by Patrick Atack, the PIE News
Online learning provider Coursera, which works with university partners around the world, is launching six new fully online degree courses. The news comes just weeks after FutureLearn, another provider of global online degrees, also announced an expansion of its full degree offerings.
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by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate
What the lack of technology means for low-income students is that, in addition to trailing in academic achievement, they are missing out on opportunities to learn the technical skills they will need to succeed in a highly competitive global workforce. Having limited access to Internet-connected computers means that they don’t have time to tinker or explore. They don’t have time to practice basic skills like typing or writing emails, or more complex skills like researching or coding. To compound the issue, teachers in low-income schools don’t use technology as effectively or as often as teachers in high-income schools.
http://www.thetechedvocate.org/digital-inequity-mean-low-income-children/
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By David Nagel, THE Journal
Minecraft: Education Edition has received a new resource pack designed to let students learn chemistry within the game itself. Resources also include new lessons and activities, a teacher lab book, a downloadable world and community support. The Chemistry Resource Pack includes a range of features for teachers and students to explore science within the game, including an Element Constructor, which allows users “to create elements based on their atomic structure with sliders to choose the number of protons, neutrons and electrons. By using the Element Constructor, you can create 118 elements from the Periodic Table as well as over 400 stable isotopes,” according to the developer.
https://thejournal.com/articles/2018/02/21/minecraft-chemistry-update-goes-live.aspx
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By Dian Schaffhauser, THE Journal
A group of private and public organizations said that, for less than $20 billion, every unserved rural school, library, health provider and community college in the country that doesn’t already have high-capacity broadband could get it and share it out. In a new study, the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition proposed that high-speed internet be fed to these “anchor institutions,” which could then act as “middle-mile” providers to distribute the service to surrounding users through a mix of wired and wireless technologies.
https://thejournal.com/articles/2018/02/20/cost-to-connect-rural-america-19-billion-or-less.aspx
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By Cait Etherington, e-Learning Inside
If you watched the Olympics, you have likely already wondered how all those young people keep up with their studies while training several hours per day and traveling around the world to attend competitions. In the past, many athletes had to put their studies on hold or count on the flexibility and kindness of their teachers and professors. Over the past decade, online education has made chasing gold medals and degrees simultaneously just a bit easier. Indeed, early gold medalists at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, including Canada’s Kaetlyn Osmand and the United States’ Red Gerard, are both currently enrolled in online programs.
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by Pluralsight APAC director Fiona Sweeney, IT Brief
You’ve heard this before – technological change is accelerating at an unprecedented rate. We are approaching the fourth industrial revolution which involves exponential developments in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, robotics, nanotechnology, and cybersecurity. According to Deloitte, the digital economy is forecasted to grow to $139 billion by 2020. In order to benefit from this, businesses need to be armed with STEM skills to be at the forefront of this disruption. STEM skills are fundamental for Australian businesses to ride the digital transformation wave. The Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) estimated that almost five million jobs will face a high probability of being replaced in the next decade due to digital disruption.
https://itbrief.com.au/story/addressing-stem-skills-gap-continuous-online-learning/
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by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate
Technology permeates every aspect of our lives today. So it’s not surprising that these advances are now revolutionizing our educational system, too. The results are more far-reaching than anyone could have predicted. Here are some of the ways in which edtech is levelling the playing field, making quality educational experiences available to all.
http://www.thetechedvocate.org/5-ways-edtech-democratizing-education/
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BY LAURA ASCIONE, eCampus News
The Post-traditional Learners Manifesto Revisited: Aligning Postsecondary Education with Real Life for Adult Student Success, from the American Council on Education (ACE), notes that more than 1 million Americans could get out of poverty if everyone in the U.S. 25 years or older, with some college but no degree, earned an associate degree.
“Helping more non-traditional learners earn a degree would have lasting and transformative effects on our society, economy, and higher education,” said Louis Soares, lead author of Revisited and ACE’s vice president for strategy, research, and advancement. “Of the 23 million undergraduates, more than 13 million are nontraditional learners. Some start a degree but don’t finish it, racking up debt and adding to their financial burdens.”
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By Bryan Alexander, Campus Technology
Humans have been imagining our future for millennia, using techniques as varied as science fiction, betting and divination, but the futures field as we know it today dates only to the mid/late 20th century. That’s when several visionaries working in business and the military, such as Herman Kahn and Pierre Wack, began codifying forecasting as a set of methods. Those methods have since been honed, extensively studied by scholars, supported by professional associations and deployed internationally.
https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/01/25/how-to-be-an-ed-tech-futurist.aspx
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By BRIAN MOLONGOSKI, Watertown Daily Times
In a Times interview Monday, Jefferson County Community College President Ty A. Stone noted that, as job acquisition increasingly requires some sort of degree or certificate beyond grade school, there are currently around 50,000 people in Jefferson and Lewis counties who do not have the appropriate work credentials to earn a living wage. She said this is a problem faced by some of the region’s largest employers, such as the Kraft-Heinz facility in Lowville, where qualified workers have to commute from far away places like Utica because they are unable to hire locally. Dedicating more resources to identifying educational needs to benefit the area, Ms. Stone said, will make the region more attractive to business.
