Educational Technology

By Julie Young, Lowell Sun
For two years running, Bloomberg’s State Innovation Index has hailed Massachusetts as the country’s most innovative state economy. Looking at such metrics as R&D; concentration of science, technology, engineering, and math employment; and numbers of science degrees, it’s no wonder that the commonwealth placed first.  But it’s not just postsecondary education that makes Massachusetts a leader in innovation. Its K-12 public schools also boast some of the most dynamic and thoughtful approaches to brick-and-mortar education, providing a model for the rest of the country. Despite these successes, Massachusetts struggles to keep pace with innovative online educational offerings that have helped students thrive throughout the nation.

http://www.lowellsun.com/news/ci_31267702/julie-young-mass-has-tools-lead-online-learning

BY JOHN JENNINGS AND BEN ROOME, eSchool News

The topic of teacher professional development has dominated discussions about teacher quality and retention for years. While some progress has been made, there is still no standardized means for teachers to develop a portfolio of credentials aligned with the always-evolving set of skills and strategies they bring to their classrooms. Digital badging has arrived on the scene as a leading contender to close this gap and help provide teachers with a clear path to professional growth, and the micro-credentials to prove it. This is an important breakthrough for a profession in which a lack of career mobility too often leads to top talent leaving for administration roles or private sector jobs.

https://www.eschoolnews.com/2017/08/31/digital-badges-shaking-teacher-pd/

by Matthew Lynch, tech Edvocate

While technology is certainly a necessary – and beneficial – tool in educating 21st century students, it also comes with its own inherent set of dangers and risks. Schools need to work harder than ever at keeping their students safe. Now, not only must they contend with physical threats, but they must also work to keep cyber threats at bay as well. Furthermore, students may need to be protected from themselves. Schools can work to prevent cyber bullying or restrict access to some technological features that put kids at risk for jeopardizing their futures through misappropriation of technology resources.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/keeping-k-12-students-safe-using-edtech/

by Matthew Lynch, tech Edvocate

The recent focus of neuroscience on what facilitates lifelong learning has led to breakthroughs in the education world. Schools, teachers, and parents have the opportunity to approach and understand learning like never before. Here are 10 ways the research of neuroscience can change education.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/10-ways-neuroscience-can-change-education/

BY SATISH SUBRAMANIAN, eSchool News
Four experienced “makers” and K-12 educators dish their top tools and advice to build a meaningful classroom makerspace from the ground up. Makerspaces are becoming a classroom staple. As these shared spaces for student-led learning continue to flourish, the concepts, tools and applications of makerspaces have reached a new level of variety. For those new to “making,” developing the blueprints for a classroom makerspace this back-to-school season can be intimidating.  The teaching and learning benefits of maker education are clear and simple. This practice enables students to exercise creativity and abstract thinking to see a problem from beginning to end. They test, analyze and modify ideas in both the design and production stages. Making offers our youngest generation a fluid model for approaching problems through trial-and-error, a skill that can last a lifetime.

https://www.eschoolnews.com/2017/09/01/teachers-makerspace-must-haves/

by Sarah Hess, Lion’s Roar
University students now have a say in which classes are offered during the summer semester. With polls being distributed to gather opinions on which classes both in person and online should be offered during summer semester, students have the chance to decide which classes will be offered. Summer classes help students advance in their degree progress and save them money by reducing costs of undergraduate courses while offering more in-demand classes and more online courses. Along with the fact that summer classes are shorter than the normal fall or spring terms, credits can be earned in four to eight weeks in summer courses.

http://www.lionsroarnews.com/news/view.php/1029387/Surveys-help-align-summer-courses-to-the

by Kelly Hinchcliffe, WRAL

Their first year, the schools enrolled nearly 3,900 students combined. By the end of the year, more than 1,200 students – more than 30 percent – left to seek education elsewhere, prompting one State Board of Education member to warn, “We need to monitor this closely.” This past year, the schools enrolled more than 4,400 students and lost nearly 1,200, or about 27 percent. Tracking how many students leave the schools has been a complex and controversial topic since lawmakers granted the schools four-year pilot programs beginning in 2015.

