Educational Technology

By ALEKS GILBERT, Index-Journal

The nationwide problem is so acute in the small, predominantly rural district that some of its classes do not have certified teachers. The solution? Online learning. The district high school and middle school offers courses through VirtualSC, a program of the state Department of Education, and Odysseyware, a private company. “We can’t just say well, I don’t have a teacher, we aren’t going to teach it,” interim superintendent Betty Bagley said. “There’s a lot of positive in (online learning) that sometimes gets lost in the interpretation of it. I think people will be impressed with what we’re trying to do when we don’t have the teachers we need.”

http://www.indexjournal.com/news/mccormick-schools-short-on-teachers-embrace-online-learning/article_da642477-0cca-5ae8-a664-0831e13b0555.html

Jim Merkel, Webster-Kirkwood Times

Following the guidelines of a new state law, the Webster Groves School District is opening the door to allowing nearly all students in all grades to take classes online. District Assistant Superintendent for Learning Kristin Denbow told members of the board of education at their meeting on Nov. 12 about actions in the district and region as the result of the passage of Senate Bill 603 and House Bill 1606. The new laws require school districts to allow students to take courses except when they have a good reason to turn down a request. “It’s going to provide some opportunities for some of our students,” Denbow told the board.

https://www.timesnewspapers.com/webster-kirkwoodtimes/webster-groves-school-district-prepares-for-online-programs/article_f59780e8-ed9f-11e8-bcc6-a3f80e13333e.html

Robyn D. Shulman, Forbes

With the surge in classroom technology use, a few edtech companies have stepped up to combat the issues schools are facing on a daily basis. One company that is helping with digital distraction is NetRef. The software allows teachers to control what their students are doing online in the classroom, both on school and with student-owned devices.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robynshulman/2018/11/24/how-this-edtech-startup-helps-teachers-solve-the-digital-distraction-problem/#21b6570d7452

By Simone Stolzoff, Quartz

Many of the skills for which the WEF predicts demand will grow, like “active learning” and “technology design,” make sense for a world where the rate of technological change is set to accelerate. Meanwhile, when we think of the skills most likely to be automated, routine and repetitive tasks like adding a widget on an assembly line or filling in an accounting form come to mind. However, some of the skills needs expected to be on the decline in the next five years might come as a surprise. Phones serve as an external hard drive for our brains. Task management software replaces some of the responsibilities previously held by managers. So, even skills which may seem uniquely human, like “memory” and “management of personnel,” will become less important differentiators for human talent as technology advances, the WEF suggests.

https://qz.com/work/1462247/skills-to-learn-for-the-future-of-work-according-to-wef/

Matt Krupnick, Hechinger Report

“We do have a little bit of a Wild West situation right now with alternative credentials,” said Alana Dunagan, a senior research fellow at the nonprofit Clayton Christensen Institute, which researches education innovation. The U.S. higher education system “doesn’t do a good job of separating the wheat from the chaff.” Thousands of credentials classes aimed at improving specific skills have cropped up outside of traditional colleges. Some classes are boot camps, including those popular with computer coders. Others are even more narrowly focused, such as courses on factory automation and breastfeeding. Colleges and universities have responded by adding non-degree programs of their own.

https://hechingerreport.org/as-students-flock-to-credentials-other-than-degrees-quality-control-concerns-grow/

By IBL News

Microsoft has introduced a free 10-course professional program on Cybersecurity, intended to help to identify threats early on and minimize breach impacts. Each course requires 8 to 12 hours of study time, and will run for three months, starting at the beginning of a quarter – in January, April, July and October 2019. However, the first course, Enterprise Security Fundamental, is already available.

https://iblnews.org/2018/11/24/microsoft-launches-a-series-of-10-courses-about-cybersecurity-on-edx-org/

by EDUCAUSE

The term “digital transformation” (Dx) encapsulates the seismic cultural, workforce, and technological shift under way as the diverse digital landscape influences—and changes—almost everything we do. Dx is being propelled by multiple drivers, from the pervasive adoption of technology across colleges and universities to external forces including reduced public funding, new expectations of technology from students, and increased skepticism about higher education. Embracing digital transformation is about building on the core values of higher education and developing new and significantly more effective ways to enrich and expand higher education’s mission.

