by the UFT
New research finds that high school students who have failed algebra and need to make up their grades get better short-term results if they take a credit recovery class in person. But over the longer term, students who take the in-person class are no more likely to graduate on time than those who took an online credit-recovery course.
http://www.uft.org/research-shows/look-credit-recovery-results
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by Tishin Donkersley, Tech.co
Buuilding up your portfolio as a graphic designer can take years. To make the field even more difficult, keeping your edge on changing design trends means continuing your education on the latest software and new methods to communicate to customers. Fortunately, we’ve got you covered. TechCo has rounded up affordable online graphic design courses from our Shop so anyone can learn to be a design ninja.
https://tech.co/3-affordable-online-design-courses-2017-08
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by Steve Ranger, ZD Net
Western Digital has unveiled what it says is the world’s highest-capacity microSD card — one that crams 400GB of storage into your smartphone. The card can hold up to 40 hours of Full HD video and can transfer data at up to 100MBps: at that speed, users could move 1,200 3.5MB photos per minute over USB 3.0. The card, which Western Digital is aiming at Android smartphone and tablet users, comes with a ten-year warranty and a US retail price of $249.99.
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by eCampus News
With online courses now part of the mainstream, colleges and universities are collecting terabytes of data on how students interact with their systems and content. But most schools gather this data according to their own specs, which makes comparisons difficult for researchers trying to identify broader trends. However, this may all change in the wake of a conference hosted by Harvard and MIT this August that saw a dozen schools implement a standardized data structure for MOOCS and other online courses using the Open edX platform. The goal: Create a better understanding of how students learn online and improve instructional approaches accordingly.
http://www.ecampusnews.com/featured/featured-on-ecampus-news/edx-online-learning/
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by Canvas
Canvas Network, an open online educational platform from Instructure, has announced that it will be hosting courses focusing on engaging girls in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) initiatives. This free online course series issues a call to action for educators, students and parents to prioritize STEM education for girls in elementary, middle and high school grades, as well as higher education. The massive online open courses (MOOCs) included in the series aim to provide a community for both girls and boys throughout the world to engage in STEM-related courses. Engaging girls in STEM is crucial at a time when more than half a million jobs in information technology are unfilled across all sectors of the economy, and projections from the White House estimate that in just two years there will be 2.4 million unfilled STEM positions.
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by Collin Binkley, The Associated Press
The newest classroom at Harvard’s business school has no desks or chairs. Instead, the professor teaches facing a towering digital screen that stretches from wall to wall, filled with the live video feeds of up to 60 students tuned in from their computers. In the futuristic classroom, housed in a television studio three kilometres from campus, class plays out like a giant video conference. Students can jump in to ask questions or respond to their classmates. The professor can stop a lecture to quiz individual students, or send the group a quick online poll.
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by Mark Pynes, Penn Live
Monday marked Day 62 without a state budget and the effects of that continue to mount. Not only is Chester-Upland School District in such a financial predicament that it won’t be able to make its Sept. 9 payroll with the absence of state dollars, hardships are starting to be felt across the entire educational spectrum from preschool to higher education. Lawmakers and Gov. Tom Wolf met once last week to try get talks moving on a two-month overdue state budget but a follow-up meeting scheduled for the next day was cancelled at the Democratic governor’s request because he said he needed more time to study an offer that Republicans put on the table.
http://www.pennlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/08/most_schools_in_session_but_a.html
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By Jacob Batte, Daily Comet
Online education enrollment has skyrocketed as parents and families search for a more individualized education for their children. Nancy Toups, a former public school teacher who home schooled three of her children, started eLearningK12 with two other teachers in 1999, seeking to provide individualize education in an efficient manner. They started in Toups’ Thibodaux loft with less than 20 students. Now, enrollment is over 1,000 with students from across the country and locations in Thibodaux, Houma and Baton Rouge. Earlier this month, eLearningK12 received a perfect score in its evaluation from the state Department of Education.
http://www.dailycomet.com/article/20150831/ARTICLES/150839956/1320
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By Katie Lepi, Edudemic
Online learning takes many forms these days. From all-online degree programs to taking one class online as part of a more traditional, in person degree program, to blended and flipped classrooms, more and more teachers and students have some type of online component to their teaching and learning. The infographic below takes a look at some of the trends and challenges that universities moving programs from an in-person to an online environment can pose.
http://www.edudemic.com/online-learning-trends-and-challenges/
by John Seed, Huffington Post
I think Smarthistory has hit critical mass. I think it truly can replace standard high school and college texts for a variety of widely taught survey courses in art history and art appreciation. Smarthistory now provides workable online syllabi for several courses, and I have made up my own “Virtual Art Appreciation” text using Smarthistory in combination with other free and open resources. The list of resources below are here for you to inspect and consider. If you are a K-12 teacher or college professor, please consult your institution’s curriculum guidelines, and your supervisor before you consider going textless. Please also keep in mind that these resources need to be properly integrated with your other resources, lecture content and evaluations. I will leave it up to you to vet these materials to make sure they meet your standards.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-seed/virtual-resources-for-art_b_5738100.html
By JEANNE MILLSAP Shaw Media
Leanne Dammann’s computer maintenance technology classes at the Grundy Area Vocational Center have been popular for years, with instruction in understanding computers, printers, cellphones, switches, routers and more. But seniors trying to enroll in the second year of the series – CMT II – were having difficulty fitting the class into their schedules. Dammann was able to start offering her CMT II course as a blended class beginning with the 2012-13 school year. This year, she has 15 students in the class. They said so far they have managed to keep up by finding time during their daytime schedules to study.
