Educational Technology

by Lydia Leavitt, TG Daily

Teenagers are usually the first demographic to embrace and integrate new technology into the patchwork of daily life. 

 Whether it’s the newest cell phone, computer game, or music player, you can bet American teenagers either has it or knows about it. Touchscreen, real-time, and instant, duh. As technology continues to evolve, there is a growing emphasis on social networking, real-time exchange of information and of course, instant gratification. Technology allows us to eat up more and more information while ultimately digesting less. 

Today’s teenagers are growing up in a world where this is normal, a world where more is better and focus is a thing of the past. “I know I can read a book, but then I’m up and checking Facebook,” says student Sam Crocker adding, “Facebook is amazing because it feels like you’re doing something and you’re not doing anything. It’s the absence of doing something, but you feel gratified anyway. My attention span is getting worse.”

http://www.tgdaily.com/software-features/52705-facebook-blamed-for-teens-lack-of-focus

By Heather Clancy, ZD Net

Because games are a big part of the Christmas season tradition, it makes sense that green advocates would seek to sneak in subtle Pavlovian-like behavior algorithms into an emerging crop of online applications and cyber-games that encourage green behavior. I wrote about this trend last month over in my SmartPlanet blog, and since then, I’ve only become more convinced that rewards for green behavior will increasingly become part of the cyber-game credos. The latest example is a new collaboration between DoSomething.org and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on a Facebook game called eMission. Get the pun?

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/green/get-them-while-they-are-young-make-green-habits-part-of-computer-games/15150

by David Sarno, LA Times

Recalling a medieval scribe laboring to preserve humankind’s rarest writings, Edith Young gently places each fraying page of a 400-year-old Chinese manuscript on a special cradle before she lowers a glass plate to flatten it for a digital snapshot. Young, a technician in Harvard University’s digital imaging laboratory, will repeat the step close to 100 times to create a digital record of “Story of Red Plum Blossom,” a Chinese drama written in the early 1600s that for the most part had been rarely seen except by a handful of museum curators and researchers.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-digital-library-20101125,0,2150064.story

By Tina Barseghian, KQED Mind/Shift

I think it’s important to point out that although kids can easily be consumed with gratuitously violent games like Angry Birds or Call of Duty, as many or more fun, educational games do exist. The two experiences, learning and enjoying, don’t have to be — and some would argue, should not be — mutually exclusive. Audrey Miller, an art teacher at Oceanview School, puts it beautifully in the accompanying video: “If you’re willing to embrace it, [technology] creates a tremendous amount of opportunity for your students…I’m not sure of the future. All I know is technology provides opportunities for teachers to reach students, for students to express themselves, and for everyone to communicate with each other. It’s a matter of taking advantage of all of it.”

http://mindshift.kqed.org/2010/11/technology-vs-learning-theyre-not-enemies/

by Illinois Computing Educators

Educators from across the region have begun registering for Illinois’ premier educational echnology conference to be held February 22 – 25 at the Pheasant Run resort in St. Charles, IL. Thursday‘s keynote speaker is David Pogue. David is the personal-technology columnist for the New York Times. Each week, he contributes a print column, an online column, an online video and a popular daily blog, “Pogue’s Posts.” David is also an Emmy award-winning tech correspondent for CBS News, and he appears each week on CNBC with his trademark comic tech videos.

http://www.iceberg.org/ice_conference

By Matt Richtel, New York Times News Service

On the eve of a pivotal academic year in Vishal Singh’s life, he faces a stark choice on his bedroom desk: book or computer? By all rights, Vishal, a bright 17-year-old, should already have finished the book, Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle,” his summer reading assignment. But he has managed 43 pages in two months. He typically favors Facebook, YouTube and making digital videos. Bypassing Vonnegut, he clicks over to YouTube, where “you can get a whole story in six minutes,” he explains. “A book takes so long. I prefer the immediate gratification.” Students have always faced distractions and time-wasters. But computers and cell phones, and the constant stream of stimuli they offer, pose a profound new challenge to focusing and learning.

