Educational Technology

October 31, 2013

How Digital Learning Is Becoming The Fourth Literacy

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By Katie Lepi, Edudemic

Reading. Writing. Math. Those are the big ones, right? Up until recently, a lot of people would have probably said that was correct. But since it is 2013 and so much of our lives happen online, digital literacy is being added to the list. Not that this should come as any sort of surprise to most of us, since most teachers spend vast amounts of time in classrooms surrounded by technology. Technology that both teachers and students need to be literate in. The handy infographic below (see URL) takes a look at digital learning as the ‘fourth literacy’, which I found interesting.

http://www.edudemic.com/digital-learning-literacy/

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Curious wants to turn teachers into the web’s next wave of entrepreneurs

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:35 am

by Ki Mae Heussner, GigaOm

When Curious launched this spring, its focus was offering lifelong learners a marketplace of bite-sized lessons on everything from beer brewing and salsa dancing to calculus and coding. Now, it’s upping its attention on the other side of the learning equation: teachers. For the past few months, in an effort to ensure quality classes, the site has recruited its teachers and given them in-house support to create their classes. On Friday, the company said it had opened up its service so that teachers anywhere can create classes of their own. “We think there are thousands of things to teach and ways to teach and you’ll never be able to build all the content yourself,” said CEO and founder Justin Kitch. “This is all in the name of helping teachers become entrepreneurs.”

http://gigaom.com/2013/10/25/lifelong-learning-startup-curious-wants-to-turn-teachers-into-the-webs-next-wave-of-entrepreneurs/

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Obama visits cutting-edge NYC school that has partnership with IBM, tells Congress to invest

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:30 am

By JONATHAN LEMIRE, Associated Press

President Barack Obama visited a cutting-edge vocational school on Friday, praising it as a model of public-private partnership and challenging Congress to invest in similar schools. Obama met with students at Pathways in Technology Early College High School, or P-Tech, which was born out of cooperation among the city’s Department of Education, the City University of New York and IBM. “Everybody is pulling together to make sure a high school education puts people on a good path to a good job,” said Obama, who praised the school as a “ticket to the middle class.” Students attend the Brooklyn school from grades 9 to 14, meaning they do two years of college work in addition to the four years of high school. Their coursework has a heavy emphasis on computer science.

http://www.tribtown.com/view/story/57a3c36f2e0b41bba3ffd3535c63801e/NY–Technology-School-NYC

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October 30, 2013

The Global Search For Education: Got Tech?

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:35 am

by C.M. Rubin, Huffington Post

In the future, will students still attend “schools” or will they be called “blended learning schools” that combine brick-and-mortar buildings with online learning? Five years ago, Clayton M. Christensen along with co-authors, Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson, applied Christensen’s theories of disruptive innovation to one of the most important matters of our time — Education. Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (McGraw-Hill: 1st edition, May, 2008; 2nd edition, August, 2010) explored how technology might better serve future students. The benefits of blended online and brick and mortar learning, such as individualization, universal access and equity, and productivity, sound powerfully tempting to policy makers looking for solutions to the failings of standardized education.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/c-m-rubin/got-tech_b_4159856.html

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US education secretary visits suburban school

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:29 am

BY SOPHIA TAREEN, Associated Press

A suburban Chicago high school — and its unique science lab with cutting-edge microscopes — got a nod from U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who said during a visit Thursday that students in public high schools nationwide should have similar opportunities. Wheeling High School officially unveiled the roughly $615,000 nanotechnology lab to coincide with Duncan’s visit. The seven microscopes, which nanotechnology industry experts say would be the envy of a university or major company, are worth $400,000 alone. “This is pretty amazing to see,” Duncan said after touring the classroom with rows of the computer-like devices. “The world of opportunity that is going to available for these students going forward is pretty extraordinary… We want to see a lot more students have these kinds of chances. ”

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/10/24/3708837/us-education-secretary-visits.html

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Gov. Parnell announces digital learning initiative

