Educational Technology

by Alex Wilhelm, the Next Web

In a slip of the tongue that was quickly denied by both Microsoft and the main corporate arm of Nokia, the French division of the Finnish giant appeared to state that Windows 8 tablets could be in the market as early as June of 2012. The comment itself was slightly ambiguous, but it did seem to clearly state that Nokia is going to have built functional Windows 8 tablets by next June. If the devices in question will be mere internal, research devices, or mass market slates in the hands on the general public is not clear. However what this information does accomplish is to affirm what we have been speculating over ceaselessly, in two ways: Primarily, Windows 8 is landing next year, and secondly, that Nokia will indeed be making a tablet to run it.

http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2011/11/16/nokia-hints-at-windows-8-tablets-as-early-as-next-june/

by Aayush Arya, the Next Web

After having exceeded the growth rate of the PC industry for five-and-a-half years (22 consecutive quarters), Apple’s Mac platform now commands a 5.2 percent share of the worldwide PC market, according to an analysis by Needham & Co.. This is the first time in fifteen years that the Mac’s share has exceeded 5 percent, as AppleInsider points out. Apple reported record Mac sales of 4.89 million units during the recently ended September quarter, which was a growth of 24.6 percent from the year-ago quarter and much higher than the PC industry’s overall growth of 5.3 percent. Apple’s Mac market share was at 4.4 percent at the end of the September quarter in 2010.

http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/11/17/explosive-growth-takes-the-mac-to-over-5-global-market-share/

By Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed

Tablets are in, computer labs are out, and the cloud is the new hard drive — these are the interwoven threads upon which college students are hoisting themselves into the future of campus computing. So say technology futurists, those whisperers who strive to interpret for the rest of us the inscrutable “digital natives” who now roam undergraduate campuses. But new data from Student Monitor, a market research firm that tracks actual consumer trends among traditional-age college students at four-year institutions, unravels those threads a bit. As it turns out, students appear more likely to store data on their local devices and networks, and to use college-owned computers, than they are to save documents in the cloud and eschew communal machines entirely in favor of their own.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/11/17/survey-says-young-students-still-computer-labs-digital-cameras-ms-word

by WAYNE WASHINGTON, the State

Students at the University of South Carolina’s two-year regional campuses would be able to get a bachelor’s degree through online coursework under a plan the university is developing. USC President Harris Pastides discussed the plan Tuesday, when he met with journalists at The State to highlight an overall vision for the university that he hopes people will embrace as it moves ahead with its $1 billion fundraising campaign, called “Carolina’s Promise.” Pastides, USC’s president since 2008, is linking that fundraising campaign to his administration’s new vision for the university, which he says will make USC a worthy investment for donors and a critical part of moving the state forward. That new vision, called “Focus Carolina,” has seven key points, including making it easier for “place-locked” students to get four-year degrees from the state’s flagship university.

http://www.thestate.com/2011/11/16/2047755/usc-4-year-degrees-online.html

By Peter Kim, Business 2 Community

The semester is about to get underway and students with online college courses on their syllabus often just sit back and breathe easy, thinking they’ve got it made this year all thanks to the Internet. Of course, just because a course has moved online doesn’t mean it’s something anyone can breeze through. In fact, leaving projects, lectures and even attendance entirely up to the student without an actual class to report to can make it an even bigger challenge than a traditional classroom. That leaves plenty of room for the students to make some very simple mistakes that can sink their entire coursework if their not careful. These are the biggest ones to avoid.

http://www.business2community.com/trends-news/5-biggest-mistakes-people-make-while-taking-online-college-courses-093494

BY SARAH JANE KELLER, Stanford News

Students may covet seats in Stanford’s popular iPhone and iPad application development course, but you don’t need to be in the classroom to take the course. Anyone with app dreams can follow along online. Stanford has just released the iOS 5 incarnation of iPhone Application Development on iTunes U, where the public can download course lectures and slides for free. Some of the most talked-about features of Apple’s latest operating system include iCloud, streamlined notifications and wireless syncing.

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/november/itunes-apps-class-111511.html

By Elyse Vesser, University of Missouri Maneater

Student and Auxiliary Services spokeswoman Michelle Froese said MU is taking strides of its own to cut down the cost of textbooks for students. “The bookstore implemented a price comparison feature on our website which allows students to compare our prices to other vendors like Amazon,” she said. “We’re finding that the majority of our customers complete the transaction with the bookstore even after comparing, and we continue to find ways to be more competitive in terms of pricing.” The bookstore also promotes used books as an alternative to paying full price for new books. Froese said used books account for more than 40 percent of bookstore sales. Course packets offer another way for students to save money, Froese said. “We have a custom publishing department (Mizzou Media) that creates course packets,” she said. “A course packet can be highly cost effective. Instead of requiring multiple books, a professor can select portions of those books and have them included in a course packet.”

http://www.themaneater.com/stories/2011/11/15/bookstore-adds-comparison-feature-online-curb-text/

by Silicon Republic

E-learning company RendezVu has launched ExamSpeak, a next-gen online language learning platform that’s aiming to transform how English-language students prepare for their speaking exams by allowing them to replicate their exams in real time. According to Paul Groarke, CEO, RendezVu, ExamSpeak is unique to the online e-learning marketplace in that students can introduce themselves to the virtual examiners, answer typical exam questions, talk to other test takers and then receive feedback on their performance. Via an immersive environment, he said students can develop their language skills by using English to answer and ask exam questions.

