Techno-News Blog

by Jonathan Symcox, Business Cloud
Organisations are looking for ways to maximise the effectiveness of their training while reducing costs. Samantha Caine, client services director at Business Linked Teams, says e-learning can help firms address the challenge of rolling out desired behaviours and skillsets consistently across global workforces. “Organisations need an approach that can overcome language barriers and cultural differences and help them deliver their global business objectives,” she told BusinessCloud. “It’s possible to train sales teams and future leaders of global organisations with e-learning and the rationale for pursuing this path is clear.

http://www.businesscloud.co.uk/news/is-e-learning-replacing-face-to-face-training

by Marco De Novellis, Business Because

Now, more than ever, it’s about having a presence online, and making sure you’re getting your personal brand out there in whatever way you can. Writing articles, sharing content, networking, contributing to communities—all that can elevate your digital footprint and make you look like an expert in your field. As we’re moving into a multigenerational workforce—with millennials in the mix—we’re finding that mindset is becoming as important as skillset. Business school and MBA degrees give you that business mindset.

https://www.businessbecause.com/news/inside-view-top-jobs/4922/technology-changing-learning-business-schools-adapt

By Tina Nazerian, EdSurge

Instructors should make sure students have the opportunity to build their own learning experiences, New Mexico State University Professor Julia Parra argues. She said that one of the ways she implements active participation is through participatory course design in some of her courses, where students take part in brainstorming what the course will look like. She takes the approach of co-designing. After Parra has combined her learning goals and objectives with that of her students, she gives it back to them, and asks them for their ideas for the activities and resources that they could do in the course and assessments. In the end she builds the final syllabus based on their suggestions.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-11-22-how-professors-can-bring-culturally-responsive-teaching-to-online-courses

By Cait Etherington, eLearning Inside

There were no major surprises in Educause’s 2017 ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology. For four years running, the number of students preferring a blended learning environment that includes “some to mostly online components” has increased and those preferring a face-to-face only learning environment has continued to decline. The report did find, however, that tablets, which were gaining popularity a few years ago, are now on their way out as a device of preference. While by no means the final word on campus-based technology, the annual survey is one of the most comprehensive surveys on educational technologies and offers valuable insights into trends and best practices.

https://news.elearninginside.com/new-study-finds-undergraduates-crave-online-learning/

by WUFT

Tammy Aagard, the associate vice president for enrollment management said the displaced students’ program allows those affected by the hurricanes to take as many online classes as they want from a selected list through UF in spring 2018 and summer 2018 without having to pay tuition and fees. These courses will count toward students’ degrees as long as they are compatible with their school’s requirements. UF requires that students prove they attended one of the 19 partnered institutions for students to enroll and receive credit. This is not the first time that a program like this is being offered to students. After Hurricane Katrina ripped through New Orleans in 2005, universities came together and accepted students from the schools located there.

https://www.wuft.org/news/2017/11/21/uf-provides-opportunity-to-students-displaced-by-hurricanes/

by Matthew Lynch, tech Edvocate

With the importance of technological literacy rising in colleges and workplaces, it’s about time primary and secondary educators took notice. To prepare students for life after high school, we need to start teaching them in a more futuristic fashion. Incorporating technology along with traditional face-to-face interaction is a practice known as blended learning. There are multiple benefits to adopting this relatively new technique. First, the inclusion of various learning models can help students retain information better. As a result, there have been marked improvements in the test scores of students using blended models. You can also experience easier progress tracking, remediation, and student communication. The question is, how can you make this new approach work for your classroom?

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/making-blended-learning-work-classroom/

BY MATTHEW GLOTZBACH, eSchool News

The days of overhead projectors and chalkboards are behind us. Today’s educators are looking to Chromebooks, smartphones and maker spaces to enhance their teaching. Other tools going the way of the overhead projector? The traditional textbook and workbook combination, complete with a #2 pencil. As digital natives, today’s students have grown up with technology integrated into every aspect of their lives, and education is no exception. When it comes to middle schools and high schools, the average classroom looks more like a typical startup office than the traditional classroom of the past.

