Educational Technology

October 10, 2013

Student Social Media Monitoring Stirs up Debate

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

By Tanya Roscorla, Center for Digital Education

Social media monitoring of students has sparked a debate among education leaders, policymakers and legal experts. And recent monitoring decisions have added fuel to the fire. On one hand, social media monitoring of students could help education institutions identify cyberbullying, suicidal posts and illegal behavior. It could also give them opportunities to teach students about responsible social media use that benefits both students and institutions. On the other hand, monitoring student social media takes time away from educators’ regular duties and can lead to more of a disciplinary mindset rather than an educational one. This monitoring could pose legal liabilities, put educators into a role they’re not trained for, and generally track what students are saying even though there is no reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing.

http://www.centerdigitaled.com/news/Student-Social-Media-Monitoring-Stirs-up-Debate.html

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Small Community Colleges Make Social Media a Priority

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

By Tanya Roscorla, Center for Digital Education

While small community colleges may not have the resources that large universities do, they’re making an effort to be on social media so they can serve their students and community. Community colleges face both unique opportunities and challenges with social media, said Brian Smith, communications coordinator for Austin Community College in Texas, which enrolls more than 43,000 credit students. The college does not have the fan base of a large athletics program, which means it doesn’t have a built-in following on social media like universities do. Plus, students generally only spend two years at the college, so many don’t have as lasting of a connection with it. “With community college, you’ve got a lot of students who frankly may be ashamed of the bad rap that community colleges get, so they don’t want to associate themselves on social media with it,” Smith said.

http://www.centerdigitaled.com/news/Smaller-Community-Colleges-Make-Social-Media-a-Priority.html

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October 9, 2013

PowerPoint-Less: Presenting Without PowerPoint?

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:39 am

by Joshua Kim , Inside Higher Ed

Editor’s Note: Thanks to Josh Kim (who presented an inspiring plenary at the Teaching Professor Technology conference this past weekend in Atlanta) for writing about the Power Point-Less approach I use in presentations – I encourage us all to give it a try! -Ray

… What I find intriguing about Ray’s talk is his decision to forgo PowerPoint. Ray actually worked the method into the substance of his talk, making the argument that a Web presentation is superior to a PowerPoint based presentation if your goal is to create a conversation. If you look at the link for Ray’s talk  –  https://sites.google.com/site/vortexoftech/  – you will see that it starts with a short pre-amble:  “A word about Power Pointless! My colleagues and I at the University of Illinois Springfield Center for Online Learning, Research and Service present many national and regional workshops encouraging attendees to freely share presentation materials online using web-native tools that encourage collaboration and updating.”

http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/presenting-without-powerpoint

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Raspberry Pi, Cambridge University Press and OCR team up for free computing lessons

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

by GARETH MCPHERSON, Cambridge News

A boost has been delivered to the teaching of computing in schools after three Cambridge institutions teamed up to offer free lessons for all.  Mini computer pioneers the Raspberry Pi Foundation, Cambridge University Press and exam board OCR have launched what they claim is the first massive open online course (MOOC) designed to support school teaching and learning in computing, a subject previously bemoaned by the Education Secretary Michael Gove as forgotten.  More than 80 bite-sized videos were released today focusing on essential knowledge for beginners to do with hardware, data representation and programming.

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/News/Raspberry-Pi-Cambridge-University-Press-and-OCR-team-up-for-free-computing-lessons-20131001175156.htm

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Online open course ambitions go global

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

By Jacques Henno/Worldcrunch/Les Echos, Gulf Times

Imagine a future where all high school students could go on to study whatever subject they want, where a university isn’t forced to limit the number of applicants it can accept or base its enrollment policy on grades or finances, but only on the wishes of students. It’s the dream of an education revolution that is stirring in California, where a lack of space in lecture halls has meant that only 16% of university students manage to graduate in four years. The California Senate proposed legislation in March, though momentarily on hold, that would allow state universities to validate free courses that students take from home. Get used to this acronym: MOOC, for “massive online open course”.

http://www.gulf-times.com/opinion/189/details/367396/online-open-course-ambitions-go-global

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October 8, 2013

A New Level Of Critical Thinking With Citelighter’s New ‘Cognitive Prints’

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

By Katie Lepi, Edudemic

Cognitive Print is a personalized fingerprint of each student’s cognitive process. Cognitive prints are a real time, color-coded, sequential task analysis of the steps that a student takes as they complete their research and writing assignment. It can offer a new depth of insight into why a student may be performing exceptionally well (or not), and can help them to guide each student in a better direction.Cognitive prints give teachers an in-depth, personalized look at each student’s work process. Since Citelighter gives them the ability to see a log of every action their students take as they research, comment, paraphrase, organize content, and write, they don’t need to waste time trying to diagnose any particular students’ difficulties. The teacher and student can work together to put a more efficient process in place for each student.

http://www.edudemic.com/citelighter-cognitive-prints/

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Data kept safe through encryption, cloud storage

