Educational Technology

by Ellen Lee, San Francisco Chronicle

The iPhone and iPad summer camp reflects the changing interests of tweens and teens, as an increasing number of them own smart phones, particularly iPhones. About a third of teenage cell phone users own smart phones, a Nielsen report said last year. “I figured I could make my own” app, said Samantha, whose family owns an iPad. “I think I could make an app that’s just like ‘Angry Birds’ or ‘Cut the Rope.’ ” Ten million kids attend camp each summer in the United States, according to the American Camp Association. The $20 billion industry is more than just campfires and canoes. There are language camps. There are sports camps. There are musical theater camps inspired by “Glee.” And for future Silicon Valley geeks, there are technology camps.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/07/11/BUBN1K84F2.DTL&type=tech

by Cecilia Kang, Washington Post

A third of all American adults own a smartphone and for many minority and low income users, those mobile devices have replaced computers for Internet access. The findings released Monday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project highlight the breakneck speed consumers are adopting smartphones — faster than just about any high-tech product in history. It’s been four years since the introduction of the iPhone and rival devices that run Google’s Android software. In that time, the devices have turned much of America into an always-on, Internet-on-the-go society. A quarter of Americans with smartphones use the devices as their main way to get onto the Internet, the Pew study found. About nine in 10 owners of such devices access the Web and check their e-mail each day through their device.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/a-smartphones-proliferate-some-users-are-cutting-the-computer-cord/2011/07/11/gIQA6ASi9H_story.html?hpid=z3

by Vidya, Dzine

Mind Mapping Applications working as powerful in this era for taking notes, capturing ideas, represent words, exploring concepts or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea. Mind maps are used to generate, visualize, structure and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing.

Mind Mapping Tools helps in many way of work in this growing and emerging industry, you can use it to study for a big exam, you can use it brainstorm new article ideas as bloggers work, or flesh out what needs to be covered in the business plan for a new venture, you can organize a big move of house, I’ve seen people use the mind map format for their daily to-do lists too.

http://www.dzinepress.com/2010/03/40-ultimate-useful-mind-mapping-tools/

by Sue Loughlin, The Tribune-Star

Starting this fall, the Indiana Department of Education will no longer require Indiana’s public schools to teach cursive writing. State officials sent school leaders a memo April 25 telling them that instead of cursive writing, students will be expected to become proficient in keyboard use. The memo says schools may continue to teach cursive as a local standard, or they may decide to stop teaching cursive altogether. Greene County resident and parent Ericka Hostetter has mixed feelings about the teaching of cursive. She has three children, and two will be in public schools next fall.

http://tribstar.com/news/x1435410216/Archaic-Method-Cursive-writing-no-longer-has-to-be-taught

by eSchool News

With the security hole, an attacker can get malicious software onto a device by tricking its owner into clicking an infected PDF file. A new security hole has opened up in Apple Inc.’s iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices, raising alarms about the susceptibility of some of the world’s hottest tech gadgets to hacker attacks. Flaws in the software running those devices came to light after a German security agency warned that criminals could use them to steal confidential data off the devices. Apple, the world’s largest technology company by market value, said Thursday that it is working on a fix that will be distributed in an upcoming software upgrade.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2011/07/08/iphones-ipads-may-be-susceptible-to-hackers/

by eSchool News

Students say they need tech skills for the future, but most high schools don’t deliver. A new survey reinforces the concern that while students must have technology skills to succeed as they enter college and the workforce, their schools are not meeting this important need. The second annual 21st Century Classroom Report from CDW-G reveals that 94 percent of students said learning and mastering technology skills will improve their educational and career opportunities, and 97 percent of school faculty agreed. But in spite of those results, only 39 percent of students said their high schools meet those technology expectations with technology in the classroom.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2011/07/11/survey-reveals-need-for-tech-skills-in-college-workforce/

by Larry Ferlazzo

This is a great early compilation of best resources for the rapidly emerging Google+ and ideas of how it might best be used in education.

http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2011/07/10/the-best-resources-for-learning-what-google-is-all-about/

by Gary Moscowitz, Mind/Shift

The student journalists my colleagues and I teach are not being trained to be writers; they’re being encouraged to become multimedia producers, mobile reporters, hackers, graphic designers, website scrapers, and web entrepreneurs. With these goals in mind, we give them tools to help them get started. But how happy are they about it? Sometimes, not very. This past term, student uneasiness and confusion over the online journalism curriculum became so heated that one large hall lecture was interrupted by a large group complaining that the assignments were confusing and did not benefit their journalism career ambitions. At least one special discussion session with an instructor had to be scheduled outside of lectures to soothe the tension, and I spent several subsequent classes explaining the purpose of the assignments, rather than teaching actual skills.

