Educational Technology

by Lilly Rockwell, The News Service of Florida

Florida’s colleges and universities are facing mounting pressure to graduate more students with science and math degrees as part of a statewide effort to more closely align workforce demands with college degrees and keep Florida competitive with other states. The business community, in particular, has clamored for a de-emphasis on liberal arts degrees such as philosophy and history toward more practical degrees like engineering and computer science to keep pace with demand. Businesses recruiting for these high-paid, high-skilled jobs say they have to look out of state to fill positions, and Florida is ranked “average” compared to other states in student preparation for science and math careers.

http://www.wctv.tv/home/headlines/Universities_Pressured_to_Boost_Science_and_Math_Degrees_130503588.html

By William Loeffler, PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW

Warren Buckleitner isn’t surprised that an increasing number of preschool-age children have gravitated to touch-screen technology to read fairy tales or learn about shapes and colors. He’s the editor at Children’s Technology Review, which evaluates digital products designed for kids up to age 15. “I was aware immediately that touch screens could be huge,” says Buckleitner, who lives in New Jersey and is an advisor to the Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning at St. Vincent College in Unity. But some child development experts question whether children using touch-screen technology — often before they can walk or read — is a good thing. The American Academy of Pediatrics says that children age 2 and younger should not be exposed to extended amounts of screen time, which includes computer touch screens on smartphones and iPads and television and video games.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/s_758379.html

by the Guardian

Key figures whose technological influence is changing the way we use the internet and live our lives. This brief presentation of profiles is a useful tool in teaching youth about individuals, their backgrounds, and their path to leadership.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/honda-dream-factory/innovators-technology-internet-honda?newsfeed=true

by Deanne Bell, Post-Standard

Technology and innovation are at the heart of Syracuse’s history. But the big question is — how do we keep that innovation going? How do we inspire the next generation of technology pioneers? With every ounce of enthusiasm I have, it’s my goal to spark excitement about one subject in particular — engineering. I’m frequently asked about my thoughts on women in engineering, or how we can encourage more students to pursue STEM careers (STEM is short for science, technology, engineering, and math). I don’t claim to have the answer, but I do know quite a lot about one little girl’s journey to become a woman in engineering. That little girl was me. When most people think of creative jobs, they think of art. When I think of creative jobs, I think of engineering. Technologies that we accept as commonplace today exist solely because someone had the creativity to imagine them. That “someone” is often an engineer. If you think engineers are uncreative, you are wrong — very, very wrong. The beauty of engineers is that we not only have the creativity to hatch an idea on a napkin, but we also have the know-how to take it through a detailed process to completion.

http://blog.syracuse.com/opinion/2011/09/how_do_we_inspire_the_next_gen.html

by Green Bay Fox 11

Green Bay West High School is opening its doors to help the public get a lesson in technology. One Saturday a month the school plans to open its computer lab allowing area residents to become more familiar with computers and the internet. The program is part of a service learning program with the Business Co-op and Future Business Leaders of America groups at the school. Staff and students will be on hand to assist anyone who needs help with their computer skills or navigating the internet, or to help translate for non-English speaking visitors. Organizers say opening the lab is a great way to learn more about technology.

http://www.fox11online.com/dpp/news/local/green_bay/Public-offered-computer-time-at-school

by MIT School of Management

Teachers and students everywhere can now explore such scenarios through Fishbanks, an interactive, management flight simulator available online at no cost through the MIT Sloan Teaching Innovation Resources (MSTIR) website. Designed by MIT Sloan School of Management Professor John Sterman to instruct the school’s MBAs about the challenges of sustainably managing common pool resources, this web-based simulation of the game can be played by an individual or in teams in a single session or over the course of a semester. The program was adapted and updated from a board game originally created by former MIT Sloan professor and alumnus Dennis Meadows. “Management flight simulators such as Fishbanks bring an experiential aspect to learning about complex systems,” says Sterman, who also directs the MIT System Dynamics Group. “They have more impact than simply listening to a lecture or engaging in a case study discussion.”

http://www.todayscampus.com/article/MIT_releases_new_interactive_simulation_tool_for_educators

By Zack Whittaker, ZD Net

Amazon’s next-generation Kindle, the “Fire” has been announced and demonstrated this morning. Finally, college students have a cheaper iPad alternative. Finally — at long last, something to appease the student market. Priced at $199, the Android-powered tablet is the next-generation Kindle, boasting a 7-inch, colour display with Wi-Fi connectivity — but without a camera, microphone, or a 3G connection. The last three points alone — if anything — bolsters the impending relationship between the upcoming tablet and college students. Though 3G is not a necessity for a college-focused laptop, Wi-Fi functionality often designated to campus and the college library is a must. But the killer feature here is the price: at $199, it is a viable competitor to the iPad in at least student circles.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/amazons-kindle-fire-at-199-finally-a-viable-college-tablet/12971?tag=content;siu-container

by Brian Patterson, Learning Online Info

These websites span areas such as English grammar, foreign languages, and computer literacy. Whether you use them independently, or as an enhancement to existing online learning you may already be taking, diving into each of these tools can be very valuable for gaining insight and experience into specific topics.