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2010/nov/21/students-digitized-diets-pose-challenge/

by Science via AScribe

Women are underrepresented and on average perform more poorly than men in introductory physics. But a recent study finds that this gap arises predominantly from differential preparation prior to college and psychological factors, rather than differences in ability. And the effects of these psychological factors can be largely overcome with a brief writing exercise focusing on important values, such as friends and family, learning or even music. This simple “values affirmation” writing exercise generally raised women’s course grades from the “C” to “B” range, a study led by University of Colorado at Boulder researchers has found.

http://newswire.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/behold.pl?ascribeid=20101124.130425&time=11%2000%20PST&year=2010&public=0

by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed

Professors routinely complain about students who spend class time on Facebook or texting their friends or otherwise making it clear that their attention is elsewhere. But is it acceptable for a faculty member to deal with these disruptions by walking out of class? Two years ago, a Syracuse University professor set off a debate with his simple policy: If he spots a student texting, he will walk out of class for the day. Now two faculty members at Ryerson University, in Toronto, sparked discussion at their institution with a similar (if somewhat more lenient) policy — and their university’s administrators and faculty union have both urged them to back down, which they apparently have.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/11/29/walkout

by Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed

Cyberbullying is back in the news, and some legislators are trying to get it into the books. Following the suicide of Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi — who jumped off the George Washington Bridge in September after his roommate allegedly filmed him having an intimate encounter with a man and streamed the video on the Internet — a pair of New Jersey congressmen introduced a new anti-bias bill earlier this month that would, among other things, make it clear that harassment undertaken via electronic media is just as illegal as the old-fashioned kind. (A similar bill has legislative approval in New Jersey and awaits action from Gov. Chris Christie, who said last week he had not decided whether to sign the bill or seek to “improve it”).

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/11/29/cyberbullying

By Tina Barseghian, Mind Shift

Sounds bizarre when you think of it in those terms, but that’s the system that some say we’ve set up for most of our middle school and high school students who don’t have access to computers in the classroom, where most of the work is done. “Computer labs are outdated, as is the idea that computers are something separate from learning, like typewriter labs,” said Joel Rose, CEO of New York’s School of One at the Education Nation conference in September. “Learning technology is not a vocation. Technology is not the ‘it.’ Technology is the fundamental enabler of education.”

http://mindshift.kqed.org/2010/11/out-with-computer-labs-in-with-mobile/

By Maria Fung, Vancouver Sun

Teenage Internet addiction is on the rise, say several addiction experts in Metro Vancouver. But many teens who have grown up with the technology don’t think spending more than 10 hours a day on the computer is even an issue, let alone an addiction. Many teens are becoming dependent on the Internet, not just for schoolwork, but to communicate via social networking sites, play video games and watch TV, movies and YouTube videos. But too much time spent idling on the Internet can have harmful consequences, including missing school, failing grades, disengaging from the community and, in rare cases, violence, according to experts in counselling.

http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Teens+screens+addictive+combination/3847181/story.html

BY DONNA PERKOSKY AND BECKY KARPOFF, North Jersey Town News

As the holiday shopping season draws closer, there are more and more advertisements for electronics that feed our hunger for instant information. Because of these and other continued developments, the Paramus Public Library, alone and through partnerships, has utilized computer and Internet technology to offer our community the best service possible. Not only does the library offer Internet access through public personal computers, but the library also offers Wi-Fi, or wireless, for those who would like to access the Internet with their own laptop or electronic device. Online collections of reference materials and magazine and newspaper articles are a win-win for both the library and the library user. These collections obviously take up less space, allowing libraries to focus on popular borrowing collections. Library users are able to quickly and easily search and access information in full text articles that were previously accessible only on paper, microfilm or microfiche. Information seekers, once limited by the library’s magazine collection of just a few hundred titles or local newspapers, can now search thousands and thousands of magazines and academic journals or national newspapers.

http://www.northjersey.com/arts_entertainment/at_the_library/108858429_Computer_technology_at_library_continues_to_advance.html

By Tina Barseghian, Mind Shift

Everyday, rolling carts full of laptops and mobile devices are wheeled through the halls of four high schools in the Acalanes Unified School District, delivering gadgets to students who use them to study science, English, and foreign language, among other subjects. The mobile devices — whether it’s the iPod Touch, the iPad, the Kindle or the Sony — were purchased through funds that came from a local city measure and various grants from parent organizations. With computer labs over-scheduled beyond student capacity, the devices have become integrated into the curriculum and as supplements to existing laptops and computers, according to Cheryl Davis, District Curriculum & Instruction Technology Specialist.

http://mindshift.kqed.org/2010/11/getting-e-readers-into-schools-one-class-at-a-time/

By HOLLY EPSTEIN OJALVO, New York Times Learning Network

Increasingly, college and university professors are using technology tools in their classrooms to engage students. How are your own teachers using technology? Does it help you learn? Do you have any suggestions for ways that your school can better use technology to promote learning and class participation?

http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/what-tech-tools-do-your-teachers-use/

by Michael Neibauer – Washington Business Journal

School computer labs are so passe. At one D.C. institution, middle schoolers are going mobile with the hottest technology around. The “magical and revolutionary” iPad, as Apple describes it, is coming to Southeast D.C.’s Friendship Tech Prep Academy. Every student will get one, all paid for by the federal government. With its wireless campus, interactive Promethean white boards and laptop carts, Friendship Tech may be better equipped than your office.

