Educational Technology

by Judith S. Eaton, President CHEA

We are again talking about innovation in higher education and it is a refreshing change. The most conspicuous, challenging and controversial subject of these discussions is “MOOCs” – massive open online courses. MOOCs such as Coursera, Udacity and edX, all launched in early 2012, have received extensive media coverage accompanied by a lot of commentary. What type of education is offered here? Will it last? How do we judge its quality? Is there a role for accreditation?

http://www.chea.org/ia/IA_2012.10.31.html

byMarc Parry, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Colleges share many things on Twitter, but one topic can be risky to broach: the reading habits of library patrons. Harvard librarians learned that lesson when they set up Twitter feeds broadcasting titles of books being checked out from campus libraries. It seemed harmless enough—a typical tweet read, “Reconstructing American Law by Bruce A. Ackerman,” with a link to the book’s library catalog entry—but the social-media experiment turned out to be more provocative than library staffers imagined. Harvard suspended the practice after privacy concerns were raised. Even though the Twitter stream randomized checkout times and did not disclose patrons’ identities, the worry was that someone might somehow use other details to identify the borrowers.

http://chronicle.com/article/As-Libraries-Go-Digital/135514/

by Marc Parry, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Data mining is creeping into every aspect of student life—classrooms, advising, socializing. Now it’s hitting textbooks, too. CourseSmart, which sells digital versions of textbooks by big publishers, announced on Wednesday a new tool to help professors and others measure students’ engagement with electronic course materials. When students use print textbooks, professors can’t track their reading. But as learning shifts online, everything students do in digital spaces can be monitored, including the intimate details of their reading habits.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/now-e-textbooks-can-report-back-on-students-reading-habits/40928

by Jason Epstein, CIO Advisor

As I look at where the majority of my time has been spent and where I may have needed to spend some more, it seems that most of my “time well spent” was on translation and interpretation. Interpretation and translation of the technology vision, of the purpose of varying technologies, and of the direction a school is technologically headed is essential to keep all stakeholders on the same page. A CIO needs to be able to articulate what their needs are to the school administration, and illustrate how fulfilling those needs will move the school in the direction that has been suggested by the board. The CIO needs to interpret those visions into tech language and tangible directions for the information services team. hen the CIO needs to interpret these needs, directions and visions to the faculty of the school so that they can stand behind and integrate these tools to enhance the students’ experiences in all educational areas.

http://www.schoolcio.com/Default.aspx?tabid=136&EntryId=5036

By Scott McLeod, School CIO

Most of us recognize that schools should be helping students learn how to do deep, rich, technology-infused knowledge work that prepares them for future citizenship, college, work, and other life needs. Many principals and superintendents, however, are struggling to balance the need to technologically empower students with countervailing organizational concerns regarding safety, respectful behavior, and the law. In my conversations with school administrators about Internet safety and student technology usage, I use many of the talking points below. Use some of them to spark a conversation with your local educators and community.

http://www.schoolcio.com/article/27-talking-points-about-internet-safety/53145

by Tanya Roscorla, Center for Digital Education

While most industries have changed significantly over the years, higher education has remained relatively the same. Students listen to professors lecture in century-old universities and tackle tough philosophical questions the way their ancestors did. But higher education is at a breaking point. Tuition is skyrocketing. State funding is dropping. And online course providers are on the rise. Cost is a major barrier for accessing higher education. A 2011 Pew Research Center survey on the cost and value of higher education found that 75 percent of respondents said college is too expensive for most Americans to afford. And 57 percent said the U.S. higher education system does not provide students a good return on their investment.“Technology has to be a big part of the solution to access and affordability,” said Ben Wildavsky, senior scholar at the Kauffman Foundation, guest scholar at the Brookings Institution and co-editor of Reinventing Higher Education: The Promise of Innovation. “The key is to do it in a smart way.”

http://www.centerdigitaled.com/news/Higher-Education-in-25-Years.html

by edudemic

Did you know that Google offers a sortable library of lesson plans that are free to download and use? It’s part of the company’s big push into education (seems to be quite the trend these days) and involves thousands of free lesson plans just waiting for you to try out. Most incorporate Google products but then again so do most high-tech lesson plans these days. You can sort the listings by the type of Google product you want or, if that’s not your cup of tea, view the plans organized by subject. That’s probably the best way to go for most Edudemic readers.

http://edudemic.com/2012/11/a-look-at-googles-massive-library-of-free-lesson-plans/

by Todd Tauber, Quartz

Everyone is trying to revolutionize education. And they’re spending billions of dollars to do it. But entrepreneurs, investors, big companies, non-profits, government, and even schools are focused on the wrong issue: How to make education more accessible. That’s not the real problem anymore. So businesses with that goal might not turn out to be good investments either. The problems with education today are relevance and, more importantly, effectiveness. The world has changed. You can blame technology, globalization, demographics, government debt, or whatever you want, but to succeed in the world of today and tomorrow, people need more knowledge, new skills, and broader capabilities than they needed yesterday. What they need is simple. It’s getting there that’s not.

