(Mostly) Free Online Courses to Increase Your Digital Skills

By Brittany Loeffler, Uloop

You don’t need a classroom anymore to learn essential skills to jumpstart your career. Millennials are taking online courses to learn important skills in our now-digital world. They are studying skills that are not taught in classrooms, right from the comfort of their own home, for free. Millennials are known for rejecting the standard 9-5 job in an office and taking on more freelance work. Taking online courses to learn and increase digital skills gives recent college graduates the ability to work from home with multiple clients and make a living on their own terms. Interested in learning more about how you can make money right from your computer? Take a look at the list of online courses and platforms linked below to get started.

https://www.uloop.com/news/view.php/252563/Mostly-Free-Online-Courses-to-Increase-Your-Digital-Skills

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=33685

30% Harder to Design for the Online Learning Environment

by Nanette Miner, ATD

In fact, it is 30 percent harder to design training for the online environment because there is one more entity that needs to be designed for—the technology. By using classroom training design as the benchmark, we know that learning is typically designed for two entities: the facilitator and the participant. The facilitator’s role is to lead the class and make logical connections between the segments of content. The participant’s role is to practice with the content and interact with one other learners during any activities that are designed to bring the content to life. In the online environment, though, the facilitator’s and participant’s roles are a bit different. What’s more, there is the third role of the technology itself, and perhaps someone who is managing the technology in a supporting capacity.

https://www.td.org/Publications/Blogs/Learning-Technologies-Blog/2017/11/30-Percent-Harder-to-Design-for-the-Online-Learning-Environment

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=33675

Why edtech companies should care about Amazon’s emergence in education

by Matthew Lynch, tech edvocate

Amazon is a recent newcomer to education, and edtech companies should take note and care about this new direction for the global retailer.  In an arena where Microsoft, Apple and Google have been the main players, Amazon is quickly moving ahead in education. As the world’s largest retailer, Amazon’s mission has been clear: reach out globally, put the customer first, and offer the greatest product selection with the best service. That’s what they are doing in education, too. Now edtech companies can take advantage of Amazon’s strategy by partnering with Amazon Web Services.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/edtech-companies-care-amazons-emergence-education/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=33665

“This house believes AI could, should and will replace teachers”

by OEB

At this year’s OEB, we’re looking to provide some of that nuance in our annual Plenary Debate on the motion entitled “This house believes artificial intelligence (AI) could, should and will replace teachers”. This is not only a debate about the capabilities of technology, but also about its ethical implications. In this particular case, it’s as much a question of philosophy as of technological practicality. What exactly is a teacher? Some would say that in many schools, teachers have become little more than devices for transmitting information in the hope of achieving defined educational outcomes and that these functions can be taken over – and even improved on – by a machine. For Donald Clark (proposition) the case for teaching bots is fairly obvious: they would be “free from cognitive… racial, gender and socio-economic biases. They never get ill, don’t forget much of what they are taught, operate 24/7, and can deliver from anywhere to anywhere where there is an internet connection. Unlike our brains they don’t sleep for eight hours a day and, in a fatal objection to human frailty, neither get burnt out, retire or die.”

http://www.online-educa.com/OEB_Newsportal/this-house-believes-ais-could-and-will-replace-teachers/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=20363

Students worldwide competed to improve security software in a contest led by UMD

By Rachel Kuipers, Diamondback

Some University of Maryland professors are trying to change how software designers approach their work. Three cybersecurity professors — Michelle Mazurek, Andrew Ruef and Dave Levin — and computer science professor Michael Hicks were among those to host the Build It, Break It, Fix it security contest, which aims to teach students how to construct more secure programs, according to the contest website. This is the fifth contest the group has held in the past two and a half years, Hicks said. “We want to make software security better [and] help developers who aren’t security experts do a better job of writing secure software,” said Mazurek, who is also a member of the Maryland Cybersecurity Center. “There’s a gap between what seems like it should work and what actually should work in the real world.”

