Educational Technology

By Geoffrey H. Fletcher, THE Journal

If you are a technology leader in a school district or a state, the 2014-15 school year may be here all too soon. That is the year that 40-plus states will implement their online testing programs, and while more than 30 states now do their summative assessments online, these new tests will be different, demanding changes in instruction, and possibly different devices and more bandwidth. The new online assessments being created by two major consortia of states, the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), will be based on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and will address higher-order thinking skills, problem solving, and other more rigorous standards. The assessments will be online and will utilize some traditional multiple-choice questions along with different kinds of item types and tasks such as simulations, computer-based items, short answers, and a lot of writing.

http://thejournal.com/articles/2012/05/24/new-online-assessments.aspx

Marc Sanchez, Marketplace

Researchers at Intel are looking into building a computers that get smarter with age. The machines will figure out our day to day routines around the house, or wherever computers live these days, and try to incorporate that data into useful knowledge. Hopefully the phrase “try to incorporate that data” doesn’t mean learn our dumb, human ways and commence with the invasion.The research, to be carried out by the Intel Collaborative Research Institute for Computational Intelligence along with specialists from the Technion in Haifa and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, is aimed at enabling new applications, such as small, wearable computers that can enhance daily life.  For example if a user leaves his car keys in the house, the device will in the first week remember where he left them and by the second week will remind the user to pick up his keys before leaving home, Rattner said.

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/tech/tech-report-blog/intel-wants-take-computers-school-and-make-them-learn

By Patrick Thibodeau, Computerworld

There is a bipartisan push for legislation to automatically give green cards to foreign students who earn a master’s degree and above in science, technology, engineering and math, the so-called STEM degrees. In the past two weeks, three green card STEM bills were introduced in the Senate. There are already bills in the House. All these bills say that the U.S. should make it easy for a foreign student who earns an advanced STEM degree to remain in this country. But the bills disagree on key points. For instance, some bills restrict green cards or permanent residency to graduates of research universities, while others allow STEM advance degree grads from any school.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9227482/FAQ_The_new_push_in_Congress_to_increase_STEM_visas_

by Katrina Schwartz, Mind Shift

There’s been a lot of excitement around TED’s foray into education, bringing its inspirational video model to the classroom. TED-Ed launched the YouTube Channel with produced and animated videos about two months ago and now includes a free service that lets teachers upload any YouTube video to its polished platform. Teachers can also make any of the videos — TED or any other — more relevant to their classes by adding customized questions and quizzes. But it’s a work in progress at the moment, until educators can figure out the best ways to use the videos. The standard TED talk typically features a speaker, usually an expert in a subject, talking about innovations and inspirations. Most speakers cover topics in big, broad strokes, unlike, for example, Khan Academy videos, which parse and explain specific lessons in different subjects.

http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/05/can-ted-talks-really-work-in-a-classroom/

by Katrina Schwartz, Mind Shift

Students aren’t just posting personal pictures and stories on Facebook — it’s just as much a part of their social lives as it is a place where they connect with each other for school work, too. According to the survey, 46 percent of students have used Facebook to collaborate on school projects, and one in 10 high school students have tweeted about an academic subject. Meanwhile, in formal classroom settings, the practice of using these online tools as an acceptable means of learning has been slow: half of all middle and high school students say they can’t access social media sites at school. Educational policy makers need to connect the dots between what motivates and encourages students to learn and what’s actually happening in the classroom, the report states. 65 percent of school principals said it was unlikely they would allow personal devices in the coming school year. That connection might be found in students’ own mobile devices. A whopping 45 percent of middle-schoolers and 55 percent of high-schoolers say that they mainly access the Internet through mobile devices.

http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/05/schools-and-students-clash-over-use-of-technology/

By Scot A. Graden, CIO Advisor

The term “leading indicators” originated as an economic theory that allowed economists to predict “lagging indicators.” For example, they learned that examining factory orders (leading) could help predict the unemployment rate (lagging) for the next month. This concept has the potential to be very useful in the field of education.

Leading indicators have three general traits:

1.Timely & Actionable – It is reported in enough time to alter the course of action.

2.Powerful – It provides the opportunity to track progress or lack of progress.

3.Benchmarked – Levels of improvement can be determined by the users.

By monitoring certain levels of academic performance at one level, we may be able to predict future performance. Then, by focusing our efforts on these key leading indicator areas we can have a significant impact on key lagging indicators like ACT scores, high school graduation, college completion, etc.

http://www.schoolcio.com/Default.aspx?tabid=136&EntryId=4304

By Converge

Thirty-seven research universities make up Gig.U, which is on a mission to bring next-generation networks to universities and the communities that surround them. Gigabit Squared raised enough capital to support gigabit-speed networks in six Gig.U member-sponsored projects. Ultra high-speed Internet will hit communities around six research universities, thanks to $200 million in funding made available by the University Community Next Generation Innovation Project (Gig.U) and the company Gigabit Squared on Wednesday, May 23. By bringing networks up to gigabit speeds, Gig.U says it will cultivate economic growth and spark ideas to improve health care and education. Between November 2012 and March 2013, they will announce the university communities that will receive these funds. In the chosen communities, the program will build networks that are 100 to 1,000 times faster than what those locations have today, according to Gigabit Squared.

