Online college courses for high school

by Carol Comegno, Courier Post

Rowan College at Burlington County will offer two new programs for high school students in the fall. High school students anywhere in New Jersey will be able to take a variety of online courses at a reduced price as part of the college’s new College Head Start in High School, or CH2, initiative aimed to reduce the time and cost required to attain a college degree. In a second initiative within the Head Start program, the college is partnering with the county technical high school to offer its students a different path to an engineering degree.

http://www.courierpostonline.com/story/news/2016/06/23/online-college-courses-high-school/86304994/

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Tech company’s tool tracks online learning; it’s also fun for kids

BY KENT ERDAHLA, Fox 31 Denver

A tech startup is helping students, teachers and parents track online learning thanks to a free extension to the Google Chrome Browser. It’s called StackUp and some of the students who are using it say it’s already changed the way they approach summer reading. “It’s really fun,” said Kailen Bryant, who is using StackUp as part of his Scholars Unlimited summer program in Denver. “You know how much progress you’ve gotten and how well you’re doing. How much better you’re doing at reading.” StackUp is a free plug-in that anyone can download to track their own productivity or prove the amount of research they’ve put in to a given topic.

http://kdvr.com/2016/06/23/tech-companys-tool-tracks-online-learning-its-also-fun-for-kids/

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Retaining the Higher Education IT Workforce

by Jeffrey Pomerantz, EDUCAUSE Review

According to one estimate, the median cost of employee turnover is 21 percent of the employee’s annual salary3; another estimate puts this even higher, at 50–60 percent.4 Furthermore, the higher the level of specialized training a job requires, the higher the turnover costs. Many information technology–related positions require substantial specialized training. Losing employees imposes a significant cost on IT operations, which is especially problematic in higher education, where budgets continue to shrink or remain flat. The hiring and retention of an IT workforce appeared on the EDUCAUSE list of Top 10 issues in IT the first time that list was compiled in 2000, and it has consistently appeared in the top five issues for the past five years.

http://er.educause.edu/articles/2016/6/retaining-the-higher-education-it-workforce

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Deep Dive into the Structure of Privacy Policies

By Bill Fitzgerald, THE Journal

As part of our work for the Common Sense District Privacy Evaluation Initiative, we spend a lot of time reading through the text of privacy policies and terms of service of educational software. However, we are also looking at the mechanics of how these policies are articulated and delivered. Over time, as we evaluate more policies, we will be looking for possible patterns or correlations between technical and stylistic details, and the contents of policies. To be clear, we do not think we will find any direct correlation between policy structures and whether terms are good or bad (although if we could see that predictably, that would make everyone’s life a whole lot easier). However, even based on what we’ve seen so far — and we are in the early stages of this analytical work — we are seeing some potential indicators that will help us highlight specific elements of policies and analyze them more efficiently. To get a better sense of our process and how we’re carrying out this work, I’ve outlined a few of the primary ways we are analyzing privacy policies here.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/06/23/privacy-by-the-numbers-a-deep-dive-into-the-structure-of-privacy-policies.aspx

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Augmented and Virtual Reality: Where Is the Educational Value?

By David Raths, THE Journal

K-12 schools are beginning to see the educational value of virtual and augmented reality and are investing in these technologies even though price points are still aimed at higher-end markets. In the Methacton School District in a Philadelphia suburb, a high school oceanography class recently visited the Great Barrier Reef, while a Spanish class traveled to cities in Spain and Mexico. The students and their teachers were taking part in the Google Expeditions Pioneer Program to test out a virtual reality (VR) platform built for the classroom using Google Cardboard, which requires only a smartphone, an inexpensive cardboard phone holder and an accompanying app. Chris Lloyd and Layla Lyons, teachers who work as technology integration specialists in the district, said the expeditions were a nice complement to topics that certain classes were working on and the technology itself was fairly straightforward to deploy.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/06/15/augmented-and-virtual-reality-where-is-the-educational-value.aspx