https://library.educause.edu/~/media/files/library/2018/10/eli7162.pdf

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience a variety of symptoms that can cause challenges in the classroom. Most of them will have some difficulty with social interactions including reading facial expressions and following a conversation. They might become easily upset by changes in routine, experience sensitivity to environmental stimuli, and become easily fixated on things. All of these present a problem for teachers, but there are lots of options for assistive technology that can help. If you have a student diagnosed with ASD in your classroom, consider whether some of these assistive technologies could help them to achieve better success.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/assistive-technology-to-help-children-with-autism-spectrum-disorder-asd-succeed-academically/

by Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed

My definition of learning innovation is institutional and organizational in scale. A college or university serious about innovation will prioritize investments in making non-incremental advances in student learning. A commitment to learning innovation can take many forms. It may be investing in a center for teaching and learning (CTL) to provide faculty with training, mentoring, and resources. Or a commitment to learning innovation may manifest in the recruitment of instructional designers to collaborate with faculty. A focus on institutional learning innovation may involve the decision that all new classroom spaces and renovations will result in active learning spaces, with flat floors and moveable furniture. Or it may revolve around an initiative to embed academic librarians with professors throughout the course development, teaching, and redesign process.

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/defining-learning-innovation

By: Daniel Shedd, Ozarks First

Historically, it’s been a rural community where agriculture and athletics have taken the drivers seat. But not anymore. “Wow. It’s drastic. We have a lot more online textbooks and online everything now,” explained seniors Mackenzie Killian and Koltan York. These Crocker natives never expected that by senior year, their rural community high school, would offer high speed internet access, and a shot at journalism. “Honestly I didn’t think we would have all of these opportunities like some of the bigger schools around here,” said Killian. “I didn’t think so growing up but I’m glad it happened.”

https://www.ozarksfirst.com/news/up-to-speed-rural-school-districts-turn-to-technology-to-enhance-learning/1608860131

Liz Guthridge, Forbes

Adult learners don’t have to sit in uncomfortable chairs with heavy textbooks and notebooks piled on their desks. Nor do adult  learners have to sign up for monotonous online courses featuring videos of talking heads. You give yourself the permission and flexibility to integrate learning into your day as you see fit. And you’ll discover that learning doesn’t have to be a discrete activity that begins when a bell rings or a deadline looms. Instead, learning is more like a regular exercise routine you voluntarily do on your time schedule.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2018/11/21/how-to-make-learning-a-habit-you-enjoy/#6a789018564c

by Douglas Heaven, Nature

Most researchers have good reason to grumble about peer review: it is time-consuming and error-prone, and the workload is unevenly spread, with just 20% of scientists taking on most reviews. Now peer review by artificial intelligence (AI) is promising to improve the process, boost the quality of published papers — and save reviewers time. A handful of academic publishers are piloting AI tools to do anything from selecting reviewers to checking statistics and summarizing a paper’s findings.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07245-9

BY LAURA ASCIONE, eSchool News
Educators should ignore the ‘fear factor’ around AI robots taking over teaching, and should harness the technology to improve their craft. While the scientific nature of artificial intelligence (AI) has frequently been used as a marketing term in recent years, AI does have some fascinating implications for instruction. But perhaps one of the biggest things to remember about AI is that it will not eliminate teaching—it will humanize it.

https://www.ecampusnews.com/2018/11/15/ai-can-humanize-teaching-if-we-let-it/

BY LAURA ASCIONE, eCampus News
Universities are in the middle of a transformation that is challenging the status quo and is forcing higher-ed leaders to embrace change if they wish to remain relevant. Four broad drivers are behind this disruption, said James Phelps, director of enterprise architecture and strategy at the University of Washington and winner of the 2018 EDUCAUSE Community Leadership Award, during EDUCAUSE 2018. Shifting skills, the digital transformation, employment and income challenges, and the higher-ed financial crisis have brought higher education to a critical space in between disruption and transformation, Phelps said.

