How is education being disrupted by technology?

by Krista Garcia, Rappler

In the past 10 years or so, we’ve witnessed a pace of disruption in education that’s unmatched in previous decades. Books, curriculums, and even teachers are rapidly being replaced or complemented by online resources and digital tools such as tablets and mobile phones. Technology has always played a role in equipping students with timely skills and up-to-the minute ideas and discoveries. But now, we see innovations challenging even the very existence of four-walled classrooms and teacher-student ratios. All of these benefit today and tomorrow’s students, as learning becomes cheaper, faster, and more accessible.

https://www.rappler.com/brandrap/futurereadyph/193447-philippines-education-then-now-slideshow

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=35889

Future is online for education

by HSY, the Star

Khan Academy is a free online course consisting of thousands of video courses on almost anything. The question is how can these videos help to revolutionise our education? The founder of Khan Academy, Sal Khan, envisioned a future where students watched and learnt from videos with educational materials at home. Teachers would monitor each student’s progress. Some students are fast learners and others are slow. This is a system that enables everyone to learn at his or her own pace.

https://www.thestar.com.my/opinion/letters/2018/01/15/future-is-online-for-education/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=35899

New Google Classroom features make it easier to learn, teach, manage and build

by Andrew Garrett, Google

Google Classroom is designed for everyone involved in a student’s education. More than 20 million educators and students use it to teach and learn together, as do administrators who oversee how this tool is used across classrooms, and developers who are building educational technology for the next generation. As everyone heads back to school to start the new semester, we’re releasing new Classroom updates designed specifically for each of these groups.

https://blog.google/topics/education/new-google-classroom-features-make-it-easier-learn-teach-manage-and-build/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=22642

How an App Helped Me Build a Classroom Community

By Laura Briggs, the Edvocate

Bloomz provides an easy way for me to communicate with parents, and also lets them communicate privately with me. They all have at least one connected device – whether a phone, computer or tablet, and using my own phone during school allows me to share photos or video, resources, and personal messages with all of my parents. I can send school flyers and announcements, as well as schedule school and classroom events using the calendar. I am completely paperless with my communication, while still keeping parents happy and knowledgeable about what is happening in our class. This additional communication has helped me build a classroom community where parents are engaged and interested in seeing the activities in which their child is participating at school.

http://www.theedadvocate.org/how-an-app-helped-me-build-a-classroom-community/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=22627

When Personalized Learning Is a Logical Fallacy

By Michael Feldstein, EdSurge

Personalized learning is not a product you can buy — it’s a set of strategies that teachers can implement, sometimes with the help of products that are designed to support those strategies. The distinction between adaptive learning and personalized learning, between a tool and a teaching technique, is necessary to the basic logic that enables us to understand how the various parts of any teaching intervention work together to make a difference. When we conflate product talk with learning-intervention talk, we lose our ability to distinguish the factors that are critical to achieving the learning outcomes we want. Until we make this distinction clearly and consistently, we can throw unlimited amounts of money at researching, developing, and promoting the spread of educational technology and still fail to make a difference in students’ lives.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-01-09-when-personalized-learning-is-a-logical-fallacy

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=22612

BOE talks online classes to cover snow days

by CONOR GRIFFITH, TheDPost.com

The Monongalia County Schools Board of Education (BOE) has started working on the calendar for the 2016-’17 school year. The board reviewed details of its annual calendar survey used to gauge the opinions of students’ parents during its Jan. 19 night meeting. One notion being considered for next year is using online lessons to make up for up to five days of missed classes. The survey is asking parents if they would support this measure and if they could provide home Internet to make this happen. Superintendent Frank Devono said if this comes to pass, students would not have to make up a snow day if it was covered via online content. Parental and student feedback plus any changes in state policy by the next school year would factor into whether or not online lessons will be used to make up snow days.

http://thedpost.com/BOE-talks-online-classes-to-cove

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14861

Polk School District getting busy with robots, online learning plans

by Kevin Myrick, Polk County Standard Journal

Students at Rockmart Middle School have kept their creations a bit more grounded and practical, using the Legos Mindstorms kits to put together robots that can bark and walk like a dog and balance on two wheels. The middle school’s robotics connection, taught by Geoffrey Sharpe who also organized the school’s robotics team, brought students from the program to the Polk County Board of Education meeting to show off their skills with bringing their Legos-based drones to life. Sharpe explained during a presentation to the board for their Jan. 12 session how the class has worked so far, and how the robotics competition works. It involves giving students pre-determined challenges and courses, and they have to figure out on their own how to build and program robots to achieve tasks put before them.

http://www.northwestgeorgianews.com/polkfishwrap/news/local/learning-lessons-in-tech-polk-school-district-getting-busy-with/article_1d676f7c-bec6-11e5-8522-7bcf4efb5c34.html

