Educational Technology

By Tom Simonite, Technology Review

Enabling software to punt its toughest tasks to humans should result in smarter mobile apps and other programs, say the founders of the newly launched company MobileWorks. The startup makes it possible for programmers to build human intelligence into their software using crowdsourcing—the practice of parceling out relatively small parts of a larger problem to many different people over the Web. Sites such as Amazon Mechanical Turk already provide a place to post tasks to be solved by a crowd of anonymous workers, paid small amounts for each task they complete. But Anand Kulkarni, one of MobileWorks’s three founders, says that Amazon’s service and others are too inaccurate and slow to be built into software that needs to solve problems with a quick turnaround.

http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/38447/?p1=A4&a=f

by Ravi Mandalia, IT Pro Portal

A new survey has shed light into the rather disturbing fact that an overwhelming majority of primary school children in the UK are capable of handling a computer quite easily, but when it comes to doing the common tasks in life such as tying shoelaces, they tend to fail miserably. Quite surprisingly in fact, it was found during the survey that 86 percent of the five to seven years old population in the country, and that’s almost like 9 in 10, are technologically pretty sound and can handle a computer quite at ease. The survey-results also claimed that 97 percent of the kids within the same age group were able to play computer games. But, that was just the better side that come out during the survey. The ugly part is that, despite their ability to operate a computer with little or no difficulty, only 56 percent of those kids were able to tell the time, and worse even, only 32 percent of them could tie shoelaces.

http://www.itproportal.com/2011/09/02/uk-kids-handle-technology-well-struggle-daily-chores/

By HANNAH JOHNSON, Stillwater Gazette

Prisoners go in and out of the Stillwater State Prison. So do computers. Nestled on the recycling and production floor of the old prison in Bayport is Minnesota Computers for Schools (MCFS), a non-profit organization that trains inmates at the Stillwater Correctional Facility to refurbish and upgrade computer hardware donated by businesses. The refurbished computers are then placed in K-12 public, private and charter schools across the state. Computers are also placed in educationally based non-profit organizations. “The whole concept is working with local corporations and making employable job skills for inmates while also benefiting schools across the state,” said Executive Director Tamara Gillard. Computers and related equipment are sold to schools at a nominal fee. Generally, schools could purchase two to three refurbished computers or laptops at the price of one, Gillard said.

http://www.stillwatergazette.com/articles/2011/09/02/bayport/news/101bay_090211_computers.txt

by Kashmir Hill, Forbes

Be careful what you download. Your computer is the perfect spying device. Tech-savvy voyeurs can turn computers against their users, allowing a hijacker to see a user through a webcam, hear them through the computer’s microphone, and see what goes on on their screens. That’s what 32-year-old Luis Mijangos did to over 100 computers, allowing him to read his victims’ email, steal financial information, overhear private conversations, and obtain surreptitious photos of them. As you might expect from a 32-year-old male, the majority of his victims were female.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2011/09/02/creepster-of-the-weekwebcam-hijacker-gets-six-year-sentence/

By David Zielenziger, International Business Times

Take a look at the senior management of Apple. Every senior executive is male. At IBM, it’s 10 of 12. And at Texas Instruments, it’s 3 of 12.Then consider how many technology companies have a female CEO. There’s Yahoo, of course. Xerox. Hon Hai Precision Industries, Apple’s biggest contract manufacturer. Then it gets more difficult. Indeed, there are a number of top women executives slightly below the CEO level. Safra Catz has been one of Oracle’s presidents since 2004 and started her second stint as CFO this year. Sheryl Sandberg is COO of Facebook after being a VP at Google. Linda Sanford is a Senior VP at IBM for enterprise computing. But why so few at the top? Given that women are more than half the population and that young women now outnumber men in graduate schools, there ought to be more. Surely, as far as consumption of technology products goes, from iPhones to Kindles, women are a huge market.

