Don’t Settle for Student Loans to Pay for Online Education

By Ashley Norwood, US News

Some online students can receive federal work-study awards to help reduce their tuition.  Don’t just settle on borrowing student loans to cover the whole cost of your program and living expenses. Instead, start thinking about how to cut costs and cover your balance in different ways, such as the following.  Grants and scholarships: Even though you are taking an online course, you can still apply and receive grants and scholarships. But your first step should be to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, commonly referred to as the FAFSA, which will allow you to receive a Pell Grant if your expected family contribution is low enough.

https://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/student-loan-ranger/articles/2018-01-10/dont-settle-for-student-loans-to-pay-for-online-education

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Gov. Brown proposes California’s first fully online public community college

by Teresa Watanabe, San Diego Union-Tribune
Gov. Jerry Brown wants California to launch its first fully online public community college to help 2.5 million young adults without college credentials gain skills for better jobs and greater economic mobility. In the 2018-19 budget plan he unveiled Wednesday, Brown proposed spending $120 million to open such a college by fall 2019, with a focus on short-term credential programs for careers in fields including advanced manufacturing, healthcare and child development. The governor is a longtime advocate of online learning, which he sees as more cost effective than traditional education.

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/la-me-online-community-college-20170110-story.html

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Glasgow freshmen using school-issued Chromebooks

BY WILL PERKINS, Glasgow Daily

“We’re seeing that most classrooms really don’t use textbooks anymore,” said Amy Allen, principal of Glasgow High School, back in October when she was speaking to the Glasgow Independent Schools Board of Education about an initiative to issue Chromebooks to all freshmen. “That’s kind of something of the past. They’re using lots of different resources that have live data that changes so quickly.” Allen said distributing Chromebooks to students would help personalize their learning, that it would not only help struggling students, but it would also allow students at higher levels to be pushed even further.

http://www.glasgowdailytimes.com/news/glasgow-freshmen-using-school-issued-chromebooks/article_2ba81f00-f664-11e7-a050-1fa89600741a.html

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Once thought to be a fad, MOOCs showed staying power in 2016

by Jarrett Carter, Education Dive

EdSurge profiles the growth of massive online open courses in 2016, which attracted more than 58 million students in over 700 colleges and universities last year. The top three MOOC providers — Coursera, Udacity and EdX — collectively grossed more than $100 million last year, as much of the content provided on these platforms shifted from free to paywall guarded materials. Many MOOCs have moved to offering credentialing programs or nanodegree offerings to increase their value in industrial marketplaces.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/once-thought-to-be-a-fad-moocs-showed-staying-power-in-2016/433204/

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Virtual field trip provides class with mobility

By Cheyenne Derksen Schroeder, St. John News

In December, Maria Loewen’s science class at McPherson Middle School took a field trip to the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. – a virtual field trip, that is. Loewen uses FieldTripZoom, a program that facilitates virtual field trips between schools and organizations, ranging from zoos to national parks. The class connects with a representative from the organization live through a webcam and participates in interactive and engaging activities geared toward classroom learning. “This has been an amazing opportunity to give all of my students the chance to experience life outside the classroom and interact with people and places they may never see in person. These experiences bring relevance and life to our curriculum, and help students understand the importance of what they are learning,” Loewen said.

http://www.sjnewsonline.com/news/20170106/fieldtripzoom-provides-class-with-mobility

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Check Out This Free Online News Literacy Course

BY MICHAEL SPIKES, Bill Moyers and Company

The Center for News Literacy’s new course, “Making Sense of the News,” aims to teach people how to critically consume information and become more informed and engaged citizens. It starts on Monday. The age of “truthiness,” a term coined by Stephen Colbert during the inaugural broadcast of The Colbert Report, is here. It refers to the feeling that something must be true, even if we have no evidence to prove it. We’ve seen many examples of this all over the internet, where misinformation often resembles news. Tweets from conspiracy theorists don’t look much different from New York Times news alerts. The Facebook post that purportedly contains KFC’s secret recipe looks the same as the investigative report from The Guardian. At the Center for News Literacy, we have developed a course that has been taught to more more than 10,000 undergraduates at Stony Brook University, and thousands more at schools around the globe.

http://billmoyers.com/story/check-free-online-news-literacy-course/

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States Urged to Step Up Protections for Students at Online Colleges

By John Sandman, the Street

Distance learning, where students attend class while sitting in front of a computer, is higher ed’s fastest growing segment according to a 2014 Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension committee report. Some observers also fear that they operate in uncharted—and unregulated—waters, where students are vulnerable to scams. That’s because distance learning or online schools are allowed to set up shop in states, where they have no physical presence. Through deals made with state legislators, they avoid regulations that must be observed by schools that do teaching in a classroom, according to a December 14 report last month from the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC). 34 states have used these agreements, called State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements, or SARAs, that exempt schools from complying with state consumer protections aimed at preventing for-profit college fraud.

http://www.thestreet.com/story/13426057/1/states-urged-to-step-up-protections-for-students-at-online-colleges.html

