Educational Technology

We invite you to submit your proposal(s) online to present at the 27th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning, hosted in Madison, Wisconsin in August. Learn more about the presentation formats by selecting from the session types at the URL below.

Lead sessions on the planning/management of distance ed/training programs.

Share your research and expertise.

Network with other professionals in your field.

Distill essential knowledge/skills.

Demonstrate your successful course and/or training materials to others.

Guide interactive discussions with your colleagues.

Submissions will be accepted until January 19 at 4 pm CST.

http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference/

By David Perlmutt, Charlotte Observer

He’d heard of computers by the time he graduated from high school in 1978 in his native Anhui Province in eastern China. But never did Yi Deng actually see one until college, when he became a student in a new field called computer science at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei. More than three decades later, Deng is dean of UNC Charlotte’s respected College of Computing and Informatics, charged with overseeing research and new degrees that are “deeply imbedded and relevant to industries in the Charlotte region.” “We are facing a tsunami of data every day,” Deng said. “Data is critically important not only to the competitiveness, but also the survival of every industry we have here. But we have a severe shortage of talent that can master this kind of data. We need to be able to train more talent to transfer data into knowledge and insights, and use those insights to run businesses more effectively.”

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/12/30/1942673/teaching-talent-to-deal-with-tsunami.html

by Sue McAllister, the Baltimore Sun

There have been plenty of research and philosophizing about preteens’ and teenagers’ use of computers. But very young children are also logging time with the mouse and keyboard, and parents are grappling with how much is too much. A 2006 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation that examined media use by kids from 6 months to 6 years found that more than a quarter of children ages 4 to 6 use a computer during a typical day, and spend an average of 50 minutes at it. Some visit sites such as PBSKids.org, where they can play games based on “Sesame Street” or “Curious George.” NickJr.com has “Dora the Explorer” games. Slightly older kids get into virtual communities like Disney’s Club Penguin, Webkinz or Kung Fu Panda World.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/family/sc-fam-1221-kid-computer-20101221,0,6565024.story

by Sara Huffman, Consumer Affairs

“Cyber-bullying” is a term many parents, teachers, health officials and media outlets buzzed about during the last few years. And as more kids and teens take to the Web, they’re finding it easier to torment each other with the use of social networking sites or their cell phones. How to keep it from happening or — at the very least — reduce the instances of it is now the question. According to a 2008 survey by Telnor, two out of every three kids said they experienced bullying via the Internet or cell phones. The survey also shows parents are uncertain about what to do about this kind of bullying. Research Fellow Tove Flack from the Centre for Behavioural Research (SAF) at the University of Stavanger in Norway has extensive experience in counseling work regarding bullying. The center’s program “Zero” gives schools advice on how to prevent or detect cyber-bullying, and to also solve problems and create continuity among kids.

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2010/12/can-anything-be-done-about-cyber-bullying.html

By Christopher Dawson, ZD Net Education

Ubuntu may not make the netbook sexy again, but it can certainly make it a more viable choice for student computing with lower long-term costs than other solutions might entail. System76 just happens to be one OEM that makes it easy to jump into Ubuntu (on netbooks and elsewhere). Netbooks still matter in education, especially K12. They’re cheap (almost to the point of being disposable) and fit well into small hands. They can often last through a school day and generally give students lots of what they need with few of the bells and whistles they don’t. With all the talk of tablets, netbooks remain the easiest, cheapest way to get kids connected to the Internet and taking advantage of ubiquitous computer access at home and at school. That being said, netbooks aren’t sexy or inspiring. Give the average teacher a choice between netbooks for his or her students and iPads all around and, chances are, the iPads are going to win out, even if the teacher can’t describe the relative merits of either platform. It’s not that the iPads are a bad idea for students, by the way. It’s simply that there are times when netbooks (or full-sized laptops, for that matter) will lend themselves better to classroom use than iPads. Like when a student needs to type. Or use a Flash application.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/education/can-ubuntu-revive-the-netbook-segment/4427

By Craig Grannell, Tech Radar

Sophisticated technology in the classroom will soon be commonplace. Every pupil at Cedars School of Excellence, in Greenock, Scotland, is now armed with an iPad, creating an environment a world away from the typical ‘computer room’, and providing the potential for seamless integration of technology and traditional teaching. The iPad project arose from day-to-day demands within the school. As Head of Computing, a dozen iMacs were fixed in Fraser’s classroom, and a dozen MacBooks were available for booking; but with teachers increasingly wanting to provide pupils with web access, pressure and demand grew.

