Educational Technology

by eSchool News

Students are more engaged in their learning and tend to show more achievement in certain areas when they have access to technology during school and at home, according to a study from wireless service provider Kajeet and Project Tomorrow, a national education nonprofit. The two-year-long study focused on the impact of mobile devices on teaching and learning. The Making Learning Mobile 2.0 study continues taking an in-depth look at the impact of one-to-one tablet implementation, including internet access outside the classroom, with Chicago Public Schools students.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2015/02/02/tech-access-study-894/

by Shelly Palmer

Now think about your digital life and how you have protected it? You have a few easy to remember passwords, a “came with your computer” firewall, a messy hard drive that may or may not have the latest antivirus software on it because it’s too big of a pain to update. If a motivated criminal wanted to get into your house, they would practically waltz in. Your sense of security is based upon where you live, your faith in the police and the size of your insurance policy. If a motivated hacker targeted you, you literally would not know you had been attacked until after it was over. From a skilled hacker’s point of view, you have glass windows, glass doors, the lights are off, there’s nobody home and you left the back door open.

http://www.shellypalmer.com/spb/2015/1/30/emperor-of-the-internet

By Stephen Noonoo, eschool News

Twitter and Google+ may not have been designed for educators, but every day thousands of teachers, school leaders, and learners of all sizes take to social media to connect, grow, and share in ways that would seem almost impossible a few short years ago. With all the noise, though, it can be tough to know where to begin. The biggest benefit is that social media helps break down of traditional geography-based professional development and exposes educators to outside ideas, says Thomas Murray, a director at the Alliance For Excellent Education, co-founder of Twitter’s #edtechchat, and new author of Leading Professional Learning. “It helps you keep up with the latest trends and hot topics, and it keeps you on the cusp of what education is looking like.”

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2015/02/02/google-twitter-pln/

by Rebecca Alber, Edutopia

In the education world, the term student-centered classroom is one we hear a lot. And many educators would agree that when it comes to 21st-century learning, having a student-centered classroom is certainly a best practice. Whether you instruct first grade or university students, take some time to think about where you are with creating a learning space where your students have ample voice, engage frequently with each other, and are given opportunities to make choices.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/how-student-centered-your-classroom-rebecca-alber

By Edudemic

You may already be using video to support your lessons, but have you considered encouraging your students to create them? Student-to-student videos enhance student understanding of a subject as well as student creativity and critical thinking skills. In a recent KQED MindShift article, Katrina Schwartz lauds peer-created videos for their ability to reach struggling students in ways that you as a teacher cannot. No longer are videos a distraction or a tool used only by teachers; videos can create a richer learning experience.

http://www.edudemic.com/student-to-student-teaching-online-video/

By Sharon Noguchi, Mercury News

Textbooks, those long-entrenched staples of classrooms, could soon be pushed from their place of prominence by a high-tech alternative: online lessons that can be downloaded, customized and updated — all at will, and all for free. The online material offers enticing benefits as it provides more current content, appeal to students and saves schools potentially big money. San Jose Unified, for example, spends $1 million annually on textbooks. For some time, textbook publishers and software developers have marketed digital lessons to schools. But unlike Apple’s proposition to replace books with more costly iPad lessons, the movement for “open educational resources” focuses on free material, created and curated by educators.

http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_27429331/goodbye-textbooks-hello-free-online-resources

By Kristen Hicks, Edudemic

In a perfect world students would understand that education is for their benefit and put their all into every assignment. Unfortunately, every educator working today knows how far off the reality is from that ideal. Cheating isn’t just something that a few bad apples do every now and then, it proliferates. In a 2010 survey of high school students, one in three admitted to using the web to plagiarize. That makes it a problem no teacher can ignore.

http://www.edudemic.com/the-5-best-plagiarism-detection-tools-for-educators/

By Amanda Ronan, Edudemic

udents in the United States today have any memory of a time before the Internet. With a world of interactions (both good and bad) a mere click away, it is crucial to prepare our students for a connected existence that values respect, awareness, and collaboration with others from diverse backgrounds – in essence, to make truly global citizens. How can it be done? By harnessing the power and design of many familiar apps and websites, teachers can bring this global diversity and collaboration into their classrooms. In fact, by simply pairing a few tried and true tools with new or more obscure apps, you can deftly combine curriculum-based and global learning.

