Educational Technology

By Ernesto Priego, Inside Higher Ed

One of the ideas I took with me was how important it is to realise the significant infrastructural differences between academic institutions around the world. This means going beyond the usual common-sense educated awareness that not all countries, and therefore not all academic institutions enjoy, or suffer, the same structural conditions (funding, human resources, access to technology, salaries, academic work and “impact” cultures). In this case, it means understanding that in a globalised higher education market, some simple measures, involving digital literacy strategies, can be, for the time being, an initial step towards preventing a normalization which often leaves many scholars out of the competition.

http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/globalisation-digital-humanities-uneven-promise

By Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed

The buzz surrounding the digital humanities has largely emphasized its implications for professional scholarship. But here at the annual meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities on Thursday, a panel of digital humanists said that weaving digital humanities research into undergraduate education could help boost information literacy among college students. “I think it’s a little disgraceful how little our students are forced to learn about the tool they and their friends use every day,” said Christopher Blackwell, professor of classics at Furman University.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/01/27/could-digital-humanities-undergraduates-could-boost-information-literacy

by KOSU

Thrun’s colleague Andrew Ng taught a free, online machine learning class that ultimately attracted more than 100,000 students. When I ask Ng how Stanford’s administration reacted to their proposition, he’s silent for a second. “Oh boy,” he says, “I think there was a strong sense that we were all suddenly in a brave new world.”Ng says there were long conversations about whether or not to give online students a certificate bearing the university’s name. But Stanford balked and ultimately the school settled on giving students a letter of accomplishment from the professors that did not mention the university’s name. “We are still having conversations about that,” says James Plummer, dean of Stanford’s School of Engineering. “I think it will actually be a long time — maybe never — when actual Stanford degrees would be given for fully online work by anyone who wishes to register for the courses.”

http://kosu.org/2012/01/stanford-takes-online-schooling-to-the-next-academic-level/

by CEF Professional

In thе past few years of research оn instructional technology has resulted in a clearer vision оf hоw technology сan affect teaching аnd learning. Today, аlmost everу school in the United States of America uѕеs technology aѕ a part of teaching and learning аnd with eаch state hаvіng itѕ оwn customized technology program. In mоѕt оf thоsе schools, teachers uѕe thе technology thrоugh integrated activities thаt аre a part of their daily school curriculum. For instance, instructional technology creates an active environment іn whiсh students not оnlу inquire, but also define problems оf interest tо them. Such аn activity wоuld integrate thе subjects of technology, social studies, math, science, and language arts with the opportunity to create student-centered activity. Most educational technology experts agree, however, thаt technology ѕhоuld bе integrated, nоt as a separate subject or аѕ a once-in-a-while project, but аs а tool to promote and extend student learning оn а daily basis.

http://www.cefpro.org/16-how-can-instructional-technology-make-teaching-and-learning-more-effective-in-th-schools.html

by Nick Pandolfo, Hechinger Report

The Bronzeville Scholastic Institute ninth-graders were working on writing assignments in the school’s homework lab, whose 24 computers are shared by nearly a thousand students from the three schools that occupy DuSable High School’s campus on the South Side. “The ratio of computers to students is absurd,” said English teacher Andrew Flaherty, a veteran educator who reports that many of his students cannot afford computers at home and don’t get enough time to use them at school. As a result, Bronzeville Scholastic students born into a digital era struggle with basic skills, such as saving work to a flash drive and setting margins in Microsoft Word. At a time when awareness of technology and its potential uses in school is growing nationally, this public high school of 550 often feels like a poster child for the so-called digital divide.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/24/education-technology-as-s_n_1228072.html

by Cheyenne Johnson, UCSB Bottom Line

Technology allows us to stay connected across city, state and even national lines. We can support rebels in Egypt from the comfort of the lecture hall where we’re supposedly learning English. James Fowler, a political science professor at University of California San Diego, summarized technology as “Instead of simply knowing who our friends are, and perhaps our friends’ friends, we can peer beyond our social horizon and see our place in a vast worldwide social network.” Through the Internet, we can feel tied to humanity as a whole, crossing political, social and ethnic lines to connect and discuss.