http://mindshift.kqed.org/2011/07/blog-tweet-design-student-journalists-go-far-beyond-writing/

by Mark Rounds

This is a great, timely site for tracking some very useful Web-based Apps connecting students to academic curriculum…” Created and curated by Mark Rounds

http://www.scoop.it/t/web-ed-tools

By: Nicholas Kolakowski, eWeek

Apple’s iPad will help drive 53.5 million tablet shipments in 2011, according to a July 8 note from research firm IDC.

IDC is raising its previous projection of 50.4 million units for the year, despite some first-quarter softness due to a sluggish economy and other factors. It noted that iPad shipments for the quarter were below expectations, but that Apple continues to hold a comfortable lead over other manufacturers, whose strategy of selling tablets via carriers isn’t gaining hoped-for traction among consumers. Nonetheless, Android shows clear signs of establishing a foothold in the tablet market, with the operating system present on 34 percent of devices.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Desktops-and-Notebooks/Apple-iPad-Android-Will-Power-Tablet-Shipments-in-2011-IDC-173643/?kc=rss

By: Nicholas Kolakowski, eWeek

Apple’s iPad franchise will continue to dominate the tablet market for some time to come, according to a new analyst report. In a July 7 research note issued by Canaccord Genuity, analyst T. Michael Walkley and his co-authors suggested that the iPad 2’s price point is making it difficult for rival tablets to compete in a profitable way. “Our checks indicate both the Motorola Xoom and RIM PlayBook have not sold well at current price points, as we believe competing tablets must sell at a substantial discount to the iPad 2,” they wrote.Their research note estimates Apple’s share of the tablet market at 56 percent in 2011, followed by Samsung with 12 percent, and Asus with 5 percent. LG Electronics, Motorola and Research In Motion are all given 3 percent of the market, followed by HTC with 2 percent. Although Amazon.com has yet to release a tablet, the note pegs their 2011 share at 5 percent. Nor do those percentages change much for 2012, although Apple loses 5 percent of its overall share to rival manufacturers.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Desktops-and-Notebooks/Apple-iPad-Will-Dominate-Tablet-Market-Through-2012-Analyst-804371/?kc=rss

By Christopher Dawson, ZDNet

Last week I was running my company’s first ever educational trade show booth at the International Society for Technology in Education’s (ISTE) 2011 conference in Philadelphia. I had a few things to say about the big business of ed tech, but, at the end of the day, I had a chance to talk to a lot of people (teachers, vendors, thought leaders, and administrators alike) and walked away with some overarching themes, ideas, and impressions on the state of the art in educational technology.  iPads  were everywhere.  Android tablets could only be found in the Dell and Viewsonic booths. While recent over the air updates to Android Honeycomb have rendered it quite stable and speedy-quick on the latest hardware and Android 2.2+ works quite well on smaller tablets, Apple has somehow convinced every teacher and administrator in North America and western Europe that only the iPad is capable of transforming education.  While no tablet will transform anything without the right teaching techniques and curriculum behind it, the iPad is poised to become the next showcase 1:1 platform in schools. It isn’t without its issues in educational enterprise deployments, but the abundance of iPad charging carts, iPad Apps, iPad sessions, and even iPad cases suggests that most people are willing to ignore its shortcomings and leap into iPad-land.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/education/iste-take-home-message-1-its-all-about-the-ipads/4631?tag=mantle_skin;content

By Christopher Dawson, ZDNet

As much as I love gadgets and slick inventions that do cool things in the classroom, my real focus in ed tech is finding ways to really improve the state of the art in teaching via technology, not just try to teach with state of the art tech. So when I heard about the idea of the flipped classroom at ISTE last week, I was genuinely excited. I know, bad me for not hearing about it sooner, but a whole lot of people were talking about it at the conference and I couldn’t help but get swept up in the buzz. It’s an idea that actually makes a whole lot of sense and is a killer application of personal tech in education.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/education/iste-take-home-message-2-the-flipped-classroom-makes-sense/4633

by Technobombs Blog

This is an interesting infographic that compares the new Google + features to those in Facebook. It is useful for those who know Facebook, and are seeking a quick overview of how G+ is different.

