Educational Technology

by EdSurge

A call to “blend” learning research is included in the report. How will advances in learning science and education technology impact online learning? This question and more are the subject of “Online Education: A Catalyst for Higher Education Reform,” a report released by the MIT Online Education Policy Initiative that follows the university’s 2014 report on the Future of Education at MIT. The new report, which targets institutional leaders, policy officials, education researchers, companies and foundations, is the result of discussion by members of the Initiative and an advisory group.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2016-04-01-mit-report-on-online-education-calls-for-research-integration-support-for-learning-engineers

By Dian Schaffhauser, THE Journal

A recent survey found that half of school districts believe they’ve completed their 1-to-1 initiatives and the infrastructure required; and almost 4 in 10 (38 percent) are planning to or will definitely “modernize” in the next 12 to 24 months. More districts also have digital content and curriculum strategies in place this year compared to last year — up from 49 percent to 62 percent. Another 33 percent of districts have one under development. More than half of those existing strategies incorporate the use of open educational resources.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/03/31/survey-shows-schools-hitting-digital-hard.aspx

By David Nagel, THE Journal

Dremel has unveiled the Idea Builder 3D40, the latest update to its line of 3D printers. The new model will be available in two versions — a standard retail configuration and a bundle designed specifically for education. The single-extruder, PLA-based 3D40 adds several enhancements over previous Dremel 3D printers, including:

WiFi and Ethernet network printing (in addition to USB printing); A larger build plate (10″ x 6″, supporting a build height of 6.7″, with a layer thickness of as little as 0.1 mm); Active filament monitoring; Assisted print bed leveling; and A “maintenance-free” extruder, according to Dremel.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/03/31/dremel-rolling-out-next-generation-pla-3d-printer-for-education.aspx

By Joe Barnhart, THE Journal

At the University of Montana — Western, we train teachers. So, a new model classroom is not a bad thing, is it? It seems a delightful idea akin to buying a beach-front condo. But the decision about which gadgets those soon-to-be teachers need to be familiar with is less important than the skills they’ll need to help their students thrive. The gadgets will, after all, be ever changing. Linked below are some of those skills any future teacher will need, whether their classroom is equipped with a whiteboard or a TV.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/03/30/8-skills-for-future-proofed-teachers.aspx

by Amy X. Wang, Quartz

Coursera announced a new program that curiously departs from its prior offerings: a MOOC curriculum that leads to an actual degree. Starting this fall, users will be able to earn a computer-science master’s degree in data science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign—whose computer-science graduate program is ranked fifth in the US—through a series of “stackable” online courses on Coursera’s site. It’s this “stackability” that’s intriguing. Users can test out the program by taking some courses for free and earning specialization certificates. Then, they’ll decide whether they want to pursue additional classes—which include direct contact with the university faculty—for the full degree, at a cost of $20,000 (less than either an on-campus degree or a traditional online degree). There’s no need to commit to anything from the start, as there is with most graduate programs physical or digital.

http://qz.com/650283/coursera-is-offering-a-way-to-get-a-real-masters-degree-for-a-lot-less-money/

By Reihan Salam, Slate

In the near future, technology will allow foreigners to work in the United States without ever setting foot on our soil. What is holoportation? Basically, the mad scientists at Microsoft Research have cooked up a way to transmit pretty convincing three-dimensional holograms of friends, family, and (here’s the important part) co-workers in real time across vast distances. Most impressively, you can interact with these holographic projections, almost as though you were physically in the same place. If I were capable of explaining it any better than that, I would be in a garage building my own holoportation device. The video below gives you some sense of the technology’s potential, and how it works in practice.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/03/holoportation_and_virtual_immigration_will_transform_the_global_economy.html

by Jeanne Leong, Penn News

Al Filreis, an English professor at the University of Pennsylvania, is the recipient of an inaugural Coursera Outstanding Educator Award. Filreis was honored with the Transformation Award, given to an instructor who has contributed the most to the platform’s vision of enabling anyone, anywhere to transform their life through its massive open online courses, or MOOCs. Filreis’ Modern and Contemporary American Poetry, known as ModPo, was among the first humanities courses on the Coursera platform. The introduction to poetry class emphasizes experimental verse, from Dickinson and Whitman to the present.

