7 Ways to Get More Girls and Women into STEM (and Encourage Them to Stay)

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology
Ninety-three in 100 STEM-related occupations pay wages above the national average. And programming jobs, specifically, are growing 12 percent faster than the market average and paying $20,000 more than jobs that don’t require coding skills. Well, apparently, women in substantial numbers are making that choice. Women make up only a third of the world’s STEM graduates, and they hold just under a quarter of IT jobs. Plus, the pipeline isn’t looking very promising; less than 25 percent of the students who took the advanced computer science placement exam were women. Those were some statistics shared by Karen Quintos, chief customer office for Dell, during a forum hosted by the Atlantic Monthly titled, “Cracking the Code: The Next Generation of Women in STEM.” The event drew participation from youth, academia, non-profits and the corporate sector to examine questions around what it means “to raise and become a woman in STEM.”

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2017/10/02/7-ways-to-get-more-girls-and-women-into-stem.aspx

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=32526

Using EdTech to Get Your Learners Motivated and Active

BY MATTHEW LYNCH, tech Edvocate

Learning by using technology can be fun, productive, educational, and can engage all types of learners, regardless of their ages! Younger students can be motivated to learn through active games, programs, and apps. Older students can be motivated through the use of interactive projects with groups or individually, or viewing media. iPads now being provided by many public schools have a wide variety of apps for student learning that include opportunities for STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) learning. Regardless of the age of the student, technology, if used correctly, can provide students the perfect supplement to traditional style classroom learning.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/using-edtech-get-learners-motivated-active/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=32511

DeVos champions online charter schools: Pennsylvania’s virtual charters have a 48 % graduation rate

By KIMBERLY HEFLING, Politico

 

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has touted online learning as a school-choice solution for rural America, saying that virtual charter schools provide educational options that wouldn’t otherwise exist. But in Pennsylvania, an early adopter where more than 30,000 kids log into virtual charter schools from home most days, the graduation rate is a dismal 48 percent. Not one virtual charter school meets the state’s “passing” benchmark. And the founder of one of the state’s largest virtual schools pleaded guilty to a tax crime last year.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/08/education-betsy-devos-online-charter-schools-poor-results-243556

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=32501

Newest NMC/CoSN Horizon K-12 Report Emphasizes Kids as Creators

By Dian Schaffhauser, THE Journal

Over the next year K-12 will be placing more emphasis on coding as a form of literacy and on students as creators. Schools that don’t already have makerspaces will want to get them and online learning will start to look like something that’s typical rather than out of the norm. Those are the “short-term” trends and technologies that surfaced in the 2016 K-12 Edition of the NMC/CoSN Horizon Report. The move to spur students as creators is an attempt to shift the gaze of students away from display screens as consumers and help them become creators. As the report noted, “Many educators believe that honing these kinds of creative skills in learners can lead to deeply engaging learning experiences in which students become the authorities on subjects through investigation, storytelling and production.”

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/09/15/newest-nmccosn-horizon-k12-report-emphasizes-kids-as-creators.aspx

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=19209

What they’re doing: Coach certification

by Andy Abeyta, QUAD-CITY TIMES

Once upon a time, almost anyone could coach football at the youth-league level. You needed to know the game, of course, but no special training or certification was necessary. Those days are gone, at least in the Quad-Cities. Every local youth football league in the metro area requires coaches to have some degree of training and certification before they can set foot on the field. Many local programs subscribe to Heads Up Football, a series of online courses to help educate coaches on proper tackling techniques and other fine points. Heads Up Football started in 2013 and was funded by a $45 million grant from the NFL.

http://qctimes.com/sports/football/what-they-re-doing-coach-certification/article_9a2a4363-0f90-5376-88de-78e9110f7632.html

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=19197

Paper or Tablet? Reading Recall and Comprehension

by Anne Niccoli, EDUCAUSE Review

As of 2014, 63 percent of colleges reported using e-textbooks, while 27 percent planned to in the near future.1 But what drives these digital book policies and practices in higher education — technology or research? Considering the pervasiveness of digital devices, the lack of sufficient guidance for educators to make informed decisions about instruction and learning is disconcerting. Despite the widespread adoption of tablets in schools, ranging from elementary through higher education, research about the effects of tablet use on student learning has obvious gaps. Rapid technological advances and changing features in electronic devices create challenges for those who study the effects of using them; specifically, researchers face limitations in understanding the effects of digital reading on student recall and comprehension. More important, increasing our understanding of the influence of electronic devices on learning will inform educators about the implications of test scores and performance.

