Evergreen schools transition from paper to pixels

By Katie Gillespie, Columbian

District adopts online classes, digital textbooks for eight subjects. Evergreen Public Schools this summer will begin shifting from paper textbooks to virtual ones. The school board at its Tuesday meeting approved digital curriculum and material for eight subjects ranging from kindergarten science and math to high school Advanced Placement psychology. The curriculum includes online class work, as well as additional printed materials. The school board will consider additional curriculum throughout the summer. The curriculum replaces textbooks for some classes as the district prepares to put laptop computers in the hands of all its students from third grade to senior year this year. Younger students will also use computers and the newly adopted material in the classroom, but won’t take the devices home. Vancouver and Battle Ground school districts are also rolling out digital curriculum.

http://www.columbian.com/news/2017/jun/24/evergreen-schools-transition-from-paper-to-pixels/

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Schools let students take laptops home to stop the ’summer slide’

by Mollie Simon, NPR

When principal Kelli Hoffman ran into her students at a McDonald’s during summer break, she knew they weren’t there for the McNuggets. The two rising eighth-graders at French Middle School had invested in a Coke to unlock a bigger prize: free Wi-Fi. They sat logged into their school-provided Chromebooks studying exercise ideas from their sports coaches. Hoffman’s district, Topeka Public Schools in Kansas, is one of a rising number of systems that are letting students take their school-issued devices home over the summer months.

http://www.scpr.org/news/2017/06/24/73206/schools-let-students-take-laptops-home-to-stop-the/

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Have Media Habits Changed Among Millennials and Teens?

by eMarketer

Millennials say they are spending more time with video and social, but they are not necessarily cutting back their time with other media. But according to a recent study, younger internet users, those ages 13 to 17, are shifting away from text-based online content—and a bit from TV—while spending more time with video and social. Change* in Usage of Select Media According to US Teen vs. Millennial Internet Users, March 2017 (% of respondents) The data comes from a March 2017 survey by streaming solutions and content provider Fullscreen and market research agency Leflein Associates, which polled 1,173 US internet users ages 13 to 34.

https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Have-Media-Habits-Changed-Among-Millennials-Teens/1016040

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How—and Why—We Can Improve the Future of Mobile Learning

By Chuck Cohn, EdSurge

When Massive Open Online Courses (or MOOCs) were first introduced, people quickly realized these platforms could help students learn more effectively at their own pace on their own schedule. “Formal” education was no longer constrained to traditional classroom hours, if it ever was. This development, combined with tremendous growth in mobile device usage due to improved technology, naturally led to a shift in mobile learning patterns. Students were now free to engage with diverse educational content—videos, podcasts, interactive games, and so on—from any location with a cellular signal.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2016-07-09-how-and-why-we-can-improve-the-future-of-mobile-learning

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Coursera president: bursting the Moocs bubble a boon for us

By Chris Havergal, Times Higher Education

Daphne Koller says online platform reached millions of learners largely because of the publicity, both good and bad, about Moocs. Some academics enjoyed nothing more than seeing the “Moocs bubble” burst. But it turns out that those who scoffed at massive open online courses may have unwittingly been playing into the hands of the innovation they were disparaging. Daphne Koller, president and co-founder of Coursera, told Times Higher Education that the hype around online courses and whether they would destroy traditional universities had been the biggest driver of student recruitment to her company, the world’s largest Mooc platform. Koller said Coursera – which now has 18 million users and 140 course providers, including some of the world’s leading universities – was “making significant, steady progress in democratising access to education”.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/coursera-president-bursting-moocs-bubble-boon-us

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DIY Co. launches JAM to help kids learn what they don’t in school, with a little help from Cartoon Network

by Lora Kolodny, Tech Crunch

DIY Co., the education tech startup led by Vimeo designer and co-founder Zach Klein, has launched a new online learning platform for kids called JAM.com. The company also quietly closed a $4 million round of venture funding led by Learn Capital, joined by Spark Capital, at the end of 2015 to support the development of JAM, Klein told TechCrunch. Courses on DIY’s new site JAM were created for kids up to age 14. Klein said, “There’s a huge landscape of skills worth kids learning now that schools aren’t teaching, and a new set of teachers who aren’t full-time educators willing to help them.”

https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/08/diy-co-launches-jam-to-help-kids-learn-what-they-dont-in-school-with-a-little-help-from-cartoon-network/