https://www.eschoolnews.com/2017/11/20/textbooks-unbundling-byod/

By Tech. Sgt. Ryan Crane,  AFNS

Keesler Air Force Base’s 336th Training Squadron has begun developing multiple initiatives aimed at improving the learning experience of Airmen who are fresh out of basic military training. Air Education and Training Command’s Continuum of Learning initiative is a shift to better focus how Airmen learn by integrating education, training and experience in ways that allow them to learn anytime, anywhere throughout their careers. The end goal of the continuum is to create a culture of life-long learners. “What this does, is transform our industrial-age pipeline production system into a modern-age, learner-centric model,” said Lt. Gen. Darryl Roberson, AETC commander. According to Rick Harmon, 336th TRS communications and information flight chief, the squadron is laying the foundation for innovative ways of conducting modulated training that is current and relative at any stage in their career.

http://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/1377370/continuum-of-learning-creating-life-long-learners/

By Martin Slagter, MLive

Online degrees offered by Eastern Michigan University with marketing help from an out-of-state private firm are drawing criticism from faculty members who believe the program could reduce the quality of education students receive. Leaders of unions representing faculty and full-time and part-time lecturers at EMU announced a print and advertising campaign Wednesday, Nov. 15, calling for a temporary halt to the new marketing partnership with Texas-based firm Academic Partnerships. The unions also created an online petition calling for the university to send its contract with the firm to EMU faculty for a thorough review.

http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/index.ssf/2017/11/emu_faculty_critical_of_new_on.html

by University of Wyoming

Leigh A. Hall, Wyoming Excellence in Higher Education Endowed Chair Professor in Literacy Education at the University of Wyoming, shared her advice on how to build relationships with students and help them overcome the feeling of isolation in an online learning environment with Inside Higher Ed. “If we want online learning to be truly interactive, then part of our job as teachers is to foster communities where students can become connected,” she explains.

http://www.uwyo.edu/uw/news/2017/11/uw-endowed-professor-shares-online-teaching-advice-with-inside-higher-ed.html

By Robert Ubell, EdSurge

One strategy for these colleges to avoid extinction is to diversify—to avoid a precarious reliance on residential students. And one way to do that is by adding online programs to the mix. The challenge for many small colleges is that they see online courses as at odds with their very identity. After all, these institutions embrace intimacy as central to their mission, with close, mentoring relationships between faculty and students, and deep, comradely connections among students—essential ingredients of highly engaged learning. For many, online fails to meet these crucial education ambitions. Instead, they reject virtual instruction as alienated learning, with isolated faculty and students coldly facing inert computer screens—not one another.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-11-21-how-online-can-save-small-private-colleges-from-going-under

By Dian Schaffhauser, THE Journal

Two undergraduate computer science students at the University of California, Berkeley have undertaken a job Twitter has been struggling with: figuring out when incendiary tweets have come from a bot instead of a real person. Ash Bhat and Rohan Phadte recently released Botcheck.me, a Google Chrome browser extension that places a button onto every Twitter profile and tweet. By clicking the Botcheck.me button, a user can tell whether the account is likely run by a person or an automated program. As the duo explained in a report published in Medium, they undertook the work specifically to address political propaganda bots, which are intended to weaken and subvert American political discourse.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2017/11/15/browser-extension-helps-identify-fake-news-accounts-on-twitter.aspx

By Helen O’Sullivan, Econo Times
Take a moment to think back to the first classroom you ever entered, whether it was at school, or nursery, chances are there was a blackboard, with coloured chalk where you focused most of your attention. You were probably working from a booklet or on paper using pencil and crayons and drawing pictures by hand. Now fast forward to the classroom of 2017 and everything has changed. Gone are the chalks and the crayons – which have been replaced by screens, social networks, cloud computing and augmented reality. Technology has changed the way classrooms work, not just at school, but right throughout the education system. So from nursery to university, students these days engage with online learning from day one. And yet, despite this increased growth in technological advances, higher education institutions are operating in an increasingly competitive and unstable market.

https://www.econotimes.com/Online-learning-can-prepare-students-for-a-fast-changing-future–wherever-they-are-1015869

by Kristen Wuerl, Luther Chips

In January 2017, Luther College’s Information Technology Services (ITS) began implementing changes to update faculty and staff work computers issued by Luther.
ITS will complete two important changes over the course of this current refresh cycle, which began during the 2016 academic year and will last three to four years. ITS is transitioning faculty and staff from Apple Mac computers to Dell computers where they consider it beneficial, and is supercharging computers that the faculty and staff currently have. Supercharging a computer involves increasing its random access memory (RAM) to eight gigabytes and replacing hard drives with faster 240 gigabytes Solid State Drives (SSDs). The supercharged computers will physically look the same but will have better performing processors.

