a-wireless-brain-computer-interface/

by Katie Lepi, Edudemic

In a recent visit (2/26/13) to Charlie Rose, Sal Khan shared some insight into the current state of Khan Academy. According to his interview, the site is now reaching about 6 million students. The Khan Academy team is comprised of 40 people. Khan is no longer the only person making the videos, and he says it’s about “ten times bigger” than when he last spoke to Rose roughly 18 months ago. Khan goes on to discuss the self-paced model and how it is effective for certain learners. He also talks about the problems surrounding passive lectures: “whether you have 10 students in the room, 20 students in the room, or 2,000 students in the room, if you’re having a passive lecture … it doesn’t matter.” He goes on to call the current lecture system as downright “dehumanizing” in this interview.

http://edudemic.com/2013/03/sal-khan-plans-stats/

by Colleen Lee, Edudemic

I see two camps of technology-involved people in my school. The ‘early adopter’ who is keenly interested in searching out new techniques, programs and options that technology can bring to teaching. I am one of those. I know for many in my school I represent something scary; the fear that because I am trying new things they will be asked to as well. As they call themselves they are the “gee, love to try that, but I don’t have time” crew. Ironically I don’t have ‘time’ either. As with them, I have marking and prepping to do and even a life to lead. I argue though to make the time. Incorporating technology into my teaching allows me to do 3 things I ask my own students to do:

http://startl.org/blog/2013/03/07/massive-open-online-courses-moocs-touted-at-sxswedu/

by Scott Steinberg, Huffington Post

In case you haven’t figured it out already, you need to take everything you know about what school was like when you were a kid and throw it out the window. If the fact that nearly every child these days is individually dropped off and picked up by their parents hasn’t already alerted you to the fact that it’s a different world, well… Let’s just say the growing emergence of schools which have official policies surrounding high-tech concerns like smartphone usage, cyberbullying and social networks should rapidly clue you in that the rules today are different.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-steinberg/technology-for-schools-an_b_2805201.html

by Joel D. Freedman, Syracuse.com

Although the National Association of Biology Teachers, the National Science Teachers Association and the Human Anatomy and Physiology Society endorse alternatives to biology lab dissections, cutting up animals is still commonplace at most of our educational institutions. When prepared for dissection, frogs are usually dropped into a water/alcohol solution. It takes up to 20 minutes for them to die. Other animals also experience much suffering before becoming “specimens” for dissection. The chemicals that preserve these animals often irritate students’ eyes, skin and respiratory systems, and are carcinogenic. Alternatives to dissection using computer programs or anatomical models are less expensive and last longer than animal purchases.

http://blog.syracuse.com/opinion/2013/03/schools_should_eliminate_anima.html

by Martin Austermuhle, DCIST

Three men allegedly broke into Brent Elementary School early last Friday, making off with a number of electronic devices before students arrived for a day of classes. Brent, located on North Carolina Avenue, was hit last October and again in November, when two other schools were also the victim of thefts of computers.

The theft of computers and electronic gadgets is a problem that has plagued a number of public schools over the years. According to a Freedom of Information request we filed late last year, at least 230 computers have been stolen from D.C. public schools since 2009. Of those, only 50 have been recovered. According to DCPS, the rise in thefts tracks with the increasing use of technology in classrooms. “The computer thefts are directly tied to an increase in the use of technology—as more schools use iPads, Kindles and laptops in the classrooms, schools become a target for thieves.

http://dcist.com/2013/03/more_computers_stolen_from_dc_publi.php

By BETH GARDINER, NY Times

At 16, Isabelle Aleksander spends hours writing computer code and plans a career in engineering. Her latest passion is the Raspberry Pi, a low-cost, credit-card-size computer developed to help teach programming. But when she told her best friend — “he’s male, also into programming” — his response was not what she had expected. “He was like, ‘Wait, how do you know about them? You’re a girl and you shouldn’t be doing that,”’ Ms. Aleksander said incredulously. She and her friend Honey Ross, 15, are among the few girls at King Alfred School, their private school in North London, with an intense interest in technology. The two, confident and outgoing, say they understand why: computing can seem boring from the outside, populated mainly by nerdy boys. “It’s sad,” Ms. Ross said, chatting between classes in the computer lab. “It’s such an amazing world. It’s kind of waiting for loads of young girls” to jump in.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/technology/computer-coding-its-not-just-for-boys.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