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

By Jake New, eCampus News

This summer, data on American campuses was under attack, with some schools like the University of Wisconsin reporting 100,000 cyber-attacks from Chinese IP addresses every day. CrashPlan backs up university’s data by encrypting it and storing it in the cloud. At the same time, more than half of universities still transmit various kinds of sensitive data over unencrypted channels, according to a recent survey conducted by HALOCK Security Labs. The not-for-profit consortium Internet2 is helping its 250 member institution members tackle the problem by providing them with the endpoint backup service CrashPlan.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/technologies/data-crashplan-cloud-025/

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How Apple Could Boost Speeds 20 Times on the Next iPhone

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

By David Talbot, Technology Review

By one estimate, global mobile data traffic will increase 13-fold between 2012 and 2017, requiring new solutions for adding capacity. A wireless networking technology found in Apple’s new operating system could—if tweaked—provide a 10- to 20-fold bandwidth increase in some situations, like on a moving train or in a busy urban environment, new research suggests. The technology is called multipath TCP. It allows you to use multiple wireless networks—such as 4G and Wi-Fi—at the same time. But Apple isn’t using it fully, nor is it using an advanced version—one that also encodes the data being transmitted in new ways— recently shown to provide those dramatic potential gains.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/519646/how-apple-could-boost-speeds-20-times-on-the-next-iphone/

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October 7, 2013

Reaching Out to Struggling Online Students with Web 2.0 Technology

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

by Shaun D. Curran, HETL

The concern among administrators and instructors regarding isolation and lack of engagement between student and instructor in online courses continues to grow as educational institutions continue to set up online departments and courses. On-campus courses offer advantages in the area of interaction in the form of a face-to-face setting; however, online courses pose challenges: feedback between students and instructors is often left to random emails or comments on assignments. The purpose of this article is to show how Web 2.0 technology can increase interaction in online courses while reducing isolation and engaging struggling students.

https://www.hetl.org/feature-articles/reaching-out-to-struggling-online-students-with-web-2-0-technology/

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Will MOOCs kill university degrees?

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

by the Economist

MOOCs presage a period of great change in higher education, but they will not kill off the traditional degree. After all, people still want to buy vinyl records in an era of MP3s. And so far there are insufficient numbers of graduates to force big shifts immediately. But MOOCs will prompt more rapid innovation in a sector facing enormous pressures over the cost of its basic product. Eventually the full-time residential four-year degree (three in Europe) could start to look out-of-date. Online education allows colleges to innovate with regard to the quality, length and cost of their offerings. It should be possible to offer shorter and cut-price degrees that are demonstrably equivalent (in terms of employability) to the degrees of today. Already there is pressure on publicly funded universities to accept online credits, and the American Council on Education says that it will evaluate MOOCs for college credit.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/10/economist-explains?

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Give competency-based education a chance

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

By Reps. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) and Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.), the Hill

While the Department of Education has allowed specified programs to explore this model through experimental sites, current regulations continue to stand in the way of these innovative programs. Financial aid is disbursed based on time rather than learning, and the academic calendar often stands in the way of students who want to progress at a faster or slower pace. Because the Higher Education Act has not been reauthorized since 2007, Congress has not had an opportunity to explore and address these barriers. For these reasons, we are introducing the Advancing Competency-Based Education Demonstration Project Act of 2013, along with Reps. Susan Brooks (R-Ind.) and Robert Andrews (D-N.J.). This unique and bipartisan effort will allow innovative colleges and universities to explore ways to deliver education, measure quality and disburse financial aid based on learning, rather than time.

http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/324067-give-competency-based-education-a-chance

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October 6, 2013

A Straightforward Guide To Building Cutting-Edge Classrooms

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

By Jeff Dunn, Edudemic

If you’re overwhelmed by all the talk of iPads, classroom connectivity, and basically unsure of how to actually turn your current classroom into something more cutting-edge, then this visual is for you. It details the step-by-step way to turn your 4 walls and desks into a 21st century classroom. While I hate that term, it fits into this visual (see below) so be sure to check it out. The following guide we found quite awhile ago on Visual.ly draws some interesting ideas out of the usual ‘get some tech into your classroom’ mantra we all follow.

http://www.edudemic.com/cutting-edge-classrooms/

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SPOCs Are MOOC Game Changers

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

by Jim Shimabukuro, ETC Journal

They’re billed as SPOCs, or small private online courses, and they’re being led by Harvard and UC-Berkeley. According to Rob Lue1, Harvard’s edX director, “We’re already in a post-Mooc era,”2 and SPOCs are the next generation. Considering the specs on SPOCs, however, SOOC3 — for selective open online course — may be a better fit for what appears to be a strong candidate for nextgen status. The problem with the moniker is that SPOCs aren’t always private.

http://etcjournal.com/2013/09/26/spocs-are-mooc-game-changers/

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The 4 Brain Essential Learning Steps

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:28 am

By Katie Lepi, Edudemic

Understanding how learning happens is a huge part of teaching. If you don’t understand what needs to happen for learning to occur, how can your students learn? We’ve heard it SO many times, especially as of late – you can’t just throw information at your students anymore, you have to teach them how to process it so that they can learn how to learn. The handy infographic below takes a look at the BELS process – Brain Essential Learning Steps. In other words, how does the brain process information in the learning process? The graphic breaks it down in terms of how to teach the material, making this a super useful reminder for teachers planning their lessons. Keep reading to learn more.

