Educational Technology

by Amy X. Wang, Quartz

While technology is “starting to improve education,” he said, it’s not personalized or focused enough to truly help teachers figure out how to improve. And most educational technology thus far has benefited only the most motivated students, he said, not those who need extra encouragement most. Added Gates, “A lot of the issue is helping kids stay engaged. If they don’t feel the material is relevant or they don’t have a sense of their own ability they can check out too easily. The technology has not done enough to help with this yet.” While more teachers say they welcome technology, most gadgets and digital techniques haven’t shown they can boost learning. Many schools have abandoned using iPads, for example, and online learning has yet to live up to its promises. Silicon Valley will have to do better yet if it’s going to make a genuine difference in the classroom.

http://qz.com/634289/bill-gates-explains-why-classroom-technology-is-failing-students-and-teachers/

By Darwin Green, US News

Even though your classes are online, you’ll still be using plenty of pens and paper. Online students should ensure they stay organized and have a comfortable place to sit and work.  It was my first day of online classes. I sat at the computer eager to learn new things. The syllabus called for the usual items: computer, monitor and so forth. I didn’t know, however, that I would need some standard school supplies as well. Deep into the second week of classes, I found myself heading to the office supply store. I learned online students should consider buying the following for their classes.

http://www.usnews.com/education/online-learning-lessons/2016/03/18/4-surprising-school-supplies-online-students-might-need

By Tara García Mathewson, Education Dive

The American Association of Community Colleges, with funding from the Lumina Foundation, will create a new model to help students, employers and colleges make sense of the variety of credentials across higher education. In announcing the initiative, the AACC said it would focus on degrees, certificates, industry certifications, apprenticeships and badges in a model that will allow people to identify courses, skills and continuing education credits that students have with each credential. Community colleges in Illinois, Ohio, Maryland, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Iowa, New York, Texas, Wisconsin, Missouri, Florida, Arizona, Alabama, Washington and Minnesota are among those participating in the Right Signals initiative.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/right-signals-initiative-aims-to-make-sense-of-credentialing/415575/

By THE Journal

These standout apps make managing classroom workflow a snap. Showbie is a favorite of many teachers owing to its super-slick design and full feature set. It’s an all-in-one solution for assigning and grading student work. And while it’s well suited to iPad classrooms, students and teachers’ work syncs to the Web, too, so you can use any device. The big selling point for Handouts is its ease of use. It might not be as flexible as something like Showbie, but it picks one thing — assigning and grading worksheets — and does that well. Classkick is a bit different from Showbie and Handouts because it blends going paperless with formative assessment. Teachers send out assignments to students and can monitor students as they work.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/03/15/3-awesome-free-apps-for-going-paperless.aspx

By David Nagel, THE Journal

Teach without grades. Teach without tests. Teach without homework. That’s the message from a growing number of educators who are not only advocating but actually making substantial changes in their classroom practices by eliminating grades and scores entirely. Sound like fantasy in this age of ubiquitous high-stakes standardized testing and “accountability” mandates? It’s actually happening. In American schools. And it’s working for many of those who are trying it.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/03/15/panel-ditch-grades-now-focus-on-student-learning.aspx

by JANICE BURNS, the National (Scotland)

A NEW computer game has been created by people with learning disabilities to help keep them safe online. The group, aged 16-40 from Edinburgh and Midlothian, worked with experts at the University of the West of Scotland (UWS) in Paisley to develop the game called #keepmesafe. It is designed to simulate common scenarios faced by people using the internet, including staying safe on social media, navigating the complex world of online relationships and buying items via digital retailers. The team worked with their local area co-ordination networks and played a key role in the design phase, discussing their online fears and ways of overcoming them with staff from Midlothian Council and experts from UWS’ Scottish Centre for Enabling Technologies (SCET), which is behind the interactive tool.

http://www.thenational.scot/news/game-helps-those-with-learning-disabilities-to-stay-safe-online.15221

By SARAH GRIFFITHS, Daily Mail

You might imagine the brain to be divided into specific areas responsible for processing different senses. But researchers have now shown how we can ‘supercharge’ our minds and break down its barriers so it becomes more flexible. Scientists taught sighted people to read Braille and found the complex tactile task surprisingly activated the visual cortex, as well as the tactile one. ‘Our findings tear up that view, showing we can establish new connections if we undertake a complex enough task and are given long enough to learn it.’ The study, published in the journal eLife, could have allow us to learn how to ‘bend’ different sections of the brain to our will by learning other demanding skills, such as playing a musical instrument or learning to drive.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3491899/Learning-complex-tasks-SUPERCHARGES-brain-Difficult-skills-make-minds-flexible-powerful-linking-regions.html

