Techno-News Blog

by Jessica Lieber, Technology Review

The shockwaves created by the iPhone and its App Store, for instance, are still being felt across the computer industry. It’s uncertain whether Glass will have a similar impact, but Google is creating high expectations that it will become a mass-market device (see “Google Wants to Install a Computer on Your Face”). While being secretive about certain key details, it intends to start selling Glass this year and has already been looking for outsiders’ ideas that could help make the device a hit. Last month, Google held two-day hackathons for selected developers in New York and San Francisco. (It had “Glass Foundry” attendees sign agreements to stay silent about their experiences.) It has also given early access to certain, but not all, developers of popular smartphone apps that could be a natural fit for Glass’s tiny, head-worn, Android-powered display.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/512046/will-anyone-create-a-killer-app-for-google-glass/

By Jessica Leber, Technology Review

Winning over recruiters and potential bosses can be hard enough. Now there’s something else job seekers have to woo: an algorithm. A San Francisco startup called Gild has created a program that evaluates and scores software developers on the work they have publicly released. Tech recruiters can use this “Gild score” to see through the top-tier degrees, vague descriptions of skill sets, or polished testimonials of well-connected programmers whose coding skills may be below par. Less-obvious candidates, such as a junior in college who has been building great apps since she was 16, might rise into view instead. One could imagine some future algorithm evaluating a teacher’s online courses, a journalist’s articles, or a scientist’s open-access data. (A company called Klout already scores how influential people are in social media.) “This is massively useful beyond just tech recruiting,” says Bryan Power, director of talent at Square, a payment technology company that has used Gild’s software to help vet job candidates for the last three months. “There’s so much more that will be online in the next couple of years,” he says.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/511896/a-startup-that-scores-job-seekers-whether-they-know-it-or-not/

By Adam Heckler, Fractus Learning

I know that most readers at Fractus are probably pretty tech-savvy, but still, some may not quite be to that level yet. The worst part about it is that the technology world moves so fast and changes so rapidly that the jargon and slang is extremely hard to keep up with, even for people who try to pay close attention. So today I thought I’d bring you a mini-encyclopedia or mini-dictionary of sorts, where I’ll lay out some of the more confusing technology terms that educators will encounter on a regular basis. I’ll do my best to explain them as well, so you can at least sound knowledgeable if you are, say, stuck in a conversation with someone who knows a lot about technology.

http://www.fractuslearning.com/2013/03/04/technology-terms-for-teachers/

By George Williams, Chronicle of Higher Ed

What if you want to edit the content you’ve uploaded to your website? Well, in a helpful comment, ProfHacker reader Chris Clark points us to a Google Drive app called Drive Notepad, which turns out to be a pretty darned impressive text editor: “View and edit all kinds of text documents in your browser. Includes syntax highlighting for many scripting and programming languages.” This app is not affiliated with Google, but is the creation of a developer listed as “DM” on the app’s page. To use Drive Notepad, you need to first get the browser Google Chrome (if you’re not already using it) and then go to this page in the Chrome Web Store, where you can install the app.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/drive-notepad-a-browser-based-text-editor-for-google-docs/46955

By Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Think the digital divide is behind us now that personal computers are ubiquitous? Consider the recent failure of an e-textbook effort in a wealthy school district outside of Washington, D.C. The e-textbooks used in the project, run by the Fairfax County Public Schools, worked only when students were online—and some features required fast connections. But it turns out that even in such a well-heeled region, many students did not have broadband access at home and were unable to do their homework, sparking complaints from parents that led the school system to approve the purchase of $2-million in printed textbooks for those who preferred a hard copy. As more colleges rush to offer free online courses in the name of providing educational access to all, it’s worth asking who might be left out for lack of high-speed Internet access to watch video lectures.

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Bandwith-Divide/137633/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

by Jane Hart, Learning in the Social Workplace

A good example of the difference between instructional packaging and instructional scaffolding was provided recently by Debbie Morrison in her post A tale of two of MOOCs: divided by pedagogy.  In a very useful table (reproduced below) she compares the approaches taken by the (very popular, connectivist) e-Learning and Digital Cultures MOOC with the (aborted, instructivist) Fundamentals of Online Education MOOC. (The first is a great example of instructional scaffolding.)

http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/blog/2013/03/06/instructional-design-packaging-to-scaffolding/

by the BBC

O2 has launched an app which lets users make and receive phone calls and texts via a tablet, computer or smartphone. Tu Go is available for Android, Apple’s iOS devices and Windows 7 PCs but limited to “pay monthly” subscribers – so excludes corporate accounts. Tu Go deducts charges from the user’s existing call minutes allowance, unlike Skype and other chat apps which involve the purchase of credit. Analysts suggest this billing innovation could prove disruptive.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21623810#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