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MOOC Watch: Users flock to online grammar course from the University of Queensland

by Tim Dodd, Financial Review

The University of Queensland (UQ) will again run its hugely popular massive open online course on English Grammar and Style, which 50,000 students enrolled in when it was first offered last year. The eight-week course will be run again starting on July 26 and promises to show students how to apply grammar and syntax to “produce coherent, economical, and compelling writing”. So far it has 10,000 enrolments, a number which is likely to rise sharply in the weeks up to the start date. So popular is the course that it is currently the highlighted MOOC on the edX website.

http://www.afr.com/technology/apps/education/mooc-watch-users-flock-to-online-grammar-course-from-the-university-of-queensland-20150703-gi1rav

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Skating and school: Local athlete excels on ice, and online classes

by  Jackson Long, Courier-Gazette

For one local McKinney athlete, a lifelong passion for figure skating has transformed into exciting opportunities on the world stage. Emily Chan began figure skating just before she turned 4 years old, when she was drawn to the sport after attending a friend’s birthday party at an ice rink. “I loved it so much, my mom brought me back again and again and started taking lessons from my coaches,” Chan said. Now, having recently graduated from the Texas Online Preparatory School (TOPS) as valedictorian, competing in her first international competition and gearing up to attend the University of Texas at Dallas for biomedicine in the fall, Chan has her sights set on an ultimate goal.

http://starlocalmedia.com/mckinneycouriergazette/sports/skating-and-school-local-athlete-excels-on-ice-and-online/article_d074c6be-210a-11e5-a014-0b5a3cafe0c8.html

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As Virtual Virginia gears up for full high-school program, some concerns remain

by Michael Bragg, Daily Progress

Christina Draper has a son in high school who does very well on his Standard of Learning tests, but his grades tell a different story. Her son, a student at Eastern View High School in Culpeper County, is smart, she said, but is easily distracted and can become a distraction to other students. “He has trouble sitting still in class, and because of that, he gets easily distracted and then he becomes a distraction to others, and then the teachers have to interrupt their lesson to get him to quiet down,” she said. Draper said her son has done homeschooling before and works better and stays on track in smaller settings. And now there’s a program Draper’s son has been accepted into that allows him to take high school classes in that smaller, independent setting and still be a public school student.

http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/education/as-virtual-virginia-gears-up-for-full-high-school-program/article_223c6708-2125-11e5-8b4b-b77f224731e7.html

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Why Udacity CEO Sebastian Thrun is rolling out

by Jason McCormick, Silicon Valley Business Journal

“There’s a huge skills gap. At some level, we’re trying to fill that skills gap,” said Thrun, who also is director of Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. We’re trying to give people a chance to find the right skills and build a pathway for them to learn the latest education in those spaces.” It’s all a part of online education growing up, and reflects a move into the professional skills market we documented back in November. Udacity has partnered in its new program with a number of large employers, including AT&T Inc. and Google Inc. The nanodegree programs will launch in the fall and focus on entry-level Web development and data analytics.

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/07/02/why-udacity-ceo-sebastianthrun-is-rolling-out.html

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Online courses future of higher ed

by ALLIE ROBINSON GIBSON, Bristol Herald Courier

Open online courses might be the way of the future for higher education, said a local educator. Rachel Fowlkes, executive director of the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center, spoke to the Kiwanis Club of Abingdon this week about MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses, which are often free classes taught by professors worldwide. Several prestigious institutions — in Virginia, the University of Virginia is involved — offer MOOCs, and it’s an easy and inexpensive way for folks to take a quality class, Fowlkes said. “We’re constantly looking for new ways” to educate students, she said. “We have and will embrace MOOCs as a way for people to develop their skills and goals.” She said MOOCs won’t replace campus-based education, but can help at places like the Higher Ed Center, which is a collaboration of colleges and universities throughout the state.

http://www.tricities.com/news/local/article_6d1686cc-025f-11e4-9dab-0017a43b2370.html

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Disruptive Innovation And Education

by Michael Horn, Forbes

What’s exciting here though is that through disruption, we have the opportunity to make a quality higher education fundamentally affordable and thereby allow many more people access to its benefits. The disruptions happening throughout education more generally afford us an opportunity to revisit how we cultivate children’s learning and futures—and hopefully allow us to do it in a way that is even better, given what we now know today. That’s not preordained either, of course, but we have the opportunity. It’s now all of our turn to shape it appropriately.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelhorn/2014/07/02/disruptive-innovation-and-education/

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