Techno-News Blog

By Roger Riddell, Education Dive

Those working in higher ed are familiar with the impact new tech developments have on an institution. For those who have attended multiple Educause conferences, the way tech can shape the space at large is even more evident. So what will 2015 hold for higher ed when it comes to tech? With 2015 now a week under way and higher ed set to begin its winter/spring semesters, we reached out to four CIOs to get their opinions on data security and the cloud, new classroom tech, and the trends and promising tech that could shake up campuses this year.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/what-do-higher-ed-cios-predict-for-campus-tech-in-2015/348364/

By Conrad Swanson, Lawrence Journal World

Recent KU graduate Michael Hilleary is always on the lookout for new opportunities to find himself back in a classroom. And he’s found that opportunity in Health and Wellness 101, the first-ever online class facilitated through the Lawrence Public Library. The massive open online course (MOOC) is offered free of charge through Kansas State University, but the library is volunteering its facilities and additional information to help increase the class completion rate, said Ransom Jabara, the library’s information services coordinator.

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2015/jan/04/lawrence-public-library-offers-first-ever-online-c/

By Meris Stansbury, eCampus News

Education and technology analysts say these tech-enabled trends will take off this year. Think it’s just about online learning? Think again; more like wearable tech and spending on campus IT security. These are just two major trends technology analysts from IEEE Computer Society, and education analysts from Eduventures, say will shape higher education in 2015. Looking at technology from a general consumer angle, IEEE’s Computer Society developed specific predictions on the underlying technology issues all IT professionals will need to tackle as a direct result of those consumer-driven trends.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/technologies/tech-trends-2015/

by Virtual Strategy Magazine

“Global Smart Classroom Market 2015-2019” has released an 83 page research report on education and smart classroom industry to the IT & Telecommunication intelligence section of its online business research and data library. Growing at 14.5% CAGR to 2019, the worldwide smart classroom market is forecast and vendors are gradually shifting to technology that is likely to provide easy-to-use teaching and learning tools, which will enhance the learning experience of students in the classroom. In today’s educational environment, educational institutions are taking advantage of new technologies and resources to change existing teaching and learning patterns.

http://www.virtual-strategy.com/2015/01/05/smart-classroom-market-growth-driven-learning-analytics-and-its-globally-increasing-adopt#axzz3NxABOOlX

by Elena Kadvany, Palo Alto Weekly

A rainy evening during finals week, after school got out for the day, eight Palo Alto high school students sat enraptured in a downtown office building, listening to software engineer Brandon Burr of Palantir talk about using his company’s software as a means to combat homelessness. The mini high-tech lecture ended, and the room fell silent as the students bent over laptops sitting on desks in front of them, returning to websites they’ve been building for several weeks with the guidance of Palantir employees.

http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2015/01/02/learning-how-to-code-school-tech-company-partner-to-guide-low-income-students-into-tech-world

by Todd Maurer, EdSurge

If the US is the world’s education technology leader, Asia is fast becoming its most critical testing ground. The reasons are unambiguous: Asia has the world’s largest pool of K-12 and college enrollments with acute needs for further educational access; deep internet and social media penetration; hypercompetitive examination systems and a wide dispersion of household affordability. Yet the most profound impact from Asia’s education breakout is going to be felt on many US-based education companies, universities, investors and entrepreneurs who are operating today in what is arguably a mature but relatively low-growth American market.

https://www.edsurge.com/n/2015-01-02-how-asia-is-emerging-as-the-world-s-edtech-laboratory

by NPR ED

In 2014 we’ve covered education as the world-changing story it is and you’ve been along for the ride. And so at year’s end, NPR Ed reached far and wide to bring you a set of provocative predictions for the education world in 2015

http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/12/26/373268439/15-education-predictions-for-2015

by Ronald Barba, Tech.co

Published on a recent Hacker News post by user denismars, the 60 following computer science courses are all online classes that are provided completely for free by various professors, departments and universities across the world through each respective university’s website. According to GitHub user prakhar1989, the originator of the list, the 60 computer science courses are all relatively unknown but deserve some attention. While most people are familiar with MOOCs through platforms like Coursera or MIT OpenCourseWare, the courses listed are provided directly from University pages and include everything from beginner courses on programming languages, to more advanced courses in machine learning. Consider checking out one of the free computer science college courses. Classes come from places like Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, and MIT. The classes are sorted by focus: Introduction to CS, Systems, Programming Languages/Compilers, Algorithms, CS Theory, and Miscellaneous.

http://tech.co/60-free-computer-science-college-courses-you-can-take-online-in-2015-2015-01