By Drew Faust and L. Rafael Reif, Boston Globe

IN 1837, the Massachusetts Board of Education devoted part of its first annual report to praising a recent classroom innovation called the blackboard. This “invaluable and indispensible” innovation enabled the “rapid and vivid communication of knowledge.” It created opportunities for teachers to engage learners in ways that had been unimaginable just a generation earlier. The same and more will be said of online learning tools. We are at the beginning of a technology-led revolution in pedagogy: Our innovation is not the blackboard, but instead an evolving suite of tools that allows interactive learning online. While one outcome of this revolution has rightly caught the world’s attention — the power to democratize access to education on a scale never seen in history — we are just as excited about the promise that these new tools hold for colleges and universities throughout the world.
http://bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/03/03/the-future-online-learning-and-residential-education/MRaKdvKFTtxC7nCA3yQhxL/story.html

BY R. F. MACKAY, Stanford

Games help us develop non-cognitive skills, which are as fundamental as cognitive skills in explaining how we learn and if we succeed, according to the panelists. We may think we’re pretty smart, but in fact we have very little notion of how humans learn. Kids know: They play games. Until, that is, they go to school. That’s when the games stop. And often, so does the learning. That was the sad panorama painted by a panel of distinguished experts on education and “gamification” who nonetheless were optimistic about the promise of using games in pedagogy.

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/march/games-education-tool-030113.html

by Katie Lepi, Edudemic

When we talk about digital learning and bringing technology into the classroom, we hope it has positive effects, right? Well, I should hope so. So let’s say you bring in a digital project-based lesson or two, encourage students to use Animoto, or just use a device in the classroom. If properly done, it’s easy to see positive effects. So where do you start? What kind of lessons actually lead to this holy grail that is ‘deeper’ learning? The 15 lessons in the infographic below (click the image to enlarge) are incredibly simple jumping-off points to bring a high-quality digital learning environment into your classroom without having to Google your brains out.

http://edudemic.com/2013/03/15-ways-digital-learning-can-lead-to-deeper-learning/

by Jeff Dunn, Edudemic

Libraries are changing. They’re becoming an online resource for students of all ages, a meeting place for the entire community of a school, and bridging the gap between school and home. That’s just a few of the ways outlined in this handy roadmap / visual at the URL below. As you can see, it lays out a handful of ways libraries impact learning. From the first step (offer access to electronic resources) to the last one (enable social collaboration), it’s clear the role of the library is extremely important. While I personally think each of these services is of the utmost importance, there are even more things I believe a library should be doing. From figuring out future trends of data storage, Open Access, and identifying new ways to open up the virtual stacks to the world. It remains to be seen how libraries will evolve over the coming years but it’s a great time to start paying attention to what your library is doing during this time education evolution.

http://edudemic.com/2013/03/critical-services-all-libraries-should-offer/

by Christina Ortiz, ReadWrite

Two years ago, Nokia made waves when it displayed a concept phone using a flexible OLED display. Samsung and Ericsson have shown similar prototypes. So flexible devices and displays are on the market horizon. But they’re still just a first step toward a new class of future devices that can not just flex, but actually stretch – so they can be safely and comfortably implanted in the body, for example. So what is the prognosis for these “stretchable” devices? One piece of the puzzle has recently been developed in a partnership between Northwestern University and the University of Illinois: a stretchable lithium-ion battery.

http://readwrite.com/2013/03/01/stretchable-batteries-power-devices-embedded-in-the-body-video

by James Hendler, GigaOm

As we understand Watson better, our students will also be exploring how to deepen its capabilities by programming new components. They will learn how this new generation of “cognitive computing,” as IBM Senior Vice President and Director of Research John E. Kelly has called it, really works. They will come to understand the architectures, software, and hardware that power the approach, and they will program new modules to give Watson new abilities. And finally, of course, there’s the blue sky nature of what Watson may allow. Given such a potent new tool, we suspect this list of projects still just scratch the surface of what our students will come up with. As one said, he is “eager to teach Watson to daydream.”

http://gigaom.com/2013/03/02/watson-goes-to-college-how-the-worlds-smartest-pc-will-revolutionize-ai/

by The Associated Press

Thousands of Idaho students in public, private and charter schools big and small next fall will be able to log into math, physics and history classes provided by the Khan Academy, a growing content provider focused on making free education available to anyone, anywhere. With $1.5 million in startup money from the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation, Khan Academy content will be provided in 47 schools, making Idaho the nation’s first proving ground for a statewide implementation of the academy’s free educational content and teaching model.