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/207798/20110902/technology-women-ceo-engineering-e-e-college-princeton-mit-female.htm?cid=2

By Barbara L. Fredricksen, St. Petersburg Times

It described my condition as Computer Vision Syndrome (CVS), a phenomenon described by New York City-based optometrist Harvey Moscot as what happens when someone stares at a computer screen for hours at a time. The result is sometimes blurry vision, eyestrain and headaches, Moscot said. Nineteenth-century novelists called it scrivener’s malady, a reference to what happened when clerks spent long, unbroken hours scrunched over account books in dark, windowless offices, staring unblinkingly at columns of figures (think Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener). To my relief, Moscot said the Kindle uses electronic ink (e-ink), which “is easy on the eyes,” but that other electronic devices, like Apple’s iPad and Barnes & Nobel’s NookColor, have a backlit LCD screen, similar to a computer monitor. “A stark contrast between the screen and your surroundings is hard on the eyes,” he said.

http://www.tampabay.com/features/humaninterest/the-joys-of-technology-take-their-toll-on-the-eyes/1189507

By Emily McFarlan, Courier News

Nearly 18,000 students in Elgin School District U46 now can access the Internet for less than $10 a month, thanks to new Comcast’s Internet Essentials program. Internet Essentials aims to “close the digital divide” for low-income families with students in schools in Comcast’s greater Chicago region, the Internet/cable/phone service provider announced earlier this month. That includes all families whose children receive free lunches in the National School Lunch program in U46, as well as those in communities in surrounding school districts. “The Internet is a great equalizer and a life-changing technology,” said LeAnn Talbot, senior vice president of Comcast’s greater Chicago region. “Internet Essentials helps level the playing field for low-income families by connecting students online with their teachers and their school’s educational resources and by enabling parents to receive digital literacy training so they can apply for jobs online or use the Internet to learn more about health care and government services, and a host of other activities,” Talbot said.

http://couriernews.suntimes.com/news/7297215-418/comcast-internet-program-to-help-bridge-digital-divide.html

By Mike Kurz, Galloway Patch

September is here, and for young Galloway residents, that means it’s time to go back to school. Students at any of the four elementary schools (Reeds Road, Roland Rogers, Smithville or Arthur Rann), the Galloway Community Charter School, the Galloway Township Middle School, Absegami High School, and the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey can all benefit from taking the right tech tools into the classroom with them. Technology has become an integral part of the education system in recent years. Just about every classroom has at least one computer in it and as a result, students now have open access to online resources like Wikipedia and the wealth of information they have to offer. The marriage of technology and education shouldn’t end when the student steps out of the classroom.

http://galloway.patch.com/articles/tech-tips-for-students

by Miami CBS4

A new state law that requires Florida high school students to take a class online is causing cash-strapped school districts to spend millions on new computers. The situation has caught the attention of the American Civil Liberties Union, which said it is calling on school districts to ensure that students who do not have Internet access at home aren’t at a disadvantage when it comes to being able to take online courses. “We are concerned about issues of access,” said ACLU spokesman Baylor Johnson. “There is a digital divide in this country and Internet access is limited by economic means.” The new law requires entering high school freshman beginning this year to take at least one course online prior to graduation. School districts say to meet this new requirement, it means spending money on new computer labs so that students who do not have the Internet at home are able to take online courses.

http://miami.cbslocal.com/2011/09/02/virtual-classes-go-from-optional-to-mandatory/

By Katie Bachmeier, DS Online

In order to beat the prices at the bookstore, students explore other avenues of textbook purchasing to avoid some seemingly unnecessary complications. The option to search online for books allows for resources to be more available to students than ever before. Within minutes, one can download a text and have it synced and ready to read on an e-reader or laptop, erasing the initial frustration of the bookstore calamities. The growth of technology has enabled books of all sorts to be readily available at one’s fingertips within days, or even minutes. The ability to order books from online stores or purchase downloadable versions of text, , allows students to be in control of their book orders and preferences, rather than only having one source, such as the university book store.