http://er.educause.edu/articles/2015/9/paper-or-tablet-reading-recall-and-comprehension

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14025

The Cyber Siege of Higher Education in North America

by David Shipley, EDUCAUSE Review

A flurry of cyber security incident headlines this summer is illustrating a growing threat facing nearly every higher education institution in North America. Notable incidents included news this spring that Penn State University’s entire Engineering School had to be taken offline for an extensive investigation and clean-up of its network and systems. That incident was followed in August with similar news from the University of Virginia (UVA) of a targeted cyber attack against two officials whose work was connected with China. The news this summer that Harvard University suffered a modest hack affecting user credentials in eight schools caused little surprise, nor did news recently that Rutgers University is spending millions this year to strengthen its security in the wake of a series of denial of service (DoS) attacks against its networks and servers.

http://er.educause.edu/blogs/2015/9/the-cyber-siege-of-higher-education-in-north-america

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14023

Promoting Engagement in Larger Classes

by Perry J. Samson, EDUCAUSE Review

A while back, I was asked to teach my department’s introductory course. It was called “Weather & Climate” and averaged about 30 students per semester. Over time I changed the curriculum to focus more on extreme weather and climate issues, and I retitled the course “Extreme Weather.” Now it averages about 200 students per semester. (Here is a marketing tip: add “extreme” to the title of whatever course you’re teaching if you’d like to increase the number of students in your class.) Faced with that many students, I soon realized that I would not know what they didn’t know until after the first exam and that my learning management system (LMS) did not provide me any information about what was happening in my classroom.

http://er.educause.edu/articles/2015/8/promoting-engagement-in-larger-classes

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14020

Virtual field trips key to innovative teaching for ASU scientist

by Arizona State University

ASU Professor Ariel Anbar has put much effort into developing a series of immersive virtual field trips (iVFTs) in conjunction with ASU education technologist Geoffrey Bruce and ASU associate professor Steven Semken, and various geoscience colleagues around the world. Their efforts are supported in part by NASA and by the NSF. The project is now extending beyond geoscience, with faculty from other fields developing field trips using the same technology framework. For Anbar, each virtual field trip can “provide at least some of the gains you would get out of a real field trip,” but they are accessible to many more students, and at far less cost, than a comparable physical trip.

https://asunews.asu.edu/20141003-anbar-virtual-field-trips

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from Educational Technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uis/edtech/~3/dKa4saYHrWk/

The digital divide with online learning

by the News-Journal Editorial Board

It’s another lesson in the gap between what Tallahassee mandates for education and how school districts execute them. As The News-Journal’s Annie Martin recently reported, Volusia County school officials realized last spring that about 3,000 of their more than 4,000 rising seniors had yet to complete an online course as is now required by state regulations. In Flagler County, 453 seniors — only about half of the county’s total — have completed the requirement. They’re not alone. In Osceola County, only 38 percent of seniors have completed the requirement. In Orange County, 45 percent of seniors have yet to complete at least one online course. In Seminole County, about 1,000 students still need to meet the requirement. Those numbers are way too high for a mandate that has been in place three years.

http://www.news-journalonline.com/article/20141006/opinion/141009741

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

Online Students Step Out For History Lesson

By: John Doetkott, KAAL TV

Educators are always looking for new and unique ways to engage their students, but when their students are online it can be more difficult. On Friday, educators with Minnesota Connections Academy, the state’s online school, took their students out of the virtual classroom and into the real world. About 25 students and their parents gathered at Bancroft Bay Park in Albert Lea for the Big Island Rendezvous, an interactive festival of early American history. “This is an experience that we could never duplicate online,” said Melissa Gould, the school’s principal. “It’s really an opportunity for kids to get immersed into the past and hear about how life was before technology came to be.”

http://www.kaaltv.com/article/stories/S3579758.shtml

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