Educational Technology

by KELSEY DAVIS and AALLYAH WRIGHT, Hechinger Report

Online learning can be a useful tool for districts facing stubborn teacher shortages, because it can help fill teacher vacancies with instruction from high-quality professionals, according to recent research from the Clayton Christensen Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that supports the increased use of technology in education. But for the best results, the program must be used in combination with direction from a teacher knowledgeable in the content areas, said Tom Arnett, a K-12 education researcher for the group.

https://hechingerreport.org/teacher-shortages-force-districts-to-use-online-education-programs/

by MIT Technology Review Insights

Key takeaways:  Artificial intelligence (AI) is a focal point of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the latest era of technological advancement. As AI becomes widespread, it is essential to consider the potential effects of the technology on society. Challenges include establishing guidelines on the use of AI, determining how to ensure AI systems are safe and ethical, measuring their effectiveness, and devising ways to interact with them.

https://s3-ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/mittr-intl/Gettingsmart.pdf

Carolyn Preston, Hechinger Report

It turns out the data on older students is imperfect, but here are some numbers we do know: Of the 12.1 million students enrolled in community colleges in 2015-16, about 903,000 were 40 or older, according to Martha Parham, senior vice president of public relations for the American Association of Community Colleges. Most of those older students, about 663,000, are participating in vocational programs…. According to the latest data from the National Center for Education Statistics, meanwhile, some 22 percent of students enrolled in credential-seeking subbaccalaureate occupational education (like computer and information science, manufacturing and marketing) were age 35 and older.

https://hechingerreport.org/going-back-to-school-after-50/

Catalin Cimpanu, ZD Net

Governments and private organizations have around 20 minutes to detect and contain a hack from Russian nation-state actors. New statistics published today by US cyber-security firm Crowdstrike ranked threat groups based on their “breakout time.” “Breakout time” refers to the time a hacker group takes from gaining initial access to a victim’s computer to moving laterally through its network. This includes the time the attacker spends scanning the local network and deploying exploits in order to escalate his access to other nearby computers. The “breakout” metric is crucial for organizations, as this is the time they have to detect infections and isolate hacked computers before a simple intrusion turns into a compromise of its entire network.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/you-have-around-20-minutes-to-contain-a-russian-apt-attack/

Max Eddy,  PcMag

A VPN, or virtual private network, is one of the smartest ways to protect your online privacy and maintain your data security. We’ve tested scores of them, and these are the best VPN services for Windows. When you access the internet over Wi-Fi, do you think about who might be spying on your data, or even stealing it? If not, you’re in the majority—unfortunately. Everyone ought to be using a virtual private network, or VPN, whether it’s at a coffeeshop or even at home. Yet when PCMag ran a survey on VPN usage, we found a surprising 71 percent of our 1,000 respondents had never used a VPN at all. Even among net neutrality supporters—who you might think would be better informed on security and privacy issues—55 percent had never used a VPN.

https://www.pcmag.com/roundup/296955/the-best-vpn-services

David Raths, Campus Technology
What is the current state of the gender gap in the higher education IT workforce? According to the latest research from Educause, there’s good news and bad news: On the one hand, the number of female IT staffers has been increasing; on the other, fewer women are being promoted into CIO positions. In a Dec. 6 webinar, D. Christopher Brooks, Educause’s director of research, described the glass ceiling women face in higher ed IT: “For staff members, we are pretty close to parity in terms of distribution between men and women holding those positions. The place we run into problems is as people move up the ladder in terms of managerial responsibility,” he noted. “Between 2016 and 2018 we saw a slight dip in the percentage of women holding CIO positions. We have made some progress, but we are still confronted with some pretty serious glass ceiling issues prohibiting women from moving up the management chain.”

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/02/14/working-to-close-the-gender-gap-in-it.aspx

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

The exhibitor floor at a major edtech convention must be seen to be believed: hundreds of vendors with thousands of new products vie for the attention of exited-but-exhausted looking teachers and administrators. Every single product promises to revolutionize education by engaging students and teaching them more, better, faster. But you’d have to be naïve to think that every single one of those products can deliver on its promises. Instead, it is time to bridge the disconnect between edtech researchers and educators.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/bridging-the-disconnect-between-edtech-research-and-educators/

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Quillionz is the world’s first intelligent tool for automatically generating questions from written content. This unique AI-driven platform has the potential to transform the way teachers create quizzes, tests, and assessments. Quillionz accomplishes this by leveraging the power and promise of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms. That’s what makes it a game-changer. The Quillionz platform is free to use. Teachers can create their free Quillionz account by visiting the Quillionz website and signing up. If you want a more human touch as opposed to relying entirely on artificial intelligence, you can use the Quillionz curation service. For a fee, their team of instructional design experts will review and revise the questions created by the AI engine, and provide you with a collection of curated, handpicked items. More information about the Quillionz curation service is available on their website.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/product-review-of-quillionz-the-worlds-first-ai-powered-question-generator/