Take this self-assessment and discover your tech readiness

by Keith Krueger, eSchool News

CoSN has developed a readiness evaluation tool—the “District Leadership Team Assessment,” which enables your team to identify strengths and opportunities for growth. This free team assessment is part of CoSN’ s Empowered Superintendent initiative, produced with AASA (The School Superintendents Association). Complementing the team assessments, superintendents and CTOs can also measure their own skills on an individual basis through separate personal evaluations—the “Self-Assessment for Superintendents” and the “Self-Assessment for CTOs and Technology Staff.” Combined, these assessments open the door for superintendents, aspiring superintendents, CTOs, and district leadership teams to identify their strengths and weaknesses and build their knowledge, skills, and confidence both from leadership roles and within the entire unit.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2015/02/19/self-assessment-701/

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More schools using technology to teach character skills

by eSchool News

As schools are increasingly fitted with new technology, the classroom atmosphere is changing. Tablets are replacing textbooks, interactive whiteboards are ousting chalkboards and software discs are going the way of the dinosaur. Amidst all of the change, however, there’s one constant: the pursuit of academic excellence and mutual respect. During the Texas Computer Education Association (TCEA) Convention, experts from the nonprofit foundation Great Expectations shared best practices for fostering productive classrooms in the presence of increased technology integration. Great Expectations is a school transformation model that emphasizes a climate of mutual respect and academic excellence.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2015/02/19/character-skills-847/

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SUNY’s 3D printing success story

by eCampusNews

Since SUNY New Paltz opened its MakerBot Innovation Center in February 2014, the university has used it to help establish the Hudson Valley Advanced Manufacturing Center (HVAMC) as a premiere hub for advanced manufacturing technology in the Hudson Valley, garnering industry interest and securing funding for further expansion. According to Donald Christian, president of SUNY New Paltz, the MakerBot Innovation Center helped jumpstart SUNY New Paltz’s 3D printing initiative, which has enjoyed “tremendous interest” from students, faculty and the surrounding business community. With the MakerBot Innovation Center, the university forged public-private partnerships with industry to create a “vibrant innovation hub that serves both students and the local business community in unprecedented ways.”

http://www.ecampusnews.com/technologies/sunys-3d-makerbot-765/

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Achieving the (Often Delicate) Balance between Technology and Information Security

by Ronald L. Vaughn and Tammy Clark, Educause Review

Higher education leaders today face mounting pressure to compete for dwindling numbers of college applicants, account for learning outcomes, embrace technology innovation and disruption, and make key decisions regarding whether to move enterprise applications and infrastructure to the cloud. In the midst of this, there is an equally compelling need to ensure that the balance between information technology and information security is continually adjusted to provide adequate protection for the vast amount of information that is collected, processed, and stored across the institution. Objective assessments of security risks, needs, and considerations must be made clear to institutional leaders who make key decisions affecting strategic planning, budgeting, technology, and data security. The focus of this column is to highlight the advantages that can be gained by achieving that balance.

http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/achieving-often-delicate-balance-between-technology-and-information-security

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Enrollment in MITx MOOCs: Are We Educating Educators?

by Daniel Thomas Seaton, Cody Coleman, Jon Daries, and Isaac Chuang, Educause Review

Surveys of 11 MITx courses on edX in spring 2014 found that one in four (28.0 percent) respondents identified as past or present teachers. Of the survey respondents, nearly one in 10 (8.7 percent) identified as current teachers. Although they represent only 4.5 percent of the nearly 250,000 enrollees, responding teachers generated 22.4 percent of all discussion forum comments. One in 12 of the total comments were made by current teachers, and one in 16 were from teachers with experience teaching the subject of the MITx course in which they enrolled.

http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/enrollment-mitx-moocs-are-we-educating-educators

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Are Digital Schools the Wave of the Future?

by Suren Ramasubbu, Huffington Post

What is the verdict then? Is digital schooling better than conventional schools? The question is ideological and is built on the encompassing argument of what education itself is. Although it is easy to denounce the digital school (or brick and mortar school) with compelling reasons, we should be wary of outweighing the interests of technology over other social, cultural, and political concerns (or vice versa). Given that the conventional academy has existed over centuries and withstood the travails of time, there is no reason to believe that “digital schools” would overturn the conventional face-to-face schooling system in the near future, but will undoubtedly serve to complement it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/suren-ramasubbu/are-digital-schools-the-w_b_6710854.html

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Absurd Creature of the Week: The Legless Amphibian That Eats Its Mother’s Skin

Perhaps the most contentious title out there is “World’s Greatest Mom.” My mother probably thinks she is, but so too does her mother, and I think they could both make pretty strong cases. But the sacrifices that human moms make pale in comparison to what’s going on in nature. There’s a bug, for instance, whose […]

The post Absurd Creature of the Week: The Legless Amphibian That Eats Its Mother’s Skin appeared first on WIRED.

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The Science of Why No One Agrees on the Color of This Dress

Not since Monica Lewinsky was a White House intern has one blue dress been the source of so much consternation. (And yes, it’s blue.) The fact that a single image could polarize the entire Internet into two aggressive camps is, let’s face it, just another Thursday. But for the past half-day, people across social media […]

The post The Science of Why No One Agrees on the Color of This Dress appeared first on WIRED.