http://www.edudemic.com/5-tool-combinations-for-globalizing-class/

By Melissa Schmitz, Edudemic

California’s Coachella Valley Unified School District (CVUSD), situated along the Salton Sea in one of the poorest sections of the country, has found a unique way to deliver Internet access to its low-income students: their school buses. The district installed routers in two of its buses, allowing students access to the Internet on their school-issued tablets during their morning and afternoon commutes. This just goes to show that cash-strapped schools can augment their students’ education, just by thinking a little outside of the school walls – and the box. But is the model one that generalizes outside of CVUSD? To determine this, we’ll take a close look at the experiment and extrapolate from there.

http://www.edudemic.com/next-big-thing-for-internet-access/

By Mark Rockwell, Campus Technology

The United States Department of Homeland Security is warning universities that their information-filled IT infrastructures might give hackers access to sensitive federal networks. Intruders hijacked a university’s supercomputer in early 2014, leveraging its vast capabilities in a massive electronic assault on U.S. gaming networks, according to a recent warning to American higher education from the Department of Homeland Security. DHS’s “unclassified, for official use only” memo said university networks are attractive targets for cybercriminals, adding that universities’ networks can provide access to other types of electronic facilities, including sensitive federal networks.

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/01/28/feds-warn-of-risks-to-sensitive-data-on-university-servers.aspx

By Joshua Bolkan, THE Journal

The University of Central Florida (UCF) has partnered with two organizations to reboot a massive open online course (MOOC) for teachers focused on blended learning in higher ed and K-12. The university has partnered with Educause, a nonprofit focused on technology in higher education, and ed tech company Instructure to launch “BlendKit2015: Becoming a Blended Learning Designer.” The course is intended to build on the success of BlendKit2014, a similar MOOC released last year that also covered blending learning and was Educause’s first. “The power of online professional development is that we can collaborate and educate in real-time,” said Julie Little, Educause vice president of teaching, learning and professional development, in a prepared statement. “BlendKit2015 leverages that power to advance strategic understanding of blended learning’s full potential.”

http://thejournal.com/articles/2015/01/27/u-central-florida-launches-blended-learning-mooc-for-educators.aspx

by Kelci Lynn Lucier, US News

“All good online classes include interactive elements that replace classroom discussions,” Guy Trainin, associate professor of education at University of Nebraska—Lincoln, writes via email. He encourages students trying to identify their fellow intellectual leaders to look for those who “show proficiency with the material and think beyond the text, making connections with other ideas, classes, and real-world events.” Similar to a traditional classroom, he says, online students who are strong academically possess “the ability to respond to others and lead discussions.” Mitch Boucher, lecturer at University of Massachusetts—Amherst’s University Without Walls, a bachelor’s program that allows adult students to choose from a wide range of online courses, has similar observations.

http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/articles/2015/01/28/how-to-find-the-smart-kids-in-an-online-class

by Ultimate Typing

Skeptics say technology has no place in the classroom. The distractions are too many to count, and students almost always end up chatting on social media rather than paying attention to the lecturer. But aren’t college students mature enough to decide for themselves whether they will follow a lecture to its conclusion instead of playing on their tablet? If done correctly, using a laptop or tablet in the classroom will actually help a student with their learning performance. With good typing skills, students can take advantage of technology to boost their educational opportunities and make the most out of every lecture, seminar, and class they attend.

http://www.ultimatetyping.com/what-everybody-ought-to-know-about-laptop-use-in-college

by Traci Gardner, Ideas for Teaching Writing

Last month, I considered the strategy of including quizzes in a writing course. Essentially, while I hated pop quizzes as a student, I thought I might be shortchanging students who do well as test takers. I decided to try quizzes in the online technical writing course during Virginia Tech’s Winter Session. Now that the course is over, I have to admit that the quizzes seemed useful and effective. Logistically, the system was simple to set up. The companion website for the textbook included quizzes that were ready to import to Scholar (our campus installation of Sakai). I had to edit the quizzes in order to randomize answers where possible and remove the requirements for written rationales for some questions. Otherwise, they were ready to go. I just used what was available.

http://blogs.bedfordstmartins.com/bits/assessment/quizzes-work-true-or-false/tgardner/