http://thebottomline.as.ucsb.edu/2012/01/technology-is-in-your-face-is-that-so-bad

By LAURA MCMULLEN, US News

Integrating technology into a high school classroom isn’t a one-step process. “You can’t just slap a netbook [computer] on top of a textbook and say, ‘Great, now we have technology,” says Bob Wise, former governor of West Virginia and president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, an advocacy organization. Wise says that digital learning starts with teachers, whose performance is enhanced by technology—not the other way around. That’s also the idea of Digital Learning Day, which the Alliance is spearheading.

http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/high-school-notes/2012/01/25/3-tips-on-integrating-technology-in-the-classroom

By D.C. Denison, Boston Globe

For most of the past six months, Vicky Shen, an editor at textbook publisher Pearson Education in Boston, has been living with a secret. Just a few blocks away in the Back Bay, Bethlam Forsa, executive vice president of global product development at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Inc. was working on the same undercover project. Both were preparing electronic editions for last week’s launch of an initiative from Apple Inc. to put textbooks on its iPad tablets. In a recent biography, the computer maker’s cofounder Steve Jobs said the textbook business was “ripe for destruction,’’ but it turns out Apple wants Pearson and Houghton to be partners, not casualties of technology.

http://articles.boston.com/2012-01-26/business/30663246_1_digital-textbooks-ipad-sarah-rotman-epps

By Nick DeSantis, Chronicle of Higher Ed

The Association of Research Libraries might have a solution to what some librarians call “the VHS-cassette problem.” Here’s the scenario: An academic library has a collection of video tapes that is slowly deteriorating, thanks to the fragile nature of analog media. A librarian would like to digitize the collection for future use, but avoids making the copies out of fear that doing so would violate copyright law. And the institution’s attorneys have advised the librarian that the fair-use principle, which might offer a way to make copies legally, is too flexible to rely on. When the Association of Research Libraries and a team of fair-use advocates surveyed librarians to find out how they navigate copyright issues, many of them described that exact conundrum. But they may soon have a way out. Tomorrow the group will announce a code of best practices designed to outline ways academic librarians can take advantage of their fair-use rights to navigate common copyright issues.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/fair-use-guide-hopes-to-solve-librarians-vhs-cassette-problem/35151

By Tanya Roscorla, Converge

In the Florida Gubernatorial Election of 2010, only 8 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds voted. “Eight percent means that this generation has no voice with our political leadership,” said Ann Henderson, director of the Bob Graham Center for Public Service at the University of Florida. “That’s a problem to me.” This generation of millenials doesn’t participate in democracy the way previous generations did. Their version of participation is reading blogs, sending stories they like to friends or watching “The Colbert Report.”

http://www.convergemag.com/college-career/Social-Media-Wall.html

By Converge

By giving schools access to an interactive learning platform, Virginia will help prepare eighth- and ninth-grade students to become good digital citizens, the commonwealth announced on Thursday. Schools that choose to use the 3.5-hour curriculum called “My Digital Life” will help students use online tools responsibly and safely. The curriculum lines up with National Educational Technology Standards that ISTE developed and covers privacy, security, cyberbullying and digital relationships, according to EverFi Inc., the company that developed it.

http://www.convergemag.com/policy/Virginia-Makes-Digital-Literacy-Curriculum-Available-to-Schools.html

