5 ways edtech is democratizing education

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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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=36549

How to effectively scale a digital learning model

by Shalina Chatlani, Education Dive
Lou Pugliese, senior innovation fellow and managing director for the Technology Innovation Action Lab at Arizona State University, and Kate Smith, vice president of academic affairs at Rio Salado College, spoke during a panel discussion at the Council for Higher Education Accreditation Annual Conference in Washington, D.C.  They revealed four conclusions of an extensive research project.  Smith and Pugliese offered insight into the online learning models of their institutions to discuss some of the key aspects of the ASU report that focuses on three main components, including defining what return on investment in digital learning formats really means and developing common shared metrics for the industry to create benchmarks of comparison.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/how-to-effectively-scale-a-digital-learning-model/515936/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=36539

Bill Allowing Homeschoolers in Iowa Learning Online Initiative Advances

BY SHANE VANDER HART, Caffeinated Thoughts

A bill, SSB 3030, allowing families that homeschool under competent private instruction or independent private instruction to utilize the Iowa Learning Online Initiative cleared another hurdle this week when it passed through the Iowa Senate Education Committee by voice vote on Monday. A subcommittee consisting of State Senators Larry Edler (R-State Center), Thomas Greene (R-Burlington), and Herman Quirmbach (D-Ames) recommended passage of the bill last Thursday. Iowa Learning Online, according to its website, is “an Iowa Department of Education initiative designed to help local Iowa school districts expand learning opportunities for their high school students through high quality, rigorous courses delivered online.”

https://caffeinatedthoughts.com/2018/01/bill-allowing-homeschoolers-iowa-learning-online-initiative-advances/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=36529

Edvocate’s list of 20 must-follow k-12 teacher twitter feeds

BY MATTHEW LYNCH, Edvocate

To say that teachers are busy would be an understatement! Besides the act of teaching, you spend hours every day and on the weekend on lesson planning and grading. But it’s also important for teachers to keep learning, and the best way to do that is from other teachers. Thanks to modern technology, it’s now easy to connect with inspirational teachers and to learn from them. We’ve curated this list of educational Twitter feeds to help you stay up-to-date on new technology, burgeoning trends, and or even just a daily dose of motivation.

http://www.theedadvocate.org/the-edvocates-list-of-20-must-follow-k-12-teacher-twitter-feeds/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=23542

WHY THE NEXT 10 YEARS OF EDTECH WILL CRUSH THE LAST 10

BY MATTHEW LYNCH, the Tech Edvocate

With some of the biggest names in technology focusing their creative and financial assets on education, edtech will be at the forefront of education reform over the next decade. Bill Gates is investing billions and Mark Zuckerberg 100’s of millions, into the future of learning. We expect Edtech to transform the way we teach and learn. Standardized testing and core standards are not going away, so many educators are turning to edtech to help them negotiate the demands of this exacting system. There is a growing relationship between these core standards and the personalized learning initiatives being funded by Gates and Zuckerberg. With these big investors at the table, educators are hopeful that the influx of edtech will move well beyond achieving benchmarks on standardized tests.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/why-the-next-10-years-of-edtech-will-crush-the-last-10/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=23512

More colleges are using free educational resources

By Ellie Ashford, Community College Daily

It’s hard to gauge the extent to which OER are used, as data is not tracked nationally, says Una Daly, director of the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources​. OpenStax, a nonprofit based at Rice University, estimates the OER materials it provides led to savings of $42 million in textbook costs in 2015-16. As the nation’s largest OER provider, OpenStax has created open textbooks for about 25 popular general education courses, allowing students and colleges to order relatively inexpensive printed copies for about $25 to $60 from Amazon or college bookstores. Because there is so much good OER material available, Daly says, faculty are now more likely to adapt OER to their needs – by customizing them or eliminating unnecessary chapters – than to create their own OER from scratch.

http://www.ccdaily.com/Pages/Academic-Programs/More-colleges-adopt-OER-degrees.aspx

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=23527

Reevaluate course evaluations

by Editorial Board, Cavalier Daily

To better assess the performance of our professors, the University should revamp course evaluations. As voluntary, typically anonymous forms, course evaluations do not adequately assist professors with teaching improvement. In order to better its system of pedagogical evaluations, the University should consider implementing compulsory, non-anonymous course evaluation forms complemented by peer review from other professors each semester. Student evaluations suffer from response bias, as those who complete them are self-selected volunteers, which overrepresents individuals with strong positive or negative opinions. Requiring all students to complete an evaluation for each of their classes in order to view their course grades would alleviate this issue. Compulsory evaluations would be more helpful for professors in that they would allow them to consider a broader range of student criticisms of their courses. Anonymity also introduces the online disinhibition effect to student evaluations. Evaluations that conceal the identities of those who submit them may cause teaching criticism to be less constructive than it would be if the evaluations were not anonymous.

