Educational Technology

by Dominique Del Calzo, Jamestown, NY Post-Journal

People today believe that cell phones and computer programs such as Facebook are horrible things to which one can allow their children access. And in some cases, depending on the child and the parental control, that may be true. But perhaps adults should stop focusing on the kids misusing such things and start paying attention to the adults, whose abuse of such devices is just as bad…. I have seen more adults mistreat technology such as Facebook and cell phones, than teenagers. I’ve seen teachers playing ”Farmville” when they should be teaching their students. I have also witnessed a teacher talk and text on her cell phone to a friend when students need help on their work. Teachers will give assignments and leave the students to teach themselves the lesson, while they go and peruse Facebook…. I’ve even seen some mothers text their children in school. How are kids supposed to stop misusing technology if adults all around them are mishandling it?

http://post-journal.com/page/content.detail/id/576024/People-Suffering-From-Technology-Abuse.html?nav=5006

by Keith Roberts, Jackson Citizen Patriot

Adrian Rose found her high school classmates too distracting and was falling behind. Corrie LaCosse was nervous about attending a new high school her senior year. A traditional high school was not for them but Northwest Alternative High School, with its new online programs, was. Superintendent Tim Hall, a former alternative high school principal in Sault Ste. Marie, said the district is using computer technology to connect with students it wasn’t connecting with in the traditional classroom setting. “The intention to get more kids in the high school,” Hall said. “By offering several different instruction delivery methods we can meet more kids’ needs.”

http://www.mlive.com/news/jackson/index.ssf/2010/12/online_programs_help_district.html

by Sarah Bradshaw, Poughkeepsie Journal

“It’s an exciting time for information technology,” said Frank Whittle, chairman of computer information systems at Dutchess Community College. “Every company has many computers. Everything is so computer-oriented.” With new cell phones and gadgets hitting the market, plus billionaires such as Facebook creator Zuckerberg to look up to, Whittle said his students want the tools to pursue their ideas and are nourished by professors to be creative. Whereas enrollments in computer science programs were down three years ago, this fall local colleges experienced a surge.

http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20101205/BUSINESS/12050355/Schools-see-surge-in-computer-science-classes

by Deepa Kurup, the Hindu

Legendary designer of the ARM chip Steve Furber, says “The brain has properties that we struggle to achieve. Your brain is a million times more power efficient than the best processor we have.” They exhibit massively parallelism in processing, are a huge network of neurons and are “astonishingly” power efficient, explains the professor, who carries on his research as ICL Professor of Computer Engineering in the School of Computer Science at the University of Manchester. Which is why his latest project, the SpinNaker, popularly called the ‘Brain Box’, attempts to evolve a computational model that is inspired from the maze of parallel neural networks that are “pinging” inside our brain. Modelled in two-dimension, the mesh is a multi-core processor called the SpinNaker chip, that comprises 20 processing cores. It establishes parallelism by connecting to its local peers through a network that provides high bandwidth communication. The interconnection pattern is meant to evolve, similar to how a brain learns.

http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/article923656.ece

By Bonnie Reiss, San Francisco Chronicle

Public school districts across California — including the San Francisco Unified School District — received more than $36 million in federal funding last week to improve student achievement through the use of technology. Education technology and digital learning have the potential to transform our schools by allowing students to learn in ways not before imagined. However, it requires an educational system that embraces new technologies, innovative content and new approaches to teaching. Today’s student are digital natives who think and learn differently than their parents yet much of our nation’s education system has only slowly begun to rise to the challenge of integrating education technology into our schools.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/opinionshop/detail?entry_id=78369

by IT Pro Portal

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati have developed a new kind of display technology that could result in a low cost and disposable ebook readers. According to DNA, UC researcher Andrew Steckl has developed a display format that could lead to electrowetting (EW) technology being used on paper instead of glass. EW technology is based on the application of an electric field to coloured droplets within a display used to project text, video and images. The study crucially found that the electrowetting process was just as efficient on a paper screen as it was on conventionally used glass screen.

http://www.itproportal.com/2010/11/27/new-display-technology-could-lead-disposable-ebook-readers/

by Bryan Walsh, Time

Now Google is taking its Earth app a step forward. At the U.N. climate summit in Cancun this morning, the company’s philanthropic arm Google.org launched the Google Earth Engine, a new technology platform that will enable global monitoring of change in the planet’s environment. Google has tapped a quarter-century of satellite images provided by Landsat, which includes most of the developing world, along with data including MODIS, a major weather tracking project. As the project’s chief engineer Rebecca Moore told Juliet Elperin of the Washington Post, the Earth Engine provides “a living, breathing model of the earth with all of the data and analysis that’s available.” It’s that last part that’s particularly important. The data Earth Engine will tap isn’t new, but Google will make it far more accessible and far more searchable than it has ever before. That will be a major boon for environmental researchers, for whom data is lifeblood. And it’s particularly important for projects on forestry and on preventing deforestation.

