Educational Technology

by Craig Watkins, Huffington Post

Education administrators block social media because they believe it threatens the personal and emotional safety of their students. Or they believe social media is a distraction that diminishes student engagement and the quality of the learning experience. Schools also block social media to prevent students from accessing inappropriate content. I have often wondered what are schools really blocking when they block social media. Working in a high school this year has given me added perspective. In one class my graduate assistant and I are working with a teacher in a Technology Applications class. Our goal is to reinvent the classroom and, more important, the learning that takes place. We structured the learning to be autonomous, self-directed, creative, collaborative, and networked. We decided to let the student teams pick which digital media project they wanted to pursue. Some students elected to team together to produce a series of Public Service Announcements (PSAs) that target teens. These students liked the idea of using digital media to tell compelling stories about the challenges of teen life. Other students wanted to produce short narratives. They were excited about creating worlds, characters, and narrative dilemmas that allowed their artistic identities to flourish.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-watkins/what-schools-are-really-b_b_1245209.html

By Collin Binkley, The Columbus Dispatch

Westerville North junior Noel Hilling uses her cellphone in her U.S. history class. Students were tweeting about the lesson; teacher Damon Mollenkopf keeps an eye on his tablet computer to watch their dialogue. “I can say, ‘Hey, this person makes a good point,’” he said. Teachers in some classrooms confiscate smartphones from students caught texting or surfing social-media websites. amon Mollenkopf doesn’t bother. The teacher at Westerville North High School actually encourages students to chat with one another on social-networking websites, with the hope that they’re talking about history. The kids can be having a separate conversation, but it can be quiet, on Twitter,” said Mollenkopf, who keeps an eye on his tablet computer to watch their dialogue.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2012/02/01/schools-link-smarts-phones.html

By Priya Natarajan, Washington Post

The Khan Academy has pioneered the use of technology to encourage unstructured learning outside the classroom and now provides teaching supplements in 36 schools around the country. For instance, recent reports describe a San Jose charter school using Khan’s instructional videos in ninth-grade math classes to tailor lessons to each student’s pace.

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/02/03/essay-massive-online-courses-not-game-changing-innovation

by Mindshift KQED

Google has revamped its site for educators, creating a redesigned repository for all its educational tools and resources for teachers, schools, and students. The newest feature is News and Calendar, a listing of all events and deadlines for Google’s education endeavors. Google also created an online booklet called Google in Education: A New and Open World for Learning, which lists the company’s initiatives and programs within the education realm, such as the Computer Science for High School program — university-created workshops for local high school and middle school computer science teachers teachers.

http://mindshift.kqed.org/2012/01/google-launches-new-education-site/

By Dolores Gende, Mind Shift KQED

Apple’s announcement last week about its new iBooks2 and authoring app created big waves in education circles. But smart educators don’t necessarily need Apple’s slick devices and software to create their own books. How educators think of content curation in the classroom is enough to change their reliance on print textbooks. As the open education movement continues to grow and become an even more rich trove of resources, teachers can use the content to make their own interactive textbooks. It might seem daunting, but the availability of quality materials online and the power of tapping into personal learning networks should make it easier. Here’s how to create a digital textbook and strategies for involving the students in its development in three steps.

http://mindshift.kqed.org/2012/01/how-to-create-your-own-textbook-with-or-without-apple/

By Ann Doss Helms, Charlotte Observer

Asking families to buy their own educational technology runs counter to the normal way of doing things in public education. But Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools say that’s the best hope for embracing the digital age, which moves faster than government budgets and bureaucratic decisions. They say kids whose families who can’t afford the latest gadgets – an iPad, for instance, runs about $500 to $700 – won’t be left out, but parents and PTAs that can pitch in will step up the pace of going wireless. It’s not a new concept to private and charter schools. For instance, Carolina International School, a K-10 charter in Harrisburg, recently decided that all students above third grade should have tablets to use in class, and asked families to do their part. About two-thirds bought their kids tablets, and the school paid for those who couldn’t. Even in high-poverty schools, such as Cochrane Collegiate Academy, many students already have smartphones. In the new Bring Your Own Technology era, they’ll be able to use those for Internet research and sharing information in class.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/01/29/2967994/in-some-schools-parents-and-ptas.html

by UCSD Guardian

The U.S. Department of Education’s Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance proposed the creation of a national online textbook database to reduce costs of course materials. The cost of attending college is rapidly rising, and with it are the escalating costs of textbooks. The College Board has predicted that the average student at a four-year public university will spend $1,137 this year on textbooks alone. In 2007, the U.S. Department of Education’s Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance proposed the creation of a national digital marketplace that would reduce costs by uploading textbooks online. This idea is a necessary step towards affordability, as any reduction in textbook costs will provide welcome relief to already financially burdened students. With its ease of access and promises of slashed prices, a national textbook database will discourage students from skimping on their required texts. The online system would allow students to do all the same things that can be done in a printed textbook, like highlighting passages — with the added plus that it would be much easier to search for key terms. Professors would also be able to create custom texts online, so students would not have to spend copious amounts of money on purchasing custom course readers.