http://www.convergemag.com/policy/Broadband-University-Communities.html

By Tanya Roscorla, Converge

University of Rochester Simon Graduate School of Business students Ruiwan Xu, Chen Xu, Xiao Li, Shan Huang present a proposal on how IBM’s Watson technology could be applied to the mining industry taking into account regulatory, environmental and safety considerations. More than a year after the IBM Watson supercomputer beat two human champions on “Jeopardy,” seven teams of MBA students competed to figure out applications for Watson technology. Twenty-five students from the University of Rochester Simon Graduate School of Business submitted proposals to a judging panel of faculty, business and IBM leaders. IBM announced the top three proposals on Thursday, May 17. Two of the three winning teams included MBA students who concentrated in marketing. The first-place team had four members from Spain, Germany, Pakistan and the U.S.

http://www.convergemag.com/college-career/Watson-Supercomputer-Contest-Challenges-MBA-Students.html

By Tanya Roscorla, Converge

From fall 2007 to fall 2010, community college enrollment jumped by more than 20 percent and reached a total of about 8.2 million students, according to a 2011 American Association of Community Colleges survey of 268 community colleges. That’s an increase of 1.4 million students. Nearly 17 percent of the growth came between fall 2007 and fall 2009. At Howard Community College in Columbia, Md., the higher enrollment is putting a strain on its campuses. “What we’re seeing is that there’s such a huge rise in population in community colleges right now that we don’t necessarily have the on-campus infrastructure to support the influx of students, so space is a huge concern,” said Amy Chase Martin, director of instructional media at Howard Community College. “That’s a concern for us. But time is also a huge concern for our student population.”

http://www.convergemag.com/classtech/Technology-Investments-CC.html

by Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed

Senior campus technology leaders should be held accountable for developing and delivering on plans to:

• Increase Quality
• Increase Access
• Reduce Costs

Every project that technology touches (which now means most things we do in higher ed) should be looked at through the lenses of quality, access and costs. It is no longer adequate to address one or two legs of this three legged stool. The role that technology plays to increase quality and access is perhaps more apparent than the ability of technology to reduce costs. We are comfortable thinking about ROI invested in supporting and running our learning platforms. And to the extent that educational professional headcount (such as learning designers) falls under the computing budget we can draw a straight line between investments and results. The growth of open educational resources and open online courses are clear examples of the role that technology can play in improving access.

http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/4-ways-technology-can-reduce-higher-ed-costs

By Katie Mangan, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Andrea L. Taylor, the Microsoft Corporation’s director for North America community affairs, said the company had 5,000 jobs with starting salaries of $100,000 or more that are going unfilled because applicants lack the required technological skills. She said that an applicant who came to Microsoft with some kind of certificate showing that he or she had entry-level skills in technology “could be trained on the job.” Satish Menon, chief technology officer at the Apollo Group, which owns the University of Phoenix, also plugged certificates as alternatives to degrees in a tech field. “The real disruption will take place as companies say, ‘If you can demonstrate mastery, we’ll hire you. We don’t care if you have a degree,’” he said.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/educational-technology-is-key-to-job-training-panelists-say/36374

by Creative Commons

Open access advocates in the United States and around the world are rallying around a petition that urges public access to publicly funded research. The petition is now live on Whitehouse.gov’s We the People platform:

Require free access over the Internet to scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research.

We believe in the power of the Internet to foster innovation, research, and education. Requiring the published results of taxpayer-funded research to be posted on the Internet in human and machine readable form would provide access to patients and caregivers, students and their teachers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and other taxpayers who paid for the research. Expanding access would speed the research process and increase the return on our investment in scientific research.

http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/32727

BY DYLAN SCOTT, Governing

Digital textbooks, streaming video lectures and online class discussions: these are a few examples of how education in the 21st century is moving more to the virtual realm. But with that movement comes the need for faster and more reliable Internet connections for students and teachers, both inside and outside the classroom. According to a new report from the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA), states and school districts have plenty of work left to meet those increasing demands. “It is a simple fact that access to high-speed broadband is now as vital a component of K-12 school infrastructure as electricity, air conditioning, and heating,” the authors wrote to open the report. They recounted several statistics that illustrate the shortcomings of most schools’ current digital capacity.

http://www.governing.com/blogs/view/gov-k-12-educations-broadband-internet-needs-continue-to-grow.html

by Regina Girdner, The Corsair

Virtual schools are getting mixed reviews from students and traditional high school teachers. Now every Florida high school student must take at least one online course to graduate. “I took economics and algebra II (online) in high school because I wanted to get ahead in my classes…(and) bring up my GPA,” said Emily Wheeler, now a student at Pensacola State College. Wheeler was one of more than 122,000 students enrolled in Florida Virtual School in 2010. In the 15 years since its inception, the state-funded virtual school has increased enrollment by 1,114 percent. Public, private or homeschool students in kindergarten through Grade 12 who are Florida residents can enroll in Florida Virtual School free of charge. The state funds the program through state taxes. Students outside of Florida may also take courses at the virtual school on a tuition basis.

