Techno-News Blog

By Tim Carmody, Technology Review

Mobile devices are pervasive, but they could be easier and more intuitive to use. The Moto X, Motorola’s first phone conceived and designed since the company’s acquisition by Google, doesn’t boast as many main processor cores or camera megapixels as its rivals at the higher end of the smartphone spectrum. It does, however, allow its users lots of control via voice and gesture commands, which speed up and simplify common tasks like taking pictures, placing calls, or getting directions (see “Motorola Reveals First Google-Era Phone, the Moto X”). How do these features work in the real world? I used the Moto X (a black, 16-gigabyte, AT&T review unit) as my primary phone for four days.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/517771/motorolas-moto-x-interface-innovation-with-a-learning-curve/

By Tanya Roscorla, Center for Digital Education

A shift in education from passive to active learning is occuring, as shown by curriculum from the Digital Harbor Foundation, BatelleEd and Arizona State. The STEM Core curriculum emphasizes inquiry, projects and production around app development. And at the end of the process, students will have an app to market in app stores. “We’re more interested in saying, ‘We want producers, we want makers, we want somebody who isn’t just using a website to learn, but is making a website to learn,” said Andrew Coy, executive director of the Digital Harbor Foundation. That hasn’t always been the mindset, though. For so long, education has been stuck in the 19th century Industrial Revolution style.

http://www.centerdigitaled.com/news/Maker-Movement-Inspires–Shift-in-STEM-Curriculum.html

by Sara Grossman, Chronicle of Higher Ed

With little fanfare, Google began offering electronic textbooks for rent or purchase on its Google Play store on Friday. Included will be books from some of the largest academic-text publishers, including Pearson, Macmillan Higher Education, and Wiley, among others. Google said the e-textbooks could save students “up to 80 percent” off print-textbook prices, and could also provide readers with features not available from traditional books. Among other things, readers can search within a text for a word or phrase, bookmark pages, annotate paragraphs, and highlight key thoughts. Additionally, there is a new sepia reading mode that can ease the eyestrain that comes from staring at a screen.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/google-begins-selling-textbooks-through-play-store/45367

By ROBERT SANFORD, Portland Press Herald

Most brick-and-mortar schools are wary of such endeavors but they should view them as opportunities, not threats. For example, MOOCs can help bring students into higher education by allowing a “safe” at-home approach through a low-cost single course, which might encourage the student to take the plunge and enroll in a program. Further, schools can add seminars of face-to-face classroom time to provide students the opportunity to reflect upon their MOOC learning and to have that knowledge validated through the earning of academic credits. Change will be constant throughout the 21st century, so the academy must instill in students the skills and desire to learn throughout their lifetimes. We all must be lifelong learners.

http://www.pressherald.com/opinion/schools-should-view-online-courses-as-opportunities_2013-08-05.html

by Zoe Fox, Mashable

What differentiates iSchool from other education tablets created for use in the developing world, such as the Aakash 2, One Laptop Per Child XO tablet and the Intel Studybook, is the company’s focus was on creating a solid curriculum first and a technology product second. Like most other education systems in Africa (and western education of the 16th century), most learning in Zambia is conducted by rote: A teacher makes a statement and students repeat it. Not surprisingly, functional literacy rates are staggeringly low: somewhere between 10 and 20% of the population is able to read. In addition to the challenge of overfilled classrooms, iSchool’s curriculum addresses other major systemic roadblocks: the country lacks educated teachers and students have to travel long distances to get to school. Half of the country’s population is under 15, meaning the government struggles to fill the growing demand for school teachers. According to iSchool, 85% of teachers in community schools are untrained.

http://mashable.com/2013/08/07/ischool/

by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 

Indiana University officials say the time appears to be right for a push to increase the school’s online education presence. IU wants to reach more students, create a strong, quality online brand, support student success and create a major source of revenue at a time when existing ones are likely to be “stressed,” John Applegate, executive vice president for university academic affairs, told The Herald-Times. “We are a large university, and that’s an advantage we should make use of,” Applegate said. “Another is the economies of scale. We have the capacity to scale up without having to recreate infrastructure.” IU has been engaged and exploring but cautious. Even without a major initiative, IU has created 109 programs, but is serving only 5,000 students. By comparison, Penn State University is seen as a national leader with 90 online programs and 12,000 students enrolled. The University of Massachusetts has nearly 100 programs and 30,000 students online.

http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/63852d871af84e99be997b49189729f7/IN–IU-Online