http://www.ucsdguardian.org/home/item/25286-quick-takes-national-online-textbook-database

by Morgan Johnson, Brown Herald

Canvas will replace MyCourses by spring 2013. More than 3,000 students this semester will use Canvas, Brown’s new online course management system, before its slated replacement of MyCourses in spring 2013. Canvas, officially selected last spring after receiving positive feedback from student and faculty surveys and focus groups, had its first testing phase last fall when it was used in nine undergraduate courses and by first- and second-year medical students, according to the project’s recently launched website. All faculty members were invited via email to participate in the second phase of testing this spring. “We received a very healthy number of responses,” said Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron of this semester’s volunteers. Sixty faculty members elected to adopt Canvas, which will be used in roughly 70 courses, Bergeron said.

http://www.browndailyherald.com/professors-replace-mycourses-with-canvas-1.2691928

by Eric Weddle, Journal-Courier

As part of the redesign, lectures are mostly online videos and classes are taught in a special room inside Hicks Undergraduate Library. There, small moveable tables allow students to interact more easily and white boards are used at each table. “Everyone has a pen in their hand,” Delworth said. “The chairs are not bolted to the floor. For what we are doing, we need to move around. A normal classroom doesn’t let you do this.” In Delworth’s algebra and trigonometry course, students are in the classroom for one weekly 75-minute class, instead of three 50-minute classes. Videos of Delworth’s lectures are available online. Students are expected to watch the lectures before the Thursday class. Once in class, students work on problems together. In other courses, students review work of classmates, offering critiques and critically thinking about the subject, Dooley said.

http://www.jconline.com/article/20120130/NEWS0501/201300315/More-interaction-less-lecturing-impacts-Purdue-classes

By ASQ

While teens rank some STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) -related careers as offering the best chance of getting a job in the future, 67 percent of youth in grades 6-12 who are interested in pursuing a career in STEM say they are concerned about the obstacles they would face, according to an ASQ survey conducted online in December by Harris Interactive. “It’s encouraging to see that more students see the value of STEM careers like engineering but clearly STEM professionals and educators can be doing more to support students along this career path.” The survey was fielded among 713 youth in grades 6-12 and a complementary survey was fielded online among 327 parents of children aged 10-17. Both studies polled respondents on their attitudes about STEM careers and study, and fielded in anticipation of National Engineers Week, Feb. 19-25.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120127005662/en/U.S.-Youth-Reluctant-Pursue-STEM-Careers-ASQ

By Jon Marcus, Washington Post

An emerging group of entrepreneurs with influential backing is seeking to lower the cost of higher education from as much as tens of thousands of dollars a year to nearly nothing. These new arrivals are harnessing the Internet to offer online courses, which isn’t new. But their classes are free, or almost free. Most traditional universities have refused to award academic credit for such online studies. Now the start-ups are discovering a way around that monopoly, by inventing credentials that “graduates” can take directly to employers instead of university degrees.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/online-course-startups-offer-virtually-free-college/2012/01/09/gIQAEJ6VGQ_story.html

by Education-Portal

No tuition money? No problem! There are many top universities that offer free courses online. This list ranks several of the best free university courses available for people who want to enhance their personal knowledge or advance in their current fields. Most free courses don’t lead to college credit. The free courses from these schools don’t offer a path towards credit, but they are strong resources if you want to learn from some of the best professors in the world.

http://education-portal.com/articles/Universities_with_the_Best_Free_Online_Courses.html

by Free Tech 4 Teachers

Udemy, an online course hosting service that I’ve previously written about, recently launched a new project called The Faculty Project. The Faculty Project is a series of free online courses developed by professors from top-notch universities including Northwestern, Dartmouth, and Vassar. The courses will be conducted through Udemy’s platform of video, slides, and PDFs. While it’s not clear if the professors will or will not be checking-in on the courses, there are discussion boards for students in each course to correspond with each other.

