Educational Technology

By Dian Schaffhauser, THE Journal
It’s no longer enough to simply begin the journey of competency-based education. Enough schools are trying to implement CBE that it’s time to write the second chapter by building on what is already known to work. That’s the idea behind a new report from CompetencyWorks, which lays out a course for scaling and sustaining K-12 CBE along four lines: equity, quality, meeting students where they are, and policy.  CompetencyWorks is a collaborative organization that promotes personalized, competency-based education in K-12 and higher education. The initiative is managed by iNACOL, a non-profit focused on K-12 competency-based, blended and online learning.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2017/11/02/report-scaling-and-sustaining-competency-based-education.aspx

BY LAURA ASCIONE, eSchool News

Maker culture is going mainstream. The maker industry is projected to grow to more than $8 billion by 2020, and with the maker movement infiltrating classrooms, after-school clubs and homes, it’s no wonder. But where is the maker movement strongest? A new report from robotics and open-source hardware provider DFRobot aims to find out by analyzing DIY-labeled products hosted on Kickstarter.

Do students buy into maker culture?

by Paul Ralph, The Conversation

Do you really believe that watching a lecturer read hundreds of PowerPoint slides is making you smarter? I asked this of a class of 105 computer science and software engineering students last semester. An article in The Conversation argued universities should ban PowerPoint because it makes students stupid and professors boring.

I agree entirely.

http://www.businessinsider.com/universities-should-ban-powerpoint-it-makes-students-stupid-and-professors-boring-2015-6

by Ashley Rose, Cleaburne Times-Review

Whether it’s playing video games or doing homework, children are spending more time on their mobile devices. According to a new report, it’s up to about two hours a day on average. The nonprofit gave about 1,500 parents, with children ages birth to 8, a survey that focused on their children’s media usage, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. The questionnaire was a continuation of two that were completed in 2011 and 2013. Officials found that those children spent an average of two hours and 19 minutes a day using mobile devices — an amount that has tripled in the past four years, according to CSM.

http://www.cleburnetimesreview.com/news/report-children-using-mobile-devices-increases/article_32510aae-c33a-11e7-a3cc-4764c386c66e.html

BY SPENCER BUCKNER, Daily Texan

Students are well-adjusted to completing homework assignments online, watching lecture videos from the comfort of their room and checking their grades over the internet. Yet however useful they may be, the programs bring an unwelcome price.  It’s senseless to require students to pay for a single program used for attendance purposes, let alone three. Paid programs can, without a doubt, serve a vital role in expanding educational opportunities. What must be changed is the sheer number of programs that professors expect students to pay for. Quest, another online learning tool, and Squarecap were both developed either here at UT or by Longhorn alumni. Shouldn’t we support university-born programs and encourage their usage by our staff? Of course, these two programs alone can’t cover the needs of all professors on campus, but encouraging their standardization on campus would reduce both the inefficiency and cost of the laundry list of programs that Longhorns are currently expected to use.

http://dailytexanonline.com/2017/11/07/longhorns-need-fewer-online-learning-tools-not-more

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate
Implementing edtech in your classroom while feeling constrained to your personal or professional budget is difficult. Luckily, there are plenty of edtech tools free for teachers! We scoured the internet and found over 100 free apps, websites, and educational programs. Here are our top 10.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/10-free-edtech-tools-teachers/

By Mark Lieberman, Inside Higher Ed Digital

The University System of Maryland’s campuses boast diverse student bodies in terms of race, income and college preparedness. Officials believe new data collection standards will improve retention and graduation rates.  “We [needed] to understand … what does it mean when we put interventions into place?” said M.J. Bishop, director of the system’s center for academic innovation, during a panel at last week’s Educause conference here. “How do we know whether or not we’re making a difference when we put these interventions into place?” What followed was a process of introspection and realignment that the system’s leaders believe has moved the campuses toward a level playing field: standardizing disparate definitions for student success data and identifying areas where students need more help than they’re getting, particularly in the classroom and before they arrive on campus for the first time.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2017/11/08/university-system-maryland-standardizes-data-collection-improve

by Dennis Pierce, THE Journal

As a student, Anthony Johnson hated school. He hated sitting still at one of several cramped desks aligned in precise rows, listening to his teachers talk for hours. It’s why he dropped out of school before ultimately earning a GED, going on to college and becoming a teacher himself. “My own experience in school was awful,” he said, “and I decided that my classroom wasn’t going to look like that.” In Johnson’s classroom at H.D. Isenberg Elementary School in Salisbury, NC, students can choose from a variety of seating options. There are tables for students to collaborate in groups of four, as well as bar-style seating on taller stools and even a few couches where they can sit comfortably while they work or read independently. The school provided the tables, and Johnson supplied the rest of the furniture himself.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2017/11/07/as-pedagogy-changes-learning-spaces-are-transforming-too.aspx