http://idahobusinessreview.com/2013/03/01/grant-helps-idaho-schools-plug-into-online-classes/

by John Danner, Huffington Post

Sugata Mitra was awarded the TEDPrize, which comes with a $1 million check and the commitment of TEDsters to help fulfill a wish of the winner. Professor Mitra is one of the pioneers in online learning, working in the slums of India. His vision forms the first step towards Online Learning 2.0. Dr. Mitra is clearly pushing for the day when learning will become 10 times easier and 10 times less expensive for students, opening up learning to billions of children that could not previously participate in the global economy.  In his “Hole in the Wall” experiment, he provided very poor children in the slums of India with a computer and left them alone, to discover that a few hours later they had figured out how to get online, browse, and learn. He replicated the experiment in several forms and it is now his hypothesis that students learn just fine in a Self-Organized Learning Environment (SOLE), with no adults around.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-danner/ted-prize-sugata-mitra_b_2790055.html

By Chris Preimesberger, eWeek

Box’s new functionality better enables enterprises to manage users, devices and applications while also providing on-demand access to data analytics. Box, which like most other cloud storage providers is continuing to assuage users and potential users that its storage and collaboration service is secure enough for business use, has upgraded to include new enterprise-grade security functionality. Box says it now protects data throughout its life cycle, rather than simply while it is at rest in the cloud. This practice better enables enterprises to manage users, devices and applications while also providing on-demand access to data analytics.

http://www.eweek.com/security/box-adds-new-security-layer-for-lifecycle-of-content/

By Brian Prince, eWeek

The notorious malware at the center of the cyber-sabotage campaign that targeted Iran’s nuclear program is several years older than researchers once thought. Researchers at Symantec have uncovered another phase in the evolution of Stuxnet, an early variant of the malware that may have been developed as early as 2005. In the more than two years that has passed since Stuxnet was discovered during the summer of 2010, the malware’s complexity and goal of causing damage in the physical world has led to multiple efforts to peel back all of the layers of Stuxnet’s existence. But while it was previously believed to have first appeared in 2009, Symantec researchers have uncovered an older variant that they have traced back to years before.

http://www.eweek.com/security/stuxnet-variant-origins-may-stretch-back-to-2005-symantec-says/

By Jen Whyntie, BBC

Scientists have connected the brains of lab rats, allowing one to communicate directly to another via cables. The wired brain implants allowed sensory and motor signals to be sent from one rat to another, creating the first ever brain-to-brain interface. The scientists then tested whether the rat receiving the signal could correctly interpret the information. As the ultimate test of their system, the team even linked the brains of rats that were thousands of miles apart.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21604005

by Daniel P. Howley, LAPTOP

When Qualcomm first announced that its next-generation Snapdragon 800 series processors would run at a maximum clock speed of 2.3-GHz, we were instantly blown away. After all, that would make the chip one of the fastest in the land. But the Snapdragon 800 is more than just a speed demon. This processor also packs a wide array of impressive features that sound too good to be true, including the ability to capture and output 4K photos and videos, run high-quality games, play 7.1 Dolby audio and enable 4G LTE Advanced connectivity. To get a closer look at this processing behemoth, we stopped by Qualcomm’s booth here at Mobile World Congress 2013 to see what the future of mobile tech holds. After spending some time with the Snapdragon 800, it’s clear that Qualcomm’s next-generation chip is destined to be one of the most important pieces of silicon in the coming years. From 4K resolution and 7.1 Dolby sound to incredible network speeds and gaming power, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor is in a category all its own.

http://blog.laptopmag.com/qualcomm-snapdragon-800-hands-on-with-the-future-of-mobile

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP

Apple CEO Tim Cook sought to assure shareholders Wednesday that the company is working on some “great stuff” that may help reverse a sharp decline in its stock price. True to Apple’s secretive nature, Cook didn’t provide any further product details during the company’s annual shareholders meeting Wednesday. There has been speculation that Apple is working on an Internet-connected watch or TV, while one shareholder recommended that Apple develop a computerized bicycle. Cook, an avid bicyclist, chuckled at the suggestion, along with the rest of the audience.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/apple-ceo-promises-investors-great-stuff-18609887

By Jessica Guynn, LA Times

Ken Goldman wasn’t working at home on Wednesday. Yahoo’s chief financial officer was working the room at a Morgan Stanley investment conference, making a forceful case that Marissa Mayer is improving the quality of life at Yahoo. He did not directly acknowledge –- nor did anyone ask about — the elephant in that room: Yahoo’s ban on telecommuting, which has sparked a national uproar. Mayer, the former Google executive charged with reviving the fortunes of the struggling Internet pioneer, has given Yahoo employees an ultimatum: show up at the office or lose your job.

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-yahoo-quality-of-life-ban-20130227,0,7564139.story