Educational Technology

By Richard Chang, Campus Technology

Worldwide tablet shipments slumped 14.7 percent during the first quarter of 2016, according to preliminary data released today by the International Data Corp. (IDC), a market research firm. First-quarter seasonality, along with an overall unenthused customer base, were factors that caused the decline, IDC reported. Shipments of Apple tablets, including iPad and iPad Pro, dropped 18.8 percent in the first quarter of 2016, compared to the first quarter of 2015. Apple’s tablet market share also slipped from 27.2 percent in Q1 2015 to 25.9 percent in Q1 2016. Meanwhile, detachable tablets — devices that include removable keyboards — saw triple-digit year-over-year growth on shipments of more than 4.9 million units, an all-time high for the first quarter of a calendar year.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/04/28/tablet-market-slides-worldwide.aspx

By Belle Smith, Parent Herald

It looks like online summer courses are beneficial to students, and it works for the parents as well! Most children are usually looking forward to summer to get away from school. However, it looks like more kids are now interested in taking online summer classes rather than just spending it doing nothing! But why is there a sudden surge in children and teens taking an interest in virtual learning? Online summer courses happen to have benefits to the students, and it works for their parents as well!

http://www.parentherald.com/articles/40344/20160430/4-benefits-of-online-summer-school-to-both-parents-and-children.htm

By Sharon Noguchi, Mercury News

Moksh Jawa, 16, captures the essence of Silicon Valley startup thinking and energy. “Why not?” might be his motto. As a seventh-grader, he studied up on the Internet and taught himself coding. As a freshman, after studying on his own, he passed the AP Computer Science A exam with a 5, the highest score possible. As a sophomore, because his Fremont high school didn’t teach coding, he developed his own online course and shepherded classmates through it. As a junior, he distilled those lessons into a 450-page test-prep book, now sold on Amazon.

http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_29834312/coding-16-year-old-writes-ap-test-prep

By Jillian Berman, Market Watch

A new report offers more insight into why student debt is often an unequal burden. Graduating college is much harder if you’re poor, a new report indicates. In 2014, just 10% of dependent family members who said they received a bachelor’s degree by the time they were 24 years old came from families in the lowest income quartile, according to a study released Tuesday by the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education in Washington, D.C. and PennAhead, an organization at the University of Pennsylvania focused on higher education policy. By contrast, 54% of bachelor’s degrees awarded to dependent family members went to those in the highest income quartile.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/college-graduation-another-reason-it-pays-to-be-rich-2016-04-19

By Tara García Mathewson, Education Dive

Students and local employers in Washington seem to have an insatiable demand for computer science skills, and the state’s colleges and universities are struggling to expand program capacity fast enough to satisfy them. The Seattle Times reports computer science pre-majors and majors numbered 100 students at Western Washington University five years ago. Now they number more than 500, and other institutions have seen their own computer science programs double in size in that time. Two-year Bellevue College is seeking approval for a bachelor’s degree in computer science to help the state’s four-year colleges meet demand that so far has made the majors increasingly competitive for students to get into.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/washington-state-colleges-struggling-to-meet-computer-science-demand/418024/

by Robin White Goode, Black Enterprise

Youth Digital provides online computer courses that teach kids how to be digital creators and innovators. It also offers summer camps to those lucky enough to live near one of its 21 camp locations. But the founder of Youth Digital, Justin Richards, has a goal of reaching kids who may not have access to a cool camp like his. Hence the online courses, which are engaging youngsters in more than 100 countries. A lot of middle schools and high schools are still underserved. That’s a gap we’re trying to fill with the online courses, because we want to reach those kids. We want them to be able to become creators too. Our camps partner with nonprofits that already have existing relationships with those communities. We’re still figuring out the online piece. We want to partner with nonprofits and enable them to deliver this content to kids whose lives they’re already touching.

Youth Digital Gives Kids the Tools to Create

by Tim Dodd, AFR

International Education Minister Richard Colbeck will launch on Saturday a radical plan for Australia to use online technology to grab 10 per cent of the world market in education by 2025, amounting to an astonishing 110 million students. Senator Colbeck said the strategy, developed by Austrade, was achievable. “Why not aim high? We sit in a rapidly developing area of the globe and they all recognise the quality of our [education] framework,” he said. International education is already Australia’s third largest export industry, worth nearly $19 billion a year.

http://www.afr.com/news/policy/education/austrade-sets-target-of-110-million-mooc-students-for-australia-by-2025-20160429-goiksz

