Educational Technology

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

In the growing world of educational technology, the question is often explored whether these applications work for students. The answer is, they can when they take into account how people learn. Products designed with the understanding of the cognitive mind will outperform their competitors. What do edtech developers actually need to consider to succeed? Neuroscience is the study of how the human nervous system develops, its structure, and function. The subcategories of computational, cognitive, cultural, linguistic and developmental neuroscience focus on different pathways in learning. We can derive a greater understanding of how our minds develop, what influences higher education functions, and how to better retain information from the science behind learning.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/edtech-actually-work-embrace-neuroscience/

by Nicholas Ibarra, Santa Cruz Sentinel

Makerspace Director and Art Studio Instructor Payson McNett invokes a quote by the late science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Standing in a workshop with the ability to print, etch and cut an array of materials into almost any imaginable design, it is easy to understand what Clarke meant. “This space is truly cross-disciplinary,” McNett said. “It’s all about breaking down the silos, getting everybody from different areas and showing how interconnected our education really is.”

http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/article/NE/20180123/NEWS/180129881

by Josh Naish, the Daily Mail

Machines that learn to think for themselves are revolutionising the workplace. But there’s growing evidence they are acquiring racial and class prejudices too.  Human bank employees are no longer allowed to use common sense to over-rule the robots. Not only are they being used to decide our access to insurance, loans and whether or not we are a decent credit risk, but they may also be influencing our employment prospects, medical treatment and tax affairs. Even more ominously, as I shall explain, such robots may soon be ruling on whether police patrol your area, and if you are a potential criminal.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5310031/Evidence-robots-acquiring-racial-class-prejudices.html

by Dana Branham, Dallas News

Bishop Lynch High School classes will take place online Thursday and Friday due to increased numbers of flu cases at the Dallas school, the principal said. Principal Chad Riley said the school made the decision after advice from Dallas County Health and Human Services. More than 10 percent of the students were absent Wednesday. This year’s brutal flu season has closed schools around the state. Bonham and Gunter school districts announced week-long closures last week to give schools a chance to disinfect their campus spaces. Dallas’ Jesuit College Preparatory School announced closures for Tuesday and Wednesday due to the flu as well.

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2018/01/24/bishop-lynch-high-school-online-school-thursday-friday-due-flu-outbreak

by  John Dykstra, Daily Journal

Ten Kankakee High School students are getting a look at what the future might hold in Illinois for advanced placement courses. Lt. Gov. Evelyn Sanguinetti, who leads the Governor’s Rural Affairs Council, announced a pilot program for online AP classes. Kankakee is one of 10 school districts participating in the pilot, which includes 75 students. Tri-Point High School, in Cullom, is the other area school participating. The pilot is part of the Illinois Virtual School, which the Illinois State Board of Education runs. The goal of the program is to expand AP classes to students in rural communities so they can earn college credits.

http://www.daily-journal.com/news/local/kankakee-tri-point-participating-in-online-ap-classes/article_eaa9728f-edf7-5d5f-853d-6e727ed0f245.html

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate
Can you remember the times when only a notebook and pen were welcome in a college lecture? Taking notes by hand is quickly becoming an obsolete way of keeping up with the class in the face of educational technology. Edtech inspires students to take the things they learn in lecture and apply them to other areas of their daily life. How exactly is this technology reinventing higher education? Take a look at a few of these top ways students are using edtech to improve their education.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/10-ways-edtech-reinventing-higher-education/

by Mark Lieberman, Inside Higher Ed

Alternative forms of teaching and learning are generally geared toward increasing students’ enthusiasm and capacity for absorbing the material. The University of Nebraska Medical Center thinks it’s found a way to further that goal: directly involving students in the creation of learning materials. The institution’s E-Learning Program pairs students interested in creating online modules with faculty mentors and instructional designers who guide them through the process. A faculty-only stab at the initiative began in 2013, but eventually it refocused on students, putting them in control of material that ends up in their courses and online as constantly available resources.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018/01/24/nebraska-medical-school-puts-students-charge-creating-elearning