http://ecorsair.com/?p=7383

by Dan Radel, Asbury Park Press

What will future classrooms look like? Will kids be required to study with other kids from around the country? Will they be paperless? The use of more technology — such as Skyping, online courses and tablets in grade schools today — might make that a possibility. Skyping enables two people, or in the case of St. Aloysius and Bay Head elementary schools, two classes 20 miles apart, to communicate visually in real time by using laptop computers and clip-on Web cams. The Skyping project at those two schools is a collaboration between Donna May’s sixth-grade math class at St. Aloysius in Jackson and Thomas Kennedy’s sixth-grade math class in Bay Head. “The students in the sixth-grade class are always excited when we Skype with the sixth-grade class at Bay Head School,” May said.

http://www.app.com/article/20120522/NJNEWS/305180072/Classrooms-take-a-high-tech-approach

by Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed

Without diminishing learning outcomes, automated teaching software can reduce the amount of time professors spend with students and could substantially reduce the cost of instruction, according to new research.

In experiments at six public universities, students assigned randomly to statistics courses that relied heavily on “machine-guided learning” software — with reduced face time with instructors — did just as well, in less time, as their counterparts in traditional, instructor-centric versions of the courses. This largely held true regardless of the race, gender, age, enrollment status and family background of the students.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/05/22/report-robots-stack-human-professors-teaching-intro-stats

By ROBYN BURNHAM, Journal Tribune

A million hits on YouTube could mean a recording contract, a part in a movie or a chance at some level of fame, but for Wells High School junior Morgan Brewster, she hopes those hits mean help for other students who are in her shoes. Morgan, according to her mother, Pauline Brewster, was diagnosed with a learning disability at a young age, and the news was overwhelming, she said. But through Morgan’s high school years, Brewster has seen her daughter flourish with the help of dedicated teachers and new technology. New technology, like the “voice search” option created by Google, led to a film crew coming to Wells High School last fall to follow Morgan for a week to see how Google has helped her in school. The crew followed her to class and to color guard practice after school, as well as interviewing her family and teacher.

http://www.journaltribune.com/articles/2012/05/19/features/doc4fb6de4b6dfe3940743150.txt

by Red Orbit

A pair of new computer components unveiled late this week — one which will require less energy to store and retrieve information, and one which improves power and resource efficiency by occasionally allowing errors to occur — could one day fundamentally change the technology behind desktops, laptops, and similar devices. The first of those two units is known as a “memristor,” and according to BBC News Science and Technology Reporter Jason Palmer, its properties “make it suitable for both for computing and for far faster, denser memory.” The theoretical concept of the memristor, which derives its name from the words memory and resistor, was first proposed roughly four decades ago, though a first prototype of the component was not possible until 2008, Palmer said.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1112538393/faster-more-energy-efficient-computer-components-on-the-way/

BY BUSINESS WIRE

This week, the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) held its annual Summit on Women and IT, an event that assembles industry leaders, educators, and members of government to focus on increasing women’s participation in technology and computing. The NCWIT Summit convenes stakeholders who believe the lack of women studying computing and pursuing careers in technology is a crisis affecting U.S. innovation and workforce competitiveness. Research shows that women hold just 25% of technology occupations, earn only 18% of computer science degrees, and are founders of fewer than 8% of tech startups.

http://www.sys-con.com/node/2281465

By Chelsea Clinton and James P. Steyer, CNN

We urgently need a public conversation in our country among key stakeholders: parents, educators, technology innovators, policymakers and young people themselves. The dialogue must focus on the ways social media and technology enable our kids to give up their privacy before they fully understand what privacy is and why it’s important to all of us. We should also discuss how social media can help empower kids to find their voice, find their purpose and potentially create the next technology revolution. All adults know that the teen years are a critical time for identity exploration and experimentation. Yet this important developmental phase can be dramatically twisted when that identity experimentation, however personal and private, appears permanently on one’s digital record for all to see.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/21/opinion/clinton-steyer-internet-kids/index.html

By Brian Bergstein

When IBM loosened its restrictions on the smart phones and tablets its employees could use for work, the company got a lesson in IT management of the kind it usually sells to clients. In 2010, like many large companies in recent years, IBM adopted a “bring your own device” policy, meaning that employees who want to work outside the office don’t have to use a smart phone provided by the company. Although IBM still gives BlackBerrys to about 40,000 of its 400,000 employees, 80,000 other workers now reach internal IBM networks using other smart phones and tablets, including ones they purchased for themselves. The trend toward employee-owned devices isn’t saving IBM any money, says Jeanette Horan, who is IBM’s chief information officer and oversees all the company’s internal use of IT. Instead, she says, it has created new challenges for her department of 5,000 people, because employees’ devices are full of software that IBM doesn’t control.

http://www.technologyreview.com/business/40324/?p1=BI