Challenges, and more distractions, lie ahead for colleges

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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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=35640

Arizona college studying technology that could make schools safer from active shooters

by Katie Conner,  ABC15

A college in Arizona will help make schools safer when it comes to active shooters. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, located in Prescott, received a $769,890 grant from the National Institute of Justice to test various technologies to keep an intruder from entering a school. Professor Tom Foley, with the University’s College of Security and Intelligence, is leading the research. Foley says they will test barriers like doors, windows, glass and locks against the guns that have been used in recent mass shootings.

https://www.abc15.com/news/region-northern-az/prescott/az-college-studying-technology-that-could-make-schools-safer-from-active-shooters

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=35625

Survey: Students sing praises for digital learning tech

BY LAURA ASCIONE, eCampus News.
Students said they vastly prefer classes with digital learning technologies.   Ninety-four percent of students in a new survey said digital learning technologies have helped them retain new concepts, and 53 percent said they prefer classes that use such tools. McGraw-Hill Education’s fourth annual Digital Study Trends Survey, compiled by Hanover Research, includes responses from more than 1,000 college students. Sixty percent of surveyed students said they think digital learning technologies have improved their grades, and one-fifth said those technologies significantly improved their grades. Students in STEM majors were the most likely to say technology has positively impacted their grades. Approximately 60 percent of students agree that digital learning technology increased their engagement with course materials.

Survey: Students sing praises for digital learning tech

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=35615

Women Take Tech in Partnership

by Flatiron School

Flatiron School is launching our Women Take Tech initiative in partnership with female-founded beauty subscription pioneer Birchbox. Through Women Take Tech, we’re dedicating over $100,000 in scholarship funding to increasing opportunity for future female software engineers – in January alone!

The stats surrounding women in tech bear repeating:

Women hold only 25% of computing-related occupations.

That number has been declining since its 1991-high of 36%.

And even when women manage to get their foot in the door of the male-dominated tech industry, they often don’t stay there: 41% of women in tech end up leaving the industry.

That’s 25% higher than it is for men in similar roles, and significantly higher than it is for women in other non-STEM fields.

http://blog.flatironschool.com/announcing-women-take-tech-in-partnership-with-birchbox/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=22368

New Coding Bootcamp Guarantees Jobs for Gradates

by EdSurge

Online learning company Springboard is launching its first data science bootcamp, the Data Science Career Track. The course, which costs between $4,800-$6,000 depending on payment method, promises graduates a job upon completion or a 100 percent refund. (According to Springboard, 50 out of 50 tracked graduates found jobs within six months at places including Amazon, Pandora and Boeing.) The self-paced course takes about 8 to 10 hours a week and runs for around five to six months. Through weekly mentor meetings and 24-7 teaching assistants, students learn skills such as statistics, Python, SQL and Hadoopfor. Springboard also pairs students with a career coach to help with interview prep, resume writing, and building connections to employers.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-01-05-new-coding-bootcamp-guarantees-jobs-for-gradates

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=22356

Moving Beyond the Tired Classroom Laptop Debate

By Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed

Can we get beyond the tired old discussion about if laptops should be banned from the classroom? The discussion that we should be having is about how we can harness the digital competencies – and the digitally inspired behaviors – that our students bring to their own learning. Have you ever observed a college student watching an online video? They are not passive video consumers. They actively control the in-video watching experience by speeding up and scrubbing through the video. They keep their cursor on the video controller and skip through the “slow” parts. Not only do students compress their video consumption by speeding and scrubbing, they also simultaneously interact with other content while watching. A video will share screen real estate with social media sites. They will chat, post, upload, compose, edit, scan, and scroll while also watching the video. How might we harness these digital video viewing behaviors to improve learning?

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/moving-beyond-tired-classroom-laptop-debate

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=22348

How software that learns as it teaches is upgrading Brazilian education

by Claire Rigby, the Guardian

Some systems help teachers track students’ progress in real time, enabling them to spend more time with those who need extra support. Many systems also allow teachers to make their own curriculum. But there is a long way to go until adaptive learning is standard in schools. Teachers will probably have to be trained in how the systems work to ensure students receive the benefits of adaptive education.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/10/geekie-educational-software-brazil-machine-learning

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14795

6 Strategies for Differentiated Instruction in Project-Based Learning

by Andrew Miller, Edutopia

Project-based learning (PBL) naturally lends itself to differentiated instruction. By design, it is student-centered, student-driven, and gives space for teachers to meet the needs of students in a variety of ways. PBL can allow for effective differentiation in assessment as well as daily management and instruction. PBL experts will tell you this, but I often hear teachers ask for real examples, specifics to help them contextualize what it “looks like” in the classroom. We all need to try out specific ideas and strategies to get our brains working in a different context. Here are some specific differentiation strategies to use during a PBL project.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/differentiated-instruction-strategies-pbl-andrew-miller

