by Patrick Atack, the PIE News
Online learning provider Coursera, which works with university partners around the world, is launching six new fully online degree courses. The news comes just weeks after FutureLearn, another provider of global online degrees, also announced an expansion of its full degree offerings.
Share on FacebookCoursera joins online degree expansionists with six new degrees
by JACKIE MADER, Hechinger Report
Inside a rural high school, five Advanced Placement physics students furiously scribbled notes about a video of a Yale University professor speaking more than 1,200 miles away. With textbooks open, they watched a lecture about Newton’s Laws on a giant screen, while their classroom teacher simultaneously offered examples of those laws in action. When the lecture ended, they had yet another to chance to learn: A physics video chat with their tutor, a sophomore physics major at Yale. The unconventional flurry of both in-person and virtual academics in a school that had never before offered AP physics is part of a broader experiment that experts say could herald the future of education, especially for rural schools.
http://hechingerreport.org/can-online-learning-level-ap-playing-field-rural-kids/
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by Mark Liebereman, Inside Higher Ed
Digital alternatives to traditional end-of-semester student evaluations seem more numerous by the day. One new tool hopes to advance that landscape with the help of artificial intelligence. Hubert, launched last fall and currently in use by more than 600 instructors worldwide, appears to students as a chat bot that asks questions about the quality of the class and the teaching. The conversational messenger format is designed to make students feel more comfortable sharing honest praise and criticism, and the low amount of required effort allows instructors to collect feedback at several points throughout the semester.
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by Hometown Life
Michigan Virtual University has selected John Glenn High School to represent them at the Student Showcase at the 2017 MACUL Conference at Cobo Hall in Detroit on March 16. Bonnie Ballard, John Glenn High School’s MVU mentor, and three students have been asked to represent Wayne-Westland Community Schools at the annual showcase. The students who are taking the online classes have a high completion and success rate. Currently, 85 percent of students who are taking online courses at John Glenn are passing their classes and receiving high school credit for those courses.
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By Joy Nelson, Edudemic
What do your students see when they look in the mirror? Do they see someone worthwhile or someone who will never be good enough? While it isn’t your responsibility to dig into the nuances of every student’s self-perception, you can still help the members of your class to have healthy views of themselves. Such a view can bolster their academic performance and serve as a bulwark against bullying. The following resources provide information about self-image that you can use in the classroom.
http://www.edudemic.com/17-resources-for-self-image/
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By Dustin Le, Edudemic
The Maker Movement is also nicknamed the Do-It-Yourself (D.I.Y.) Movement, because it empowers individuals to design, manufacture, and create their own objects, ultimately improving creativity in many fields. In a way, the tools used in this movement are taking us back to a time when every person was a craftsperson — except now, we have much cooler gadgets than a wood chisel. And while many of us do not realize it yet, this hands-on approach is something that is missing from our very digital, holographic world. The 3D printer is one of the biggest revolutionary tools in the Maker world and has inspired a push toward the do-it-yourself sensibility. Still, though the cost of 3D printers is coming down, they are still prohibitively expensive for many schools and what’s more, when turning a classroom into a makerspace, it would be silly to limit ourselves to one technology. In this article, we discuss five tools that are not 3D printers that schools can use to help students embrace this movement inside the classroom.
http://www.edudemic.com/maker-movement-tools/
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By Rachel Fuerschbach and Joed Viera, Lockport Union Sun-Journal
Mandated free education helped a young Lockport resident avoid a jail sentence on drug-related offenses recently. On March 1, Dylan Lewis, 25, completed two business management courses on ALISON, a free online learning platform. City Court Judge William J. Watson had ordered Lewis to complete the courses as an alternative to incarceration. Chuck Diemert, organizer of the diversion program and literacy coordinator for Orleans/Niagara BOCES, oversaw Lewis’ progress on ALISON over a two-week period. Lewis completed the courses through home study as well as at the BOCES Literacy Zone on Genesee Street, where he took course exams.
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By Michael Scheuermann, Campus Technology
Two reconfigured classrooms are facilitating student collaboration and providing flexible options for teaching and learning. Over the past year, the Information Resources and Technology (IRT) department at Drexel University (PA) has reconfigured two classrooms in its Korman Computing Center, Korman-111 and Korman-110, for these key reasons: to facilitate student collaboration, and to provide professors with pedagogical choices, as well as a multitude of teaching and student-engagement options.
By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, ZDNet
What looks like an ordinary HDD, which could fit into a drive bay on your PC, actually holds 10 terabytes of data. It’s not meant for your PC, though. Its destination is your datacenter. This drive, better known as the 10TB SMR HelioSeal HDD, has been in the works since September 2014. At the show, sources close to the company said it would be shipping in the second quarter of 2015. To access these drives from Linux, a new device manipulation library had to be added: libzbc. With this library, Linux can access Zoned Block Commands (ZBC)-based and Zoned-device ATA command set (ZAC) HDDs, such as the 10TB HelioSeal. The ZBC standard details how to handle devices that require writing to occur at specific locations on their media while allowing random reading of already written data.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/hgst-gets-closer-to-shipping-10tb-hdd/
by LINDA WHITE, Toronto Sun
The virtual trips are but one example of the way education — including online learning — continues to evolve. With information available at the click of a button, there’s really no need to hand students a textbook to “read, memorize and regurgitate.” Instead, savvy instructors are taking advantage of technology to develop critical thinking, observation, collaboration and other skills that are in demand in today’s workplace, says Mouton, manager of distance education at Durham College in Oshawa, Ont.
http://www.torontosun.com/2015/03/12/new-technology-enriches-online-learning
by WHAM 13
It’s another way of learning: a virtual classroom that’s been set up by Stu Smith, a sixth-grade math teacher at Barker Road Middle School in Pittsford. “It gives them a lot of confidence knowing they can go home and review the lessons as many times as they need to,” said Smith, who started posting the lessons online last year. Around 80 percent of Smith’s 100 students use the videos that match each lesson they have in the classroom. “I really like them because in other grades in past years I had to ask my Dad for help if I didn’t get anything, and sometimes he’ll do like different methods and I’ll tell him, we didn’t learn that in class, that’s different,” said sixth grader Taylor Sampone. “But now this time we can actually use the videos and know that’s the way he taught us and still be able to learn.” Students also use the lessons to make up missed classroom time.
http://www.13wham.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/making-up-class-time-online-10199.shtml
by Virtual College (UK)
A growing number of businesses are pursuing the 70-20-10 principle in their learning and development initiatives. The concept involves the largest part of training coming through experience, but crucially, this is supported by other forms of learning: namely knowledge derived from colleagues and also courses and training, both online and in the classroom. The companies that are pursuing this principle include many at the top of their respective industries, such as Coca-Cola, Sony Ericsson, Morgan Stanley, Philips, Microsoft, Nike and Dell. The crucial thing to remember with such a multi-pronged approach is that each strand should support and reinforce the others, so online courses can be used to reiterate lessons that staff will need to learn in their day to day jobs, for example, while also introducing and expanding on other topics.
by Amber Mac, Fast Company
The online learning space is at full boil. Whether you want to spruce up your knitting skills or learn how to take perfect wedding photos, there is an e-course built just for you. When it comes to entrepreneurial lessons, there are also a growing number of offerings to suit how you learn best. From tuning into a quick one-hour live video to diving deep into an eight-week course, today’s digital learning ecosystem offers something for every business owner.
