Techno-News Blog

By Jake New, Editor, eCampus News

College students love social media, but can also find it to be a distraction in the classroom. It can be used for recruitment, attracting students to a specific campus through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Youtube. It can be used for safety, serving as network of warnings and alerts during emergencies. It can be used simply to better communicate with the student body. But for all of social media’s benefits, some professors are still wary of the medium. According to the results of a survey of 8,000 faculty members conducted by Babson Survey Research Group and Pearson, more than half of faculty use social media in a professional context, a ten percent jump from last year’s 45 percent. Slightly more than 70 percent use social media for personal purposes.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/infographic-impact-social-media-education/

By CIO

Many business users say they’re fed up with what they perceive as sluggish IT departments, but cringe at the thought of outsourcing to a managed services provider. However, the rise of BYOD, consumer tech and cloud computing may be clearing a path for change. The idea that the formal IT department would melt away either piece-by-piece or wholesale, replaced by managed services providers (MSPs), has been hanging over the heads of CIOs for nearly a decade. While the option — or threat, depending on how you look at it — is a legitimate and viable one, it hasn’t come to pass yet for many companies, according to a new study from CompTIA.

http://www.cio.com/article/751767/IT_Departments_Not_Losing_Ground_to_Managed_Service_Providers_Yet_

by ROBERTO BALDWIN, The Next Web

The Solid conference in San Francisco is a two-day hardware event showcasing what’s new and exciting in the world of tangible items. After years of worshiping at the feet of software, hardware development is making a come back. Some of the reasons that hardware development is on the upswing is the wider acceptance of 3D printing and the ability to quickly prototype items with hardware from Littlebits, Arduino and Raspberry Pi. A nice byproduct is the resurgence of robots at events. We found five robots that could potentially make our lives not only easier, but also safer. And of course, none of these robots would ever rise up against us.

http://thenextweb.com/dd/2014/05/23/4-robots-solid-thatll-make-lives-easier-definitely-wont-kill-us/

By Katie Lepi, Edudemic

Wearable technology is a pretty cool concept to me, though I’d still probably classify most of it as less “now”, more “future“. While there is a wide array of products currently on the market, the most well known wearable gadgets (which I try to distinguish in my mind from the more generalized “wearable technology”, which most of us wear in our clothing and shoes on the regular) are probably activity trackers (like Fitbit or the Nike Fuel Band) and Google Glass – and clearly the latter is much less widespread in use. So how can you use wearable technologies in the classroom? Unless you’re a PE teacher, having activity trackers in class probably isn’t at the top of your wish list. The handy infographic linked below takes a look at wearable technology in the classroom, and what the future might bring to our current classroom reality.

http://www.edudemic.com/wearable-tech-in-the-classroom/

by Traci Peterson, Phys.org

The participants in Mintz-Binder’s study – 38 students in the online courses and 21 in the on campus courses – took an online survey focused mainly on stress levels and their sense of belonging or feeling connected. Some of the findings she observed already:

• Both groups experienced what Mintz-Binder saw as a satisfactory level of feeling that they belonged to a community or were connected, scoring an average of about 60 on a test with an 80-point scale. Online students scored slightly higher on the measure.
• All but five of the online students made contact with academic coaches who supplement instruction in the online classes. For those students, more contact with the online coach translated into a stronger sense of belonging.
• Both groups indicated similar levels of stress. For the online students, Mintz-Binder observed a stronger relationship between their grade in the course and their stress. Not surprisingly, lower grades were linked to more stress.

http://phys.org/news/2014-05-online-students-stress.html

By Robert McGuire, SkilledUp

Dr. Frank Mayadas was one of the pioneers of online learning in his role as founding President of Sloan Consortium, also known Sloan-C. The Sloan Consortium started as a Sloan Foundation project called the Anytime, Anyplace Learning Program, which hoped to leverage the emerging potential of networked computers. That was in 1992, just before the World Wide Web became accessible at home for most people, and the digital education resources that did exist could usually be accessed only at terminals on university campuses. In the years that followed, as early networks gave way to the World Wide Web, Sloan-C led the movement to promote funding, infrastructure and research so American universities could develop online programs that could be accessed remotely. Now over 7,000,000 students each year are taking online classes from institutions of higher ed, largely on the foundations of that infrastructure. For leading this work at Sloan-C, Dr. Mayadas is sometimes referred to as the “father of elearning.”