https://news.upenn.edu/news/penn-s-al-filreis-wins-coursera-outstanding-educator-award

by Julie Wurth, News-Gazette

More than 4,000 students applied for 200 undergraduate spots this year in computer science, among the most competitive departments at the University of Illinois. Demand is similar at the graduate level, with data science one of the hottest and highest-paid professions of the millennium. To help meet demand — and generate revenue — the UI is offering a new online professional master’s degree in data science, built on “MOOCs” (massive open online courses), in partnership with the Silicon Valley company Coursera. Similar to the “iMBA” online program announced last year by the College of Business, it will allow students to take initial courses as MOOCs, for free, to “test the waters,” said computer science Professor John Hart, who designed the new program. They can take one course, or several for a Coursera certificate, or apply to the full master’s degree program.

http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2016-03-31/ui-turns-internet-help-meet-demand-masters-degree.html

By V Doctor, Parent Herald

Bonaire Elementary School recently came up with a unique approach to enhance their students’ computer skills. A new online program was introduced to help kids to improve in their problem areas. “This is a program that the kids truly enjoy being a part of. They love playing the games, they love even the learning part of it because that gets them to the games. So, we want the kids to understand that learning is fun and education galaxy is a great tool to get that idea across to the kids,” said Willis Jones, the principal of Bonaire Elementary School, in an interview with 41NBC.

http://www.parentherald.com/articles/33295/20160331/bonaire-elementary-school-motivates-student-learning-via-online-program.htm

By Blake Montgomery, EdSurge

Have you always wanted to teach an art class but couldn’t find an online resource on a Walmart budget? Despair no longer. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the expansive museum founded by Walmart heir Alice Walton, has launched two free distance learning courses and opened applications for educators to become certified to teach them. Applications close April 25. Museums, with their vast collections of rare and valuable resources, offer boundless opportunities for learning, but they’re often relegated to the realm of field trip destinations, visited once a semester or year. And that’s only if students are fortunate enough to have field trip programs.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2016-03-31-alice-walton-s-crystal-bridges-museum-launches-online-courses-and-teacher-training

by Mary Wade, Edutopia

Problem-based learning, makerspaces, flipped learning, student blogging — these are becoming perceived staples of 21st-century learning. With such ambitious practices taking the spotlight for how people regard modern classrooms, it’s not surprising that a murmur of impracticality or skepticism is still a frequent response when they’re first introduced. So how do we encourage teachers everywhere to believe that great changes can happen in their classrooms? By helping them envision small, practical steps that will lead them there. Here are five elements of 21st-century classrooms, along with concrete suggestions that teachers can visualize and implement today.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/visualizing-21st-century-classroom-design-mary-wade

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

A private school in Fort Worth, TX with 167 students in grades preK-8 has adopted a new Internet management tool to keep students on task. All Saints Catholic School chose NetRef from a company with the same name to enable its teachers to set Internet access boundaries in their classrooms. All Saints, which runs a dual-language program in English and Spanish and maintains a computer lab, also is increasingly using tablets in its classrooms. NetRef helps the educators manage student Internet usage via a touch-screen panel. Teachers can program allowable domains and applications that are relevant to the lesson and receive real-time alerts when a student wanders off-task.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/03/30/private-school-turns-to-tech-to-manage-classroom-activities-online.aspx

By David Raths, Campus Technology

Yes, it’s possible to embed accessibility into the course creation process, without expending too much time or effort. Here are things to consider during each development phase. “If you are teaching an online course, the chances are you have a student with a disability,” according to Jason Khurdan, department administrator in the Office of Disability Services at Rutgers University (NJ). Regardless of whether a university considers accessibility a priority now, he said, “eventually they will because it is becoming an issue that is more apparent in society as a whole.” Khurdan spoke about accessibility issues at a Rutgers-hosted online learning conference in New Brunswick, NJ, this past January. He started his presentation by giving a live demonstration of the struggles a student would have using an NVDA (NonVisual Desktop Access) screen reader on a typical syllabus he found online. “Attendees saw how difficult it was to work through this document.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/03/30/your-course-accessibility-checklist.aspx

by Dave Doucette, EdTech Magazine

Technology-backed learning offers opportunities to institutions and students, as long as IT can keep pace with the new requirements. When Southern New Hampshire University President Paul LeBlanc stepped onto the stage at Campus Tech 2015 in July, he painted a bright picture of competency-based higher ed. “Today, 500 institutions are moving to competency-based education, and they are not-for-profit,” he said. “There’s a lot of opportunity.” LeBlanc certainly had that right. In the eight months that have passed since that technology conference, I’ve heard more and more higher ed administrators discuss competency-based education. And whether institutions are creating new programs or expanding existing ones, the bandwagon is slowly but surely filling up.