http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2010/12/02/technology-google-makes-the-earth%E2%80%94and-the-planets-forests%E2%80%94searchable/

By Rob Koplowitz, Forrester

Here’s the challenge: As collaboration moves from being document-centric to more people-centric, the rules change. “Need to know” becomes “need to share”. This can be scary, particularly for folks in HR that are concerned with privacy, legal folks that are thinking of intellectual capital, compliance, and the list goes on. Let’s not even bring up the word WikiLeaks for heaven’s sake. You get the picture. Now, the real challenge; All that said, for many organizations, it’s far worse to hide your head in the sand. The organizations that embrace a new way of working will in fact, foster new businesses, technology offerings and social structures. And if your competitors are doing that, you can ignore it at your own peril. And you know what? If you don’t provide the capabilities to your workers, they may well go and provision it for themselves. And that might well be a whole different kind of trouble.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/forrester/collaboration-will-become-more-people-centric-in-2011/563

by Nicole Zivalech, the Feed

Apple has been granted a patent on a way to project 3D images without the use of glasses. The picture above is super easy to understand but on the off chance you don’t get it: pixels will be projected on reflective and textured surfaces. The reflected pixels are then bounced into your left and right eyes. Voila, stereoscopic effect. Apple and I clearly have something in common, we think 3D glasses look silly. Their technology will rely on “inexpensive auto-stereoscopic 3D displays that allow the observer complete and unencumbered freedom of movement,” which means no glasses and you don’t have to sit still to enjoy. It will also be capable of sensing multiple eyes so more than one person can watch the 3D projection at once.

http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/708960/Apple-Patents-New-3D-Projection-Technology—-No-Glasses-Needed.html

By Bridget McCrea, THE Journal

As technology continues to infiltrate every corner of the K-12 educational space, administrators, teachers, and students are undoubtedly curious about what’s coming around the bend in 2011. Will the cloud continue to reign? Will more schools embrace student-centric mobile devices? To get the answers to these and other pressing questions, THE Journal spoke with a handful of technology experts and came up with a short list of top tech trends they said you’ll want to watch in the new year.

http://thejournal.com/articles/2010/12/02/5-k12-technology-trends-for-2011.aspx

by Arizona State University

Arizona State University students who want to enhance their opportunities in the job market by learning advanced computer skills are joining the Software Developer’s Association (SoDA). The student club’s membership has swelled to more than 600 in the past few years, attracting those interested in learning to use the latest computing technologies and collaborating on team projects. SoDA is drawing more than computer science and engineering students. History, finance and English and art majors are among its members.

http://asunews.asu.edu/20101201_sodacomputerclub

By Adam Zewe, Community Pub

Dickinson High School is using its expanding STEM Academy to try and outgrow its image as a run-of-the-mill high school. The STEM Academy offers career pathways and specialized courses for students interested in pursuing careers or post-secondary education centered on science, technology, engineering and math, said Assistant Principal Chris Kohan. Those courses are aimed at giving students new options and empowering them to take their education beyond the textbooks, he said. At the same time, they show that Dickinson has specialized programs, making it as viable as the charter and private schools it has been up against for years, Kohan said.

http://www.communitypub.com/education/x556838888/Dickinson-High-School-branches-out-with-STEM-Academy

By MATT RICHTEL, New York Times

Parents, researchers and educators have been asking whether the spread of mobile devices and Internet access, for all their benefits, can have negative side effects for young people, interfering with homework or leading to cyberbullying. Now the government is asking the same question. The Federal Communications Commission announced this week that it plans to hold a forum on Tuesday at a high school in Washington to address risks associated with heavy technology use among young people. The forum will include panels and conversations with experts about how parents can help young people find balance in their digital diets.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/10/f-c-c-to-hold-forum-on-teenagers-and-technology/?src=tptw

By Ann Blair, Boston Globe

Worry about information overload has become one of the drumbeats of our time. The world’s books are being digitized, online magazines and newspapers and academic papers are steadily augmented by an endless stream of blog posts and Twitter feeds; and the gadgets to keep us participating in the digital deluge are more numerous and sophisticated. The total amount of information created on the world’s electronic devices is expected to surpass the zettabyte mark this year (a barely conceivable 1 with 21 zeroes after it).

