Educational Technology

By Eric Kelderman, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Last Monday the department released its recommendations for major changes in the rules regarding accreditation and how colleges qualify for federal financial aid. Approval by a federally recognized accrediting agency is a key condition for colleges to receive federal student-aid dollars — the lifeblood of most colleges.  Possible rule changes also include lowering requirements for colleges to operate online across multiple states, setting rules for distance learning, amending how religious colleges are treated by accreditors, and shifting the administration of federal grants for students who plan on classroom teaching, called Teach Grants. Negotiated rule-making on all of those recommendations, which will involve representatives of various interested groups, are to begin in the middle of January.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/Cutting-Oversight-of/245429

James Paterson, Education Dive
Temple University has agreed to pay nearly $5.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit with students in its Fox School of Business who said the university provided inflated data to U.S. News & World Report’s popular college ranking. The lawsuit alleged Temple claimed its entire incoming class for its online MBA program submitted a Graduate Management Admission Test score when only one-fifth of students actually did, leading to inflated average test scores and a higher spot in the ranking. U.S. News removed Temple’s program from the ranking as a result. The plaintiffs said the scandal “will have a long reaching negative impact on [the] school’s reputation, prestige and peer ratings.” Temple will pay $4 million to students enrolled in its online MBA program between 2015 and 2018 and an additional $1,475,000 to students who attended six other programs within its business school over the same period. It also will establish a $5,000 scholarship in business ethics. ​

https://www.educationdive.com/news/temple-pays-55m-to-settle-lawsuit-over-us-news-ranking-inflation/545474/

Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

The college search process is stress-filled and time-consuming. Adding one more “to do” to your list may be the last thing you want, but this task can save you time and unnecessary disappointment: add social media to your college search process. How can social media help with your college search? It can ensure you don’t miss deadlines, provide more insight into the schools you’re considering, and allow you to make yourself a stronger candidate. Here’s how:

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/leveraging-social-media-the-missing-key-to-the-college-search/

BY MICHAEL BALLONE AND MICHAEL BOWMAN, eSchool News

Preparing students for college and a career is the mission of every public K-12 school system, and this work begins by establishing a strong foundation for success in the early grades. At Marlboro Township (NJ) Public Schools, a K-8 district, we are doing several things to ensure that our students are on a path to college and career readiness before they move on to high school. Our efforts seem to be paying off, as all of our elementary and middle schools are rated by the state as either “shows progress” or “excels” in terms of reading and math achievement. Moreover, we have the largest number of students in our area who are accepted into highly competitive vocational schools. Here are four strategies that we believe are essential to any college and career readiness initiative.

https://hbr.org/2019/01/does-higher-education-still-prepare-people-for-jobs

Tomas Chamorro-PremuzicBecky Frankiewicz, Harvard Business Review

In short, we believe that market demands clearly call for a paradigm change. More and more students are spending more and more money on higher education, and their main goal is largely pragmatic: to boost their employability and be a valuable contributor to the economy. Even if the value attached to a university degree is beneficial to those who obtain it, companies can help change the narrative by putting less weight on “higher education” as a measure of intellectual competence and job potential, and instead, approach hiring with more open-mindedness.

https://hbr.org/2019/01/does-higher-education-still-prepare-people-for-jobs

Andrew Ross Sorkin, NY Times

What if there were a way to eliminate student debt? No, really. Student debt reached a new height last year — a whopping $1.5 trillion. A typical student borrower will have $22,000 in debt by graduation, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Now, Silicon Valley is backing a novel idea that proposes to rewrite the economics of getting an education. The concept is deceptively simple: Instead of charging students tuition — which often requires them to take out thousands of dollars in loans — students go to school for free and are required to pay back a percentage of their income after graduation, but only if they get a job with a good salary. The idea, known as an Income Share Agreement, or I.S.A., has been experimented with and talked about for years. But what’s happening at Lambda School, an online learning start-up founded in 2017 with the backing of Y Combinator, has captivated venture capitalists.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/business/dealbook/education-student-loans-lambda-schools.html

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

There are many new edtech tools on the market, and each claims it will improve student learning. Before your district can put promising new technology in the classroom, however, you’ll need to assess whether the tech lives up to its marketing claims. These steps will help you pilot edtech successfully.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/8-steps-to-successfully-piloting-an-edtech-project/

