Educational Technology

February 29, 2012

Manifesto for Teaching Online

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:39 am

by the University of Edinburgh

The manifesto for teaching online is intended to stimulate ideas about creative online teaching. It was written by teachers and researchers in the field of online education, in connection with the MSc in E-learning programme at the University of Edinburgh. It attempts to rethink some of the orthodoxies and unexamined truisms surrounding the field. Each point is deliberately interpretable, and this page is a starting point for some of those interpretations.

A manifesto for teaching online from Jen Ross on Vimeo.

http://www.education.ed.ac.uk/swop/manifesto.html

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KnowU: Where Social Meets Learning

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:35 am

by Eric Stoller, Inside Higher Ed

Representatives from Harrison College (HC) emphasize a “sense of place” with their KnowU learning platform. The platform went live last month with 164 online students who were slated to use KnowU. According to Mark Apple, Director of PR at HC, “focus groups were used to determine WHICH [virtual] space was the most visually appealing.” HC created more than “100 different environments” during testing and selected visuals that “resonated the most with focus groups.” With an emphasis on “Learning, Community, and Support,” KnowU is a unique take on the online learning experience. HC representatives commented on how they wanted to position KnowU as a platform that creates and sustains community as a way of stimulating engagement and learning. The community aspect is largely driven by social media integration.

http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/student-affairs-and-technology/knowu-where-social-meets-learning

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Pandoc Converts All Your (Text) Documents

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:30 am

By Lincoln Mullen, Chronicle of Higher Ed

I wanted to do all of my writing in a plain text format, like Markdown or LaTeX. But I need to be able to share my writing in a variety of formats: HTML for the web, PDF for printed documents or academic writing, and occasionally RTF or Microsoft Word or OpenOffice. The best way I’ve found to move between these formats is Pandoc. Pandoc is a command line tool written by a philosophy professor, John MacFarlane. Its general use is to take a document in one format and convert it to another. You can get an idea of the wide variety of formats Pandoc can translate by looking at an enlargement of the header diagram. Here’s an example of how this works. Suppose that you have a Markdown document like the one we created for the post on Markdown. (View pandoc-example.markdown on GitHub.) You can convert this to a number of text formats with a simple terminal command

http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/pandoc-converts-all-your-text-documents/38700

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February 28, 2012

iPad 3: Predictions and Challenges

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:39 am

by Tom Kaneshige, CIO

The iPad 3 is on deck. Kyle Wiens, what are your predictions?

Wiens: I anticipate the iPad 3 will have basically the same form factor but with double the screen resolution. A Retina display, or four times the pixels, would be the goal. Although I haven’t run the numbers, it all depends on how far you hold it from your face. It’ll be very close to the Retina display. There might also be a high-resolution camera. To go with this, Apple will have to up the graphics processor. Right now it’s a dual-core, gigahertz-ish processor, but I think there are a lot of improvements down the pike for graphics performance on iPads. (In its iPhone 4S teardown, iFixit found that the A5 dual-core processor with 512 MB RAM fell short of 1 GB.) Have you seen Infinity Blade 2 on the iPhone? It’s gorgeous. The graphics are just awesome. You can’t really see pixels or flaws. But on the iPad, there’s notably lower resolution. That’s because the iPhone and iPad use the same graphics processor (while screen sizes are different). Apple needs to up their game on the iPad.

http://www.cio.com/article/699517/iPad_3_Predictions_and_Challenges

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E-textbooks beyond Apple’s iBooks

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:35 am

By Hayley Tsukayama, Washington Post

Apple’s iBooks got a lot of attention, but there are several other alternatives in the e-textbook space that show promise. For example, the Nature Publishing Group recently launched a new text called Principles of Biology, a constantly updating science textbook. Vikram Savkar, publishing director for the Nature Publishing Group, said that he’s been working to take the textbook forward, and feels that being able to offer a device- and platform-independent online text is the best way to do that.  Apple is infamous for the control it exercises over its image — especially its retail stores. Here are some of the top consumer gadgets that have been creating a lot of buzz.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/e-textbooks-beyond-apples-ibooks/2012/02/21/gIQAl79zRR_story.html