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ePortfolio: Changing the Rhetoric of Technology Adoption A Q&A with Trent Batson

By Mary Grush, Campus Technology

In a recent blog post, AAEEBL president Trent Batson pondered “The Edinburgh Challenge: If ePortfolios are so great, why aren’t more people using them?” Here, we talked with Batson about a reframing of the notion of ‘ePortfolio adoption’ and how that may ultimately help promote the technology. Mary Grush: Where are we in ePortfolio adoption today? Trent Batson: The numbers are encouraging. Educause, in its annual survey of undergraduate use of information technology — which is sent to undergraduate students in 55 countries — shows that well over 50 percent of students use ePortfolios at some point in their college careers, and ten percent use ePortfolios in all or nearly all of their courses. It would be hard to find an institution in any of those 55 countries that doesn’t have an ePortfolio program in some form or other.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/06/21/eportfolio-changing-the-rhetoric-of-technology-adoption.aspx

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Report: Wearable Shipments to Top 100 Million This Year

By Joshua Bolkan, Campus Technology

Global shipments of wearable devices will grow 29 percent over 2015 to hit 101.9 million units this year according to a new forecast from market research firm International Data Corp. (IDC). The segment will continue to see strong growth, according to the company, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.3 percent through 2020, when it will ship 213.6 million units. The market leaders throughout the forecast period will remain watches and wrist bands.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/06/22/report-wearable-shipments-to-top-100-million-this-year.aspx

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Research Suggests Students Learn More When Working Together in Virtual Reality Games

By Michael Hart, Campus Technology

In the game, which is intended to help students learn Japanese — although it is designed to teach other languages as well — players go on “quests” to learn new words by watching game characters talk to each other. For instance, as one character walks away, another that is left behind says, “Sayonara.” The hope is that the player understands “Sayonara” means “goodbye.” At that point, the player can drag the word from a speech balloon into an inventory of terms that can later be used to construct sentences. In one group, students were connected via a chat interface with another player who could, if they wanted, offer advice on how to play. The second group played a version of the game in which they were definitely required to collaborate on quests. The research group found the students in the second so-called “high-interdependence” group spent more time communicating and, as a consequence, learned more words.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/06/22/research-suggests-students-learn-more-when-working-together-in-virtual-reality-games.aspx

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FCC Chairman Gets Educated on VR at Stanford

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

A day after the a federal appeals court upheld net neutrality rules put into place last year by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the guy who heads that agency had a chance to try out virtual reality (VR) and to ask questions of Stanford University experts about how VR might affect future policy decisions. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler visited the university specifically to check in on the Virtual Human Interaction Lab. The mission of that lab is to understand the impact of VR on interactions among people residing in digital worlds. Wheeler used the visit to emphasize the importance of “unfettered access to the entire web,” as he said in a prepared statement regarding the DC Circuit ruling. “Virtual reality shouldn’t have gatekeepers,” he told those participating in his Stanford visit. “It starts with an internet that is fast, fair and open.”

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/06/22/fcc-chairman-gets-educated-on-vr-at-stanford.aspx

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Technology key to university branding strategies

By Jarrett Carter, Education Dive

eCampus News lays out three strategies to promote a successful branding campaign; digital archives and delivery systems are key for schools that want to expanding quality branding in recruitment, retention and community outreach. Building strong visual identity begins with feedback and support from campus stakeholders, and must be enforced with firm rules on presentation and usage. Making logos and marks accessible is critical to a successful branding campaign. Maintaining updated photo repositories and breaking down bureaucracy in securing these tools encourages institutional buy-in and support for branding guidelines.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/technology-key-to-university-branding-strategies/421329/

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Adaptive Learning Holds Promise for the Future of Higher Education

by Education Dive

As an educational model, differentiated instruction has been around since the time of Socrates. As a method of providing a classroom of students, often with differing abilities, instruction based on individual aptitudes for learning, it has been an effective alternative to repetitive rote memorization that is still widely practiced in many countries around the world. Today, with the widespread availability of new learning software and platforms, differentiated instruction can take on a revolutionary role under the guise of adaptive learning, and it could alter our thinking about education and the way students learn.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/study-examines-why-students-choose-for-profit-education/421361/

