Educational Technology

November 23, 2010

Why is a computer room in your school not enough?

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:40 am

by e4Africa

In Africa a school with a computer room, holding twenty or thirty computers, is indeed fortunate. Only a small percentage of schools have such facilities. If you are teaching in a school with a computer room and you have the opportunity to take your learners there, you are indeed privileged. You are the envy of most of the teachers on the continent. Computer rooms have many uses, such as allowing learners to gain computer skills, doing drill and practice exercises, doing research and project work, and performing assessment tasks. You may even be able to use the facility to teach and reinforce what you’ve done in the classroom. In spite of the good things that can happen in a computer room, you must still try to move technology into your classroom as soon as you can.

http://www.e4africa.co.za/?p=2901

Share on Facebook

Schools ban cell phones and one man sells “mobile rental space for gadgets”

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:35 am

by Computer Technology Webuda

Each morning, over 700 Bronx high school students stand in line to drop off their cell phones with a man named Vernon Alcoser. The “mobile rental space” costs $1 a day. Alcoser, ever the mercurial entrepreneur, heard that two schools in the Bronx DeWitt Clinton High School and Herbert H. Lehman High School were planning to ban cell phones. Seeing a fiscal opportunity, he decided to open up the city’s first mobile rental truck, calling his company Pure Loyalty Electronic Device Storage.

http://computertechnology.webuda.com/schools-ban-cell-phones-and-one-man-sells-%E2%80%9Cmobile-rental-space-for-gadgets%E2%80%9D/

Share on Facebook

Wired classroom: First Grade Smith students to get laptops

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:30 am

by Mike Wilder, Times-News

Every student in a first-grade class at Smith Elementary School will soon have a laptop computer. The computers won’t be paid for by the Alamance-Burlington School System, Smith principal Wendy Gooch said, though the school system will help maintain the laptops. In most cases, students’ families have agreed to pay for the computers. Business contributions will cover the costs for families who can’t afford the purchase. Students who are part of the school’s first-grade Spanish-language immersion class will use the laptops.

http://www.thetimesnews.com/news/smith-38460-computers-students.html

Share on Facebook

November 22, 2010

Why There Are So Few Women in Tech

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:40 am

By Vinita Gupta, Business Week

Women with engineering or computer science degrees often disappear just as they are within grasp of reaching career peaks. Of the top 100 tech companies in 2008, women accounted for a mere 6 percent of chief executives, according to the National Center for Women and Information Technology. Of companies that raised venture capital in 2006, not even 7 percent were founded by women. Meanwhile the number of startups led by female chief executives that attracted funding last year was just 4.3 percent, according to VentureOne, a venture-investment tracker. As distressing as such facts are for the U.S. technology field, there is another, far-more-alarming number: Only 18 percent of college graduates with computer science degrees in 2008 were women—down from 37 percent in 1985, according to NCWIT.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2010/tc2010119_348456.htm

Share on Facebook

My five-year-old tech geek

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:35 am

by DARICE WIEBE LUTZ, Globe and Mail

I awake to the sound of technology seeping out of my son’s bedroom. It doesn’t surprise me, even at this early hour. My son is enamoured with technology. He eats with an old cellphone beside his plate. He keeps lists of the latest gadgets he wants to purchase. He pores over Future Shop and Best Buy flyers. He talks endlessly to strangers about BlackBerrys and iPods. He dreams about receiving electronics for gifts.

He is five years old.

