Techno-News Blog

By Laura Devaney, eSchool News

Students frequently walk away from homework when it is too difficult, but difficult games are another matter–kids walk away from games when they’re too easy. Difficult games present a positive challenge for students. A challenging task “stretches” a student’s brain, and the more a person expects his or her brain to do different things, the more pathways that person’s brain will develop. “Choice is a really important part of this equation, and gaming embodies choice–games are open-ended, and that’s part of the reason they’re so engaging for kids,” Kiang said.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2014/07/07/gaming-engaging-students-365/

By Meris Stansbury, eCampus News

As with all types of popular learning models that have the potential to be nothing more than a flash in the pan, it’s important to conduct thorough research on the model’s real potential. And according to a 2014 research and case study review, there are roughly 20 new things higher education faculty and leaders should know about Flipped Learning. The report, “2014: Extension of a Review of Flipped Learning [2],” conducted by George Mason University with the support of Pearson and the Flipped Learning Network [3](FLN), reviews current relevant research—both theory and empirical evidence—to learn more about Flipped Learning’s growth in education, and its effects on student learning faculty teaching.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/20-new-facts-flipped-learning-higher-ed/

By Jason Cross, Edudemic

If you run a school that utilizes 1:1 technology tablets, you have no doubt had to deal with a few bumps and bruises. Especially if those tablets end up going home with students. Here are some tips for reducing tablet loss in your program.

http://www.edudemic.com/oops-cracked-pad/

by Matt Levinson, Edutopia

For schools, the challenge is how to bring together kids’ “native” knowledge regarding technology and teachers’ pedagogical experience without entering into a tug-of-war battle that teachers will inevitably and invariably lose when technology is in the ring. A colleague of mine from many years ago gave me sage advice regarding working with middle schoolers: “If you don’t have a plan for them, they will have a plan for you.” There is no truer statement when it comes to deploying technology in schools. Teachers have to design learning experiences around challenging problems where the technology is a tool that needs to be used to solve the problem. If technology sits idly on the side, kids will go in their own direction, gravitating toward games and other “distractions,” and teachers will feel “gamed” by the kids. The kids will make their own plan.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/digital-teens-have-a-plan-matt-levinson

By Katie Lepi, Edudemic

The internet: Not just for first world countries anymore. While high speed, broadband access may be much more ubiquitous in more developed countries, internet infrastructure and broadband connectivity is much more widespread than you may be aware of. Over the last decade, huge strides have been made, meaning many more students across the globe are being connected to the vast network of students, teachers, and the world. The handy infographic linked below paints a pretty good picture of what internet connectivity looks like around the world. Take a look, and try to imagine how many more people you could be connecting with around the globe in just a few short years.

http://www.edudemic.com/world-connectivity-infographic/

By Katie Lepi, Edudemic

Using smartphones and tablets in the classroom isn’t necessarily innovative anymore. For some schools it is the norm, still others are just jumping on the bandwagon of using mobile devices (both in BYOD environments and in scenarios where schools supply the technology). That isn’t to say that a lot of classrooms aren’t using desktop and laptop computers anymore, but a lot of data is pointing to the fact that apps are the future, not the web. The handy infographic linked below takes a look at some interesting statistics on apps vs. web tools.

http://www.edudemic.com/apps-graphic/

by BERNADETTE TANSEY, Xconomy

Sometime next year, an AT&T executive may be sitting at a desk, trying to decide whether to hire that computer science major from a good college—or a whip-smart high school graduate who just passed five or six courses on mobile iOS development from an online catalog. The value of the college grad’s four-year degree will be backed up by a longstanding higher education establishment that includes universities themselves, as well as the independent accrediting agencies that oversee the quality of their instruction. The high school grad will hold a new kind of credential called a nanodegree, whose value has been vouched for by AT&T itself; the company designed the online coursework in partnership with educational technology startup Udacity.

