Techno-News Blog

February 14, 2017

Google Rolls Out New Chromebooks, Allows Access to Android, Adobe Apps

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By Richard Chang, Campus Technology

Google is releasing two new Chromebooks for the education market that aim to be more versatile and practical for the everyday student. The new Chromebooks are scheduled to arrive in late spring, in time for back-to-school planning. Google did not offer a specific price, but the devices are designed to be affordable for the student market. Finally, Google has made updates to its popular Google Classroom learning management system, so that all new Chromebooks can take advantage of new features, such as differentiated instruction, specific management of student work, notifications and analytics.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2017/01/24/google-rolls-out-new-chromebooks-allows-access-to-android-adobe-apps.aspx

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The future is online

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by Pierre Dubuc, FE Voices

Who would be a student today? What was once a relatively carefree occupation – an exciting step into the adult world, the opportunity to study for a career – is now beset by uncertainty over one’s employment chances following graduation, and the certainty that large debts will accrue during one’s studies. Yet change is in the air, and there are many reasons to be optimistic for the future of higher education. It’s true that we face an ongoing skills crisis, rising university fees, and rapidly changing demands in the skills required by business; but the world of skills and online learning is beginning to experience a revolution that promises answers to all these issues.

https://www.fenews.co.uk/fe-voices/the-future-is-online-13095

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Expanding education: Why distance learning is called Alaska’s wave of the future

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by Alaska Native Tribal Health Program

In Alaska, post-secondary education can come at a higher-than-usual price — especially for people hailing from rural parts of the state. Besides the usual expenses, students face the steep cost of travel: Flying from a remote West Coast or Bristol Bay community to a university in Anchorage or a training center in Bethel or Fairbanks can be costly. Which is why educational institutions around Alaska are turning to technology to make education accessible for students from every corner of the Last Frontier.

https://www.adn.com/features/sponsored-content/2017/01/23/expanding-education-why-distance-learning-is-called-alaskas-wave-of-the-future/

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February 13, 2017

3 questions today’s campus leaders should ask

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BY JACK NEILL, eCampus News

A single piece of data can reveal a lot. For example, whether colleges and universities are meeting their enrollment goals or comparing the number of merit based scholarships versus need based ones. But, there’s also a lot left out of those pictures, like how successful those students were in their classes or how long it took them to graduate – or if they did so at all. While colleges and universities are eager to leverage institutional analytics, it is time for them to think bigger and broader. Doing so will open up a realm of possibilities not yet tapped, creating the opportunity to ask more complex questions and find solutions that better serve and support students. Right now, according to the EDUCAUSE Data, Research, and Analytics unit, about 50 percent of institutions consider institutional analytics a “major institutional priority,” and 25 percent more report that it’s a major department-level priority

http://www.ecampusnews.com/campus-administration/questions-institutional-analytics/

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Looking Beyond the LMS: Why a Single App Won’t Work

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by David Raths, Campus Technology

What will the next-generation learning management system look like? Will it just be the next iteration of Blackboard, Canvas or Moodle? Malcolm Brown, executive director of the Educause Learning Initiative (ELI), said his group started researching the topic and decided that was the wrong question. As it tried to envision the next-generation digital learning environment, ELI started using metaphors such as Legos or a smartphone to describe a component-based architecture, in which individual applications, including an LMS, could all be “swimming around in this space connected through open standards and able to exchange data. That would be the platform,” Brown said.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2017/01/23/looking-beyond-the-lms-why-a-single-app-wont-work.aspx

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It’s Not Just Millennials That Tap into Mobile for Social

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by Rimma Kats, eMarketer Daily

It’s no surprise that millennials’ social media time is mainly spent on smartphones. But what about older folks—are Baby Boomers and older users mostly mobile when it comes to social? Turns out, the answer is yes, if not quite to the same extent. According to Q3 2016 data from Nielsen, even those age 50 and up spend the vast majority of their social media time on mobile devices. Three-quarters of the older users spent most of their social media time on mobile—that includes smartphone and tablet. Not surprisingly, the level was even higher among Millennials. Fully 90% of their social media time occurred on smartphones and tablets.

https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Its-Not-Just-Millennials-That-Tap-Mobile-Social/1015091

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February 12, 2017

The world couldn’t afford engineering degrees without philosophy majors

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by Allison Schrager, Quartz

Though it costs more to educate an engineer, it pays off, according to the paper—at least, for the student who gets the degree. The chart below shows the earnings of past graduates, up to age 45, (controlling for demographic and institutional factors) minus the cost of each degree. The value of each degree is scaled to show how much it pays off relative to an education major (which is set to zero). For example, a business major can expect to earn $78,000 more (after costs) than an education major by the time they reach age 45. At most universities, people pay the same tuition no matter what they study—and what students pay in tuition is less than what the university spend to educate them, no matter what they study. But universities spend different amounts on different degrees, and english and philosophy majors demand fewer resources—which means they essentially subsidize engineers. (interesting charts included at URL)

https://qz.com/884450/which-college-majors-make-the-most-money/

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A National Educational Technology Call to Action

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By Steven Mintz, Inside Higher Ed

The U.S. Department of Education places ed tech front and center in the effort to meet the nation’s postsecondary attainment goals. It will be a shame if the National Higher Education Technology Plan, released by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology just eight days before the presidential inauguration, fails to receive the attention it deserves. For it offers a vision of the role of technology in higher education that seeks to radically reshape the discourse by focusing attention less on the use of ed tech in individual classrooms and much more on the ways it can contribute to the development of “a student-centered higher education ecosystem.”