http://www.dakotastudent.com/news/more-students-buy-textbooks-online-1.2573153

by School CIO

The Renzulli approach begins with establishing a data-rich personal profile for every student reflecting interests, learning strengths, and preferred methods of instruction. Accessible to teachers, parents and students, profiles supplement the school’s multiple other methods for collecting key data to help BELL educators target instruction and build on the motivating factors that increase student engagement and positively impact performance. The Renzulli program also includes an extensive library of pre-screened resources, including web sites, software, books, articles, and more, to help teachers customize activities for students.

http://www.schoolcio.com/showarticle/41276

By Gordon K. Dahlby, CIO Advisor

As most readers know, Steve Jobs has stepped down from his position as CEO of Apple. Many customers and business professionals have written about their concerns as to whether Apple, above all other concerns, will be able to continue to be as successful as it has been in the last decade. Can Apple continue to be as innovative when the company’s iconic leader changes? Of course, in this case, there is also historical evidence that raises the concern from the years between Mr. Jobs’ earlier departure from Apple and his celebrated return. Meanwhile, as U.S. schools start up again, chief technologists are ready to test their summer efforts. These projects may include infrastructure and capacity growth, implementation and upgrades to dashboards and database systems, or the deployment of new and replacement of end-user devices and applications.

http://www.schoolcio.com/showarticle/41288

By Stephanie Overby, CIO

Traditional IT outsourcing customers are struggling with cloud computing, according to IT service providers and outsourcing advisors surveyed by KPMG Sourcing Advisory. IT service providers and advisors rated their IT executive customers’ facility with various aspects of cloud computing on a scale of one to five, where one represented “very unskilled” and five represented “very skilled.” IT executives earned embarrassing scores from their providers and advisors: None garnered even a middling score of three. When it comes to managing and governing cloud initiatives, IT leaders earned their lowest scores from respondents: 1.69 from advisors and 2.19 from providers.

http://www.cio.com/article/687015/CIOs_Lack_Adequate_Cloud_Computing_Knowledge

 By Natasha Wanchek, THE Journal

The key decision when selecting a Learning Management System (LMS) for a K-12 school district is no longer whether to use a commercial option or the open source Moodle. Instead, costly commercial solutions are increasingly left out of the equation, and administrators are instead focusing their energies on which of several open source systems might be best for their district. When conducting needs assessments for LMSes, administrators are looking at a variety of options and coming to different conclusions. While Moodle and Sakai are the two open source LMSes with the biggest market share in the United States, there are more specialized and newer entrants to the field that are getting notice, including Instructure’s Canvas, OLAT, ATutor, and Google’s CloudCourse.

http://thejournal.com/articles/2011/07/27/a-guide-to-k-12-open-source-lms-options.aspx

By David Nagel, THE Journal

There’s an effort underway to replace traditional student advancement (based on “seat time”) with advancement based strictly on demonstrated mastery of a subject. It’s not a particularly new notion, but it’s one that’s gained traction in recent years as technology has begun to make feasible the requirements such a system would impose–frequent and rigorous assessment well beyond fill-in-the-bubble tests, differentiated instruction, the continuous movement of massive amounts of assessment data, access to the breadth of instruction that communications technologies have only recently made viable, and much more. Under such a system, failure is literally “not an option,” according to Susan Patrick, president and CEO of iNACOL, the International Association for K-12 Online Learning. Students move up to the next level when they’ve demonstrated proficiency, allowing advanced students to proceed at an accelerated pace and providing extra attention to the ones who need more help before pushing them out the door.

http://thejournal.com/articles/2011/08/10/beyond-seat-time-advancing-proficiency-based-learning.aspx

By Bridget McCrea, THE Journal

At a time when schools are banishing student-owned mobile devices from their classrooms–or, at least making sure the disruptive laptops, tablets, and phones are powered down class begins–London Jenks is taking a decidedly different tack. A science teacher at Hot Springs County High School in Thermopolis, WY, Jenks welcomes iPhone- and Android-toting students into his classes. His reasoning is clear cut: Students need little or no training on their own devices, which allow them to quickly access to the Internet; interact with their instructor and other students; and use innovative tools like QR codes. A Google-certified educator who teaches earth science, physics, chemistry, and astronomy, Jenks explainedhis reasons for letting down the walls that so many other instructors have erected during this “mobile” age and told us how the strategy has helped him be more effective as a teacher.

