Techno-News Blog

by the BBC

A desktop device that can quickly scan objects so they can be replicated using a 3D printer has gone on sale. The Makerbot Digitizer, which costs $1,400 (£900), will be shipped to the first buyers in October. Demand for the machine appeared to overload the company’s store when it went on sale on Thursday evening. The Digitizer is the latest product looking to bring 3D printing to mainstream technology users – but experts are sceptical. The machine is designed to allow the replication of objects without any need for the user to learn any 3D modelling software or have any other special expertise.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23795303

By Mike Orcutt, Technology Review

Adapting conventional printing technology, researchers have developed a way to rapidly and inexpensively make uniform arrays of high-performing transistors out of carbon nanotubes on flexible plastic sheets. The process could eventually lead to a tool for manufacturing large-area, low-power sensor arrays and displays. Thin-film transistors made from carbon nanotubes are attractive for these types of applications because they are robust and mechanically flexible, and they can be much more energy efficient than silicon transistors. They can also be applied as a solution, or “ink,” and can be processed at relatively low temperatures, making them compatible with plastic substrates.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/518126/a-printing-process-to-make-wall-sized-displays/

by Arizona State University

Research has shown an increase in student success when traditional lectures are replaced with active learning exercises that promote this interactive approach. In addition to mathematics, ASU has rapidly embraced these new, proven learning tools and launched other classrooms. For example, in the School of Earth and Space Exploration, the course “Habitable Worlds” has been developed by President’s Professor Ariel Anbar and instructors Steve Semken and Lev Horodyskyj with funding from the National Science Foundation. Active learning classrooms have also been launched in the School of Life Sciences to teach genetics, evolution and neurobiology. According to the Scientific American article, while the shift has professors making big adjustments from lecturer to mentor, the expectation “is that generational turnover could make these computerized methods of instruction and testing, so foreign now, unremarkable, as they are for Arizona State’s Hawkins and her classmates,” notes Phil Regier, ASU’s executive vice provost and dean of ASU Online.

https://asunews.asu.edu/20130923-online-learning

By Katherine Bourzac, Technology Review

Flexible electronic circuits would make possible radical new kinds of devices, like water-resistant tablet computers that can be rolled or folded. A group of academic and industry researchers has now demonstrated one of the most important components for this fully flexible future: graphene radio-frequency electronics that are speedy enough to produce, receive, and process telecommunication signals. There are many different candidate materials for flexible circuits, each with its own set of problems. Some perform calculations too slowly for practical applications; others excel at speedy signal processing, but researchers know there’s no hope of manufacturing them at reasonable prices. That’s now starting to change, says Deji Akinwande, an electrical and computer engineer at the University of Texas at Austin, who leads the work on printed graphene transistors. “I think we can realistically envision flexible smartphones, tablets, and other communication devices,” he says.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/518606/printed-graphene-transistors-promise-a-flexible-electronic-future/

By Kevin Bullis, Technology Review

People could soon get cleaner energy from a compact fuel-cell generator in their backyards, at costs cheaper than power from the grid. At least, that’s the hope of Redox Power Systems, a startup based in Fulton, Maryland, which plans to offer a substantially cheaper fuel cell next year. Redox is developing fuel cells that feed on natural gas, propane, or diesel. The cells, which generate electricity through electrochemical reactions rather than combustion, could allow businesses to continue operating through power outages like those caused by massive storms such as Hurricane Sandy, but they promise to be far cleaner and quieter than diesel generators. They can also provide continuous power, not just emergency backup power, so utilities could use them as distributed power sources that ease congestion on the grid, preventing blackouts and lowering the overall cost of electricity.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/518516/an-inexpensive-fuel-cell-generator/

By Jeff Dunn, Edudemic

Normally, finding out your kids are watching their teacher on YouTube would cause panic, but not if the video they are watching is a math lecture about determining probability. Perhaps your child is having difficulty with learning how to use direct object pronouns in Spanish, and is going online to review lectures. This digital approach called “flipping the classroom” is already being used by K-12 teachers across the nation. The use of flipped classes (those with an at-home, online component for instruction, and in-class work with teacher support), and other blended classrooms has been on the rise since its debut in 2004, and teachers support the change. In fact, 60 percent of teachers who use flipped learning technology believe the online aspect motivates students. Students feel that classes with an online learning component give them a more personal learning environment, one they have more control over.

