Educational Technology

by Robert Lemos, Technology Review

By creating a distinctive username—and reusing it on multiple websites—you may be giving online marketers and scammers a simple way to track you. Four researchers from the French National Institute of Computer Science (INRIA) studied over 10 million usernames—collected from public Google profiles, eBay accounts, and several other sources. They found that about half of the usernames used on one site could be linked to another online profile, potentially allowing marketers and scammers to build a more complex picture of the users. “These results show that some users can be profiled just from their usernames,” says Claude Castelluccia, research director of the security and privacy research group at INRIA, and one of the authors of a paper on the work.

http://technologyreview.com/web/32326/?p1=MstRcnt

by Tom Simonite, Technology Review

Readability wants to make it easier to read stuff online—while directing a little cash toward the content’s creators. When design firm Arc90 relaunched its Readability Web service last week, it tried to solve two problems at once: that ad-cluttered Web pages make reading long articles a chore; and that no way exists for Web publishers to accept small sums of money for the articles that people read online. In return for a monthly fee of $5 or more (depending on a person’s generosity), Readability users get a new button in their browser that lets them make micropayments to publishers while reading articles with no unwanted clutter.

http://technologyreview.com/computing/32310/?p1=MstRcnt

by Denis Hamill, NY Daily News

Techno-savvy kids own the future. The old guys who run Xaverian High in Brooklyn are wise enough to have learned that from the smart, hip, middle-class Brooklyn kids in their classrooms. And so, as Catholic schools continue to shutter, this storied high school on Shore Road in Bay Ridge decided that in order to survive, it had better meet the technological needs of its 21st century students. “That’s why we made a deal with Apple to buy 300 to 350 iPads for the incoming freshman class next year, at a cost of about $150,000 to $200,000,” says Bob Alesi, president of Xaverian.

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/brooklyn/2011/02/10/2011-02-10_tablet_is_schools_rx_for_bright_future.html

by Bridget Jones, Auburn Journal

Technology is changing by the second, and a local school wants to help adult residents keep up. The Placer School For Adults is offering a number of computer and technology classes during its spring session. Some of the classes include: Design & Build Your Own Website, Battle of the Smartphones, Introducing the Revolutionary New iPad, Marketing with Social Media Networking, Facebook, Twitter & Foursquare for You & Your Business, Search for Jobs on LinkedIn & Connect with Business Professionals and more. The school is also offering several technology classes for students who are 55 years old and older.

http://auburnjournal.com/detail/171022.html?content_source=&category_id=2&search_filter=&user_id=&event_mode=&event_ts_from=&event_ts_to=&list_type=&order_by=&order_sort=&content_class=1&sub_type=&town_id=

Computers: From 1939 to 2010 [Infographic]

What a long, strange trip it’s been. When you look back at the history of these little boxes that we spend so much time around, it really opens up a lot of information. From the formation of Hewlett-Packard in 1939 to the release of the iPad in 2010, the folks over at TechKing have put together a pretty extensive infographic of every step in between. (found at The Next Web)

http://www.testking.com/techking/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/IG-HoC-1000px.jpg

By Ben Wieder, Chronicle of Higher Ed

A new smartphone application takes most of the grunt work out of citing books in scholarly papers. Quick Cite, which costs 99 cents and is available for both iPhones and Android-based phones, uses the camera on a smartphone to scan the bar code on the back of a book. It then e-mails you a bibliography-ready citation in one of four popular styles—APA, MLA, Chigaco, or IEEE. As reported by Hack College, the app was developed by a team of seven students at the University of Waterloo, who set out in November to develop seven apps in seven days. They dubbed the project Seven Cubed. QuickCite was the first app they developed and the only one so far released for sale. The app took about eight hours to make, says Ross Robinson, one of the student developers.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/smartphone-app-makes-book-citations-a-snap/29768?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

by Dan Lips, NewsOK

Consider the exciting innovations that are occurring with online or virtual learning. Across the country, more than 1 million children are participating in various forms of online learning. These programs include full-time virtual schools, supplemental online courses and classroom-based online instruction. By harnessing the power of technology, students can be taught any time, anywhere by some of the best teachers in the world. They can learn at their own pace — progressing to new lessons when they excel or receiving additional instruction when they struggle. Classrooms of students can receive individualized, customized instruction with a teacher’s support and supervision. These innovative programs provide a glimpse of American education’s exciting future. The challenge for policymakers in Oklahoma and beyond is to implement policy reforms that will let families take full advantage of the best learning options for their children.

