BY ELLIE ASHFORD, CC Daily
Apprenticeship programs jointly developed by community colleges and businesses – and scaled up on a nationwide basis – could go a long way toward closing the nation’s skills gap, according to U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta. “Our job is to ensure America’s workforce is prepared to meet the demands of a global and ever-changing economy,” Acosta told participants on Thursday at the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) board of directors summer retreat in Washington, D.C.
http://www.ccdaily.com/2017/08/labor-secretary-calls-national-apprenticeship-programs/
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By Emily Tate, EdScoop
LearnStorm’s six-week course aligns with the start of the school year to help strengthen students’ skills and get their minds right for the new year.
The flexibility of Khan Academy will be available to students and teachers in a new way this back-to-school season — and this particular classroom program is tailored toward rebuilding students’ confidence as they work to overcome the infamous “summer slide.” The nonprofit education company is launching LearnStorm — a free, online learning challenge — to relieve some of the pressure on teachers as students get acclimated to the new school year. Signups opened Tuesday, and beginning Sept. 12, students in grades 3-12 will have six weeks to work with their classmates — or independently — to strengthen their skills in science, math, history and grammar.
http://edscoop.com/khan-academy-launches-online-learning-program-to-offset-summer-slide
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by Education Dive
If knowledge is power, as Francis Bacon suggested, its supporting partner would undoubtedly be information. The kind of information that, in today’s world, can connect complex reams of disparate and often isolated data, and can help support better decision making and better outcomes. This is the promise of data analytics and, with its ability to capture behavioral information and provide the ability to manage and act on that data, it’s becoming of increasing interest to the world of education. With proven value in the fields of finance, research and in a thousand online applications, what might a marriage of analysis and academia look like? And what are the opportunities for colleges and universities to use data to secure better outcomes for students and further empower faculty?
http://www.educationdive.com/news/the-big-opportunity-in-data-analytics/424903/
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By Robby Korth, Roanoke.com
Before new Virginia Tech freshmen start classes next week they’ll be required to take an online course on diversity. New students now have to take a trio of online courses to raise awareness of issues that they may face in college, including alcohol, sexual violence and being inclusive of people from different races and backgrounds. “Providing it to new students is consistent with and reflects the value we place on inclusion and diversity at this university,” Tech spokesman Mark Owczarski wrote in an email. “Virginia Tech is proud to promote inclusion and diversity as an important part of our land grant mission.
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by Kevin Shea, NJ.com
Thomas Edison State University has been chosen as one of eight universities nationwide for an experimental federal pilot program seeking to connect students using non-traditional training with federal financial aid. Thomas Edison’s role in the program will study how to use financial aid to cover the cost of alternative credit courses through Study.com, and ultimately help students complete their degrees. The pilot program is called Educational Quality through Innovation Partnerships, or, EQUIP and the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) and university unveiled it Tuesday.
http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2016/08/nj_university_chosen_for_pilot_program_studying_on.html
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by Christopher Ratcliff, ClickZ
You know, apart from the most obvious search engine. And possibly the second most obvious one too. In fact I’ll start again, what are the eight most popular search engines after Google and Bing? The first list below contains the most popular search engines currently available, ordered by most to least popular in the US. The ranking is according to eBiz, it’s in order of estimated unique monthly visitors and is accurate as of August 2016. The second list is a global overview of most popular search engines, according to Net Market Share, which is ranked in order of market share and is again accurate as of August 2016. As opposed to our previous list of search engine alternatives to Google, this list will concentrate purely on informational searches rather than say… Gifs or copyright free images.
https://www.clickz.com/what-are-the-top-10-most-popular-search-engines/104620/
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By Marco della Cava, USA Today
Parents across the U.S. are eager for their children to learn coding and other computer science skills, but their message hasn’t yet hit the in-box of school administrators. That’s the finding of a new Gallup study commissioned by Google that spotlights a potentially perilous economic disconnect as tech companies struggle to enlarge their engineering talent pools. Among key and contrasting findings are the facts while 90 percent of parents see computer science, or CS, as “a good use of school resources” (and 66 percent say CS should be required learning alongside other core classes), fewer than 8 percent of administrators believe parent demand is high. They also cite a lack of trained teachers as a top barrier to offering CS courses. Three quarters of principals report no CS programs in their school.
http://www.eschoolnews.com/2015/08/21/coding-students-survey-672/
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By Ron Bethke, eCampus News
Students break down what aspects of technology are most useful to them in the classroom in a new survey. According to the results of a new survey from VitalSource Technologies, college students overwhelmingly agree that technology boosts grades, improves their overall learning experience and alleviates costs. In the fifth annual survey of its kind, 500 currently enrolled college students were polled in order to gauge how much importance they place on the growing role of technology in higher education classrooms.
http://www.ecampusnews.com/technologies/survey-technology-student-123/
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By Amanda Ronan, Edudemic
The eyes roll back, the mouth scowls, the fingers grip the not-so-secretly hidden cellphone, and the brain checks out. These are, as teachers everywhere can attest, the surefire signs of a disengaged student. And these symptoms are ravaging the educational system. Teachers know that student engagement is the key to learning retention and having a great overall classroom experience, but they often don’t have the time or energy to come up with some of the outrageous things that they see other teachers doing online to keep kids’ interest. Some of us just can’t plan a flash mob for every lesson.
http://www.edudemic.com/top-five-ways-engage-students-classroom/
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By Laura Devaney, eSchool News
True game-based learning uses intrinsic experiences and moves away from a more simple extrinsic rewards-based system where students play the game in pursuit of a reward or achievement and are disconnected from the fundamental content. Games combine just the right degree of challenge with just the right amount of engagement, said Lucien Vattel, CEO of GameDesk, a nonprofit focusing on research and development around game-based learning. GameDesk recently launched Educade, an online portal that links students, teachers, and parents to an online resource library full of apps, games, and hands-on activities.
http://www.eschoolnews.com/2014/08/18/games-learning-experience-346/
By Leila Meyer, Campus Technology
While every active-learning classroom is unique — based on the physical space itself and the needs of students and faculty — there are features common to many of them. Typically, the instructor has a podium at the center of the room. Surrounding the podium are large, round tables that each seat six to nine students. Movable chairs allow students to easily shift between small groups of three to larger groups of six or nine. Each student table may have its own large display or interactive whiteboard for collaborative work and sharing, and many of the rooms also feature writable walls, where students can collaborate on virtually any vertical surface in the room. This classroom design enables instructors to spend a few minutes guiding the whole class from the center of the room, and then quickly transition students into collaborative work without needing to reconfigure the furniture or organize students into groups.
http://campustechnology.com/articles/2014/08/06/tech-basics-for-active-collaborative-learning.aspx
By Joshua Bolkan, Campus Technology
Chromebook sales will reach 5.2 million shipments this year, largely on the strength of the education market, according to a new report from market research firm Gartner. That’s a 79 percent increase over 2013 sales, and the company predicts the devices will continue to experience impressive through 2017, when it forecasts 14.4 million shipments. Education is far and away the driving force behind Chromebook sales, accounting for 85 percent of shipments in 2013, according to Gartner, and the United States, where 2.9 million of the devices were sold last year, makes up the bulk of the global market.