http://www.edudemic.com/brain-essential-learning-steps/

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October 5, 2013

Who and What Links to the Internet Archive

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

by Yasmin AlNoamany, et al. ArXiv

The Internet Archive’s (IA) Wayback Machine is the largest and oldest public web archive and has become a significant repository of our recent history and cultural heritage. Despite its importance, there has been little research about how it is discovered and used. Based on web access logs, we analyze what users are looking for, why they come to IA, where they come from, and how pages link to IA. We find that users request English pages the most, followed by the European languages. Most human users come to web archives because they do not find the requested pages on the live web. About 65% of the requested archived pages no longer exist on the live web. We find that more than 82% of human sessions connect to the Wayback Machine via referrals from other web sites, while only 15% of robots have referrers. Most of the links (86%) from websites are to individual archived pages at specific points in time, and of those 83% no longer exist on the live web.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1309.4016

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Four Perspectives on the Future of Online Education

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

by Dave Clinefelter, Learning House

Between regulatory changes, the introduction of new learning models such as MOOCs, and rising tuition rates, online higher education is evolving at a rapid pace. No longer is it an expansive market where schools can build an online program and expect an instant boost in enrollment. How, then, can schools succeed? A panel of diverse industry experts, including Richard Garrett, vice president and principal analyst for online higher education at Eduventures; Bradley Safalow, founder and CEO of PAA Research; Gregory Ferenbach, partner at Dow Lohnes, PLLC; and Dr. Susan Aldridge, senior fellow of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and newly appointed senior vice president for online learning at Drexel University, has some answers.

http://www.learninghouse.com/blog/marketing/four-perspectives-on-the-future-of-online-education

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Google Tweaks Search to Challenge Apple’s Siri

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

By Tom Simonite, Technology Review

Making search better able to understand natural language and speech could allow major changes in how people use mobile devices. Google announced a series of upgrades to its search engine and mobile search apps today that strengthen its ability to understand queries in the form of natural sentences like those used in conversation. The changes are particularly focused on enabling more complex spoken interactions with Google’s mobile apps, boosting the company’s challenge to Apple’s Siri personal assistant. “We are making your conversation with Google more natural,” said Amit Singhal, who leads search technology at Google. He spoke at a press conference held in the Menlo Park garage that Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin made their first office space in 1998.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/519681/google-tweaks-search-to-challenge-apples-siri/

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October 4, 2013

MSU’s new ‘active’ classrooms help students pass tough classes

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

by GAIL SCHONTZLER, Bozeman Daily Chronicle

Chronicle Staff Writer Shad Cristando likes taking his business law class in one of Montana State University’s new interactive classrooms. Instead of staring at the back of someone’s head and listening to the professor lecture, students sit at round tables, work in teams and help each other learn. “I love it,” said Cristando, a business management major. “It’s a better learning atmosphere. More personal.” “My algebra class rocked in here,” agreed business student Jackie Johnson. MSU has created two “technology enhanced, active learning” or TEAL classrooms. They’re proving successful, Marilyn Lockhart, interim director of MSU’s Center for Faculty Excellence, told about three dozen faculty members who attended a meeting last week to learn more about the new teaching option.

http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/montana_state_university/article_601a997a-27ce-11e3-999a-0019bb2963f4.html

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UNL’s push for online courses targets graduate students

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

by Layla Younis, Daily Nebraskan

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s projected increase in online enrollment will target distance graduate students. At his State of the University address last week, Chancellor Harvey Perlman said online enrollment will be an integral part of reaching his goal of 30,000 students by 2017. The university will increase funding for online courses and experiment cautiously with expanding opportunities, which he said could include massive open online courses (MOOCs) or blended courses.

http://www.dailynebraskan.com/news/article_24db7332-2654-11e3-a4e2-001a4bcf6878.html

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Wearable Computing: Not Just For Consumers Anymore

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BY HIMANSHU SAREEN,Wired

Wearable computing looks like the next big trend in technology. Or at least one of the dozens that are being crowned right now. While the current market cap for wearable computing is less than $10 billion, most industry experts agree that it will skyrocket over the next 5 years. The market potential for wearable computing stems from its diversity. From watches and fitness trackers to sensor-filled clothes and Google Glass. The applications around wearable computing are wide-ranging, and because there is no clear market leader (a la the iPod for MP3 players and the early days of the iPhone), the variety of products being developed are given the opportunity to pursue different, diverging paths.

http://www.wired.com/insights/2013/09/wearable-computing-not-just-for-consumers-anymore/

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October 3, 2013

How To Use Augmented Reality In Education

Filed under: Educational Technology — admin @ 12:38 am

By Jeff Dunn, Edudemic

Augmented reality is not exactly stuff like Google Glass or Iron Man. Instead, it’s an array of apps, web tools, and games designed to enhance learning through interactive experiences. That’s my definition at least. In an effort to shed some light on the current tools and teachers using AR, I thought it might be useful to assemble a list of what we’re seeing these days.

http://www.edudemic.com/augmented-reality-in-education/

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