Educational Technology

By Hilary Collins, Star-Telegram

When Kristin Bratsch couldn’t find the textbook she needed, she decided to try an electronic version, a series of PDF files that she downloaded onto her computer. After completing the course Concepts of Fitness and Wellness, Bratsch, a student at Collin County Community College’s McKinney campus, had mixed feelings about the e-textbook. She said following along in it while watching video lectures was difficult, in contrast to a regular textbook that she could flip through. But she did like how easy it was to locate exact information by using the “find” feature in Adobe Reader. “I wouldn’t be against using [an e-textbook] again,” she said.

http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/07/27/2365696/e-textbooks-more-popular-in-texas.html

by Claudette Riley, Springfield, MO News-Leader

By fall 2012, every Springfield Public Schools classroom will have a smart board and projector. The school board approved a trio of bids to purchase and install the equipment at its mid-July meeting. Project to put projectors, boards in all classrooms to cost about $2 million. A recent audit shows the interactive white boards, which display a computer video output wirelessly and act as a touch screen, are already used in 547 classrooms. The effort to install the technology in the other 901 classrooms is expected to begin this fall. “Every classroom, every student will have technology available to them,” said Anita Kissinger, associate superintendent of educational services.

http://www.news-leader.com/article/20100726/NEWS04/7260343/Technology-to-be-in-every-room

By Dennis Pierce, eSchool News

Daily technology use in core subject-area classes, frequent technology use in intervention courses, and a low student-to-computer ratio can play a critical role in reducing dropout rates, new research suggests—and the study’s authors argue that a federal investment in mobile computers for every child would pay huge dividends in terms of national productivity. “Technology is an investment, not an expense,” says Project RED (Reinventing Education), the group behind the research.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2010/07/26/are-computers-for-every-student-a-wise-investment/

By Martin Bryant, the Next Web

Apple launched its Magic Trackpad with little fanfare, just a press release; even that prioritised the new iMacs over this new control device. Despite the quiet launch, the Magic Trackpad could be a game changer in many ways. Here are some ways that the Magic Trackpad could transform the world of computing forever.

http://bit.ly/brQxFz

By Matt Brian, the Next Web

According to Pocket-lint, Amazon is predicting that sales via its Kindle ebook store will surpass its US paperback sales by the end of next year, exceeding hardback and paperback sales shortly after. In a private briefing with the tech blog, Amazon’s SVP of Worldwide Digital Media, Steve Kessel confidently stated “I think we will sell more Kindle books than paperback books in the next year” going on to say ”sometime after that we will start selling more Kindle books than hard covers and paperbacks combined”.

http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2010/07/29/amazon-expects-ebooks-to-outsell-paperbacks-by-next-year/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheNextWeb+%28The+Next+Web+Top+Stories%29

By Joshua Kim, blog U

On to the new $139 Kindle. Someone help me do the math on this one. At what point do we start to save money by buying Kindles and moving our second copy ordering to a Kindle e-book? I say 2nd copy, as I can see the wisdom of having one hardcover for circulation and preservation. No need for an Amazon e-book library lending model, although the lack of one drives me bonkers. Rather, an old-fashioned model where the library buys a bunch of Kindles, puts Kindle books only on that device, and then loans out the device

http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology_and_learning/the_139_kindle_and_the_academic_library

By Alex Wilhelm, the Next Web

In short, Microsoft is hoping to translate the great success of Windows 7 on the desktop, and move it to tablets. Microsoft is “tuning” the operating system for slate use, and will then farm the hardware work to the many companies that focus on Windows devices. Of course, now that HP and Palm are one, expect no HP Windows mobile devices. Concerning the project, Ballmer went on to say that “It is job one urgency. No one is sleeping at the switch.”

http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2010/07/29/microsoft-is-coming-full-guns-after-the-ipad/

