Educational Technology

by Mark Sample, Chronicle of Higher Ed Wired Campus

Like Dropbox, SpiderOak automatically backs up files to the cloud, and those files can be accessed from many other devices. Like Dropbox, SpiderOak works on multiple platforms—Windows, Mac, and Linux, as well as Android and iOS. Like Dropbox, SpiderOak offers a free 2GB version, from which you can upgrade all the way up to 100GB for $100/year ($100/year only gets you 50GB at Dropbox). Despite these similarities, there are several significant differences between Dropbox and SpiderOak. Most relevant here, SpiderOak encrypts the files on your computer before uploading them to the server. That means it’s all but impossible for anybody other than yourself to access readable versions of your data by hacking into SpiderOak. Even SpiderOak itself has no access to your unencrypted files, something SpiderOak calls its “zero knowledge” policy.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/spideroak-as-a-secure-alternative-to-dropbox/34305?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

By Josh Keller, Chronicle of Higher Ed Wired Campus

Many colleges have published iPhone apps in the last few years that allow people to get campus news, maps, and other information on Apple’s popular smartphones. Then some colleges found they also needed to develop a version for phones running Google’s competing Android system. And some built apps for BlackBerrys as well. But at least a few colleges are now reconsidering the wisdom and the expense of building all those mobile apps. As the mobile Internet continues to grow at an astounding pace, those colleges are shifting their attention from stand-alone applications that can be downloaded from an app store to mobile-optimized versions of their Web sites.

http://chronicle.com/article/As-Mobile-Devices-Multiply/128060/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

By Tanya Roscorla, Converge

A Ball State history professor saw a serious issue with the way fourth-grade Indiana textbooks were explaining a Civil War event. A computer science professor was interested in gaming at the same time. And through a mutual colleague, Ronald Morris and Paul Gestwicki started addressing a serious education problem with a serious game. They led computer science students in creating an educational video game about Morgan’s Raid. And now, schools can start using the game.

http://www.convergemag.com/college-career/Ball-State-Students-Create-Historical-Video-Game.html

by Michelle Pacansky-Brock, GetIdeas.org

For the past five years, I’ve been on a journey through the world of social media. While many of the lessons I’ve learned have been startling and more provocative than I’ve ever expected, I have to say that the single tool that has surprised me the most is Twitter. I know, I know … You want to stop reading now, don’t you? You probably already have a scowled look on your face about this superficial, nonsensical method of communicating in 140 characters or less. I’ve heard it before and, honestly, felt the same way two years ago before I began to experience the value of Twitter while attending a conference. When I tried Twitter, I was very reluctant to get involved with yet another social media tool. But I gave it a whirl because I saw other professors and instructional designers at the conference using it, and I was curious.

http://www.getideas.org/getinsight-blog/teaching-life-long-learning-skills-twitter-lesson-leaders

by ICT Magic Art, Craft and Design

Check out this compilation of interactive websites with lots of ways to draw online. Plenty of tools. Excellent matrix showing capabilities.

ed note:  to this great list, I would add the new “app” Showme http://www.showmeapp.com/ 

http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Art,+Craft+&+Design

by Jon Bergmann, Jerry Overmyer and Brett Wilie, Learning Innovation and Tech

There has been a lot of interest in the flipped classroom. This past week the Flipped Class Conference occurred at Woodland Park High School in Woodland Park Colorado and during the pre-conference a team of flipped teachers got together to write a three-part article about the nature of the Flipped Class. This first article is an attempt to define what the Flipped Class is and what it is NOT.

http://www.thedailyriff.com/articles/the-flipped-class-conversation-689.php

by Arizona State University

Ten young Phoenix-area students who are visually impaired recently took part in a special four-day computing workshop designed especially for them, thanks to an alumna of Arizona State University’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. Stephanie Ludi, who earned her Ph.D. in computer science at ASU in 2003, leads a National Science Foundation (NSF) project to encourage middle school and high school students who have visual impairments to study computing. Supported by a $475,000 NSF grant, Accessible Computing Education – or Project ACE – is conducting hands-on “ImagineIt” workshops around the country.

