Educational Technology

By: Laura Taddei, Faculty Focus

Innovation and creativity are two words heard frequently in higher education today. How can we encourage innovation and creativity in ourselves and our students? Reimers-Hild and King (2009) described components of innovation as fun, creative, diverse, collaborative, and intuitive. Taking small steps to accomplish this goal is the way to go, but there needs to be support and encouragement. Taking risks and sometimes even looking at failure as “fuel for innovation” can help promote this process (Ryshke, 2012). If something does not work, we can learn from it, and then modify and try again. While serving as Director of a Center for Faculty Development, I often asked faculty how they encourage creativity and innovation in their classroom. Here are some of the key themes that arose from these conversations.

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/faculty-development/encouraging-creativity-and-innovation-in-yourself-and-your-students/

By Laura Bates, Fractus Learning

There is sometimes a tendency to assume that all students will love education technology and e-learning – after all, students love computers, the internet, and mobile devices right? But in fact, while there are many things students do enjoy and find rewarding about education technology and online learning, there are also some things they may find frustrating and distracting. The best teachers can learn a great deal about how to tailor and implement their edtech teaching from these student likes and dislikes.

http://www.fractuslearning.com/2013/08/23/students-e-learning-likes/

by Dr. Bob- Blog Curator

Almost all state standards, including the new Common Core State Standards, call for more technology and digital tools to be used in classrooms in order to give students more access to the types of tools they will be expected to use later in life. One such standard states students must be able to use diverse forms of media, such as video, in order to problem solve. Each core subject has many of such standards. Kids are already living in an online world, so why should their education be any different? Statistics even show that 89 percent of parents would like to see their children in classes where mobile devices are used for class work.

http://sharingtree.me/2013/08/23/is-online-learning-coming-soon-to-high-schools-edudemic-edudemic/

by Christina Farr, Venture Beat

After a few tweaks, the company just reported that its summer pilot has been far more successful. Thrun, who is also a Google fellow and Stanford lecturer, published a blog post with the results. “In short, pass rates are up and match more closely those in SJSU on-campus classes,” Thrun announced. For the summer program, Udacity used data from the spring and made a number of changes. Interestingly, college credit was not the leading motivation for students to take these courses for credit. “Love of learning, career advancement, and lack of options were all part of the equation,” said Thrun.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/28/udacity-reports-better-results-for-its-online-education-experiment/

by EduTech Associates

Mass access to the Internet is a mere 20 years old and during this time Web Services have completely revolutionised how we interact – so how will the Internet transform us over the next 20 years? This article explains how technologies can be architected to allow learning to flourish in the emerging world of the Internet of Things. In 2008, the number of things connected to the Internet exceeded the number of people on Earth – but that is still less than 1% of all the physical things in the world today. Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG) predicts some 25 billion devices will be connected by 2015, and 50 billion by 2020, whilst IDC estimates machine-to-machine communication to grow to 41% of Internet communication by 2020. IoT represents a major shift in how IT is being used. The personal computer and the ‘Internet of People’ defined the previous IT era. The Internet of Things will be defined by embedded and ubiquitous technologies such as 3d printing, advanced sensing and energy management.

http://edutechassociates.net/2013/08/21/internet-of-learning-things/

by Will Donovan, SUNY Blog

At the University at Albany School of Education, Associate Professor Peter Shea is trying to bring together the console and the classroom. Professor Shea is leading a research study investigating the use of video games to promote learning, with a large and various group of experts, students, and faculty. The project, named “SUNY Games II”, seeks to explore how teachers and students from diverse fields across the SUNY system can develop video games to promote understanding of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) content in K-12 schools. SUNY Games II will help the research and development of educational games. The project is being worked on through the Open SUNY framework, a massive online SUNY platform that will bring all online courses offered at each of SUNY’s 64 campuses onto a shared and comprehensive online environment.

http://blog.suny.edu/2013/08/consoles-and-classrooms-suny-games-ii-to-create-stem-video-games/

