3 must-have skills for today’s librarians

BY SUSAN K.S. GRIGSBY, eSchool News

Districts nationwide are looking for new and innovative ways to provide training and resources for their staff, all while keeping within a limited budget. What many administrators fail to notice is that their greatest asset is already in their building. It’s the 21st century, and school librarians are no longer just “the keepers of the books.” Librarians and media specialists are highly trained, highly versatile staff members, whose scope of responsibilities spans all students and all subjects. We embrace a train-the-trainer model when adopting new technologies or programs, so I make sure that our librarians have the training they need to not only implement these innovations, but to share them with their teachers. I want our school librarians to be seen as experts in new tools and resources, so I teach all of them these three essential skills:

https://www.eschoolnews.com/2017/07/17/3-must-skills-todays-librarians/

Share on Facebook

from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=29892

4 ways to update critical thinking skills for a massively digital world

BY JENNIFER CONROY, eSchool News

Faced with a flood of information, we are challenged to evaluate and make sense of what we see and read, especially in the digital world. Parents, students, educators, and employers all have a stake in meeting this challenge through the use of critical thinking skills. It is vital that people develop the ability to analyze the information they encounter online and assess whether they can trust the sources behind the content. But how can these important skills be taught and strengthened? Based on my own experiences teaching both high school and college students, here are four suggestions on how critical thinking skills can be taught in the digital age:

https://www.eschoolnews.com/2017/07/19/update-critical-thinking-skills/

Share on Facebook

from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=29877

Girls Learn Virtuous Hacking at Tandon School of Engineering

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

The program, Computer Science for Cyber Security (CS4CS), lasts three weeks and will culminate with a cyber-mystery that involves, aptly, the theft of Wonder Woman’s iconic lasso. The students meet daily, Monday through Friday. During the first part of the camp, they receive lessons in programming, depending on their level of expertise. Then they receive an introduction to cryptography, by examining the classic cyphers, frequency analysis, hashing and related topics. From there, it’s onto operating systems, steganography (the study of message concealment) and image analysis, networks, the web, databases and forensics. The program is led by members of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and the Offensive Security, Incident Response and Internet Security (OSIRIS) Laboratory.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2017/07/17/girls-learn-virtuous-hacking-at-tandon-school-of-engineering.aspx

Share on Facebook

from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=29862

Amazon’s New Market? Student Loans

By Andrew Kreighbaum, Inside Higher Ed

The online retail giant’s promise to provide “discounted” student loans through a new partnership with Wells Fargo elicits concerns from consumer advocates about possible duping of students. Search “student loans” on Amazon.com and the results include titles like The Student Loan Scam and The Student Loan Mess: How Good Intentions Created a Trillion-Dollar Problem. Now the online retail giant is becoming involved in the student loan sector itself through a partnership with Wells Fargo. On Thursday, Amazon and the banking and financial services company announced a partnership through which Amazon Prime Student members will be eligible for a 0.5 percentage point reduction on their interest rate for private student loans taken out through Wells Fargo Education Financial Services.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/07/22/amazon-wells-fargo-partnership-private-student-loans-troubles-consumer-advocates

Share on Facebook

from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=16405

Stanford Course Prepares Educators For The New School Year

by Stanford

A three-week online course specifically designed to help K-12 teachers and administrators foster a culture of productive and respectful communication in their classrooms starts August 2016. The standards particularly describe the importance of students understanding the reasoning of others and engaging in meaningful conversations using critical thinking. Stanford University’s world renowned Graduate School of Education has launched a short online course designed specifically to help educators create rich and meaningful opportunities for communication within the classroom. The course, Effective Conversation in the Classroom, launches this August with three online sessions. K-12 classroom instructors, instructional coaches, and educational administrators are invited to enroll.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/stanford-course-prepares-educators-for-the-new-school-year-300299709.html

Share on Facebook

from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=16402

15 Things You Should Know Before Learning to Code Online

by SKILLCRUSH, AlleyWatch

There are some questions you need to ask yourself before you decide if learning to code online is right for you (it probably is! But I might be biased…), and more importantly, what kind of online class is going to be the most likely to lead to success. There are online subscriptions, mentorship programs, resource libraries, and everything in-between. And there isn’t a single right way to learn to code online. While one person might need a structure and schedule to stay on track, another person might want unlimited access to move at her own pace. If you’re not sure how to decide which online course is right for you, then ask yourself these fifteen questions to get a better handle on the kind of learning environment you need to be successful.

