by Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed
Like many of you, I’ve been trying to get my head around the announcement that edX and Google are entering into a partnership. How big a deal is this partnership for higher ed? I had the opportunity to chat with edX’s marketing and communications team, and I think that I have some idea why the edX / Google partnership is important news.
Share on FacebookBy Carl Straumsheim, Inside Higher Ed
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology will this fall package some of its online courses into more cohesive sequences, just as edX prepares to roll out certificates of completion using identity verification. Seen together, the two announcements may provide a glimpse at what the future holds for the massive open online course provider. The “XSeries” sequences add a new layer of structure to MITx, the institution’s section of the edX platform. The first of seven courses in the Foundations of Computer Science XSeries will be offered this fall, with one or more new courses being rolled out each semester until the fall of 2015. The Supply Chain Management XSeries, consisting of three courses, will begin in the fall of 2014. The two sequences will target undergraduates and working professionals, respectively.
Share on FacebookBy NICHOLAS FINIO, The Slate
With the advancement of technology throughout the past decade, education has taken steps in easier, more compatible directions. With such a wide array of information, access and connection associated with the Internet, taking classes electronically have become a normal part of the college experience. Such innovations did not exist 20 years ago and now that these options are available, professors and students are using the stability of working from home rather than doing exercises in the classroom. In my opinion, taking an online class truly eliminates factors that may make a student hesitant to participate and applies a positive outlook on actions.
http://www.theslateonline.com/article/2013/09/technologys-benefit-in-schools
Share on FacebookBy Denny Carter, eCampus News
Three in four online students said this week in a national survey that they were satisfied with their college experience, though the quality of online instruction is a lingering concern. Instructional quality remains a concern in online classes. The 75 percent satisfaction rate among web-based students was markedly higher than the 55 percent rate among traditional campus-based students surveyed by Noel-Levitz, a higher education consulting firm that publishes the annual “National Online Learners Priorities Report.” The report gauges student perception of various kinds of post-secondary education, and how they’ve changed in recent years. Online learning satisfaction levels were high, but instructional quality was pegged as a primary concern among those who took online classes.
http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/survey-online-students-133/
Share on FacebookBy Anthony Valencia, CSU Stanislaus Signal
The Intrasystem Concurrent Enrollment Program (ICEP) at California State University, Stanislaus now offers a wider variety of classes and campuses. The ICEP is an online resource which allows students to take online classes from either the student’s home campus or other college campuses. Students must be enrolled full-time in order to enroll in any online courses through ICEP. ICEP provides students with the opportunity to safely enroll in the program, take classes at their discretion and gain credit for those classes. In the spring if a student wishes to graduate, and they are required to take a class that is only offered in the fall at their campus, that student now has the option to enroll in ICEP. After signing up on ICEP, the student can see if the class needed is offered, take the class online and still graduate that spring.
http://csusignal.com/2013/icep-offers-online-course-options-through-other-universities/
Share on FacebookBy Hannah Winston, Chronicle of Higher Ed
The board that governs California’s 112 community colleges has started requiring that courses, research, and other work paid for by the system chancellor’s office be made available free to all users under Creative Commons “attribution” licenses. While the system will retain the copyright on the materials, other users will be able to take advantage of them as long as the originators are properly credited. Cable Green, director of global learning at Creative Commons, says that requiring work to be covered by Creative Commons licenses will allow people to get the most for their money. He says he sees open educational resources growing on a national scale as colleges realize that Creative Commons licensing allows work to be widely disseminated and creates a collaborative working environment. In 2010, Washington State enacted a similar open-access policy for community and technical colleges. Because the work is publicly financed, he says there is no reason it shouldn’t be available to everyone. “The public should get what they pay for,” he says.
Share on FacebookBy Marcia Devlin, Whyalla News
Traditional so-called academic “content experts” now work with learning/educational designers, e-learning specialists, curriculum consultants, language and academic skills experts, library staff, work-integrated learning experts, careers and employment staff, information technology staff, learning-space designers and others to create and deliver university curriculum and learning environments and experiences. The move to more teaching-focused academics may just reflect the related changes occurring in the university teaching space. Of course, there are other motivations for the growth of these positions. As Professor Probert points out, attempts to improve a university’s research standing for international ranking purposes have led to widespread use of teaching-focused positions to remove research-inactive staff from “the count” of staff, the number of which affects the calculations for rankings.