By Susan Young, Technology Review

About 100,000 patients with brain disorders use deep brain stimulators, but the devices sold today don’t respond to fluctuating conditions. A new brain implant that can record neural activity while it simultaneously delivers electric current has been implanted into a patient for the first time. The new device from Medtronic, a Minneapolis-based medical device company, can also adjust its electrical output in response to the changing conditions of the brain. This automated control could one day improve deep-brain stimulation treatment and even enable doctors to use the device to treat more conditions, say experts.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/517871/new-implantable-device-can-manipulate-and-record-brain-activity/

by Kegarver, edudemic

Online education opportunities are proliferating like crazy, with new courses and learning communities popping up almost daily. Many people are using these non-traditional resources to expand their own knowledge and skill sets, either to improve their current job performance or to prepare to change jobs or careers. These courses and programs can give job seekers a leg up by helping them demonstrate their knowledge and skills acquisition as well as motivation for personal and professional development. Here are four ways online students (and offline, for that matter) can showcase your online learning to stand apart from the crowd:

http://www.edudemic.com/2013/08/4-ways-to-showcase-your-learning-online/

by Online Learning Insights

Competency-based education is just getting started. As [U.S.] institutions look for ways to harness technology effectively, lower costs and remain financially viable, many will explore competency-based programs. Making it even more feasible, is the The US Department of Education’s move to provide federal financial aid to students enrolled in competency programs. They are even encouraging education institutions to explore and implement such programs (ed.gov, U.S. Department of Education). This gives competency-based education serious clout. Given the programs lower costs and flexibility for students, competency-based education can be a game-changer for education.

http://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/2013/08/10/need-to-know-news-competency-based-transcripts-a-profitable-online-education-company-ed-tech-tool-vittle/

by Educators’ Technology

The world of educational technology has been exponentially expanded in the last couple of decades with the birth of several new educational concepts founded on digital media. The digital terminology is growing up rapidly to the point that it becomes hard for teachers to keep track of all the digital concepts that spur up here and there. This is a personal initiative from my part to amass a list of some trending educational technology concepts to share with you here. I am pretty sure you will already be familiar with some of them but you will definitely find new ones. I invite you to have a look and share the list with your colleagues and fellow teachers.

http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/08/10-trendy-concepts-in-educational.html

by WVU Today

West Virginia University Provost Michele Wheatly is not given to hyperbole. So when she calls massive open online courses “the most exciting academic innovation in 30 years,” colleagues and campus communities should take notice. “There is a lot of hype surrounding MOOCs,” Wheatly said, “both negative and positive. But what I’m thrilled about is that their advent has stimulated a serious discussion about the science of learning.” When Wheatly organized a panel for chief academic officers from the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities this summer on the MOOC phenomenon, she thought it was time to adopt a proactive stance and redirect the conversation toward strategies for online course development that would improve student learning.

http://wvutoday.wvu.edu/n/2013/08/08/wvu-provost-sees-opportunity-for-new-normal-in-trend-of-massive-online-open-courses

by Katie Lepi, Edudemic

From time to time, I find myself saying ridiculous things. Ridiculous in the ‘I grew up in the ’80′s’ sort of sense. Specifically, I have a hard time saying ‘record’ in reference to a TV show or movie, and instead I am inadvertently old-school and often refer to it as ‘videotaping’. I know, I know. No one has owned a VCR in years except for my grandma. But when I came across this handy visual it brought to mind things that truly connected educators should probably know before the upcoming school year, I was happy to see that I’m not the only one that needs to update my colloquial vocabulary. Even people much younger than me are losing some quite commonly spoken words as technology changes. What to know what to wipe out of your vocab to help keep yourself from looking like you live in the dark ages?

http://www.edudemic.com/2013/08/17-tech-terms-connected-educators-must-know/

by Katie Lepi, Edudemic

While most technology doesn’t garner hoards of people queueing for hours on its release date (like the 2007 release of the original iPhone), but that doesn’t mean that people aren’t itching to get their hands on the latest and greatest devices. Between official company press releases and leaked information, we generally have a pretty solid idea of what we’re in for by the time a device actually hits the shelves. So what noteworthy items did 2013 bring us? This handy infographic below takes a look at 8 highly awaited new devices that showed their new (or redesigned) faces in 2013.

http://www.edudemic.com/2013/08/next-gen-devices-students/

by TIM DODD, Australian Financial Review

Investors in Coursera, the world’s largest massive open online course (MOOC) provider are confident the company will arrive at a sustainable business model, says its co-founder, Daphne Koller. Ms Koller, who set up Coursera last year with fellow Stanford IT professor Andrew Ng, now offers more than 400 free online courses from 84 partners which are mainly universities.  “Our investors are quite confident that, with the kind of traffic that we are getting . . . [and] the retention of students who come back to take class after class, it will not be a problem to make this a sustainable model,” Ms Koller said. Coursera is larger than its major competitors, edX and Udacity, and Ms Koller said Coursera’s aim was to be offering 5000 courses in three to five years, “the same as a moderately large university”.