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/11/28/information_overload_the_early_years/

by TMC Net

There’s a technological revolution taking place in many Southwest Michigan schools. Newer technologies such as interactive white boards, response clickers and sound enhancement systems are changing the way students learn and the way teachers teach, educators say. What began as a ripple is now escalating into what many school staff and teachers predict will soon become a huge wave as the price of the new devices and systems has dropped to a reasonable level. The interactive white boards are a logical extension of the old-fashioned chalkboards, with a modern twist.

http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2010/11/28/5161480.htm

By Kathleen Pierce, Boston Globe

Zhenya Pankova sends and receives 200 text messages a day. That’s typical for a ninth-grader. But to read her texts, she presses her Samsung cellphone to her ear. Pankova is blind. Tweet 2 people Tweeted thisSubmit to DiggdiggsdiggYahoo! Buzz ShareThis The 14-year-old can also search the Web, read textbooks, and translate Spanish assignments. For that, she uses the BrailleNote Apex, a wireless device about the size of a netbook computer that she carries over her shoulder. “The advancements are incredible for kids,’’ said Janet Ulwick-Sacca, who teaches children with visual impairments at Georgetown High School. Earlier this week, Pankova attended a technology fair at the Carroll Center for the Blind in Newton to check out the latest products from the evolving market called assistive or adaptive technology — products for low-vision and blind people.

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2010/11/26/advances_in_mobile_technology_provide_the_blind_with_new_tools/

by Josh Verges, Argus Leader

In one Sioux Falls elementary school, a handheld device better known for entertaining is slowly taking the place of textbooks, worksheets and computer labs. Every student at Lowell Math, Science and Technology school is assigned an iPod Touch, which stays in the classroom. The district spent about $80,000 this fall on the $220 gadgets, courtesy of a federal grant for schools with low math and reading scores and a high percentage of students from low-income families. “The first time I touched an iPod Touch, my wheels started turning on how they can be used in schools,” said Wade Helleson, instructional coach for teachers at Lowell and three other schools.

http://www.argusleader.com/article/20101127/NEWS/11270302/1001/news

By JULIAN GUTHRIE, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

They are unknown, but their works of art are seen by hundreds of millions of people across the globe. They were art nerds in school — teased by peers or called to the principal’s office for doodling in class — but are now working at one of the world’s most important companies. They are Google doodlers, a small team of artists who create the decorative logos for the company’s home page, images that celebrate events as varied as the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man and the 70th birthday of John Lennon to the invention of the bar code and the landing of the Mars rover.

http://www.seattlepi.com/business/430996_google01.html

By Jonathan Frochtzwajg, The Sandy Post

Students in two new elective courses at Cedar Ridge Middle School are learning math and science through an innovative combination of traditional instruction and hands-on activities – and robots. In his Design and Modeling/Automation and Robotics course, Martin Bush is teaching students basic engineering concepts and skills such as measuring precisely, then having them apply those skills to, among other things, building and programming robots. Over in Kendra Payne’s Lego Robotics class, students are learning how to construct robots out of Legos and control them using a simple computer language. Both courses are aimed at teaching math and science in new ways that are not only engaging, but also show the subjects’ real-world applications.

http://www.sandypost.com/features/story.php?story_id=129062089050233200

by the Now News

School District 43 staff and students need to trim down on online habits through a digital diet. Assistant superintendent Sylvia Russell said the school district has begun to hit 100-per-cent utilization rates. As a result, the computer network needs an overhaul to meet ever-increasing demands. “We think there’s an unavoidable investment that the board is going to have to contemplate this year. That’s never good news, especially in times of shrinking budgets,” Russell told the board last week. “But we’re hoping that by giving you enough lead time on this, that we can come up with some creative ways to deal with this issue. It is expensive; there is no doubt.” Information services manager Brian Kuhn said schools need to cut back on using digital resources for non-educational purposes.

http://www.thenownews.com/news/Network+diet+schools/3877062/story.html#ixzz17IRvzWld

By EDWARD L. KENNEY, The News Journal

As Ursuline Academy senior Meredith Vieira played her oboe, she sat in front of a computer screen that let her read the musical score for Bach’s “Sinfonia.” But it also presented an innovative music lesson. Computer software the school recently installed not only provided harpsichord accompaniment and showed her where she was playing note by note but also gave her an instant assessment by showing her the notes she played correctly. If she came in too soon or too late or hit the wrong pitch, the note turned red; a green note let her know she played it correctly.

http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20101125/NEWS03/11250345