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14793

2016 Google Tracker: Everything Google is working on for the new year

by Ron Amadeo, Ars Technica

It’s that time of the year again—welcome to the Google Tracker! This is a bi-annual series where we recap every ongoing project (that we know about, at least) inside of Google’s sprawling empire. Though from now on, perhaps we should say, “Every ongoing project inside of Alphabet’s sprawling empire.” “Google” is now a mere company inside of “Alphabet,” the newly formed umbrella company created by Google’s founders. Most of the Google side projects we’ve been tracking in the past have been spun off into companies inside of Alphabet, but rest assured we’re still keeping track of everything. As always, the Tracker is a big roundup of previous announcements, rumors, and a bit of speculation.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/2016-google-tracker-everything-google-is-working-on-for-the-new-year/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14790

PHM replaces snow day with eLearning: How did it go?

by Annie Chang, WSBT

For the Springman family in Osceola, Mom is the teacher today. The classroom is the kitchen table. And the teaching assistant is a very vocal terrier. Cora Springman and her children, first-grader Riley and kindergartener Nick, are tackling the coursework assigned for eLearning Snow Day 1. Cora says Riley got 17 pages of homework, Nick got 11. “Just looking at it, it seems like quite a bit of work,” Cora says. “Knowing what they bring home in a day, paper work, this does seem a full day of school work to me.” The eLearning is meant to take up at least five hours for K-5, six hours for 6-12 graders. Cora works full time, but took the day off so she could help the kids get the homework done right away.

http://www.wsbt.com/news/local/phm-replaces-snow-day-with-elearning-how-did-it-go/30620262

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Digital Libraries Provide Books To Impoverished Schools, Replace Old-School Ways

By Eleanor Goldberg, Huffington Post

After realizing the overwhelming need at schools — and how costly and ineffective book drives are — Tanyella Evans and Rebecca McDonald founded Library for All, a digital literacy platform. Established in 2012, the New York-based group stocks struggling schools with cloud-based digital libraries that are suitable for grades K-12. The organization raised more than $100,000 through a Kickstarter campaign in 2013 to build and pilot the program in Haiti where only 49 percent of the population is literate and less than 15 percent of schools have libraries. Library for All debuted its program at Respire Haiti, a Port-au-Prince school that services 530 students. A majority of them are former child slaves.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/06/library-for-all_n_6418388.html

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Waterloo students take classes online during ’snow days’

by Brittany Noble, KMOV

Gibault Catholic High School in Waterloo had their fourth snow day on Thursday but students haven’t missed any class. “We call them (snow days) a lot. Last year I’d wait till the last moment holding out hope we don’t have to call off school. Now if there is even a chance I think we have a snow day, I’ll just call off by noon,” said Principal Russ Hart. The school replaces snow days with electronic learning days, by using the “My Big Campus” website.

http://www.kmov.com/news/just-posted/Waterloo-students-on-track-after-holding-online-classes-during-snow-days-239507611.html

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Los Angeles library to offer high school diplomas

By JULIE WATSON, Associated Press

The Los Angeles Public Library is evolving from a place where people can check out books and surf the Web to one where residents can also earn an accredited high school diploma. The library announced Thursday that it is teaming up with a private online learning company to debut the program for high school dropouts, believed to be the first of its kind in the nation. It is the latest step in the transformation of public libraries in the digital age as they move to establish themselves beyond just being a repository of books to a full educational institution, said the library’s director, John Szabo.

http://www.boston.com/news/education/2014/01/09/los-angeles-library-offer-high-school-diplomas/ZHs8lVzYlxhTR8S3pvzMOO/story.html

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from Educational Technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uis/edtech/~3/yLjzBK1mRo8/

The Visual History Of Classroom Technology

By Jeff Dunn, Edudemic

It’s been quite awhile since the early days of classroom technology. However, it’s still something worth knowing about as we all race into the future of edtech. Whether it’s a Massive Open Online Course (MOOCs) or simply trying out a new app on your tablet, there’s a lot to know about how we all got here. As you can see in the below visual guide to the history of classroom technology, the ballpoint pen and overhead projector didn’t really happen too long ago. In fact, this whole timeline seems shockingly recent! I’d also recommend you check out a previous Edudemic article we did that takes an even deeper dive into the history of edtech.

http://www.edudemic.com/visual-history-classroom-technology/

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