By BENEDICT CAREY, NY Times

Storytelling happened, and now scientists have mapped the experience of listening to podcasts, specifically “The Moth Radio Hour,” using a scanner to track brain activity. In a paper published Wednesday by the journal Nature, a research team from the University of California, Berkeley, laid out a detailed map of the brain as it absorbed and responded to a story. Widely dispersed sensory, emotional and memory networks were humming, across both hemispheres of the brain; no story was “contained” in any one part of the brain, as some textbooks have suggested.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/29/science/this-is-your-brain-on-podcasts.html

By Liam Tung, ZD Net

Microsoft accidentally announces Flow, a new tool for business users to automate messaging and data-sharing between Microsoft and third-party business apps. Microsoft appears to be close to launching Flow, a tool that allows users to automate actions from various web accounts such as Salesforce, Twitter and OneDrive. Microsoft has accidentally revealed what could be a nifty tool for non-programmers who want to automate actions between online accounts. The Flow tool’s announcement appeared briefly on the Microsoft.com site before being taken down. As MSPoweruser noted, Flow is similar to IFTTT, a popular tool that lets users create simple If-Then commands called recipes for various smart devices.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-leaks-flow-its-ifttt-like-tool-for-automating-actions-across-apps/

By Tara García Mathewson, Education Dive

With the average student bringing as many as seven wired or wireless devices to campus, Dee Childs, CIO and associate provost at the University of Alabama Huntsville, sees a new era to which campuses have had to adapt. EdTech reports Childs sees massive implications for the shift, which is tied to student preferences for socializing, learning, collaborating, and communicating. This shift requires colleges to step up bandwidth management and consider widespread wifi coverage. While 2013 to 2015 marked a new trend in ResNet funding with a move away from student fees, Childs finds one of the biggest changes identified by the 2016 State of ResNet Report to be in funding models because now schools are going back to a hybrid model that relies on central and departmental funding along with student fees.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/higher-ed-cio-says-student-devices-shifting-the-digital-landscape/418364/

by Times of India

In a study that compared MOOC student use of the course’s Facebook groups to use of the built-in course message boards and forums, researchers said students were more engaged on the Facebook groups and also admitted to the researchers that they preferred interacting more on the social media site than through the course tools. “In previous studies we found that the real challenge for MOOC developers and instructors is trying to keep students engaged and enrolled in the course,” said Saijing Zheng, a former doctoral student at Pennsylvania State University in US. “In this study, we are finding that social media tools may be one way to keep students engaged in a MOOC,” said Zheng, who is currently a research scientist at Microsoft.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/social/Heres-how-Facebook-helps-students-to-study-online/articleshow/52029192.cms

by Akanksha Sharma, ATD

One of the most common concerns about the evaluation of collaborative learning is that even though all participants do not contribute equally, their efforts are grouped with those of their team members in a single score. A solution to this genuine concern is to assess participants at both the individual and group level. Additionally, as recommended in the previous post in this series, group rewards should be based on individual learning. This reward interdependence helps emphasize individual accountability. It also compels participants to support the learning process of their team members. When is the right time to evaluate a collaborative learning program? The assessment of the transformation in knowledge (cognitive domain) or social behavior (affective domain) should be done throughout the collaborative process, while keeping the participants motivated, and not just toward the end.

https://www.td.org/Publications/Blogs/L-and-D-Blog/2016/04/Assessing-Online-Collaborative-Learning

by Tom Lindsay, Forbes

Online education has been and continues to be the subject of hot debate. On the one hand, the U.S. Department of Education’s analysis of 44 separate studies of online education found its learning outcomes to be as good and—in its “hybrid” form, which combines online with traditional learning—at times superior to traditional education. I should confess that, as someone who taught Plato and Aristotle at the university level for two decades, I approached the subject of online education with similar reservations. But my own experience over the past three academic years teaching political philosophy in a doctoral-level, fully-accredited program has overcome most of my concerns.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomlindsay/2016/04/28/game-changer-first-ever-online-social-gaming-platform-for-education/#7bae8c405d50

by Deb McMahon and Laurent M. Jean-Marius, Chief Learning Officer

With the rapid growth of e-learning comes an exponential rise in the number of tools, technologies and flavor-of-the-month market trends that appeal to chief learning officers looking for ways to weave new tools into their development strategies. Consequently, the information technology department is on the receiving end of requests for a variety of new online learning apps, gamification software, social, microlearning or adaptive learning. So, how does a CLO get all of the features they want from new e-learning technologies without completely disrupting — or, worse yet, replacing — the current infrastructure? There are definitive steps a learning leader can take to help their IT peers prepare a learning ecosystem for transformation, while minimizing business risk and cost.

