Tablets at the Table Can Influence a Child – Not always in a Positive Way

by Matthew Lynch, tech Edvocate

Research shows that 75% to 80% of parents now use technology to placate or distract children, for example on a long car trip, waiting for a doctor’s appointment, when mum or dad is cooking dinner, or when it’s nap time. While this strategy works, it raises important questions about how children will develop all the social skills they need for our world. Screens may ward off kids’ complaints (or complaints from adults around us) but we’re doing children a disservice if our go-to strategy is always to use technology to keep them quiet.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/tablets-table-can-influence-child-development-not-always-good-way/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=28159

Trump’s first full education budget: Deep cuts to public school programs in pursuit of school choice

By Emma Brown, Valerie Strauss and Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, Washington Post

Funding for college work-study programs would be cut in half, public-service loan forgiveness would end and hundreds of millions of dollars that public schools could use for mental health, advanced coursework and other services would vanish under a Trump administration plan to cut $10.6 billion from federal education initiatives, according to budget documents obtained by The Washington Post. The administration would channel part of the savings into its top priority: school choice. It seeks to spend about $400 million to expand charter schools and vouchers for private and religious schools, and another $1 billion to push public schools to adopt choice-friendly policies.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/trumps-first-full-education-budget-deep-cuts-to-public-school-programs-in-pursuit-of-school-choice/2017/05/17/2a25a2cc-3a41-11e7-8854-21f359183e8c_story.html

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=28144

Taking Out Student Loans? Here Are 4 Ways Trump’s Budget Could Affect You

by Kaitlin Mulhere, Money

A first look at President Trump’s proposed 2018 education budget revealed massive changes to the federal financial aid system, including work study cuts, reshaping student loan payments, and eliminating a loan forgiveness program. The White House’s official 2018 draft budget proposal outline a more than $9 billion cut to the Education Department. The department’s spokeswoman Liz Hill said in an email that the department wasn’t commenting on the budget until it was released next week and that until then, negotiations are ongoing and numbers are preliminary. A president’s spending proposal has to go through Congress before becoming a budget, so it’s possible these cuts will be tweaked or removed from the final version altogether. Still, they reveal Trump’s and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s education priorities. Here’s what’s on the chopping block for college students and student loan borrowers.

http://time.com/money/4784214/trump-2018-budget-education-cuts-student-loans/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=28129

Colorado State bringing AI into online psych courses next fall

By Tara García Mathewson, Education Dive

Artificial intelligence software from Boston-based Cognii will use natural language processing to offer immediate feedback to Colorado State University psychology students on essay assignments. Xconomy reports the software works like voice-command programs on smartphones, where instead of answering a question, the program asks one and then determines how students could improve their response to be more accurate. The software is expected to help students during formative assignments, improving the quality of work they eventually submit to professors, and it will give instructors a new layer of insight into student performance, including analytics data.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/colorado-state-bringing-ai-into-online-psych-courses-next-fall/420305/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=15983

Online vs hybrid: The big divide in education start-ups

by Sadhana Chathurvedula, Live Mint

Some of the online education providers that have quickly scaled up operations through videos, online tests and chat forums are beginning to realize the benefits of mentoring and collaborative learning, usually associated with classroom learning. US-based Udacity Inc., one of the best-known education start-ups which provided only online classes so far recently launched Udacity Connect, a program where learners could interact with each others as well as with teachers. In a blog post, the company claimed learners in such a model were three times as likely to complete their program. Udacity is yet to introduce the program in India, which has both online-only education providers—the preferred solution since it is easier to scale up—and hybrid learning providers who offer a mix of online learning and offline sessions. The latter limits scale and is more difficult to implement.

http://www.livemint.com/Companies/FdshzhjaZOkYe1wf01rq7I/Online-vs-hybrid-The-big-divide-in-education-startups.html

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=15981

South Carolina House Introduces Bill to Expand Course Options for Public School Students

by MICHAEL MCGRADY, Heartland

A South Carolina bill to expand public school students’ access to credit-bearing courses from public schools, colleges, nonprofit organizations, employers, and other course providers was introduced in the House on April 14, 2016. The bill failed to progress to the Senate in time to meet the crossover deadline of May 1 for the current legislative session. State Rep. Todd Atwater (R-Lexington) introduced House Bill 5216, the South Carolina Course Access Act. The bill was referred to the House Committee on Education and Public Works on April 14, 2016, but the state Department of Education opposed the bill in its current form. The Course Access Act is designed to provide students state funding and full class credit for completing state-approved courses which are offered by a number of course providers in a variety of formats.