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/start-ups/item/24507-english-learning-online/

By Steven Ambrus, Chronicle of Higher Ed

The National Autonomous University of Mexico, better known as UNAM, has said it will make virtually all of its publications, databases, and course materials freely available on the Internet over the next few years—a move that some academics speculated could push other universities in the region to follow suit. Campus officials at UNAM, Mexico’s largest university, said the program, known as All of UNAM Online, could double or triple the institution’s 3.5 million publicly available Web pages, as the largest collection of its kind in Latin America. They also said it was key to UNAM’s social mission as a public institution: providing educational resources to populations usually underrepresented in the university system—really, to anyone who desires access to them. “As the national university, we must assume a national mission and give back to society what we are doing with its financial support,” said Imanol Ordorika, a professor of social sciences and education at UNAM and a key force behind the effort. “That means providing open access and being accountable and transparent.”

http://chronicle.com/article/Mexicos-Largest-University-to/129772/

By Jim Giles, Technology Review

Thousands of people every day use the link-shortening service Bitly to tame unwieldy Web links to share on Twitter and other social media sites. Few realize that they’re simultaneously helping the New York company peer into the Web’s future. Bitly analyzes the pages pointed to by the 80 million short links it generates every day to predict changes in the public’s attitude toward people and companies. Now Bitly is set to get access to a slew of new data that could make its Web crystal ball even better at forecasting the future. Bitly has reached a data-sharing agreement with VeriSign, based in Dulles, Virginia. VeriSign acts as a kind of telephone directory for the Internet. Any address typed into a browser is sent to servers at VeriSign or one of a handful of other organizations, which help turn that URL into a numerical address that a computer can use to find the Web page it needs.

http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/39121/?p1=MstRcnt

By Tom Simonite, Technology Review

Even as the processing power and download speeds of mobile devices surge, one component still lags behind: the screen. LCD panels use significantly more power than any other component of a phone or tablet because of their need to pump out bright light to form an image. The only practical alternative is e-ink, the technology used in the Amazon Kindle; it consumes orders of magnitude less power but sacrifices color and the ability to change images fast enough for video playback or smooth game play. Now, after years of waiting, alternative technology that promises the best of both approaches is finally edging closer to commercialization. During a recent visit to mobile chipmaker Qualcomm’s headquarters in San Diego, Technology Review tried out a full-color, 5.7-inch Android tablet with a display that offers rich colors under bright light, close to those of an LCD and not unlike the pages of a magazine.

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/39135/?p1=A4

by David Zax, Technology Review

Best Buy has plans to sell a Toshiba “ultrabook”—an ultrathin, Intel-based laptop—for just $799. We don’t know exactly when it’ll be coming out—”sometime soon,” per Best Buy’s product page—but the news is noteworthy because it represents a new low price point for ultrabooks. The “Portégé Z835,” as it’s called, has one of Intel’s fancy new “Sandy Bridge” processors (a 1.4GHz Core i3-2367M processor, if we’re going to be precise). It’s got a 13.3″ LED-backlit TFT high-definition widescreen display, a 128GB Serial ATA solid state drive, a built-in webcam and mic, a mutliformat media reader, one USB 3.0 port and two USB 2.0 ports, and much more. The whole thing weighs 2.5 pounds and is just over a half-inch thick. Expect to see an ultrabook battle around this price point in the coming year; we can expect to see a ThinkPad ultrabook from Lenovo around this price in 2012, says The Verge. HP and Dell ultrabooks are also expected in early 2012.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/helloworld/27339/?p1=blogs

by Melony Shemberger, Leaf Chronicle

Students at Austin Peay State University wanting to get ahead and stay on track to graduation can take an online course during the University’s new winter term. Winter term courses begin Dec. 18 and end Jan. 27. The new term offers undergraduate students the opportunity to complete one class in just six weeks. All courses are offered online and include in-demand courses. The new term is expected to help students stay focused on completing credits toward a degree.

http://www.theleafchronicle.com/article/20111114/NEWS01/111140302/Students-can-stay-track-new-APSU-winter-term

by the Huffington Post

The California initiative would impose requirements on online providers that would address concerns about quality:

The courses would need to be certified by the University of California as A-G eligible;

The online provider – which could be a district, charter school, community college, or private provider under contract with a district – would have to be accredited;

The teacher would need to have a California teaching credential or the equivalent if a college instructor;

The online provider would be required to document student work, and students would have to pass a proctored end-of-year exam.