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-gamma/national-educational-technology-call-action

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Fake news: How students learn to read between the lies

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by DONALD HALL, Hechinger Report

We are living in an era of stun­ningly unreliable narration. “Fake news” sites fuel one unsubstantiated conspiracy theory after another, and vigilantes take up arms to redress imaginary crimes. Provocateurs from abroad and opportunists at home seem eager to sow political chaos, through manipulating fictions presented as facts. Despotism and/or social mayhem are the likely outcome of a lie-based storytelling envi­ronment. See Germany in the 1930s or Rwanda in the 1990s for historical proof of that. About the latter, especially, I know all too much. I taught in Rwanda, at its national university, in the mid-1980s and left the coun­try just as the economic situation began to spiral out of control. We are at an especially dangerous point in America today. We, too, are divided along racial, ethnic and economic lines, into camps of globalists and isolationists. Today, however, our “facts” and “fictions” are delivered at a historically unprecedented speed and quantity, through online media and through social networks.

http://hechingerreport.org/fake-news-students-learn-read-lies/

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February 11, 2017

How does gamification affect the learning process?

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BY MATTHEW LYNCH, Edvocate

In the context of education, the trend of using game elements in non-game contexts, termed otherwise gamification, aims at increasing the engagement and motivation of students, capturing their interest to continue learning and influencing their classroom behavior. Although games are today often used in educational environments, the trend remains stigmatized, and its use limited due for example to (1) inadequate access to technology, (2) lack of professional expertise in integrating new technologies, and (3) resistance to change. Gamification in education may optimize the brain’s processing of new information. This may be facilitated by the general aspects of gamified lessons, with the audio-visual presentation, minimized bites of schematized information, short time lapses, and often repetitive patterns.

http://www.theedadvocate.org/how-does-gamification-affect-the-learning-process/

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Free to Be You and Me: Autonomy Privacy in Higher Education

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by Sol Bermann, EDUCAUSE Review

In the digital age, we all too often focus on data privacy and its legal and compliance requirements. In doing so we forget the dictionary definition of privacy (which includes “being apart from…observation”), and risk losing track of how pervasive and quickly data collection, big data, and data science are creating autonomy-privacy issues that can impact free expression or dissenting views as much as pervasive security cameras or wiretaps.

http://er.educause.edu/blogs/2017/1/free-to-be-you-and-me-autonomy-privacy-in-higher-education

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Everything Depends on the Data

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by Todd Bryant, EDUCAUSE Review

Trends in education promise to improve how institutions support students by providing the student, instructor, or institution the ability to make more informed decisions using student-created data. Unfortunately, as our reliance on data increases, our ability — especially students’ ability — to access the data seems to diminish. Whereas learning analytics gives a small number of users access to a single large data set, personalized learning requires that a large number of users — students — have access to their own relatively small portion of data within various systems. While no solutions come without a cost, enormous potential benefits to institutions, educators, and students arise if we adopt systems that provide access to data produced by students.

http://er.educause.edu/articles/2017/1/everything-depends-on-the-data

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February 10, 2017

Survey: Demand for digital course materials reaches record high

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by Jarrett Carter, Education Dive

A new survey from Pearson Education reveals that 80% of a surveyed group of students and faculty say that digital learning materials are part of the future of higher education, and would help with challenges in learning and affordability. Only 56% of survey respondents say their schools have at least half of the course materials available in digital format, despite the costs of traditional textbooks having risen more than 1,000% in the last 40 years. Some vendors say digital materials are helpful not only in increasing affordability for students, but also in collecting student data on learning styles and trends.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/survey-demand-for-digital-course-materials-reaches-record-high/434314/

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Tech is changing manufacturing. These classes could help people and businesses adapt.