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by Shalina Chatlani, Education Dive
Half of American adults believe students don’t pursue STEM degrees because the field is too difficult, according to the results of a Pew Research Center survey. Pew reports only about a third of workers over the age of 25 have an undergraduate degree in a STEM field; but while only 13% of the U.S. workforce was employed in a STEM job in 2016, 40% of non-STEM workers said they were interested in the field at some point. When asked why they didn’t pursue a STEM career or degree, 27% of respondents said they thought it was too costly and time-intensive to pursue, while only 14% said it had to do with classes being too difficult — statistics that reflect how lack of opportunities of promotion at the K-12 level may be a greater barrier to STEM participation in college and career.
BY JOHN MILBURN AND KIMBERLY DEFUSCO, eSchool News
We often get inquiries about our district’s overall vision for our libraries. The truth is, libraries in our schools are far from cookie-cutter, and that’s what makes us successful. One of the reasons we feel our libraries are so effective is because each school is equipped with a full-time certified library media specialist. Additionally, each library’s resources are curated and customized for each school to meet the needs of its diverse student population. It sounds like a big task, but it’s what our students need, so the effort is worth it. When students enter the real world, they’ll be exposed to a variety of print and digital text, and libraries are great equalizers for different forms of media. Our media specialists are experts in collaborating with teachers, knowing their student population, identifying the right mix of print and digital resources, and detecting student preferences
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By Molly Fosco, OZY
On a fall day in early September, Rachel Murat begins the school year by instructing her newest group of high schoolers to google themselves. As they click away on their Chromebooks, the students begin to realize what a simple search can reveal about them, and the room slowly fills with gasps of shock. Once the students have settled down, Murat tells them to google her name. “They always think they’re going to find dirt, but they never do,” Murat says. “Then I harp on them about not making a permanent post about a temporary emotion.” When Murat wanted to start a digital citizenship class at Maine-Endwell High School in Broome County, New York, in 2012, she didn’t have much of a road map to work with. Today, a growing number of digital-citizenship curriculum providers are emerging, catering to increasing demand from schools and educators across the country adopting “DigCit” as central to the education they provide.
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by Sandra Beckwith, University Business
How big-picture threats to higher ed are impacting campuses and what administrators are doing to take control.
Although many higher ed leaders are advocating for colleges and their students at the national level, it remains an area where they can control little. They can—and are—however, battening down the hatches on their own campuses to help emerge from this challenging climate intact. This involves having a vision for strengthening the institution’s foundation and agility in managing new responsibilities and demands. Following are seven things higher ed search leaders and administrators believe campus administrators must do in the coming year to get the job done.
https://www.universitybusiness.com/article/challenges-and-more-distractions-ahead-colleges
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By Dian Schaffhauser, THE Journal
The new report, “Computational Thinking for a Computational World,” explains its theme of computational thinking by borrowing a description from a long-ago article published by the Association for Computing Machinery: It is “a way of solving problems, designing systems and understanding human behavior that draws on concepts fundamental to computer science… a fundamental skill for everyone, not just computer scientists.” More simply, the report noted, “The skill required to tell a computer what to do is programming. The thought process behind programming is computational thinking.” What it isn’t is humans thinking like computers. And, according to the report’s authors, it’s something that needs to be taught across subjects in K-12 schools.
https://thejournal.com/articles/2018/01/02/its-time-to-weave-computational-thinking-into-k12.aspx
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BY LAURA ASCIONE, eSchool News
Female students say they feel less equipped to tackle future careers because they haven’t necessarily learned about the new technologies shaping those future career fields, according to a new survey. The Quizlet survey polled more than 1,000 Americans between the ages of 13 and 24 to ask them about their familiarity with the future of work and how they are learning about it in school. The good news is that 95 percent of students know about the future of work and why it is important and relevant to their learning. But the survey also reveals some troubling differences between what male and female students know and wish they could learn.
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by eSchool Media
In this straight-forward report, eSchool Media discusses what to expect, overall, in 2018; how 2017 compares to 2018 for both K-12 and higher ed; and predictions from educators and industry on both K-12 and higher ed trends for the new year. 2018 promises to be a year that epitomizes the term “transformational.” Are you ready? It’s going to be a wild, wonderful ride.
https://www.eschoolnews.com/files/2017/12/eSMtrends2018final1.pdf
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BY LAURA ASCIONE, eSchoolNews
Augmented reality-based apps infuse more engagement into learning exercises, and students often grasp complex concepts quickly with interactive content, said Peterson, referencing Drew Minock, an advocate for augmented reality in the classroom and outreach manager at augmented reality company Daqri. “If you can captivate those kids when you introduce the lesson, you know they’re going to pay attention throughout the lesson,” Peterson said. “This is a great way to grab kids and get them involved.” Relevant educational uses include using augmented reality during a visit to a museum or historical location, seeing science concepts in motion, looking at math from new visual perspectives, watching books come to life, and animating art.
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