By Laura Devaney, eSchool News

Access to high-speed internet is among middle and high school students’ top technology preferences, according to a CompTIA national survey of students and educators. Fifty-six percent of surveyed students said they’d like access to high-speed internet, 57 percent said they would like laptops, and 53 percent said tablets are a must-have. When broken down by gender, male students demonstrated a greater preference for high-speed internet and game-based learning simulations, while female students expressed a preference for tablets and mobile e-learning apps. Fifty-two percent of students want to learn more about gaming in school, 49 percent want to learn more about computer troubleshooting, and 45 percent want to learn more programming/coding.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2015/01/26/learning-technology-survey-039/

By Tom Daccord, eSchool News

Too often, we see teachers putting the proverbial cart before the horse. They find an app or tool they like, so they introduce it in their classroom. The students might find it cool and engaging—but if the teacher hasn’t defined why they’re using that tool, its integration has no clear, educational purpose. If, instead, you begin with a learning goal in mind and choose apps and devise activities in support of it, then you’re on a path to meaningful technology integration. To help educators develop a vision for using technology in their classrooms, here are a few examples of what great teachers do with these tools.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2015/01/26/great-teachers-technology-072/

BY SOPHIE QUINTON, National Journal

A University of Iowa program called the Iowa Online AP Academy has been giving students access to free, online Advanced Placement courses since 2001. The online learning partnership offsets some of the disadvantages that can come with being a high-achieving student in a small, isolated school district, providing the chance to take challenging academic courses that many schools can’t offer. Over the past five years, an average of 430 students across Iowa have enrolled in courses through IOAPA each year. IOAPA was created with rural districts in mind, but any accredited school in Iowa can participate. Online courses can be prohibitively expensive, and it can be hard for even motivated teenagers to stay on top of their work without a teacher and classmates present. So IOAPA was designed to address both challenges.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/next-america/education/how-online-learning-can-close-the-ap-participation-gap-20150127

By Tanya Roscorla, Center for Digital Education

These six technologies are what education technology policy watchers are keeping an eye on. As technology continues to change, policy issues slowly come into play to govern them. This year, education technology policy watchers see at least six major policy issues that university administrators should keep an eye on in 2015.

http://www.centerdigitaled.com/news/Top-6-Higher-Ed-Digital-Policy-Issues-to-Watch-in-2015.html

by Globe Newswire

According to Pacific High School the most significant way to transfer education is MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). It is considered as the best practice for online students to succeed. With the right infrastructure and the right software system MOOCs can deliver education. These courses allow better understanding of information, basically permitting students to learn from anywhere at any time. In the year 2015 educational institutions can take advantage of these courses and make it more accessible with cloud-based innovation, adaptive education, information capture, analytics to support educational institutions in coordinating MOOCs and different sorts of instructive technologies into the learning environment.

http://globenewswire.com/news-release/2015/01/25/699702/10116878/en/Pacific-High-School-Speaks-on-How-Emerging-Tech-Could-Impact-Students-in-2015.html

By MATTHEW SANTONI, Associated Press

As homeroom ended Thursday morning, students in Shaler Area High School’s Academy program sat down for math lessons at their laptop computers, watching video lectures or taking quizzes for one of four or five math courses. Teacher Nicole Kutzner watched on her laptop as sophomore Logan Pegher took a geometry quiz, seeing which questions took more time and stepping over to help. “If I need help, she helps us,” said ninth-grader Charlotte Zimmerman of Shaler, who was watching a video lecture at the desk next to Logan. “It helps a lot. Last year, I failed, and this year I’m getting mostly ‘B’s and ‘A’s.” The Academy, which blends one-on-one instruction with online lessons tailored to each student, is helping the district with students who otherwise would be at risk of dropping out of a regular class.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/25/high-school-classes-increasingly-blend-in-technolo/

By Andrew Marshall, Vidette Online

A new phone application called Class 120 focuses on the problem of class attendance by letting parents or administrators know when students are skipping class. This application is developed by a new startup company Core Principle. “Our purpose is to promote and support student success in college,” CEO and Founder of Core Principle Jeff Whorley said. Studies show class attendance is the number one contributor to good grades in college courses, but is also a problem nationwide. According to National Student Clearinghouse, the total cost of unattended classes by college students nationwide is $31 billion in tuition alone. The application uses the student’s smartphone to monitor if they are in the class at the given time with geolocation technology.

http://www.videtteonline.com/index.php/2015/01/25/new-app-developed-identifying-when-students-skip-class/