Techno-News Blog

by Candice N. Pittman & April K. Heiselt, OJDLA

With the increasing number of students enrolling in distance education, there is a need to consider the accessibility of course materials in online learning environments. Four major groups of disabilities: mobility, auditory, visual, and cognitive are explored as they relate to their implementation into instructional design and their impact on students in online learning, specifically for students with disabilities. This article highlights the ways in which universal design can assist in providing increased accessibility, not only for students with disabilities, but for all students in the online learning environment. Current standards for disability instruction and guidelines for creating accessible materials are shared.
http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/fall173/pittman_heiselt173.html

by D. Frank Smith, EdTech

From blended learning to analytics, an educational technology investment organization is identifying what works in classrooms. Pressure is mounting for colleges and universities to boost student graduation rates. At the same time, many see developing and scaling up learning technologies as a valuable strategy for keeping students engaged in the classroom and promoting success. A recent infographic from Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) identifies several ways technology can aid student success. The organization awards grants for technology solutions in education, including blended learning initiatives and learning analytics.

http://www.edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2014/11/7-ways-tech-can-raise-student-success-rates-infographic

by Adithya Venkatesan, the Tartan

With so many new technologies available today, from robots to responsive spaces, we have a great opportunity to make better systems for personalized learning, intelligent creativity support, and open health innovation. “Some knowledge is sticky and hard to acquire and often you can understand that knowledge in one of two ways: A self-discovery, and a toolkit that brings about that discovery,” said Winslow Burleson, an associate professor at New York University’s College of Nursing, during a Human-Computer Interaction seminar lecture last Wednesday titled “Motivational Environments: Strategies for Personalized Learning, Intelligent Creativity Support, and Open Health Innovation.”

http://thetartan.org/2014/11/24/scitech/hci

by Steve Webb, Edutopia

Education, like so many other aspects of our society, has been undergoing a digital transformation. Accepting this reality is inevitable. Embracing it would be wise. But my district has chosen to go a step beyond that as we strive to lead the transformation. Digital transformation in Vancouver Public Schools (VPS) began with our second-generation strategic planning process, which we call Design II. Launched in January 2007, the process engaged hundreds of staff and community members in shaping the future of our district. Flexible learning environments for the 21st century emerged as the strategic goal area for Design II, challenging us to think differently about the use of time, space, and technology to maximize learning potential. VPS approached this challenge from a “whole systems” perspective to ensure that our digital transformation would be executed in the right way from the very beginning.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/leading-learning-successful-digital-transformation-steve-webb

by eCampus News

5R Open Course Design Framework now available to support capacity-building as OER use enters mainstream. Open courseware experts announced plans to publish the 5R Open Course Design Framework, a set of guidelines and best practices for developing courses using open educational resources (OER). The framework, which will be freely available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC BY), encourages educators to capitalize on the unique rights associated with open content also known as the 5Rs: the ability Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix and Redistribute content for educational purposes.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/oer-course-design-475/

by Kristine Guerra, Star Press

At least one Central Indiana school district wants to make sure that does not happen again this year. At Northwestern Consolidated School District of Shelby County, there will no longer be snow days. Students will instead use their school-issued iPads and Chrome books to do their homework, take lessons and talk to their teachers from home on days that schools are closed because of the weather. “The main thing that we noticed last year is that those days we had to miss due to the weather were really important to us,” said Bobby Thompson, principal at Triton Central Middle School, the first school in the district to try the program. “Those were the crucial time to prepare students for standardized assessments.” This year, teachers are asked to create virtual lesson plans or “e-learning bundles” designed to address critical ISTEP standards and for students to do independently at home, said Shane Robbins, superintendent for the school district. Students use Google chat and Google hangout to talk to their teachers online.

http://www.thestarpress.com/story/news/local/2014/11/21/schools-avoid-snow-days-learning/19384375/

By Meris Stansbury, eCampus News

The key to successfully using games for education is in promoting a diverse “ecosystem” of gameplay complete with codes of conduct. In part one of this story, “#Gamergate—and what it means for gaming in education,” which discussed the cultural context of Gamergate and how it applies to education, MIT’s Education Arcade emphasized that “the key to fashioning the gaming world as a safe place for women and others is not necessarily censorship or making all games appeal to all potential players, but rather to create an ecosystem of games designed to appeal to players of different play styles, values, and backgrounds,” and nowhere is this ecosystem more important than education. “Games are one of the best learning mediums in education because it forces the learner to interact with information,” explained Sherry Jones—a Philosophy, Rhetoric, and Game Studies instructor at the University of Colorado, Denver.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2014/11/21/diversity-education-gaming-398/