http://www.afr.com/p/national/education/coursera_billed_as_the_amazon_of_z43H3MRVetLGEQt49zjzbN

by Michael Fitzgerald, Information Week

The EdX tool itself is in alpha; it’s been used in two EdX courses, neither of which were writing courses (one is a chemistry class, the other a course on public health). It does use artificial intelligence to give feedback on (and, yes, grade) writing assignments, but it does not have to — the tool has three possible ways to give feedback: the artificial intelligence-driven tool, peer-grading and assessment, and self-assessment. Teachers can use any or all of them, in any order they like.  An automated essay grading tool like EdX’s can give feedback quickly and repeatedly, with consistent comments on what the student could do to improve, and what’s working well. It’s like giving students one-on-one access to a grammar instructor who will always remain patient, even to the nth time the kid splits an infinitive.

http://www.informationweek.com/education/instructional-it/automated-essay-grading-software-stirs-d/240159419

By Justin Pope, AP

About 39,600 signed up for “The Challenges of Global Poverty” and I was among 4,600 who finished. I passed, if not exactly with flying colors, and was emailed a PDF of the “certificate of mastery” to prove it – my very own  quasi-credential from MIT. The experience was enlightening, both on the subject matter and the potential for MOOCs generally. I learned more than I expected, and worked harder than I expected. I took a course for free from two leading experts in a field that’s of great personal interest – a remarkable opportunity. For millions around the world who lack access to quality teaching, the MOOC-backers are right: This is a revolution. Yet I also got a better handle on precisely what MOOCs can’t do, and what would be missing from a college education comprised of them entirely.

http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_23796757/massive-open-online-courses-whats-it-like-enroll

by David F. Carr, Information Week

Online education site Udemy is stepping up its appeal to instructors and students whose native language is not English, introducing a multi-lingual version of the site. Udemy.com is now localized for Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, Italian, Russian and Turkish. This does not mean all content is available in all of those languages, but the website itself — all the user interface for navigating the site and searching the course catalog — is available in all those languages, making it easier for those who are not native English speakers to browse the site and find content in their native language, according to Dennis Yang, president and chief operating officer of Udemy. A planned next step is to provide subtitles in other languages, he said.

http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/udemy-offers-online-course-site-in-9-lan/240159482

By  Charlie Boss  and  Jennifer Smith Richards, Columbus Dispatch

According to Inside Higher Ed, university officials reported that students in traditional classes outperformed their Udacity peers. Of those taking classes with a teacher, 74 percent passed, compared with 51 percent of Udacity students, a report said. The news doesn’t worry Reynoldsburg officials. “This stuff is new,” spokeswoman Tricia Moore said. “All of us are finding out the best place for it. In general, digital content at the high-school and college level is hard to come by.”

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/08/07/schools-arent-worried-by-udacity-pass-rate.html

By Paul E. Peterson, Education Next

“By 2019 about 50 percent of courses will be delivered online,” wrote Clayton M. Christensen and Michael B. Horn in a pathbreaking essay in 2008 (“How Do We Transform Our Schools?” features, Summer 2008). Five years later, the authors stand by that prediction (see “Data Support Disruption Theory As Online, Blended Learning Grow,” Forbes.com blog entry, May 30, 2013), though they expect most of the online delivery to be blended into traditional brick-and-mortar classrooms. In my view, the estimate, optimistic even when written, now seems out of reach. Although digital learning is making definite advances, it has yet to disrupt secondary education. When it comes to higher education, however, the prediction is deadly accurate. Hardly a day passes without news of another institution joining the online stampede.

http://educationnext.org/while-k%E2%80%9312-schools-resist-digital-learning-disrupts-higher-education/

by Wade Roush, xconomy

Imagine that you’re a second-year college student returning to campus in September, only to discover that your school has made some curious changes. Instead of offering just one introductory Spanish course, one calculus course, and one chemistry course, the college now lets you choose from a dozen of each, led by different instructors with different teaching styles. Amidst such changes, instructors would now be competing for attention and pay—and it would be easy for students to find out which teachers were the best. Within a few weeks, the top teachers would naturally wind up with the largest classes, while there would still be a “long tail” of smaller classes on specialized subjects. In other words, your school would have been transformed from a medieval semi-meritocracy with a catalog of take-it-or-leave-it courses into a true marketplace. Of course, no real university works this way. But Udemy does.

http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2013/08/07/at-udemy-online-education-meets-the-marketplace/

By Sylvie Belmond, Simi Valley Acorn

Due to advances in technology, online education has become an effective alternative for students who wish to earn a degree from the comfort of their own home. But Internet lessons are not for everybody. Students who choose that route must be disciplined and willing to work hard in order to succeed, said Patricia Ewins, dean of student learning at Moorpark College. “When you’re experienced and you know what you’re doing in an online class, then it can be very effective.

http://www.simivalleyacorn.com/news/2013-08-09/Schools/Online_courses_more_effective_for_disciplined_stud.html