By Jason B. Jones, Profhacker, Chronicle of Higher Ed

What it does, then, is scan your Twitter and Facebook accounts for links, and preloads them for you in a spiffy, magazine-inspired format. In addition, once one of your friends has shared a link, Flipboard also tracks who else in your network has posted the link, so that you can participate in any online conversations about it. You never have to click a blind URL to discover an article again! Flipboard’s fast and stylish, and puts the focus where it should be: on making it easy for you to decide whether something’s important. What’s nice about Flipboard is it’s the first Twitter app to think seriously about how the experience might be different on an iPad.

http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Making-Social-Media-More/25858/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

By Jessica Quillin, Inside Higher Ed

The prospect of online networking through a site like LinkedIn can seem as arduous as an annual checkup. You know that it could be good for you, especially in the long run. Yet its benefits seem illusory enough (after all, how unhealthy is your career?) that the sheer act of going to the site and dealing with e-networking seems hardly worth the effort of typing in the URL. Higher education professionals are particularly poised for taking advantage of the networking capabilities of a site like LinkedIn. However, as with any new media tool, LinkedIn involves a certain amount of patience, creativity, and restraint in order to fully leverage what the site can offer.

http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2010/07/30/quillin

by JEFFREY ROSEN, Lakeland Ledger

The problem is of a challenge that, in big and small ways, is confronting millions of people around the globe: how best to live our lives in a world where the Internet records everything and forgets nothing — where every online photo, status update, Twitter post and blog entry by and about us can be stored forever. With Web sites like LOL Facebook Moments, which collects and shares embarrassing personal revelations from Facebook users, ill-advised photos and online chatter are coming back to haunt people months or years after the fact.

http://www.theledger.com/article/20100725/ZNYT05/7253000/1035/BUSINESS?Title=The-Web-Means-the-End-of-Forgetting

By Gregory M. Lamb,Christian Science Monitor

Middle School Unplugged,” was that time away from gadgets might cause young people like Wade to see the benefits of disengaging from their screens and connecting in person with friends and family. But it seemed to have the opposite effect on Wade: “I sort of learned the magnitude of how [technology] helps me.” Not carrying a phone was a factor in his getting lost on his own in downtown San Francisco, near where he lives, an experience that troubled him. Wade is a “digital native” whose world – half in cyberspace, half on terra firma – is breeding what might be called a new species of thinkers. The early 21st century may be a watershed moment in how humans learn and communicate, a change perhaps not equaled since the invention of the printing press nearly six centuries ago.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Tech/2010/0724/Are-iPads-smartphones-and-the-Mobile-Web-rewiring-the-way-we-think

By Scott Kirsner, Boston Globe

It appears readers are embracing the devices. On Monday, Amazon.com, the online merchant that also developed the Kindle e-book, said that over the past three months, it had sold 143 digital books for every 100 hardcovers and that the gap had widened in the past month to 180 digital sales for each 100 hardcovers. Forrester Research, a technology tracking firm in Cambridge, expects that as many as 10 million e-reader devices will be sold in the nation this year.

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2010/07/25/kicking_back_with_a_good_e_reader/

By Mary Vorsino, Hawaii Star Advertiser

Despite tight budgets, many public schools are making it a priority to bring more cutting-edge technology into classrooms — from interactive, touch-screen whiteboards to laptops and iPads — in hopes of engaging students often more comfortable with keyboard and screen than pen and paper. At Maunawili Elementary School, which has an annual “technology fundraiser,” every classroom is now equipped with touch-screen SMART boards in place of standard whiteboards, and students have digital responders so teachers can ask questions of a class and get instant feedback on how many understood the lesson.

http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/hawaiinews/20100724_technological_achievement.html

By Pete Griffin, Patch

The City of Beverly Hills has partnered with Planet Bravo, a provider of in-school computer instruction and after-school enrichment programs, for a unique summer camp experience at El Rodeo School. Program counselors educate youth on the latest technological trends and encourage them to start thinking about multimedia when it comes to their school projects.  Patch dropped by a session and captured a group preparing for a “robotics” competition, where different teams have three days to build a robot from scratch and then present it to their fellow classmates.