His first word was “clock.” He was comfortable using a mouse to click and play computer games before he was 2. He could carry on an intelligent conversation about Ethernet cables by preschool.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/facts-and-arguments/my-five-year-old-tech-geek/article1790540/

Share on Facebook

Decoding the Value of Computer Science

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:30 am

By Kevin Carey, The Chronicle

In The Social Network, a computer-programming prodigy goes to Harvard and creates a technology company in his sophomore dorm. Six year later, the company is worth billions and touches one out of every 14 people on earth. Facebook is a familiar American success story, with its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, following a path blazed by Bill Gates and others like him. But it may also become increasingly rare. Far fewer students are studying computer science in college than once did. This is a problem in more ways than one. The signs are everywhere. This year, for the first time in decades, the College Board failed to offer high-school students the Advanced Placement AB Computer Science exam. The number of high schools teaching computer science is shrinking, and last year only about 5,000 students sat for the AB test. Two decades ago, I was one of them.

http://chronicle.com/article/Decoding-the-Value-of-Computer/125266/

Share on Facebook

November 21, 2010

Real and digital worlds increasingly converge: Smartphones on forefront of trend in everyday life

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:40 am

By: The Economist

What if there were two worlds, the real one and its digital reflection? The real one is strewn with sensors, picking up everything from movement to smell. The digital one, an edifice built of software, takes in all that information and automatically acts on it. If a door opens in the real world, so does its virtual equivalent. If the temperature in the room with the open door falls below a certain level, the digital world automatically turns on the heat. This was the vision David Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale University, put forward in his book Mirror Worlds in the early 1990s. “You will look into a computer screen and see reality,” he predicted. “Some part of your world — the town you live in, the company you work for, your school system, the city hospital — will hang there in a sharp colour image, abstract but recognizable, moving subtly in a thousand places.”

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/business/real-and-digital-worlds-increasingly-converge-106814748.html

Share on Facebook

With iPods, Kearns High students touch education’s future

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:35 am

By Rosemary Winters, The Salt Lake Tribune

Nearly 1,700 students at Kearns High snagged a sleek new tool for their book bags on Friday: an iPod touch. Students at the high school screamed with delight during a kick-off assembly that featured students break dancing to digital beats. “This is the most exciting day of my life,” said Kirsten Leaver, a junior who immediately began tinkering with her new iPod. “It’s so futuristic. You don’t even have to use books anymore.” Her friend R.J. Hall, a senior, disagreed. “It’s not even futuristic,” he said. “It’s what everyone should have today.”

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home/50618043-76/students-ipods-kearns-ipod.html.csp

Share on Facebook

Giving young adults a technological leg up

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:30 am

By Tara Malone, Chicago Tribune

Often described as the inner-city MBA program, the organization targets economically disadvantaged 18- to 27-year-olds who show promise. The group is guided by the belief that its graduates provide Fortune 1000 companies with skilled technical workers who, by their success, help uplift their families and neighborhoods. “We look for people who are resilient and have a mind-set of: ‘It’s bigger than me,'” said Sandee Kastrul, a former high school teacher who co-founded the organization and serves as its president. To train each cycle of interns, I.C. Stars spends about $258,000, much of it from businesses and foundations, including Chicago Tribune Holiday Giving, a campaign of Chicago Tribune Charities, a McCormick Foundation Fund.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/education/ct-met-holiday-inner-city-computer-st20101106,0,5968429.story

Share on Facebook

November 20, 2010

Students Instruct Teachers in Technology

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:40 am

by Elise Preston, NewsChannel 10

Some students and teachers swapped roles for the day. Teachers with the Hereford Independent School District underwent a new unique training for the classroom. Thursday, four Hereford High School students instructed some of the districts teachers on various computer application programs. Teachers say the programs learned will soon be used as tools for teaching their other students. They hope the tools will boost excitement in the classroom, helping them reach their students better.

http://www.newschannel10.com/Global/story.asp?S=13448300

Share on Facebook

It’s 2010; Why do I still have to carry 3 devices? Where is my single-device solution?