http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2016/06/02/south-carolina-house-introduces-bill-expand-course-options-public-schoo

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=15978

Why Teachers and Students Should Blog

By Hanna Shekhter, Edudemic

Blogs have the potential expand student creativity, not to mention their writing skills. Language Arts and Reading specialists will love that, right? But how do I convince them that their students are thirsty for the knowledge they want to share but not the same way that they themselves obtained it? These kids are 21st century students and are adapting to a digital world that they are eager to learn from. Fortunately for teachers, blogs are surprisingly easy to use. They require minimum technical knowledge and are quickly and easily created and maintained. Students will be able to pick up how to use blogging platforms with minimal technical assistance and teachers will enjoy the ease in the initial setup. Unlike many traditional Web sites, blogs are flexible in design and can be changed relatively easily.

http://www.edudemic.com/how-and-why-teachers-should-blog/

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from Educational Technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uis/edtech/~3/RzBJbCPFhD4/

Online education options for school-aged kids this summer

By Michelle Quinn, Mercury News

In researching online education opportunities for her children to keep their brains active this summer, columnist Michelle Quinn landed on these options. For more, the Alameda County Office of Education has a blog post with dozens of online educational options:.

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_28208732/online-education-options-school-aged-kids-this-summer

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from Educational Technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uis/edtech/~3/L3zL2ZX9WiQ/

3 must-dos for caring for your mobile devices

by Roger High, eSchool News

While mobile learning continues to work its way further into educational institutions, administrators and their team of educators are faced with a new set of issues. How will our teachers and students learn to use these devices? What happens when students break or lose their tablets? These issues and more are bound to arise as the education industry explores new ways to leverage mobile devices in the classroom. Linked below are three necessities to consider for running a successful mobile education plan and keeping devices in good working order.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2015/05/29/mobile-devices-209/

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from Educational Technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uis/edtech/~3/l4E7wfZ0_Fw/

IT Departments Not Losing Ground to Managed Service Providers (Yet)

By CIO

Many business users say they’re fed up with what they perceive as sluggish IT departments, but cringe at the thought of outsourcing to a managed services provider. However, the rise of BYOD, consumer tech and cloud computing may be clearing a path for change. The idea that the formal IT department would melt away either piece-by-piece or wholesale, replaced by managed services providers (MSPs), has been hanging over the heads of CIOs for nearly a decade. While the option — or threat, depending on how you look at it — is a legitimate and viable one, it hasn’t come to pass yet for many companies, according to a new study from CompTIA.

http://www.cio.com/article/751767/IT_Departments_Not_Losing_Ground_to_Managed_Service_Providers_Yet_

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

5 Robots from Solid that’ll make our lives easier and definitely won’t kill us all

by ROBERTO BALDWIN, The Next Web

The Solid conference in San Francisco is a two-day hardware event showcasing what’s new and exciting in the world of tangible items. After years of worshiping at the feet of software, hardware development is making a come back. Some of the reasons that hardware development is on the upswing is the wider acceptance of 3D printing and the ability to quickly prototype items with hardware from Littlebits, Arduino and Raspberry Pi. A nice byproduct is the resurgence of robots at events. We found five robots that could potentially make our lives not only easier, but also safer. And of course, none of these robots would ever rise up against us.

http://thenextweb.com/dd/2014/05/23/4-robots-solid-thatll-make-lives-easier-definitely-wont-kill-us/

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

The Teacher’s Guide To Wearable Tech In The Classroom

By Katie Lepi, Edudemic

Wearable technology is a pretty cool concept to me, though I’d still probably classify most of it as less “now”, more “future“. While there is a wide array of products currently on the market, the most well known wearable gadgets (which I try to distinguish in my mind from the more generalized “wearable technology”, which most of us wear in our clothing and shoes on the regular) are probably activity trackers (like Fitbit or the Nike Fuel Band) and Google Glass – and clearly the latter is much less widespread in use. So how can you use wearable technologies in the classroom? Unless you’re a PE teacher, having activity trackers in class probably isn’t at the top of your wish list. The handy infographic linked below takes a look at wearable technology in the classroom, and what the future might bring to our current classroom reality.

http://www.edudemic.com/wearable-tech-in-the-classroom/

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