Educational Technology

By Joshua Bolkan, THE Journal

Rural schools face a raft of challenges schools in more densely populated areas do not, including declining enrollments, high socioeconomically disadvantaged populations, high transportation costs, lack of computer and internet access in student homes, low teacher pay, high teacher turnover, fewer teachers and fewer courses available to students. A new report from the Foundation for Blended and Online Learning (FBOL) and the Evergreen Education Group looks at policies and programs in 15 states that use technology to help address some of those problems.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2018/03/27/foundation-for-blended-and-online-learning-report-examines-tech-solutions-to-rural-ed-challenges.aspx

by Tripp Mickle, Wall Street Journal
Apple Inc. said it is updating its entry-level iPad with capabilities designed to appeal to students and new software for teachers, as the company tries to recharge sales of the tablet and shore up its dwindling share of the U.S. education market. The company Tuesday said its new 9.7-inch iPad includes a faster processor and works with the Apple Pencil stylus, which previously worked only with higher-end iPad Pro models. The entry-level iPad’s price remains at $329, the lowest-priced tablet available from the company. Schools, which receive discounts on pricing, can buy the device for $299.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-updates-ipad-with-stylus-support-1522167400

By Henry T. Casey, Lapotop
Apple has announced a new iPad targeted at the education market to challenge the Chromebook, which is starting to dominate classrooms. But are Apple Pencil support and AR apps enough to compete with the most popular laptops with Google’s OS?  While many expected Apple to launch this tablet with a new, lower price point, Apple kept this iPad at the same pricing the 2017 model had: $329 for consumers and $299 for schools. By comparison, the Asus Chromebook C202SA, most popular Chromebook on Amazon, which we like, is a more affordable $223.

https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/ipad-vs-chromebooks

By Alissa McAloon, Gamasutra
Google is acting on a pledge made last year to provide digital skills training to African citizens by launching the Africa Web and Android Scholarship program to support software developers in the country. Through a partnership with Udacity and Andela, Google is offering free access to a 2-month long single course on Udacity’s online platform to 15,000 African developers in addition to 500 6-month long ‘nanodegree’ scholarships to some who complete the first program.

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/315837/Google_offers_15000_online_scholarships_to_new_and_seasoned_African_devs.php

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) formed in 1984, and since then, its series of short videos have revolutionized motivational speeches and the technology. With the click of a button, you can access powerful speeches that will make you help you embrace change and new ideas. Are you looking for some inspiration? TED-Ed offers tons of great educational content, and it has a significant amount of comment aimed at the EdTech industry. By watching these talks, you will gain insight into how students think and what teachers want in the classroom.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/top-10-ted-talks-edtech/

by Microsoft
Today we are announcing the integration between Open Up Resources curricula and Microsoft Education for Back to School 2018. Open Up Resources is a nonprofit working to develop the highest quality full-course OER curricula, standards-aligned, and provided for free to promote instructional equity. This curriculum was developed by Illustrative Mathematics, and currently covers 6th – 8th Grade Math. Recently, EdReports rated this curriculum with their highest ever rating. Any teacher can now easily sign up to use the Open Up Resources curriculum. With today’s announcement, Microsoft Education is offering this curriculum through OneNote , Forms and custom dashboards. This solution is free and can be used by teachers and students on any platform and device.

Microsoft Education and Open Up Resources announce partnership to deliver top rated math curriculum

By Dian Schaffhauser, THE Journal

Forget about sensors everywhere. The Internet of Things is really about networked devices making our lives easier. According to Steve Burt, the applications for IoT in the school environment currently most often involve lighting, climate control and transportation. Burt is the director of strategy for Clarity Innovations, a professional services firm that consults with education agencies, organizations and companies on technology. So far, he noted, retail is a far better venue for IoT usage than education, collecting data “to help them essentially do their job, selling things better.”