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2012/01/faculty-project-free-courses-from.html

By KAITLYN BYRNE, the Reflector

During the fall 2011 semester, 201 cases of academic dishonesty were reported at Mississippi State University. By comparison, 271 cases of academic dishonesty were reported for the entire 2010-2011 academic year. James Orr, director of the student honor code office, said the increase in reported academic dishonesty cases is not due to an increase in cheating. Instead, the increase is due to professors taking a more active involvement in reporting students who are caught cheating. “Faculty members and other students are vigilant in reporting and discovering academic dishonesty,” Orr said. “Professors understand that a major part of deterring academic dishonesty involves reporting incidents and ensuring that students receive the appropriate sanction.” Orr said sanctions for violating the student honor code could include receiving a zero on the assignment, lowered course grade, dismissal from MSU and/or the course grade of “XF.”

http://www.reflector-online.com/mobile/news/cheating-reports-continue-to-increase-1.2691143

by Peter Murray, Singularity Hub

 This past August fellow Singularity Hub writer Aaron Saenz wrote about Udacity, the online university created by Stanford artificial intelligence professor and Google autonomous vehicle leader, Sebastian Thrun. At the time Thrun was gearing up to teach his Introduction to Artificial Intelligence course to a class of 200 at Stanford. But why teach 200 when you can teach 1,000…or 160,000? With Udacity, Thrun and fellow AI giant Peter Norvig created an online version of the course, and anyone that wanted to enroll could – for free. The homework assignments and exams would be the same as the ones given to the Stanford students, and they would be graded in the same way so online enrollees could see how they stacked up to some of the brightest students in the world. It was to be a grand experiment in education.

http://singularityhub.com/2012/01/28/sebastian-thrun-aims-to-revolutionize-university-education-with-udacity/

by David Zax, Technology Review

Wearable electronics gets a new boost, with a new platform from Adafruit Industries, the brainchild of DIY-goddess Limor Fried (hacker handle: Ladyada). The new platform, dubbed the Flora, points to a future where people are wearing TV screens–or at least, something vaguely like them–on their T-shirts. The Flora board is quite small, less than 2” in diameter (the thing has to be wearable, after all), and has built-in USB support (“this means you plug it in to program it, it just shows up,” says the site). CNET says the new platform is designed so that anyone can “craft a matrix of hundreds or someday, more than 1,000 small LED ‘pixels.’” Currently the Flora, which is being beta tested, can support no more than 500 linked pixels. Of course, 500 pixels isn’t an immense number–you might want to stick to your television to watch a movie–but it’s a start.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/helloworld/27535/?p1=A4

by Christopher Mims, Technology Review

New Hanover County, North Carolina, just rolled out Super Wi-Fi, which is its actual name, not just a patronizing euphemism I’m deploying because I think you can’t handle “a new Wi-Fi standard operating in the ‘white spaces’ between 50-700Mhz, where previously only television stations were allowed to transmit.” Aside: here’s a very accessible primer on what Super Wi-Fi is and why you should care about it (http://gizmodo.com/5646259/what-is-super-wi+fi) .

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/27531/?p1=blogs

By Rachel Metz. Technology Review

The market for sweetly named smart-phone assistants is heating up, as Siri, Apple’s iPhone-based virtual helper, just got a new “frenemy” named Evi. Created by True Knowledge, a Cambridge, U.K.-based semantic technology startup, Evi, like Siri, can answer questions posed aloud in a conversational manner. But unlike Siri, which is only loaded on the latest iPhone, Evi is available as an app for the iPhone and phones running Google’s Android software.

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/39560/?p1=A3

by Sue Gee, I-programmer

Online Computer Science classes that have attracted tens of thousands of students have been put back for a couple of weeks. Is this on account of Sebastian Thrun’s resignation from Stanford? Students who are signed up for Stanford University Online Computer Science Classes in Cryptography, Natural Language Processing, Human-Computer Interaction and Design and Analysis of Algorithms I, which were due to start during January, were sent emails telling them of the delay:

Unfortunately, there are still a few administrative i’s to dot and t’s to cross. We’re still hopeful that we’ll go live very soon, and we’ll let you know a firm date as soon as we possibly can.

http://www.i-programmer.info/news/150-training-a-education/3659-delay-for-january-stanford-online-courses.html

by Philjaelearning, Philadelphia Online Learning

With significant advancement in the field of information technology, many impressive changes have taken place in many sectors including education. Previously, only classroom courses were available, but nowadays, lots of online college courses are offered. Students from any part of the world can enroll and finish the class by going to virtual classes. These programs include lectures, assignments, tests, multimedia presentations, and readings. And many courses even offer face-to-face teacher facilities to talk over issues online.

http://philjaelearning.org/online-college-courses-make-learning-more-accessible/

By Barrett W. Sheridan and Brendan Greeley, Business Week

Free online courses are instructing non-techies in JavaScript and other coding and design of Web apps. A growing number of people agree that not only should Congress understand how software is made, so should everyone. Designers, economists, doctors, and others with no direct connection to the technology world are embracing coding as a way to advance their careers, automate boring tasks, or just a means of self-improvement, a hobby like learning Spanish or doing crossword puzzles. And they have access to an expanding universe of free online coding tutorials from startups and universities such as Stanford and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Programming is becoming “a much more fundamental piece of knowledge, similar to reading or writing,” says Andy Weissman, a partner at New York’s Union Square Venures, which led a $2.5 million investment round for Codecademy, a site that teaches people basic programming skills.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/computer-coding-not-for-geeks-only-01262012.html