http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/apple/the-school-that-gives-every-student-an-ipad-915539

by Real Online Degrees

University of Florida is now offering online courses, making it a new addition to the online university group. The growing popularity of online degree programs has made traditional universities take notice. You can now find full associate degrees, certifications, bachelors programs, master’s degrees, specialist degrees, and even doctorate degrees, all from their University of Florida online degree catalog.

http://www.realonlinedegrees.com/university-of-florida-is-now-an-online-university_2010-12-30/

by Erica Rodriguez, Victoria Advocate

Remove oil drills. Cap the oil wells. And do it all with Lego robots in less than two minutes. It’s a task students, in a new Career and Technology Institute robotics class, will soon take on using a table-top course as an oil field, soda cans for oil wells and a robot built from Legos. “It’s got to be able to do it all by itself in two minutes,” said Joseph Holochwost, the robotics class instructor, pointing to the plastic machine. “So it’s not only the structural design of the robot, but it’s the program that makes it automated.” The robotics students spent the fall semester gearing up for the competition, building the robot from a Lego kit, programming it during classes and testing it on the course. The students will compete for the first time next week at a regional Lego Mindstorms Robotics Challenge in Corpus Christi.

http://www.victoriaadvocate.com/news/2010/dec/27/er_visd_robotics010210_123588/?features&education

By John Hechinger, Bloomberg

Students seeking to move up in life by getting a degree from a for-profit college are being trapped in a growing underclass of education debtors. Ronnie Franklin borrowed to pay his tuition at a for-profit college that advertised its success in preparing graduates for better jobs. That decision haunts him. Frustrated that his degree didn’t lead to work in electronics, Franklin — now a $12-an-hour housepainter — decided to go to a community college this year. He can’t qualify for a federal grant that would have paid the cost because he defaulted on $20,000 of his earlier U.S. student loans. Debt from a for-profit college education also shadows Christina Bergschneider and Michael DiGiacomo. Landlords rejected Bergschneider’s apartment applications more than 20 times because of her unpaid student loans.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-28/for-profit-college-slump-converging-with-student-life-debtors.html

by Zara Rabinowicz, Chip Chick

2010 has been an interesting year in terms of technology. We’ve seen tablets become an everyday part of living (though we’re still not sure of their purpose), 3D viewing advance dramatically, and augmented reality took off, thanks to the rise of compatible mobile applications. Alongside these tangible products, there has been much advancement in the backend of science and technology with talented scientists researching medicines, creating programs and extending their knowledge of the virtual world. Many of these projects were spearheaded by women, and I’d like to draw your attention to the top thirteen women who have impacted technology in 2010.

http://www.chipchick.com/2010/12/top-women-2010-technology.html

By Dave Murray, The Grand Rapids Press

Andrew Topper worked 12 years as a software engineer, and one day his daughter’s second-grade teacher asked for help in her computer lab. “I watched as the teacher spent so much time on the phone with the technical support people while 25 7-year-olds waited,” he said. “I thought, there must be a better way to integrate technology in the classroom. “Then I thought, I could either criticize it, or I could change it.”

http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2010/12/virtual_classrooms_online_educ.html

by SUSAN TROLLER, The Capital Times

The sign on the classroom wall prohibits the use of handheld communication devices, yet on this December morning all 28 students in Lori Hunt’s algebra II class are texting on their cell phones. But these Middleton High School students are not a defiant bunch of teens. With Hunt’s blessing, they’re using their cell phones to text answers to math problems. Every answer appears, anonymously, on a wall-mounted, interactive, electronic whiteboard all students can see. For Hunt, it provides an instant way of knowing how many students understand the problem and can calculate the answer. For the students, it allows them to use a familiar technology to explore challenging new concepts.

http://host.madison.com/ct/news/local/education/local_schools/article_925d24be-1207-11e0-87c0-001cc4c03286.html

By TRIP GABRIEL, New York Times

Mississippi had a problem born of the age of soaring student testing and digital technology. High school students taking the state’s end-of-year exams were using cellphones to text one another the answers. With more than 100,000 students tested, proctors could not watch everyone — not when some teenagers can text with their phones in their pockets. So the state called in a company that turns technology against the cheats: it analyzes answer sheets by computer and flags those with so many of the same questions wrong or right that the chances of random agreement are astronomically small.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/education/28cheat.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

by Ira Flatow, NPR

On New Year’s Eve in 1999, many people were celebrating the arrival of the year 2000. Some computer experts, however, were on alert, hoping that work reprogramming computers to deal with a date change bug would pay off. Science Friday opens the archives for a look back at worry over Y2K.