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:27 am

by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Gov. Sean Parnell on Thursday announced a digital learning initiative aimed at ensuring students have access to the best teachers available. In an address to the Alaska Federation of Natives convention in Fairbanks, Parnell said every child deserves access to a high-quality education and kids in rural areas cannot be shortchanged. He said rural teachers do a good job but cannot be expected to provide expert instruction in every subject to every child in every grade level they teach, such as those in small schools who teach grades 1-12.

http://juneauempire.com/state/2013-10-25/gov-parnell-announces-digital-learning-initiative

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October 29, 2013

The Decline of Wikipedia

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By Tom Simonite, Technology Review

Wikipedia and its stated ambition to “compile the sum of all human knowledge” are in trouble. The volunteer workforce that built the project’s flagship, the English-language Wikipedia—and must defend it against vandalism, hoaxes, and manipulation—has shrunk by more than a third since 2007 and is still shrinking. Those participants left seem incapable of fixing the flaws that keep Wikipedia from becoming a high-quality encyclopedia by any standard, including the project’s own. Among the significant problems that aren’t getting resolved is the site’s skewed coverage: its entries on Pokemon and female porn stars are comprehensive, but its pages on female novelists or places in sub-Saharan Africa are sketchy. Authoritative entries remain elusive. Of the 1,000 articles that the project’s own volunteers have tagged as forming the core of a good encyclopedia, most don’t earn even Wikipedia’s own middle-­ranking quality scores.

http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520446/the-decline-of-wikipedia/

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Web classes open up for Michigan students

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:30 am

by Jennifer Chambers, The Detroit News

Online learning for Michigan’s public school students is kicking into high gear in January, when students get more choices in deciding how and where they want to take their classes. A statewide catalog of online courses is being assembled this month for students in grades 5-12 who — for the first time — will be able to take up to two online courses per semester as part of their regular school curriculum. Under changes in Michigan school law approved in 2012, students will need permission from their parents to sign up for the classes, which start in January, but they no longer will need approval from their home district, which has to pay providers for the courses.

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20131023/SCHOOLS/310230030/Web-classes-open-up-Michigan-students?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE

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Twitter Experiments With a Private Feed

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:27 am

by Tom Simonite, Technology Review

Two experiments being run by the company suggest it is dabbling with the idea of offering people private and personalized feeds alongside the public one. The experiments may provide a preview of how Twitter will further expand a service that started out simple but is now becoming more complex (see “Facebook and Twitter Are Converging”). Opting in to the experiments involves following two special Twitter accounts, which then send personalized messages using the service’s direct message function. The first of these experiments, @magicrecs, was launched in June. Its followers receive direct messages containing recommendations for other Twitter accounts and tweets that may be of interest. The account’s profile says that it will also recommend “content,” although I’ve not seen any reports of that happening yet. A second experimental account with a similar design appeared earlier this month. Called @eventparrot, it sends its followers personalized updates on breaking news via direct messages.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/520636/twitter-experiments-with-a-private-feed/

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October 28, 2013

A Survival Guide to Teaching with Technology

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:37 am

by Jeff Dunn, Edudemic

If you’re a brave soul attempting to teach with technology, then you know that it can be a challenging and downright difficult task. Students are resistant to change. Teachers are too. Administrators are, well, too. Everyone seems to be unsure about how to effectively integrate technology without running into several roadblocks. A presentation by the always amazing Shelly Terrell should help. It’s quite literally a survival guide to teaching with technology and I strongly recommend you scroll through each slide. It’s packed with wisdom from a teacher who really gets it. Terrell has been a strong proponent of teaching with technology and she’s incredibly passionate about it. You can tell from the slides and her blog here.

http://www.edudemic.com/teaching-with-technology-guide/

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Look How Far Technology Has Come