By Nick DeSantis, Chronicle of Higher Ed

The Stanford University professor who taught an online artificial intelligence course to more than 160,000 students has abandoned his tenured position to aim for an even bigger audience. Sebastian Thrun, a professor of computer science at Stanford, revealed today that he has departed the institution to found Udacity, a start-up offering low-cost online classes. He made the surprising announcement during a presentation at the Digital – Life – Design conference in Munich, Germany. The development was first reported earlier today by Reuters. Despite the low production quality, many of the 200 Stanford students taking the course in the classroom flocked to the videos because they could absorb the lectures at their own pace. Eventually, the 200 students taking the course in person dwindled to a group of 30. Meanwhile, the course’s popularity exploded online, drawing students from around the world. The experience taught the professor that he could craft a course with the interactive tools of the Web that recreated the intimacy of one-on-one tutoring, he said.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/tenured-professor-departs-stanford-u-hoping-to-teach-500000-students-at-online-start-up/35135?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

by Samantha Bail, the UK Guardian

Thanks to the ubiquity of the internet and social media sites like Facebook, children and young adults, girls just as much as boys, now handle laptops and smartphones confidently, taking for granted their ability to use such highly complex technology without much effort. Why is it then that the other end of this spectrum, the side which produces technology rather than just consuming it, is still widely regarded as a a “boys only” club? I believe it is incredibly important to send out this message to children who are making their first steps on a computer and learning how to programme – either for leisure or as part of a computing class in school: It’s not about learning how to write lines of program code; it’s about the amazing things you can do by writing code.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network/2012/jan/19/girls-computing-manchester-geek-girls

By Rosalie Murphy, USA Today

This semester, students of all ages can attend lectures at Harvard, Stanford and MIT with nothing but a WiFi connection. Some professors don’t assign reading; others give final exams. And they all teach for free. It’s part of a growing trend at universities worldwide: Posting popular, engaging lectures online for public consumption. “People go into continuing education or lifelong learning for different reasons,” said Dan Colman, who directs Stanford’s Continuing Studies Program and edits an educational website, Open Culture. “Some people are looking to acquire job skills. [But] I think there are other people who are just really curious about the world.”

http://www.usatodayeducate.com/staging/index.php/ccp/a-harvard-education-for-free

Jacqueline Barnes, Litmos LMS

Do you feel like you are being more efficient and productive when learning online? Are you maximizing your capacity to retain information? Or are you feeling the extreme opposite? Are your brain and eyes on overload from viewing everything via online? According to recent studies, our brains love learning online. Columbia neuroscientist, Betsy Sparrow, states, “We are becoming symbiotic with our computer tools”. There is no fact in denying that people today are constantly glued to their computer, Smartphone, tablet, or other electronic gadget. Although some may argue that it is a bit excessive, being one with our computer tools allows our brains to become like online memory banks. Within seconds, we can work through a problem with the help of the Internet; which in turn allows our brains to offload some information, and create more room in our brain to focus on areas of other interest. Studies have shown that the action of “googling”, “may actually engage a greater extent of neural circuitry” than paper-based complex reasoning, states neuroscientist Gary Small.

http://www.litmos.com/industry-news/online-learning-it-does-a-brain-good-2/

by Julie Hubbard, The Tennessean

MTSU President Sidney McPhee falls in line with a recent Pew Research Center study that says leaders of the nation’s colleges are a tech-savvy group. McPhee has an iPhone, iPad, several iPods, several computers and a Nikon camera. MTSU President Sidney McPhee used Skype on his iPhone for a more personal conversation with the Hangzhou Normal University president, working out the details of shipping 500 plants from China to Murfreesboro for research. But McPhee’s technophile side doesn’t end with smartphones. He’s also an avid iPad user who hired Middle Tennessee State University students to design apps to check their grades, review lunch menus and see a campus map. A new lab at his school will include tablet-phone combinations at desks — new technology the manufacturer is testing before putting it on the market. “I was an early adopter of the iPod,” McPhee said. “When it comes out, I don’t mind being the guinea pig.” He reflects new Pew Research Center polling on university presidents’ technology use, which shows those in charge of educating America’s college students are more likely to embrace new technology. Nearly 87 percent use a smartphone daily, 56 percent use a laptop several times a day, and half use a tablet computer, compared with 8 percent of the general public with tablets.