By Joshua Bolkan, THE Journal

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is requesting proposals for networks of school improvement (NSIs). NSIs are, according to the foundation’s glossary for the project, groups of schools serving students in grades 6-12 that work on their own and together with an intermediary to implement a continuous improvement process that aims to improve outcomes for black, Latino and low-income students. The organization said in a release that it will be requesting additional proposals to lead NSIs in the coming years, but the current one is specifically for intermediaries, which will receive funding directly.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2018/01/16/gates-foundation-seeks-intermediaries-for-networks-of-school-improvement.aspx

By Meredith Thompson, THE Journal
The market for virtual reality applications is growing at a rapid pace, and is expected to double in the next five years (Bolkan, 2017). As the cost of equipment falls and schools have greater access to technology, there is great interest in virtual reality as an educational tool. A small but growing group of educators have started to integrate virtual reality in their classrooms, with promising results (Castaneda, Cechony & Bautista, 2017). We reached out to teachers and administrators who are currently using virtual reality in their classrooms to hear their perspectives and practical strategies for infusing this resource into their classrooms.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2018/01/11/making-virtual-reality-a-reality-in-todays-classrooms.aspx

By Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology

Whenever we analyze the landscape of higher education technology, we find a range of trends in various stages of development. There are topics with real staying power, such as learning space design (which has factored into our trends list for several years). Others have evolved over time: Virtual reality made our list in 2016, then expanded to include augmented and mixed reality in 2017, and this year makes up part of a broader concept of immersive learning. And while some topics, like video, have been around for ages, new developments are putting them into a different light. To help make sense of it all, we asked a panel of four IT leaders from institutions across the country for their thoughts.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/01/11/7-ed-tech-trends-to-watch-in-2018.aspx

By BRIAN MOLONGOSKI, Watertown Daily Times

In a Times interview Monday, Jefferson County Community College President Ty A. Stone noted that, as job acquisition increasingly requires some sort of degree or certificate beyond grade school, there are currently around 50,000 people in Jefferson and Lewis counties who do not have the appropriate work credentials to earn a living wage. She said this is a problem faced by some of the region’s largest employers, such as the Kraft-Heinz facility in Lowville, where qualified workers have to commute from far away places like Utica because they are unable to hire locally. Dedicating more resources to identifying educational needs to benefit the area, Ms. Stone said, will make the region more attractive to business.

http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/news03/jcc-president-developing-workforce-increasing-enrollment-priorities-for-college-20180123

by MARK SCHNEIDER AND MATTHEW SIGELMAN, American Enterprise Institute

Every year hundreds of thousands of students earn an associate of arts (A.A.) degree from community colleges in the United States. Most graduates intend to use the degree as a stepping-stone to a bachelor’s degree. As a result, most A.A. degree programs focus more on general education than developing marketable skills. Unfortunately, many A.A. students never earn a bachelor’s degree. Without this higher-level degree and without high-value, marketable skills, A.A. degree
holders experience a wage penalty compared to their peers completing career and technically oriented associate degrees and, as we show below, compared to what
employers are willing to pay better-skilled workers.

http://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Saving-the-Associate-of-Arts-Degree.pdf

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

According to the Alliance for Excellence Education, “Future Ready Schools helps K-12 public, private, and charter school leaders plan and implement personalized, research-based digital learning strategies so all students can achieve their full potential.” Ultimately, future ready schools find ways to embrace ever-changing technology in the classroom to help students succeed beyond the classroom walls. While most people assume future ready is strictly focused on technology, this is incorrect. Let’s look at some of the other defining characteristics of future ready schools.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/future-ready-school-look-like/

By Deborah Gertz Husar Herald-Whig

Ashley Zimmerman pulls out a folder, notebook and highlighter for her second hour government class, then starts to read a text on the art of politics for her next assignment But this is no typical class for Zimmerman or her classmate Sarah Wilson. There’s no teacher in the room, but he’s available by phone, email or text. There’s no classroom or desk, so instead the two sit in front of computers at the Quincy High School library. And it’s up to them to stay on track with the “pacing chart” with weekly assignments for the online class. “It is all on your own. We’ve got to try to keep up with time management to stay on pace with everything,” Zimmerman said. “It really is like an introduction to college. This is what it’s like.”