Share on Facebookby Harvard Magazine
Harvard President Emeritus Derek Bok, speaking at the six-hundredth anniversary of the University of St Andrews on September 14, focused squarely on the application of information technology to the classroom. Framing his remarks, Bok said it was easy to decide which theme to pursue in thinking about the future of universities: “In the long history of higher education, no development since the printing press has had as much power to transform universities as the computer and the related innovations we call information technology.”
http://harvardmagazine.com/2013/09/harvard-past-president-endorses-online-education
Share on FacebookBy Dian Schaffhauser, THE Journal
A new charter school for adults will open this week offering technology-driven education to adults who have faced chronic under-education and unemployment in Washington, D.C. The Community College Preparatory Academy (CCPA), located in a site previously used for a public charter school, plans to serve 150 students in its first year and up to 350 by the third year. An initial charter application submitted in February 2012 said the school would expect to enroll 1,225 students at full capacity in multiple sites. CCPA has contracted with Pearson Education to deliver much of the instruction.
Share on FacebookBy Katie Lepi, edudemic
The web is filled with videos, social media chatter, and more resources than your brain can handle. Who is putting all that stuff online? According to a new study on internet usage by different generations, all the content on the web may be coming from some unexpected places. That’s because the millennial generation seems to be far and away the most connected and ready to share online. 20% of all members of that generation have posted a video of themselves online. That’s compared to just 2% of the boomer generation. To put this all into context, think about your classroom or fellow students. They are the ones shaping the content of the web right now. In the very near future, members of the millennial generation will begin taking on roles that dictate the future of the web, what it can and should be used for, and more.
http://www.edudemic.com/kids-of-the-past-vs-today-infographic/
Share on FacebookBy Eric Patnoudes, edudemic
Learning technologies change student-teacher interactions in several ways, but there’s one specifically that really stands out and makes the most difference in our classrooms. Technology has an especially strong effect in the 1:1 classroom, since the students are so in touch with their technology. Tony Wagner, the first Innovation Education Fellow at the Technology & Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard, and the founder and co-director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education for more than a decade, recently talked about this in his article ’Graduating All Students Innovation Ready‘.
http://www.edudemic.com/technology-student-teacher-interaction/
Share on FacebookBy Katie Lepi, edudemic
We’ve shared a lot of different ideas here on how to integrate different forms of social media in the classroom. From Facebook to Twitter and Pinterest, there are a ton of educators out there who are harnessing their students’ existing interest and knowledge of these social media tools to engage them in learning activities in the classroom. The handy infographic below (Via: librariansonthefly.blogspot.com) shows a number of different ways to employ another popular social media tool in the classroom and library: Instagram. It does offer you more than just fun filters for your photos! Keep reading to learn more.
http://www.edudemic.com/instagram-in-the-classroom-infographic/
Share on Facebookby Beth Kantor, Beth’s blog
The NMC’s annual reports that highlight emerging technologies and their impact on the education sector over the next five years include NMC Horizon Report: 2013 K-12 Edition and the NMC Horizon Report: 2013 Higher Education Edition and were published this spring. The specific technologies highlighted in the reports are place along a continuum of near-term, mid-term, and far-term field adoption:
One year or less to adoption: Cloud Computing (K-12), Mobile Learning (K-12), MOOC (Higher Ed), Tablet Computing (Higher Ed)
Two or three years to adoption: Learning Analytics (K-12/Higher Ed), Open Content (K-12), Games and Gamification (Higher Ed)
Four or five years to adoption: 3D Printing (K-12/Higher Ed), Remote/Virtual Labs (K-12), Wearable Technology (Higher Ed)
http://www.bethkanter.org/emerging-tech/
Share on Facebookby Jackson State University
Learning has gone mobile, and the students at Jackson State University (JSU) are reaping the benefits. Through the iPad Technology Advantage Scholarship Initiative (TASI), incoming full-time freshmen at JSU are each provided with the latest-generation iPad. And what do the students do with these iPads? Some pretty amazing things. In addition to having 24/7 access to textbooks online in the form of eBooks or iBooks, students have dozens of apps that enable them to take class notes, collaborate on content, communicate via Skype, tap into resources like math reference formulas or periodic tables, learn a foreign language online, access world maps at a touch, read or listen to thousands of other books or audiobooks, use their iPad as a graphing calculator and much more. ESE Apps are also included, with references for American Sign Language and text to speech conversion.
