Educational Technology

BY JILL HOBSON, eSchool News

What are the ingredients and directions in a recipe for personalized learning? Take one learning platform (because we want only one place to go for everything) and add a variety of digital content and learning applications from all different sources. Next, whisk the content until it’s broken down into discrete learning objects that can be made available to the right student at the right time for the right learning objective. Sounds like a great technique for achieving individualized and differentiated learning, doesn’t it? Well, let’s break this down a little bit further because it involves quite a bit of behind-the-scenes maneuvering to make possible everything in that little “recipe” that might not be so obvious.

A 3-step recipe for personalized learning

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Digital writing has permeated writing instruction today. Students write using digital software programs, and they share their written thoughts with audiences in a variety of online platforms. Our writing curriculum consists of digital literacy in every stage of the writing process. Students who are learning prewriting, writing, revising, editing, and publishing skills benefit from the digital writing strategies available to them. There are digital writing strategies for every learner.

Digital Writing Strategies for Every Learner

Kathleen Huun and Andreas Kummerow, Journal of Eductors Online

Distance students consider online faculty availability and immediacy to be very important. Understanding student course usage is imperative to be able to align with their needs. The results of daily course usage by fully online nursing students enrolled in three separate clinical courses on an LPN-to-BSN track illustrate a clear pattern of extraordinarily consistent usage over six semesters for each course with remarkable consistency between courses. As an aggregate group, students spend roughly the same amount of time each day of the week using their LMS except Sunday, which shows roughly twice the usage as other days. Therefore, matching faculty availability and immediacy to times of higher student activity on the LMS should be considered.

https://www.thejeo.com/archive/2018_15_2/huun_kummerow

by LOUISA IRVIN, Junkee

Although the idea of online study seems easy in theory — especially to tech savvy millennials — actually getting on top of the content and staying on track is a lot harder than you might think. The learning is a lot more self-driven, and although traditional on-campus courses are reliant on student involvement, online classes are in league of their own. It is a lot easier to turn off your computer than it is to walk out of a lecture hall. So, we’ve put together some pointers that will help you get through what is the minefield of online studies.

http://junkee.com/stop-slacking-off-online-degree/169602

by Andy Austin, WOKQ

In the 21st century, many adults are able to work from home during inclement weather. One state is adopting the same policy for school children. During the dog days of summer, the furthest thing from the mind of vacationing students is what they’ll do on a snow day. However, if the Granite State follows the path of South Carolina, they might be in for a rude awakening. According to KDKA, a South Carolina school district is already planning to eliminate their student’s snow days. Anderson District 5 will be the first district in the state to closing school in dangerous winter weather. In this new system, kids will not be sledding or participating in mass snowball fights. Instead, they will participate in an “eLearning” day. Teachers will reportedly send assignments to their student’s computers and will be able to monitor their progress online. Students won’t even need an internet connection, as they will access assignments via their Chromebooks, which do not require internet service.

http://wokq.com/should-new-hampshire-purge-snow-days-for-online-learning/

BY DENNIS, Baltimore Post

Digital learning is, in many ways, already making inroads into our education system. The internet, and everything surrounding it, has changed the way in which we can carry out research and writing. This trend seems set to continue, and with our technology continually advancing, it will most likely expand in the coming years. How this will change our education, and the way we learn, is yet to be determined. What we know for sure is that it will change both of these things. This article will delve into some of the major ideas surrounding online learning in higher education, which will hopefully give some people a chance to understand the basics of the debates.

How online learning will change education

by Lauren Thrasher, eSchool News

Research tells us that students’ attention spans correlate to their ages, but did you know that this applies to adults as well? In fact, humans have less of an attention span than goldfish. (A human has an average attention span of eight seconds, whereas a goldfish has an attention span of nine seconds.) What does this mean? For one, it’s hard to capture someone’s attention. As educators, we know this all too well. But we also know there are tried-and-true tactics we can take to engage and motivate learners—no matter their age.

3 outstanding tips for training new and veteran teachers

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Being a teacher is a tough job. So much so, many new teachers end up leaving the field within their first three years. To ensure that the next generation of students have qualified teachers, we must nip this phenomenon in the bud. In this article, we will discuss 8 ways that digital age teachers avoid burning out.

8 Ways That Digital Age Teachers Avoid Burning Out

by James Paterson, Education Dive
Google will enter the college exploration process by offering information about institutions when their names are entered into its search function. According to MarketWatch, the tech giant reported that the data about four-year colleges and universities will include specific information about costs, financial aid, admissions and graduation rates and graduates’ income levels. Google will get the data from sources such as the federal government’s College Scorecard, which the Trump administration says its planning to enhance, and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS).

https://www.educationdive.com/news/google-adding-data-to-college-information-searches/528957/

by Richard L. Riccardi, University Business

In this era of increased accountability, diminishing resources and fierce competition, institutions have begun to see a culture of data-informed decision-making as a necessity instead of a luxury. Making good decisions depends on quality data and less on intuition or anecdotes. The days of telling a good story with no concrete evidence to back it up are numbered. Too often leadership’s default answer to a problem is “we need data” without truly understanding what the question is. At a recent enrollment meeting, a vice president emphatically stated that students do not read their emails, and the immediate response from the room was a request for data. Upon further discussion at subsequent meetings, the real question emerged: How can we get students to respond to the important emails we send?

https://www.universitybusiness.com/article/if-data-answer-higher-ed-what-question

By Zack Whittaker for Zero Day
The attack can be run remotely on a target device without running code on the system. Researchers have discovered a new variant of Spectre, a set of processor vulnerabilities dating back two decades, which they now say can remotely steal data from vulnerable systems.  Previously, an attacker would have to run malicious code on an affected device to exploit Intel, AMD, and ARM processors by running malicious JavaScript on a user’s browser. But now, an attacker can pummel a target device with malicious network traffic without running any code on the system, say the paper’s authors.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/new-spectre-attack-can-remotely-steal-secrets-researchers-say/

by Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed

The structures that support academia have not kept up with the emerging importance of non-faculty educators. Our language is running behind the reality. Professional associations have not evolved or adapted quickly enough to accommodate the growing community of non-faculty academics working as learning professionals. The old ideas of staff and faculty divide still persist in thousands of ways, both big and small. Career paths, professional recognition, and protections of academic freedom must still be negotiated on a case-by-case and individual basis. We are all making this up as we go along.