http://www.dbknews.com/2016/11/07/university-of-maryland-computer-science-software-contest/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=20351

No matter where you turn, the Internet shapes us

By Zhu Shenshen, Shanghai Daily

Virtual reality English learning is just one example of Internet Plus services in Shanghai — a merging of online applications and offline lifestyle trends. This latest digital trend covers a wide range of services, including the panoramic view of a restaurant when you book a table via smartphone, sharing bicycles unlocked by mobile apps, and paying for Metro trips and drinks by smartphone or even smart watches. Internet Plus services are turning Shanghai into one of the world’s most “digital smart” cities and, at the same time, changing human experiences and habits in education and entertainment, dining, transportation, payment and investment.

http://www.shanghaidaily.com/business/economy/No-matter-where-you-turn-the-Internet-shapes-us/shdaily.shtml

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=20342

The shape of classrooms to come

By Beth Marlowe, Washington Post

These days, education is swinging from intimate in-person seminars to massive online open courses. Georgetown University’s come up with something in between. The school’s master of science in finance (MSF) program, which launched in 2014, uses what faculty call a “blended classroom” to teach students either in-person and online — or both. The result is a program with many of the community and networking aspects of a traditional classroom, but one that students can access from anywhere. “We started utterly from scratch,” says Allan Eberhart, a finance professor who leads the program. He and colleagues started planning for it in early 2012. “We never had the MSF here before. It’s an entirely new program and we certainly had never done anything like this, technology-wise.”

http://www.pressreleaserocket.net/new-lessons-from-learning-com-to-prepare-https://www.washingtonpost.com/express/wp/2015/11/09/the-shape-of-classrooms-to-come/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14302

The Promise (and Perils) of Digital Textbooks

by David Raths, THE Journal

The New Media Consortium’s 2014 Horizon Report K-12 Edition noted that although digital textbooks have become a mainstay in higher education, they have been slower to infiltrate K-12. The report’s authors added, however, that the “financial and educational benefits of digital learning materials will eventually outweigh the outdated paper textbook dependence in K-12 education, and gradual adoption of digital textbooks is expected.” THE Journal recently spoke with teachers and administrators in several districts that are experimenting with digital versions of textbooks from traditional publishers as well as those curating digital material to compose new, more personalized texts for their students.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2015/10/28/the-promise-and-perils-of-digital-textbooks.aspx

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14308

Google Creates Tech Entrepreneur Nanodegree to Help Indies Learn to Scale

by RICHARD HARRIS, App Developer Magazine

Google has partnered with Udacity to create a new Tech Entrepreneur Nanodegree which is designed to help indie app publishers learn what it takes to design, validate, prototype, monetize, and market app ideas from the ground up and grow them into a scalable business. The program takes 4-7 months to complete and offers access to industry app veterans to provide students with a battle-tested perspective. Included will be Geoffrey Moore, author of “Crossing the Chasm”, Pete Koomen, co-founder of Optimizely; Aaron Harris and Kevin Hale, Partners at Y-Combinator; Nir Eyal, author of the book “Hooked: How to build habit forming products” and co-founder of Product Hunt; Steve Chen, Co-Founder of YouTube, rapid prototyping company InVision and plus others.

https://appdevelopermagazine.com/3339/2015/11/9/Google-Creates-Tech-Entrepreneur-Nanodegree-to-Help-Indies-Learn-to-Scale-/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14305

Goodbye, Snow Days: Students Study From Home

by Kyle Potter, Associated Press

The early arrival of wintry weather in the Midwest this week gave Grewing an opening to test out a virtual class day at St. Cloud Cathedral high school in central Minnesota, having students whip out laptops or iPads and work from home. After a successful test run, Grewing declared Tuesday that students’ cherished snow days are a thing of the past — at least at Cathedral. “This is what we will be doing every single snow day going forward,” she said. “I’ll be honest. There has been some grumbling.” Private schools like Cathedral — and, increasingly, some public school districts — across the nation are starting to use the flexibility technology provides to work around weather, meeting school mandates without make-up days.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/goodbye-snow-days-students-study-home-26844708

