Educational Technology

By: Shelly Terrell, Tech and Learning

One of my favorite activities with my students was having them keep daily journals. Each day, they knew the routine. Grab their journals, grab a pillow, sit where they want and spend 5 minutes responding to the prompt on the board. Nowadays, technology provides us more engaging ways to encourage writing. Students can journal online with blogs or use mobile technologies to capture images, record videos, and post podcasts. They can make their voices more engaging, spread their ideas, and receive comments from around the world. Linked below are a few ideas and resources.

http://www.techlearning.com/Default.aspx?tabid=67&entryid=7155

By Steve Young, CIO Advisor

I came back from TCEA, underwhelmed, not by the myriad of great presenters, but by vendor product offerings. Where were the companies transforming education and interconnecting systems so that educators can leverage multiple platforms as needed to help provide a better, more integrated learning experience? Most of what I saw was just incremental improvements of existing products. While there were some standouts, I was not wowed.

http://www.schoolcio.com/Default.aspx?tabid=136&entryid=7197

By: David Kapuler, Tech and Learning

A while back I created a list of top 10 sites for creating timelines. Well, since that time mobile learning has really integrated into education and apps have been developed to accomplish this task. I’ve created a new list combined with apps and sites that are ideal for creating timelines.

http://www.techlearning.com/Default.aspx?tabid=67&entryid=7150

By Google

Lots of online education is delivered using video and text. However, opportunities for learners to do things and get feedback on their work are also important — after all, one does not learn to play the piano by watching videos of many virtuoso performances. We’re excited to announce Oppia, a project that aims to make it easy for anyone to create online interactive activities, called ‘explorations’, that others can learn from. Oppia does this by modeling a mentor who poses questions for the learner to answer. Based on the learner’s responses, the mentor decides what question to ask next, what feedback to give, whether to delve deeper, or whether to proceed to something new. You can think of this as a smart feedback system that tries to “teach a person to fish”, instead of simply revealing the correct answer or marking the submitted answer as wrong. If you’d like to get an idea of what these explorations are like, you can try out some examples at www.oppia.org.

http://google-opensource.blogspot.in/2014/02/oppia-tool-for-interactive-learning.html

By Karine Joly, University Business

As Google explains on its website, the goal of UA is to help you get a better understanding of how visitors interact with your online content. Some institutions, including Penn State, and Lehigh University and the University of Scranton, also in Pennsylvania, have already switched to UA. At Eastern Kentucky University, the UA code is run in parallel with the classic version of Google Analytics. However, most early adopters haven’t yet implemented anything that couldn’t be done with the original Google Analytics. As usual in higher education, it’s a process.

http://www.universitybusiness.com/article/universal-analytics-game-changer-higher-ed

By Kristen Domonell, University Business

A 2013 Noel-Levitz E-Expectations Report of incoming college students found that 78 percent have regular access to a mobile device. And while that number has probably crept higher for 2014, what about the approximately one in five college students who don’t have that access? For many low-income and first-generation college students, owning a smart phone, tablet or laptop is simply not a reality. What is a reality is that this situation creates educational barriers for these students. In fact, technology is so integrated into our society that students who do not have access can be at a disadvantage academically, socially and financially, says Brittania Morey, director of communications for the Iowa College Access Network (ICAN), which helps more than 300,000 students, parents and education professionals prepare for college each year.

http://www.universitybusiness.com/article/bridging-digital-divide

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

The proposed Congressional Tax Reform Act of 2014, put forward this week by Dave Camp, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, would end deductions for tuition and student loan interest and eliminate certain deductions, such as classroom supplies purchased personally by teachers in an effort to simplify the tax code related to education. To soften the blow to education, promised the authors, taxpayers would see “more generous” standard deductions, which could offset specific ones no longer allowed.

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2014/02/28/education-sees-direct-hits-in-proposed-tax-reform-bill.aspx

By David Nagel, THE Journal

Within the next two years, IT organizations will need to master a slew of mobile-related skills — many of them new or unfamiliar. They’ll also need to have on hand the tools to execute and support increasingly important mobile technologies. In a post, Gartner Vice President Nick Jones identified several of these skills and tools that apply to organizations across sectors.

http://thejournal.com/articles/2014/02/24/8-mobile-competencies-it-will-need-by-2016.aspx

by Edutopia, Mary Beth Hertz

I have met many edtech entrepreneurs through my work in teaching technology to kids, and through working with organizations that support innovation in the field of educational technology. As a co-organizer of the Philly EdTech Meetup, I also get to talk one-on-one to many entrepreneurs on a fairly regular basis. Through these conversations, it has become apparent that there are many things that edtech entrepreneurs can do to stay relevant and be successful.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/5-tips-for-edtech-entrepreneurs-mary-beth-hertz

By David Nagel, THE Journal

The era of double-digit growth in smart phone adoption is coming to a close as devices approach the saturation point, which in turn will lead to drops in prices, according to new research. In North America alone, some 200 million smart phones are already in active use — one for about every 2.75 people residing on the continent and about one-seventh of the world’s total active devices. According to International Data Corp., in mature markets like the United States and Europe, smart phone growth will drop to the single digits in 2014, while, worldwide, growth will drop in half to about 19.3 percent for the year. (That follows growth of 39.2 percent in 2013 on 1 billion unit shipments. Shipments in 2014 are currently forecast at about 1.2 billion units.)

http://thejournal.com/articles/2014/02/27/as-smart-phones-approach-the-saturation-point-prices-head-downward.aspx