http://www.technobombs.com/infographic-facebook-vs-google/

Online Converter

by Online Converter

Very nice, simple to use, reliable tool!   This free online file converter lets you convert media easy and fast from one format to another. We support a lot of different source formats, just try. If you can’t find the conversion you need, please let us know and write us an e-mail. We probably can help you… This is particularly useful for busy teachers and media support specialists.

http://www.online-convert.com/

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

When a Web designer or developer at the University of Washington in Seattle has questions about the accessibility of the school’s sites and applications, he or she can tap the expertise of a team of technology accessibility specialists such as Terrill Thompson. As a senior computer specialist, Thompson divides his time among multiple grant programs, including AccessIT (the National Center on Accessible Information Technology in Education) and DO-IT (Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking, and Technology). These federally funded research and dissemination projects focus on improving access to technology, education, and challenging careers for individuals with disabilities. Prior to his work at U Washington, Thompson served as coordinator of assistive and IT at North Carolina State University.

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2011/07/07/web-accessibility-for-all.aspx

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

A company that specializes in creating solar panels for charging portable devices has just come out with a carrying case that allows a user to recharge his or her Apple iPad. Voltaic Systems’ new Spark Solar Tablet Case provides one hour of iPad video playback for every hour in direct sunlight.

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2011/07/07/voltaic-launches-solar-charger-for-ipad.aspx

By Leila Meyer, Campus Technology

Oracle Launches Virtual Desktop Client App for iPad. Oracle this week released its new Virtual Desktop Client App for iPad, which provides secure access to Oracle Sun Ray Software and Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure virtual desktops. Once the application is installed on their iPad, users simply run the app, select the server to connect to, and log in with their Sun Ray or Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure user account. Users can use gestures and the virtual keyboard to do their work on virtual Windows, Oracle Linux, or Oracle Solaris desktops and applications wherever and whenever they want. Connections between the Virtual Desktop Client App and servers use 256-bit AES encryption.

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2011/07/07/oracle-launches-virtual-desktop-client-app-for-ipad.aspx

By Jonathan Schorr and Deborah McGriff, Education Next

Despite the kids’ engagement in the online lesson, no one is claiming that time in front of the computer is directly responsible for the extraordinary performance of Rocketship students. Rather, the online work is essential to the long-term vision for the school’s instructional model—and for Rocketship’s growth trajectory. Crucially, the lab requires an adult who has experience with children, but no teaching credential (nor, indeed, bachelor’s degree) is required. For this class, it’s a young mother named Coral De Dios, who dispenses help and order as the moment requires. Her ability to monitor the 43 kids here means that the school requires less staff, ultimately saving hundreds of thousands of dollars each year that can be plowed back into resources for the school, including staff salaries. In cash-strapped California, that’s no small matter.

http://educationnext.org/future-schools/

by Michael Petrilli, EducationNext

The first thing to understand about Twitter is that most of its messages amount to, “Hey, check this out,” followed by a link to a newspaper article or blog post. It’s a handy device for telling the world (or at least the people in your own world) about news or columns that you find compelling. It’s also a form of self-promotion; quite a few tweets announce posts the tweeter herself has written.  But in the hands of a gifted provocateur, Twitter can be so much more. Take scholar-turned-reform-apostate Diave Ravitch, who according to Klout.com is the most influential tweeter in the education policy space (see sidebar). As Alexander Russo, a freelance writer and blogger, remarked sardonically, “a 72-year-old grandmother has won the Internet.” She’s done it not only by linking to columns and articles she agrees with, but by offering bumper sticker–style statements that tend to set the web aflame. For instance, “Accountability is only for teachers and principals, not for students, families, elected officials, district leadership.” Or: “Last places to go to find out how to ‘reform’ schools: Congress/State Legislature/US Dept of Education.”

http://educationnext.org/all-a-twitter-about-education/

By Jie Jenny Zou, Chronicle of Higher Ed Wired Campus

Researchers at Old Dominion U. in Virginia are trying to figure out what percentage of the Web is archived by sampling from the four different sources.  Researchers at Old Dominion University in Virginia are trying to figure out how much of the public Web is archived and who is storing it, as part of a larger effort to preserve the digital record. Michael L. Nelson, a computer-science professor, has been working with professors and students since September to determine how much of the Web’s history has been preserved in Internet databases around the world.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/old-dominion-u-researchers-ask-how-much-of-the-web-is-archived