Educational Technology

by ABC Australia Future Tense

Technology plays a central role in the modern classroom. But what are the pros and cons of ditching the chalk and going digital? And do we need to go beyond teaching kids how to use software and get them to learn about the nuts and bolts of computer programming itself? We explore the challenges of using technology in the classroom and pick up on the growing international push for children to rediscover the fun of coding.

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/futuretense/digital-classrooms-and-computer-coding/3969160

by Orlin Wagner, Associated Press

Teachers in some area classrooms are welcoming students’ electronic devices as another resource for learning. Cellphones and other electronic devices, once banished to school lockers, are becoming part of classroom lessons in some area school districts. From pop quizzes through text-messaging to lab results loaded onto electronic tablets to looking up information on smart phones, teachers are finding ways to engage students with the latest devices.  “Technology is part of kids’ lives. It’s here to stay,” said Superintendent Robert Scott of Avon Lake, a district in its fifth year of building its wireless network.

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2012/04/classrooms_welcome_electronic.html

By STAN MILAM, Gazette

Most people see computer savvy and people skills as opposites. UW-Whitewater professor Roger Yin sees them differently. He places high value on both and brings them together in capstone projects for students majoring in information technology with an emphasis in networking and security. Yin’s students are taking what they learn in the classroom into the field to conduct security audits for area school districts. This semester, they are auditing computer security at the Whitewater School District. “First of all, we welcome the student audits and use them in lieu of outside, private consultants,” said Charlie Barr, the district’s technology coordinator. “We are finding it to be useful, in addition to saving money for the district.”

http://gazettextra.com/news/2012/apr/28/uw-w-students-audit-computer-security-school-distr/

by Edudemic

Pardon the hyperbole, but this may be one of the biggest partnerships in education since chalk met the chalkboard. MIT has officially joined forces with Khan Academy to launch a new set of educational videos. In this new partnership, MIT students will be making videos, not the professors. It’s a truly inspiring time in education when you see a school ask its own students to become the teachers. It’s like the ultimate flipped classroom. It’s a flipped school. “Our students have responded with all the energy and enthusiasm we knew they would. We worked with them to design the program, and the results are fantastic.” -Ian A. Waitz, Dean of the School of Engineering and the Jerome C. Hunsaker Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

http://edudemic.com/2012/04/mit-khan-academy-we-all-win/

by Dave Lee, BBC News

A camera which produces written descriptions of scenes rather than photographs has been invented by a student in the US. The device uploads pictures to the web which are described within minutes by users on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service. The short description is then sent back to the camera and printed. It was developed by Matt Richardson, an Interactive Communications graduate student at New York University.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-17853523

by the BBC

Children under the age of 13 are not supposed to have Facebook accounts. Parents are helping their children to set up under-age profiles on social networking site Facebook, Children’s Minister Tim Loughton has said. This meant that children were getting involved in social media at too young an age, he suggested. He added that parents had a responsibility to monitor youngsters’ online activity. The comments came in a debate on “sexting” – youngsters sending explicit pictures to each other. Mr Loughton, who has three teenage children, said parents had a responsibility to monitor youngsters online, adding: “Having a Facebook page, you should be at least 13 to do that. That is not legally enforceable.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-17853498#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

by Catherine Armitage, Sydney Morning Herald

The phenomenal success of a ”crazy idea” by a Stanford University professor, Sebastian Thrun, to open free online enrolments in his artificial intelligence course has pundits sounding the death knell for higher education as we know it. His new venture is Udacity, a 20-person free online education start-up funded by venture capital. More than 130,000 people signed up for the first two courses in January – building a robotic car and a web-search engine. He believes that in 50 years, there will be a small number of institutions – maybe only 10 – offering ”amazing educational products that will educate many millions of students”. He says ”as technology allows for scale, the number of providers will shrink”, noting this has happened in ”pretty much every industry”.

http://m.smh.com.au/national/postgraduate-education/rise-of-online-teaching-sets-a-clicking-pace-for-universities-20120427-1xqae.html

by Erin Steuber, KATC

Students across Lafayette Parish are getting the opportunity to stay on track for graduation by logging on to the internet. One hundred high school students from across Lafayette Parish are enrolled in the program. Helping them get the courses needed to graduate.  “We have 45 different courses,” said Jarrett Coutee, Admnistrator of eCampus. “We have a whole suite of math courses, we have some very attractive electives and of course the core courses.” Don’t think online courses are an easy ‘A’, Coutee says the classes are just as rigorous.

http://www.katc.com/news/students-stay-on-track-to-graduate-with-ecampus/

by Al Fin, Alfin

It is never too late to have a dangerous childhood, and it is never too late for a dropout such as Bill Gates to go back to school — even if for only one online course.  According to Phil Giudice, the CEO of a battery startup called Liquid Metal Battery, his company found their most high profile investor, Bill Gates, through a more unusual way: the classroom. …Gates started taking a class from Liquid Metal Battery founder and MIT Professor Don Sadoway via MIT’s online open-course program. Gates took Sadoway’s 34-lecture series on batteries and contacted Sadoway by email to meet with him and learn more, said Giudice.

http://alfin2100.blogspot.com/2012/04/harvard-dropout-bill-gates-takes-online.html