By Richard Vaughan, TES

Teachers should stop relying on traditional teaching methods and opt for 10-minute video lessons to capture the “wandering minds” of their students, according to Sanjay Sarma, director of digital learning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Sarma believes that schools and universities have been slow to come to terms with the reality that most of today’s young people are doing their learning online, particularly through websites such as YouTube. “The way we teach today is based on lectures, which is still a factory-style system,” he said. “But cognitive science and cognitive psychology tell us that students learn in a way that, frankly, isn’t compatible with lectures.” Students learned “in a more organic way”, he said. In order to absorb knowledge they had to be given it when they needed it.

https://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storyCode=6455175

by C.P. Gopinathan and K. Ramachandran, Firstpost

Indian higher education is at an inflexion point. Several forces from within and outside are hitting the entire sector. These forces including cost, technology and new sets of demanding learners, are forcing education providers to re-look at existing models of education delivery. The questions is will the existing brick and mortar, infrastructure-led higher education system be able to meet the rising new demands or cope with the large scale changes. With each passing moment, it is clear they cannot. More than any other force, technology today is a large force multiplier, that possesses the ability to answer the most critical questions around the same issues of access, equity, excellence and affordability today, unlike, even the recent past.

http://www.firstpost.com/living/online-technology-changing-way-world-learns-2027677.html

by Nick Morrison, Forbes

For many educators, technology is now a key tool in their practice, and in some cases even shapes the way they teach. While technology is undoubtedly a useful weapon in any teacher’s armoury, there is a lot of talk about the latest gizmo and not enough about what helps students learn. Not so much a trend as an aspiration is that 2015 will see more inquiry into how technology aids teaching and learning, with less emphasis on the technology and more on showing how it makes a difference. After all, technology in education is a means to an end, not an end in itself. So I thought it would be useful to round up some of the key trends in educational technology to look out for in 2015.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmorrison/2015/01/01/the-edtech-trends-to-look-out-for-in-2015/

By Keith Button, Education Dive

In 2014, the number of massive open online courses offered rose to 2,400 and universities offering MOOCs rose to more than 400, or double that of 2013, EdSurge reported.  Coursera offers the most MOOCs, twice as many as the No. 2 provider, edX, which has nearly 400 courses. But Coursera’s market share shrunk to one-third in 2014 from nearly half in 2013. The top three MOOC subjects were the same in 2014 as in 2013: humanities, computer science and programming, and business and management.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/universities-offering-moocs-doubled-in-2014/347803/

by Devon Haynie, US News

There has been little national research comparing completion rates for online and on-campus college and graduate programs, says Peter Shea, associate provost for online learning and an education professor at University of Albany—SUNY. Much of the research focuses on community colleges, and even there, the research is divided. Shea’s research has found that community college students across the country tend to have a higher chance of finishing their online courses. But a paper by the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College that looked at two state systems found otherwise. The data that does exist on a wider scope suggests that completion rates for online students may be lower, but not much lower, says Russell Poulin, deputy director of research and analysis for WCET, an organization that advocates for effective technology use in higher education.

http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/articles/2015/01/30/experts-debate-graduation-rates-for-online-students

By Frank Kaufmann, Washington Times

Tech changes out-pace spiritual foundations for their ethical use. Tech changes affect three areas. Individuals acquire greater independence and reach. The locus of power shifts accordingly. And traditional buffers between discordant groups dissolve. These developments call for new structures for moral development, and the radical reassessment of human organization. Science fiction writers are doing far better reflecting on change and what is needed than those presumably responsible to govern or lead for the sake of positive human welfare. Virtually all current systems have been rendered obsolete by tech developments of the last 15 years. We race with these obsolete systems down the path toward a truly broken world with each passing day; politics, media and entertainment, education, security, and economics and finance, and more. All of these in their current form arose in the past era marking the rise of the nation state, and of “modern” industrial technology. They simply no longer correspond to the world in which we now live.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/31/technology-moves-faster-ethics/

by htxt.africa

Two of the classrooms provided are solar-powered computer labs built into shipping containers. Samsung’s Solar Powered Internet Schools (SPIS) have been in development for five years and are in action around the continent. The third set-up is an e-Learning Centre (E-LC), also designed and built by Samsung. The SPIS is a a 12-metre long,solar-powered, mobile and self-regulating repurposed shipping container turned into a classroom that is designed specifically for schools with restricted infrastructure. Each SPIS has a 50-inch electronic board, notebooks, tablets and WiFi cameras and can accommodate up to 21 learners. Solar panels on the SPIS roof can power the teaching area for up to nine hours a day.