By Elaine Sanchez Wilson, THE Journal

Districts that have spent millions on 1-to-1 rollouts are protecting their investment with a variety of cases and covers. With schools around the country — including major urban districts like Miami-Dade, Houston ISD and Los Angeles Unified — rolling out 1-to-1 initiatives, hundreds of thousands of kids (and their teachers) are handling new mobile devices. To those in the classroom, these are learning tools, but to school administrators, they are major investments that need to be protected. So while data security may grab the headlines, tech leaders are also engaged in the more mundane task of choosing cases and teaching best practices to provide physical security for their mobile devices. Here’s how they’re protecting against breakage, and what they’re doing when accidents happen.

http://thejournal.com/articles/2014/02/26/making-mobile-devices-durable.aspx

By Beth Holland, Edudemic

Augmented Reality (AR) allows teachers and students to extend the physical world with a virtual overlay. Whether you have iPad, Android, or a smartphone, scanning a trigger in the physical world with an AR app allows a new layer of information to appear. This information could be a link to a web site, a video, an audio recording, or even a 3D model.

http://www.edudemic.com/augmented-reality-in-the-classroom/

By Katie Lepi, Edudemic

Instantaneous is the speed that most of us expect, and mind-numbing amounts of data are crunched, sent, and received. But just how much stuff is happening on the internet in just one minute? The handy infographic linked below takes a look at a minute in the existence of the internet. Some of the statistics are mind boggling, but moreover, I can’t wait to see what these numbers look like and what additions have been made in five or ten years!

http://www.edudemic.com/internet-minute-infographic/

By Katie Lepi, Edudemic

Not too long ago, the NMC Horizon Report: 2014 Higher Education Edition was released, with the aim of examining emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in teaching and learning within higher education settings. This is the eleventh time the New Media Consortium has put out this report, and it is interesting to look back and see what they had to say last year, as compared with their findings this year. In the report, the NMC teams with the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative to identify six trends that are accelerating the adoption of technology in higher education.

http://www.edudemic.com/education-trends-keep-tech-front-center/

By Kelly Taylor, eCampus News

Gardner-Webb University began delivering its new online curriculum using Teachscape’s professional learning system in fall 2013. When the state of North Carolina dramatically reduced textbook funding, yet decided it would implement the Common Core State Standards, our School of Education at Gardner-Webb University decided to fast-track a program to make all teacher preparation courses textbook-free. We did this with the goal of preparing our students for the environment they would experience when they enter the teaching field, as well as to better equip them to meet the digital expectations that will be asked of them once they graduate.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/well-prepared-teachers-235/

By Sarah Butrymowicz, The Hechinger Report

Now, as online courses soar in popularity, a battle is beginning over who should own them. Though little noticed, it’s a fight that could change longstanding traditions about faculty control of classes they create, and influence the future and success of online higher education. Universities hope to make money off these courses, which can enroll thousands of paying students instead of the few hundred who can fit inside the largest brick-and-mortar lecture halls. But many faculty fear their work may be altered for the worse, or that universities will employ other, less-qualified people to teach them.

http://nation.time.com/2014/03/01/online-courses-moocs-ownership/

by TIM DODD, Financial Review

Anant Agarwal, president of US massive open online course provider edX, is a native Hindi speaker. But Professor Agarwal had to come to the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra to find the first edX MOOC to be delivered in his native language. On April 29, ANU will launch Engaging India , a 10-week course which ANU academics McComas Taylor and Peter Friedlander will present online with the help of ANU India specialists, taking advantage of the university’s widely-recognised expertise on the country.

http://www.afr.com/p/national/education/anu_bilingual_mooc_hit_in_india_jNqzxkEBSn33Jw9G9Z2RII

By BiztechAfrica

The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) has just launched the 2014 edition of the online training courses in financial management, international trade and intellectual property. These courses are intended for trade and finance professionals and officials from developing countries including least developed countries and economies in transition. Since the introduction of online courses in 2003, over 10,000 officials mainly from developing countries benefited from our courses.

http://www.biztechafrica.com/article/africa-un-launches-2014-online-courses-finance-tra/7789/?section=internet#.UxN03eNdXso

By Sari Factor, Forbes

Six hours a day. That’s how much time the average teenager spends online, according to a June 2013 study by McAfee. These are “digital natives,” a generation that has grown up online and connected. Just think about it: students born in 2007, the year the iPhone was launched, are already in first grade. Students born during the dot-com boom of the late ’90s are in high school. These students have never known a world without the Internet. They’re communicating 140 characters at a time, establishing completely new ways of consuming news and information.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/schoolboard/2014/02/28/ed-tech-is-poised-to-go-mainstream/

by the Guardian

“Simple and brilliant,” was student Dave Featherstone’s verdict on the university’s OU Anywhere app that allows instant access to everything he needed for his studies via a mobile device. Seeing ever larger numbers of students using its virtual learning environment, the university decided to embark on the process of digitising all its undergraduate course materials, including text and multimedia resources, optimizing them for mobile use. “The Open University’s method of delivery already enables students to fit study around work and life commitments: OU Anywhere means that students can now easily transport their study materials everywhere, on devices they are already carrying, eliminating the need to carry books,” says Belinda Tynan, pro-vice-chancellor, learning & teaching.

http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2014/feb/18/winner-the-open-university-distance-or-online-learning

By Meris Stansbury, eSchool News

Common Core online assessments are scheduled to begin in districts across the country in the spring of 2014 through 2015. However, many districts still struggle to implement these online assessments, thanks to inadequate bandwidth and lack of technology infrastructure. National consortia and multiple school districts have offered eight key recommendations to help districts in their implementation efforts.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2014/02/24/core-online-assessments-788/