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:35 am

By Jeff Dunn, Edudemic

Technology has evolved at a neck-snapping pace. We see it every day as we all learn about new web tools, apps, startups, and ideas in the education technology arena. We have bright eyes staring toward the horizon and we’re all hoping for a bright future for our students. But it’s important to look back. I’ve found you never truly know where you’re headed until you understand where you’ve been. In terms of education technology (emphasis on technology), we’ve come so far. Let’s look at an interesting image that I came across whilst browsing the ol’ Pinterest.

http://www.edudemic.com/history-of-technology/

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4 Apps and Web Tools Perfect For Digital Art Class

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:30 am

By Katie Lepi, Edudemic

There are lots of web tools and apps out there that teach specific educational material. If you tried to catalog the vast number of spelling, reading, writing, and math apps out there, you’d probably have a full time job just keeping track of everything that’s out there. There are apps for specific math concepts (like the series of iDevBooks apps that we’ve mentioned in the past) as well as more general ones. There are apps for every age group and reading level.

http://www.edudemic.com/digital-art-class/

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October 27, 2013

3D printing to dominate STEM education within 3 years

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:40 am

by 3ders

A new report from the NMC Horizon Project has identified 12 emerging technologies that will have a significant impact on STEM+ education over the next one to five years. The Technology Outlook for STEM+ Education 2013-2018 recognizes learning analytics, mobile learning, online learning, and virtual and remote laboratories as technologies expected to enter mainstream use in the near-term horizon of one year or less. 3D printing, games and gamification, immersive learning environments, and wearable technology are seen in the mid-term horizon of two to three years. Finally, flexible displays, the Internet of Things, machine learning, and virtual assistants emerged in the far-term horizon of four to five years.

http://www.3ders.org/articles/20131022-3d-printing-to-dominate-stem-education-within-3-years.html

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Can we scale ‘the learning that matters most’?

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:36 am

by Tony Bates, Online Learning and Distance Ed Resources

Will the mining of the mass of student data lead to pedagogies that will help students understand chemistry, mathematics, or art?  Will the mining of data simply be an exercise in petrology, or will it uncover new pedagogies? Audrey Watters cites the online company, Knewton, which claims to provide personalized solutions using their technology to move students through course material “at their own pace.”  She points out how Knewton uses PR spin to claim that they offer “adaptive learning” by means of its technology.  One of my reasons for wanting to use the P-20 Longitudinal Data System is find out what student data they are using and storing in the data warehouse.  No doubt they will include transcript type data such as grades, attendance, behavior, age, etc.  And no doubt we will find student test scores accumulated over the years in every subject that was tested.  But what kind of data, beyond these, will enable educators to “make better data-driven decision-making,” especially to personalize student learning?  Will this data be valuable to the day-to-day teaching of our chemistry, math, or art teacher?

http://www.artofteachingscience.org/the-race-to-top-p-20-data-system-is-it-petrology-or-pedagogy/

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Libraries Staying Relevant

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:29 am

by Carl Straumsheim, Inside Higher Ed

If basic market forces are reshaping higher education, common knowledge dictates incumbents will lose market share to newcomers. But based on the discussions at a conference on sustainable scholarship here on Tuesday, no one — from faculty members to librarians — intends to play the role of the incumbent. Disaggregation, unbundling and public-private partnerships were some of the many recurring themes during a daylong brainstorming session on innovative forms of teaching and learning — themes that the almost 200 academic librarians, publishers and representatives of the private sector in attendance suggested could prevent their fields from becoming obsolete. The conference sessions were meant to focus on specifically on librarianship and publishing, but moderators regularly had to prompt panelists to return to those topics as the conversation quickly spilled into higher education as a whole. The event was hosted by the nonprofit research organization Ithaka, which promotes innovative forms of teaching and scholarly communication.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/10/23/sustainable-scholarship-conference-highlights-urgency-stay-ahead-curve

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October 26, 2013

Why Are Girls Not Pursuing Computer Science Degrees?