http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/blog/2010/11/at-one-dc-school-ipads-for-everybody.html

by Matthew Wicks, Matthew Wicks & Associates

As I travel around the country talking with students, parents, teachers, administrators and public officials about online education, I sense enormous excitement about the promise of online learning to prepare today’s students to succeed in an increasingly technology-driven global economy. After all, the young people of this “Millennial” generation grew up with the Internet and thrive in a multimedia, highly communicative environment. Learning online is natural to them—as much as retrieving and creating information on the Internet, blogging, communicating on cell phones, downloading files to iPods and instant messaging. Online learning and virtual schools are providing 21st century education and more opportunities for today’s students. So what is online learning all about? Online learning is expanding access to courses in K-12 education and providing a new network of highly qualified teachers to schools and students in underserved communities. Online learning has numerous benefits, including expanding course offerings, offering customized and personalized learning, giving struggling students a second chance to master a subject through online credit recovery when they fall behind, and providing a rigorous, interactive learning model for schools with imbedded assessments that is data-rich. (Free Download)

http://www.inacol.org/research/bookstore/detail.php?id=22

by McGraw-Hill

As the only major publisher to submit digital learning programs to the California Learning Resource Network, McGraw-Hill Education will provide unprecedented access to many of its K-12 online programs. Part of the Statewide Education Technology Services initiative from the California Department of Education, CLRN provides educators with a “one-stop shop” for the selection of digital learning resources aligned to the State Board of Education academic content standards. As part of McGraw-Hill’s broad commitment to developing and providing electronic teaching and learning tools to classrooms in nearly every district in the U.S., the company has submitted seven interactive digital programs to Phase 3 of the CLRN Digital Textbook Initiative – the only major publisher to provide content through this phase of the initiative. McGraw-Hill’s interactive online courses are under review by CLRN and include some of the company’s most popular titles for history, government, economics, and biology .

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mcgraw-hill-provides-digital-content-through-the-california-learning-resource-network-108998304.html

By David Nagel, THE Journal

Early Learning Academy’s science curriculum includes lessons on planets and the moon. Ed tech developer Age of Learning has launched a new online education portal designed for the youngest students. The site, ABCmouse.com Early Learning Academy, brings a full online curriculum to preschoolers and kindergarten students for use in schools and at home. ABCmouse.com Early Learning Academy provides a range of learning and instructional management tools, such as progress tracking, lesson creation, and a rewards system, in an ad-free environment.

http://thejournal.com/articles/2010/11/18/early-learning-academy-brings-online-curriculum-to-preschoolers.aspx

By MANDY DE WAAL, Daily Maverick

The world is entering an age of superabundant data. We’re spewing out masses of information: from credit card charges to consumer shopping patterns and life-saving blood work results, to more mundane data like Facebook updates and blogs. The amount of information generated globally is increasing exponentially and, as it does, mankind will become ever more reliant on machines to make sense of it all. More so, smart machines created by even smarter scientists will help humans solve problems that could save lives. One of the world’s top thinkers on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning is Daphne Koller, who’s helping machines “think” with her probability models for complex and uncertain domains. These models enable computer systems to solve real-world problems like changing the way search engines read images or predicting whether premature babies will have life-threatening complications. Koller is part of a team at Stanford University that recently pioneered a revolutionary new way of modelling risks for premature infants.

http://www.thedailymaverick.co.za/article/2010-11-16-building-smarter-machines-that-serve-humanity

By James Rush, Telegraph and Argus

A Bradford University student has developed a wireless robot which is controlled simply by using the human eye. It uses sophisticated eye-tracking technology and could change the lives of thousands of disabled people. Suraj Verma, a master’s of science student at the university’s School of Engineering, Design and Technology, created the robot, under the supervision of lecturer Dr Prashant Pillai. Dr Pillai said: “The advanced eye-tracking technology used in this project has several practical future applications in the research area of assisted living, especially for the disabled.

http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/8638502.___We_guide_our_robot_by_eye____/

by the Central Chronicle

Former President Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam said here today that language computing has an important role to play for making the country progressive and developed. He said that self dependence in agriculture and food processing, education and health, information and technology, qualitative electricity, road, availability of infrastructure and technology is must for a developed India in the year 2020. Abdul Kalam was inaugurating the language computing workshop at the Academy of Administration and Management. Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam said that the local language should be given digitalization which is language computing in real meaning. He said that the heritage documents in local language should also be digitalized and they should be changed into Unicode through Optical Character Recognition method. In this way, documents written in local languages not only be digitalized, but also people can reach them through Internet. This will help greatly to improve knowledge of students, villagers, and people living in small towns.

http://www.centralchronicle.com/viewnews.asp?articleID=51893