http://www.edudemic.com/2013/08/online-learning-high-schools/

by Julie Mack, MLive

Developing schools as community centers of birth-to-grave lifelong learning. Using technology to dramatically expand access to high-quality teaching and training. Tapping technology and brain research to better motivate schoolchildren, individualize their instruction and provide the support they need. About 140 people gathered in Kalamazoo Wednesday morning to consider the future of education and more specifically: How can community leaders channel current trends to improve learning opportunities and outcomes?

http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2013/08/kalamazoo_event_focuses_on_how.html

by EduTech Associates

Mass access to the Internet is a mere 20 years old and during this time Web Services have completely revolutionised how we interact – so how will the Internet transform us over the next 20 years? This article explains how technologies can be architected to allow learning to flourish in the emerging world of the Internet of Things. In 2008, the number of things connected to the Internet exceeded the number of people on Earth – but that is still less than 1% of all the physical things in the world today. Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) predicts some 25 billion devices will be connected by 2015, and 50 billion by 2020, whilst IDC estimates machine-to-machine communication to grow to 41% of Internet communication by 2020. IoT represents a major shift in how IT is being used. The personal computer and the ‘Internet of People’ defined the previous IT era. The Internet of Things will be defined by embedded and ubiquitous technologies such as 3d printing, advanced sensing and energy management.

http://edutechassociates.net/2013/08/21/internet-of-learning-things/

by Will Donovan, SUNY Blog

At the  University at Albany School of Education, Associate Professor Peter Shea is trying to bring together the console and the classroom. Professor Shea is leading a research study investigating the use of video games to promote learning, with a large and various group of experts, students, and faculty. The project, named  “SUNY Games II”, seeks to explore how teachers and students from diverse fields across the SUNY system can develop video games to promote understanding of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) content in K-12 schools. SUNY Games II will help the research and development of educational games. The project is being worked on through the Open SUNY framework, a massive online SUNY platform that will bring all online courses offered at each of SUNY’s 64 campuses onto a shared and comprehensive online environment.

http://blog.suny.edu/2013/08/consoles-and-classrooms-suny-games-ii-to-create-stem-video-games/

By David Talbot, Technology Review

Hundreds of millions of people rely on Dropbox and similar services to store, share, and update their files. Dropbox and similar services have exploded in popularity in recent years because users find it so convenient to simply drag files to an icon that puts that data in the cloud, shares it with others, and automatically syncs new versions across multiple devices. But ease of use and insecurity often go hand in hand, and now researchers are revealing an uncomfortable truth: if a computer with Dropbox functionality is compromised, the synching feature allows any malware installed by the attacker to reach other machines and networks using the service. “People don’t consider that once you have Dropbox configured, anything you put in the synchronization folder gets a free pass through the firewall,” says Jacob Williams, a digital forensic scientist at CSR Group. “We’ve tested this on several services, and it gets data right through the firewall.”

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/518506/dropbox-and-similar-services-can-sync-malware/

By Jennifer Chu, Technology Review

Researchers from MIT and Harvard are now analyzing students’ clickstreams (recordings of where and when users click on a page), forum comments, and homework, lab, and exam scores. They hope to use the data to better understand online learners—what their demographic characteristics are, how they use online resources, what factors encourage them to stick with an online course, and what helps or hinders their performance. In a paper published in Research & Practice in Assessment, the team reports preliminary results from its analysis of 6.002x data on users’ characteristics and study habits. The team includes lead author Lori Breslow, director of MIT’s Teaching and Learning Laboratory, and physics professor David Pritchard, who heads MIT’s Research in Learning, Assessing and Tutoring Effectively (RELATE) group.

http://www.technologyreview.com/article/517836/learning-from-edx/

by Michael Brown, PC World

So you’re heading back to school and you need a new laptop—but you didn’t manage your finances over the summer. Your bank account is nearly tapped out, and you still need to buy text books and lay in enough ramen noodles to last through the winter. Yeah, we’ve all been there. Fortunately, Moore’s Law is still in play, so today’s budget notebook is yesterday’s workhorse. Pretty much any modern laptop can handle the gamut of productivity chores—word processing, number crunching, email, and the like—but all of the machines in this roundup can also tackle media editing and encoding sessions, and deliver respectable entertainment experiences. To strike the best balance between performance and affordability, I gathered the top five notebooks I could find for $650 or less. Benchmark busters they’re not, but they aren’t budget busters, either.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2046844/5-budget-laptops-for-college-students-we-name-the-best.html

