Making 3-D printing as simple as printing on paper

by Rob Matheson | MIT News Office

If you haven’t used a 3-D printer yet, you may be surprised to learn that it isn’t fully automated the way your office’s inkjet is. With paper printers, users queue documents from a computer, and each finished sheet drops neatly into a tray, waiting to be collected. With commercial 3-D printers, however, designs are manually programmed into the printer, and each finished part is manually removed before starting a new print, which is very time-consuming. At schools and businesses, a trained expert usually handles all prints, which can be expensive. Now MIT spinout New Valence Robotics (NVBOTS) has brought to market the only fully automated commercial 3-D printer that’s equipped with cloud-based queuing and automatic part removal, making print jobs quicker and easier for multiple users, and dropping the cost per part.

http://news.mit.edu/2017/startup-nvbots-3-d-printing-simple-printing-paper-0505

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=27601

Are we heading for a new encryption war?

By Steve Ranger, ZDNet

More details of how the UK’s new surveillance law will operate have been revealed, in details about the use of encryption. Under draft regulations to support the new Investigatory Powers Act, the government will be able to issue ‘technical capability notices’ to companies with more than 10,000 UK users to make it easier for police, spy agencies and other government bodies to access their customers’ communications. In particular, the regulations require companies to provide and maintain “the capability to disclose, where practicable, the content of communications or secondary data in an intelligible form and to remove electronic protection applied by or on behalf of the telecommunications operator to the communications or data, or to permit the person to whom the warrant is addressed to remove such electronic protection.”

http://www.zdnet.com/article/are-we-heading-for-a-new-encryption-war/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=27586

New partnership with Khan Academy designed to expand ‘personalized learning’ in the classroom

by LOUIS FREEDBERG, EdSource

Khan with attendees at an event in Irvine on April 24 to kickoff the partnership between the Khan Academy and several county education departments. In establishing relationships with several county offices of education in Southern California, the Khan Academy is hoping to expand its already large footprint in the world of personalized learning to make its online resources a more formal part of the school curriculum. The move could mark a quantum leap in the use of online materials in the classroom. Sal Khan, the Khan Academy’s founder, said he hopes the materials he has developed – online courses, instructional exercises, videos and a personalized “learning dashboard” – will become a “primary tool for practice” in the classroom, rather than just a supplement to the curriculum.

https://edsource.org/2017/new-partnership-with-khan-academy-designed-to-expand-personalized-learning-in-the-classroom/581313

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=27576

E-learning makes basic employment skills available to all

BY ELSAMARI BOTHA, HR News

The exponential rate of information has led to the creation of a new kind of educator: low-cost, on-demand, short-length education providers, providing courses on everything from gardening to robotics at lower costs than traditional universities and colleges. These are generally divided into two types: immersive educators such as Hack Bright that tend to focus on computer programming and massive open online courses (MOOC) such as Coursera that focus on collaborative and individualised learning. The growth of immersives and especially MOOCs around the world is a sign of how quickly digital innovation is changing the world and jobs market. The skills required for the new jobs on the cutting edge of innovation are changing rapidly and new job types are being created all the time. As innovative as the alternative educators have been, they have targeted the higher-income population group.

http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/362/144756.html

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=15872

New Workers, New Skills

by Marina Gorbis, EDUCAUSE Review

As the world of work undergoes transformation, new worker categories are emerging—people who, by choice or by necessity, are thinking about making a living in new ways and who are putting work into a very different context. At the Institute for the Future (IFTF), our team of ethnographers has been exploring these new worker categories while conducting in-depth interviews and observations in various locations around the United States. These workers span different levels of skills and different levels of engagement with work, from those who simply rent their assets (e.g., homes, cars) to generate income streams to those who work in new ways full-time. Such workers include micro-workers, dream builders, amplified entrepreneurs, and makers and hackers.

http://er.educause.edu/articles/2016/5/new-workers-new-skills

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=15869

Penn State Responds to Surge of Interest in Skills-Based Online Teaching Certificate

by EdSurge

Last fall Pennsylvania State University’s World Campus launched a small, free skills-focused certificate program meant to help 30 graduate students develop online teaching abilities—but 350 actually showed up, and now the university plans to shake up its professional development to reflect the swell of interest. Laurence Boggess, director of faculty development for the World Campus, told Inside Higher Ed he believes this reflects a larger shift: “These graduate students who are about to go off and be the professors of the future, they get it. They understand that they’re going to be teaching online at some point, and they understand that online education—for better or worse—is not going anywhere.”