http://beverlyhills.patch.com/articles/technology-as-a-tool#video-804769

by News Wise

Whether you’re heading back to school this September, or busy building a career as a videographer, graphic designer or IT specialist, or already in a top job in the computing field, one thing is clear: fast, robust storage solutions should be on the top of your want list. Speedy, ample storage is essential for smart computing in the classroom and in the ever-changing world of business. No matter what your specific computing needs, solid state drive (SSD) technology—which beats traditional hard drives in terms of speed and power consumption—is an essential tool of the trade, and a must-have for those seeking the “best in breed” in computing.

http://www.newswise.com/articles/need-for-speed-ssd-technology-puts-computer-users-in-the-fast-lane

Official Google Blog

We have always pursued innovative projects because we want to drive breakthroughs in computer science that dramatically improve our users’ lives. Last year at Google I/O, when we launched our developer preview of Google Wave, a web app for real time communication and collaboration, it set a high bar for what was possible in a web browser. We showed character-by-character live typing, and the ability to drag-and-drop files from the desktop, even “playback” the history of changes—all within a browser. Developers in the audience stood and cheered. Some even waved their laptops. But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-on-google-wave.html

by Lamar University

Lamar University freshman computer science majors Zebulun Barnett of Lumberton and Ethan Hasson of Winnie got a little more than they bargained for when approached by Jane Liu, associate professor of computer science, to become undergraduate research assistants for the High Performance Computing Laboratory. They were asked to develop and teach a one-week summer computing workshop geared toward area kindergarten through 12th grade computer science, science and math teachers.

http://www.lamar.edu/newsevents/news/207_8771.htm

by Kayla Gahagan, Rapid City Journal

Douglas School District board meetings could soon be paperless if the district agrees to buy iPads for board members. The board is considering a proposal to buy an Apple tablet computer for each of the seven members to reduce costs and eliminate paper. Board members could view documents before and during meetings, eliminating the need to send out packets before the two meetings each month. The devices would let board members browse the internet and check e-mail accounts. Superintendent Loren Scheer said the district has tried to create more energy efficient ways to run the district, and technology is part of that.

http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/news/article_a2278400-9905-11df-ae0b-001cc4c002e0.html

By Erinn Walker, Ahwatukee Foothills News

“Who here has been to the country of Vietnam?” a second-grade teacher asks his students. As the children glance at each other nervously, not one hand raises. “Well, it looks like we should take a field trip there today. Sit back, relax, and buckle up. Here we go!” the teacher announces as he turns on the classroom’s LCD projector and flashes the images from his computer of Google Earth onto the whiteboard. The students sit breathless as they watch themselves hover above the earth and travel down to Hanoi, Vietnam. Thanks to technology, this trip is made possible.

http://www.ahwatukee.com/community_focus/article_35a6e336-95d4-11df-95da-001cc4c002e0.html

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

The story of the Department of Music and Arts Technology began in the mid-1990s when the shared campus of Indiana University and Purdue University began offering what was the first United States-based master of science degree in music technology. The focus was on educating students on computer-based music technology, multimedia and interactive design, and multimedia production techniques.

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2010/07/21/the-technology-that-saved-a-university-degree-program.aspx

By Mary Vorsino, Hawaii Star Advertiser

Public schools will roll out online testing for reading and math proficiency this fall, and for the first time students will be able to take the assessment up to three times, with the highest score being used to gauge what they are learning in the classroom. Department of Education officials believe shifting from paper-and-pencil exams will improve scores at a time when schools are facing increasing proficiency benchmarks under the No Child Left Behind law. Educators also hope online testing will appeal more to today’s tech-savvy students. Exams will feature interactive elements, including animation and computer graphics, that would not be possible on a paper test.

http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/hawaiinews/20100722_Schools_to_move_to_online_testing.html