http://www.skilledup.com/blog/sloan-frank-mayadas-early-history-of-online-ed/

by Saj-Nicole Joni, Forbes

With billions of people connected to the Internet, massive, inclusive collaborations are now possible for the first time in history. MacArthur fellow and Duolingo chief executive Luis von Ahn is making such collaborations a reality, and in the process he’s uncovering some unexpected lessons about how to solve challenges at that kind of scale. Duolingo is a language-learning and crowdsourced text-translation platform. Its online language classes are designed so that as part of learning a new language, students are invited to translate content and vote on the accuracy of other student translations. The content comes from organizations such as CNN and BuzzFeed, which pay Duolingo to translate articles for their companies’ international sites. This model allows Duolingo to make its language courses free for all students with access to the Internet.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesleadershipforum/2014/05/28/help-yourself-and-help-the-world-an-interview-with-duolingo-ceo-luis-von-ahn/

by NASA

NASA and Khan Academy, a non-profit educational website has launched a series of online tutorials designed to increase student interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM. The announcement of the new collaborative effort was made today at the 6th annual White House Science Fair. The interactive education lessons invite users to become actively engaged in the scientific and mathematical protocols that NASA uses everyday to measure our universe, to explore the exciting engineering challenges involved in launching and landing spacecraft on Mars, and to learn about other space exploration endeavors and destinations. Exciting and realistic simulations, challenges and games transport students deep into STEM subjects, blending NASA’s space exploration expertise with Khan Academy’s compelling approach to online self-paced learning.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1113156196/nasa-khan-academy-bring-stem-opportunities-to-online-learners-052814/

By Lindsay Tucker, Boston Magazine

Starting this summer, what once was a WGBH studio will become a virtual classroom that may revolutionize the way we think about online education. Dubbed HBX Live, the new Harvard Business School collaboration will use the space in the same manner as a traditional lecture hall—with a professor at the front presiding over a semicircle of 60 screens, each one a stand-in for an off-site student. The initiative will debut as part of the business school’s new online learning platform, HBX, which launches this month. The unique configuration of the room will allow virtual participants to view up to 59 others via an interactive Web page, encouraging communication and virtual hand-raising.

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2014/05/28/harvard-hbx-live-online-classroom/

by Jo Cook, Training Journal

Colin Steed, chief executive of the Learning Performance Institute, independently hosts two online conferences a year. Steed says, “I think people will say you can’t be online all day long. Conventional wisdom tells you a whole day of live online learning is too much, so I always resisted doing a whole conference for that reason. But I had second thoughts in 2013 for, through experience, I found that if you are absorbed in learning things that are valuable to you then you can concentrate for that long – providing there are sufficient breaks of a reasonable length. The key is having 30 minute breaks between the sessions. The feedback for the first and second Virtual Learning Show amazed me. People said that they were ‘absorbed for the whole day’ and that showed me that if you pick the right content and speakers who know how to deliver live online learning properly then a whole day online, with breaks, can work.”

https://www.trainingjournal.com/articles/interview/behind-scenes-virtual-learning-show-ld-online-conference

By Leila Meyer, THE Journal

Brigham Young University (BYU) researchers have developed a system to project sign language interpreters onto Google Glass and other similar types of glasses. The “Signglasses” project was developed to improve the planetarium experience for deaf students. Typically, when deaf students visit the planetarium, they can’t see the sign language interpreter and the overhead projections at the same time because the lights have to be on to see the interpreter and off to see the projection. With Signglasses, deaf students can watch the planetarium projection at the same time as they watch the interpreter projected onto their glasses. The research team has field tested the system with students from Jean Massieu School for the Deaf. The researchers were surprised to discover that students preferred the interpreter to be projected in the center of one lens, so they could look straight through the signer when focusing on the planetarium show. The team had assumed students would prefer to see the projection at the top of the lens, as Google Glass normally does.

http://thejournal.com/articles/2014/05/28/brigham-young-researchers-develop-google-glass-system-to-assist-deaf-students.aspx

By Ellen Zimmerman, The Journal

3D Printer3D fabricators are an exciting new technology, but students can also get the experience of creating three-dimensional objects using two-dimensional cutters. Two-dimensional cutters are those nifty, artsy-craftsy tools that scrapbooking people use to create those really awesome, totally-time consuming, decorative photo albums we all would love but don’t have time to do ourselves! The cutter cuts out shapes with a moving blade using a motion like a printer. The blade is protected and retracts into a casing when it is not in use. It can also create fold lines that are not cut all of the way through. How do 2D cutters relate to education? They provide students with the opportunity to create 3D objects from flat, 2D media. Think of math classes where you have a “net” or “unfolded” shape such as a cube or a pyramid. These often appear on standardized tests, where students have to visualize what flat shapes will look like folded or what the folded version will look like flat.

http://thejournal.com/articles/2014/05/27/cheap-and-free-2d-and-3d-fabrication-tools.aspx

By Tom Daccord, Edudemic

Many teachers I encounter have decided that they need to crack down on — if not entirely eradicate — screen distractions in their classrooms. (A minority of teachers accept it as a form of 21st century doodling.) So, I regularly get questions from teachers asking if they can lock students into apps (yes, that’s possible) or watch student laptop screens remotely (yes, that’s possible, too). Yet, I rarely indulge in discussions of “Big Brother” tools and strategies. Instead, I ask teachers to consider the most important truism regarding screen distractions: The best classroom management tool is a good lesson. If the activity is engaging and challenging, there is an authentic audience, and prescribed time limits, students won’t mess around.