By MEG P. BERNHARD and MICHAEL V. ROTHBERG, Harvard Crimson

EdX held its inaugural Open edX conference to bring together nearly 200 of the platform’s collaborators, who hail from as nearby as Cambridge to as far away as Japan. The conference comes a year and a half after edX launched the open-source initiative, which allows third-party groups to install, use, and develop the edX platform for their own educational purposes. “We open-sourced our platform in June of 2013 and since then we’ve seen a lot of adoption,” said Sarina Canelake, a software engineer for the company. “What’s cool about this conference is that we’ve seen a lot of people, from France and from Japan, who we’ve never had a chance to meet.” According to Canelake, more than 400 courses are offered through Open edX worldwide. Contributors to the platform include Google, the University of Queensland, and Tsinghua University in Beijing.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2014/11/20/EdX-hosts-open-conference/

by IEEE

IEEE, the world’s largest professional organization advancing technology for humanity, is collaborating with edX, a non-profit organization founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to offer massive open online courses (MOOCs) and other continuing professional education courses to a worldwide audience on www.edX.org. “edX’s commitment to innovation and quality has changed online education in the past two years,” said Saurabh Sinha, vice president of the IEEE Educational Activities Board. “Their global reach, reputation for quality, and engagement with the community of IEEE members and other technical professionals makes edX a great fit for IEEE’s online education programs.”

http://www.ieee.org/about/news/2014/14november_2014.html

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

The teacher certificates will be issued for one year to all U.S. teachers who pass one of the teacher training courses. That will be extended for an additional four years for Title I teachers and others in high-need districts. Classes will train teachers on the use of technology in the classroom, teaching in a blended environment, and learning theory and leadership. Those classes will be available from Boston University, Davidson College, Teachers College at Columbia University and six other universities. The organization is also pursuing students in high-need and rural school districts around the country to take courses to help them prepare for advanced placement exams. Over the next five years students will be able to earn free, verified certificates in 40 different courses. AP prep MOOCs will be made available by the Cooper Union, Tennessee Board of Regents, Rice University and five other institutions.

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2014/11/20/edx-launching-moocs-with-free-certificates-for-teacher-training-and-ap-prep.aspx

By KATIE KILMARTIN, Daily Tarheel

More than 230,000 students from more than 180 countries have enrolled in massive open online classes, known as MOOCs, offered by UNC since July 2013. People across the globe continue to take advantage of world-class professors by enrolling in the classes, but UNC professors teaching the massive classes have also benefited. After teaching MOOCs as large as 40,000 students, economics professor Buck Goldstein, said he learned how to facilitate and communicate with his large lectures better. “Probably the biggest lesson of this semester has been that we can use techniques from the MOOC to make on campus class better,” he said.

http://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2014/11/moocs-at-unc-benefit-students-professors-alike

By Marie Norman, Inside Higher Ed

Of all the results from the survey, the one that strikes home most for me is instructors’ conviction that they should develop and own the courses they teach. Amen to that! If meaningful education were just about content, we never would have needed universities, just libraries. But it isn’t. Education is about apprenticeship and mentoring: about putting disciplinary experts and students together, where the passion of the teacher for his or her field brings the subject to life and influences the students’ desire to learn more. That relationship can’t be replaced by mass-produced courseware, nor can faculty bring the same passion to their teaching if they are merely facilitating a course someone else created. Teaching your own course your own way allows you to show students what you yourself love and find meaningful about your discipline. It’s central, not peripheral, to effective teaching.

https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2014/11/21/faculty-members-must-own-online-learning-process-essay

by Rahim Ladhani, CTV Winnipeg

John Taylor Collegiate is using technology to help students get the most out of every lesson. The device is called “The Juno.” Math teacher Keith Goetz wears it around his neck during class and it records everything he says. It also syncs with his lesson on the classroom smartboard. After each class, Goetz uploads the lesson online and students can review what they just learned as many times they like. It’s a virtual classroom. Goetz was the first teacher to use the device at the school but the results have been so positive, the entire math department and some French and chemistry classes have also followed suit. Each device costs about $1,200.

http://winnipeg.ctvnews.ca/winnipeg-school-uses-technology-to-record-classes-upload-lessons-online-to-help-students-learn-1.2109959

by Dale Bernard, Detroit News

If the current online enrollment growth rate of 6.1 percent holds steady, half of all college students will be enrolled in an online course by 2020. What does this mean in the big picture? It means that in order for high school graduates to be prepared fully for success in college in the 21st century, it would be beneficial for them to have gained experience with online learning while in primary or secondary school. This experience will ensure they are familiar and comfortable with the subtle differences between online and in-class learning. At a time when only 26 percent of high school graduates taking the ACT tests are ready for entry-level college courses in English, reading, math and science, according to ACT’s annual report, “The Condition of College & Career Readiness 2014,” isn’t it on us, as educators, to provide students with as many resources and experiences as possible to promote success within our classrooms and beyond?