http://learningonlineinfo.org/2011/09/12/three-valuable-web-tools-improved-online-learning/

by Elizabeth Alderton, Eric Brunsell, Damian Bariexca; JOLT by Merlot

This research study provides new insight into how teachers use social networking sites, such as Twitter, as professional learning networks. The researchers surveyed and analyzed the public Twitter feeds of classroom teachers to determine the specific purposes for which teachers use Twitter. Study participants also completed surveys dealing with social networking. The K-12 educators in this study engaged in true dialogue, where evidence of actual conversation occurred in Twitter over 61% of the time. Additionally, over 82% of the time, the educators in this study chose to follow other educators or content experts related to their field of teaching so they were able to create a personal learning network meaningful to their professional needs. Analysis of data shows that a majority of tweets were educationally focused and were primarily in the categories of practice/philosophy, questions, and sharing of resources. Additional studies looking at how other online learning communities may be used as professional development venues would be beneficial and add to the knowledge base of online learning, professional development, and learning networks.

http://jolt.merlot.org/vol7no3/alderton_0911.htm

by Meta College

Just a few short years ago, the idea of taking a college course through the Internet was something online “techies” considered. Now that people realize how convenience it is to take a class without leaving home, more and more people is taking advantage of using their computer to learn. But while the technology used for online classes is so simple just about anyone can become an online student, you should ask yourself the following 5 questions first – and save yourself a lot of stress!

http://metacollege.com/5-questions-to-ask-yourself-before-taking-your-first-online-class/

By Scott Woolley, Technology Review

Under government rules designed to protect local TV stations from harmful interference, high-power Super Wi-Fi signals (up to 4 watts), which can travel for miles, must give TV channels a wide berth. Low-power Super Wi-Fi signals (less than 40 milliwatts) face fewer restrictions. The result is that while there are 48 channels potentially available for long-range Super Wi-Fi, zero or one channel will be available for long-range use in the places most Americans live—so Super Wi-Fi networks significantly bigger than today’s home Wi-Fi networks won’t be practical. In rural areas, the longer-range systems could prove a boon, although even there, most of the spectrum will still be off-limits. The short-range devices will supplement existing Wi-Fi systems, which can sometimes run out of capacity when lots of people in one vicinity try to use them. Super Wi-Fi will benefit from using lower-frequency waves that travel farther and penetrate walls more easily, but those advantages will be reduced, if not completely offset, by the 40 milliwatt power limit. (Regular Wi-Fi can use up to 1 watt of power.) Ultimately, Congress could decide to loosen the limits on Super Wi-Fi—over the objections of TV broadcasters. According to the broadcasting industry, not even current limitations are stringent enough, which is why it has been fighting to block the white-space rules.

http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/38635/?p1=MstRcnt

by Christopher Mims, Technology Review

Could Abraham Lincoln have become president of the United States in a world in which poor children lack access to physical books?Today Amazon announced that it is finally rolling out Kindle-compatible ebooks to public libraries in the U.S., a much-needed evolution of the dominant e-reading platform. But there’s a larger problem that this development fails to address, and it’s an issue exacerbated by every part of Amazon’s business model. Except under limited circumstances, eBooks cannot be loaned or resold. They cannot be gifted, nor discovered on a trip through the shelves of a friend or the local library. They cannot be re-bound and, unlike all the rediscovered works that literally gave birth to the Renaissance, they will not last for centuries. Indeed, publishers are already limiting the number of times a library can loan out an eBook to 26.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/27185/?p1=blogs

By Duncan Graham-Rowe, Technology Review

A tablet computer developed collaboratively by researchers at Intel, Microsoft, and the University of Washington can be controlled not only by swiping and pinching at the screen, but by touching any surface on which it is placed. Finding new ways to interact with computers has become an important area of research among computer scientists, especially now that touch-screen smart phones and tablets have grown so popular. The project that produced the new device, called Portico, could eventually result in smart phones or tablets that take touch beyond the physical confines of the device.

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/38662/?p1=A1

by eSchool News

Florida, a pioneer in the field of virtual education, is extending its digital reach this year with a new law that will push even more students to log on to learn. It is a move some educators call worrisome, fearful it really is an effort to cut costs, not boost education, and uncertain all online offerings are the right fit for so many youngsters. But others say the Digital Learning Now law is precisely what Florida needs to prepare children for a technology-based future and to free them from the geographic constraints of the walled classroom. “Online courses help level the playing field so that every student can access a world-class education,” Susan Patrick, president of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, wrote in an eMail.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2011/09/20/as-virtual-school-options-expand-some-worry-about-costs-and-quality/