http://www.wral.com/nearly-2-500-students-have-left-nc-s-online-charter-schools-why-did-they-leave-where-did-they-go-/16719011/

By Mike Masciadrelli, WWLP

More students at UMass are going online to get their degrees. More than 75,000 students enrolled in UMass online courses last year, up 6 percent from the previous fiscal year. “Sometimes online classes can be a little less rigorous, you don’t have to go to class all the time,” said Hannah Boyd, Junior at UMass Amherst. “It just makes it easier to get those extra credits.”  UMassOnline offers 150 degrees and certificate programs, along with more than 1500 courses. One of their more recent online programs allows students to obtain a graduate certificate in business analytics at UMass Amherst.

http://wwlp.com/2017/08/29/more-umass-students-are-getting-their-degrees-online/

by Matthew Lynch, tech Edvocate

Let’s be honest: it’s exponentially more difficult in the digital age to keep students engaged! Because of the allure of apps, games and videos that are so easily accessible, many kids nowadays can’t quite summon the interest in picking up a good book. What if you could leverage children’s love of technology to help build a lasting love of reading? Does that seem like a paradox? You can make it a reality with these apps specifically for the purpose of making your students love reading.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/7-must-apps-make-students-love-reading/

By Sydney Johnson, EdSurge

For many attending the Future of Work symposium on Wednesday, there wasn’t any question whether automation is going to take over jobs—but rather when, and how education should respond. Hosted at Stanford University, the day-long event brought together dozens of minds who are thinking about what careers and skills students need to prepare for, and how an increasingly digital higher-education system will need to adapt to help get them there. Speakers including edX CEO Anant Agarwal, associate dean and director of Stanford’s Diversity and First-Gen office Dereca Blackmon, and Deborah Quazzo, a co-founder of investment firm GSV, shared their ideas on what that might look like.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-08-31-so-what-is-the-future-of-work

by the UFT
New research finds that high school students who have failed algebra and need to make up their grades get better short-term results if they take a credit recovery class in person. But over the longer term, students who take the in-person class are no more likely to graduate on time than those who took an online credit-recovery course.

http://www.uft.org/research-shows/look-credit-recovery-results

by Tishin Donkersley, Tech.co

Buuilding up your portfolio as a graphic designer can take years. To make the field even more difficult, keeping your edge on changing design trends means continuing your education on the latest software and new methods to communicate to customers. Fortunately, we’ve got you covered. TechCo has rounded up affordable online graphic design courses from our Shop so anyone can learn to be a design ninja.

https://tech.co/3-affordable-online-design-courses-2017-08

by Steve Ranger, ZD Net

Western Digital has unveiled what it says is the world’s highest-capacity microSD card — one that crams 400GB of storage into your smartphone. The card can hold up to 40 hours of Full HD video and can transfer data at up to 100MBps: at that speed, users could move 1,200 3.5MB photos per minute over USB 3.0. The card, which Western Digital is aiming at Android smartphone and tablet users, comes with a ten-year warranty and a US retail price of $249.99.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/storage-breakthrough-worlds-biggest-microsd-card-crams-in-a-massive-400gb-of-data/

Technology is already invading the classroom, says Joy Harris, director of educational technology at the University of Tampa. She expects to soon see more “ed tech” that integrates more complex human gestures in user interfaces, as well as augmented and virtual realities. However, the distinction between tech that enhances human teachers and that which replaces them is a gray area. “We’re already seeing large-scale increases” in the use of artificial intelligence in the classroom, says Harris, even if that just means asking Siri the answer to a question. Further still, “AI has already been proven effective for teaching rudimentary skills such as colors and numbers, as well as additional languages,” Harris says, adding, “We’ll see that continue to grow rapidly.”