By Jim Taylor, BBC

The rise in smartphone and tablet gaming will continue in 2013, according to figures seen by Newsbeat. Industry analysts IHS Screen Digest think nearly £300 million will be spent on mobile games in the UK this year, up from just £100m three years ago. It is still significantly less than the £743m expected to be spent on console games but the gap is narrowing. Nine out of 10 apps are free to download but ‘freemium’ games, offering in-app purchases, are now more common.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/21694133#

by the BBC

Freezing an Android phone can help reveal its confidential contents, German security researchers have found. The team froze phones for an hour as a way to get around the encryption system that protects the data on a phone by scrambling it. Google introduced the data scrambling system with the version of Android known as Ice Cream Sandwich. The attack allowed the researchers to get at contact lists, browsing histories and photos. Android’s data scrambling system was good for end users but a “nightmare” for law enforcement and forensics workers, the team at Erlangen’s Friedrich-Alexander University (FAU) wrote in a blogpost about their work. To get around this, researchers Tilo Muller, Michael Spreitzenbarth and Felix Freiling from FAU put Android phones in a freezer for an hour until the device had cooled to below -10C.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21697704#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

by the BBC

Robots confused about what they encounter in the world of humans can now get help online. European scientists have turned on the first part of a web-based database of information to help them cope. Called Rapyuta, the online “brain” describes objects robots have met and can also carry out complicated computation on behalf of a robot. Rapyuta’s creators hope it will make robots cheaper as they will not need all their processing power on-board. The Rapyuta database is part of the European Robo Earth project that began in 2011 with the hope of standardising the way robots perceive the human world.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21714191#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

By Nathan Eddy, eWeek

Extra security prompts when downloading Google Android version 4.2 Jelly Bean should help deflect Trojans, the F-Secure report predicted. Android malware continued to gain in share in 2012 and was responsible for 79 percent of all threats for the year, up from 66 percent in 2011, according to security specialist F-Secure’s latest Mobile Threat report. In the fourth quarter alone, 96 new families and variants of Android threats were discovered, which almost doubles the number recorded in the previous quarter. A large share of the Android threats found in the fourth quarter was malware that generates profit through fraudulent short message service (SMS) practices, with 21 of the 96 Android threat variants found contributed by Premium SMS, a malware family that sends out messages to premium rate numbers.

http://www.eweek.com/android/android-responsible-for-79-percent-of-mobile-malware-in-2012/

By Todd R. Weiss, eWeek

Twitter is updating its Android and iOS apps to bring faster content delivery for users. Twitter’s Android and iOS apps have received improvements to make them easier to use and quicker at finding content on the popular social media platform. The updates to search and Web browsing are also being added to Twitter’s mobile.twitter.com site, according to a March 6 post by software engineer Nick Takayama on the Twitter Blog. The improvements follow another recent change that allows users to see older Tweets in their search results.

http://www.eweek.com/mobile/twitter-adds-user-enhancements-to-its-mobile-apps/

by Jamia Wilson, TED

After more than 13 years of research convinced him that children have the ability to learn almost anything on their own, 2013 TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra aspires to shape the future of learning by building a School in the Cloud, helping kids “tap into their innate sense of wonder.” In the spirit of Mitra’s invitation to the world to “ask kids big questions, and find big answers,” we asked four brilliant young people to tell us: What do you think is the future of learning?

http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/06/4-inspiring-kids-imagine-the-future-of-learning/

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, NY Times

Institutions of higher learning must move, as the historian Walter Russell Mead puts it, from a model of “time served” to a model of “stuff learned.” Because increasingly the world does not care what you know. Everything is on Google. The world only cares, and will only pay for, what you can do with what you know. And therefore it will not pay for a C+ in chemistry, just because your state college considers that a passing grade and was willing to give you a diploma that says so. We’re moving to a more competency-based world where there will be less interest in how you acquired the competency — in an online course, at a four-year-college or in a company-administered class — and more demand to prove that you mastered the competency…. Clayton Christensen, the Harvard Business School professor and expert on disruptive innovation, gave a compelling talk about how much today’s traditional university has in common with General Motors of the 1960s, just before Toyota used a technology breakthrough to come from nowhere and topple G.M.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/opinion/friedman-the-professors-big-stage.html?_r=0

By Spencer Kilgore, Daily Sundial

President Dianne F. Harrison encouraged faculty members at this year’s faculty retreat to consider the idea of integrating Apple’s iPad and various educational apps, such as iBooks Author, into their classrooms. Two ideas being implemented are The iPad Initiative, an idea presented by Apple to integrate their tablets into a classroom environment, and the Course Redesign institute, a two-week summer program to train CSUN faculty members to restructure their face-to-face classes into an online or hybrid environment. Both ideas are ways the campus can further incorporate technology into an educational environment. Harrison said that iPads can improve student learning outcomes.

http://sundial.csun.edu/2013/03/more-technology-in-classroom-could-affect-students-and-teachers/

By Erin Palmer, US News University Directory

Like many moms, Charlotte Butler wanted to inspire her children by going to school and obtaining her college degree. The difference with Butler is that her two biological sons are 60 and 59 years old, and her foster son is 19. And Butler herself is 80. Butler, a native of Naugatuck, Conn.,  recently enrolled in classes at Post University Online Institute in pursuit of a bachelor’s degree in human services. Butler, who never previously attended college, said working toward her degree will not only motivate her children, but help her stay sharp. “A smarter America is a stronger America, and people today are not using their brains enough,” Butler said in a news release. “I want to stay active both physically and mentally and age is no obstacle.”

http://www.usnewsuniversitydirectory.com/articles/80-year-old-woman-enrolls-in-online-college_12989.aspx#.UTlL2tabCnI