Educational Technology

By Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology
Workcred, a nonprofit organization focused on credentialing in the workforce, is partnering with the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities and the University Professional and Continuing Education Association to help create opportunities for undergraduate students to earn certifications as part of their degree program. Supported by a grant from the Lumina Foundation, the effort will bring together experts from higher education institutions and accredited certification bodies in a series of convenings across the United States.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/01/03/partnership-working-to-connect-degrees-and-certifications.aspx

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology
Will artificial intelligence make most people better off over the next decade, or will it redefine what free will means or what a human being is? A new report by the Pew Research Center has weighed in on the topic by conferring with some 979 experts, who have, in summary, predicted that networked AI “will amplify human effectiveness but also threaten human autonomy, agency and capabilities.”

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/12/20/experts-debate-merits-of-ai-in-education.aspx

Entrepreneur

As far as New Year’s resolutions go, “learning a new skill” is less popular than getting in shape, with only 27 percent of respondents saying they’ve made that self-promise. That statistic is a bit surprising, considering how easy (and affordable) it is to learn a new skill through these 20 online courses.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/325503

Prateek Singh, Entrepreneur
Online education also has the benefit of delivering high-quality lectures by the brightest minds of our world, imagine being able to learn from the best educators, online from the comfort of your home or workplace.  Two things will shape upskilling in the 21st century.

1. Millennials taking over the workplace.
2. Faster adoption of new technology.

A young population and faster adoption of new technology mean employees need to upskill quickly. Jobs which are the highest paying today didn’t even exist 7-10 years ago. The speed at which industry is changing means employees who do not upskill quickly will see stagnation in their careers. This is the biggest threat to the new generation.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/325465

By Kaysey Price, DL-Online

“Technology gets a bad rap. People think we’re putting their kids’ eyes in front of these screens, and instead of reading in a book, they’re reading on a Chromebook. That’s not what we’re doing. We still have books,” said Rhonda Fode, an instructional coach at the Detroit Lakes High School. Yes, kids are still reading from books and getting out a freshly sharpened number two pencil to take notes. The difference is that now they have this supplemental learning tool. At the high school, it’s a personal Chromebook and all the programs and information that the world wide web can provide. Sometimes, having that world at the tip of a student’s fingers is distracting and potentially troublesome but, more often than not, at least in a classroom setting, it’s really useful.

https://dl-online.com/news/education/4550730-techy-transformation-technology-changing-classrooms-altering-how-and-what

Anant Agarwal, Forbes

In 2018 we discussed the increasing value of soft skills; how the skills transformation is affecting the way we work; and the rise of the non-linear career path. These topics merely scratched the surface of the changes we’re seeing in education and in the workplace, which we’ll continue to debate in 2019. These are some key trends to keep an eye on this year:

1. Education emphasizing hybrid skills. 
2. Education goes omnichannel.
3. Education underscoring soft skills remains critical. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/anantagarwal/2019/01/02/three-education-trends-that-will-revolutionize-the-workplace-in-2019/

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

You may be extremely comfortable using technology, but that does not mean your students or fellow teachers are as tech-savvy as you. As digital technology becomes part of our everyday lives and embeds itself into the classroom (and the curriculum), it is imperative that our school community has digital readiness and competence. Digital readiness is simply the ability to use digital tools with ease. In other words, digital readiness refers to how “ready” or how comfortable an individual is with digital technology. Along the same lines, digital competence refers to “the confident and critical usage of the full range of digital technologies for information, communication and basic problem-solving in all aspects of life.”