http://thejournal.com/articles/2011/08/31/qr-codes-in-the-classroom.aspx

by the Mercury

Certainly the topic of children bullying one another is not new; it is perhaps as old as childhood itself. What is new, and confounding, is the utilization of various electronic communication programs by children. The programs present new challenges to adults, especially parents, to control behavior by children. While bullying has always been a problem, it is clear that cyberbullying has raised the activity to a new level. When children and teens engage in bullying by computer, they are no longer face to face with their victim. Spiteful behavior is easier without human interaction.

http://pottsmerc.com/articles/2011/08/23/opinion/srv0000013336384.txt

By Tim Sohn, Campus Technology

Google Education provided an undisclosed amount of seed funding for the opening of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Mobile Learning, according to the Cambridge school. The center, located at the MIT Media Lab, will focus on new mobile technologies, apps, and their uses in education, including location applications, mobile sensing, data collection, and reality gaming. The first project will study and extend, for educational technology use, App Inventor for Android, a tool developed by Google Labs designed to allow anyone–from novices to programmers–to create apps by using a graphical interface of buttons and menus in a web browser called the Open Blocks Java library.  “Google incubated App Inventor to the point where it gained critical mass,” said Johnson. “MIT’s involvement will both amplify the impact of App Inventor and enrich the research around it.”

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2011/08/23/mit-opens-center-for-mobile-learning-with-app-inventor-research.aspx

By Tim Sohn, Campus Technology

This fall the University of Michigan will roll out an interactive presentation tool called LectureTools, created by one of its own professors, to more than 4,000 students. The software is designed to keep students engaged during presentations using laptops and smart phones, especially in large lectures. “The key is to engage students through their laptops or cellphones, so they don’t drift off onto social networking sites,” said Perry Samson, an atmospheric science professor. “We’ve shown we can do that.” Samson began LectureTools as a research project at the university with funding from the National Science Foundation in 2005 with the goal of increasing student engagement and participation. LectureTools, the Ann Arbor, MI-based company, was founded in 2010, and the software’s new version was developed that year.

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2011/08/24/prof-engage-students-through-their-laptops.aspx

by Patti Neighmond, NPR

Psychologist Dan Willingham at the University of Virginia, who studies how our brains learn, says teachers should not tailor instruction to different kinds of learners. He says we’re on more equal footing than we may think when it comes to how our brains learn. And it’s a mistake to assume students will respond and remember information better depending on how it’s presented. There are workshops for teachers, products targeted at different learning styles and some schools that even evaluate students based on this theory. This prompted Doug Rohrer, a psychologist at the University of South Florida, to look more closely at the learning style theory. When he reviewed studies of learning styles, he found no scientific evidence backing up the idea. “We have not found evidence from a randomized control trial supporting any of these,” he says, “and until such evidence exists, we don’t recommend that they be used.”

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/08/29/139973743/think-youre-an-auditory-or-visual-learner-scientists-say-its-unlikely

By Gil-Rey Madrid, eSchool News

Research shows that if our students fail science and math in the sixth grade, it will increase their risk of dropping out, and we wanted to decrease the likelihood of that happening to our students. We knew that the math intervention solution we chose had to identify the skill gaps not mastered in earlier grade levels, and then deliver targeted instruction to close those gaps through a prescriptive course plan that would quickly bring them up to grade level. We wanted a solution with a strong instructional component that was designed by real teachers for struggling math learners. To support our diverse student population, we needed quality video instruction with extensive descriptive graphics. Plus, to help our students with the more difficult math concepts, we needed educational explorations, manipulatives, and practice to reinforce learning. Other critical needs included ongoing assessments and easily accessed and understandable reports for teachers, students, and parents to measure progress. In addition, we needed all of this at an affordable price

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2011/08/29/closing-the-math-skills-gap-and-boosting-achievement/