Educational Technology

By Kylie Exline, Uloop

Regardless of your desired location, the point is that you are accomplishing work, all while trying to make your life a little easier. And we all need some “easy” in our lives. So when taking your online classes, have fun with it. Study in a library one day, and a coffee shop the next. The point is to accomplish work, while also not killing yourself with stress. Plus, we all can enjoy some excitement in our lives. I just know it.

http://www.uloop.com/news/view.php/207159/5-Best-Places-For-Tackling-Online-Classes

by Timothy M. Chester, EDUCAUSE Review

Unmanned aircraft systems offer numerous possibilities in the academic environment, from creating programs aimed at UAS design and construction to finding ways to use them in traditional research across academic disciplines. Unmanned aircraft systems (UASs), also known as drones, offer numerous benefits and vast potential in the academic community both for developing new programs of study and for augmenting research in existing fields. However, the realization of these benefits has proved challenging, as the rapidly increasing interest has outpaced the existing regulatory framework. It has also presented institutions with new challenges in terms of accommodating and managing UAS use on campuses. At the University of Georgia we are working to provide support for UAS use in teaching and research. Here, I discuss my experiences and offer an overview of possibilities in higher education and the regulations and issues involved in UAS use.

http://er.educause.edu/articles/2016/7/early-days-for-drone-use-in-higher-education

By Jarrett Carter, Education Dive

Flipping a classroom requires small-scale goals in changing coursework and reevaluating learning outcomes. Allowing for overage in assignment completion, looking for moments of increased student engagement, and time management are three of the most important elements in successfully flipping a learning environment. Doing less allows students to accomplish more in digesting a syllabus and developing ways to learn the course material.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/flipping-the-classroom-requires-patience-time-management/422522/

by Jordan Friedman, US News

Business certificates, in some cases referred to as “mini MBAs,” become increasingly popular in online education. Experts say the trend is no surprise given that smaller credentials – ranging from digital badges to these certificates – are now prevalent in online learning. “The speed of change in today’s business environment is unprecedented. That sounds like a cliche, but it’s a reality,” says Joe Schaffer, associate dean of executive education at Rutgers Business School. Lifelong business skills, he says, are beneficial for employees who want a competitive advantage. Online business certificate programs, experts say, aim to provide a credential that gives deeper insight into the field than a free online course, for instance, but with less of a time commitment than a full MBA.

http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/articles/2016-07-12/develop-business-skills-through-online-certificate-programs

by Ingrid Lunden, Jonathan Shieber, TechCrunch

Codecademy, an online coding school with 16 million registered users, has built out its footprint without charging its students a penny to use it. Now, as more questions arise about how and when the startup might start monetizing its services, it is announcing $30 million in new funding that could be an indication of what might come next. Naspers, the (for-profit) media giant based out of South Africa, is leading the Series C round, which the company says it will use to continue to expand its product globally and to develop more platforms for using it, such as mobile.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/12/codecademy-the-free-online-coding-school-raises-another-30m-led-by-naspers/

by Ralph LaFontaine, Learning and Development Professional

Many people continue to see e-learning as a poor alternative to face-to-face learning. This is often based on poor experiences with uninspiring e-learning courses that simply plonk a slide presentation or PDF onto a web page, with little thought for engagement or interaction. The question still pervades whether, despite the emergence of new digital learning technology, e-learning can ever be ‘as good’ as the supposed exemplar of classroom learning. The answer is quite simple: e-learning gives us the opportunity to extend learning beyond borders with more benefits than traditional learning could ever offer. Here are four reasons why…

http://www.ldphub.com/general-news/why-elearning-is-better-than-facetoface-learning-219492.aspx

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

A project at Carnegie Mellon University promises to change that with the use of sensors in the classroom hooked to software to help TAs — especially those from other countries — refine their teaching skills in STEM courses. Computer-Aided Noticing and Reflection (CANAR) is the project of Amy Ogan, an assistant professor in the Human Computer Interaction Institute, and Ph.D. student David Gerritsen. The work is being supported by a $174,000 National Science Foundation grant. As Ogan explained the problem, “Many of our teaching assistants in universities today come from a wide variety of cultures.”  The ultimate goal of the project is to support improved teaching and learning in university classrooms by bridging cultural divides between students and their teachers.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/07/06/using-kinect-sensors-and-facial-recognition-in-the-classroom.aspx

