10 Best Cheap Online Courses For High School Students

by GABRIELA VATU, Insider Monkey

As the time for college approaches, students may want to look into various courses they can take which could help them decide what they want to do in life, not to mention that any extra classes will look good in the application, so take a look at the best cheap online courses for high school students. While numerous places offer extracurricular classes, especially during the summer, we decided to look at the world’s top universities and see what type of classes they are offering. Even if you end up studying elsewhere, at least you had the chance to learn something from a prestigious school before you even hit the necessary age. In addition to this, you may also want to check out these 10 most popular courses on Udemy right now and see if anything catches your eye.

http://www.insidermonkey.com/blog/10-best-free-online-courses-for-high-school-students-590595/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=29812

10 Apps to Help Students with Their Science Homework

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Science can be hard. Science homework can be harder, especially when the teacher isn’t there to help. Many parents now are struggling to help students with their STEM and Common Core aligned science homework, no matter what specific scientific branch it is. Rather than spend money on a tutor, surf the Internet for hours, or try to squeeze a few minutes out of a teacher’s free time, students can, instead, use these ten apps to help themselves with their homework. This way, students can take charge of their own learning and homework skills.

http://www.theedadvocate.org/10-apps-help-students-science-homework/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=29797

Study: Potential earnings not a factor in high school students’ college choices

by ISAAC CAREY, Hechinger Report

Researchers gave students at participating high schools in Virginia access to a state-backed website called gradpathva.com, which analyzed the average wage earned by graduates and the average cost of enrollment, sorted by university and type of program. The students used the website rarely, and did not seem to base their academic decisions on it. During the three-year study, researchers were able to see where students ended up going to college, and what type of programs they chose to pursue. There was no evidence that access to salary data had a detectable impact. The next step, Blagg said, is to add information about graduates’ salaries to those larger websites students already use. Most freshmen who entered college last fall ranked “finding a good job” among their principal reasons for going to college, according to a survey by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. Information about what they’ll eventually earn is particularly helpful for high-achieving low-income students, the Urban Institute report said.

http://hechingerreport.org/study-potential-earnings-not-factor-high-school-students-college-choices/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=29786

Indiana CIO Brad Wheeler Provides Update on Unizin

By David Raths, Campus Technology

Unizin’s co-founder describes the consortium’s focus on content, learner interaction platforms and analytics, and what it hopes to achieve this year. During a July 14 Future Trends Forum video chat hosted by consultant and futurist Bryan Alexander, Wheeler described Unizin’s focus on giving institutions control over their own content and data. “It is pretty exciting that we can go from faculty-authored content delivered through a platform owned by the academy to all the digital tracks coming off of it into repositories owned by the academy that are available for IRB-approved research,” he said. “We don’t have to ask for our data back. It is our data, and our students’ data. That is an important thing for the future. We are hoping to enable the means of improving digital education through the institutions being able to assert a much greater degree of control around content, learner interaction platforms and analytics.” By the end of the calendar year, Wheeler added, Unizin anticipates that researchers from different institutions will be able to coordinate research efforts with cross-institutional data sets.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/07/18/indiana-cio-brad-wheeler-provides-update-on-unizin.aspx

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=16387

Stanford Debuts Online Communication Course for Teachers

By Joshua Bolkan, Campus Technology

Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education has launched a new online course, Effective Conversation in the Classroom, designed to help educators learn to create rich and meaningful conversations in their classrooms. “Each session includes expert video screencasts, classroom video clips, readings and resources and assignments that will help participants create a strong foundation of communication within the classroom,” according to a news release. “The course has been developed by Understanding Language/SCALE, a Stanford research and practice center focused on K-12 language and performance assessment. The teaching team consists of Stanford Professor Emeritus Kenji Hakuta, Senior Researcher Dr. Jeff Zwiers and Lecturer Dr. Sara Rutherford-Quach.”