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/models-and-instruments-for-assessing-digital-readiness-and-competence/

By Jo Best, ZD Net
SpiNNaker’s spiking neural network mimics the human brain, and could fuel breakthroughs in robotics and health. The one-million core SpiNNaker — short for Spiking Neural Network Architecture — is the culmination of decades of work and millions of pounds of investment. The result: a massively parallel supercomputer designed to mimic the workings of the human brain, which it’s hoped will give neuroscientists a new understanding of how the mind works and open up new avenues of medical research.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-million-core-supercomputer-inspired-by-the-human-brain-breaks-all-the-rules/

By Jeffrey R. Young, EdSurge

Marty Ringle has been working in educational technology for more than 40 years, and he’s seen it all—the birth of the PC and and their early use at colleges, the building out of the internet, which started at colleges, and the arrival of smartphones. In fact, he was personal friends with Steve Jobs, and he heard one of the early pitches for what would become the first iPod.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-12-26-this-administrator-helped-shape-tech-at-colleges-for-more-than-40-years-here-s-his-outlook-on-what-s-next

by Dhawal Shah, Class-Central

Now in its seventh year, the modern MOOC movement crossed 100 million learners to a total of 101 million. At the same time,  we are seeing a decrease in the number of new learners signing up. In 2018, 20 million new learners signed up for at least one MOOC, down from 23 million the year before. Despite the slowdown, the number of paying users may have increased. MOOC providers’ constant tweaking of the model seems to be paying off, as providers such as  Coursera are hitting record revenues ($140 million in 2018 for Coursera).

Here is a list of top five MOOC providers by registered users:

1. Coursera – 37 million
2. edX – 18 million
3. XuetangX – 14 million
4. Udacity – 10 million
5. FutureLearn – 8.7 million

https://www.class-central.com/report/mooc-stats-2018/

By IBL News

Anant Agarwal, CEO at edX, decided to channel the funding received with Yidan Prize of $1.8 million to “reimagine undergraduate online education” and foster stackable credentials in this area. That amount corresponds to 50% of the prize, which was granted at an award ceremony in Hong Kong, last December 10. Half of the $3.9M was in the form of a cash prize to the laureate (Mr. Agarwal), while the other was a project fund.

https://iblnews.org/2018/12/31/edx-will-invest-another-1-8m-in-fostering-digital-bachelors-degrees/

by Mattew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

On the one hand, children need to learn how to have traditional, face-to-face conversations unmediated by technology. On the other hand, they also need to learn how to communicate appropriately using technology. Both of these kinds of communication will be vital to their success as adults. Traditional communication requires extensive screen-free time in order to develop the ability to communicate well. Children need to be taught, for example, the importance of eye contact. They should also understand that there is some cultural variation on the appropriateness of eye contact in different contexts, and they should be prepared for that reality. They will also need time to develop an understanding of non-verbal aspects of communication—something that is foreign to most kinds of digital communication.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/how-to-teach-kids-to-communicate-in-this-digital-age/

By Ann Claire Carnahan, US News

The job market has fundamentally shifted in the United States and it is changing how and why Americans work. Through the rise of technology and globalization, competition among workers has become fiercer. Education requirements for employees have risen even though jobs are steadily becoming deskilled. And the mounting anxiety over jobs in an increasingly fluid job market has political, social and personal consequences, according to Ellen Ruppel Shell, author of “The Job: Work and its Future in a Time of Radical Change.” In an effort to keep up, Americans are seeking additional education and are learning new skills. “But it will not inoculate them against the changes that are already occurring or that are coming,” Shell says. For example, the vast majority of future jobs will not require a college education. Already, roughly one in three college graduates are underemployed.

https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2018-12-28/the-eroding-middle-work-in-the-us-heading-toward-high-and-low-skill

Bob Herpen, Haddonfield Sun

“We’re coming into a foundation that’s not as strong as people think and we’re going to see that, through QSAC and other things that we’re working on. Once we get a handle on all of it, we’re looking forward to solidifying the foundation so that we can work on 21st-century learning, digital learning, what the one-to-one initiatives are looking like, and how we prepare our kids for college when it will be driven by a system that’s all online learning. So we can’t start that until we get that foundation right and really, really solidified.”