https://thejournal.com/articles/2018/03/22/iot-has-arrived.aspx

by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Published

The issue of provision of education and related services for refugees is complex and multifaceted. With a record number of 65 million individuals who were forcibly displaced worldwide in 2016, the magnitude of the refugee and displacement crises is unprecedented (UNHCR, 2017). Particularly alarming is that children make up more than half of the 22.5 million refugees, i.e. those individuals who fled their countries to seek protection elsewhere. The repercussions in the field of education can be quite severe. Immediate, strategic and sustainable educational responses are required to ensure that refugees and displaced populations have access to equitable and inclusive quality education and lifelong learning opportunities. In this report, the analysis of mobile learning projects and practices is structured alongside ten education-related challenges,1 grouped into three main categories:

https://reliefweb.int/report/world/lifeline-learning-leveraging-technology-support-education-refugees

by Jessica Davis, Information Week

At its Think conference in Las Vegas this week, IBM announced Watson Assistant, a voice-activated interface that gives consumers access to the Watson AI. While it may seem new to most of us, IBM Watson IoT VP Bret Greenstein told InformationWeek in an interview that IBM has been quietly offering these capabilities for several years now. For instance, this assistant has powered the lighting and other environmental controls in Philadelphia’s Jefferson Hospital’s recovery rooms. This assistant was also the power behind office supplies retailer Staples’ “Easy Button” that enabled customers to easily order and reorder products. “We did many early versions,” Greenstein said. “Now we are announcing it as a formal product.”

https://www.informationweek.com/big-data/ai-machine-learning/a-different-take-on-voice-interfaces-ibm-launches-watson-assistant/d/d-id/1331349

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Teachers have long competed with video games when it comes to maintaining the focus of their students. Children are more likely to head home at the end of a long day and zone out in front of a mindless video game than they are to complete another math worksheet. The research supports the fact that gamification can sustain interest far better than the traditional teaching methods that many educators would rather employ. What can these games teach modern educators about student motivation? Here are a few of the key points that teachers need to take note of regarding student engagement.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/video-games-can-teach-educators-motivation-student-engagement/

By Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed

A shared cybersecurity initiative has been launched by Indiana University, Northwestern University, Purdue University, Rutgers University and the University of Nebraska Lincoln. The initiative, called OmniSOC, will be based at Indiana University and will review security data from each member campus in real time using human analysis and machine learning.

http://ittechnology24.com/global-massive-open-online-course-market-2018-instructure-inc-coursera-inc-iversity-udacity-inc/

by IT-Online

President Cyril Ramaphosa says South Africa’s success depends largely on its ability to capitalise on the demands of the 21st century, and using advanced technology effectively to help move the country forward is one of them.
Richard Rayne, CEO of corporate learning solutions provider iLearn, agrees. He says South Africa is “absolutely” ready for digital transformation in learning. “It’s a reality the world over and we need to get on-board. If we delay, we will get left behind.” Rayne, who attended the Digital Learning Realities Research Conference 2018 in London last month, says the key take-home was simple – digital learning is gaining ground worldwide.

Digital learning a no-brainer for SA employers

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Today, teachers often face an uphill battle against digital distractions in the classroom. In particular, students tend to get sidetracked by social media, such as Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter. So instead of waging war against social media, why not turn it into a teaching tool? Repurposing social media for educational use might sound impossible, but it’s actually pretty simple. One easy, effective way to utilize social media is to host a class Twitter chat in your classroom.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/hosting-a-class-twitter-chat-in-your-classroom/

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Keeping up with the grade book, student correspondence, and the daily minutiae of teaching can be a serious drain. For many educators, there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything well. Unfortunately, budget cuts and constraints often prevent teachers from hiring an assistant that they truly need. With the advances made in modern science, there may soon be a new option for teachers to consider. Your next teaching assistant could very well be a programmed machine that could help you to interact with students using artificial intelligence. The AI teaching assistants can cut down on the costs of a real assistant and save educators valuable time on grading and answering questions.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/need-teaching-assistant-artificial-intelligence-rescue/

The Student Loan Report — a website that covers news on student loans — reports that more than 21.2 percent of college students use their financial aid money to invest in cryptocurrencies.  If bitcoin really ends up being the next global currency as Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey believes will happen, then some students investing in crypto today could have some positive outcomes. Yet risking strings-attached financial aid on a hyper-volatile asset is not a wise thing to do.

