Educational Technology

BY MARK RUDIN, Idaho Statesman

Technology can be a powerful educational aid. However, giving students new iPads or Surfaces won’t automatically make them better learners, or even more receptive to learning. In untrained hands, these technologies can become nothing more than personal entertainment and social media systems. Only the effective implementation of technology, bolstered with teacher training, can make a difference in students’ lives and how they learn. Fortunately, for more than a decade, the College of Education’s EdTech department at Boise State University has offered graduate programs for teachers and other education professionals geared toward meeting this increasingly urgent need to support traditional teaching methods with emerging new technologies.

http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/article149139724.html

by Associated Press

Some Illinois school districts are revamping their summer school programs this year with virtual programs designed to allow students to complete lessons outside of the classroom. But education experts are worried that online learning programs aren’t the best approach for younger students, the Chicago Tribune reported (http://trib.in/2oX6GV1 ). They are questioning whether the move is due to the school districts’ desire to cut costs and redirect money at a time when the state is $13 billion behind in allocating school funds due to the budget impasse. “They’re thinking it’s cost-effective, but it may not be learning-effective,” said Rena Shifflet, an associate professor at Illinois State University’s School of Teaching and Learning. “Illinois has kind of backed school districts into a corner. They’re doing the most with what they have.”

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/illinois/articles/2017-05-07/illinois-schools-opt-for-virtual-summer-learning-programs

http://www.theedadvocate.org/personalized-learning/

by Rob Matheson | MIT News Office

If you haven’t used a 3-D printer yet, you may be surprised to learn that it isn’t fully automated the way your office’s inkjet is. With paper printers, users queue documents from a computer, and each finished sheet drops neatly into a tray, waiting to be collected. With commercial 3-D printers, however, designs are manually programmed into the printer, and each finished part is manually removed before starting a new print, which is very time-consuming. At schools and businesses, a trained expert usually handles all prints, which can be expensive. Now MIT spinout New Valence Robotics (NVBOTS) has brought to market the only fully automated commercial 3-D printer that’s equipped with cloud-based queuing and automatic part removal, making print jobs quicker and easier for multiple users, and dropping the cost per part.

http://news.mit.edu/2017/startup-nvbots-3-d-printing-simple-printing-paper-0505

By Steve Ranger, ZDNet

More details of how the UK’s new surveillance law will operate have been revealed, in details about the use of encryption. Under draft regulations to support the new Investigatory Powers Act, the government will be able to issue ‘technical capability notices’ to companies with more than 10,000 UK users to make it easier for police, spy agencies and other government bodies to access their customers’ communications. In particular, the regulations require companies to provide and maintain “the capability to disclose, where practicable, the content of communications or secondary data in an intelligible form and to remove electronic protection applied by or on behalf of the telecommunications operator to the communications or data, or to permit the person to whom the warrant is addressed to remove such electronic protection.”

http://www.zdnet.com/article/are-we-heading-for-a-new-encryption-war/

by LOUIS FREEDBERG, EdSource

Khan with attendees at an event in Irvine on April 24 to kickoff the partnership between the Khan Academy and several county education departments. In establishing relationships with several county offices of education in Southern California, the Khan Academy is hoping to expand its already large footprint in the world of personalized learning to make its online resources a more formal part of the school curriculum. The move could mark a quantum leap in the use of online materials in the classroom. Sal Khan, the Khan Academy’s founder, said he hopes the materials he has developed – online courses, instructional exercises, videos and a personalized “learning dashboard” – will become a “primary tool for practice” in the classroom, rather than just a supplement to the curriculum.

https://edsource.org/2017/new-partnership-with-khan-academy-designed-to-expand-personalized-learning-in-the-classroom/581313

BY LESLEY VOS, eSchool News

Students write a lot, and the issue of plagiarism (or, at least, wrong paraphrasing) remains topical. As educators, what can you do to help students avoid the problem? Everything starts with suspicion. You take a student’s essay, start reading it, and it doesn’t feel right. The writing structure, word constructions, and deductions are unlike this mentee of yours! You go to PlagiarismCheck, Copyscape, or any other resource to check that essay for plagiarism and…ta da! You were right. The essay has obvious signs of plagiarism. Don’t hurry up to blame a student. They might plagiarize accidentally. A responsible educator, you can help students write original academic papers and teach them to distinguish whether they opine on the topic or simply paraphrase statements, taken from third party sources. Here’s how.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2017/05/04/prevent-accidental-plagiarism/