http://www.edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2016/03/how-competency-based-courses-are-changing-education-game

By Matthew Fultz, WHSV

Teachers at Berkeley Glenn Elementary School are teaching their students using a new online program. Tabitha Jonhson is one of the teachers using the program for her class. The website is called Tenmark, and allows teachers to pick from a bunch of assignments to use for their classes. It focuses on math and prepares kids for the SOL’s. Math teacher Erin Shifflett first introduced the site to faculty at the school. Now, she and Johnson use the site in their classrooms. Not only does the program help teach kids but it allows for friendly competition in classes too.

http://www.whsv.com/content/news/Waynesboro-teachers-make-learning-online-fun–373915791.html

By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, ZDNet

According to sources at Canonical, Ubuntu Linux’s parent company, and Microsoft, you’ll soon be able to run Ubuntu on Windows 10. This will be more than just running the Bash shell on Windows 10. After all, thanks to programs such as Cygwin or MSYS utilities, hardcore Unix users have long been able to run the popular Bash command line interface (CLI) on Windows. With this new addition, Ubuntu users will be able to run Ubuntu simultaneously with Windows. This will not be in a virtual machine, but as an integrated part of Windows 10.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-and-canonical-partner-to-bring-ubuntu-to-windows-10/

by Inside Higher Ed

About 6 percent of students who took an online final exam proctored by Examity last fall broke the rules, the company said on Tuesday. That adds up to 3,952 out of the 62,534 exams the test-proctoring company reviewed. Most of the attempts to cheat came in the form of a cheat sheet (21 percent) or using Google to look up answers or translations (14 percent). Examity also shared some more sophisticated attempts at circumventing the rules.

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/03/30/examity-shares-data-cheaters

By Carl Straumsheim, Inside Higher Ed

Major publishers report sales of digital course materials surpass sales of print textbooks for the first time. When McGraw-Hill Education this week reports its finances for 2015, the results will show that the company’s digital products — including learning platforms ALEKS, Connect and LearnSmart and digital textbook service SmartBooks — for the first time sold more units than its print products. The company already teased that detail in a press release earlier this month, showing healthy year-over-year digital growth. McGraw-Hill Education isn’t alone. A spokesperson for Cengage Learning, whose digital offerings include the MindTap learning platform, said the company is on track this fiscal year to see digital sales surpass print sales, both in terms of unit sales and revenue.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/03/30/publishers-report-digital-sales-overtaking-print-sales

by Marguerite Reardon, CNet

Google is taking on traditional providers with its $10-a-month Fiber Phone service. Customers can make and answer calls from any connected device anywhere Internet is available. Google is adding home phone service to a bundle of services that also includes ultra fast broadband. Fiber Phone includes a Fiber Phone box that works with the phones you already own. Handset not included. Fiber Phone, is a service will be sold alongside its 1Gbps broadband service and its video offering in cities where Google has deployed its all-fiber network. The service comes at a time when Google faces competition from traditional broadband providers, like AT&T and Comcast, which are also delivering ultra high-speed services. As of 2013, about 40 percent of adults in the US said they used a cell phone exclusively for voice communications, according to survey data from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention.

http://www.cnet.com/news/google-fiber-phone-broadband-service-bundle-home-phone-landline/

BY BRUCE MILLER, eCampus News

Higher education was the first market segment to adopt bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies. BYOD brings with it the challenge of mixed usage, which combines critical education and business related application usage (e.g., online instruction, cloud storage, communication) with recreational application usage (e.g., streaming video, social media, gaming). When education and business mix with recreation on the same network, it creates fundamental challenges with network capacity. The network must be intelligent enough to appropriately prioritize what is important and de-prioritize (or even block) what is not.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/bandwidth-sucking-apps/

BY MUHAMMAD, Tech Worm

The course is free and will only take three months to complete, if you’re serious. Google is getting ready for deep learning and it wants you to be ready as well, which is why the tech giant has launched a three month course in order to help you learn its next level machine language. Deep learning is a machine learning technique that has become the foundation of the several services that Google already provides (this would include everything from speech recognition to automatically sorting your photo collection). The course is available to see on educational site Udacity, and could actually take longer than three months, depending on how quick you are to learn it. The course details state that if a student or any interested other person is able to invest 6 hours a week into the course, then they will be able to complete it in a period of months.

http://www.techworm.net/2016/01/google-getting-serious-deep-learning-publishes-free-three-month-course.html