5 Assistive Technology Apps for Students with Special Needs

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

With so much talk about mobile devices at K-12 desks and teaching technology for the majority of students, it can be easy to overlook the strides also being made for students with disabilities when it comes to assistive technology, especially in the area of apps. These apps can be used with virtually any electronic device, including mobile phones. Also, many come no cost, and those that are fee-based are usually inexpensive. In this article, we will profile the best assistive technology apps on the market today.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/5-assistive-technology-apps-students-special-needs/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=30200

How to Choose the Right Digital Learning Device

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Choosing the right digital learning device can be tricky. As more schools go one-to-one, offering every student a computer or tablet, they are faced with the difficult choice of picking one device that will work for all purposes. It can be tough to find a device that is tough enough to withstand everything students will throw at it, is easy to carry around, and can do everything teachers and students need it to do. Ultimately, there is no one right digital learning device for every school. But there are some basic guidelines that schools can follow to help them choose the right digital learning device for their needs.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/choose-right-digital-learning-device/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=30190

Is Online Education a Jobs Engine?

By Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed

Drawing parallels to one economist’s unorthodox view of e-commerce.I like nothing better than getting things wrong. When we are wrong, we learn something. So I interested to read a NYTimes piece on 7/10/17 on e-commerce, the tech sector, and job creation. For a while now I’ve thought that the growth of online shopping is killing retail jobs, and that this trend would inevitably result in overall job losses as less the role of sales people and cashiers is eliminated. But maybe I’ve been wrong. And if online shopping is really a jobs engine, couldn’t online learning also be a job creator for educators?

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/online-education-jobs-engine

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=30175

Official: Technology boost would increase efficiency in schools

By Nathan Thompson, Examiner-Enterprise

Ever-evolving technology advances is a challenge Bartlesville Public School leaders hope to address in the upcoming bond election. Voters will head to the polls Aug. 23 to decide the fate of a proposed $19.4 million bond issue, of which $2.8 million (15 percent) would be used to modernize technology across the school district. Granger Meador is a physics teacher at Bartlesville High School. He also is the chair of the science department and handles school district communications, after state budget cuts forced Bartlesville schools to eliminate the community relations coordinator position. In 2017, he is slated to become the executive director of technology and communications. According to Meador, the bond issue money would provide students with the instructional technology other districts offer but isn’t yet available to Bartlesville students.

http://examiner-enterprise.com/news/local-news/official-technology-boost-would-increase-efficiency

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=16597

Smart classrooms give tech boost to learning

by Matt Alderton, USA TODAY

The ear-assailing sound of chalk on a chalkboard. The woody aroma of pencil-sharpener dust. The dog-eared pages of old textbooks. The blinding light of an overhead projector. These are just a few of the classroom quirks that 21st-century students may never experience. Instead, they’ll suffer through slow download speeds, frozen screens and drained batteries — minor inconveniences that pale in comparison to the promise of digital learning: an experience that’s infinitely more interactive, engaging and immersive than analog education. It may seem light years in the future, but the transition in many schools is already underway. In fact, spending on computer hardware was up last school year in nearly half (46 percent) of all U.S. school districts, according to market research firm MDR.

http://www.khou.com/features/smart-classrooms-give-tech-boost-to-learning/284580426

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=16582

Words With Friends Reimagined for Classrooms

By Sri Ravipati, THE Journal

Words With Friends is out with a free, educational version of its popular Scrabble-like game for mobile devices. Created by Zynga, a social game developer, Words With Friends EDU includes new education-focused features to help students in grades 4-8 learn high-value academic vocabulary. “Words With Friends EDU reimagines the Words With Friends experience for a game that’s as entertaining as it’s effective for students, whether they have an advanced vocabulary or are learning English as their second language,” said Vaibhav Sahgal, general manager at Words With Friends, in a statement.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/07/28/words-with-friends-reimagined-for-classrooms.aspx