http://www.ozy.com/acumen/ozy-poll-are-we-ready-for-robot-teachers/80095

Professors should be required by the University to improve the technology in their courses by using updated software and higher quality equipment. They should use better recording equipment, like a Blue Snowball microphone, and upload files as mp4s or avis, which are supported by most computers. Simply relying on PowerPoints with shoddy voice-overs and outdated files will decrease the quality of learning. Students pay approximately $1,250 per credit for summer online courses – the same amount per credit for traditional courses – and they should be getting the same quality of instruction. As of now, students can only grin and bear through the outdated software because there is no other alternative on such short notice. They can either be fortunate enough to find another way to view the material, or end up just dropping the class entirely.

https://www.gwhatchet.com/2017/08/28/professors-must-update-outdated-technology-in-online-courses/

by Vickie Law, Huffington Post

Online tutoring is one of the most lucrative areas of tutoring. It gives the tutor flexibility to teach students anytime, anywhere. While you need to have advance knowledge of a subject, you don’t need any specialized training to be an online tutor. You don’t have to quit your current job to teach online. It affords a flexibility that allows you to work at your convenience. If you’re prepared to start an online tutoring business for yourself, here are some of the steps that will guide you through the process.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/how-to-start-tutoring-online-as-a-side-business_us_599f176ae4b0a62d0987ad97

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

In education, ROI (Return On Investment) is a big deal. Resources are finite, and whenever they’re spent those holding the purse strings want to know if the investment is justified. When it comes to new technologies and innovative approaches, ROI can be difficult to calculate; which can put edtech in an awkward position when it comes to justifying the expenditure. It’s important that educators and administrators have a sense of what they hope to accomplish with edtech: what are the goals which edtech can help achieve? Progress towards these goals needs to be tracked wherever possible, as this is the most straightforward way of presenting a case regarding ROI.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/school-districts-measure-ed-techs-return-investment/

by Will Knight, MIT Technology Review
Andrew Ng, one of the world’s best-known artificial-intelligence experts, is launching an online effort to create millions more AI experts across a range of industries. Ng, an early pioneer in online learning, hopes his new deep-learning course on Coursera will train people to use the most powerful idea to have emerged in AI in recent years. The thing that really excites me today is building a new AI-powered society. Even though a lot of the buzz in AI has been around large tech companies—and clearly the large tech companies are creating huge amounts of value with AI through better Web search, online advertising, better maps, better payment systems, and so on—if you look across an entire economy, really any Fortune 500 company can create a lot of value with AI as well.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608573/andrew-ngs-next-trick-training-a-million-ai-experts/

by Leslie Barker, Dallas Morning News

George Siemens knows all about tug-of-war between social and technological networks. As executive director of the Learning Innovation & Networked Knowledge (LINK) Research Lab at the University of Texas at Arlington, he studies it, along with researcher Catherine Spann and their team. They live it. They ponder it. And in this swirling juxtaposition of person and machine, this question guides them: What does it mean to be human in the digital age? To help answer that question, or at least contemplate its implications, UTA has teamed with the Free Life People School of Yoga in Arlington — where Spann, Siemens and other LINK colleagues have taken classes — to offer a six-week course beginning Oct. 16.

https://www.dallasnews.com/life/healthy-living/2017/08/25/stay-human-digital-age

by MELANIE MORGAN, eSchool News
A kindergarten teacher working on a military base shares her best practices for connecting with ELL students and their parents. As more and more ELL students enter the U.S. public school system, teachers are facing the twofold challenge of communicating not only with these students, but with their families as well. After all, non-English-speaking families have the same desires as native English speakers to know how their child is doing academically, emotionally, and socially.

https://www.eschoolnews.com/2017/08/25/communication-multi-cultural/

by  Jeremy P. Kelley, Dayton Daily News

Enrollment in purely online schools is dropping in Ohio, according to the Ohio Department of Education, but local districts are offering more online education within their schools, as laptop computers and iPads become the norm. Sometimes that’s just a single math lesson, and other times it’s a formal online curriculum.

http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/how-are-your-local-districts-handling-online-school/zBhtI4jWKPUmu2tHDBc6JL/