http://www.whig.com/20180122/qhs-students-part-of-pilot-project-taking-virtual-government-class

by Alexander Popp, Forsyth County News

This week, all Forsyth County Schools were closed down for two days while snow and ice blanketed most of the county. But those weren’t two days free of school work; instead, thousands of students participated in Online Learning days, using computers, tablets or smart phones to complete activities and learn safely from home.  According to Jennifer Caracciolo, spokeswoman for Forsyth County Schools, the Online Learning days have been a reality for the school district for years and have been tweaked and streamlined by feedback from parents and teachers.  During an Online Learning day, where students have to stay home from school, they work on assignments online from a smart phone, or tablet or laptop computer via an application called itsLearning.

https://www.forsythnews.com/local/education/online-learning-program-keeps-students-task/

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

What if we treated school buses as an informal first period? What if our students’ school days started the minute they stepped on their bus and took a seat? For some students, that equates to over an hour more each day of learning and productivity. And what’s standing in their way of problem-solving and essay-writing on the go? Aside from a short attention span and the desire to chat with friends, there’s often no internet access. Options like SmartBus allow students access to Wi-Fi that automatically filters out inappropriate content, social media distractions, and entertainment sites like Netflix and Spotify. School has taken a technological turn for the better and more assignments and study materials can be found online. If students have access to working Wi-Fi they have access to instant intellectual improvement.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/happens-school-buses-get-wi-fi/

by Ed Colby, ACT

http://www.act.org/content/act/en/products-and-services/the-act/test-preparation/act-academy.html

by Tian Luo, Alexander Murray, Helen Crompton; IRRODL

Online learning is increasingly being used in K-12 learning environments. A concomitant trend is found towards learning becoming authentic as students learn with tasks that are connected to real-world occupations. In this study, 48 pre-service teachers use an online environment to engage in authentic practice as they developed online learning experiences for their future students. Using a design-based research methodology, the researchers were involved in planning, designing, implementing, and evaluating the higher education class across two macro cycles. An authentic learning framework was utilized in the development of the class. Findings explicate the design of the course and how it aligned to the authentic learning framework. It appears that web-based tools were beneficial as the pre-service teachers designed their own K-12 online classes.

http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/3037

by Doug Drinkwater, CSO
Machine learning algorithms will improve security solutions, helping human analysts triage threats and close vulnerabilities quicker. But they are also going to help threat actors launch bigger, more complex attacks. Defined as the “ability for (computers) to learn without being explicitly programmed,” machine learning is huge news for the information security industry. It’s a technology that potentially can help security analysts with everything from malware and log analysis to possibly identifying and closing vulnerabilities earlier. Perhaps too, it could improve endpoint security, automate repetitive tasks, and even reduce the likelihood of attacks resulting in data exfiltration.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3250144/machine-learning/6-ways-hackers-will-use-machine-learning-to-launch-attacks.html

by Shalina Chatlani, Education Dive
Half of American adults believe students don’t pursue STEM degrees because the field is too difficult, according to the results of a Pew Research Center survey.  Pew reports only about a third of workers over the age of 25 have an undergraduate degree in a STEM field; but while only 13% of the U.S. workforce was employed in a STEM job in 2016, 40% of non-STEM workers said they were interested in the field at some point. When asked why they didn’t pursue a STEM career or degree, 27% of respondents said they thought it was too costly and time-intensive to pursue, while only 14% said it had to do with classes being too difficult — statistics that reflect how lack of opportunities of promotion at the K-12 level may be a greater barrier to STEM participation in college and career.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/pew-survey-highlights-need-for-k-12-university-partnerships-in-stem-promot/

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

All instruction begins with students. Educators call this student-centered learning, and if you’re going to design a useful edtech product, you’ll start with students, too. This design approach isn’t too different from a business model in which you create a product that provides solutions for consumer problems. Begin at the grassroots level. Designing useful edtech is a lot less about creating what you like than it is about providing what students need. They need human-centered design, which is an approach that begins with people.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/really-want-design-useful-edtech-start-students/