Educational Technology

By Tanya Roscorla, Converge

Information sources have multiplied online. University libraries spend millions of dollars on vetted resources like science journals, but many students search on Google first. And more students and faculty want to find information easily on their mobile devices. These are some of the challenges facing university libraries today. And Boston College Libraries is tackling these challenges by developing reusable Web services, analyzing how many expensive resources are being used and providing targeted information to users.

http://www.convergemag.com/infrastructure/Boston-College-Libraries-Reusable-Services.html

By Tanya Roscorla, Classroom Technology

In an urban school outside Detroit, more than half of freshmen failed English in fall 2009. Along with failing classes, freshmen students got in trouble. A lot. That semester, principals at Clintondale High School dealt with 736 discipline cases for 165 students. A year later, the scene changed. Of 165 freshmen, only 19 percent failed English. Math classes saw similar results, going from 44 to 13 percent. And both science and social studies failure rates dropped too.

http://www.convergemag.com/classtech/Clintondale-High-Flipped-Classes.html

by Best Colleges Online blog

Between the cat images and celebrity porn, the Internet actually manages to boast educational potential. Considerable educational potential, in fact. Even that Twitter thing the kids are into these days, with its 140-characters and its perpetual haze of pound signs, has its uses. More than 28, of course, but here’s a nice little starting point.

http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2011/07/06/28-creative-ways-teachers-are-using-twitter/

by Andrew Ravenscroft, IRRODL

Connectivism offers a theory of learning for the digital age that is usually understood as contrasting with traditional behaviourist, cognitivist, and constructivist approaches. This article will provide an original and significant development of this theory through arguing and demonstrating how it can benefit from social constructivist perspectives and a focus on dialogue. Similarly, I argue that we need to ask whether networked social media is, essentially, a new landscape for dialogue and therefore should be conceived and investigated based on this premise, through considering dialogue as the primary means to develop and exploit connections for learning. A key lever in this argument is the increasingly important requirement for greater criticality on the Internet in relation to our assessment and development of connections with people and resources. The open, participative, and social web actually requires a greater emphasis on higher order cognitive and social competencies that are realised predominantly through dialogue and discourse. Or, as Siemens (2004) implies, in his call to rethink the fundamental precepts of learning, we need to shift our focus to promoting core evaluative skills for flexible learning that will, for example, allow us to actuate the knowledge we need at the point that we need it. A corollary of this is the need to reorient educational experiences to ensure that we develop in our learners the ability “to think, reason, and analyse.” In considering how we can achieve these aims this article will review the principles of connectivism from a dialogue perspective; propose some social constructivist approaches, based on dialectic and dialogic dimensions of dialogue, which can act as levers in realising connectivist learning dialogue; demonstrate how dialogue games can link the discussed theories to the design and performance of networked dialogue processes; and consider the broader implications of this work for designing and delivering sociotechnical learning.

http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/934

by eSchool News

Blackboard Inc. officials will stay in their current positions for now. Educational software maker Blackboard Inc. is being taken private for $1.64 billion in cash by an investor group led by affiliates of Providence Equity Partners, and a Blackboard official said the much-discussed purchase would not affect the company’s education customers, as the company would continue its focus on mobile learning and analytics.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2011/07/01/blackboard-reassures-education-customers-after-acquisition/

By Michael Hart, THE Journal

The National Education Technology Plan can be a significant tool if President Barack Obama is to accomplish his goal of making sure the United States has the highest percentage of college graduates in the world by 2020.   As part of that effort, “we can use education to ratchet up everybody’s opportunity,” said Karen Cator, director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education, focusing on the term “educational” in the name of her agency rather than “technology.”  “Technology actually will not replace teachers, as many people think,” Cator added, “but it can enhance human performance.”

http://thejournal.com/articles/2011/06/30/national-tech-plan-a-key-to-education-success.aspx

by Steve Wheeler, Learning with ‘e’s

The video below demonstrates how easily a 2 year old child can operate an iPad. She has her first encounter with it, and immediately knows intuitively how to use it. It reminds me of a quote from Marx (Groucho, not Karl of course) who said: ‘A five year old child could understand this! Get me a five year old child!

http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2011/06/dont-be-surprised.html

by pen.io

It takes just seconds to create a page and start adding content. Pen.io has been designed as a more permanent alternative to blogs. Blogs are great for posting regular content – with Pen.io, you can create a page and set and forget.  You can write a longer response to a Tweet and reply with the compact url.  Simple.

