Record Interest in Icelandic

BY VALA HAFSTAD, Iceland Review

A record four hundred people have signed up for Icelandic as a second language at the University of Iceland this fall, RÚV reports. Enrollment in Icelandic as a second language has increased in recent semesters, and the university has not been able to meet the increased demand. The unversity’s online courses in Icelandic, icelandiconline.is, developed in 2010, have now been made available for smartphones, and a special online course has been created for immigrants. Many students are enrolled in Icelandic in winter, but summer classes are also very popular and fill up quickly. Every day, 400-600 people study Icelandic using their smartphones. Professor of Second Language Acquisition and Pedagogy Birna Arnbjörnsdóttir reports that the interest is not limited to Iceland. “There is also a lot of interest in Icelandic lessons, organized by the Sigurður Nordal Institution, at foreign universities.”

http://icelandreview.com/news/2016/09/26/record-interest-icelandic

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=18995

Does Presence Equal Progress? Tracking Engagement in Online Schools

By Steven Guttentag, EdSurge

Embracing online school requires a new mindset, as well as new criteria for measuring academic success—measures that take into account the nature of teaching and learning online, the types of students online schools serve, and the unique ways in which those students learn. Many valid questions have been raised about online schools. It’s true that not all of them are serving the best interests of their students. Each of us has seen headlines about an online school providing an unaccredited program that looks like a “diploma mill,” or a completely mismanaged school administration that was not prepared for high student mobility or other realities of online learning.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2016-09-25-does-presence-equal-progress-tracking-engagement-in-online-schools

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=18965

Focus On Online Learning Can Help Boost Ontario Math Scores

by Doina Oncel, Huffington Post

With the recent news release, that Ontario students are doing poorly at math, it is imperative to focus on this issue now as it affects not only our current students and schools but our economy in the long run. While STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) focused professions are the future of our economy they require a high level of math knowledge. For example, to enter an engineering field one must have a high understanding of math and, if not learned early it may be a loss that the next generation will have to deal with when losing opportunities in the future. While the idea of having a one hour blocked time for math learning in classrooms is a great solution, I am personally not convinced when it comes to the online learning strategy. It is very interesting to see how many kids and their parents will actually have access to online resources considering that, although we live in one of the best nations in the world, many people do not have a computer and Internet access at home.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/doina-oncel/online-learning-ontario_b_12121784.html

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=18953

Jefferson Forest course trains students in technology – and puts them to work fixing IT issues

by Rachael Smith, News and Advance

At 9 a.m. Friday morning in Jefferson Forest High School’s library, about 10 students are cleaning Chromebooks with compressed air. They are only the second group to enroll in “Cavalier Tech,” a high school course designed for students interested in the technology field that also serves as an internship worth college credit. The students work together to help peers and teachers resolve Level 1 technology problems, or basic issues, on hardware and software belonging to JF and to Bedford County Public Schools.

http://www.newsadvance.com/news/local/jefferson-forest-course-trains-students-in-technology-and-puts-them/article_f1c7cdb2-086c-5f71-b02b-a326dff7d9c8.html

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=18941

Curriculum and Instruction: Brewing a Better Vocabulary

By Jeff Mao, THE Journal

One of the challenges of the education profession is the lack of a standardized professional vocabulary. Doctors, lawyers, car mechanics, barbers and IT workers have them — if I say “mullet,” “French braid” or “flat top,” I bet you have pictures in your head that are the same as the next person. However, get a room full of educators and ask them about digital learning, blended learning, hybrid learning, personalized learning or individualized learning, and you’ll likely end up with more definitions than people in the room. This lack of a standard vocabulary is particularly noticeable, and particularly important, in the ongoing conversation about technology use. When and how is using technology in learning a good idea? If your district adopts a model that gives you a common vocabulary, that conversation is much easier.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/09/21/curriculum-and-instruction-brewing-a-better-vocabulary.aspx

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=18933

Data Can Help Schools Confront ‘Chronic Absence’

By Dian Schaffhauser, THE Journal

Half of “chronically absent” students are found in just four percent of the country’s school districts. Thirty districts in Texas and California alone account for 10 percent of the country’s total chronically absent kids. About 500 districts have chronic absenteeism that surpasses 30 percent — more than twice the national average. The data cited here isn’t new. It was shared in June by the Office for Civil Rights, which compiled it from a 2013-2014 survey completed by nearly every school district and school in the United States. What is new is a report from Attendance Works and the Everyone Graduates Center that encourages schools and districts to use their own data to pinpoint ways to take on the challenge of chronic absenteeism. Both of those organizations promote improvements in school practices that will lead to higher graduation rates.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/09/22/data-can-help-schools-confront-chronic-absence.aspx

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=18921

Scriyb: A new live streaming tool for online learning

by Washington Business Journal

Scriyb is different from other online class tools in that it uses live streaming video and allows interaction through a moderated chat room, where students can interact with each other, and a teacher can guide his or her lecture by seeing responses from the students. The chat was inspired by the chatrooms of online video games, and the streaming follows similar programing that apps such as Periscope use. It now competes against leading learning management systems like Blackboard and Canvas, but it is also designed to sit on top of an existing platform. The program takes, for example, 300 students who are signed up for a class, and then places them into groups of 30 students, whom they would interact with. It attempts to make a large class more intimate by putting it online.

http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2016/09/23/scriyb-a-new-live-streaming-tool-for-online.html

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=18909