The initiative would leave it to the state Department of Education to create regulations governing payments between providers and districts and verification of work performed. The provider of an online chemistry course could contract with the students’ home districts to offer the lab work and to proctor exams, for example.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/14/californias-online-bill-o_n_1092841.html

by The Associated Press

Virginia Commonwealth University says a school server that included personal data of more than 176,000 current and former faculty, staff, students and affiliates has been hacked. The university says it is notifying everyone who may have been affected, but that it believes the likelihood that the data included in the files was compromised is “very low.”

http://hamptonroads.com/2011/11/vcu-says-server-176000-files-hacked

the Sloan Consortium

The ninth annual survey, a collaborative effort between the Babson Survey Research Group and the College Board, is the leading barometer of online learning in the United States. Based on responses from over 2,500 academic leaders, the complete survey report, “Going the Distance: Online Education in the United States, 2011” reports a 10% increase in online learning at colleges and universities.

http://sloanconsortium.org/publications/survey/going_distance_2011

by Erin Kourkounis, Pennsacola News Journal

Many Florida high-school students choose to take online courses. Some do it to boost their grade point averages. Others might want to take courses not offered at their school. But this year, online classes are no longer a choice. They are a graduation requirement. Starting with this year’s freshman class, students must take at least one virtual course in high school. The requirement is part of a bill the Florida Legislature passed in May with the goal of expanding virtual instruction to all students so they are better prepared for college and the 21st century workforce, according to the state Department of Education.

http://www.pnj.com/article/20111112/NEWS01/111120323/Reaction-mixed-requiring-online-high-school-courses

By Chuck Lawton, Geek Dad

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, along with Microsoft Vice President of Education Anthony Salcito, announced that the DOE’s TEACH campaign will be taken over by Microsoft. This site, a marketing effort aimed at recruiting new teachers, will be moved from its current home at teach.gov to a new site, teach.org. Going forward, Microsoft will be forming a coalition of private-sector companies to support these efforts. Secretary Duncan’s full remarks can be read at the ed.gov website. This is an interesting move by the Department of Education. Teach.gov launched a little over a year ago and aimed to help show people what teaching was really like. It also provides resources on how to get started in this career including directing access to financial aid scholarships or federal grant programs that can help.

http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2011/11/microsoft-partners-in-learning-aims-to-inspire-teachers/

By: Rohit Pande, the Tech Portal

In these two words ‘Information’ and ‘technology’, the aspect to be noticed is the fact that Information always precedes technology. Information existed, technology made it accessible, thereby building a society knowledge rich, aware and discerning. With time, the fact got proven that IT is an enabler of social inclusivity, by the sheer truth that it can bring information to the masses, educate them and make them live a life of quality. Technology is an indispensible aspect in fostering education and the Indian society is waking up to this fact. The One-Laptop-Per-Child was the initial fuel for a future where every corporate have sharpened their lens to laser focus on the under-privileged. It’s not mere distribution of books or schoolbags, as had the practice been really fruitful, the number of drop-outs definitely would have been much less than five million. Of the nearly one million public schools in India, less than 0.2 percent has any form of IT infrastructure or computer-based education.

http://www.technology-digital.com/web20/technology-charts-an-inclusive-socio-economic-growth-gradient

By Alexandra Rice, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Students’ use of electronic books has grown little, if at all, over the past three years, according to international surveys of more than 6,500 college students conducted in 2008 and again this year. The finding, from ebrary’s Global Student E-book Survey, surprised audience members when the survey report was previewed this week at the Charleston Conference, a gathering of librarians, publishers, and e-book vendors. Even so, presenters said they felt confident that the number of e-book users would grow more rapidly over the next six months, and that libraries and colleges must be ready to handle the demand.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/quickwire-student-e-book-use-has-flatlined-since-2008/34113

By Paul Fain, Inside Higher Ed

The American Public University System wants to get more bang for its buck with e-textbooks, so the for-profit college system is enlisting its professors to write and edit digital course materials. Faculty members are submitting proposals for e-textbooks to be used in about half of the institution’s general education courses by the end of 2012. And university leaders hope the recently launched APUS ePress will produce many more in-house e-textbooks in the future. The plan has led to grumbling among faculty members, some of whom worry about quality control for the new digital texts and about whether they will be paid enough for the new work. Internally published texts also raise challenging questions about professors’ intellectual property rights.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/11/07/american-public-university-enlists-faculty-write-e-textbooks