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=15040

Chatting online at school to sharpen critical reading skills

by the Straits Times

Students at Ngee Ann Secondary School often chat online in class, with their teachers’ encouragement. The Tampines school recently developed a Web-based reading and learning analytics programme that develops students’ critical reading skills. The programme, used for subjects such as English throughout the year, allows students to use their mobile devices and read uploaded materials, on topics such as abortion and Singapore’s education system, on the WiRead platform. They then consider the text’s finer details such as the purpose, assumptions and points of views, before sharing their answers with their peers online.

http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/education/chatting-online-at-school-to-sharpen-critical-reading-skills

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=15037

Linguistics of foul language

By Peter Rosen, KSL

You’re not supposed to say them. We can’t spell them out for you. But at the University of Utah, you can get credit for studying curse words. The university’s Linguistics Department offers an online class titled “Bad Words and Taboo Terms,” taught by Randy Eggert. “We started it really as a class that would attract non-majors,” he said. “It’s a fairly new area of research,” Eggert said. “For years the topic itself was taboo. Few people were willing to research it seriously until the 1980s.” Bad words, themselves, though, are nothing new.

http://www.ksl.com/?sid=38431212&nid=148&fm=most_popular&s_cid=article_popular-10

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=15042

School officials: Digital learning initiative gives students individualization

BY CLAIRE BYUN, the Sun News

School districts nationwide are sharpening their own PDL programs, and Ambrose said Horry County was among the first in the state to jump into digital learning. She said student reading skills scores have improved. “Talk to the students, talk to the teachers,” Ambrose said. “The students are engaged, we see a huge difference now.” Horry County schools rely on the Lexile Framework – a national measure to match reading skills to appropriate texts – to help determine student growth and performance. After using PDL programs for a semester, student’s Lexile scores in grades 6-12 improved nearly twice as much as the district anticipated, Ambrose said.

http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/2015/02/07/4774631/school-officials-digital-learning.html

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from Educational Technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uis/edtech/~3/djaKymX6Qt0/

What can we learn from the badging movement?

by CHRIS BERDIK, Hechinger Report

The digital badge buzz got started when U. S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan called them “a game-changing strategy” that could trigger “a quantum leap forward in education reform.” Badges? Yes, like the Boy and Girl Scouts — but online. A quantum leap forward? I know. But here’s the argument: In today’s world, learning can and should extend beyond school walls — in after-school programs, volunteering, clubs and online — and badges can make all of it count.

http://hechingerreport.org/what-can-we-learn-from-the-badging-movement/

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from Educational Technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uis/edtech/~3/60pcS4AWmmk/

Snow Days Show Why Schools, Blended Learning Matter

by Michael Horn, Forbes

No, this isn’t another piece about how online learning can allow students to continue to learn even when school is canceled because of snow—although online learning could arguably help a select number of parents who can work from home solve the problem faced when this happens. Instead this is a piece about how important physical brick-and-mortar schools are in our communities and why, even as online learning grows, those schools likely won’t be going away. The insight is one reason why the future for most K–12 schools and students is in blended learning.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelhorn/2015/02/06/snow-days-show-why-schools-blended-learning-matter/

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Tablet Growth Slows as iPad Sees Below Average Performance

By David Nagel, Campus Technology

“It’s becoming increasingly clear that markets such as the [United States] are reaching high levels of consumer saturation and while emerging markets continue to show strong growth this has not been enough to sustain the dramatic worldwide growth rates of years past,” said Tom Mainelli, IDC research director, Tablets, in a prepared statement. “We expect commercial purchases of tablets to continue to accelerate in mature markets, but softness in the consumer segment — brought about by high penetration rates and increased competition for the consumer dollar — point to a more challenging environment for tablets in 2014 and beyond.” In the fourth quarter, tablet sales grew 28.2 percent year over year, down significantly from a growth rate of 87.1 percent the year before.

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2014/02/03/tablet-growth-slows-as-ipad-sees-below-average-performance.aspx

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Challenge for UNH is not an easy one

Editorial, Foster’s Daily Democrat

The “State of the University” speech by UNH President Mark Huddleston offered much food for thought. What is new, or at least newer, is the challenge of online learning. UNH is burdened with much brick and mortar that sucks up resources. There is always a building begging for repair. Meanwhile online learning, which needs limited brick and mortar, has taken off. This is, in part, due to lower cost as well as students born, not with silver spoons in their mouths, but computers at their fingertips. All this and more presents a complicated rubric for anyone looking to keep UNH competitive and attractive to students who are confronted with an in-state tuition rate among the highest for public schools in the country.

http://www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20140208/GJOPINION_01/140209320/-1/FOSOPINION

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from Educational Technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uis/edtech/~3/GRwMVv8WcT0/

Teaching Decision Making in an Online Environment

by Clayton Wukich, Author Stream

This narrated power point describes an approach to teaching decision making while under conditions of uncertainty. The presentation describes approaches to teaching decision-making in emergency management. In particular, it is designed to inform teaching in homeland security and data security areas.

http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/wukich-2070578-teaching-decision-making-online-environment/

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