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Growing Pains at Online Education Startup Udemy Hit as Amazon Rumors Swirl

by Claire Groden, Inverse

Enter Amazon. The retail giant and growing media presence might be considering a foray into the online education space: four instructors who asked to remain anonymous say they’ve been approached by Amazon to post their courses on the company’s newest service. And after $173 million of investment, the highly leveraged Udemy is going to have to start showing revenue — not just a growing student count that many instructors say is dramatically exaggerated.

https://www.inverse.com/article/17307-growing-pains-at-online-education-startup-udemy-hit-as-amazon-rumors-swirl

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Bay Area Organizations Help Refugees Access Free, Online Educations

by CBS San Francisco

Bay Area organizationsare helping refugees access free, online educational courses through Coursera via Stanford University, the University of California, and other major universities around the world. In an effort to increase access to education for refugees and non-profit organizations that serve refugee populations, Mountain View-based, Coursera.org launched the Coursera for Refugees program on Monday, in honor of World Refugee Day. Globally, a record 65.3 million people were displaced from their homes by persecution and conflict in 2015, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Coursera, a for-profit, venture capital-backed provider of onlinecourses, is now offering thousands of courses to refugees, as well as specialized courses such as English for Business and Entrepreneurship via the University of Pennsylvania, Career Success via the University of California, Irvine and Python for Everybody via the University of Michigan.

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/06/21/bay-area-organizations-help-refugees-access-free-online-educations/

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No more classroom, no more books: Hazelwood Elementary takes wireless learning outdoors

By Jeremy Eaton, CBC News

Hazelwood Elementary will move some of its classes outside in September thanks to new technology recently installed at the St. John’s school. On Monday morning, teachers and students at Hazelwood launched their wireless outdoor classroom. “It’s a very special day,” said principal Dale Lambe. “One of our teachers had the idea that, not only could we construct an outdoor classroom but make it more accessible for all and make it more appealing for learners in the 21st century.” Most of the total cost of about $18,000 came from government funding and construction took about a week. Using wireless Internet and tablets, students will be able to use apps to study nature and the school’s outdoor surroundings.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/hazelwood-elementary-wireless-outdoor-classroom-1.3643324

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Study: In-school support crucial for Montana online classes

By MATT HOFFMAN, Billings Gazette

This year, Montana Digital Academy took steps to add more on-the-ground support for students in the online program’s credit recovery courses. Now, a report from a Portland, Ore.-based education research group backs that decision up. Education Northwest found that schools with higher passing rates offered more in-school structure and support for students in credit recovery. Data from the 2013-2014 school year shows passing rates varied wildly from school to school, although many schools had very small samples.

http://billingsgazette.com/news/local/education/study-in-school-support-crucial-for-montana-online-classes/article_3d7c080e-b2d5-5d9c-be90-a7e3813af9b2.html

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IBM to give $2.4 million to entrepreneurs in India taking courses from Coursera

By tech2 News Staff

IBM India announced today that it will source entrepreneurs with high potential from India to invite them into its Global Entrepreneur program from Coursera’s series of courses under “Full Stack Web Development Specialization”. The series is being offered by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. According to the announcement, at least 20 participants taking the online course and meeting the criteria by IBM will be accepted in IBM Global Entrepreneur. The selected participants will be given $120,000 in credit to access IBM Cloud services in credit in addition to the invites to apply to represent their startup at IBM SmartCamp 2016, a mentoring Bootcamp and pitch competition between rising startups from all over the world.

http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/ibm-to-give-2-4-million-to-entrepreneurs-in-india-taking-courses-from-coursera-322113.html