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Navigating my way through designing a class: Sharing teaching expertise through technology

by Ian Watkins, the Working Waterfront

A class isn’t about handing a student a thick binder, online or otherwise, of lessons and assessments; it requires the teacher delivering and teach the material. The main task of creating an online class involves substituting this time-tested and highly effective method of delivering content. If you’re not an expert on the topic, you rely on other resources. In using those resources, you must consider how can they be presented and delivered in a coherent way that doesn’t necessarily include a teacher standing in front of a classroom.

http://www.workingwaterfront.com/articles/Navigating-my-way-through-designing-a-class/16236/

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10 Online Programs to Boost Your Business Skills

by Nicole Fallon, Business News Daily

No matter how long you’ve been out of school, you’re never truly done learning. This is especially true of entrepreneurs, many of whom figure out the ropes of running a business as they go. Taking opportunities to improve your business skills is always a good idea, but once you get your startup going, you likely won’t have the time or budget to go back to school and enroll in a traditional university course. The good news is, you don’t have to: There are plenty of online education programs designed specifically for entrepreneurs and small business owners who want to do more than just attend an occasional workshop or seminar.

http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/7780-online-business-education-programs.html

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Good News! Kids Aren’t Dying as Much as They Used To

On a blog post at PLOS, the tropical disease expert Peter Hotez and postdoctoral fellow Jennifer Herricks take a run through the data on the biggest killers of children around the world in 2013, part of a new dataset from Global Burden of Disease study published in the January Lancet. The main one is malaria, […]

The post Good News! Kids Aren’t Dying as Much as They Used To appeared first on WIRED.

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Infoporn: The Best Images Of The Deep Universe (So Far)

The European Southern Observatory released an incredible set of images today that give the best-ever view of the deep universe. It’s a stunning new peek at one region of space—the Hubble Deep Field South (HDF-S)—that reveals many previously invisible galaxies, along with new information about how they move and how far away they are. The […]

The post Infoporn: The Best Images Of The Deep Universe (So Far) appeared first on WIRED.

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Should Californians Resurrect a Plan to Pipe in Water From Alaska?

In 1991, Alaska's governor proposed building a pipeline to bring his state's water to drought-stricken California. 25 years later, the state is in a worse drought, and the idea is still crazy as hell.

The post Should Californians Resurrect a Plan to Pipe in Water From Alaska? appeared first on WIRED.

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NASA Upgrades Giant Rocket-Carrying Vehicle

For five decades a 6.3-million pound behemoth of a machine, like a baseball diamond perched atop tank treads, has moved NASA rockets from their hangars to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. Now the two Crawler-Transporters, stalwart workhorses of the American space program, is getting its first major upgrade. Maxing out at just a mile […]

The post NASA Upgrades Giant Rocket-Carrying Vehicle appeared first on WIRED.

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Drexel and TechGirlz to Create Online Game Design Class for Teens

by Drexel Now

Recent higher education reports have raised questions about the persistence of inequality in gender representation among college students in science, technology, engineering and math disciplines in the last decade. Employment in the technology sector continues to reflect this disparity. Two local groups are taking steps to reverse this trend by increasing access to tech workshops that encourage young women to pursue careers in STEM-related fields. The idea is to make a set of self-contained online instructional videos and educational materials that will guide middle-school and high-school age students –and their teachers- through a basic game design curriculum. Drexel University’s Entrepreneurial Game Studio is working with the Philadelphia nonprofit TechGirlz to create a virtual game design class that will be made available, free-of-charge, to schools and students nationwide.

http://drexel.edu/now/archive/2015/February/ESA-TechGirlz/

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from Educational Technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uis/edtech/~3/FwjBchE1zkY/

All the World’s a Stage—Becoming a Better E-Learning Designer

by Ethan Edwards, ATD

Too often people seem to think a cookbook procedure combined with the basic knowledge of an authoring tool is sufficient or even desired. In fact, looking for a single restrictive instructional design model to be repeated over and over, and a blind reliance on technology to create learning are two of biggest traps that reliably produce really ineffective training. Efforts in that direction are usually geared toward productivity rather than instruction. (And productivity is a good thing, but it is easy to forget that not only does e-learning have to be delivered, it also has to have some effect.) Fortunately, I find new design insights in the most unlikely places.

https://www.td.org/Publications/Blogs/Learning-Technologies-Blog/2015/02/Becoming-a-Better-E-Learning-Designer

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The New York Times and CIG Education Group Collaborate on New Online Learning Initiative

by the New York Times

The New York Times and CIG Education Group have come together to launch NYT EDUcation, a new education initiative. NYT EDUcation marries The New York Times’s premier content and award-winning journalism to the educational expertise of CIG Education Group, a leader in the development of branded academic institutions. NYT EDUcation will provide innovative courses and programs covering a wide array of subjects, including communications and media, which reflect the authoritative content and intellectual breadth of The New York Times. Courses will be offered on a wide variety of topics, ranging from pre-college level to higher education, continuing education and executive education by incorporating the skills, knowledge and experience of The New York Times.

http://investors.nytco.com/press/press-releases/press-release-details/2015/The-New-York-Times-and-CIG-Education-Group-Collaborate-on-New-Education-Initiative/default.aspx

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How the Sahara Keeps the Amazon Green

The Sahara Desert is huge, hot, and full of sand and dust. The Amazon basin is huge, warm, but full of greenery and wildlife. And one can’t live without the other. The Amazon, it seems, depends on the Sahara for its very survival. The link: Dust. Specifically, phosphorous and other nutrients, kicked up by the […]

The post How the Sahara Keeps the Amazon Green appeared first on WIRED.

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