https://www.ecampusnews.com/2018/11/19/beyond-disruption-the-future-of-higher-education/

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

Arizona State University isn’t satisfied with the state of adaptive. That’s why this innovative university is going all in with adaptive degree programs. What we’ve decided to do is take the benefits of [adaptive] technology to a fully integrated program for a bachelor of science degree in biology. And we’re going to integrate all the instructional resources from first year to fourth year into CogBooks. That’s the partner that the School of Life Sciences has decided to use.  That holistic approach differs dramatically from our general education approach. It requires more alignment between courses. In our traditional model, each course was its own island — even to the point where each section of each course may have been its own island.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/11/14/the-next-frontier-of-adaptive-learning.aspx

Paul Wellener, Industry Week

Last week Deloitte’s report, 2018 Skills Gap Study, showed that 2.4 million jobs will likely go unfilled over the next decade. To put that in terms of the monetary effect on the U.S. economy, the study showed that it could jeopardize $454 billion of economic output in 2028 or more than $2.5 trillion over the next decade. Already, manufacturing executives are feeling the impact of the talent shortage and anticipate this skills gap will get up to three times worse over the next three years, largely due to the time required to fill skilled positions: Manufacturers say it takes upwards of three months to fill openings for engineers, researchers, and scientists, and; More than two months to fill positions for skilled production workers; In turn, these vacant positions impact several business areas, notably productivity (51%), growth (47%), customer service (42%) and innovation (43%).

https://www.industryweek.com/economy/skills-gap-could-cost-us-economy-25-trillion-over-next-decade

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

At a recent edtech conference in Austin, Texas, there were over 40,000 devices connected to the network at the convention hall. This suggests, perhaps better than any other metric, the immense size of a modern edtech conference. Needless to say, this can all be a bit overwhelming to those who attend these conferences. Here are six suggestions for getting the most out of your edtech conference:

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/making-the-most-of-your-edtech-conference/

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Learning disabilities can affect students in a variety of ways, ranging from difficulty with reading to struggles with basic math problems. These issues can be difficult to sort through for students and teachers alike. With help, students can still succeed academically whether they have dyslexia, dyscalculia, or one of the other disabilities. Assistive technology can offer the support each student needs to help them become more proficient in the classroom. Educators can help students to reach their potential by implementing some of these assistive technologies in the classroom. They can help to minimize the deficits some children experience as a result of their learning disability.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/assistive-technology-to-help-students-with-learning-disabilities-succeed-academically/

by Oliver Barber, Training Journal

Beyond the tabloid hyperbole, it is important to recognise that artificial intelligence-driven automation means that the pace at which workers’ skills and knowledge will become obsolete is going to accelerate. As a result, ‘always-on’ continuous learning will become increasingly critical. There is an air of serendipity in the fact that, while artificial intelligence is the root cause of this disruption, it is also the solution for navigating it. Here are five critical ways in which AI will provide the enabling technology to make lifelong career learning a working reality:

https://www.trainingjournal.com/articles/features/five-ways-ai-will-enable-lifelong-learning-and-transform-workplace

By Bianca Vázquez Toness, WGBH

Massachusetts education officials recognized that students need a more sophisticated understanding of computer science than they’ve been getting. They changed the standards to emphasize teaching kids to create technology rather than just use it. But, according to our analysis, only about one percent of students in the state are taking a computer class that meets most of those recommendations. That leads some educators to worry that public schools aren’t preparing students for the tech jobs here.

https://www.wgbh.org/news/education/2018/11/18/is-mass-preparing-students-for-tech-jobs-of-the-future

Alan Kadish, Education Dive

According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics as reported by NPR, this is a more realistic snapshot of today’s college students:

• One in five is age 30 or older.
• Half are financially independent from parents.
• One in four take a year off before starting school.
• One-quarter is caring for a child.
• 47% attend college part time at some point.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/president-speaks-lets-stop-talking-about-non-traditional-students/542569/