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Backup Google Documents with Insync

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:30 am

By Ryan Cordell, ProfHacker Chronicle of Higher Ed

ProfHacker loves Google Docs and backup plans. Today’s recommendation combines the two. Recently a post at Lifehacker made me aware of Insyc, free software that creates a folder on your hard drive and automatically syncs the documents in your Google Docs to it. Insync works in both directions—new documents added online are downloaded to your hard drive, and documents added to the synced folder are uploaded to Google Docs. I’ve only played with Insync for a few days, but it seems to work as advertised

http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/backup-google-documents-with-insync/38618?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

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February 27, 2012

Understanding the Implications of Online Learning for Educational Productivity

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:40 am

U.S. Dept. of Education

New Federal Report on Online Learning Available: The US Department of Education released a report called “Understanding the Implications of Online Learning for Educational Productivity” this past January. In the United States, online learning alternatives are proliferating rapidly. Recent estimates suggest that 1.5 million elementary and secondary students participated in some form of online learning in 2010 (Wicks 2010). The term online learning can be used to refer to a wide range of programs that use the Internet to provide instructional materials and facilitate interactions between teachers and students and in some cases among students as well. Online learning can be fully online, with all instruction taking place through the Internet, or online elements can be combined with face-to-face interactions in what is known as blended learning (Horn and Staker 2010).

http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/os/technology/implications-online-learning.pdf

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Behind the Google Goggles, Virtual Reality

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:34 am

by NICK BILTON, New York Times

Google is expected to start selling eyeglasses that will project information, entertainment and, this being a Google product, advertisements onto the lenses. The glasses are not being designed to be worn constantly — although Google engineers expect some users will wear them a lot — but will be more like smartphones, used when needed, with the lenses serving as a kind of see-through computer monitor. “It will look very strange to onlookers when people are wearing these glasses,” said William Brinkman, graduate director of the computer science and software engineering department at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. “You obviously won’t see what they can from the behind the glasses. As a result, you will see bizarre body language as people duck or dodge around virtual things.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/technology/google-glasses-will-be-powered-by-android.html

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Why we should all learn to hack

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:28 am

by Tom Chatfield, BBC

There is an old joke amongst computer programmers: “There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don’t.” Not funny to everyone, but it makes a neat point. We now live in a world divided between those who understand the inner workings of our computer-centric society and those who don’t. This is not something that happened overnight, but it is something that has profound consequences for our future. In professional terms, it’s easy to see why knowing how to put together a program is a valuable skill: more and more jobs require some technical know-how, and the most skilled students have glittering prospects ahead of them. But with only a fraction of those signing up for free lessons ever likely to reach even a semi-professional level of skill, are movements like Code Academy able to offer more than good intentions?

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120206-why-we-should-all-learn-to-hack

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February 26, 2012

KU program puts technology, expert training, new teaching in classrooms

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KU program puts technology, expert training, new teaching in classrooms

by the University of Kansas

It’s becoming more common with every semester for a school to hand out new electronics such as iPads or laptop computers to give students a new tool in their educational kit. For years now, a University of Kansas program has been going several steps beyond, knowing it’s not enough to just give a classroom new gadgets, it’s vital to provide teachers with the training on how to use the technology to enhance curriculum and help change how students learn. Since 2003, Technology Rich Classrooms, a project of Advance Learning Technologies in Education in KU’s Center for Research on Learning, has been managing a Kansas State Department of Education program that provides funding to school districts across the state to purchase new technology and fund a facilitator in the school who coaches teachers how to make the new devices part of higher order curriculum. Nearly 90 Kansas schools have received the two-year, Title IID grants, and the program is spreading beyond Kansas’ borders. “When it comes down to it, we don’t talk about iPads or Macbooks, we talk about using any technology the school has that engages students and empowers critical thinking,” said Amber Rowland, project leader.

http://www.news.ku.edu/2012/february/22/trc.shtml

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Technology to Turn Gestures Into Song