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by Amina Alahi, Chicago Tribune

Experts agree that automation is coming to American manufacturing, but many employers and workers still have to learn how to adapt. An upcoming online course on digital manufacturing and design aims to address questions about the future of manufacturing, and will be the first massive online open course (MOOC) from Goose Island-based UI Labs. “Digital Manufacturing and Design Technology” will offer about 40 hours of instruction in 10 installments delivered by Coursera, a leading platform for online courses. The first three will be online Jan. 30, with the rest going live later in the year. Topics include digital design and manufacturing basics, intelligent machines and cybersecurity.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/originals/ct-ui-labs-digital-manufacturing-coursera-bsi-20170119-story.html

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Finish a Bachelor’s Degree Online After Community College

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by Jordan Friedman, US News

Four-year institutions typically partner with community colleges – either on-campus or online – to align their curriculums and closely advise students who plan to transfer. The goal, experts say, is for students to move on to their bachelor’s without having to retake certain courses or worrying about credits being accepted, often at a lower total cost than in full bachelor’s programs. Whether students need to separately apply to the four-year institution varies depending on the program, experts say, and students might take longer than four years total to finish. “2+2 and bachelor’s completion programs have existed for many years. The online versions of this have grown a little more recently,” says Greg Fant, associate vice president and deputy provost for New Mexico State University, which has several 2+2 online programs.

http://www.usnews.com/higher-education/online-education/articles/2017-01-19/complete-a-bachelors-degree-online-after-community-college

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February 9, 2017

4 Technologies Making News in 2017

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By Joshua Bolkan, Campus Technology

Another new year means another endless volley of prediction articles for the days ahead. While sidestepping proclamations that Crocs will find their home in high fashion, chocolate will become a breakfast staple and the University of Alabama will win the 2017 college playoffs — forecasts that are horrifying, delicious and already proven wrong, respectively — we’ve gathered four trends for technology leaders to keep their eyes on as the year progresses.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2017/01/19/4-technologies-making-news-in-2017.aspx

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Phishing Attacks Down 10 Percent in 2016

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By Joshua Bolkan, THE Journal
Information security professionals are 10 percent less likely to report that their organization was the victim of a phishing attack in 2016 than in 2015, though that still means three-quarters of organizations were targeted and half of that same group said phishing attacks are on the rise, according to the latest State of the Phish report from Wombat Security Technologies. The report found a 64 percent increase in the number of organizations measuring the risk posed by end users. The company also reported that it had examined more simulated phishing e-mails than in the previous year and found that click rates are improving for many industries and for organizations with mature programs.
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Brief interventions help online learners persist with coursework, Stanford research finds

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BY ALEX SHASHKEVICH, Stanford University News

A study, published in the Jan. 20 issue of Science, found that people in less-developed countries are completing MOOCs at a lower rate than those in the more developed parts of the world. But, the researchers found, brief psychological interventions that affirm class takers’ sense that they belong can help close the global achievement gap. “MOOCs have expanded access to education but this doesn’t guarantee equal opportunities for people around the world,” said René Kizilcec, the lead author of the study and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication. “Providing access to the Internet and courseware is not enough. People need to feel welcome in online-learning environments to reach their potential.”

http://news.stanford.edu/2017/01/19/brief-interventions-help-online-learners-persist-coursework-stanford-research-finds/

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February 8, 2017

Using gamification in teacher professional development

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BY MATTHEW LYNCH, Tech Edvocate

If you asked a room of teacher if they would rather work, play, or participate in professional development, professional development would likely come in last. And while these tried-and-true methods for professional development aren’t going anywhere, there are methods for increasing engagement amongst the teachers in attendance. Gamification involves bringing elements traditionally associated with video games into the learning environment. Often, this involves concepts like points accrual, leveling, competition, and rewards being integrated into lessons that previously used another format. Additionally, most video games provide a safe space for failure, as players can respawn or open a previous save and try again. The purpose of gamification is to increase engagement by making the tasks both challenging and entertaining, but also giving participants a chance to try again if they don’t immediately succeed.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/using-gamification-in-teacher-professional-development/

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Five Apps that Make Learning to Code Fun

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BY MATTHEW LYNCH, Tech Edvocate

One concept that has become really popular in the last 10 years is the idea that everyone should be able to code. Despite this, the need for programmers is growing much faster than the number of people learning to code. The majority of people either have tried and failed to learn or have just avoided learning code. There is this idea that coding is too complicated, that it is only for a person who thinks a certain way. The way that coding has been taught in the past does not help either; it is tough to learn when you can barely understand the jargon the teacher uses during class. The following are five free apps that will teach you to code without making it feel like a complete bore.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/five-apps-that-make-learning-to-code-fun/

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Demand for Digital Courseware Is Higher Than Supply, Survey Says

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by Meghan Bogardus Cortez, EdTech

As universities clamor for digital materials and tools, the question of how to properly implement them remains. Now, more than ever, higher education stakeholders believe digital course materials are the key to solving systemwide problems. A recent Pearson Education survey called “Digital appetite vs. what’s on the table,” found that at least 84 percent of students, teachers and administrators said a shift to digital could help with challenges they face. About 82 percent of those surveyed also said that digital is the future, but only 56 percent said more than half of their institution’s courses are using some sort of digital courseware.

http://www.edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2017/01/demand-digital-courseware-higher-supply-survey-says

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