http://www.clomedia.com/2016/04/29/will-your-e-learning-be-ready-for-the-future/

By Emmett Dulaney, Campus Technology

For better or worse, the flash drive has become a ubiquitous tool for transporting data on campus. Here’s how to keep that data secure. An interesting development has quietly transpired over the past decade: The flash drive has become a staple for instructors everywhere. They carry one into each classroom and use it to hold slides, papers, grades, backups and almost everything else imaginable. Part of the reason for it gaining such momentum can be traced to the universal acceptance of USB technology — it is hard to find a computer anywhere that does not have USB capabilities — and another part is the increase in the capacity of the drives coupled with their decrease in price. Ten years ago, you were doing well to have a drive that could hold 1GB of data, and today you can purchase a drive that holds between 32GB to 256GB for a fraction of the cost you previously paid.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/04/28/how-to-protect-sensitive-student-data-on-flash-drives.aspx

By Sri Ravipati, Campus Technology

The new competitive grants build on the executive office’s plan to offer free community college programs and connect students to high-growth careers. The White House announced an additional investment of $100 million in competitive grants that are intended to connect more Americans to education and workforce training. The America’s Promise Job-Driven Training grants (America’s Promise Grants) build on the executive branch’s proposal last year to offer two years of free community college for students across the U.S. According to a news release, the America’s Promise Grants “will help communities catalyze new and strengthen existing partnerships and programs to provide more Americans access to the knowledge and skills they need to pursue their educational and career goals, particularly in high-growth sectors like technology, manufacturing and health care.”

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/04/27/white-house-offers-100-million-competitive-grants-to-push-free-community-college.aspx

By Frank DiMaria, Campus Technology

The range and variety of sensitive data in higher education make it difficult to secure. In the event of a breach, this six-phase incident response plan will help guide your institution through the crisis. Like corporations, universities and colleges have copious amounts of data to protect. But campuses are not corporations. They’re more like little cities, providing an array of services and functions. “We have an enormous range and variety of confidential information and that makes it very challenging to secure,” said Michael Corn, deputy CIO for Library and Technology Services and CISO at Brandeis University. IT must protect not just the identity of students, faculty and staff but also the intellectual property and sensitive data generated by hours of research. When a cyber-attack does occur, the incident response team needs a plan that guides it through the crisis.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/04/28/6-steps-to-survive-a-cyber-attack.aspx

By David Nagel, THE Journal

Virtual and augmented reality are often touted as the next big thing in education. How big? Not nearly as big as textbooks, but heading toward the billion-dollar mark inside of 10 years. Virtual and augmented reality are often touted as the next big thing in education. How big? Not nearly as big as textbooks, but heading toward the billion-dollar mark inside of 10 years. The numbers for education aren’t as staggering as for some other industries. According to investment bankers Goldman Sachs, VR and AR technologies will generate $700 million annually from the education sector by 2025. That pales in comparison with videogames in the consumer market ($11.6 billion), events ($4.1 billion) and video entertainment ($3.2 billion).

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/04/27/virtual-and-augmented-reality-poised-for-explosive-growth.aspx

By Joshua Bolkan, THE Journal

The International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) will host a free webinar, Powerful, Personalized PD for Teachers, next month focused on designing individualized professional development for personalized learning. “Next generation learning requires new methods, strategies and skills from educators,” according to a news release. “New models demand personalized professional development for teachers to prepare for the shift in pedagogy and practice. This webinar will highlight educators sharing their own stories about the most powerful, personalized professional development to prepare for next generation learning models.”

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/04/27/inacol-to-host-webinar-on-designing-personalized-pd-for-personalized-learning.aspx

by Hicks Crawford, Elite Daily

As Millennials enter the workforce in large numbers, they’re increasingly realizing the benefits of education and experience in the careers they’ve chosen. Even if they recently earned a college degree, they may quickly notice they fall short of their older peers who have been in the business world for a while. Fortunately, thanks to the many online learning platforms now available, they have the option of getting extra training that could give them an edge when it comes to promotions and future job opportunities. Here are eight of the top online education platforms that Millennials can use to further their education.

http://elitedaily.com/life/sites-brain-active-after-college/1470500/

By Sri Ravipati, Campus Technology

Beginning May 9, UConnect students in Los Angeles, New York City and San Francisco will have access to physical learning centers where they can network, interact and collaborate with others. UConnect students will meet once a week with a mentor and receive “face-to-face guidance with goal setting and hitting key milestones,” according to a news release. In a pilot program, Nanodegree students who combined their online education with in-person study sessions through UConnect saw a 30 percent increase in project submissions and were more likely to complete their Nanodegree program than the students learning only online.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/04/25/udacity-connect-offers-face-to-face-sessions.aspx