https://haddonfieldsun.com/haddonfield-superintendent-committed-to-moving-forward-in-2019-c112d985edf0

By Vicki Gerdes, DL-Online

Despite a post-Christmas blizzard that caused not just one, but two sessions to be postponed until later in the week, the Becker County Museum’s Robotics Mini Camps were a big success, with more than three dozen area kids between ages 4-14 learning how to do such basic tasks as scratch coding, problem solving, and bridge building.

https://www.dl-online.com/news/4550246-fun-bots-and-bridges

Laura Portalupi, Coursera Blog

The community is a forum space for our global community of learners to ask questions and help each other out. Anyone can access and read the discussions. To reply or start a new topic, you’ll need a Coursera account. If you’ve participated in course discussion forums before, you know that they’re designed for discussions about that specific course. The new community is geared towards more general discussion about subjects and careers, and anything else you’re passionate about. Since the new forums aren’t connected to a specific course, people aren’t continually finishing and moving on, which means you can really get to know the community members and build strong connections and friendships. You can focus on your learning when you need to and participate in the community when you have the time––think of the community as an additional resource.

https://blog.coursera.org/join-courseras-new-community/

BY MATTHEW LYNCH, Tech Edvocate

The rise in popularity of eLearning and its associated programs is well on its way to creating a tightly-knit global community. These new programs are making it easier than ever to find realistic ways to communicate with others and connect with people around the globe. Regardless of language barriers, the eLearning community is slowly grabbing hold and helping us to overcome some of these once-prominent obstacles.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/elearning-creates-global-community/

BY O. KAY HENDERSON, Iowa Public RadioHundreds of Iowa high school students may lose access to

required foreign language classes if lawmakers don’t provide a cash infusion to a state-run initiative.  The program is called “Iowa Learning Online” and Iowa Department of Education director Ryan Wise uses the shorthand “I-LO” when discussing it. “It is virtually impossible to get the fees and the demand at a point where ILO pays for itself,” Wise said during a recent budget presentation in the governor’s office.

https://www.radioiowa.com/2018/12/26/funding-crunch-for-online-high-school-courses/

By Cassidy Alexander, News-Journal

School choice options like charter schools and private school vouchers have a reputation for siphoning students away from traditional public education, especially in Florida. But over the past decade, increases in private school enrollment in Volusia County paled in comparison to an option with a little less political buzz: home schooling. The number of kids in Volusia who are home-schooled went up by 86 percent between 2007 and 2017, meaning it nearly doubled. In comparison, private school enrollment went up by 12 percent. And public school enrollment dropped by about 1 percent.

https://www.news-journalonline.com/news/20181229/volusia-hoping-to-tempt-home-school-students-with-more-online-learning-opportunities

By Merve A. Kızrak, Interesting Engineering

Imagine that a ‘human lawyer’ can handle all the cases in the world after AI’s preliminary research. For a human lawyer, it takes weeks to do research, but AI can do it in just a few seconds. Moreover, AI does not get tired, sleep, eat or drink coffee. In fact, the AI can produce more successful results than an average experienced lawyer. In 2017, in an experiment involving more than 100 lawyers in London, hundreds of actual applications to the Finance Ombudsman for a specific credit card irregularity were examined. While the accuracy of human prediction was 66.3%, an AI program trained to predict whether or not to accept files achieved 86.6% accuracy.

https://interestingengineering.com/ai-vs-lawyers-the-future-of-artificial-intelligence-and-law

Karishma Jain, India Today

What learning experience would you prefer: a chapter in a book telling you about Ancient Rome or a completely immersive virtual tour of an ancient Roman town? Most likely, you’d go for a Virtual Reality (VR) tour and so will millions of students all over the world VR can be used to teach lots of things, from history to human anatomy Now imagine that you want to teach biology to children; needless to say, getting them interested in the learning process can be difficult.

https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/featurephilia/story/role-of-augmented-virtual-reality-in-education-1417739-2018-12-26