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Google and Udacity launch a new Android programming course for beginners

by Lucia Maffei, Tech Crunch

Google wants more people to learn to program — especially for its Android platform. While the company already offered a few programming courses, they were typically geared toward students with at least some rudimentary programming experience. Starting today, the Google Android Basics Nanodegree class is available on the online learning platform Udacity. It’s the first Android nanodegree class designed by Google for people with no programming experience at all. “Google, in partnership with Udacity, is making Android development accessible and understandable to everyone, so that regardless of your background, you can learn to build apps that improve the lives of people around you,” Shanea King-Roberson, program manager at Google, said in a blog post.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/22/google-and-udacity-launch-a-new-android-programming-course-for-beginners/?ncid=mobilenavtrend

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Daphne Koller: Soft skills are overlooked and undervalued

by Rebecca Smith, Management Today

But which skills does Koller think students should be really swotting up on for future success? ‘One of the bigger ones we’re seeing is the ability to handle data,’ she says. ‘I don’t just mean big data, but data-oriented thinking and business analytics.’ Koller then points to an often overlooked set of skills as those that’ll always be valuable. ‘The whole range of soft skills is also very important,’ she says. ‘We’re getting to a point where the world is changing really fast so concrete skills that are important today might not be useful tomorrow.’ But the abilities to formulate a problem, work well within a team, accept responsibilities and be flexible don’t have a sell-by date. ‘All of those skills that I think for a while weren’t seen as important will be for a long time.’

http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/news/1399477/daphne-koller-soft-skills-overlooked-undervalued/

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ALEX Wants to Fill Classrooms Like Airbnb Fills Beds

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

“In a world where we can place people in empty seats in cars and empty beds in houses, why not place people in empty chairs in college classrooms?” That’s what a team of Harvard University students say about their new start-up called ALEX (Anyone’s Learning EXperience). The students recently won a Public Sector Innovation Award for their work from the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard. The idea behind ALEX is this: Universities and colleges with empty seats in some of their courses make those available through the site, and employers that want employees to obtain continuing education can subsidize enrollment for their people. The platform matches company need with excess classroom capacity.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/06/15/alex-wants-to-fill-classrooms-like-airbnb-fills-beds.aspx

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Want a high-paying job? Get a ‘nanodegree’

by Clay Dillow, CNBC.com

In an effort to address the skills shortage, three-year-old Udacity (2016 CNBC Disruptor No. 12) has partnered with tech giants such as AT&T, Google, Facebook and Amazon to reinvent job training. The company — founded by Stanford professor and onetime Google VP Sebastian Thrun — has repositioned its focus from massive open online courses (MOOCs) to certification training on very specific skills. Students can earn what’s called a nanodegree and learn things like front-end web developing, iOS and Android programming, or machine learning in less than a year — and for less than $1,000.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/06/20/udacity-reinvents-skills-training-with-the-nanodegree.html

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Coursera’s Koller: ‘Yesterday’s degree doesn’t prepare for tomorrow’s jobs’

By Jarrett Carter, Education Dive

Coursera President and Co-Founder Daphne Koller says that the college diploma of 15 years ago doesn’t provide the necessary skills for a job in the 21st century. According to her podcast interview with Recode, Koller says that expanding educational access with coursework designed for skill-building in key industries is the way to increase interest in education and career preparation. Koller says that artificial intelligence and virtual reality components of learning will replace traditional classroom lectures.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/courseras-koller-yesterdays-degree-doesnt-prepare-for-tomorrows-jobs/421277/

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New sites use research to help students select the right college

by eSchool News

A series of state-specific websites, grounded in work conducted by the American Institutes for Research (AIR), will offer students a new way to plan for life after high school. Its interactive features show the potential return on investment for a wide array of higher education choices. The first “Launch My Career” website, launched in Denver, will help students identify in-demand jobs across Colorado and in particular regions of the state, and will help students identify majors, as well as degree or certificate programs, that will help prepare them for those jobs.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2016/06/20/air-research-fuels-launch-my-career-website/

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Internet of Things, Machine Learning & Robotics Are High Priorities For Developers In 2016

by Louis Columbus, Forbes

56.4% of developers are building robotics apps today.