http://qz.com/23591/less-than-4-of-students-in-an-mit-online-course-passed-the-final-why-investors-in-education-are-throwing-their-money-away/

by Timothy Vollmer, Creative Commons

MOOCs have captured the public mindshare as an interesting way to deliver high quality education to huge numbers of online learners. In order to maximize the educational benefits that MOOCs promise to provide, they must be “open” in both enrollment and licensing. MOOCs should seriously consider applying CC licenses to content they build, asking contributing Universities to openly licnese their courses, and making CC licensing part of their MOOC platforms. By doing so, they’ll be best positioned to serve a diverse set of users and support the flourishing open education movement.

http://creativecommons.org/tag/massive-open-online-course

By Vandana Rola, Marigrace Ryan, and Shan Huang, League for Innovation

The Pioneering Online Science Labs project exemplifies Sinclair Community College‘s motto: “Find the need and endeavor to meet it.” Sinclair students expressed a need for fully online degree programs; however, the lack of online science courses prevented the completion of the AA and AS degrees online. The college listened and met the need by developing fully online astronomy and biology lecture and lab courses. The courses have been extremely successful; enrollment has increased and success rates mirror those of the traditional classroom.

http://www.league.org/blog/post.cfm/pioneering-online-science-labs

by Amanda Riply, Time

Now, several forces have aligned to revive the hope that the Internet (or rather, humans using the Internet from Lahore to Palo Alto, Calif.) may finally disrupt higher education — not by simply replacing the distribution method but by reinventing the actual product. New technology, from cloud computing to social media, has dramatically lowered the costs and increased the odds of creating a decent online education platform. In the past year alone, start-ups like Udacity, Coursera and edX — each with an elite-university imprimatur — have put 219 college-level courses online, free of charge. Many traditional colleges are offering classes and even entire degree programs online. Demand for new skills has reached an all-time high. People on every continent have realized that to thrive in the modern economy, they need to be able to think, reason, code and calculate at higher levels than before.

http://nation.time.com/2012/10/18/college-is-dead-long-live-college/

by Bobby Blanchard, Daily Texan

Beyond its partnership with a nonprofit offering innovative online classes, the UT System hopes to continue its growth in the world of digital and interactive education. Steven Mintz, executive director of the Institute for Transformational Learning, spoke to the UT Senate’s general assembly Thursday evening, where he said it was important that UT lead the world in an innovative transition of higher education. “If we do not do it, somebody else will and we probably won’t like what they do,” Mintz said. Earlier in October, UT joined edX after a unanimous vote by the UT System Board of Regents. The nonprofit organization, which offers online education courses, was founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last year. Since then, the University of California at Berkeley and the UT System have signed on to join edX.

http://www.dailytexanonline.com/news/2012/11/02/new-partnership-with-edx-brings-innovation-to-utsystem-digital-resources

by Nikolas Badminton, Huffington Post

“Once we have computer outlets in every home, each of them hooked up to enormous libraries where anyone can ask any question and be given answers, be given reference materials, be something you’re interested in knowing, from an early age, however silly it might seem to someone else… that’s what YOU are interested in, and you can ask, and you can find out, and you can do it in your own home, at your own speed, in your own direction, in your own time… Then, everyone would enjoy learning. Nowadays, what people call learning is forced on you, and everyone is forced to learn the same thing on the same day at the same speed in class, and everyone is different.”  That is a quote from futurist and science fiction author Isaac Asimov in 1988.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/nikolas-badminton/online-learning-distance-education-university-courses-ubc_b_2036425.html

by RONDI, WAHM Resources Site

Online classes are perfect for those of us who work from home, especially busy moms. Whether it’s getting a professional certificate or a higher degree online, there are plenty of opportunities to use a flexible online schedule to your benefit. But, it does require a major adjustment, as any online course will be a time investment. Here are a few tips for juggling the load.

http://www.wahmresourcesite.com/7-tips-online-class-wahm/

by the University of Illinois Springfield

The University of Illinois Springfield is among three universities partnering with California’s Coastline Community College to create a seamless pathway for students to earn an online bachelor’s degree. “The model – developed at UIS and refined over the past dozen years – holds many advantages for students and institutions,” said Ray Schroeder, UIS associate vice chancellor for online learning. “It provides a near seamless melding of the community college and the university in the academic program of the student.” The UIS one-two-one online learning model has proven very successful. It is now being expanded in a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Project led by the League for Innovation for the Community College. Joining UIS in the project are the Penn State University’s World Campus and the University of Massachusetts Online.