http://newsok.com/education-choice-for-oklahomas-future/article/3538118

By Jennifer Smith Richards, THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

A melancholy child stands motionless in a dark, dingy school hallway. Students move around him, ignoring him. Enter the voice-over: “It can bring everything to a grinding halt. Bullying can stall a child’s ability to learn and put a family’s life on hold.” The new TV ad by the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow – an online charter school – is designed to appeal to parents and students who dream of a bully-free school. ECOT is touting itself as “safe from bullies” and introduces its new website, safefrombullies.com, in the commercial. Until now, most ads for online charter schools have pitched greater freedom and flexibility as reasons to enroll.

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/02/05/e-school-ad-touts-lack-of-bullying.html?sid=101

by the initiative to develop credentialing of OER learning

Individuals are free to learn from OER hosted on the open web. The OER for Assessment and Credit for Students Project will provide opportunities for these OER learners who are interested in earning formal academic credit for their learning. This project will contribute to the design and development of the OER university.

This OER initiative will align with the community service and outreach missions of the formal education sector. Through our community service mission we will open pathways for OER learners to earn formal academic credit and pay reduced fees for assessment and credit. In this way the OER movement can contribute to addressing the global demand for higher education where traditional delivery models are unable to respond to the need for post-secondary education.

http://wikieducator.org/OER_for_Assessment_and_Credit_for_Students

by Diana Oblinger, EDUCAUSE Review

One theme of the articles is clear: we cannot focus on technology alone. However, we must be alert to the new models it has enabled: Amazon, eBay, Wikipedia, Facebook, Match.com, and Twitter, for example. New models and possibilities are emerging in education as well. Staley and Trinkle refer to the “new invisible college,” in which “networked and self-organizing teams of researchers are responsive to new ideas and new research problems.” They also note how some scholars have reframed the “brain drain” as a “brain exchange” among many countries. “Academic mobility,” which Staley and Trinkle call as much a state of mind as it is the travel of students, professors, and administrators, can be enabled by information technology. Today’s constant interconnection of individuals, ideas, and cultures has been accelerated by technology.

http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume46/ABroadViewfortheFuture/222653

by Gregory A. Jackson, EDUCAUSE Review

Technologies have a life cycle. Initial implementation often requires central initiative and guidance. In due course, however, many technologies mature sufficiently that they no longer require central oversight. In the Chronicle article, I gave examples: “Most colleges and universities now have pervasive networks, accessible to everyone everywhere. Users interact directly with administrative and academic systems. E-mail, instant messaging, and cellphones are everyday tools. Information technology is a utility like electric power, available consistently and pervasively across most of higher education.” Therefore, I suggested, some IT elements require crisp operational management, and not necessarily high-level leadership. I cited some other examples of areas no longer requiring central attention: the promotion of instructional technologies; the support of local computer users.3 Even so, my core argument was that it remains important for colleges and universities to have a Chief Information Officer, or CIO.

http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume46/TheShrinkingCIO/222655

By Maryellen Weimer, Faculty Focus

Greenwood defines active learning as “The process of having students engage in some activity that forces them to reflect upon ideas and how they are using those ideas. Requiring students to regularly assess their own degree of understanding and skill at handling concepts or problems in a particular discipline. The attainment of knowledge by participating or contributing. The process of keeping students mentally, and often physically, active in their learning through activities that involve them in gathering information, thinking and problem solving.”

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/defining-active-learning/?c=FF&t=F110209

By Ben Wieder, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Mobile devices are one year away from transforming education. For the third straight year. The 2011 Horizon Report, an annual look at technology trends affecting higher education, points to mobile devices as one of six technologies to watch. Of the other five trends, game-based learning and learning analytics—using data to track student progress—are new additions for 2011. The report, produced by the New Media Consortium and Educause, notes that mobile devices have been listed before, but it says that resistance by many schools continues to slow the full integration of mobile devices into higher education.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/6-top-tech-trends-on-the-horizon-for-education/29581?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Download the report: http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/HR2011.pdf

by Clayton Christensen, et al; Center for American Progress

Online learning appears to be this technology enabler for higher education. It is for the first time disrupting higher education—and indeed helps explain much of the rapid growth in the up-start for-profit higher education sector over the last 10 years, even as many colleges and universities have struggled financially and had to cut back. Roughly 10 percent of students in 2003 took at least one online course. That fraction grew to 25 percent in 2008, was nearly 30 percent in the fall of 2009, and we project it will be 50 percent in 2014.