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

In the past, most teachers would teach at a level appropriate for a student who was slightly below average. When stated this plainly, that practice can sound like a depressing state of affairs. In recent years, an emphasis has been placed on differentiated instruction. The idea is that teachers would not attempt to teach the same material in the same way to every student in the class. Rather, teachers would differentiate the curriculum so that students would have multiple options for their instruction and assessment. Another similar trend is that of personalized instruction. As the term suggests, the idea is that teachers would teach directly to the needs of each student. It probably would not have been possible to personalize learning a generation ago, but the new generation of tech tools makes it a possibility.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/the-future-of-learning-meeting-the-needs-of-all-learners/

The flowering of edtech over the last decade has created an amazing landscape. Being a leader in this field is truly an astounding opportunity to connect students with the digital tools that can motivate and engage them and, hopefully, prompt improved learning outcomes. But with this incredible opportunity comes important responsibilities. Here are four of the responsibilities of leading with technology.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/the-responsibilities-of-leading-with-technology/

By Justin Aglio, Getting Smart

When the Montour School District launched America’s first Artificial Intelligence Middle School program in the fall of 2018, many questions arose. Why middle school? Why teach Artificial Intelligence? How? (Just to name a few). But, as a student-centered and future-focused district, the thought process was not if we should teach AI, but what if we don’t teach AI? Also, why isn’t everyone teaching AI?

An Inside Look – America’s First Public School AI Program

By Michael Schneider, Inc

Especially in today’s world, where robots are doing the majority of the résumé screening, you have to pass predictive analytics assessments, and (owing to ease of accessibility) there’s an average of 250 applications per corporate job opening. In a LinkedIn Emerging Jobs Report released in early December, new data revealed the 10 jobs with the highest demand and most significant growth in hiring rates, making them conceivably more stable career choices and more attainable.  Although the job market is vast and continuously evolving, aligning your education and experiences with these 10 jobs is a good strategy if you’re looking to snag a new job quickly.

https://www.inc.com/michael-schneider/new-linkedin-data-reveals-10-us-jobs-with-largest-growth-rate.html

BY STEPHANE KASRIEL, FastCompany

YOU’LL BE IN SCHOOL THE REST OF YOUR LIVES
Why? Because skills are changing faster than traditional education is keeping up. There are a few reasons for this. After all, per Moore’s law, technological progress grows exponentially, creating smarter and smarter machines, which require newer and newer skills. Plus, in an era of fast-paced technological and scientific breakthroughs, the more we discover, the more we have to learn new skills. And while some leading universities now offer courses on the gig economy or new technologies like the blockchain, it’s far from being the norm. The vast majority of high schools and colleges aren’t adapting quickly enough to the change, leaving their students increasingly unprepared for the jobs market.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90247298/5-things-im-telling-my-kids-to-prepare-them-for-the-future

By Mahashreveta Choudhary, Geospacial World

A recent report published by Devex, USAID, and DAI says that geospatial technology is one of the most preferred career choices amongst youngsters followed by Big Data, Cloud Computing and Artificial Intelligence which are half-finished areas without geospatial technology. According to the report 2,500 respondents wish to learn and use advanced information and communications technology or ICT in the next 10 years where GIS is number one choice for them. Below are four top technologies with GIS on top that are going to be a next being thing to the world and for you if you are a tech enthusiast and wish to make a career in it.

https://www.geospatialworld.net/blogs/gis-is-the-most-preferred-career-choice/

BY STEPHANE KASRIEL, FastCompany

YOU’LL BE IN SCHOOL THE REST OF YOUR LIVES
Why? Because skills are changing faster than traditional education is keeping up. There are a few reasons for this. After all, per Moore’s law, technological progress grows exponentially, creating smarter and smarter machines, which require newer and newer skills. Plus, in an era of fast-paced technological and scientific breakthroughs, the more we discover, the more we have to learn new skills. And while some leading universities now offer courses on the gig economy or new technologies like the blockchain, it’s far from being the norm. The vast majority of high schools and colleges aren’t adapting quickly enough to the change, leaving their students increasingly unprepared for the jobs market.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90247298/5-things-im-telling-my-kids-to-prepare-them-for-the-future