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:35 am

by Brad McCarty, Inside Higher Ed

Every other weekend, I make a 7 hour round trip across 3 states. For that trip, I carry my iPod Touch, my Droid X and a laptop. As I sit here in a rest area, tethering my laptop over my Droid’s 3G, it makes me wonder why I still have to carry three devices on any given trip. Weren’t we promised a world where we could do it all on one? I seem to remember that being the talk coming out of many mouths only a few short years ago. And yet, even as technology has shifted gears toward being more mobile, no single device gets the job done the way that it should. I still can’t stand the music player on my Android, my laptop doesn’t have enough battery life and an iPad simply doesn’t cut it for full-fledged work. So what’s missing?

http://goo.gl/2Eg1x

Share on Facebook

How To: Choose The Right Smartphone For You

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:30 am

by Adam Mills, The Next Web

Maybe the contract with your carrier just ended. Maybe you are finally eligible for an upgrade. Maybe you made a bad decision when choosing your device. It’s possible that you are finally ditching your feature phone and joining the big boys and girls. Or you might just be doing research on which handset to snag this holiday season. Whatever the case may be, you’re in the market for smartphone and you are having a difficult time pulling the trigger and you’ve ended up here

http://goo.gl/5PgDM

Share on Facebook

November 19, 2010

DARPA-funded project to spark computer science education

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:38 am

By Jenna Zwang, eSchool News

TopCoder hopes its virtual community will increase student interest in pursuing computer science jobs. To boost computer science education and help middle and high school students strengthen their science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) skills before they enter college and the workforce, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded TopCoder a $5.57 million contract to develop a new virtual community featuring competitions and educational resources.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2010/11/04/darpa-funded-project-to-spark-computer-science-education/

Share on Facebook

When the Tech Guy Is 13 (or Even 10)

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:35 am

By DAVID H. FREEDMAN, NY Times

Donald Garner Jr. was at his auto-salvage lot shooting the breeze last year when a customer mentioned that her nine-year-old twin sons had just gotten back from computer camp. Great skill to have, said Mr. Garner, who went on to complain about how much he was going to have to pay a pro to build a decent Web site. Why not ask her boys to do it? the customer asked. He could pay them whatever he thought the results were worth. He thought about it. Why not? he replied. Mr. Garner had to suppress a laugh when the boys showed up the next day with clipboards and serious looks. But he dutifully gave them a rough idea of what he had in mind, and then waved goodbye without particularly high expectations. A month later, he was stunned and delighted when they delivered exactly the sort of site he had had in mind. He dashed off a check for $2,000, but the boys would accept only $700.

http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/when-the-tech-guy-is-12-or-even-10/?src=busln

Share on Facebook

Cyber Kids: Education in the Digital Era

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:28 am

By Linda Grush, Western Springs Patch

When my daughter asks me questions, I often make the suggestion that we can look it up on the internet. It’s gotten me thinking about how the use of computer and internet will affect our kid’s educational experience. No need to trek to the library to blow the dust off an encyclopedia THAT CANNOT BE CHECKED OUT. Maybe in 5 years there won’t even be books, they’ll all just have an electronic reader?

http://westernsprings.patch.com/articles/cyber-kids-education-in-the-digital-era

Share on Facebook

November 18, 2010

Bytes to Beats: In Sync With UAB’s Computer Music Ensemble

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:40 am

By Blake Tommey, University of Alabama Birmingham

Two words sum up the UAB Computer Music Ensemble (CME): far out. The 12-member group in the Department of Music mixes synthesizers with software—including Apple Logic, Reason, and ProTools—to create often-unconventional compositions. Senior Andrew Hyde came to UAB to study music. What type of music, exactly, was still up in the air: he had no prepared instrument and wasn’t very keen on vocal performance, either. Then he discovered the CME. “Singing in choir isn’t really my thing,” says the music technology major. “I’m here to write good music on computers and learn those techniques and styles. That’s my niche.” Hyde’s brand of music features everything from singing robots and electronic drum circles to Wii remotes that trigger modulated synthesizer notes.

http://www.uab.edu/uabmagazine/2010/october/computermusicensemble

Share on Facebook

Is texting worse than TV?