BY VALARIE HONEYCUTT SPEARS, Herald-Leader

Wayne County Public Schools Assistant Superintendent Allen Clark is offering a deal to homeschool families: If a homeschool student is willing to enroll in the district taking online courses, the district will pay for the classes. “We assign a teacher from our high school and they work with the child,” Clark said. Wayne County Assistant Superintendent Allen Clark Wayne County Schools. If the student passes the classes, which cost about $100 total, Wayne County can count them in its average daily attendance numbers and receive state funds — about $3200 per student, per school year, according to Clark. About seven or eight of the district’s 75 homeschool students took him up on the offer in 2015-16, and he hopes that 15 to 20 students enroll for 2016-17.

http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article88800107.html

by Mark Muckenfuss, Press Enterprise

Women are fleeing the lab in larger numbers than men. Despite years of effort to encourage female students to pursue degrees in science, technology, engineering and math – so called STEM fields – a new study by researchers at the University of Missouri finds that gender is a primary indicator in dropout rates for college programs. Education professor Lisa Floresand her team are in the midst of a five-year study of 12 engineering colleges. Preliminary results indicate that while dropout rates seem to vary little along ethnic lines, there is a distinct difference between men and women. No numbers were provided with the preliminary findings.

http://www.pe.com/articles/women-807778-stem-students.html

By Chuck Cohn, EdSurge

When Massive Open Online Courses (or MOOCs) were first introduced, people quickly realized these platforms could help students learn more effectively at their own pace on their own schedule. “Formal” education was no longer constrained to traditional classroom hours, if it ever was. This development, combined with tremendous growth in mobile device usage due to improved technology, naturally led to a shift in mobile learning patterns. Students were now free to engage with diverse educational content—videos, podcasts, interactive games, and so on—from any location with a cellular signal.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2016-07-09-how-and-why-we-can-improve-the-future-of-mobile-learning

By Chris Havergal, Times Higher Education

Daphne Koller says online platform reached millions of learners largely because of the publicity, both good and bad, about Moocs. Some academics enjoyed nothing more than seeing the “Moocs bubble” burst. But it turns out that those who scoffed at massive open online courses may have unwittingly been playing into the hands of the innovation they were disparaging. Daphne Koller, president and co-founder of Coursera, told Times Higher Education that the hype around online courses and whether they would destroy traditional universities had been the biggest driver of student recruitment to her company, the world’s largest Mooc platform. Koller said Coursera – which now has 18 million users and 140 course providers, including some of the world’s leading universities – was “making significant, steady progress in democratising access to education”.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/coursera-president-bursting-moocs-bubble-boon-us

by Lora Kolodny, Tech Crunch

DIY Co., the education tech startup led by Vimeo designer and co-founder Zach Klein, has launched a new online learning platform for kids called JAM.com. The company also quietly closed a $4 million round of venture funding led by Learn Capital, joined by Spark Capital, at the end of 2015 to support the development of JAM, Klein told TechCrunch. Courses on DIY’s new site JAM were created for kids up to age 14. Klein said, “There’s a huge landscape of skills worth kids learning now that schools aren’t teaching, and a new set of teachers who aren’t full-time educators willing to help them.”

https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/08/diy-co-launches-jam-to-help-kids-learn-what-they-dont-in-school-with-a-little-help-from-cartoon-network/

By Christopher Watkins, Udacity Blog

People love to make pronouncements about a year. 2016 is the Year of … what? Data? That certainly doesn’t seem possible, given that we’ve been talking about data—both big and otherwise—for some time now. And yet, there was Glassdoor, rating Data Scientist as the #1 Best Job in America for 2016. They weren’t the only ones either. CareerCast.com put Data Scientist at #1 as well. These two studies have been so extensively cited that it’s essentially become a given that Data Scientist is one of THE hot jobs of today, and of the future as well. So how do you prepare for a data science career? Let’s begin by looking at the skills you’ll need.

http://blog.udacity.com/2016/06/skills-to-launch-data-science-career.html

By Richard Chang, THE Journal

Wisconsin study of high school students in virtual classes aims to provide important information in a field that hasn’t garnered much research. Wisconsin high school students who engaged in online courses for two or more hours per week had better outcomes than students who engaged less than two hours per week, according to a study by Regional Educational Laboratory Midwest and the Virtual Education Research Alliance. The study, conducted in the fall 2014 semester, included all Wisconsin Virtual School advanced placement, core and elective high school course enrollments. The sample included 1,512 student enrollments in 109 online courses, with 1,179 unique students, 170 of whom took more than one online course.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/07/07/low-but-steady-engagement-in-online-courses-better-than-diminishing-engagement.aspx