By Sri Ravipati, THE Journal

A word of warning: If there is an e-mail in your inbox asking you to open a Google Doc from someone, don’t open it. A day after the recent attack, Google rolled out a new safeguard to its Android Gmail app. The phishing scam attempted to hack a user’s Google account after the user clicks a link that appears to be from a trusted individual. Google was able to stop the attack after about 1 million (just 0.1 percent) of all Gmail users had seen one of the e-mails. Now with the Gmail app updates, when a phony link appears in an e-mail, Google will warn the user, with an alert: “The site you are trying to visit has been identified as a forgery intended to trick you into disclosing financial, personal or other sensitive information.”

https://thejournal.com/articles/2017/05/04/google-adds-safety-feature-to-android-gmail-app-after-email-phishing-attack.aspx

By Sri Ravipati, THE Journal

A group of South Carolina companies called SC Aerospace, supported by the South Carolina Council on Competitiveness and the South Carolina Department of Commerce, are introducing an aerospace curriculum in six high schools. This fall, each of the following schools will receive $50,000 from the South Carolina Department of Education to cover course costs

https://thejournal.com/articles/2017/05/10/6-south-carolina-high-schools-to-launch-aerospace-curriculum-this-fall.aspx

by Matthew Lynch, tech Edvocate

Student videos can be performances of short stories or narratives written by the students for English class. They can be videos of experiments done at home for science. They can be reenactments of historical events or raps about math concepts. Graphics and text can be added to these videos for context, and students can even release their creative side by including special effects. With most students owning smartphones and with many classrooms using smart pads, making videos for a class has become easier than ever. There are many movie making apps available for smartphones and tablets to create videos, but we’ve decided to share the top 5 that are the easiest for students to use.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/5-movie-making-apps-student-projects/

BY ASHLEY PEREIRA, eSchool News

The Science and Engineering Practices of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) require students to ‘obtain, evaluate, and communicate information’ (NGSS Lead States, 2013). Despite this need to communicate with increasing clarity and creativity, oftentimes students and teachers rely upon common modalities such as Powerpoint presentations, Word brochures, and handmade posters when asked to communicate information within the classroom setting. While useful and rife with practical implications, these traditional options tend to be overused and are limited in their capabilities to communicate information in dynamic new ways. Additionally, it is important that students learn to use a wide variety of technology tools within our 21st century classrooms (US Dept. of Education Office of Educational Technology, 2016). This article features recommendations for technology tools that enable students to communicate information in innovative, creative, and visually appealing ways.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2017/05/04/teacher-tools-ngss-standards/

BY KARINA GODOY, REBECCA CRUTCHFIELD, AND SARAH GRIEGO, eCampus News

Three educators share their experiences teaching English to Chinese students on their own schedules and from their own homes. Apps like Uber, Lyft, and Task Rabbit have helped millions of people use their skills to earn money on their own schedule. This model has now come to the American education market with 51Talk (pronounced “five-one-talk”), an online platform that connects educators in the U.S. with Chinese students who want to learn English. During each 25-minute lesson, teachers interact one-on-one with students using a live videoconferencing platform. Here, three early adopters share the challenges and rewards of practicing their craft whenever and wherever they want.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2017/05/03/teaching-job-uber-teachers/

by Pat Donachie, Education Dive

3-D printing is a skill increasingly in demand in the fields of art, design and other industries, and the Fashion Institute of Technology is responding by installing a nascent 3-D printing lab, according to Ed Tech: Focus on Higher Ed. The technology can be adapted to a wide variety of industries, including manufacturing, aerospace, healthcare and others — and supporters of the new tech say it can also be of great use to those involved in the visual and performing arts. Proponents like Jana Duda, FIT’s technology resources manager, say schools should begin small and allow time for experimentation as students and educators discern the best uses for 3-D printing. FIT built its space in an existing classroom.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/3-d-printing-a-valued-commodity-in-tech-industries-and-college-campuses/441977/

by Sri Ravipati, THE Journal

A tool developed by two security companies that scans the internet for command and control (C2) servers has already uncovered thousands of malicious RATs, or remote access trojans, on computers and other internet-connected devices. Shodan, a search engine used by many security researchers, lists information for open ports belonging to internet-connected devices. The company teamed up with threat intelligence firm Recorded Future to integrate a new online crawler into its search engine called Malware Hunter. Malware Hunter scans the internet regularly over time to identify C2 servers for various malware like RATs.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2017/05/02/industry-tool-detects-thousands-of-c2-server-rats.aspx

By Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology

Indiana University’s Mosaic Active Learning Initiative, a program launched in fall 2015 that supports faculty teaching, research and classroom design for active learning environments, has expanded to five of the institution’s regional campus: IU East, IU Kokomo, IU Northwest, IU South Bend and IU Southeast. The move brings 14 new Mosaic Faculty Fellows into the program. Fellows are “faculty who, over the course of an academic year, teach in Mosaic classrooms, share approaches to active and collaborative learning, engage in research related to active learning classrooms, and contribute to the development of learning spaces across IU,” according to a university announcement.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2017/05/03/indiana-u-expands-active-learning-initiative.aspx

BY MERIS STANSBURY, eCampus News

As online learning becomes increasingly popular, what are the skills and habits necessary for student success? Recently, eCampus News posted an article about the latest online learning myths, one of which was “earning an online degree is easy.” Typically, only those online students who are self-motivated tend to succeed, but are there other more define-able characteristics that characterize successful online students? In author Joel English’s book, Plugged In: Succeeding as an Online Learner, students about to embark in online learning are given a list of should-have skills or habits in order to succeed. English, as well as Cengage Learning (which produced an infographic based on the key points of English’s book) recommend instructors share these 10 boiled-down characteristics with their online students before starting the course or class.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2017/05/03/4-out-of-5-companies-have-hired-a-coding-bootcamp-graduate.aspx

By Nathan Grundahl, Anne Larson, Michael Mades; Campus Technology

Seeking a better way to achieve its curricular and instructional goals, SPASD implemented itslearning’s end-to-end enterprise teaching and learning platform in 2016. That platform now serves as the foundation for SPASD’s new 1-to-1 Chromebook program and also supports its “Future Ready Schools for Sun Prairie Students” plan. Working together, Nathan Grundahl, technology integrator; Anne Larson, digital learning manager; and Michael Mades, director of technology, developed a six-step process that the district used to map out its successful LMS implementation. Here’s how they did it:

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2017/05/01/6-steps-to-a-successful-lms-implementation.aspx

by Sri Ravipati, Campus Technology

The University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication (UO SOJC) last year founded its Insights and Analytics Lab, providing undergraduate students access to real-world big data to help them gain in-demand analytics skills for their future careers in media. Many businesses expect to add more jobs that require data analysis skills in the next five years, according a national survey from the American Statistical Association. UO SOJC partnered with analytics companies Alteryx, comScore and Shareablee to open up more workforce opportunities for students, says Heather Shoenberger, an assistant professor who founded, directs and teaches “Brand Insights with Data” at the Insights and Analytics Lab.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2017/05/03/how-the-university-of-oregon-is-teaching-media-students-to-use-big-data.aspx

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

More than 6 million students took at least one online course in 2015, representing more than a quarter (29.7 percent) of all higher education enrollments that year, according to a new report from Digital Learning Compass. Among that 29.7 percent, it’s almost evenly split between students who took some but not all courses online (15.4 percent) and those who took every class online (14.3 percent). In contrast, total online enrollments in 2002 came in just under 10 percent. Put another way, the number of students who have taken a “distance education” course rose by 3.9 percent in 2015, adding an additional 226,375 online students to the virtual attendance rolls. Between 2012 and 2015, the number of on-campus students has declined by 5 percent, losing a total of 931,317.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2017/05/02/on-campus-enrollment-shrinks-while-online-continues-its-ascent.aspx

by Matthew Lynch, tech Edvocate

According to eSparks Learning, teachers regardless of age or experience level harbor doubts about their ability to successfully use classroom technology. So, if teacher’s skills and technology are to exist in harmony, there needs to be a balance. We need teachers’ talents and at the same time encourage them to start looking to the future. The majority of today’s student population have never known the world without high-speed internet. It acts as a source of information, a place to socialize and now, a place for them to gain a formal education. Teachers need to see technology as another way to engage with their students and not as a replacement for their talents and their jobs. So, in hopes of finding a balance between technology and teaching, here are some ways to make sure there is a balance between teaching and technology.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/find-balance-teaching-technology/

by Vikki Ortiz Healy, Chicago Tribune

Summer school — once the dreaded stretch of vacation when students were required to be back in the classroom for weeks — is getting an update at several elementary and middle schools this year through virtual programs designed to allow students to complete lessons from home, the beach or anywhere else. “We felt that this was a better way to engage more students,” said Cathy Fisher, director of teaching and learning for Maercker School District 60 in Westmont, which this year is replacing its traditional in-school elementary summer school program with a home-based version.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-summer-school-online-met-20170429-story.html