http://www.napsnet.com/articles/69797.html
Share on Facebookby Muhammad Nadeen, Education News
LearnBig offers a powerful search engine on its website. The search tools include filters for grade level, subject, and whether or not the content complies with national educational standards to help users dig for the right stuff. LearnBig also features Career Paths, which provide older students with learning programs that pull from all around the web to get them set up for a career in a skill-based field like mobile app development or 3D modeling. LearnBIG is hoping to change the way learners of all ages access thousands of online educational resources by providing them with one central location. The company’s website joins together technology and community to improve educational access regardless of income, age or geographic location, according to LearnBIG. The company sees that users want to search for and filter content by subject, level, platform and popularity for all major sectors of education — Pre-K, K-12, college and lifelong learning — and allows users to easily find education resources that match their perceived learning style.
Share on Facebookby Justin Ferriman, Learn Dash
A study done by Digital Learning Now is debunking online learning myths, and they even went one-step further to put these myths into a nice, easy-to-read infographic. What I found most fascinating about their online learning study is the amount of policy that has emerged because of it. They found that in the U.S., there are many states that are adopting reforms that support digital learning. It appears that online learning is more than just a method, it is being viewed as a legitimate offering – one that is driving innovative public policy. In five years, I wouldn’t be surprised if online learning is in nearly every classroom across the country given the advancements in technology, and the natural amount of interaction that happens between technology and today’s students on a daily basis.
http://www.learndash.com/busted-online-learning-myths-infographic/
Share on FacebookBy CHERYL WALKER, Wake Forest
Semester Online, the first-of-its-kind program to offer for-credit undergraduate courses through a consortium of top-tier universities, announced today that Wake Forest University is joining the consortium and will offer its first course in 2014. In a partnership with 2U, Inc., Semester Online offers rigorous, small, online, for-credit courses in real time, to qualified college students from anywhere in the world. Wake Forest joins the Semester Online growing roster of nationally renowned colleges and universities including Boston College, Brandeis University, Emory University, Northwestern University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Notre Dame, and Washington University in St. Louis.
Share on FacebookBy Lauren Alix Brown, QZ
More than a year since Coursera launched, the startup offers more than 400 free classes to reach 4 million students around the world. Massive open online courses, better known as MOOCs, have been touted as higher education’s savior, but more likely are taken by people looking for training and skills development. According to Coursera’s demographic data, more than 75% of people in its system already have a bachelor’s degree. Just over half were motivated to take a course for a new job; 61% were doing it for personal fulfillment. While the 10 courses with the highest enrollment affirm interest in acquiring coding skills, the list is dominated by classes that explore decision-making, why people behave the way they do, and learning how to reason.
http://qz.com/122463/the-most-popular-online-classes-arent-what-youd-expect/
Share on FacebookBy Karl Malgiero, WDDE
Over 6,500 hundred high school and college students, veterans and job seekers are already participating in the Cyber Aces program in five other states. The Delaware Cyber Aces program is comprised of three phases: online courses, state championship events and elite education academies. This year’s program begins with a qualifying online competition that runs from now until December. Qualifiers then advance to a championship event on March 30 that utilizes NetWars, the same hands-on simulation the U.S. military uses to train its officers in network warfare. From that point, selected participants can begin elite education and workforce training at a “Cyber Aces Academy” that provides hands-on coursework, certifications and paid residencies in real world job environments. Although Delaware does not have an academy of its own in the state, planning is underway to get one up and running.
http://www.wdde.org/49739-online-competition-seeks-cybersecurity-talent
Share on FacebookBy Judy Salpeter, School CIO
Few people today would argue with the idea that technology offers powerful tools for teaching, learning, and communicating. But how do we ensure that access to such tools is ongoing and ubiquitous, rather than an optional “frill” that teachers and students use only occasionally? Participants in this working session were addressing this question through 1:1 initiatives, Bring Your Own (BYO) solutions, or some combination of the two.
http://www.schoolcio.com/cio-feature-articles/0109/byod-and-one-to-one/54155
Share on Facebookby Fontana Elementary School
One school’s effort to encourage parents/students to access and apply open educational resources to supplement their in school work. We hope these free online learning resources are useful tools as you stretch your brain beyond the boundaries of school. Please remember that these resources are created and maintained by outside groups. We cannot guarantee that they will always be available, or free, or the same quality that they were when we found them. Learn from them while you can!
http://www.fontana.k12.wi.us/for-students/online-learning-resources
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