45% of developers say that Internet of Things (IoT) development is critical to their overall digital strategy.

56.4% of developers are building robotics apps today.

45% of developers say that Internet of Things (IoT) development is critical to their overall digital strategy.

27.4% of all developers are building apps in the cloud today.

24.7% are using machine learning for development projects.

These and many other insights are from the Evans Data Corporation Global Development Survey, Volume 1 (PDF, client access) published earlier this month. The methodology was based on interviews with developers actively creating new applications with the latest technologies.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2016/06/18/internet-of-things-machine-learning-robotics-are-high-priorities-for-developers-in-2016/#1f4e1e835644

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How Online Middle School Classes Prepare Your Student for Higher Learning

by the Sequitur

Your child’s middle school educational years are incredibly important. This is the time that students become more independent, more responsible for their education and more vested in their commitment to learning. In seventh and eighth grade, curriculum becomes more rigorous than it was in early educational years. Expectations rise as students are taught to develop and refine their study habits and gain more advanced analytical and problem-solving skills. The priority is to help online learners continue to grow their knowledge base while preparing for the demands they’ll need to meet once they advance to a high school education. Linked below are some of the things online middle school classes are designed to help students achieve:

https://www.thesequitur.com/how-online-middle-school-classes-prepare-your-student-for-higher-learning-1268946/

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The digital-first district where OER meets iPads

By KATHERINE SCHAEFFER, Beaver County Times

Teachers and students at one district are replacing print with digital. By and large, it’s working. For students at Central Valley middle and high schools, accessing classroom lessons rarely involves opening a book. Instead, they power up glowing iPad screens and swipe and tap their way through math problems, the day’s reading or interactive content. In high school math teacher Joe Sowinski’s classes, technology has changed class structure. Students tackle lessons at their own pace as they work in groups to focus on concepts they find most challenging. “I spend less time waiting for students to copy notes and more time helping students work problems,” Sowinski said. Central Valley School District administrators envisioned such a shift when they decided to begin swapping paper textbooks for iPads in the 2012-13 school year.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2016/06/17/the-district-where-oer-meets-ipads/

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Worldwide Smartphone Sales to Grow at Slower Pace in 2016

By Richard Chang, THE Journal

Global smartphone sales will continue to grow, but not in the double digits anymore, according to market research firm Gartner. Smartphone sales are expected to grow 7 percent worldwide in 2016 and reach 1.5 billion units. That is significantly down from 14.4 percent growth in 2015, but it’s still substantial growth, equating to a new smartphone for one out of every five human beings on the Earth. In 2010, smartphone sales hit their highest growth, at 73 percent, Gartner said. In 2020, smartphone sales are on pace to total 1.9 billion units. “The smartphone market will no longer grow at the levels it has reached over the last seven years,” said Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner, in a prepared statement.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/06/15/worldwide-smartphone-sales-to-grow-at-slower-pace-in-2016.aspx

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Colorado startup seeks to track online learning

by Caitlin Hendee, Colorado Business Journal

When Nicholas Garvin applied for a position at electric-car maker Tesla Motors in 2012, he felt there was really no good way to represent all the knowledge he had in the auto industry. ” We invented the Stackup tool to categorize and score everything you read online,” Garvin said. Stackup is a web application and smart browser extension that currently works with Google Chrome that can be used to track users’ engagement on any given website. Engagement is then scored to provide insight into the time people spend learning on the web. The app is currently gaining steam in the education industry. Several teachers in both the Aurora Public Schools and Denver Public Schools are using it in their classrooms to create assignments asking students to spend time learning on the web.

http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/blog/broadway_17th/2016/06/colorado-startup-seeks-to-create-a-credit-score.html

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New report outlines how the wearables market is set to grow through 2020

by eCampus News

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the “Global Classroom Wearables Technology Market 2016-2020” report to their offering. The report forecasts the global classroom wearables technology market to grow at a CAGR of 36.57 percent during the period 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from sales of classroom wearables technology devices such as smart glasses, smart watches, fitness trackers, wearable cameras and VR head gears.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/technologies/84308/