By Tanya Roscorla, Center for Digital Education

As consistent budget cuts have taken their toll, access to classes has been a problem at California State universities, particularly in high-demand courses. To address this problem, the university system is trying a different approach with online classes this fall, while also investigating other online initiatives. If students can’t get into a particular general education class on their home campus, they can enroll in one online class per term at another California State university. The course will go on their home campus’s transcript and at least count for elective credit, though students need to talk with an adviser about the general education requirements it could fulfill.

http://www.centerdigitaled.com/news/Online-Classes-Ease-Bottleneck-California.html

By Tanya Roscorla, Center for Digital Education

College presidents are more active on social media than CEOs, a survey from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth finds. But colleges don’t do a great job of monitoring online conversations about their institutions. The annual social media survey is one of the first to look at how college presidents as a whole are using social media, according to Nora Ganim Barnes, director of the Center for Marketing Research at the university. The 2012-13 study includes interviews with 474 presidents at a +/- 4 percent margin of error. More than half of college presidents post on Facebook and tweet, and just over a third of them blog.

http://www.centerdigitaled.com/news/College-Presidents-Social.html

by Center for Digital Ed

A new state law will give open access to the research conducted at public universities in Illinois. The Open Access to Research Articles Act requires each public university to set up a task force by Jan. 1, 2014, that will consider how to meet open access goals. Traditionally, faculty research is not available publically, but is published in scholarly academic journals that charge subscription fees. But Illinois universities will now consider making their research available at no charge online. They’ll also look at how other universities and the federal government are handling open access. The news comes on the heels of the University of California’s recent announcementthat its faculty adopted an open access policy.

http://www.centerdigitaled.com/news/Open-Access-Could-Come-to-Illinois-Universities.html

By Jennifer Chu, Technology Review

Researchers from MIT and Harvard are now analyzing students’ clickstreams (recordings of where and when users click on a page), forum comments, and homework, lab, and exam scores. They hope to use the data to better understand online learners—what their demographic characteristics are, how they use online resources, what factors encourage them to stick with an online course, and what helps or hinders their performance. In a paper published in Research & Practice in Assessment, the team reports preliminary results from its analysis of 6.002x data on users’ characteristics and study habits. The team includes lead author Lori Breslow, director of MIT’s Teaching and Learning Laboratory, and physics professor David Pritchard, who heads MIT’s Research in Learning, Assessing and Tutoring Effectively (RELATE) group.

http://www.technologyreview.com/article/517836/learning-from-edx/

by David F. Carr, Information Week

After weathering a round of negative publicity, Udacity CEO Sebastian Thrun believes vindication is at hand. “The thing I’m insanely proud of right now is I think we’ve found the magic formula,” he said in an interview last week. “Had you asked me three months ago, I wouldn’t have said that. I’m not at the point where everything is great. There are a lot of things to be improved, a lot of mistakes we’re making, but I see it coming together.”

http://www.informationweek.com/education/online-learning/udacity-ceo-says-mooc-magic-formula-emer/240160169

BY ANGELA WILSON, The Southern

Four students at Southeastern Illinois College have been recognized for being the first graduating class of the online hybrid practical nursing program at the school. The program, which will now begin each fall and run 11 months, is a combination of theory classes, all online, and labs in the classroom. This type of program caters to those who are proficient at online learning and need the flexibility that online classes can provide, due to work or family obligations. “There are challenges in online education that hold the students to a higher standard of rigor, and the instructors must be creative and innovative in their development and delivery of curriculum,” said Amy Murphy, interim director of nursing and allied health. “This has been an exciting pilot program, and we are looking forward to many years of successful online nursing education.”

http://thesouthern.com/news/local/first-class-of-online-hybrid-practical-nursing-students-graduates-from/article_bb2a8d20-05be-11e3-a9fc-001a4bcf887a.html

by Michael Brown, PC World

So you’re heading back to school and you need a new laptop—but you didn’t manage your finances over the summer. Your bank account is nearly tapped out, and you still need to buy text books and lay in enough ramen noodles to last through the winter. Yeah, we’ve all been there. Fortunately, Moore’s Law is still in play, so today’s budget notebook is yesterday’s workhorse. Pretty much any modern laptop can handle the gamut of productivity chores—word processing, number crunching, email, and the like—but all of the machines in this roundup can also tackle media editing and encoding sessions, and deliver respectable entertainment experiences. To strike the best balance between performance and affordability, I gathered the top five notebooks I could find for $650 or less. Benchmark busters they’re not, but they aren’t budget busters, either.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2046844/5-budget-laptops-for-college-students-we-name-the-best.html