http://pen.io/

by ANKIT, Teck-Tweak

For a teacher, the task today is not only to provide students with the knowledge in accordance with the approved curriculum, but to teach them the methodology of learning and self-education. To teach them the necessary skills to work with information, ability to interact effectively with colleagues, through modern IT, and the ability to constantly evolve and learn independently. To work effectively you must use all the achievements of modern educational technologies and appropriate instrumentation, that allow us to work faster and more convenient with the information to plan their work, maintain communication with students and colleagues, to empower the educational and scientific activities, create and live with the times.

http://tech-tweak.com/2011/04/improving-education-with-web-2-0.html

by Karen Swan and colleagues, eduMOOC

Live presentation today, Thursday, July 7 at 2 pm eastern time; 11 am pacific time and 7pm London time.

Resources on the topic can be found online: https://sites.google.com/site/edumooc/edumooc-week-two-what-the-research-tells-us

The live link is:

http://www.uis.edu/technology/live/edumooc.html

(recording link will be posted after the session)

The home site of eduMOOC:

http://sites.google.com/site/edumooc

Knovio™ is an innovative tool for turning PowerPoint® slides into rich video presentations with just a web browser and webcam. With Knovio, you can take static PowerPoint slides to a new level with video and audio presentations that can be accessed anytime on-demand and shared with others through email and social media. Knovio was developed by KnowledgeVision, the company that makes KVStudio, a video presentation platform for businesses. The word “Knovio” comes from a contraction between “Knowledge” and “Vision” as we thought it was very important to have a name that was similar to our already established company name. In Spanish, the word “novio” means boyfriend or love interest and we thought that Knovio would be something that people would love as they discovered how easy it was to create video presentations.

http://www.technologybitsbytesnibbles.info/archives/5066

by Cyndi Danner-Kuhn, Technology Bits, Bytes, and Nibbles

Okay, this is just the coolest thing. A friend, Diane Lawrence, told me about this cool thing you could do with a Children’s book (or any book) using QR codes (bar codes) couple weeks ago. I finally had time to give it a try. So here is the deal…….. Get a book, one you can find videos or even websites to enhance or go along with the book….

http://www.technologybitsbytesnibbles.info/archives/5066

by Chenda Ngak, CBS News

Microsoft launches Office 365 today, bringing its ubiquitous Office Suite online in an effort to get into the cloud computing game. Much like the difference of home and enterprise versions of the desktop software, Office 365 has three different plans: professional and small business; midsize businesses and enterprise; and education. Each category has a subscription plan, starting at $6 per month, which makes it easier for anyone to work virtually anywhere with any device. With the launch, a wide array of products will go live, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. These desktop applications will be synced to the cloud service via SharePoint Online. Exchange Online will connect with Outlook and deepen the online and mobile availability of features like emails and calendars. The news of Microsoft’s entrance into the cloud applications arena isn’t going unnoticed. The release strikes at the heart of Google Apps, which already offers office-related software online.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-20075005-501465.html

By Shaun Waterman, The Washington Times

Millions of websites all over the world routinely are built with one of the most basic security flaws because software designers are not taught anything about security, according to cybersecurity experts. The flaw makes websites vulnerable to “SQL injection,” in which hackers take control of a site’s database — including user names and passwords — by writing a special code in text boxes where users enter log-in data or type search terms. The flaw was identified as the No. 1 computer-security vulnerability in a report released this week, “The Top 25 Most Dangerous Software Errors 2011.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jun/28/cybersecurity-experts-warn-common-software-error/

by Michelle Amodio, TMCnet

It’s a no brainer – technology is great for the classroom.  Even without stats and studies, it’s a pretty safe assumption that using tools that can boost performance when it comes to learning will lead to positive outcomes. As technology improves, whether in devices for students, educational software, tools for teachers to better administer information or apps on handhelds, technology can make us better educators and students.

