Actualizing the Online Community College

by Kelvin Bentley, EDUCAUSE Review

Regardless of whether California develops and launches its first fully online community college, this topic should inspire all of us working in community colleges to find ways to enhance our approaches to offering online courses and programs. We should begin or continue to research and appropriately adopt good practices in accessibility, course development, course scheduling, faculty hiring and support, OER selection, and the use of analytics to help us offer online learning experiences of the highest quality. Such work is crucial to ensuring that the future of online learning at community colleges truly benefits the students and faculty we strive to serve.

https://er.educause.edu/articles/2017/10/actualizing-the-online-community-college

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=34130

Deep Neural Networks for Face Detection Explained on Apple’s Machine Learning Journal

by Juli Clover, Mac Rumors
Apple today published a new entry in its online Machine Learning Journal, this time covering an on-device deep neural network for face detection, aka the technology that’s used to power the facial recognition feature used in Photos and other apps. Facial detection features were first introduced as part of iOS 10 in the Core Image framework, and it was used on-device to detect faces in photos so people could view their images by person in the Photos app. Implementing this technology was no small feat, says Apple, as it required “orders of magnitude more memory, much more disk storage, and more computational resources.”

https://www.macrumors.com/2017/11/16/machine-learning-journal-face-detection/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=33900

Building a Virtual Reality Career

By Caroline Watson, Udacity

As an elementary school english teacher in Phoenix, AZ, Kristin was in constant search of new ways to further engage students through the use of technology. But she didn’t think of herself as a “technical” person. That role belonged to her husband, a software developer. All the same, she was surprisingly proactive on her student’s behalf. In her spare time, she started both a coding and a robotics club. But her motivation was rooted in curiosity—for her, technology was more of a hobby. She never considered a future for herself in the tech industry. “I had this false perception that I wasn’t very good at math. But, I realized over time that computer science is really less about math and more about logic—which I’m good at!”

https://blog.udacity.com/2017/11/building-virtual-reality-career.html

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=33382

10 reasons why blended learning is exploding

BY MERIS STANSBURY, eCampus News

Infographic delves into recent education trend data to explain why blended learning is taking off. Blended learning, like many other buzzwords in education, is getting thrown around in ed-tech conversations as one of the hottest trends taking over course instruction and luring prospective students to colleges. But just like the current backlash against MOOCs, it’s important to know why a trend occurs in order to gauge its shelf life. Blended learning is constantly evolving, with most of the innovations and refinements developed to support student-centered learning, explains DreamBox Learning, creator of the infographic.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/online-learning/blended-learning-exploding/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=23989

How Coding Should Be Taught to Kids

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Parents and educators across the country understand the importance of teaching kids how to code. Not only can it help them learn valuable skills that they can use into their technology-driver future, but it also helps them learn to approach problems differently. But determining the best method for teaching a child to code isn’t always obvious. In most cases, people agree that a traditional textbook approach is insufficient for subjects like coding. While the idiosyncrasies of the language can be introduced that way, it is difficult to assimilate the information until it is in use fully. But sticking children in front of a blank screen and having them write line after line, though functional, isn’t very inspiring or even interesting. If you want to capture the interest of young students while giving them access to a valuable skill set, then turning to games may be the ideal method.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/how-coding-should-be-taught-to-kids/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=23737