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TEENS: Online courses prepare you for the future

by Alana Harms, The Times: Youth

Even at my small school in Flanagan, the teachers and staff make sure students have whatever class options they need, including several dual credit courses through a community college. For me, a new experience I had this year was taking an online class. The schedule was flexible enough that I could keep up with my other classes, but I was still learning and being prepared for college courses. I could even talk with my classmates about the theories I had learned and how they affect us in everyday life. In addition to my next semester of calculus, my composition class is switching to an online version and I look forward to it. I know it will be challenging and time-consuming, but it feels great that schools are providing students with classes that prepare them for the future.

http://www.mywebtimes.com/news/youth/teens-online-courses-prepare-you-for-the-future/article_4cb7bb54-b560-588e-a679-c484173ae283.html

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14826

Negotiating the Many Definitions of Hybrid, Online Classes

By Bradley Fuster, US News

Be proactive in understanding why a school classifies a course as one or the other. As online education evolves, the ways classes are taught aren’t as straightforward as they might have previously been. In course listings, university registrars generally include a column labeled “instructional type.” Historically, this column has contained basic terms such as “traditional,” “hybrid” or “online.” While traditional instruction requires no further explanation, increasingly the lines between hybrid and online courses have become blurred. For example, at some institutions, if a class meets in person just once, it is listed as hybrid.

http://www.usnews.com/education/online-learning-lessons/2016/01/15/negotiating-the-many-definitions-of-hybrid-online-classes

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These 6 questions determine if you’re technology rich, innovation poor

By Alan November, eSchool News

Think your school is innovative with tech? Answer these 6 questions and prepare to reassess innovation. questions. At the start of a webinar I recently conducted for school leaders, I asked attendees if they felt they were leading an innovative school as a result of the implementation of technology. More than 90 percent responded that they were. At the end of the webinar, when polled again, only one leader claimed to be leading an innovative school. The complete reversal was due to a presentation on the six questions that you will read about in this article—a list of questions that were developed to help clarify for educators the unique added value of a digital learning environment, and whether their assignments were making the best use of this environment. Want to test your own level of innovation? The questions we ask to evaluate implementation and define innovation are critical.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2015/01/13/questions-innovation-303/

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from Educational Technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uis/edtech/~3/crus8oZr268/

Teaching Rudimentary Coding Concepts to Students

By Edudemic

After I tested Lightbot for a week in my classroom and analyzed other online reviews, I can unreservedly endorse it as the best educational programming game for iOS and Android. Relative to competitors, Lightbot has a stronger educational orientation and simpler explanations of complex concepts. With Lightbot, educators can not only familiarize students with basic programming, but can also hone students’ problem-solving and logical-reasoning skills. Lightbot is a cut above similar apps, thanks to its simple design and pedagogical focus. Read on to learn how Lightbot works and what makes it the preferred programming education tool.

http://www.edudemic.com/lightbot-teaching-rudimentary-coding-concepts-to-students/

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15 E-Learning statistics you need to know for 2015

by Training Zone

It’s the beginning of a new year and 2015 looks set to be an exciting one for E-Learning! Just before Christmas, we brought you 10 Key E-Learning Trends for 2015 and today we’ve compiled for you a handy infographic with the fifteen E-Learning statistics you need to know for 2015. The digital learning scene changes and expands so fast, it can hard to keep up sometimes. We hope our statistics will help give you an idea of the power of E-Learning and the traits of leading learning organisations!

http://www.trainingzone.co.uk/blogs-post/15-e-learning-statistics-you-need-know-2015/188198

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The Skills Students Learn from Coding

by Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

I have recently received a couple of messages through the Facebook Page of Educational Technology and Mobile Learning about resources on teaching coding to kids soI decided to write this guide. All students are able to learn math, coding originates from mathematical concepts,so all students can learn coding.But why is it that coding and computer science are not yet compulsory subjects in schools? The technological world is advancing in spectacular speed and weirdly enough kids and teenagers are those who are catching up with it the most and yet we do not provide them with a nurturing environment to not only learn about how to use technology for educational purposes but more important learn how this technology works.

http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2014/01/these-are-skills-students-learn-from.html

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My Goals With Google Glass

by Joe Sabado, Student Affairs and Technology Leadership

I have several reasons as to why I decided to commit my money towards this device. It’s the same reason as to why I spend so much time using social media and on my mobile devices. They are integral to my work and my life-long learning. I may be mistaken but I believe wearable computing and internet of things (pervasive/ubiquitous computing) will be part of the next wave of technologies that as a higher education technology professional, I will need to be ready for. I bought Google Glass as part of my preparation and to learn more about these technologies that will become more common sooner than we think. These technologies will bring new opportunities and challenges in higher education in the way we conduct our business and how we provide support and environment towards student learning.

http://joesabado.com/2014/01/my-goals-with-google-glass/

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Coming Soon: Smart Glasses That Look Like Regular Spectacles

By Mike Orcutt, Technology Review

Sunglasses made with nanoscale optical technology hint at a near future of inconspicuous head-mounted displays. Head-mounted displays could transform computing applications such as navigation, translation, gaming, and assisting people with disabilities. For all the hype around smart glasses, none of them actually look like normal glasses. But Vuzix, which develops wearable display technology for military and industrial applications, plans to change that this summer by releasing a pair of sleek wraparound shades that will let users see colorful images projected over objects in the real world.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/523151/coming-soon-smart-glasses-that-look-like-regular-spectacles/

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