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2016-05-03-penn-state-responds-to-surge-of-interest-in-skills-based-online-teaching-certificate

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=15866

For Teachers, Learning to Code Becomes Learning to Learn Again

by Gerard Dawson, Edutopia

I used tech tools all day with little knowledge of their workings. And, despite my interactions with Jane, I had a typical fixed-mindset explanation for this: “I’m an English teacher. My brain doesn’t work that way.” What I was really saying was, “I forgot how to be a beginner.” A year ago, though, I became a beginner, an apprentice, a struggling learner. I decided to learn how to code. Immediately, the experience became less about designing websites and more about experiencing the growth mindset, improving confidence with technology, and learning that failure is part of the process.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/learning-to-code-learning-to-learn-gerard-dawson

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from Educational Technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uis/edtech/~3/7eoagNT3iTU/

Inquiry in the Classroom: 7 Simple Tools To Get You Started

By Pamela DeLoatch, Edudemic

We know certain characteristics can be encouraged, but not taught, like curiosity. But teachers who use an inquiry based approach can provide techniques that help students learn the questions to ask that may spark a natural interest. As students process this new way of approaching projects, they and their teachers have numerous technological tools to make work easier, so more time can be spent with creative thinking, research and discussions, instead of with project paperwork.

http://www.edudemic.com/inquiry-in-the-classroom/

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2015’s Top Education Technology Trends

By Kristen Hicks, Edudemic

Each year, the New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE release the NMC Horizon Report, which looks at the technology most likely to shape education in the next five years. The 2015 report highlights a number of key changes that educators, those at the higher education level in particular, should be aware of.  A number of experts weighed in on the six technology trends that are making the biggest impact on education. If you read the report itself, you’ll see not only a description of what the trend is (which we’ve summarized below), but also a few examples of institutions or organizations that have already embraced it.

http://www.edudemic.com/education-trends-keep-tech-front-center/

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Oracle Massive Open Online Course: Develop Java Embedded Applications Using a Raspberry Pi

by Tori Wieldt, Oracle

This course introduces Java developers to the world of embedded devices and the Internet of Things (IoT). Embedded controllers are already a part of our lives. Meters read electric and water usage and send the readings to a central office. Electronic thermostats turn on the heat and air conditioning as required. Java Embedded leverages your experience with Java to open the world of the Internet of Things by providing direct access to electronic sensors and mechanical devices.

https://blogs.oracle.com/java/entry/oracle_massive_open_online_course1

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from Educational Technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uis/edtech/~3/5lPUq-cdZew/

Eight Ways To Build Blended Learning Class Culture

by Romain Bertrand, EdSurge

How to get students to value and care about the work they do online. If students don’t care about the quality of work they produce online, everything they do online loses its value: the websites or apps they use, the data collected. Nothing can be utilized with fidelity if students are half present when they are online. That’s why while giving a tour of our learning labs at Ranson IB Middle School, I was struck by an extremely important question I don’t get asked very often. One of the teachers asked me, “How do you build the culture around Blended Learning so that students will put as much care in the work they do online as they put in the one they do in class?”

https://www.edsurge.com/n/2014-05-15-eight-ways-to-build-blended-learning-class-culture

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Instead Of Getting Ready For The Tech Revolution, Schools Are Scaling Back

by Sarah Garland, Huffington Post

Instead of investing in new and better technology, more than two thirds of school districts are cutting back on regular maintenance and replacement of equipment because of budget troubles, according to a survey by the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), a professional organization of school technology leaders, published in March. The survey, of 600 school district technology chiefs from around the country, also found that nearly half said their funding was inadequate to support existing equipment or to bring in new technologies.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/16/schools-scale-back-technology_n_5340711.html

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