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/seeing-new-academics

By David Raths, Campus Technology
Since the 1960s, academic libraries have been using their own standards for the communication of metadata about resources in their catalogs. Originally designed for magnetic tape-based computers, machine-readable cataloging (MARC) standards are only understood by library systems. Failure to speak the language of the web has isolated libraries from the broader world of information developing there. Determined to take advantage of the semantic web, Stanford Libraries is working with the libraries of Cornell, Harvard and the University of Iowa to continue the development of a “linked data” metadata environment.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/07/05/universities-working-to-make-library-metadata-searchable-on-the-web.aspx

By David Raths, Camus Technology
Getting faculty to try out new technologies can be a challenge. And while many universities have established programs to foster digital innovation campuswide, their efforts are constantly evolving with new developments in teaching and learning and changing mindsets around learning analytics, learning design and more. From internal grant programs to forming communities of practice, here are four ways academic technology leaders are fine-tuning their approaches to working with faculty.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/07/25/4-ways-to-fine-tune-academic-innovation-in-higher-ed.aspx

by Allison Galvan, Oregon Connections Academy
The Oregon Legislature’s Joint Committee on Student Success should be applauded for touring the state from March to October, holding hearings to listen to students, teachers, parents and community leaders. Committee members are listening for what’s working and what’s not in our public schools in an effort to improve academic performance for all students. The committee has heard from several families about the importance of having full-time virtual public schools available to students.

https://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/2018/07/28/5-questions-ask-when-considering-online-schooling-oregon-connections-academy/857076002/

By Rhea Kelly, THE Journal
Open source software company Moodle today announced it is ending its partnership with LMS giant Blackboard. Blackboard will “transition out of Moodle’s Certified Moodle Partner program in the coming months,” and “will no longer be allowed to use the Moodlerooms name or the Moodle trademarks that had been licensed to them to advertise their Moodle-related services,” according to a press release. Blackboard has been a Moodle partner since 2012, when it acquired Moodlerooms and several other companies with Moodle licenses.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2018/07/27/moodle-drops-blackboard.aspx

By James Paterson, Education Dive
A new Morning Consult study shows that 46% of students surveyed believe textbooks and other course materials have a “big impact” on their financial situations, and some experts say the costs heighten stress and force students to make tradeoffs that affect their ability to pay for housing and food, according to Inside Higher Education. About 43% of students surveyed said they skipped meals because of the expense for books, about 70% said they took on a part-time job because of the the added costs and around 30% said they had to take fewer classes. Some respondents even changed their major or opted out of a specific course so they would not have to pay the extra money. The head of the the education technology firm Cengage, which sponsored the survey of more than 1,600 students, said that textbooks and other course materials cost on average $1,200 a year per student, though learners often find other avenues — including renting books or copying what they need — but still pay almost half that.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/survey-students-say-textbook-costs-have-big-impact-on-finances/528744/

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Reluctant readers and writers often have a difficult time with literacy. They may not like to read, or they find the process arduous because of poor reading skills or attention deficits. Traditional literacy is about reading and writing, but digital technology has encouraged more broad definitions of literacy that include visual, media, and information literacy. Multiliteracy has reignited learners’ interest in literacy through digital storytelling, and teachers have discovered that they can capture the hearts of struggling learners with digital storytelling.

Capture the Hearts of Struggling Learners with Digital Storytelling

by Chris Pilgrim And Christopher Scanlon, The Conversation
Don’t assume online students are more likely to cheat. The evidence is murky.  You’d think that studying online would make it easier to cheat. But don’t jump to conclusions.  More university students are choosing to study online rather than face-to-face, prompting concerns about academic integrity. If you’re tempted to cheat in face-to-face courses, even during exams, how much easier would it be to pass off work that isn’t your own when you’re online? But research by us and others shows how university courses are delivered is less important in predicting which students are more likely to cheat. A better predictor is students’ demographic characteristics, particularly their age.

https://phys.org/news/2018-07-dont-assume-online-students-evidence.html

by NBC 5
Montgomery County Public School buses remained idle as schools were closed Jan. 25, 2016, in Bethesda, Maryland.  Students in one South Carolina school district will still have work to do even when it snows. Anderson School District 5 is the first district in the state to eliminate snow days with what it calls eLearning days. When the roads are too icy for buses, teachers will send assignments to their students’ computers and can even monitor their progress online.  “No longer will we need to run buses mid-June for a makeup day that only a quarter of our students attend,” Superintendent Tom Wilson told the Anderson Independent-Mail. The state Education Oversight Committee gave the district permission in May to serve as a pilot program for no more snow days.

http://www.mynbc5.com/article/school-district-swapping-snow-days-for-online-learning/22577800

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

As necessary as they may be, staff meetings are usually not something most teachers look forward to.  The meetings are often held at the end of the day when teachers are exhausted and likely to disengage from instructional matters. The meetings inevitably turn into informational sessions that could have been better handled through email, and your teachers have lost out on a collaborative opportunity. To transform your staff meetings, use edtech to encourage collaboration among education professionals.

Transform Your Staff Meetings with Edtech