http://asunews.asu.edu/20110621_stephludiworkshop

By JENNY ANDERSON, New York Times

If many schools seem intent on containing students’ online personas and use of social media, Dwight is trying to set them free — to blog, animate, make movies, design video games, make robots, and go forth in the networked world headfirst. “If we don’t take this time to teach them how to behave online, something will happen,” Mr. Kolani said. (He did not mention it, but the behavior of certain elected officials came to mind.) “We want them to participate online in order to have a legacy of good things about them online.” And there’s the fact that a lot of college and university level work will be increasingly online and collaboration oriented.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/21/at-a-private-school-virtual-learning-and-the-rock/

by OnlineCollegeCourses.com

Whether ultimately a boon or a bane (or somewhere in between), only educators from another planet haven’t somehow encountered opinions regarding Wikipedia’s presence in their industry… Just about as many ideas about its influence exist as there are individuals to even hold them, but nobody can deny that the online encyclopedia, not to mention the other Wikimedia websites, certainly left a splash in the classroom and mainstream society alike. And here, for reader consideration, just happen to be a couple of examples.

http://www.onlinecollegecourses.com/2011/06/21/10-ways-wikipedia-has-changed-education/

By Rick Spencer, Tewksbury Patch

If Tewksbury High School assistant principal Jason Stamp has his way, the days of watching 90-pound freshmen lug 50-pound backpacks into TMHS every morning may soon be over. Stamp and TMHS Principal Dr. Patricia Lally went before the school committee last Wednesday evening seeking approval for funding to launch a pilot program that would study the feasibility of eventually issuing an Apple iPad tablet-sized personal computer to every Tewksbury High student, effectively replacing text books, notebooks, pens and pencils with the popular iPads.

http://tewksbury.patch.com/articles/will-ipads-replace-backpacks-in-the-new-tewksbury-high-school

By BRANDON L. SUMMERS, Messenger News

High schools throughout the region are seeing a rise in the number of the students taking advantage of district-paid opportunities in partnership with Iowa Central Community College. Southeast Webster-Grand High School, Burnside, has operated a charter school for five years, according to Superintendent Launi Dane. “We offer concurrent courses here on the campus, on the high school site,” Dane said. “And then we bus kids up to Iowa Central and they’re allowed to take any course up there.” College courses offered at Southeast Webster-Grand include introductory English literature, composition, business courses, and career and technical classes.

http://www.messengernews.net/page/content.detail/id/540235/Area-high-school-students-taking—.html

By CHRIS DETTRO, THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER

There are no grades to be earned in a new online course offered by the University of Illinois Springfield. No credit is given. And participants can begin in the middle of the course or wherever they please. But after four days of registration, more than 2,000 people from more than 50 countries had signed up for the “MOOC” — Massive Open Online Course — that will focus on the topic “Online Learning Today … and Tomorrow.”

http://www.sj-r.com/top-stories/x438674688/UIS-online-course-draws-big-response

by Linda P. Campbell, Star-Telegram

How far student speech has come since Mary Beth and John Tinker and Christopher Eckhardt wore black armbands to school in Des Moines to protest the Vietnam War and got suspended as though they were common hooligans. Now, online-savvy teens get in trouble for rudely mocking their elders on social networking sites, and the ensuing court battles rattle and redefine free-speech boundaries. In Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, Justice Abe Fortas famously wrote for the Supreme Court in 1969 that students don’t “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”But in an Internet-driven world, where’s the schoolhouse gate anyway?

http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/06/22/3172540/digital-technology-changes-boundaries.html

by Larry Abramson, NPR

Many school districts are reluctantly cutting staff and dropping courses in a desperate effort to respond to tighter budgets. But some educators are looking at ways to save money and improve instruction at the same time. The answer for some schools: blended learning, which is part computer lesson, part classroom instruction. KIPP Empower Academy in South Los Angeles has had to make virtue out of dire necessity. Just as this nationwide network of charter schools was opening up a new kindergarten here, the amount of state money began to dry up. Principal Mike Kerr says he saw only one way out: raising class size. “We had to cut out one whole classroom. So went from five classes of 20 to four classes of 28,” Kerr says.

http://www.npr.org/2011/06/22/137318998/schools-blend-computers-with-classroom-learning

by The Effingham Daily News Sun

A Kansas City man has been charged with receiving stolen property after police discovered three laptop computers taken from a tornado-damaged elementary school here. Charles C. Rice, 41, was arrested Monday after police had been contacted by the owner of a computer technology company. He said he had been asked by Rice to unlock a secured laptop computer. Inside, the computer was identified as property of the Joplin School District. According to a statement that accompanied the charges filed by the Jackson County prosecutor’s office, Rice told the company owner that he had more computers to unlock. Officers, who discovered other laptops, contacted school security officials, who confirmed that the computers had been stolen.