By Dennis Pierce, eSchool News

Whether technology can lead to better achievement is a question stakeholders have asked now for decades. More than a decade into the 21st century—and seven years since the launch of Facebook sparked the biggest communications revolution since the invention of the telephone—we’re still having this debate. Outside of school, students are plugging in and taking charge of their own learning, as the results from Project Tomorrow’s annual Speak Up survey have shown. But when students arrive at school for their formal education, many have to power down and revert to a style of learning that arose when the goal of public education was to prepare them for industrial-era jobs. Statistics from the U.S. Commerce Department rank education dead last in technology use among 55 sectors of the economy, suggesting that the transformation the rest of society has experienced as a result of technology has left schools largely untouched. That anyone would be OK with the notion that schools haven’t changed much since the days when factory jobs were prevalent speaks volumes about how our society values education and its children.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2011/09/21/on-ed-tech-were-asking-the-wrong-question/

By Tanya Roscorla, Converge

Many high school students have counselors who continually guided them or parents who asked lots of questions. But when they reach a university, they have take responsibility for their own learning. And the challenge they face is understanding where they are in class, said John Campbell, Information Technology at Purdue associate vice president for academic technologies and chief architect of the application Course Signals. After all, most faculty don’t ask you how you’re doing every day. Through the Signals app, Purdue University focuses on giving freshmen and sophomores early and continual feedback on how they’re doing in class. And on Sept. 1, that application earned a Digital Education Achievement Award from the Center for Digital Education.

http://www.convergemag.com/classtech/Purdue-Signals.html?elq=ac760d4add564e55a10cf481c124d95e

By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY

The center, dubbed “Digital Promise,” will aid the rapid development of new learning software, educational games and other technologies, in part through helping educators vet what works and what doesn’t. Among the new ideas: a “League of Innovative Schools” that will test-drive promising technologies and use its collective purchasing power to drive down costs. “Given the power of this technology, the administration believes that we should be doing everything we can to take advantage of it,” said Tom Kalil of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. While he acknowledged that games and online learning aren’t “a silver bullet for education,” he said the Obama administration wants to support “the ways in which technology can really make a dramatic impact on student performance and student outcomes.”

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2011-09-16/digital-promise-white-house-education/50419910/1

By MICHAEL HORN, Forbes

Pearson announced that it is acquiring Connections Education in a move that should reverberate across the field of online learning and the education world more broadly. The shift to digital learning is happening much faster than most realize—and that this transaction should raise that profile. There is also no question that Pearson appreciates this shift to digital learning—and I would argue appreciates it more than any incumbent education business does. Tom’s insight that Pearson was willing to cross a line into supporting and operating schools that they had historically avoided because they recognize the rapid and accelerating growth of online learning (signaled in Connections’ consistent 30 percent year over year revenue growth) I think is right. The implications of this step are also interesting, given the strand that Rick Hess and I and others have been exploring through AEI’s series on the role of for-profits in education.

http://blogs.forbes.com/michaelhorn/?p=117

By Jim Price, Wauwatosa Patch

When school came back into session, it didn’t take long for some Wauwatosa students to see that they were learning in a different landscape than the one they had left last spring. It was now, in large part, a digital landscape. From Day 1 in Juliebeth Farvour’s advanced placement calculus class at East High School, the topic was new technology and how it would be used. Students in Farvour’s class had been selected to receive a consignment of iPads purchased by the Wauwatosa School District as part of a pilot program to push ahead with online learning.

http://wauwatosa.patch.com/articles/21st-century-learning-digital-technology-turns-teaching-around

by Sheena Dooley, Des Moines Register

Iowa students would have greater access to online courses under a proposal that significantly expands the state’s virtual class offerings. A committee of educators and business leaders presented the Iowa State Board of Education on Thursday with recommendations for expanding Iowa Learning Online. The program, which now has 625 students, offers 13 courses for high school credit to Iowa students. The group’s proposal calls for adding to the program over three years. The state would increase the courses it offers, while boosting enrollment to 5,000 students. The growth would allow students to take online courses full or part time, while providing them access to classes their school might not offer.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20110916/NEWS/309160053/-1/NEWS04/Expanded-online-education-plan-urged-Iowa-students

by jennymackness, Jenny Connected

I suspect that MOOC participants who are teachers interested in applying some of the ideas encountered in MOOCs all struggle with this. If they are like me they will be asking themselves questions like – What is my responsibility? Where does it begin and end? How do I resolve the tension between control and freedom to learn? Where do control and responsibility overlap? Does teaching intervention equate to control? At what point do my good intentions lead to poor learning experiences? And so on… Most of us who run courses in traditional institutions still have to comply with the University/School regulations and associated constraints, particularly the constraints of assessment. This has been an ongoing issue for many who have participated in MOOCs. There is also the problem of open. Many institutions simply will not ‘open up’ their courses or learning environments to ‘outsiders’ and this then means that the ‘massive’ element of MOOCs is immediately compromised. Only the ‘online’ and ‘course’ parts remain.

http://jennymackness.wordpress.com/2011/09/17/mooc-principles-and-course-design/