By Clainetta Jefferson, Florida Times-Union

Navigating the complexities of special education laws and procedures can be challenging for parents, educators and service providers. It is important for all to know how to comply with the legal requirements in every decision, every classroom, in every program, every day. To help with those challenges the Navy, through Child and Youth Programs, is offering free resources and courses through two special education programs.

http://jacksonville.com/military/periscope/2016-03-16/story/free-line-special-ed-courses-resources-offered

by Roger Riddle, Education Dive

If you couldn’t be in Austin or see everything on display, here’s what caught our attention. There was no shortage of ed tech to take in at SXSWedu 2016. Whether it was teacher-driven instructional management tools, digital citizenship curriculum solutions or STEM-fueled satellite projects, there was a little something for everyone. In no particular order, here are eight pieces of ed tech news worth noting from this year’s show.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/8-pieces-of-ed-tech-news-to-note-from-sxswedu-2016/415595/

By Tara García Mathewson, Education Dive

Colleges and universities have long relied on SAT and ACT scores in admissions decisions, to the detriment of low-income students, Latinos, African-Americans, and women, and some point to e-portfolios as the solution. Chalk & Wire CEO Geoff Irvine writes for eCampus News that the 90-college Coalition for Access, Affordability, and Success is on the right track in attempting to redesign admissions, but he says the implementation hurdles for high schools, including cost, could doom the project. Irvine advocates for portable, cloud-based e-portfolios, that parents pay for and high schools adopt, giving students access to their own work through college and beyond.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/replacing-a-reliance-on-standardized-test-scores-with-e-portfolios/415832/

by SADHANA CHATHURVEDULA, LiveMint

Thanks to the enormous number of online courses which teach programming today, anyone can gain the right computer skills to execute the next big idea. Programming needn’t always be reams of boring text. You can get started with visual programming languages that abstract the text, and let you explore the fundamentals using visual elements like blocks. A popular example is Scratch , developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to help kids to get started with computer programming.

http://www.livemint.com/Consumer/NK0dRMtVGPsiW5kCYeEfxK/Stop-worrying-and-start-coding-sites-to-get-started.html

by Monica Burns, Edutopia

There are tons of quick and easy ways to integrate technology into your instruction — with powerful results. I’ve been a fan of Quick Response (QR) codes in education for years and even wrote a book all about how they can be used to promote deeper learning in your classroom. When speaking to teachers about these black-and-white squares, it’s so much fun to see the “aha” moments as we explore different ways to use scannable technology in the classroom. This list of five things that you may not know about QR codes contains some simple ideas that definitely pack a punch.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/qr-codes-can-do-that-monica-burns

By Dian Schaffhauser, THE Journal

More teachers said that technology has changed how they approach time management (93 percent) than how they approach instructional delivery (88 percent). It has also transformed how they handle parent communication. A solid 7 in 10 reported that they now use tech to do that. On the instructional front, most teachers apply tech to classroom lecture time (84 percent) and differentiated instruction (74 percent). Those results came out of a survey of nearly 1,000 American teachers who were contacted in January and February 2016 by TES Global, a company with a teacher community and marketplace. The findings were shared during a panel at SXSWedu taking place this week in Austin, TX.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/03/09/teachers-report-oer-in-textbooks-out.aspx

By Rhonda Tracy, Community College Daily

Colleges, universities or systems should not back away from competency-based education if they can’t immediately implement some of the hallmarks of CBE: freedom from the credit hour, authentic assessments, self-paced progression, etc. Rather, a plan should be developed that allows for transitioning to the more impactful components of CBE. As states and colleges evolve in their adoption and implementation of CBE, some are finding it challenging to fully implement a strictly non-credit hour, direct assessment model. As such, a plan that provides a scaffold for both transitioning to competency-based practices and scaling the model beyond a small group should be considered. In short, CBE exists along a continuum with evolving adoption that ranges to classroom-based, competency-based instructional practices to a fully developed program-level CBE model that impacts instruction, delivery, services and policy.

http://www.ccdaily.com/Pages/Workforce-Development/Is-there-a-continuum-for-competency-based-education.aspx

by the Conversation

Interestingly, Australian teachers have fewer professional development days each year than in many other nations. And many are turning to online courses to fill the gap. While 97% of Australian teachers participate in professional development activities, they have an average of nine days of professional development activities each year. That is just over half of the number reported by teachers in other countries (15 days). Teachers are seeking out new ways to develop skills relevant to both their challenges and career trajectories. Online providers of professional development have responded accordingly. Providers are rapidly moving to fill the gaps in existing professional development with a wide range of program choices. The online world also provides opportunities for regular engagement in activities that support individual learning needs.