http://www.alleywatch.com/2016/07/15-things-know-learning-code-online/

Share on Facebook

from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=16399

This Is What Today’s Online Learning Content Tells Us About The Future Of School

by Jordan Shapiro, Forbes

Today’s children are extremely savvy. They’ve grown up in a world where information was always just a button away. Buttons? Soon, they won’t even need buttons. With Windows 10, they’ll simply say, “hey Cortana.” She’s more like the world’s greatest librarian than a personal assistant. She delivers content on command. In the future, after children have mastered reading, writing, and arithmetic, will more formal schooling still be necessary? Because of the unprecedented access we now have to information, some folks think that online self-directed learning will soon replace traditional education as we know it. They imagine that open, web-based solutions like Khan Academy, Lynda, EdX, and Coursera—perhaps paired with a system of certifications—can address most of society’s education needs. Professors, in a world where information is ubiquitous, could become more like curators than instructors.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanshapiro/2015/07/19/this-is-what-todays-online-learning-content-tells-us-about-the-future-of-school/

Share on Facebook

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

The Maker Movement and the Classroom

By Dustin Le, Edudemic

The Maker Movement is a new trend based on old school traditions in which the philosophy of doing, building, and creating prevails over just simply buying. Instead of going to the toy store, people are learning how to design and 3D print their own toys. Instead of shopping for furniture, people are going to local community workshops like TechShop and building their own custom chairs and tables. The Maker Mentality creates a powerful paradigm shift by eliminating the separation between consumer and producer. By looking at the benefits and upsides of the Maker Movement and analyzing why it has reemerged, we can use it productively in the classroom by intertwining these new techniques with the classic methods such as lecture, reading, and so on.

http://www.edudemic.com/maker-movement-classroom/

Share on Facebook

from Educational Technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uis/edtech/~3/_jRslO1C4jg/

Baker sees gigabit Internet as important competitive edge

By Elvyn Jones, LJ World

All is on schedule for the Baldwin City campus to have fiber optic gigabit Internet access in the first or second week of August, said Bosch and Andy Jett, Baker’s chief information officer and vice president of strategic planning and academic resources. With that, gigabit access will be available in all university academic halls, sports venues, the Harter Student Union and residence halls, where 500 of the about 930 undergraduates on Baker’s Baldwin City campus reside. Faster Internet access will help improve Baker’s administrative efficiency and will have significant academic consequences going forward, but Jett said an important immediate factor for Baker administrators was the competitive edge it affords in recruiting high school graduates who grew up socializing, playing games, watching movies and TV shows and completing homework assignments on laptops, tablets and smartphones.

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2015/jul/20/baker-sees-gigabit-internet-important-competitive-/

Share on Facebook

from Educational Technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uis/edtech/~3/pnGt9lAoBx0/

A Starting Point for Ensuring Student Online Privacy

by Anne O’Brien, Edutopia

Two recent documents — NSBA’s Data in the Cloud and the U.S. Department of Education’s Protecting Student Privacy While Using Online Educational Services — offer good introductions to issues of student privacy in the cloud-computing era. Both also provide practical tips to help protect student privacy. While these tips are geared towards the district level, it is vital that all educators — teachers, principals, school counselors and others — understand the implications.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/starting-point-ensuring-student-online-privacy-anne-obrien

Share on Facebook



from Educational Technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uis/edtech/~3/rac5iNJH5RI/

Teach Coding in the Classroom: Resources from ISTE ‘14

by Ashley Cronin, Edutopia

In an attempt to heed Dave Guymon’s call to share the ISTE learning (see his blog post on Getting Smart, “Don’t Leave Your Learning Behind: What To Do Now That #ISTE2014 Is Over”), here are some resources discussed by a group of elementary and secondary educators during a morning session on coding in the classroom. No matter what grade or subject you teach, you’re certain to find something here you can use. Notes from this and several other sessions can be found on the wiki for ISTE Unplugged; also check out the Twitter stream from the event at #HackEd14 or #HackEducation.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/teach-coding-classroom-resources-iste-14

Share on Facebook



from Educational Technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uis/edtech/~3/BVMPT-359kE/

Studies show significance of using text reminders for millennials

by Brad Mannion and Sam Newton, Red and Black

Conducting their research on a group of 800 community college students, Castleman, an assistant professor of education and public policy at the University of Virginia, and Page, a research assistant professor of education at the University of Pittsburgh, used the organization uAspire to send text messages to students concerning the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, along with maintaining academic requirements. Of the students in the treatment or control group, the study found 64 percent of students in the control group, which did not receive text reminders, persisted with aid reapplication to their sophomore year.But for students in the treatment group, who did receive text reminders, 76 percent continuted on to their sophomore year. uAspire also provided an inexpensive way to send text messages at $5 per student during the study. Generation Opportunity, a millennial advocacy group, found that young Americans are more likely to vote in an election if sent a reminder via Facebook messaging or text.

http://www.redandblack.com/uganews/studies-show-significance-of-using-text-reminders-for-millennials/article_024c55fc-09f7-11e4-ac97-0017a43b2370.html

Share on Facebook



from Educational Technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uis/edtech/~3/W1_tDjArjjo/