http://www.npr.org/2010/12/24/132311774/Remembering-The-Y2K-Problem

by Vince Horiuchi, Salt Lake Tribune

Twenty years ago, Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist at Geneva’s CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, established the first communication link between a server and an HTTP client. Since he’s widely credited with inventing the Web, Berners-Lee is the one who deserves praise whenever you surf the Web for the hottest viral video or for breaking news about Lindsay Lohan’s latest faux pas. Just search for his name on Wikipedia. You can thank him for the ability to do that, too. “It [the Web] enables me to do things that I otherwise wouldn’t be able to do,” said Martin Berzins, director of the University of Utah’s School of Computing. “I can read newspapers all over the world. I can find books on music that would be difficult to find. I can learn what people think about current events.” Berners-Lee’s concept of linking computers resulted in a new modern-day communication medium as significant and as ubiquitous as the telephone or television and has opened up vast channels of global information to everyday people.

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home/50924566-76/web-berners-lee-computer.html.csp

By Jane Wakefield, BBC

Biology teacher Ros Johnson says 3D projections of body organs have given lessons a new direction at the Abbey School in Reading. Biology lessons are a distant memory for me but if they had been anything like the one I’ve just sat through at Abbey School in Reading, I think I may have remembered a little more. The pupils were looking at how a chest works, via 3D glasses and a 3D-enabled projector.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11891753

By Christopher Dawson, ZD Net

Android became a household name. I scored myself a Chrome OS Notebook. Google just kept stepping on privacy landmines. And the company just keeps raking in the billions, recession be damned. Here’s my top 10 posts of the year on what is arguably the most important tech company on the planet.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/google/android-oracle-self-driving-cars-oh-my-my-top-10-google-posts-of-2010/2716?tag=nl.e539

By Matthew Miller, ZD Net

Last year you can see that ebook readers dominated The Mobile Gadgeteer and at the end of that summary article I stated I thought ebook readers would be even more popular in 2010. As you can see in my list below, the prediction proved to be correct with Apple’s iOS products taking most of the other top posts (based on page views). Take a walk down the path of 2010 and relive some of those moments. One thing I wanted to note before you check through the list is that the number one post below actually had 10 times the page views over the 2nd most popular post. This shows me that people are very interested in getting work done on these consumer-oriented tablet form factor devices. Here are the top 10 most viewed posts for my writing on The Mobile Gadgeteer in 2010:

1) iPad Office app showdown: Four apps to help you get work done

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/mobile-gadgeteer/ebook-readers-and-the-ipad-dominated-my-2010-posts/4239?tag=nl.e539

By Larry Dignan, ZD Net

Apple’s iPad, Windows Phone 7 and Mark Hurd’s resignation from Hewlett-Packard were among the key surprises of 2010. Here’s a look at my top surprises in order.

1) Apple’s iPad. It wasn’t like the iPad was a complete shocker when it launched (rumors were building as soon as the calendar turned). However, everything about the iPad since Steve Jobs first showed it off has been a surprise. What has been so surprising? Businesses are all over the iPad as a productivity tool. Many CIOs at the Gartner powwow—yes the same CIOs that built brick walls to keep the iPhone away—had iPads and came off as fan boys.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/the-year-in-review-10-technology-surprises-in-2010/42952?tag=mantle_skin;content

by Maggie Shiels, BBC

Libboo has a lofty aim – it wants change the way books are both written and read by creating what it describes as the world’s first globally-written novel. No tall order, but a project that has potential appeal to every wannabe scribe while perhaps angering those who make their living from writing. Libboo is the brainchild of Chris Howard, a Brit who teaches at Harvard. In a nutshell, he is using crowdsourcing and a fancy algorithm to capture the imagination – in more ways than one. There will be no single author but a multitude in what he has dubbed “the biggest literary experiment in history”.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/maggieshiels/2010/12/rethinking_the_world_of_books.html

by Mary Cosper LeBoeuf, Houma Today

The past year has been very successful for the Terrebonne Parish Library System.

By the numbersIn 2010…

– 56,000 people per month visited Terrebonne Parish public libraries

– 10,000 people per month used the public computers at Terrebonne Parish public libraries

– 10,000 people per month accessed the Terrebonne Parish Library System’s website

With approximately 56,000 people visiting Terrebonne Parish libraries monthly, 10,000 people monthly using the public computers and 10,000 people monthly accessing the Library System’s website, the Library System is apparently essential to many people in the area. “The public library is the anchor or heart of a community and the statistics prove that this library system is vital,” said Mary Cosper LeBoeuf, the Library System’s director.

http://www.houmatoday.com/article/20101212/ARTICLES/101219959/1008/living?Title=56-000-people-per-month-visited-a-local-library-in-2010