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/02/disrupting_college.html

By Josh Fischman, Chronicle of Higher Ed

A new survey of nearly 40,000 scholars across the natural sciences, humanities, and social sciences shows that almost 90 percent of them believe open-access journals are good for the research community and the individual researcher. But charges for publishing and the perception that open-access journals are of lower quality than traditional publications deter scholars from the open-access route, according to the Study of Open Access Publishing report, by an international team of researchers.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/scholars-favor-open-access-journals-but-quality-and-fees-are-concerns-for-some/29555?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

By the White House

The Obama administration proposes a new initiative to encourage development and adoption of new educational technologies:

Create a quantum leap in educational technologies. The United States should foster innovation in technologies that have the potential to dramatically improve student performance, such as software that is as effective as a personal tutor, and increase access to lifelong learning and training for American workers. The President’s FY 2012 Budget for the Department of Education includes a proposal to launch the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Education, a new organization that will support research on breakthrough technologies to enhance learning.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/innovation/strategy/executive-summary

By Tanya Roscorla, Converge

Instead of connecting remote school sites with fiber or copper, Castro Valley Unified School District in California uses wireless links. In an attempt to save the district money on its network, Castro Valley replaced its older backhaul technologies with a more efficient solution. These wireless links make up a microwave backhaul system that connects 10 of the district’s 13 schools with the central office. Because of geography, three other schools couldn’t be connected.

http://www.convergemag.com/infrastructure/Castro-Valley-District-Shares-Wireless-Backhaul-Lessons.html

By Tanya Roscorla, Converge

With a secure video service, school districts don’t have to worry about inappropriate content popping up when they show video clips on subjects their students are studying. In Conemaugh Township Area School District, teachers wanted to show high school students short YouTube videos on topics the students were studying. But on third-party sites, inappropriate comments, related links and banner ads could pop up at any time. The district already subscribed to educational streaming sites to solve this issue. But sometimes teachers needed two or three minute videos on a specific subject, not a 30-minute series.

http://www.convergemag.com/infrastructure/Pennsylvania-District-Tests-Secure-Video-Service.html

By Pam Derringer, Teaching & Learning

Five years ago, school administrators using smartphones or PDA s to check the status of hallway loiterers or read email under the table during dull staff meetings were the height of cool. But today, mobile devices are more than cool. Combined with real-time access to sophisticated Web-based data systems, mobile devices are beginning to transform the evaluating of students, teachers, and administrators and edging closer to education’s holy grail: How well are schools teaching kids to learn?

http://schoolcio.com/showarticle/35608

By Ellen Ullman, Teaching & Learning

“For years, everyone saw the laptop as the magic bullet for integrating technology,” says Lewis Wynn, director of technology operations for Rockdale (TX) Independent School District. “It’s no longer about a specific piece of technology; we don’t know what the new tools will be next year, in three years, or in five years. The trick is to teach kids not how to use laptops but how to use technology in general.” Welcome to the new world order of one-to-one computing. As administrators scramble to offer ubiquitous technology in their districts, the goal has moved away from one laptop for each lap to…well…a plethora of alternatives. “Districts should be focusing on providing high-speed wireless networks and devices for those that cannot afford or don’t have,” CoSN CEO Keith Krueger says. “It is a rethink of one-toone and urgently needed in this time of economic crisis.”

http://schoolcio.com/ShowArticle/36440

by David Kapuler, Teaching & Learning

Web 2.0 is a term that describes the second generation of the web and its collaborative and evolving nature. I’ve compiled a list of my favorite web 2.0 sites for education, focusing strictly on sites that have an educational portal//instance. What I mean by this is that each site has a section for teachers or a way of controlling the content that students produce. This can be done by educational accounts, monitoring by teachers, filtering, or other means. Most of these sites are free but may offer more services via paid subscription.

http://techlearning.com/Blogs/35720