5 technology trends for the new school year

BY LAURA ASCIONE, eSchool News
Education is reaching a tipping point when it comes to using tech in the classroom. It’s fair to say technology is ubiquitous in many classrooms, but because it changes constantly, educators are challenged to keep pace with what’s new and next in the classroom. Sometimes, it’s difficult for educators to filter through the hype and identify the most pertinent technology changes to track. To help educators stay on top of changes in technology, the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has compiled 5 of the most important trends likely to impact education in the 2017-2018 school year.

https://www.eschoolnews.com/2017/08/31/technology-trends-school-year/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=31566

Schools launch online learning options

By Carol Paur, Lake Geneva News
The Lake Geneva school district is expanding its online options for students in the middle schools and Badger high school. Introduced in May, the district is offering what it calls Lake Geneva Online Learning Options (LGOLO) as another choice for their students. These courses will supplement, not take over classroom instruction. “This came out of a need to expand course selections,” said Russ Tronsen, Badger High School principal. “This will be a potential tool for us.”

http://www.lakegenevanews.net/news/schools-launch-online-learning-options/article_12e58ab4-9a1f-5768-b673-41782b261692.html

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=31556

Personal Computing Devices Expected to Decline Through 2021

By Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology

Global shipments of personal computing devices (PCD) are expected to decline slightly through 2021, at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of -1.7 percent, according to the latest forecast from International Data Corp. That market segment includes both traditional PCs (desktops, notebooks and workstations) and tablets (slates and detachables). While the category will decline overall, some devices will experience more growth than others. Detachable tablets and convertible notebooks will see the biggest increase, with a five-year CAGR of more than 14 percent, while ultraslim notebooks are expected to grow 11.8 percent over the same period. Notebook PCs will see just 0.7 percent growth, the IDC forecast predicted.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2017/08/28/personal-computing-devices-expected-to-decline-through-2021.aspx

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=31546

Can Predictive Analytics Encourage Purdue Students to Be More Successful?

BY TANYA ROSCORLA, Converge

Purdue University is working on student- and adviser-facing applications that reveal how student behavior matches up to their peers who have been successful academically. Enter Forecast, a student-facing Web application designed to compare current student behavior with the aggregated behavior of successful peers over the last eight years. Indiana university adopted hardware and software platforms to support predictive analytics, and then developed the application for students on top of that infrastructure. “We really wanted to expand what we were doing in the space of predictive modeling to allow us to look at more near-time and real-time data points of how students are actually interacting with the campus, and see how those were or were not predictive of whether they were ultimately successful here,” said Brent M. Drake, who became Purdue’s first chief data officer nearly three years ago. Purdue plans to study whether this application will help students actually change their behavior and improve academically.

http://www.centerdigitaled.com/higher-ed/-Could-Predictive-Analytics-Encourage-Purdue-Students-to-Be-More-Successful.html

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=18106

Mars free-for-all: Monash course equips students for life on red planet

by Birdie Smith, Sydney Morning Herald

Want to study how to live on Mars? This course will take just 12 hours of your time. And it’s free. That’s right, gratis. Among your teachers will be astronomer Jasmina Lazendic-Galloway and chemist Tina Overton. The idea of life life on Mars has long captivated the human imagination, but while getting to the red planet is relatively easy, surviving will be a real challenge. Your classroom will be of the virtual variety, with the four three-hour-sessions run by Monash University taking place online. The course will cover the basics of how to survive on the inhospitable red planet, which offers visitors no air, water or food.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/monash-course-readies-students-for-life-on-red-planet-20160905-gr8toa.html

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=18091

History Enrollments Drop

By Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed

From 2012-14 to 2014-15, undergraduate enrollments fell by 7.6 percent, survey finds. At a time of concern about the state of the humanities in American higher education, a new survey finds declining enrollments in history, one of the central humanities disciplines. From 2012-14 to 2014-15, undergraduate enrollments fell by 7.6 percent, according to a new survey released by the American Historical Association. The survey is based on results from 123 history departments and is focused on total enrollments, not the number of history majors.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/09/06/survey-finds-decline-history-enrollments