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Columbia Launches Hybrid Learning Initiative

By Michael Hart, Campus Technology

Columbia University has launched an initiative to turn more of its traditional lecture courses into hybrid learning experiences that would incorporate the use of audiovisual materials, social media, flipped classrooms and real-time feedback from students. The Provost’s Faculty Advisory Committee on Online Learning has asked faculty members to submit their proposals to either turn existing courses into hybrid online courses or create new courses. A faculty committee will review the proposals and make recommendations to Provost John Coatsworth, who will announce November 24 which proposals the university will pursue. A second round of proposals will be accepted in the spring.

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2014/11/10/columbia-launches-hybrid-learning-initiative.aspx

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Radical Ideas for Reinventing College, From Stanford’s Design School

BY KYLE VANHEMERT, Wired

At WIRED by Design, Sarah Stein Greenberg, executive director of Stanford Design School, shared a handful of concepts for redesigning college, culled from a year long workshop. Specifically, they look at how to keep the on-campus experience relevant in an age where online learning is becoming increasingly common. One of the provocations, called Open Loop University, wonders what could happen if you gave students six years of college to use whenever they wanted throughout their adult life. This sort of speculative thinking is meant to address growing concerns about the traditional four-year undergraduate track—basically that today’s system makes way for a bunch of well-trained sheep. “This is a generation of students who are incredibly highly structured, but they’re going to be entering an increasingly ambiguous world,” Stein Greenberg says. “We need to be training our students not just to expect that they will be society’s leaders, but also to be our most creative, daring, and resilient problem solvers.”

http://www.wired.com/2014/11/radical-ideas-reinventing-college-stanfords-design-school/

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from Educational Technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uis/edtech/~3/eNPfis6zjNc/

How To Choose The Best Education Technology For Your School

By Benjamin L. Stewart, Edudemic

Inspired by a recent #edchat poll for possible discussion topics: if the choice were yours, would you rather your school adopt 1:1 laptops, bring-your-own devices (BYOD), or a little-to-no approach to educational technology? erhaps those a bit more savvy when it comes to educational technology (ET) might find it strange to still hear the argument that bringing devices into schools does little to advance student learning. Forget the ubiquity of current technologies, students do not learn any differently today than they did in the past, the argument goes. Educators have gotten by without using technology in the past while student learning has not suffered, some may claim. But is this still really a sound argument?

http://www.edudemic.com/best-education-technology-for-your-school/

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How To Choose The Best Digital Tools For You

By Patrick Larkin, Edudemic

As I look for entry points in working with school leaders just getting their feet wet with digital tools, I sometimes struggle to pinpoint the best place to start. I guess it is because there are so many useful tools out there that my colleagues could utilize to help them to change their workflows for the better. However, the important thing is not the tool at all. The important thing is that educational leaders are modeling the fact that they too are continuous learners who are striving to employ the most relevant resources that they can access to do their jobs.

http://www.edudemic.com/choose-best-digital-tools/

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KU professor creates online course to combat bullying

by Ann Wilson, Channel 6 Lawrence

Educators throughout the nation are working on ways to combat bullying, but a University of Kansas professor in Lawrence is training teachers and administrators through an online course to curb the problem. “Most people think of bullying as two types, like when I grew up in the 50’s and it’s sticks and stones, verbal teasing and hitting,” said Bob Harrington, professor of psychology and research in education. Harrington said those forms of bullying still occur in 2013, but the types of bullying are much more expansive and can happen at any age. A lack of civility in schools prompted Harrington to start an online series of courses for graduate students in education. This semester focuses on bullying prevention and intervention. “When you come into a school, you should be guaranteed to be safe. Schools should be safe places,” Harrington said.

http://6lawrence.com/news/education/7813-ku-professor-creates-online-course-to-combat-bullying

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