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/07/19/stanford-debuts-online-communication-course-for-teachers.aspx

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=16385

Delft University attracts one million students for its online courses Education

by DutchNews.nl

Delft University of Technology has signed up its one millionth student for its online lectures or Massive Open Online Course programme. The university launched its first courses, on solar energy and water treatment, in September 2013. It now offers 36 different MOOCs, ranging from ‘leadership for engineers’ to aerospace. There is even a programming class, in Dutch, geared towards children ages 8 and up Students can select which courses to take via edX, a non-profit platform for online education that is also used by MIT, Harvard and other universities to make their courses available to anyone on the planet with access to the internet. Some 20% of Delft’s subscribers hail from the United States and 13% are based in India. The most popular course so far has been solar energy, which has drawn 131,000 enrolments. Creative Problem Solving, the second most popular, has attracted 113,000.

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2016/07/delft-university-attracts-one-million-students-for-its-online-courses/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=16382

Internet and Technology: Are digital natives really equipped?

by Jamil Ezzo, the Peninsula

Being born into the age of information and communications technology (ICT) does not certify today’s youth to be experts in digital technology. Today’s generation admittedly have exceptional proficiency in the use of computers and laptops along with mobile and social media technologies, possessing a good level of digital literacy. Nevertheless, they still need to be formally educated to use technology to advance society further; otherwise, they will become ‘digital orphans’ who lack the qualifications or experiences to get meaningful employment. Surveys suggest that the majority of young people do not possess the skills and abilities required by today’s job markets. It has become a challenge for companies to recruit somebody who is digitally literate and can make the most of the internet and what digital technology has to offer rather than just a digital native who has led an active virtual life but lacks the skills to use the medium to deal with the needs of the work environment.

http://thepeninsulaqatar.com/life-style/techfile/347876/internet-and-technology-are-digital-natives-really-equipped

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from Educational Technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uis/edtech/~3/6D9xFlflvKQ/

How online training increases employee engagement

by Roz Bahrami, IT Business Canada

Engaged workers matter because they are the loyal ones who will go the extra mile, offer the innovative idea, and work with passion when needed to meet deadlines and keep a company going. Actively disengaged employees can harm a company, acting out their disgruntlement and unhappiness. Companies despair when they think that the price of engagement may be too high an investment for them to offer during tough and competitive times. But it doesn’t have to be. One highly effective way you can change the morale and engagement in your workplace is to offer training as part of your employee development activities. Even with a very small budget, you can offer online courses that send the message you believe and value to your employees as you want to tie your employees to you for the future.

http://www.itbusiness.ca/blog/how-online-training-increases-employee-engagement/56882

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New Waseca schools math curriculum shows greater focus on mastery, online learning

By JACOB STARK, Waseca County News

A new math curriculum coming to Waseca schools will offer a different approach for students from fourth through 12th grade, showing a shift toward more direct mastery of mathematical concepts. At the high school level, four different textbook series were examined. While the classes had online portions previously, Swanson said that they left room for improvement. “You really have to know the material and know the math to know what you’re looking at,” she said. The difference with the online portion for the new series is that the online lessons are aligned directly with lessons from the book, allowing students to have a lesson retaught if there was something they didn’t understand in class.

http://www.southernminn.com/waseca_county_news/news/article_9a879ef0-40ce-5e13-876f-ebe4d001354d.html

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Decoding the hidden messages in Satya Nadella’s letter to Microsoft employees

by Ed Bott, ZD Net

When the CEO makes a big speech, even if it’s delivered on a Snowfall-style web page, it’s carefully vetted by the company’s brain trust (and by its lawyers). And you don’t have to play Kremlinologist to discern major themes for the next year or two. Just as it pays to read annual reports carefully, it’s also worth picking out the substance buried beneath the yadda-yadda in a presentation like this one. Here are five small but meaningful details that caught my attention.

http://www.zdnet.com/decoding-the-hidden-messages-in-satya-nadellas-letter-to-microsoft-employees-7000031472

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Alternative programs show signs of success

by CHERYL BURKE, Carteret County News-Times

Nearly 200 county students were served through public school alternative learning programs last year, and results are paying off, according to County Schools Assistant Superintendent Mat Bottoms. “Results are very positive,” said Mr. Bottoms during the County Board of Education meeting Tuesday in the school system’s central services office on Safrit Drive. Mr. Bottoms said high schools focus mainly on students with high incidents of attendance issues and students who lack enough credits to graduate with their peer group. The high schools use a combination of online learning, computer-based learning and small group settings to assist students.

http://www.carolinacoastonline.com/news_times/article_f50fa266-090d-11e4-86a8-001a4bcf887a.html

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