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:35 am

By David Wheeler, Chronicle of Higher ed

Vancouver, British Columbia—A new technology lets people control a speech synthesizer with gestures, allowing them to speak or sing with their hands. Along with opening new realms of musical expression, research with the speech-generating system may deepen understanding of how the brain drives spoken language and song. Sidney Fels, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of British Columbia, led the team of researchers that created the device. He talked about it in a session here at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/technology-to-turn-gestures-into-song/28768

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Continuing studies dean wants more opportunities for technology, research

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:28 am

by Patrick Svitek, Daily Northwestern

School of Continuing Studies Dean Thomas Gibbons wants his program — as well as hundreds of others across the country — to undergo what he calls “drastic change” as college costs skyrocket in a fragile economy. In an article published earlier this month, he urged similar colleges to reconsider their business models and place greater emphasis on technology and research capacity. At Northwestern’s School of Continuing Studies, part-time students can take night classes as part of bachelor’s, master’s and certificate programs taught by University faculty. The proposed reforms are part of a strategic plan for the University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA), for which Gibbons is set to become president later this year. The membership group includes more than 300 institutions of continuing higher education that would be affected by Gibbons’ outline. “Today’s economic realities have forced higher education to begin rethinking its fundamental business model — a model that for the past 30 years or more has seen the cost of college far outpace the cost of living for ordinary families,” Gibbons wrote in the inaugural issue of The EvoLLLution, a new education journal.

http://www.dailynorthwestern.com/campus/continuing-studies-dean-wants-more-opportunities-for-technology-research-1.2704229

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February 25, 2012

Blended learning as future of education

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:37 am

by eLearning News

Blended learning is a combination of classroom training along with online learning. Training that takes place in the classroom is done with the help of a teacher. In this type of learning the student –teacher interaction is direct and face to face and the teacher handles the content and the speed of the class going on. In spite of many misunderstandings, online learning can also be directed by the teacher. Through the online learning or digital learning the teacher can instruct her students through the webcast where they can see and interact with their teacher through the projector screen or the computer screen. Teachers can also post classes and make projects that learners complete on their own. The trainer still handles the content of the lessons and sets up the final time limit, but in online learning students are independent to choose how, when and where they want to learn.

http://empowerlms.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/blended-learning-as-future-of-education/

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iPad Kindergarten Research Starts Turning up Results

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:36 am

By Tanya Roscorla, Converge

Initial results from the nation’s first kindergarten iPad initiative show modest increases in literacy test scores, Auburn School District announced Thursday February 16. “This is the first real examination of a program with this age group of kids and such a strong research design,” said Damian Bebell, assistant research professor in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College, which collaborated with two others on this research.

http://www.convergemag.com/classtech/iPad-Kindergarten-Research.html

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Edtech Projects Spur Illinois Educators to Learn

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:29 am

By Tanya Roscorla, Converge

Over the past three or four years, educators in two Illinois schools sat through traditional presentations on technology tools during professional development time. “It was a challenge to try to encourage educators to use the technology that was available,” said James Gubbins, technology coordinator for Maine Township High School District 207 in Park Ridge.

http://www.convergemag.com/training/Edtech-Projects-Illinois.html?elq=b13c82bc39e1421f8a45b47b649d6dc2

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February 24, 2012

Children want to be treated as Humans – by Robot Teachers

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:42 am

by Kirsten Winkler, the Big Think

This week I came across an interesting study by Latitude Research via the MindShift Blog. In collaboration with LEGO® Learning Institute and Project Synthesis, Latitude asked children from across the world to write stories, imagining that a robot companion would be part of their everyday life, at school and beyond. The study Robots @ School found that children apparently have no problems to imagine a life with such a digitized friend, quite the opposite. The robot teacher would have all the time and patience to explain a problem and concept over and over again until the kid got it. But there won’t be any harsh judgement or shame involved like in a “normal” classroom setting. The robot teacher / tutor would be supportive and understanding.

http://bigthink.com/ideas/42541

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Technology in the Classroom Part 2: Social Media ‘Befriending’ Education