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Deep Learning Isn’t a Dangerous Magic Genie. It’s Just Math

by Oren Etzioni, Wired

Deep Learning is rapidly ‘eating’ artificial intelligence. But let’s not mistake this ascendant form of artificial intelligence for anything more than it really is. The famous author Arthur C. Clarke wrote, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” And deep learning is certainly an advanced technology—it can identify objects and faces in photos, recognize spoken words, translate from one language to another, and even beat the top humans at the ancient game of Go. But it’s far from magic. As companies like Google and Facebook and Microsoft continue to push this technology into everyday online services—and the world continues to marvel at AlphaGo, Google’s Go playing super-machine—the pundits often describe deep learning as an imitation of the human brain. But it’s really just simple math executed on an enormous scale.

http://www.wired.com/2016/06/deep-learning-isnt-dangerous-magic-genie-just-math/

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Augmented and Virtual Reality: Where Is the Educational Value?

By David Raths, THE Journal

K-12 schools are beginning to see the educational value of virtual and augmented reality and are investing in these technologies even though price points are still aimed at higher-end markets. In the Methacton School District in a Philadelphia suburb, a high school oceanography class recently visited the Great Barrier Reef, while a Spanish class traveled to cities in Spain and Mexico. Chris Lloyd and Layla Lyons, teachers who work as technology integration specialists in the district, said the expeditions were a nice complement to topics that certain classes were working on and the technology itself was fairly straightforward to deploy. “The teachers were excited once we introduced the concept to them at a faculty meeting,” Lyons said. “When it came time to schedule it, everyone wanted to do it.”

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/06/15/augmented-and-virtual-reality-where-is-the-educational-value.aspx

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Behind the Scenes of a Makerspace

By Leila Meyer, Campus Technology

Rutgers University Makerspace has become a hub of creativity on campus. Here’s how it manages operations, equipment, projects and more. Four years ago, Rutgers University in New Jersey opened the Rutgers Makerspace — a place where students, faculty, staff and other members of the community can learn to use equipment such as 3D scanners and printers, laser cutters, cutting and milling machines, electronics, and power and hand tools, for both university-related and personal projects. Here’s how the space has evolved into a bustling hub of creativity on campus.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/06/15/behind-the-scenes-of-a-makerspace.aspx

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3D Printer Shipments Up for Education (and All Other Segments)

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

3D printing is on a growth jag. A new report from International Data Corp. (IDC) finds that the market grew in the United States by nearly 20 percent in 2015 compared to 2014. Printer hardware and materials represented a $2.5 billion market in this country last year. According to the IDC report, “U.S. 3D Printer Forecast, 2016-2020: New 3D Print/Additive Manufacturing Technologies Fuel Growth,” that increase is expected to continue through 2020, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 16 percent. In the education segment specifically, IDC forecasts that 3D printing spending, which includes printers, as well as materials and software, will grow from around $200 million this year to more than $500 million in 2019.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/06/16/3d-printer-shipments-up-for-education-and-every-other-segment.aspx

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Are school internet connections fast enough to support personalized learning?

by Joshua Bleiberg, Brookings

Education technologies like personalized learning have tremendous potential to help students learn. To maximize the value of personalized learning, the public and private sectors must increase their investments in training, infrastructure, hardware, and curriculum. Unfortunately progress in each of these areas is uneven. In a recent Chalkboard post, I discussed the potential benefits from broad adoption of personalized learning. A key reason that I remain skeptical about the long-term impact of personalized learning is the lack of bandwidth in the nation’s schools. The available data suggests that school internet speeds continue to rise at a rapid rate, but remain below the levels needed to support broad adoption of personalized learning.

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/brown-center-chalkboard/posts/2016/06/15-school-internet-connections-support-personalized-learning-bleiberg

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