https://www.lutherchips.com/4534/news/luther-to-switch-from-mac-to-pc/

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/fix-edtechs-diversity-problem/

BY LYNNE MAY LIM, DIANA TRAYLOR, AND ROBIN RICKETTS, eCampus News
The children we teach were born with technology as a part of their lives. They don’t know a world without touchscreen phones and computers in every room. In today’s world, saying that subjects like coding and robotics “are for ‘big kids’” is like saying “reading is for ‘big kids.’” Children need to actually touch, manipulate, and experiment with objects in order to fully understand them. Robots bring this physical interaction to the potentially intimidating process of understanding engineering and programming. If we add in the social interaction of working with friends, we can deepen the understanding through conversation and the sharing of ideas.

https://www.eschoolnews.com/2017/11/17/introduce-kindergarteners-robots/

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

The start of each new school year brings a barrage of new apps and skills for educators to master. Keeping up with it can feel very overwhelming! But it’s not the apps you use or the skills you’ve mastered that make you truly “tech-savvy.” Rather, it’s a whole attitude of mind. Here are the 10 most essential habits of tech-savvy teachers.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/10-habits-tech-savvy-teachers/

By Ashley A. Smith, Inside Higher Ed
California community colleges look to create a new statewide​, online-only college that will focus on helping adult students earn credentials. More than two million Californians have attended college but don’t have a degree, which is a problem the state’s two-year system is trying to help solve with a new statewide, online-only college. Today the system will submit three options for the college to its Board of Governors. “What we’re trying to do is provide access to a population we’re not serving,” said Jose Fierro, president of Cerritos College and co-chair of the group that developed the three online options. “We’re trying to look to the future to provide as many options for upward mobility given the changes in the economy and population in the state.”

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/11/13/california-mulls-three-options-new-online-community-college

By Patti Zarling and Shalina Chatlani, Education Dive

A new higher education advocacy group — Higher Learning Advocates — has emerged to specifically focus on nontraditional students and federal education policies addressing them.  Among some of the concerns cited by the group at its first public event is tuition affordability for older students that don’t qualify for scholarship, but are working full-time and raising families — recommending federal financial aid standards to address that.  With federal statistics showing 75% of U.S. college students did not begin their higher education directly out of high school and nearly half of them are over 25, with the number expected to grow, nontraditional student advocates argue institutions ought to reconsider their business models to be more flexible.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/nontraditional-students-gaining-steam-in-higher-ed-discussions/510865/

by Jordan Powell, Yale Herald
I, too, arrived on campus, wondering what it would be like to sit in a classroom with Claudia Rankine, or daydream in the back of Akhil Amar’s lecture after months of hearing my father gush over his favorite legal scholar. And I was bemoaning the fact that I’d have to wait until the spring to take “Death” with Shelly Kagan when my friend told me over a plate of Yale Mac ‘n Cheese that Kagan’s lectures had been available online for the past 10 years. Indeed this is true: lectures by the university’s most notable faculty from Jonathan Holloway to David Blight can be found online, accompanied by required course materials such as readings, exams, and homework on a platform known as Open Yale Courses (OYC), started by program director and Dunham Professor in the History of Art Diana E.E. Kleiner in 2001. The goal of the program is to expand the accessibility of a Yale education to the general public through an online platform.

https://yaleherald.com/a-seat-at-the-coursetable-4e362b6dd6d7

by Helen O’Sullivan, the Conversation

Technology has changed the way classrooms work, not just at school, but right throughout the education system. So from nursery to university, students these days engage with online learning from day one. And yet, despite this increased growth in technological advances, higher education institutions are operating in an increasingly competitive and unstable market. It is clear then that online programmes can and should be viewed as an innovative platform through which access to higher education can continue. This is important because online learning breaks down barriers that are otherwise difficult to overcome and helps to share knowledge across the globe.  But, for this to happen, higher education institutions must continue to adapt, and develop new ways to deliver programmes and courses.

http://theconversation.com/online-learning-can-prepare-students-for-a-fast-changing-future-wherever-they-are-80497