http://effinghamdailynews.com/cnhins/x177907868/K-C-man-nabbed-with-computers-from-Joplin-school

by Laura Speranza, Sunday Telegraph

Computers are killing students’ handwriting skills, with some schools scrambling to correct their illegible scribble ahead of HSC exams. A rising use of laptops in schools means students are writing less and what they do write is sloppy. Parents and Citizens’ Association of NSW spokesman David Giblin said parents were worried about computer technology’s impact on the ability of students to write legibly, especially in senior years. “The downside – as we move towards information and communication technology in schools – is we are seeing a drop-off in the quality of handwriting,” Mr Giblin said. “One of the anomalies is exams, including the HSC, are delivered with pen and paper.”

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/computers-are-killing-students-handwriting-skills/story-e6freuy9-1226077713500

By ANNIE KARNI, NY Times

A backpack full of bulky textbooks is going the way of the abacus. Students at Manhattan’s top private schools are set to receive their own sleek $500 iPads from their schools next year, ditching their No. 2 pencils for touch-screen technology. At the posh Trinity prep school on West 91st Street, where tuition is $38,000 a year, middle-school students will “lease” Apple’s premier tablet computer from the school, according to faculty. The first batch of 20 iPad 2 tablets, which have two cameras and high-definition video recording, will be put to use by middle-school science students this fall.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/ipads_touch_of_class_T8oWrqCABzgOTtbeA9tpkL

by the Detroit Free Press

Some tout robotic surgery as the next generation of laparoscopic surgery. In the most common setup, surgeons don’t stand at the operating table. Instead, they sit at a control console that displays three-dimensional images on video screens and allows a wide range of motion and 360-degree maneuverability of the instruments. Surgeons use computer controls to guide the robotic arms and hands that maneuver the surgical instruments inside the body. It’s impressive technology, but what are the benefits? Currently, there’s remarkably little, if any, evidence that robotic surgery helps the patient or the surgeon.

http://www.freep.com/article/20110619/FEATURES08/106190409/Harvard-Medical-School-adviser-Do-robots-make-better-surgeons–

By SCOTT JAMES, New York Times

Though it rarely makes headlines these days, the digital divide — the gap between the computer haves and have-nots — remains reality for thousands in the Bay Area, a remarkable situation considering this is home to Google, Apple, Facebook and many other titans of technology. An estimated one in five adults in California do not use the Internet, and 30 percent do not have broadband access at home — about the same as the national average. Those left behind are increasingly isolated and disadvantaged as more of life’s basic information, like vital community news or transit schedules or job listings, has moved online. The divide is most severe in California’s Latino community, where 35 percent of adults do not use the Internet at all, and only 50 percent have broadband access at home. Other groups fare better, according to a 2010 study by the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan research group: whites (90 percent use the Internet, 82 percent have broadband access at home), Asians (87 percent Internet, 77 percent broadband) and blacks (82 percent Internet, 70 percent broadband).

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/17/us/17bcjames.html?_r=1

By: Shelley Nelson, Superior Telegram

The UW System Board of Regents approved the Health and Wellness degree late last week. The online program is a collaboration of four campuses in the UW System — La Crosse, River Falls, Stevens Point and Superior. Five of the seven degrees approved by the regents last week are offered online. With limited resources available today, he said the partnership is vital to allowing the campuses to expand their programs; none of the campuses could do it independently. “At this point online education is every bit as good and for some students even better than face-to-face or classroom education,” said David Schejbal, dean of Continuing Education, Outreach and E-Learning with the University of Wisconsin-Extension.

http://www.superiortelegram.com/event/article/id/54887/

by Allie Grasgreen, Inside Higher Ed

Last year, many colleges enjoyed record-breaking summer enrollment, growth that was largely attributed to the poor economy and students wanting to get out of college as quickly and cheaply as possible (many institutions mark down tuition and housing costs during the summer term). This year, the results are more mixed, and it’s harder to discern a trend. While many colleges are reporting declines in summer enrollment for the first time since the economic downturn started, a few institutions are reaping the benefits of concerted marketing efforts – which, in one of the most extreme cases, boosted new student enrollment by 70 percent.

http://www.insidehighered.com/layout/set/popup/layout/set/popup/news/2011/06/17/no_clear_summer_enrollment_trend_at_colleges_and_universities