http://theconversation.com/australian-teachers-get-fewer-training-days-than-in-other-countries-and-turn-to-online-courses-for-support-55510

By Joy Nelson, Edudemic

What do your students see when they look in the mirror? Do they see someone worthwhile or someone who will never be good enough? While it isn’t your responsibility to dig into the nuances of every student’s self-perception, you can still help the members of your class to have healthy views of themselves. Such a view can bolster their academic performance and serve as a bulwark against bullying. The following resources provide information about self-image that you can use in the classroom.

http://www.edudemic.com/17-resources-for-self-image/

By Dustin Le, Edudemic

The Maker Movement is also nicknamed the Do-It-Yourself (D.I.Y.) Movement, because it empowers individuals to design, manufacture, and create their own objects, ultimately improving creativity in many fields. In a way, the tools used in this movement are taking us back to a time when every person was a craftsperson — except now, we have much cooler gadgets than a wood chisel. And while many of us do not realize it yet, this hands-on approach is something that is missing from our very digital, holographic world. The 3D printer is one of the biggest revolutionary tools in the Maker world and has inspired a push toward the do-it-yourself sensibility. Still, though the cost of 3D printers is coming down, they are still prohibitively expensive for many schools and what’s more, when turning a classroom into a makerspace, it would be silly to limit ourselves to one technology. In this article, we discuss five tools that are not 3D printers that schools can use to help students embrace this movement inside the classroom.

http://www.edudemic.com/maker-movement-tools/

By Rachel Fuerschbach and Joed Viera, Lockport Union Sun-Journal

Mandated free education helped a young Lockport resident avoid a jail sentence on drug-related offenses recently. On March 1, Dylan Lewis, 25, completed two business management courses on ALISON, a free online learning platform. City Court Judge William J. Watson had ordered Lewis to complete the courses as an alternative to incarceration. Chuck Diemert, organizer of the diversion program and literacy coordinator for Orleans/Niagara BOCES, oversaw Lewis’ progress on ALISON over a two-week period. Lewis completed the courses through home study as well as at the BOCES Literacy Zone on Genesee Street, where he took course exams.

http://www.lockportjournal.com/news/local_news/class-time-instead-of-jail-time/article_f2f9e751-2aa2-52ad-a1ab-b06b3135aeae.html

BY LINDA BORG, THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL

‘CS4RI’ initiative aims for computer science to be taught in every R.I. public school by Dec. 2017. Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo has announced a comprehensive computer science education initiative in partnership with Microsoft, Code.org, colleges and universities across Rhode Island, and others. Computer Science for Rhode Island (CS4RI) brings together the following partners, including Microsoft TEALS, Code.org, Project Lead the Way, Brown University’s Bootstrap, and University of Rhode Island’s computer science curricula for high school, which will offer eight options for schools to expand education in kindergarten through grade 12.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2016/03/10/rhode-islands-2017-computer-science-goal/

by eSchool News

K-12 educators and admins to earn university professional development units with badge and micro-badge courses.  Under a new partnership, PD Learning Network (PDLN) and University of the Pacific’s Center for Professional and Continuing Education (CPCE) will let K-12 educators earn university professional development units for skills they develop post-degree. “We feel privileged to enter into this partnership to offer educators more opportunities for recognition of their professional growth,” said Jennifer Gibson, CEO and co-founder of PDLN. “University of the Pacific’s CPCE is a natural match for educator micro-credentialing because of its emphasis on learners setting their own educational goals and their interest in credentialing educators in this rapidly changing environment.”

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2016/03/11/badging-partnership-to-offer-teachers-college-credit-for-pd/

By Michael Hart, Campus Technology

Finding your own “unicorn” and other ways to create healthier relationships between academia and the IT department. The relationship between academia and technology is notoriously complicated. Faculty often view IT staffers as gadget-mongers eager to roll out new tech regardless of its value to teaching and learning, while technology specialists are certain they could make life easier for those on the other side — if they’d only listen! “We’re talking a similar language,” said Rovy Branon, vice provost for educational outreach at the University of Washington, “but sometimes we’re talking past each other.”

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/03/10/6-ways-to-bridge-the-gap-between-faculty-and-it.aspx