by Jamaican Observer

Twelve members of Jamaica National Building Society (JNBS), the majority of whom were senior citizens, successfully completed the JNBS Computer Application and Appreciation Programme earlier this month and were awarded certificates of completion at a graduation ceremony at the JN Financial Services Centre, Catherine Hall, in Montego Bay, St James. The graduates acquired basic computer skills and honed their proficiency to use the society’s LIVE by JN online banking portal.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Senior-citizens-graduate-from-Online-Banking-Course_14889225

by CLASSROOM AID

It’s time to get the party started with gamification in higher education. Maybe it’s the liberating feeling of the summer, or the fact that it is the perfect time for some educators to make improvements to their curriculums. Maybe I’m just sick of waiting for the gamification movement to bloom on its own. Regardless, it is time to take some drastic action in jumpstarting the games-in-learning movement this summer, so here are five easy things that every educator can start doing this fall to usher in a new era of interactive, engaging, and innovative education.

http://classroom-aid.com/2013/08/16/5-easy-steps-to-gamifying-highereed/

BY JESS FEE, Mashable

Millennials live and breathe on social media, so teachers are learning how to incorporate the medium into the classroom successfully. In doing so, teachers not only encourage students to engage actively in the material, but they also provide online communities for students that might not exist for them in real life. But how are teachers infusing social media into their everyday lessons? We’ve highlighted several different examples and offered our own ideas on how to best engage students.

http://mashable.com/2013/08/18/social-media-teachers/

by Ana Homayoun, Psychology Today

As technology becomes an even more integral part of the classroom learning experience, online interactions will more aggressively contribute to overall school climate. According to 2010 data from the U.S. Department of Education, teachers at public schools reported that 69% of their students use computers during class most or some of the time. Internet connection was available for 96% of computers brought into classrooms. Research suggests that males tend to focus more of their online efforts on gaming, while females tend to spend more online time socializing. Many girls now find their interpersonal relationships are now even more intertwined with their academic experiences. Unlike whispers in the hallway or notes passed in the middle of class, rumors online leave digital traces, and the potential to go viral can cause intense panic and rash decision-making.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-myth-the-perfect-girl/201308/girls-technology-and-the-classroom

by Classroom-Aid

The development of Google Glass, with augmented reality and live/recorded virtual re-location capabilities has enormous implications for education. This infographic anticipates scores of way in which Google Glass may become an important teaching and learning tool.

http://classroom-aid.com/2013/08/18/how-google-glass-can-be-used-in-education-infographic/

(infographic originates at: http://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/how-google-glass-can-be-used-in-education-infographic/ )

by Katie Lepi, Edudemic

Rubrics can be an incredibly useful tool for your classroom. Aside from being one of those cool words that sounds a little weirder every time you say it, using a rubric can help your students understand the assignments in your classroom, and will make your grading process clearer, faster, and more objective and consistent. Online rubric makers can make rubric creation pretty simple, so we’ve collected a few sites that offers online rubric makers (some of them are free) that can help you out in your classroom. There are many sites out there that also offer shared rubrics from other users that you can use as well – quite a helpful tool if you’re either in a pinch, or at a loss for where to start.

http://www.edudemic.com/2013/08/time-saving-rubric-makers/

by Katie Lepi, Edudemic

Yesterday, we took a look at some of the fastest and most popular browsers across a variety of devices. While I was digging around for a few facts to see how accurate some of those numbers were, I stumbled across another handy infographic on worldwide browser usage, and felt like it was a pretty interesting follow up to yesterday’s post. Taking data from 2012, it takes a look at what browsers are being used where, and shows some fairly interesting trends. Whereas yesterday’s post showed some more granular detail of what browsers worked best on different systems, this one shows plain old popularity (aka, usage) in different areas in the world. Keep reading to learn more.

http://www.edudemic.com/2013/08/which-countries-use-which-browser/