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:40 am

 

By Noah Golden, Quad News Quinnipiac University

Last week, Quad News examined the debate over whether students should be allowed to use laptops in the classroom. Despite opinions for and against the technology’s use, it was discovered that most Quinnipiac professors’ main concern is that, students will immediately go on social networking sites if given the opportunity to use a computer in class. But now, as Pam Dyer writes in “Social Media Today,” “When used as an educational tool, [schools] have found that social media enhances the learning experience by enabling students and teachers to connect and interact in new ways beyond the classroom.”

http://www.quadnews.net/mobile/lifestyles/technology-in-the-classroom-part-2-social-media-befriending-education-1.2703260

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EDUCATION: Schools’ need for Wi-Fi grows

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:35 am

by Dayna Straehley, Press Enterprise

As more Inland schools encourage students to go online to speed learning, conduct research and use Web versions of textbooks, educators say they need to expand wireless Internet access. Many schools haven’t upgraded their classroom wireless networks since the years when teachers marched their classes down to weekly computer lab sessions. Now students’ use of iPads, smartphones, laptops, Kindle Fires, iPod Touches and other devices to access the Internet is overloading some school wireless systems. Districts across the Inland area are updating their plans and looking for money to accommodate better Wi-Fi access. It’s not just for district bragging rights. School officials say students comprehend more by using wireless devices.

http://www.pe.com/local-news/topics/topics-education-headlines/20120219-education-schools-need-for-wi-fi-grows.ece

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February 23, 2012

U.S. needs to spark girls’ interest in technology

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By Kimberly Brown, Washington Post

President Obama and American firms have every reason to be concerned about the number of Americans who are pursuing science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. In the United States, 30 percent of bachelor degrees are awarded in scientific disciplines, according to the National Science Foundation (NSF), compared with 50 percent in Asia. Moreover, the U.S. has experienced a five percent decline between 2000 and 2006 in the number of foreign students relocating here to pursue those careers. The data underscore the need to formulate strategies to enhance and promote an interest in STEM to support U.S. economic growth and continued innovation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/us-needs-to-spark-girls-interest-in-technology/2012/02/16/gIQAhWghLR_story.html

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The Technovore: Tablet computing a fixture of commerce, entertainment

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:35 am

By Andrew DiLuccia, Auburn Journal

There are even smaller versions that offer you plenty of bang for your buck, i.e. the Kindle Fire (14 percent market share) from Amazon, which has been chipping away at the iPad’s reach, and Barnes and Nobles’ Nook Tablet. But the iPad is spawning new ways to work and learn, and gives folks freedom from the old desktop and laptop. Here in Placer County, iPads are being used as cash registers at coffee houses and are finding their way into schools. At Sheridan Elementary, out past Lincoln, students are getting lesson plans through iPads thanks to a couple of grants. “Our intent was that the children would access their curriculum though the iPads,” Sheridan Elementary School Principal Kris Knutson told our sister paper, the Lincoln News Messenger. “The teacher can see the kids’ iPads on her iPad, and if they are having a tough time on a problem, she can throw that up on the interactive wall and the kids can go up and do changes.” Apple is now providing school textbooks through its app store for use on the iPad.

http://auburnjournal.com/detail/200661.html

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Job hunters seek to sharpen skills

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:29 am

by Susan Morse, Seacoast Online

It’s a Wednesday night and York High School students fill the classrooms. They are adults who are returning to school to take computer and technology courses to beef up their job skills or to find a new career. Adult demand for General Education Diplomas and college degrees, as well as courses in Excel, Microsoft Office and other technology is increasing, according to Katie Schindler, director of York Adult Education. “There’s a huge increase in demand across the state,” Schindler told the York Budget Committee earlier this month. “A lot of adults are lacking those skills essential to getting those 21st century jobs.” “The enrichment program is definitely seeing an increase in technology and computer classes,” Schindler said. “They tend to fill up quickly.”

http://www.seacoastonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120219/NEWS/202190339/-1/NEWSMAP

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