BY LAURA ASCIONE, eSchool News

New research has unearthed a dramatic increase in the number of young children who have their own tablet device–42 percent compared to 1 percent in 2011. The research from Common Sense, which examines media use by kids ages 0-8 and is the third installment in an ongoing series that tracks media and technology use, also uncovered an increase in the amount of time children spend with mobile devices–48 minutes, up from just five minutes in 2011. The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Kids Age Zero to Eight is based on a large, nationally representative sample of respondents and replicates methods from 2011 and 2013 to gauge how media environments and behaviors have changed over the years.

https://www.eschoolnews.com/2017/11/06/spike-childrens-media-use/

by Shalina Chatlani, Education Dive

Students and faculty have somewhat differing views when it comes to technology use in the classroom, according to an Educause Center for Analysis and Research survey with responses from 11,141 faculty members and 35,760 students across the nation, reports Campus Technology.  When it comes to learning management systems, the survey found most faculty are satisfied with it, but students become more frustrated with it as the tasks become more difficult and complicated. And while many students report their teachers have adequate technology skills, they say that few faculty use this technology for more sophisticated purposes. While at least 80% of students said they found student success systems moderately helpful, the survey found most faculty don’t use them. And, when survey authors reported to Campus Technology on how CIOs could support faculty members, they stressed explaining student demands would not sway faculty. Rather, explaining research on effectiveness and learning outcomes to faculty on technology use would be more effective.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/survey-highlights-student-faculty-divide-on-classroom-tech/510201/

by Education Dive

Higher education campuses are hotbeds for cybersecurity threats — college and university servers house countless pieces of data on current and past faculty, students and other stakeholders. But as institutions become more and more technologically entrenched — and customers demand that the college experience be more modern, while still guaranteeing safety — securing this data and ensuring that members of the institution’s community do not inappropriately handle ed tech becomes more of a daunting task for administrators, in particular CIOs.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/higher-ed-is-becoming-more-entrenched-in-tech-what-does-this-mean-for-cio/507825/

by EMMANUEL BRUCE , Graphic Online

Technology is now presenting educators and students with a new, low cost tool for teaching and learning through the Internet. It is for this reason that the Springboard, Your Virtual University, a radio programme on Joy FM, used last Sunday’s edition to look at how to explore technology and learning to transition one’s career. The show, which is hosted by Rev. Albert Ocran, had the Chief Executive Officer of TECHAIDE, Mr Kafui Prebbie, the Human Resource Business Partner at Ecobank, Mr Nii Koi Kotey, and Mr Derrydean Dadzie, who took listeners through how they could develop themselves through personal learning and some of the opportunities that existed in it. Rev. Ocran, in his introductory remarks, said personal development and informal learning gave people the power to learn whatever they liked, as it puts the power in the hands of the individual. “In personal learning, nobody gives you what you learn, you choose what you want and learn it. There are no limitations,” he said.

https://www.graphic.com.gh/business/business-news/democratizing-education-with-technology.html

by edScoop

States need to develop a common definition for personalized learning if they hope to pursue it as a common goal — that was one of the biggest takeaways from the recent gathering of state edtech leaders, according to Tracy Weeks, executive director of the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA). The SETDA Leadership Summit drew state and affiliate attendees from 47 states and territories, as well as speakers from Code.org and Future Ready Schools, among others. This year’s meeting gave special attention to the topic of personalized learning and how state leaders can leverage technology to make it work for students.

http://edscoop.com/tv-radio/states-need-to-find-common-ground-on-personalized-learning-setdas-tracy-weeks-says

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Remember the days schlepping a big bag home every night of teaching in the classroom? As the grading period ended, it was often two bags, and sometimes three.  The classroom was even worse, cluttered with learning materials – books, manipulatives and work station activities that left little room for anything else, including students and the teacher. It was important to have every conceivable teaching tool ready for the students in the event of a “teachable moment.” Today’s teachers have edtech on their side. Edtech teaching and management tools have streamlined processes, and providing engaging learning opportunities that go far beyond the materials I could create for students learning. If I were still in the classroom today, I’d use these 7 edtech tools:

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/7-edtech-tools-use-still-classroom/

by Cade Metz, NY Times

They are a dream of researchers but perhaps a nightmare for highly skilled computer programmers: artificially intelligent machines that can build other artificially intelligent machines. With recent speeches in both Silicon Valley and China, Jeff Dean, one of Google’s leading engineers, spotlighted a Google project called AutoML. ML is short for machine learning, referring to computer algorithms that can learn to perform particular tasks on their own by analyzing data. AutoML, in turn, is a machine-learning algorithm that learns to build other machine-learning algorithms. With it, Google may soon find a way to create A.I. technology that can partly take the humans out of building the A.I. systems that many believe are the future of the technology industry.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/technology/machine-learning-artificial-intelligence-ai.html

by Natanje Holt, HR News

Recent advancements around automation as well as an increasingly flexible workforce has led to a departure from the traditional employment model. Whilst previous generations have spent their working lives enveloped in the security of a more linear career path – stemming from a period of focused study such as an apprenticeship – we are now seeing a significant step away from the ‘job for life’ mentality. Currently people are expected to have between 6-11 jobs on average but it’s predicted that this will increase even further. Moving forward not only could people move between as many as 40 jobs, it’s possible they could have as many as 10 different careers across their working lives.

http://hrnews.co.uk/anywhere-anytime-learning-will-key-successful-workforce/

By Tim Sandle, Digital Journal
Voices.com has released a new report which has found that e-learning projects make up 5.1 percent of the global voice over market. The worth of the voice over industry has been costed for the first time, at $4.4-billion. E-learning is based on cognitive science principles, where effective multimedia learning is used to develop electronic educational technology. When developed effectively, research suggests that the selection of appropriate concurrent multimedia modalities enhances learning and can lead to improved educational attainment.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and-science/technology/voice-over-market-is-key-for-e-learning-developments/article/506863

by Shalina Chatlani, Education Dive

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has already received 238 applications from the nation’s higher ed institutions as of last month to host the company’s new $5 billion corporate headquarters, which Bezos proposes will create 50,000 new jobs with average salaries of $100,000 for the areas graduates, reports The Chronicle of Higher Education. The move is similar to when Amazon counterpart Microsoft invested more than $1 billion in the University of Washington, creating a pipeline from the institution and others in the city into the company. Bezos’ plans are similar as eligibility for the headquarters requires the institution to be in a city with a population of at least 1 million and a strong pool of talented students that are likely to go into a technical field.  Experts predict that the city will be one which already has a superior reserve of computer science graduates and programs. Though it’s likely the move will enhance local economies, many still caution that the influx of Amazon’s business could have the negative consequence of raising the city’s housing prices, making competition even more difficult for the city’s highly skilled laborers, and changing the identity of the city.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/higher-ed-will-be-critical-to-amazons-success-and-institutions-are-joini/510110/

BY MERIS STANSBURY, eCampus News

New tweaks or additions to this year’s list include a move from data-informed decision-making to data-enabled institutional culture, strategic leadership to change leadership, sustainable staffing to sustainable funding, digital transformation of learning to digital integrations, and next-gen enterprise IT to institution-wide IT strategy.  IT strategy moved significantly up on the list, with last year’s enterprise IT coming in at number 9 and this year’s institution-wide IT strategy coming in at number 3. The Top Ten 2018 IT Issues were also grouped into four major themes for 2018, which include Students, Data, Security, and Planning and Funding.

https://www.ecampusnews.com/campus-administration/educause-top-10-issues-2018/

by Matthew Lynch

In this technological age, learning to code has become just as important as learning to read and write. Indeed, coding is likely a more valuable and necessary skill these days than writing. Some schools have acknowledged this and have integrated coding classes into their curriculum. However, Idit Harel thinks American schools are teaching kids how to code “all wrong.” Teaching kids to program through apps and “coding tutorials” Harel believes is a “superficial response” to the increased need for individuals with programming skills. Whether the current response to this need is right or wrong, there are definitely some more creative, fresh ways to teach kids how to code. We have listed 5 of those ways here.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/5-fresh-ways-teach-kids-code/

by Taylor Robinson, Kent Wired
“We’ve hosted workshops over the years, but nothing quite like this,” said Cindy Kristof, head of the copyright and document services in the library and associate professor at the University Libraries department, who coordinated Friday’s conference. Faculty and staff members from all over campus came together taking notes, engaging in an open discussion and considered ways to get affordable materials for students to set them up for success.

http://www.kentwired.com/latest_updates/article_7bafe9b6-c0fd-11e7-a4d7-8b322c236761.html