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=16567

Stumped by AP calculus? Click on Davidson College’s online help

BY ANN DOSS HELMS, Charlotte Observer

Davidson College is out to make the planet a bit smarter – or at least more successful on Advanced Placement calculus, physics and macroeconomics exams. The edX High School Initiative just started offering free online lessons on the concepts most likely to trip up high school students who tackle these brain-busting college-level tests. The interactive lessons were designed by Davidson professors, with teachers and students from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools as guinea pigs. While the Internet teems with online lessons, it’s hard to find ones that match the AP curriculum and the College Board’s exams, said Bruce Bacon, an AP calculus teacher at South Mecklenburg High. The videos created by Davidson professors “hit the sweet spot,” he said.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article28702138.html

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Huntsville’s newest high school brings ‘blearning’ connection with 121 universities worldwide

By Paul Huggins, Alabama

Huntsville will have a new high school starting in August, and it will be showcasing the growing trend of “blended” online and face-to-face instruction. The U.S. Department of Education found that “classes with online learning (whether taught completely online or blended) on average produce stronger student learning outcomes than do classes with solely face-to-face instruction.” Education Week’s July 13 edition had an article that said blended learning models allow “for more student-centered learning experiences” and “a powerful way to scale personalized learning.” “New learning models will continue to emerge that adopt the best features of online learning and face-to-face instruction,” stated the article submitted by the International Association for K-12 Online Learning.

http://www.al.com/news/huntsville/index.ssf/2015/07/huntsvilles_newest_high_school.html

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Rise of the Teacherpreneur

By Leah Levy, Edudemic

You’ve heard the term “entrepreneur.” You’ve probably even heard the term “edupreneur.” But do you know what the term “teacherpreneur” means? As you can probably intuit, “teacherpreneurs” are teachers who create their own educational product or service to fix a problem they or they colleagues have encountered in the classroom. This is distinct from an edupreneur, which can be interpreted to mean any entrepreneur working in the education space – teacher or not. There is no doubt that our educational system could benefit from this kind of internal entrepreneurialism – from that creativity, innovation, and lust for change. Ed tech companies, outside think tanks and nonprofits are an important force in creating and fostering these changes. But when innovation begins with educators who not only recognize the issues at hand, but who also have an immediate, textured, nuanced, and concrete firsthand experience with those issues in action, the solutions they develop have the potential to be extremely powerful, comprehensive, and long lasting.

http://www.edudemic.com/why-we-need-edupreneurs/

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Illinois Virtual School looks to expand offerings

By Pam Adams, Peoria Journal Star

Cindy Hamblin, director of Illinois Virtual School, wants enrollments to grow 20 percent in the coming school year, to about 3,600. She also wants to expand courses for middle school students. Illinois Virtual School’s main feature is almost 150 courses and 22 credit-recovery classes for high school students. Courses include core English, math and science classes; six languages, including Arabic and Latin; and electives such as meteorology, oceanography and Java programming. Like its students, the virtual school’s 62 part-time teachers live throughout the state. The school also reaches other teachers and school nurses through online professional development courses.

http://www.pjstar.com/article/20140724/NEWS/140729635

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Ga. teen sues for in-home classes during pregnancy

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

A Georgia teen says in a civil rights complaint that she should have been allowed to complete her schoolwork from home while pregnant and on doctor-ordered bed rest. According to the complaint filed Thursday, 18-year-old Mikelia Seals was a junior at Washington-Wilkes Comprehensive High School when her doctor ordered bed rest seven months into her pregnancy. The complaint says a guidance counselor told Seals the school did not have a program letting her take classes from home. Wilkes County Schools Superintendent Rosemary Caddell says she has not seen the complaint yet.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-2704657/Ga-teen-sues-home-classes-pregnancy.html

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5 laptops for college students that won’t break your budget

by Consumer Reports

College may be the best investment for the future, but it certainly doesn’t come cheap. To help stretch your budget, we combed our computer Ratings to find some of the best laptops in terms of price and performance in the $600 to $800 range. These budget laptops, all equipped with a 14-inch or larger screen, can handily surf the Web, run productivity software, and stream Netflix while maintaining a respectable battery life. Some of them even have enough power to do a decent job with computer games. The models we’ve chosen all use the Windows 8 operating system. (There are some great Apple MacBooks in our Ratings too, but a similarly equipped model costs considerably more.)

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2014/07/5-laptops-for-college-students-that-won-t-break-your-budget/index.htm

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