College Students Are Using Financial Aid to Buy Cryptocurrencies

By Henry Kronk, eLearning Inside

These days, it’s not uncommon to hear any kind of online course-provider—MOOC or otherwise—to say that they’re democratizing education. But one organization is making a more substantial attempt at that goal than most. Philanthropy University has a concerted directive: help non-government organizations make a measurable difference, with a focus on the global south. Philanthropy University’s CEO Connor Diemand-Yauman says “Philanthropy University is reimagining capacity building for the digital age… That’s not just a sound bite; it means we’re challenging systematic, deeply-entrenched assumptions and practices about how to best to strengthen civil society, and how to measure that strengthening.”

Philanthropy University Is Building Capacity at NGOs with Free MOOCs, Capital, And Other Initiatives

by Steven Rose, the Guardian

The report that the Open University plans to axe more than a third of its courses and slash its teaching staff makes grim reading for anyone who cares about the consequences for its original mission of making tertiary education open to all. Of course, the cuts must be set in the context of what has been happening to higher education as a whole, but there is clearly a danger that the OU’s unique contribution to public education over the half-century since it was created will be lost.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/23/open-university-cut-staff-courses-tertiary-education

by Abigail Hess, CNBC

Americans collectively hold almost 1.5 trillion in student debt, but some students are shouldering more of the burden than others. According to the American Association of University Women (AAUW), women hold roughly two-thirds of all student debt in the nation. “Millennial women (35 percent) are more than three times as likely as their male peers (11 percent) to not have completely understood their financing options when applying to college.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/13/american-women-hold-two-thirds-of-all-student-debt-heres-why.html

by Jarrett Carter, Education Dive
North Idaho College is the latest institution to join the Interstate Passport Network, a coalition of two- and four-year institutions which allow for block-transfer of credits between other member schools. Boasting 25 schools spread throughout 9 states, the network allows the transfer of lower-division general education credits based on learning outcomes instead of specific courses taken and passed. The network claims to be a system of support for 40% of community college students who will transfer to different schools, according to a 2015 report from the National Student Clearinghouse.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/could-interstate-passport-network-disrupt-the-transfer-system/519830/

by Michigan State University

Christine Greenhow is an associate professor of educational psychology and educational technology and the 2018 recipient of MSU’s Teacher-Scholar Award for excellence in scholarship and teaching informed by research. She is currently the principal investigator of research funded by the Bates-Byers Endowment for Technology in Education examining the affordances of robot-mediated learning for student engagement in hybrid education. In an age where the internet and social media are changing the ways we do business and communicate, it is no surprise that a professor of educational technology would inquire how to harness these technologies to solve persistent educational problems. How can we get students more engaged in their learning? How can we reach students anytime, anywhere? How can we make all students feel a sense of connection to classmates and instructor? How can we make classes more accessible, interactive, and fun?

https://msutoday.msu.edu/360/2018/christine-greenhow-harnessing-technology-to-solve-educational-problems/

By Shalina Chatlani, Education Dive
When it comes to the future of learning, a debate rages within higher education circles over the question of whether certain types of curriculum can be scaled through digital technologies, as an alternative to the traditional residential classroom setting. A number of institutions already have invested in online bachelor’s and master’s degree programs — and now, there has emerged a number of professional degree programs online. The questions surrounding this trend are largely the same as with other iterations of the cyber classroom, but there’s something different about this type of education that begs this question: Does earning a professional credential in an online environment offer students the quality education they need to be considered expert practitioners in their fields, especially when the experiential learning component is reduced?

https://www.educationdive.com/news/navigating-online-professional-degrees-potential-and-caution/518847/