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=18081

Arkansas online-only eVersity ready to enroll after just 18 months

By Aziza Musa, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

The UA System board of trustees in March 2014 gave the go-ahead to start eVersity. At the time — and even now — the online market was a competitive one. And in the ring are some of the biggest for-profits, such as the University of Phoenix with its some 250,000 students, as well as the traditional brick-and-mortar universities going online, including Arizona State University with its nearly 83,400 students, 17 percent of which are online only. In Arkansas, the Arkansas Department of Higher Education has allowed more than 100 distance education providers.

http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2015/sep/07/applications-to-open-tuesday-for-ua-s-o/?f=latest

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=13773

Udemy sees 200% rise in revenue, online learning demand increases

by Natalie Marsh, the Pie News

Online learning platform, Udemy, has seen an increase in revenue of 200% year on year, as the demand for skills-based online learning increases.Udemy, which launched in 2010 in the US, provides free and paid-for online courses tailored for skills-based learning in subjects including language learning, office productivity and IT and software. Courses are created by instructors themselves, who receive all of the revenue, minus the payment fees, if they bring students to their course, or half of the revenue if students were brought in by Udemy. The revenue increase of the platform overall has risen since last year, when it was displaying a growth of 160%.

http://thepienews.com/news/udemy-sees-200-rise-in-revenue-online-learning-demand-increases/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=13770

District rolls out revamped elementary computer curriculum

by Margaret Reist, Lincoln Journal

This fall, Lincoln Public Schools is rolling out a revamped elementary computer curriculum that emphasizes computer science — and coding — principles. Kent Steen, LPS computer science curriculum specialist, said the goal is to expose all students to the basics of coding and computer science — including robotics — along with digital literacy and digital media arts. Exposing all students to computer science at a young age, by showing them it’s something they all can do, will help reduce the gender and racial minority gap in such fields, he said.

http://www.macon.com/news/business/technology/article34167813.html

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=13767

Are College Students Really Obsessed With Technology?

By Katie Lepi, Edudemic

Not too long ago, I read a post written by a teacher that said “Our students get younger every year”. While this is obviously not true unless you’re measuring their age in relation to yourself, as you move further and further away from being a student, your students may be harder to ‘get’. Every year, the re:fuel agency College Explorer does a huge study among all types of students in the 18-24 and 25-34 year old age groups. The key findings have been summed up in the handy infographic linked below that they’ve made to accompany the study. Keep reading and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what college students are looking like these days – in so many different aspects!

http://www.edudemic.com/college-students-really-obsessed-with-technology/

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from Educational Technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uis/edtech/~3/6Xd20Qvges4/

Top 5 Tips For Blended Classrooms

By Reannah Sartoris, Edudemic

What is a blended classroom? The blended classroom learning model combines face-to-face teaching with technology enhanced instruction. This includes having students use Apps, QR codes, websites, surveys, and videos integrated into the lesson. Effectively and efficiently blending the classroom with these technologies can increase student engagement, motivation and build a sense of community as students collaborate more together. Fortunately, if the students are using a school’s wireless network, many inappropriate sites are blocked; however, for students with 3G and 4G capabilities, unblocked content and social media access is still a concern. So, before you have your students take out their phones or devices, consider these suggestions to seamlessly turn your classroom into a blended classroom.

http://www.edudemic.com/top-5-tips-blended-classroom/

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from Educational Technology http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/uis/edtech/~3/frOP_2GtLEg/

Online learning offers pros, cons

by Jennifer Pallay, Northwest Indiana Times

College professors and students agree that while online courses have their challenges, they also have many benefits. At Indiana University Northwest, the online classes fill up sooner than face-to-face ones, said Alicia Wright, a lecturer in IUN’s Department of Communications. “We were surprised by that,” she said. “I’m trying to get everyone in the department to learn about it and teach these classes. In the communications department, it’s a hard sell but it’s actually what the students want.” Wright, who was recently honored with IUN’s Online Design and Delivery Award, originally felt online courses would be too difficult for some topics, but since taking online teaching courses through the university and creating three classes of her own over the past year, she has seen the light, she said.

http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/online-learning-offers-pros-cons/article_5b61663d-2472-526e-9799-a779dac381cb.html

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