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/2014/11/20/online-learning-key-college-ready/19290981/

By Ann Elliott, Edudemic

Conveying information in a striking, concise way has never been more important, and infographics are the perfect pedagogical tool with which to do so. Linked below, you’ll find my experience with designing an infographic-friendly classroom research project, explained in a step-by-step process you can implement in your own classroom.

http://www.edudemic.com/how-classroom-project-infographic/

by Barbara Gault, Lindsey Reichlin, Elizabeth Reynolds, Meghan Froehner; Institute for Women’s Policy Research

Over a quarter (26 percent) of all undergraduate students, or 4.8 million students, are raising dependent children. Women are disproportionately likely to be balancing college and parenthood, many without the support of a spouse or partner. Women make up 71 percent of all student parents, and roughly 2 million students, or 43 percent of the total student parent population, are single mothers. Single student fathers make up 11 percent of the student parent population.

http://www.iwpr.org/publications/pubs/4.8-million-college-students-are-raising-children

By Carl Straumsheim, Inside Higher Ed

“When you look at the challenges the OER movement is facing — how to find content, how to get it to students, how to get it to faculty … — it’s something libraries are uniquely suited to be able to help with,” said Nicole Allen, director of open education for the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (or SPARC), an organization that promotes open forms of scholarly communication. Anchoring an OER initiative in the library could counteract the issues some faculty members report experiencing when they try to discover open resources; doing so could also help make them aware of the resources in the first place. In the Babson survey, for example, 65.9 percent of respondents said they knew little or nothing about open resources. Libraries have already helped support the growth of open access research, speakers said, and they can do the same for the discoverability of educational resources.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/11/21/oer-conference-speakers-push-academic-libraries-promote-adoption

by Preston Smith, Huffington Post

Since the 1970s we’ve known of Moore’s Law, which states the processing power of computers will double every two years. Forty years later, computers are presumably a million times more powerful. The education world is finally beginning to harness this power, taking us far beyond the origins of computer labs where students clicked away at the Oregon Trail and practiced word processing. Finally, we’re starting to reach a point where adaptive online programs engage students with rigorous academic content at their exact level while providing teachers with detailed data, allowing us to better group students and meet their unique needs.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/preston-smith-/blended-learning-its-not-_b_6165398.html

BY MEGAN BEDFORD, Columbia Missourian

High school students in Columbia can now take gym class from their computers. Columbia Public Schools is allowing high schoolers to take physical education online through a program called Online PE, said Christi Hopper, one of the district’s physical education and health coordinators. With an online physical education class, students check out fitness kits that include a stability ball, a heart rate monitor, a resistance band, jump ropes and dumbbells. Based on a video they watch, students follow an exercise regimen while using the heart rate monitor. They videotape themselves doing stretches, lifts with weights and other aerobic workouts and then post the videos online for their teachers to view and grade.

http://www.columbiamissourian.com/a/181747/online-gym-class-offered-for-rock-bridge-and-hickman-high-school-students/

by The Associated Press

Purdue University is offering a popular introductory computer science and programming course for free to high school students in Indiana. The online course titled “Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming” offers an introduction to computer science and the Java programming language. The course will not be graded or count toward credit requirements, but it covers material similar to the computer science Advanced Placement course and could help students to test out of freshman programming classes at Purdue and other schools. Purdue says the self-paced course is available to any high school student in Indiana, including those who are home schooled. Enrollment for the spring semester is open through Dec. 1.

http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/11/18/4241007/purdue-offers-students-free-online.html

by Laura Mandaro, USA Today

If you want to lure young girls into computer coding, go straight to the heart — which these days is likely to inhabit the magical snowy landscape of Frozen. Code.org announced Wednesday that it had teamed up with Disney Interactive on a tutorial that lets young programmers help Frozen sisters Anna and Elsa make ice fractals and skating patterns using basic coding skills.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/11/19/disney-codeorg-frozen-girls-computer-programming/19260097/