21 education technology recommendations for 2016

By Converge Staff

The new National Education Technology Plan offers a vision and roadmap for technology-supported learning.  A new federal National Education Technology Plan reveals 21 recommendations for policymakers, administrators, teachers and teacher preparation professionals. The 2016 Plan, Future Ready Learning: Reimagining the Role of Technology in Education, articulates a vision of equity, active use, and collaborative leadership to make everywhere, all-the-time learning possible, according to the plan’s website. While acknowledging the continuing need to provide greater equity of access to technology itself, the plan goes further to call upon all involved in American education to ensure equity of access to transformational learning experiences enabled by technology.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2015/12/15/education-technology-recommendations-749/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14581

Report Examines School Internet Connectivity State by State

By Dian Schaffhauser, THE Journal

An organization that monitors Internet connectivity to schools has reported that while 20 million additional students have been given access to high-speed Internet, a comparably high number “still don’t have the speeds they need.” EducationSuperHighway’s 2015 “State of the States” report has found that more than three-quarters of school districts (77 percent) meet the widely accepted goal of 100 Kbps per student. That count was only 30 percent in 2013. The remaining 23 percent of districts leave 21 million students lacking the connectivity required for digital learning.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2015/12/15/report-examines-school-internet-connectivity-state-by-state.aspx

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14579

The Deepest Internet Connection on the Planet

By David Raths, Campus Technology

Do you think you have networking issues extending WiFi to remote parts of your campus? Try extending electric power and Internet service to the ocean floor three miles below the surface — the deepest Internet connection on the planet. That is the challenge the University of Hawaii had to overcome to support scientists doing sustained real-time observations in the deep ocean. Located 60 nautical miles north of the island of Oahu, the ALOHA Cabled Observatory (ACO) is the site of the long-term Hawaii Ocean Time-series open ocean measurement program, visited by research vessels 10 to 12 times each year since October 1988. Researchers use it to study ocean currents, salinity, plant and animal life, and geology.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/12/10/the-deepest-internet-connection-on-the-planet.aspx

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14576

College Campuses Are The New Test Facilities For Emerging Technology

by Melissa Tait, Tech Crunch

Consider, for instance, the University of Michigan is using VR technology to offer prospective student-athletes a behind-the-scenes look at the facilities and exciting game-day environment. This includes glimpses into fall camp, the stadiums and footage of the Oregon State football game — all of which offer an accurate and inclusive representation of a football player’s life at UM for a would-be student-athlete weighing his (perhaps numerous) college options. While some colleges use new technology to strategically draw prospective students, others use it purely as a means to generate buzz and lay the foundation for its potential application to the real world. By setting an aggressive pace for technology adoption, colleges around the country are pioneering the ways in which we will work and live. Students, having grown accustomed to using virtual reality, driverless cars and Google Glass in their college lives, will inevitably carry these tools to future jobs and their personal lives.

http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/12/college-campuses-are-the-new-test-facilities-for-emerging-technology/#.o1vp04r:gXtg

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14573

How to Support New Teachers in Personalized Learning—and Minimize the ‘Disillusionment Phase’

By Jin-Soo Huh, EdSurge

As someone tasked with supporting those who implement personalized learning, I have been reflecting on how to support first-year teachers who are both new to the classroom and new to a next generation model of teaching. These points are not groundbreaking, but they are best practices that coaches and instructional leaders have implemented for years. However, the focus on the shininess of online platforms and executing new models perfectly often leads us as instructional leaders to place a lesser priority on these strategies. Here’s what I’ve discovered works well.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2015-12-13-how-to-support-new-teachers-in-personalized-learning-and-minimize-the-disillusionment-phase

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14568

Did you love watching lectures from your professors?

by JILL BARSHAY, Hechinger Report

Online course data show that video lectures are not the best way to learn. Koedinger didn’t study live lectures, but recorded ones that were part of a free online psychology class produced by the Georgia Institute of Technology. He and a team of four Carnegie Mellon researchers mined the data from almost 28,000 students who took the course over the Coursera platform for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). They found that video lecturers were the least effective way to learn. Students who primarily learned through watching video lectures did the worst both on the 11 quizzes during the 12-week course and on the final exam. Students who primarily learned through reading, or a combination of reading and video lectures, did a bit better, but not much. The students who did the best were those who clicked on interactive exercises.

http://hechingerreport.org/data-mining-shows-that-recorded-video-lectures-are-the-least-effective-way-to-learn/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14565

Stanford Now Offers Minor in Digital Humanities

By Michael Hart, Campus Technology

In September, Stanford University launched a new minor in digital humanities, intended to combine digital tools with research and exploration of history, literature, languages and other humanities topics. Students in the minor can choose one of three focuses: geospacial humanities, text technologies or quantitative textual analysis. Each track has a corresponding introductory class that is partly method-based but also incorporates the larger themes of the digital humanities. The minor requires students to complete 20 units, including one core class of five units and five other courses with a minimum of three units each. Examples of course titles include “The Digital Middle Ages,” “Poetry and the Internet” and “Technologies of Enlightenment.” More than 70 courses throughout the university satisfy requirements for the minor, including those offered by the linguistics, history, management science and Earth sciences departments.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/12/14/stanford-now-offers-minor-in-digital-humanities.aspx

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14571