By Jarrett Carter, Education Dive

Ed Tech Magazine reports data security is becoming an increasing priority on college campuses, and contracting the service allows more flexibility for on-campus IT offices to address other issues. Colleges are among the most-targeted businesses for data breaching, and have growing turnover rates in security specialists who leave for more lucrative positions in the private sector. Managed security service providers (MSSPs) can offer a faster, more comprehensive response to data security challenges, because of familiarity with growing trends in technology and practice, according to Ed Tech Magazine.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/should-campuses-outsource-it-security/422284/

By Peter Sayer, IDG News Service

Someone at Google really likes sneakers: The company has just bought a French machine-learning startup that taught a computer how to recognize 15,000 different types of them. Paris-based Moodstocks builds image and object recognition software using deep learning techniques, and offered an Android app and visual search API that could recognize certain kinds of objects. By analyzing video from a smartphone camera, and correlating it with accelerometer readings to determine how the camera is moving around, the software is able to infer information about the three-dimensional shape of objects in the video, facilitating their recognition.

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3091077/internet/google-buys-machine-learning-company-moodstocks.html

By John LaMar, US News

Making the decision to pursue an online program can be intimidating for students. Online Learning Lessons offers tips and advice from online students and educators on everything from finding a program and paying for it to what happens after enrolling.

http://www.usnews.com/education/online-learning-lessons/articles/2016-07-06/4-lessons-about-balancing-online-education-career-needs

by Andy Vale, Audiense

In 2016, mature social media teams can adopt a myriad of roles across marketing, communications, customer service, audience research, product development, and much more. At the core of this activity is using social media data intelligently to extract smart insights. As the demands of this role grows, so does the social media data and analytics understanding required by social media teams. Ben Donkor is a social media analyst at Microsoft, and is adamant about the importance of social media analytics for all businesses. In this exclusive chat you will discover why social analytics is something every organisation should be looking at, how Microsoft are using it, and how you can start.

https://www.audiense.com/interview-media-microsoft-uses-social-analytics-data-twitter-marketing-case-study-tips-you-can-too/

By Robert Nott, The New Mexican

More than 600 students in the district, including about 200 at Capital and 150 at Santa Fe High, enrolled in summer classes that began just after Memorial Day to get some extra learning time. A four-week program for some 260 students in grades K-8 at Gonzales Community School ended last week. Most experts agree that students can regress during the so-called summer learning slide, which can cost a month or so of classroom learning in the fall as teachers try to get students caught up. But whether summer school pays off in terms of accelerated academic achievement or graduation to the next grade level remains unclear, both locally and on the national level. Few studies have been conducted on the issue, and many states, including New Mexico, don’t track summer school data. Still, summer school attendance is growing nationwide. A 2011 Bureau of Labor Statistics report said, for instance, that 45.6 percent of the nation’s 16- to 19-year-olds attended summer school that year.

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/education/summer-school-offers-students-extra-learning-and-a-chance-to/article_f3342c12-9acb-5692-b160-40b06d3def51.html

By Erin Duffy, World-Herald

Free from the walls of a traditional classroom, kids enrolled in Nebraska’s first K-8 virtual school could have access to 3-D printers and a full menu of educational videos to peruse at their own pace. They could video-chat with a marine biologist in Hawaii or learn coding through the popular Minecraft game. The only catch? These innovative online classes will be available only to home-schooled students during a coming pilot program. The Omaha Public Schools are trying to get its virtual school concept off the ground this fall by targeting an unusual population for a public school system: home-schoolers.

http://www.omaha.com/news/education/ops-to-test-virtual-education-program-with-home-schooled-students/article_0ee8087b-a7ab-5fb7-a7e1-0c8037ddd2a3.html

By Kathy Hovis, Cornell Chronicle

These activities and the small groups, which stay the same all semester, lead to greater classroom confidence and learning outcomes, according to Ballen’s assessments, which compare students from new active learning classes with students who took the class the year before, when it was being taught in a traditional way. All students reported a heightened sense of inclusion in the classroom and higher confidence in discussing the topics they learned, said Kelly Zamudio, the Goldwin Smith Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, one of the faculty members teaching the class. “You could watch the in-class groups go from forming to storming to norming to performing,” Zamudio said of the traditional group dynamics model put forth by psychologist Bruce Tuckman. “You can tell that they are teaching and learning from each other, and many of them tell us they have become close friends.”

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2016/07/active-learning-class-achieves-higher-student-engagement