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14859

Ramping Up for the 2016 Mobile Explosion With Wave 1 and Wave 2

By Toni Fuhrman, eCampus News

Lorraine Abraham, CIO and library director of Emory and Henry College (VA), is not taking any chances. “We’re replacing the entire network infrastructure,” she said, noting that E&H will be fully prepared by installing the latest WiFi technology: 802.11ac Wave 2. “When you only upgrade every eight years,” she asserted, “you have to get the latest and greatest.” E&H decided to start now by installing the technology of the future – some of which will not come into play for about a year. With a campus that’s small (1,100 students) and remote (“Our neighbors are cows”) in the beautiful Appalachian Highlands, E&H has to work harder to accommodate its students – 85 percent of whom live on campus. Sean O’Connor, assistant CIO for Worcester Polytechnic Institute (MA), is also opting for Wave 2, but for different reasons. “We want to be more agile for students and faculty,”

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/01/12/ramping-up-for-the-2016-mobile-explosion-with-wave-1-and-wave-2.aspx

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14856

50+ Tools for Differentiating Instruction Through Social Media

by John McCarthy, Edutopia

Can you recall a time when student interests like skateboarding or video were never used as part of learning curriculum because the tools needed were either too expensive or not yet conceptualized? Do you remember a time when non-traditional learners struggled, and absenteeism meant a high likelihood of students doing poorly in school, and possibly having to retake the course? If you experienced none of these scenarios, then you live in a world of possibility because you grew up with the many social media tools available to support all learners. If any of these scenarios bring back memories as a teacher or student, then you understand that we have many more tools today to ensure that learners succeed despite struggles, because students and teachers have so much more available to meet every learner’s needs.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/differentiated-instruction-social-media-tools-john-mccarthy

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from Educational Technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uis/edtech/~3/OTx1RSA8UuY/

Video Boot Camp

by Bill Selak, Edutopia

The rapid adoption of devices in the classroom has fundamentally changed the way we can create video. Every part of the creation process — writing, recording, editing, and distributing — is possible on the devices that can fit in our pocket. Vision is the most dominant of the five senses. Research shows that concepts are better remembered if they are taught visually. This is called the pictorial superiority effect, and it’s why video is such a powerful learning tool. Curating content is another significant way to incorporate video into your classroom. If you don’t have the time or software to make a fancy video, odds are someone has already made it and shared it on YouTube. This Film Festival is equal parts curation and creation.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/five-minute-film-festival-video-boot-camp

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from Educational Technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uis/edtech/~3/EaWE_E7F7Ew/

4 ways a GoPro can boost your campus profile

By Meris Stansbury, eSchool News

3D printers, digital signage, educational video games—there’s just some technology that, while not vital to day-to-day campus operation, helps boost student engagement and communication, and ultimately makes your campus stand out from the competition. Enter the GoPro camera. Often reserved for cool YouTube videos about extreme sports or creepy videos of cheerleaders hula-hooping, innovative institutions looking to technology as a branding and marketing tool are now using GoPro cameras to highlight campus life, build international brand awareness, enhance student campus activities, and even enrich lab work.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/gopro-education-campus-889/

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from Educational Technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uis/edtech/~3/ccBkF3ZZhoY/

The Current State Of MOOCs

By Katie Lepi, edudemic

MOOCs are still eliciting buzz in the academic world. But MOOCs are about more than just education – they are a huge social presence and inhabit a network of their own. Big name universities have signed on to back many of the courses, lending some credibility to the land of online learning. With MOOCs gaining traction quickly and millions of learners signing on, the appeal is quite powerful. The handy infographic linked below takes a look at some interesting facts and statistics about MOOCs.

http://www.edudemic.com/state-of-moocs/

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from Educational Technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uis/edtech/~3/ZYu4eV81k8c/

2 Pros And 2 Cons To Education Technology

By David Johnson, Edudemic

Use of education technology is a somewhat problematic premise, because it has generated a heated debate on whether it helps or hinders learning. Recent dramatic increases in technology in our society have led to proliferation of technology in the learning institutions (from elementary school to the graduate school) at a rapid rate. Integration of technology in schools has changed today’s education and also the way teachers and students use their classrooms. These changes have both positive and negative impact on learning. Here is how technology helps and hinders education.

http://www.edudemic.com/education-technology-pros-cons/

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from Educational Technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uis/edtech/~3/UTyDRbSf2mI/

Ed tech wars: Udemy takes mobile MOOCs to Android

Lauren Hepler, Silicon Valley Business Journal

Education technology startup Udemy on has released its first Android app, adding to mobile competition for students interested in online classes. Coursera, a Stanford-bred Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) provider and Udemy rival released its first iOS application in late 2013. Udemy’s first Android applicationis a new frontier for providers of Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, which have only recently started experimenting with apps for iPhones and iPads.

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/01/10/udemy-takes-the-ed-tech-and-mooc.html

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