by Ana Homayoun, Psychology Today

As technology becomes an even more integral part of the classroom learning experience, online interactions will more aggressively contribute to overall school climate. According to 2010 data from the U.S. Department of Education, teachers at public schools reported that 69% of their students use computers during class most or some of the time. Internet connection was available for 96% of computers brought into classrooms. Research suggests that males tend to focus more of their online efforts on gaming, while females tend to spend more online time socializing. Many girls now find their interpersonal relationships are now even more intertwined with their academic experiences. Unlike whispers in the hallway or notes passed in the middle of class, rumors online leave digital traces, and the potential to go viral can cause intense panic and rash decision-making.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-myth-the-perfect-girl/201308/girls-technology-and-the-classroom

by NANCY DUVERGNE SMITH, MIT Alumni Life

Webinars are old news at MIT, but the Sloan School of Management is taking online instruction to a new dimension. Last spring, Sloan launched a new Executive Education program called Big Data 4Dx, an online version of its popular program Big Data: Making Complex Things Simpler. Unlike online courses where participants watch lectures, Big Data 4Dx uses AvayaLive EngageTM, a web-based, immersive collaboration environment that allows participants to interact with each other in a virtual classroom.The next two-day session—both in person and online—is set for October.

http://alum.mit.edu/pages/sliceofmit/2013/08/19/big-data-4dx-online-learning-moves-into-the-4th-dimension/

by CLASSROOM AID

It’s time to get the party started with gamification in higher education. Maybe it’s the liberating feeling of the summer, or the fact that it is the perfect time for some educators to make improvements to their curriculums. Maybe I’m just sick of waiting for the gamification movement to bloom on its own. Regardless, it is time to take some drastic action in jumpstarting the games-in-learning movement this summer, so here are five easy things that every educator can start doing this fall to usher in a new era of interactive, engaging, and innovative education.

http://classroom-aid.com/2013/08/16/5-easy-steps-to-gamifying-highereed/

BY JESS FEE, Mashable

Millennials live and breathe on social media, so teachers are learning how to incorporate the medium into the classroom successfully. In doing so, teachers not only encourage students to engage actively in the material, but they also provide online communities for students that might not exist for them in real life. But how are teachers infusing social media into their everyday lessons? We’ve highlighted several different examples and offered our own ideas on how to best engage students.

http://mashable.com/2013/08/18/social-media-teachers/

by Classroom-Aid

The development of Google Glass, with augmented reality and live/recorded virtual re-location capabilities has enormous implications for education.  This infographic anticipates scores of way in which Google Glass may become an important teaching and learning tool.

http://classroom-aid.com/2013/08/18/how-google-glass-can-be-used-in-education-infographic/

by Katie Lepi, Edudemic

Yesterday, we took a look at some of the fastest and most popular browsers across a variety of devices. While I was digging around for a few facts to see how accurate some of those numbers were, I stumbled across another handy infographic on worldwide browser usage, and felt like it was a pretty interesting follow up to yesterday’s post. Taking data from 2012, it takes a look at what browsers are being used where, and shows some fairly interesting trends. Whereas yesterday’s post showed some more granular detail of what browsers worked best on different systems, this one shows plain old popularity (aka, usage) in different areas in the world. Keep reading to learn more.

http://www.edudemic.com/2013/08/which-countries-use-which-browser/

by Katie Lepi, Edudemic

Rubrics can be an incredibly useful tool for your classroom. Aside from being one of those cool words that sounds a little weirder every time you say it, using a rubric can help your students understand the assignments in your classroom, and will make your grading process clearer, faster, and more objective and consistent. Online rubric makers can make rubric creation pretty simple, so we’ve collected a few sites that offers online rubric makers (some of them are free) that can help you out in your classroom. There are many sites out there that also offer shared rubrics from other users that you can use as well – quite a helpful tool if you’re either in a pinch, or at a loss for where to start.

http://www.edudemic.com/2013/08/time-saving-rubric-makers/

By Michael A Peters, Truthout

Ernst & Young’s Universities of the Future carries the line, “A thousand year old industry on the cusp of profound change.” The report suggests that the current Australian university model “will prove unviable in all but a few cases.” It identifies five major “drivers of change”: democratization of knowledge and access, contestability of markets and funding, digital technologies, global mobility and integration with industry.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/18120-massive-open-online-courses-and-beyond-the-revolution-to-come