CompTIA, a non-profit association in the IT industry, recently conducted a study focusing on technology and its impact on educators and students. The survey conducted shows that 78 percent of 500 educators believe that technology is one of the many positive influences in education today. According to the release, 65 percent of educators said students are more productive today than they were three years ago due to the use of technology.

http://education.tmcnet.com/topics/education/articles/191072-study-shows-technology-boosts-performance-educators-students.htm

by Yonhap News

South Korea will digitize all school textbooks by 2015 in a bid to help students create their own study patterns and lighten their backpacks, the government said Wednesday. Under the plan, which requires 2.23 trillion won (US$ 2.07 billion) from the state budget, all schools will be fitted with an Internet-based computing system known as cloud computing by 2015, according to a report submitted to President Lee Myung-bak by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and the President’s Council on Informatization Strategies. Cloud computing allows users to share conventional computer resources, including software, information and online connections, through mobile devices such as smartphones without having to carry laptops or personal computers.

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2011/06/29/79/0302000000AEN20110629008300315F.HTML

by Jerry Mechling, Governing

Over time, innovation is what makes most human endeavors better and more productive, and over the past 50 years the big changes have largely been enabled by information technologies. That’s clearly true for most medical procedures, many police investigations,certainly the biological sciences and computing itself.  But, what about education? It has been the prototypical victim of Baumol’s “cost disease,” where productivity lags because the process doesn’t yield to new technologies. As a result, while a Civil War doctor entering a hospital today wouldn’t know where to begin, the Civil War teacher would be rather at home in most of today’s classrooms. Despite mind-boggling growth in computer capabilities, teachers remain the “sage on the stage,” not “the guide on the side.”

http://www.governing.com/columns/mgmt-insights/better-education-finally-possible-technology.html

By Ilana Greene, Christian Science Monitor

A year ago, Harvard University’s student newspaper dubbed computer science the most “gender-skewed” major on campus – meaning that many more men majored in computer science than women. Then something happened. In a year, the number of women majoring in computer science has nearly doubled on the Harvard campus. “Computer science seems like a lot of fun, but it also proves to be a lifesaver,” says Katrina Wong, a Harvard literature major who is considering switching to computer science. Since her father lost his job to the recession and she maxed out her credit cards, she’s begun writing content for smart-phone apps that her college friends are creating for clients. “It’s not a big income, but it buys me necessities as well as opens doors to profit-sharing opportunities.”

http://www.kptv.com/story/14989641/worried-about-jobs-college-women-go-geek

by Russell Blair, Record-Journal

The Board of Education recently approved the purchase of 452 Companion Touch 10 computers for $230,000, and teachers spent Monday learning the ins and outs of the new technology. The units will be used by students, mainly as part of the elementary school reading curriculum. In the Cook Hill School library, dozens of teachers gathered. The Companion Touch is similar to a netbook computer, but has many other features, including a webcam – which can be reversed and used as a document projector – and a touch screen. The screen can be rotated flat to create a tablet for writing, and it can also be used as an e-reader. The computers are compatible with the recently purchased Treasures reading program, and give students access to more than 7,000 online book titles. Moses Y.

http://www.myrecordjournal.com/wallingford/article_175c64b0-a135-11e0-96b6-001cc4c002e0.html

by Peter Orszag, Business Standard

I now have more health information on my wrist than my doctor had about me 10 years ago, and I’m hopeful that it’s going to help keep me healthier. But it’s worrisome, too, because the same technological change that allows any of us to walk around with all this personal data at a glance may wind up exacerbating the growing gap in life expectancy between people with high levels of income and education and those without. New technologies allow us to collect our own health data and store it in an online record. When combined with information from doctors and other providers, it can present a picture of someone’s well-being more nuanced than anything available before. My wife and I now have a new Withings Wi-Fi scale: When I step on, it transmits my weight and body-fat readings to the computer over our home Wi-Fi network. The information is then automatically linked to my personal online health record. A similar wireless blood-pressure monitor has just become commercially available.

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/howtechnology-called-wi-fi-adds-to-americas-class-divide/440538/

by New America Media

On a rainy Wednesday morning at Tyrrell Elementary in Hayward, sixth-grade teacher Francisco Nieto was giving his students—all English language learners —an in-class assignment: To fill in the blanks of sentences with new words they learned from reading Lois Lowry’s book, “The Giver.” “Intricate,” said Nieto. “What does it mean?” “Very complicated but detailed!” screamed one student from the other end of the classroom, iPod in hand, after looking up the word quickly online. “Very good,” said Nieto with a smile on his face, seemingly impressed that the student was able to give him an answer within seconds of being asked the question. Other students followed suit, entering their answers into an online worksheet, which they sent electronically to Nieto, many using their mobile devices.

http://newamericamedia.org/2011/06/mobile-devices-in-classroom-give-english-learners-a-leg-up.php