Apps Are Free for a Reason

By Patrick Peterson, THE Journal

Introducing an educational app to the classroom can be dangerous, and the danger can be revealed at surprising times with startling images. “Watch out for someone in a bathing suit washing a car,” Kristy Sailors, director of educational technology at Blue Valley School District in Kansas, told audience members during a workshop at FETC 2016 in Orlando this month. A free app might provide an unexpected message that a teacher would prefer students miss. Parents will disapprove of their children being exposed to unwanted advertising, racy images or violent themes, so teachers should avoid introducing apps until they have been carefully checked out. Apps are expensive to create, so someone is paying for them. Remember the old saying, “If the app is free, you are the product being sold.”

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/01/26/apps-are-free-for-a-reason.aspx

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14946

College classes for middle school students? It’s happening in Hayward

By Susan Frey, EdSource

Instructors at Hayward’s Chabot College teach classes at the middle schools ranging from Early Childhood Development to Engineering to Music. Each of the five middle schools in the Bay Area school district offers one class per semester. Although the instructors adjust their teaching to be more appropriate for middle school students, the content is the same as courses offered at Chabot. The credits earned are transferable to community colleges and four-year universities. Offering college classes for 12-year-olds might seem like another example of putting pressure on students at ever-younger ages, but the impetus for the program is quite different, Hayward administrators say. Middle school occurs at a critical juncture for students, who face peer pressure as they try to form their own identity and envision their future.

http://edsource.org/2016/college-classes-for-middle-school-students-its-happening-in-hayward/93885

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14943

Six Steps to Building High-Quality Open Digital Badges

by Gina Howard, Evolllution

Though it can be difficult to build high-quality, evidence-rich badges, there are certain affordances that can help streamline the process. Building on an earlier EvoLLLution article, “Recognizing, Supporting, and Attracting Adult Learners with Digital Badges,” which takes a “macro” approach to badging, we now propose a framework to work through the technical aspects of building and supporting badges in a thriving ecosystem. This includes information about the appearance of the badge, what information the badge should contain, and how the contents of the badge should be shared.

http://evolllution.com/programming/credentials/six-steps-to-building-high-quality-open-digital-badges/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14940

7 Tips for Creating Memorable Learning Experiences

By Patrick Peterson, THE Journal

Memorable learning, said Rushton Hurley, is outside the book, the school bus and the campus; and it’s hands on and engaging and involves talking, being creative and taking risks. “It’s the stuff that sticks. We have a lot of days when things do not,” Hurley said during a workshop at FETC 2016 in Orlando. “Much of what happens in classes is sitting and listening and trying not to fall asleep.” He’s all about Great Projects! Many of those projects involve video.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/01/27/7-tips-for-creating-memorable-learning-experiences.aspx

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14938

Ithaca College discusses moving course evaluations online

By Grace Elletson, the Ithacan

As Ithaca College advances discussions about moving all course evaluations online, there is doubt in local and national conversations on the effectiveness of using course evaluations to judge a professor’s skill. A preliminary discussion was held at the Dec. 1, 2015, Faculty Council meeting about the positives and negatives of conducting course evaluations online collegewide. Benjamin Rifkin, provost and vice president for educational affairs, advocated for the switch. He said moving evaluations online provides more instant feedback for professors, students’ handwriting wouldn’t give away their identity, and the college would save money. Rifkin said the previous school he worked at, The College of New Jersey, had a successful switch to conducting evaluations entirely online.

https://theithacan.org/news/ithaca-college-discusses-moving-course-evaluations-online/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14935

Integrating Technology into My On-campus Course

by Brian J. Bushee, UPenn Almanac

In my new approach, I post my video lectures for the day’s topics to Canvas and ask the students to watch the videos prior to class. I also require that they take a five-question multiple choice quiz on the video material prior to class. The quizzes motivate them to watch the videos and provide them with immediate feedback on their understanding of the material in the videos. The quizzes also provide me with feedback on the student’s understanding of the material. I review the quiz results prior to class and start class by covering any questions that the students struggled with. Through this process, I am able to reduce the “lecture” part of class from 20-25 minutes to less than five minutes. Now, I have 20 minutes of extra class time that I can use for more in-depth coverage of advanced material, for additional real-world applications, or for more extensive discussions of complicated issues with students.

http://www.upenn.edu/almanac/volumes/v62/n20/talk-about-teaching.html

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14932

What a Million Syllabuses Can Teach Us

By JOE KARAGANIS and DAVID McCLURE, NY Times

Over the past two years, we and our partners at the Open Syllabus Project (based at the American Assembly at Columbia) have collected more than a million syllabuses from university websites. We have also begun to extract some of their key components — their metadata — starting with their dates, their schools, their fields of study and the texts that they assign. This past week, we made available online a beta version of our Syllabus Explorer,  http://explorer.opensyllabusproject.org/, which allows this database to be searched. Our hope and expectation is that this tool will enable people to learn new things about teaching, publishing and intellectual history.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/opinion/sunday/what-a-million-syllabuses-can-teach-us.html

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14929