http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2014/07/02/udacitys-nanodegrees-edtechs-challenge-to-college-credentials/

by Michael Horn, Forbes

What’s exciting here though is that through disruption, we have the opportunity to make a quality higher education fundamentally affordable and thereby allow many more people access to its benefits. The disruptions happening throughout education more generally afford us an opportunity to revisit how we cultivate children’s learning and futures—and hopefully allow us to do it in a way that is even better, given what we now know today. That’s not preordained either, of course, but we have the opportunity. It’s now all of our turn to shape it appropriately.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelhorn/2014/07/02/disruptive-innovation-and-education/

By ELISE HU, WUWF

What we know as the World Wide Web — the main way by which most of us access the Internet — just turned 25 this year. Its existence has allowed for all kinds of learning and free expression, coding and making, rule-breaking and platform-making. One American researcher even links the Internet to a decline in religious affiliation. An estimated 5 billion of us are expected to have Internet access in the next decade, but what will the Internet look like then? How easily will we be able to get, share and create with it? The Pew Research Center reached out to more than 1,400 tech industry leaders and academics, asking about the basic way the Internet will function come 2025.

http://wuwf.org/post/future-internet-not-so-free-or-open-pews-new-survey

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

Open educational resources not only save students from triple-digit (or more!) textbook costs, but they also allow instructors to mix-and-match content for a more personalized, engaging learning experience. Here are 16 resources that offer a wide range of content and tools to help implement OER in just about any course.

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2014/07/02/16-oer-sites-every-educator-should-know.aspx

By David Nagel, Campus Technology

The United States Department of Education has awarded $5 million to three universities to find out how (or whether) school and district leaders use research to inform their decisionmaking. The grant will fund the creation of a new center — dubbed the National Center for Research in Policy and Practice — whose aim is to study how research is currently used in schools and in what circumstances research is used to inform decisions. It will also look to find ways that education-related research “could be made more meaningful for educational leaders through long-term partnerships between researchers and practitioners.” Research will be conducted by investigators at the University of Colorado Boulder, the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University and the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University.

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2014/07/01/researchers-to-study-how-school-leaders-use-data-to-inform-decisions.aspx

By David Raths, Campus Technology

SIIA’s annual survey finds that bandwidth is not keeping up with demand at higher ed institution, but suggests progress on digital content, e-portfolios. As more classroom activities require Internet access, the number of college and university educators who believe they have access to adequate Internet bandwidth levels is declining, suggesting that bandwidth is not keeping up with demand, according to the most recent annual survey by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA). Yet educators noted improvements in other areas, including security measures and e-portfolios.

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2014/07/01/report-universities-struggle-to-provide-adequate-bandwidth.aspx

By Alexandria Neason, Hechinger Report

For teachers in rural areas, technology training for classrooms can be elusive. It’s one reason why swarms of teachers, smartphones in hand, crowded around a small table covered in bar coded stickers at the annual International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference, eager to learn. They listened intently on Sunday as Terra Graves, a district technology specialist from Washoe County, N.V., explained how to scan quick response (QR) codes for a new massive open online course (MOOC) debuting this August, using Google Hangouts and Google Plus. “Having it online, being able to have them connect with other educators that teach their content really broadened their horizons,” said Graves, one of hundreds of educators who are gathering at ISTE in Atlanta to swap tips and solutions on digital learning.

http://hechingerreport.org/content/rural-school-districts-new-tech-training-available-online-course_16577/

By Alexandria Neason, Games and Learning

One of the major challenges facing game developers hoping to get their tools used by teachers is the level to which teachers are comfortable using those technologies. In this story from the Hechinger Report, journalist Alexandria Neason reports from this week’s edtech conference in Atlanta about what some teachers are doing to answer the training gap.