http://news.uis.edu/2012/10/uis-expands-online-reach-by-partnering.html

by Jason Pontin, Technology Review

What Windows 8 and Surface and the iPad Mini suggest about the two companies’ capacities for reinvention. There’s a smug maxim in Silicon Valley and the places that imitate it: “To survive, you must destroy your company every x years” (where x varies according to how much the speaker wants to stress the pace of technological change). Sometimes attributed to Intel’s former chief executive Andy Grove, it is a maxim more repeated than observed. But it can be a lovely and startling thing when a large, publicly traded company takes a big bet by replacing its core product. Microsoft’s new Windows 8 operating system, which went on sale last Friday, is the most dramatic gamble by a technology company since Intel abandoned the memory market to make semiconductors in the 1980s. Windows is a civilizational tool; there are more than a billion Windows users around the planet. But when, after being given a new personal computer by their IT manager or buying a new device for themselves, those users boot up the new OS, they’ll recognize nothing.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/506536/microsoft-and-apple-at-their-crossroads/

By Tom Simonite, Technology Review

The Internet was designed to facilitate the sending back and forth of small bits of information. But that’s not how people use the Internet today. A new method of networking could simplify things and make video downloads happen much more quickly. A growing number of researchers think it’s time to rewire the Internet. A fundamentally new approach could better serve the streaming video, nonstop connectivity, and sizable downloads that users have come to expect, these experts say. The problem is simple: the Internet was designed to send small packets of data back and forth in a conversational style, says Glenn Edens, who heads networking research at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). “Where we are today, the Internet is mostly used for the distribution of content like video, pictures, and e-mails,” says Edens, who is leading an effort at PARC to design and test an alternative way of operating the Internet known as content-centric networking—a project that is attracting increasing support from other researchers and companies.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/506581/a-rewired-internet-would-speed-up-content-delivery/

By Rachel Metz, Technology Review

As the popularity of tablet computing grows, the most successful tablets are likely to shape the way people access information and digital content. Google’s new Nexus tablets and smartphone put it in even closer competition with Apple and Amazon within this landscape. Google unveiled a 10-inch Android tablet, a new version of its seven-inch tablet, and a new smartphone on Monday. On Monday, Google unveiled a 10-inch touch screen tablet built by Samsung called the Nexus 10, priced at $399 or $499, depending on storage capacity. The new tablet follows on the heels of the seven-inch Nexus 7, which Google built with Asus and rolled out over the summer. The Nexus 10 will be available through the Google Play store starting November 13. The announcement comes just a week after Apple said it will start selling the iPad Mini, a compact version of the iPad with a 7.9-inch touch-screen and starting price of $329. The standard iPad’s screen measures 9.7 inches at the diagonal, and the latest model of that version starts at $499 (see “Live Updates from Apple’s ‘iPad Mini’ Event”).

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/506566/google-goes-large-with-a-new-android-tablet/

by the Center for Digital Education

The iPad 4 and iPad Mini bring more options into the tablet space. But ultimately, the education conversation around these devices comes down to price and teaching quality. Apple announced a new iPad 4, iPad Mini and iBook Author update on Tuesday, Oct. 23, in a live-streamed event. Since the first generation of the tablet entered the market in 2010, the company has sold 100 million of them. This news is important in the education world because 2,500 schools in the United States use digital textbooks that were created in iBook Author. The updates to iBook Author include the ability to use new templates, import fonts and insert mathematical expressions. The mathematical expressions capability is a big deal, Apple CEO Tim Cook said. But the application doesn’t work for all publishers.

http://www.centerdigitaled.com/news/New-iPads-Spark-Education-Discussions.html

by Tomorrow’s Professor

Mentors facilitate learning by keeping the learner front and center. To mentor effectively, you will use the learning approach most appropriate for your mentee. Asking questions, reformulating statements, summarizing, listening for the silence, and listening reflectively will help you do this. These strategies should always be part of your toolkit.

http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/posting.php?ID=1200

by Tomorrow’s Professor

Education technology has long since delivered on its promise of software that can grade most student work in lieu of instructors or teaching assistants. These days, debates about artificial intelligence in education are more likely to revolve around whether automatons can be relied upon to teach students new concepts. Yet when it comes to English composition, the question of whether computer programs can reliably assess student work remains sticky. Can a machine that cannot draw out meaning, and cares nothing for creativity or truth, really match the work of a human reader? In the quantitative sense: yes, according to a study released by researchers at the University of Akron. The study, funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, compared the software-generated ratings given to more than 22,000 short essays, written by students in junior high schools and high school sophomores, to the ratings given to the same essays by trained human readers.

http://derekbruff.org/blogs/tomprof/2012/10/24/tp-msg-1206-online-learning-and-liberal-arts-colleges/