http://www.htxt.co.za/2014/12/17/three-new-solar-powered-internet-classrooms-arrive-in-limpopo/

by Anna Fifield, Washington Post

In this education-obsessed country, Cha is a top-ranked math teacher. But he doesn’t teach in a school. He runs an online “hagwon” — or cram school — called SevenEdu that focuses entirely on preparing students to take the college entrance exam in mathematics. Here, teaching pays: Cha said he earned a cool $8 million last year. “I’m madly in love with math,” said Cha, looking the height of trendiness in his crimson shirt and pants and tweed jacket, in his office in Gangnam — a wealthy part of Seoul famous for its conspicuous consumption and featured in the song “Gangnam Style.” It’s hard to exaggerate the premium South Korea places on education.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/in-education-crazy-south-korea-top-teachers-become-multimillionaires/2014/12/29/1bf7e7ae-849b-11e4-abcf-5a3d7b3b20b8_story.html

by Heather Mullinix, Crossville-Chronicle

“If it never starts, there is never going to be a shift. To me, let’s take that money that we were going to buy new math textbooks and let’s do something creative and culture shifting with that money instead of continuing to replicate the past,” he added. The school system will be considering adoption of new math textbooks this year and possible purchase of new books for the next school year at an estimated cost of $500,000. However, the school system has also been exploring possibilities for reducing the reliance on printed textbooks with laptops or tablets for each student to access digital learning content in school and at home. “The only way we’ll ever be able to go in this direction is if we have a culture change, we have the professional development to back it up, and we have the ability to utilize textbooks that are free or extremely reduced in cost.”

http://www.crossville-chronicle.com/news/local_news/schools-look-for-creative-ways-to-make-e-textbooks-a/article_8fa73806-8f83-11e4-9c0a-6b50e52c1c75.html

By James Hinton, Edudemic

Edutainment is now a very popular tool in the classroom. Current students tend to be computer savvy gamers with a hefty appetite for active learning. A wide variety of edutainment has been created for the classroom to meet this need. But sometimes purpose built software doesn’t meet the specific needs of a given classroom. When that occurs a teacher may have to get a little creative and find ways to adapt commercially available games meant for private gamers. At the university level various professors have engaged in novel solutions. For example, Boise State uses Second Life as an interactive classroom. I myself found Empires III surprisingly helpful in learning how the Tokugawa Shogunate came to power during my military history studies. But what about at the highschool level? Have highschool teachers been able to similarly adapt? Today I’d like to share three real world examples where teachers did precisely this. Hopefully by looking at how they adapted popular games to their classrooms you’ll find inspiration that will help you in your own classrooms. Our three examples are Jeremiah McCall, Dan Bloom, and Don LaBonte.

http://www.edudemic.com/computer-games-as-lesson-plan/

By Ann Elliott, Edudemic

After weeks of poring over reviews and testing the app in my classroom, I can say with confidence that instaGrok offers the best research engine experience for education of any app for tablets running iOS or Android. The instaGrok app is more classroom-friendly than its competitors, and its visual presentation of results is unparalleled. With instaGrok, teachers can encourage self-directed learning, empowering students to hone research, critical thinking, and writing skills. The search results engage students and encourage them to dig deeper in research projects. Read on to learn why instaGrok is the ideal classroom research app.

http://www.edudemic.com/instagrok-an-education-search-engine-for-students/

by Information Week

Education is being flipped on its head by technology. Teachers see the promise — and the pitfalls. This is an exciting time to be in education technology. The global spend on edtech in classrooms is on the rise, fueling a market that is projected to reach $19 billion by 2018, according to a market study released by Futuresource Consulting earlier this year. As blended learning environments evolve, administrators and teachers continue to celebrate the promise of digital learning and experience the pitfalls of underwhelming edtech tools. Below are five edtech trends and opportunities for developers of these tools to consider.

http://www.informationweek.com/government/open-government/5-education-tech-trends-for-2015/a/d-id/1318396?_mc=RSS_IWK_EDT

by Dan Kedmey, TIME

Nearly half of workers say that the Internet, distractions and all, has improved their productivity at the office, according to a report released last Tuesday. Pew Research Center asked 1,066 Internet users how web access has changed the way they work. Only 7% of respondents blamed the Internet for a decline in productivity, while 46% credited it as an improvement, opening up new paths of communication and extending their workday over longer and more flexible hours. More than one-third of respondents said that round-the-clock Internet access means they now work longer days than they used to.

http://fortune.com/2014/12/30/workers-internet-productivity/