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By Katie Lepi, Edudemic

We know that there is what is called a ‘gender divide’ (or gender gap) in STEM. In short, there are more men than women in STEM careers. More young men pursue STEM fields in college than young women. So why don’t more girls pursue technology careers, become scientists, or become computer scientists? Girls get the same education in K-12 that boys do. So do they simply dislike computer science? Are they not good enough at it to pursue it as a career? The handy infographic at the URL below takes a look at some statistics from a few different sources to show that it is mainly girls’ perceptions that prevent them from pursuing careers in computer science.

http://www.edudemic.com/girls-computer-science-degrees/

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6 Reasons To Try Mobile Devices In The Classroom

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:35 am

By Alice Martin, Edudemic

Looking at the recent advancement in computer and technology, the education system seems more organized and systemic than ever. Considering this aspect, one can easily predict a more technology-based classroom environment that will benefit both the teachers and students in future. Tablets and Smartphones have reinforced this ideology further by introducing new ideas and concepts in the traditional ways of schooling. Now students can learn in a more flexible and self-paced environment without any hurdles with resources – time, people, space and money. This has resulted in an efficient and faster way to learn and grow within a particular field of study. Here I will inform you about some important benefits that you can avail using Tablets, Smartphones and other mobile devices in the classroom.

http://www.edudemic.com/mobile-devices-in-the-classroom/

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Where In The World Do The Most Young People Use Technology?

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:30 am

By Katie Lepi, Edudemic

•Digital Natives are considered to be those who are aged 15-24 and have at least five years of online experience

•30% of the world’s youth has been online for at least five years

•Out of a world population of 7 billion, only 363 million are digital natives – or about 5.2%

•Iceland has the largest number of digital natives as a % of population (13.9%)

•China has the largest (raw) number of digital natives

•Korea (Rep.) has the largest number of digital natives as a % of the youth population (99.6%)

•The ratio of youth internet usage to overall internet usage is highest in developing countries

(see the URL for much more!)

http://www.edudemic.com/world-young-people-use-technology/

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October 25, 2013

Your tutor is a computer

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:40 am

by DAVID ISRAELSON, The Globe and Mail

“We’re working with millennium students [students who have come of age in the 21st century] so we want to use technology to create buy-in. You want to keep everything interesting and relevant,” Ms. Lloyd says. It’s cheaper and easier than ever to deploy up-to-date technology for academic coaching and tutoring, she adds: “You used to have to buy specialized software or hardware, but there’s less of that these days. For example, text-to-speech is built in to a lot of computers.” Evoke uses the cloud to store student materials. “Once their notes are dropped into the cloud, they don’t get lost, and they don’t have memory keys that can get lost either,” Ms. Lloyd says. Looking ahead, Evoke aims to make its Web presence more robust. “We want to develop our own videos, to help students understand various disabilities or exceptionalities and find strong ways to study for tests or exams,” she explains.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/tech-news/your-tutor-is-a-computer/article14909972/

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Understanding E-Textbooks – it’s not Elementary!

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by Resource Link

The advantages of e-textbooks seem logical:

  • 24/7 and remote access
  • enhanced mobility and reduction in physical size
  • inbuilt features such as search, dictionary
  • enhancement of learning experience via inbuilt multimedia and interactivity
  • improved accessibility for students with sight impairment

However, teachers and teacher librarians report challenges including

  • the need for digital infrastructure including strong WiFi networks
  • the cost of providing/maintaining devices required to deliver digital content
  • the time-consuming nature and complexity of management
  • the inability to provide textbook hire or resale of texts

http://resourcelinkbce.wordpress.com/2013/10/18/understanding-e-textbooks-its-not-elementary/

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15 Learning Tools You Never Knew Existed

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:30 am

by Educators Technology

The world of educational technology is moving in such an allure that it becomes hard for us to keep up with it. Everyday, there are new learning apps emerging hither and tither, new educational trends are being conceptualized and the educational field gets richer and richer. Online College has compiled this interesting list of some new learning trends you might have probably never heard of. I am sharing it with you below, have a look and let us know what you think of this list.

http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/10/the-world-of-educational-is-moving-in.html

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