http://www.gamesandlearning.org/2014/07/02/facing-new-technologies-in-the-classroom-teachers-seek-help-online/

by Sue Gee, iProgrammer

Udacity now has an Android version of its app that lets you study its online courses on your smartphone. There also a new course on developing your own apps for Android.  All Udacity courses are now available on Android for the first time, in a classroom specifically built and optimized for touch. You can stream lectures wherever your Android device goes, and test yourself with quick and fun quizzes and you learn on the go. One course that would seem very suitable to study in this way is Developing Android Apps: Android Fundamentals, an advanced 8-week course (assuming 6 hours per week) in which you’ll: “Build a cloud-connected Android app, and learn the tools, principles, and best practices of mobile and Android development that you’ll apply to your own projects.” This course is one of four new additions to the Udacity Course Catalog all of which are being developed in collaboration with Google.

http://www.i-programmer.info/news/150-training-a-education/7491-new-courses-and-android-app-from-udacity-.html

By Edwin Kee, Ubergizmo

Microsoft’s Bing search page has been updated in time for summer. In fact, a couple of new features have been unveiled along the way which will come in handy for folks who are on the lookout for online courses as well as recently published reading materials. The results will be displayed automatically in the side pane, which will be more natural to the human eye to read and figure out. A user will be able to perform a search for books while seeing the results appear over in the side pane. Just how is this going to be different from a standard search? Well, the side pane will show up an excerpt from the book, in addition to a link to a location where the book itself can be downloaded, alongside locations of where the title will be made available for loan for students (or interested parties) to borrow.

http://www.ubergizmo.com/2014/06/bing-textbook-online-course-search/

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

While predictive analytics have been an ed tech buzzword in recent years, they are but a midpoint in the evolution of data analytics in higher education. What began as descriptive analytics, the analysis of historical data to understand what has happened in the past, has matured into predictive analytics, the use historical data to develop models for helping to predict the future. Now, prescriptive analytics takes the prediction and prescribes recommendations or actions to influence what ends up happening in the future. It works by developing business rules that kick into action when certain conditions are present. For example, a prescriptive analytics-driven learning management system could recommend additional material or Web sites to a student with poor performance pertaining to a specific topic.

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2014/06/25/12-essentials-of-prescriptive-analytics-for-student-success.aspx

By Laura Devaney, eSchool News

Here are five reasons why school iPad initiatives tend to stall, ETT-iPadTablets, including iPads, are all the rage in today’s classrooms. But how many iPad initiatives fail due to common mistakes that could be avoided with proper planning? During a jam-packed ISTE 2014 session, EdTechTeacher director and co-founder Tom Daccord gave an overview of what he said are five common mistakes schools across the country seem to make when it comes to iPad implementations. “It struck me that there were ways in which schools were making common mistakes with iPads,” Daccord said.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2014/07/01/5-ipad-mistakes-743/

By Denny Carter, eCampus News

The “State of ResNet Report” breaks down exactly which devices are using the most bandwidth on campuses. The prevalence of tablets — once a rarity — has wreaked havoc at many schools. Eighty-four percent of respondents to the ResNet Report said tablets are the biggest drain on their campus’s bandwidth, with 75 percent saying laptops and desktops are the main culprit. Six in 10 said internet-connected Blu-Ray players are to blame for bandwidth woes. Sixty-three percent pointed to smartphones and 61 percent said video games are a central issue in maintaining reliable bandwidth for every student. Students now own an average of seven mobile devices, up from 6.4 in 2012, according to a study from Marketing Charts.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/bandwidth-college-campuses-134/

By Meris Stansbury, eSchool Ness

Adaptive learning, considered a ‘game changer’ for higher education in its innovative use of technology to deliver high-quality, highly-personalized instruction to all types of learners, is still relatively new in its adoption and implementation. Thankfully, 17 tech-savvy leaders in higher ed are offering best practices to get the most out of adaptive learning. In a new report, “Maximizing Investment in Adaptive Learning,” sponsored by Adapt Courseware and produced by Eduventures—a research and consulting service—though adaptive learning is not only in demand by colleges and universities (Arizona State, Carnegie Mellon, the University of California Berkeley, and more) but meets the needs of today’s students’ through rich online learning environments and personalized learning, its full potential is not yet realized.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/adaptive-learning-steps-487/