http://www.edudemic.com/distracted-by-screens/

By Dan Gordon, THE Journal

JD Ferries-Rowe is the Chief Information Officer and debate coach at Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School in Indianapolis. Here, he recounts how embracing BYOT has changed everything from how the school approaches PD to what classrooms look like. The joke we always tell is that when I came here 10 years ago, the T1 line was being used as a doorstop in the library and teachers had just started using e-mail. Since then our school has gone through a major renovation. Now we are a 1-to-1 BYOT school, the 30 percent of our kids who are on financial aid receive technology grants to buy their own technology and we’ve completely revamped how we do professional development. It’s a very different environment.

http://thejournal.com/articles/2014/05/28/leadership-for-the-mobile-classroom.aspx

By Meris Stansbury, eCampus News

Schools and districts are increasingly urging teachers to use digital content for instruction, with many teachers taking innovative steps by creating their own digital content. But when it comes to copyright, ownership, and sharing, that’s where it gets tricky. “In the era of digital publishing, which includes teacher-created, -refined, and –remixed materials, an important question has arisen: who owns this digital content?” asks a policy brief from the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA), titled “Clarifying ownership of teacher-created digital content empowers educators to personalize education, address individual student needs.”

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2014/05/28/teachers-copyright-digital-951/

By Maureen Magee, UT San Diego

Online courses are popular with students who want to make up credits, take classes that aren’t available at their schools or take a break from regular classes. But more students are forgoing mainstream schools altogether as charters and school districts establish online options. The virtual offerings also appeal to traditional home-school families who increasingly rely on online courses. About 310,000 students in kindergarten through high school nationwide were enrolled in full-time online schools in the 2012-13 school year, a 24 percent increase from the previous year, according to the International Association for K-12 Online Learning.

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/may/27/online-students-graduation-san-diego/

By Mark Rowh, University Business

“Some institutions, eager to jump in the field, think once they’ve developed their online courses, they are set to launch,” says Jacqueline Moloney, executive vice chancellor at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. “But many neglect to prepare their institutions to support online students with services customized to their needs.” As of 2012, when Babson Survey Research Group asked 2,800 academic leaders about current enrollment patterns, nearly one-third of all students were taking at least one online course.  Yet, experts say, effective support services meeting the specific needs of distance learners are too often lacking.

http://www.universitybusiness.com/article/online-not-alone-campus

By Brian Wallace, Business2Community

Online courses were once very rare, and they catered exclusively to nontraditional students. Now one in five students is taking an online course. But they sometimes end up costing more than a traditional college course, so why bother? There are a lot of perks to taking online courses. Many times, you can take classes whenever it works into your schedule instead of having to show up at your university at a set time. Course materials are often available for you to go back through as needed, which can be great if you’ve forgotten something from the beginning of the semester. There are rules and regulations about everything from the certifications of the person teaching the class to the technology being used. The initial startup costs are making online courses more expensive for now, but as technology and training catch up to the standards, these costs will decline in the future. Check out the infographic linked below for more about the benefits of online college courses.

http://www.business2community.com/infographics/online-courses-cost-infographic-0892949#!Q7b6N

BY MARTHA QUILLIN, News Observer

The course at Wake Tech this year with the highest enrollment – by a landslide – had no classroom, no meetings, no deadlines, was not for credit and the nearly 17,500 students who signed up for it paid no tuition. But the class may prove to be invaluable in helping students get ready for community college. Wake Tech’s Introductory Algebra Review is free and open to anyone who wants to take it, anywhere in the world, at any time. Rolled out in May 2013, it was the college’s first massive open online course, or MOOC, testing the usefulness of letting students choose the material they need to review and the pace at which they want to work through it.

http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/05/25/3887767/wake-techs-free-online-algrebra.html?sp=/99/102/

BY HOLLY RAMER, Associated Press

As the 2016 contest approaches, the University of New Hampshire plans to use the latest Internet technology to educate students far beyond its campus through a Massive Open Online Course exploring the state’s treasured first-in-the-nation tradition. Starting in the fall of 2015, enrollment will be expanded in a class the university has offered for the last several election cycles. Those participating from afar will be able to watch lectures and presentations from classroom guests and join in on discussions, said Dante Scala, who will teach the class along with fellow political science professor Andrew Smith, director of the UNH Survey Center. Students will hear from political activists, candidates and journalists who descend on the state every four years. The class will be the University of New Hampshire’s first MOOC. Unlike those enrolled on campus, participants elsewhere won’t receive credit for the class, and the university hasn’t decided yet whether they will be asked to complete assignments or take tests or how much they will be charged.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/05/26/4138880/new-hampshire-primary-college.html

by Bryan Sinclair, Educause Review

By leveraging technology, we can open new doors to scholarly inquiry for ourselves and our students. Through new collaborations, we can create exciting shared spaces, both virtual and physical, where that inquiry can take place. The library is a natural home for these technology-rich spaces.

http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/university-library-incubator-digital-scholarship