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:35 am

by Stuff New Zealand

Digital living Google confirms 10 percent pay rise: reports Number portability should stay: Commission Engineers identify Vodafone network glitch Feds: Woman illegally fired over Facebook remarks Google announces ‘Instant Previews’ search feature Microsoft sues Motorola over Xbox patent issue Unions seek action on Depression-era packers Google gags Groggle Facebook grabs bigger slice of display ad pie Let’s face it: Teenagers spend hours texting, socialising on Facebook and playing video games. And it’s driving their parents nuts. Sure, there are real dangers associated with all this screen time – everything from cyberbullying to couch-potato obesity. Not to mention driving while texting, shortened attention spans and internet porn. But many of today’s parents spent hours as kids sitting in front of screens too – only they were TV screens. Which raises an interesting question: Is Facebook really worse for teenagers’ brains than the mindless reruns of Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch that their parents consumed growing up?

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/4288805/Is-texting-worse-than-TV

Share on Facebook

Online Community Encourages Kids’ Creativity

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:30 am

by Foster Folly News

Scott, a Downingtown, Pa. middle school student, walked into class one day to a pleasant surprise. His technical education teacher instructed the class to use a fun, online collaborative game to further its classroom experience. Less than a year later, the phenomenon has spread through the school like wildfire. Much like Scott’s teacher, many educators and parents are leveraging online tools and technology to encourage their kids’ imagination and growth. A free, online building game and community gives kids the opportunity to be creative and encourages them to leverage their skills to build personalized spaces populated with characters, vehicles, homes, high-rise buildings, pirate ships and even major landmarks such as Mt. Rushmore and the White House. Kids employ basic math, programming and physics knowledge to create one-of-a-kind games, avatars and online interactive spaces.

http://www.fosterfollynews.com/news/2010Oct23POINTERSFORPARENTS.php

Share on Facebook

November 17, 2010

Ann Arbor, students can benefit from the expansion of online learning courses

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:41 am

by Online Gaming

Ann Arbor, online courses are offered to the growing proportion of high school students to serve and improve opportunities for successful completion, officials said. More than 650 students are in online courses, said the school district network coordinator Susette Jaquette, presented Huron School Parent Teacher Organization on Monday students Four types of online courses for students at Ann Arbor – Michigan Virtual High School Courses, Moodle course, assessment of learning mathematics and classes of local knowledge, courses in 2020. Huron High School, health, government, algebra 1 and 2, geometry and mathematical analysis of the construction of class categories is provided in the normal line through Moodle.

http://goo.gl/nG0GQ

Share on Facebook

Math support is helping students to build confidence in their skills

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:36 am

By D. Aileen Dodd, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

In Math III Support classes, thousands of juniors across the state who barely passed freshman and sophomore math or failed their finals have a second chance to succeed. It is one of the ways schools help teens falling behind get back on track for graduation. In the support class, general and special education students expected to work at the same level learn how to survive Math III, which has been accelerated to include advanced algebra , trigonometry and statistics under the Georgia Performance Standards curriculum. The state offers a free online course through Georgia Virtual School to help students review Math I, II and III. Mathematics ExPreSS Online is available for free and features sample questions to prepare the Class of 2012 for the new Georgia High School Graduation Test. Parents can also use it to help their kids understand math homework.

http://www.ajc.com/news/math-support-is-helping-713528.html

Share on Facebook

Poynter Receives $50,000 Carnegie Corporation Grant to Develop JRN 101, an Online Learning Journalism Course for Universities

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:30 am

by the Poynter Institute and Carnegie Corporation

The Poynter Institute and Carnegie Corporation of New York will partner on a new online journalism course for universities. Carnegie Corporation of New York has awarded a $50,000 grant to the Poynter Institute to pilot Journalism 101, an online course on the basics of journalism. The 16-week course, planned for launch in the fall of 2011, will be piloted by up to 10 universities and will be designed to satisfy graduation requirements for a core journalism class.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010PoynterCarnegieGrant/11/prweb4737154.htm

Share on Facebook
« Newer PostsOlder Posts »

Powered by WordPress