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20120118/NEWS04/301180082/College-presidents-set-curve-when-comes-technology?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE

by Daily Disruption News

In the United States, the number of women represented in undergraduate computer science education and the white-collar information technology workforce peaked in the mid-1980s. Particularly in computer science, there has been a dramatic drop in women earning bachelor’s degrees. Recent figures from the Computing Research Association Taulbee Survey indicate that the number recently fell below 12%, from nearly 40% in the mid 80s. A similar situation is observed in Canada, where the decline of women in computer science is apparent. Research has shown that some aspects about computing may discourage women. One of the biggest turn-offs is the “geek factor”. High school girls are repelled by the image of Computer Scientists sit in a cubicle writing code for the duration of their workday. The “geek factor” affects both male and female high school students, but it seems to have more of a negative effect on the female students. The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is looking to change that perception. The 12th Annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC) has opened its Call for Participation.

http://www.dailydisruption.com/2012/01/women-in-tech-2012-grace-hopper-celebration-of-women-in-computing-opens-call-for-participation/

by Computerworld UK

People working in the technology sector understand that while most Brits know how to use, and benefit from modern technologies, very few understand how they are created. Fewer still would be able to develop the technology themselves. But these skills are vital to the future of the UK. A few months ago a report by Ian Livingstone and Alex Hope called ‘Next Gen – Transforming the UK into the world’s leading talent hub for the video games and visual effects industries’, made it abundantly clear that computing skills are crucial to economic success. So we must ensure our young people have the knowledge and skills necessary to stay at the forefront of technological advances.

http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/management-briefing/2012/01/reshaping-schools-ict—we-can-all-play-our-part/index.htm

by SFist

A computer lab at San Francisco City College was recently shut down after it was discovered that one of its computers contained a virus that had been transmitting user data to Russia and China for the past ten years. Authorities aren’t quite sure yet what information was stolen, but they suspect it was primarily personal information and credit card numbers from students and staff. The virus logged students’ keystrokes, recorded images of the screens and might have spread to other labs and home computers via flash drives. As Help Net Security reports, the virus was detected by David Hotchkiss, the City College’s chief technology officer, over Thanksgiving on a lab computer at Cloud Hall on the Phelan Avenue Campus. Hotchkiss soon “discovered an infestation of viruses that compromised a great number of servers and desktop computers across the college district’s administrative, instructional and wireless networks.”

http://sfist.com/2012/01/16/city_college_computers_plagued_by_v.php

by the Guardian

Last week the Guardian launched a campaign to improve the teaching of computer science and IT in schools. Businesses had complained that poor quality courses in schools, colleges and universities had led to a shortage of workers with programming skills, even as these skills become more and more relevant for a wider variety of jobs. Michael Gove, the education secretary, agreed, and last Wednesday made a speech in which he scrapped the existing ICT curriculum – which he felt left children “bored out of their minds being taught how to use Word and Excel by bored teachers” – in favour of allowing schools to write their own, with input from businesses and universities.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/mortarboard/2012/jan/17/digital-literacy-campaign-best-of-your-comments-and-ideas

BY JOE ROBERTSON, The Kansas City Star

Kathleen Teel can certainly see why most schools ban students from bringing their iPads and smartphones to class. All she has to do is look around. This is what Notre Dame de Sion High School gets for being one of the first to go BYOT, allowing students to “bring your own technology.” Teel, a biology teacher, ranges among girls clustered in noisy twos and threes around a smorgasbord of computing options. And her classroom, because it sits in a reinforced basement, can’t seem to produce enough Wi-Fi to go around. So groups of girls have taken to the hallway, sitting with laptops on their knees to snag better connections.

Regrets? Certainly not.

This, say administrators, teachers and students at Sion, is the way it should be.

http://www.kansascity.com/2012/01/17/3374668/kansas-city-school-allows-students.html