By Rafi Letzter, Live Science
Neuroscientists are teaching computers to read words straight out of people’s brains. Kelly Servick, writing for Science, reported this week on three papers posted to the preprint server bioRxiv in which three different teams of researchers demonstrated that they could decode speech from recordings of neurons firing. In each study, electrodes placed directly on the brain recorded neural activity while brain-surgery patients listened to speech or read words out loud. Then, researchers tried to figure out what the patients were hearing or saying. In each case, researchers were able to convert the brain’s electrical activity into at least somewhat-intelligible sound files.

https://www.livescience.com/64424-speech-computer-brain-interface.html

Jeanne Carey Ingle, eCampus News

In my classes, I have my students create their own website. I do this in all of my classes and I don’t teach any classes on web design or graphic design. This assignment is popular with my students and extremely useful for them as they move on in their careers. I take course content, small assignments, and components of larger assignments and have students store them on the websites they create during my course. After the course is over, students tell me they put their websites’ links on their resumes and share them during interviews. One student put her website on her business card as a QR code and, during a job fair, showed it to a potential employer—she ended up getting the job!

https://www.ecampusnews.com/2019/01/03/its-a-website-its-a-portfolio-whatever-it-is-its-much-better-than-a-resume/

BY ERICH PELLETIER, eCampus News

A new initiative from the Charles A. Dana Center at The University of Texas at Austin aims to drastically improve students’ college readiness and success in mathematics by targeting the “junior to junior year” timeframe. The new initiative, called Launch Years, looks to align K-12 schools and higher education and is supported by a $6.68 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Launch Years specifically looks to address barriers that keep many students–especially first-generation college students and those from low-income families–from progressing in their math courses between their junior year of high school and their junior year of college.

https://www.ecampusnews.com/2019/01/04/new-math-initiative-targets-high-school-to-college-readiness/

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

It is necessary to develop the appropriate pedagogical tools to deal with edtech, and digital pedagogy is an effort in that direction. Obviously, critical assessment of digital tools is an important step in creating a valid digital pedagogy. But it isn’t the only step. It is also important that we humanize our digital pedagogy. Here are four ways to do that.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/humanizing-our-digital-pedagogy/

Kim Nilsson, Forbes

I do believe that when it comes to the use of AI, data analytics and data science, 2019 will be the year when we see a sharp increase in its use by organisations of all sizes. Central to the rise of data analytics are open source tools, which I believe are doing more to democratise the field of data science than anything else. As someone working in the field, I believe that open source is not just an interesting side note to the data science revolution; it is absolutely integral.  Closing the gap between data science teams and other areas of the business is central to deriving the maximum amount of value from an enterprise’s AI initiatives. 2019 is shaping up to be the year when this will actually happen, driven by a more equitably distributed amount of technology expertise throughout an organisation and the smart application of AI.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimnilsson/2019/01/04/2019-the-year-ai-will-move-into-the-mainstream/#33036b1450b4

By Sam Dean, the Spoon

It’s no secret that the food industry is rapidly awaking to the great promise of blockchain technology, and headlines abound about how it promises to make traditional paper ledger-based transactions obsolete, replaced by digital ledgers. That could revolutionize the food supply chain, which remains burdened by sketchy accountability. Part of the challenge in assuring that blockchain fulfills its promise is connecting the right people—everyone from farmers, to fishermen to warehouse managers to data scientists. Another part of the challenge, though, is educating people in the food industry so that they can implement blockchain-based food source tracing solutions, and more.

https://thespoon.tech/as-the-food-industry-wakes-up-to-blockchain-online-training-options-are-now-available/

Ross Rubin, ZD Net
While the new frontier of intelligent object detection can create amazing eye candy, it is also tackling the decades-old problem of simply being heard in a crowd. The demonstrations — promised to be only a hint of the kinds of wizardry AI can muster — made some of the strongest cases to date about how AI-based computations can enhance the smartphone experience beyond the photo enhancement that has been one of the leading manifestations to date. Indeed, they began with the original cell phone application: Voice calls. By using AI to identify the voice of the speaker, a phone would be able to virtually eliminate any background noise from a call, be it some reserved office chatter or raucous city street noise. This capability extended far beyond that of even today’s best noise cancelling and into the realm of noise elimination.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/ai-could-reduce-the-tech-in-your-smartphone/