In an open-ended question asking for educators’ favorite technologies currently in use at their schools, respondents overwhelmingly chose Google’s G Suite for Education as their top overall pick.
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The top overall categories were:
Mobile devices
Interactive whiteboards/displays/projectors
eLearning/learning management systems and reading software — Lexia Learning’s Core5 scored big in the reading software area, while Google Classroom, Schoology, Moodle, Canvas, and Blackboard Learn were often mentioned in the LMS area
Also, there was an article in there on learning spaces. Some ideas mentioned include:
That graphic got me to reflecting upon the situation for many parents and families out there today. In many households today, it often takes 2 incomes just to keep your heads above the water. That said, neither of the parents have much energy by the time they:
Make their way through traffic to finally arrive home from a very long day of work
Prepare dinner
Clean up after the dinner
Attend to pressing items for the household (i.e., going through the mail, paying bills, shopping for groceries, doing the laundry, mowing the lawn, etc.)
…and more
Having little energy left is especially true with single parents, who often have to go straight from work to pick their kids up from the daycare center or from a relative’s place. My hat’s off — big time — to single parents, as I have a great deal of respect for the enormity of their task.
So all of this leads me to reflect upon the questions:
If a child brings home homework to do each night, who’s going to be able to assist them with it if help is needed?
Who’s got the energy to deal with that?!
Thus, I’m not big on homework unless it is well within the child’s Zone of Proximal Development. It should rarely — if ever — involve the parents. I realize that’s not a very ideal statement or assertion. But, it’s now our current reality — as captured by the above graphic. This is true even when the parent, parents, or guardians highly value education.
It’s time to stop the homework. Or at least be sure that the children can do the homework themselves.
If anyone has some research on the efficacy of homework — or the lack thereof — please post it in the comments. I’d appreciate seeing those resources, and likely, others would too.
From DSC: Reading the item below prompted me to return to a thought/question that I’ve had several times now…in the future, will students be able to choose “where” they want to study? One of our daughters would probably be able to focus better if she were able to be transported to a place of her choosing — perhaps by a stream of running water.
Anyway, it’s an interesting thought/question to consider. It would certainly provide:
For example, the idea of being able to teleport their employees to worlds outside of the office – including on a beach on an island a thousand miles away – may help boost employees’ productivity while reducing their stress level.
Mure VR, an Icelandic company, has found a way to integrate virtual reality with your work with the introduction of Breakroom. According to their website, “Breakroom is the way to turn your virtual reality headset into a multi-monitor system. You open a relaxing virtual environment and open your regular Windows applications as a floating 2D monitor within the virtual world. You are no longer limited by the physical computer monitor and can surround yourself with applications.”
Breakroom allows employees to escape workplaces by creating a workspace – such as on the beach, or in a park – that is stress-reducing, while tailored specifically to their needs. Becoming immersed in your work and blocking out the distractions that come with now-popular open office environments is a practical way that Mure VR is bringing virtual reality into the workplace.
Also here’s another application of virtual reality:
“We are Alfred” is a pioneering virtual reality program where students don a headset to experience first-hand what it is like to be an older adult living with these common conditions.
Students at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine in Maine – the state with the oldest population in the country – are among the first in the world to use this program as a means to learn empathy for their patients.
“We’re trying to get our students to understand the person-to-person approach of caring for people and working with people,” said Dr. Marilyn R. Gugliucci, professor and director of geriatrics education and research at the college. “We don’t want to just teach in a classroom. They’ve got to know people to help heal people.”
Chris Lenihan from DiscoverDataScience.orgemailed me to let me know about a recently published guide on their site that’s entitled, “A Guide for Women in STEM”. Discover Data Science partnered with Heather Ambler from the University of Pittsburgh and Aiden Ford from the University of Connecticut to help produce this guide. Per Chris, the guide covers :
An overview of the challenges women can face in STEM fields
Outlines reasons women should pursue a STEM related career
Provides tips on how to encourage girls at an early age to follow their passion
Gives the reader extensive links to pre-college programs available for women, followed by a listing of over 30 scholarship options available to women pursuing STEM related degrees
Chris mentioned that both current and aspiring students can benefit from this information as they look for inspiration in their careers. Their mission is to serve students by delivering accurate, high quality information presented in a simple, clean format and they hope that this guide achieves that.
CURIE Academy is a one-week summer residential program for high school girls who excel in math and science. The focus is on juniors and seniors who may not have had prior opportunities to explore engineering, but want to learn more about the many opportunities in engineering in an interactive atmosphere.
G.R.A.D.E. CAMP is a week-long day program designed specifically for entering 8th to 12th grade girls who want to find out what engineering is all about through “hands-on” experience. G.R.A.D.E. CAMP emphasizes career exposure rather than career choice, so you can come just to experience something new.
Girlgeneering’s goal of a girls-only camp is to increase the interest of high ability young women in a career in engineering by combating stereotypes, creating connections, reducing the issue of competition for resources with boys, and demonstrating the real-world social impact of engineering. This one-week day camp will introduce middle school young women to the field of engineering by showing how engineering is connected to personal issues, social concerns, and community interests.
It’s a Girl Thing is a residential camp for girls. The goals are to provide girls with strong role models and dispel myths and misconceptions about science and careers in science. Campers experience university life, hands-on classes and recreational activities. In the past we have offered classes ranging from Nano Energy to Animal Science.
Smith Summer Science and Engineering Program (SSEP) is a four-week residential program for exceptional young women with strong interests in science, engineering and medicine. Each July, select high school students from across the country and abroad come to Smith College to do hands-on research with Smith faculty in the life and physical sciences and in engineering.
Survey the World of Engineering – is a one-week day camp that will allow you to develop your creativity as well as provide you with the opportunity to meet and speak with working engineers. For part of the camp, you will work on campus with different engineering departments, learning and completing hands-on projects to better understand the breadth and variety of different engineering fields. For the remainder of the camp, you will visit various corporate engineering plants such as General Electric, Procter & Gamble, and Northrop Grumman Xetron to meet professional engineers and see their work in action.
Survey: Women More Interested in STEM but Feel Less Prepared— from steamuniverse.com by Dian Schaffhauser
In a survey among Generation Z individuals, women and girls came across as less certain about innovative technologies such as robots and self-driving cars than men and boys, but they’re more intent on learning about the subjects that lead to those innovations. The research project was undertaken by Quizlet, an education technology company that produces an online study service.
What if a text or work of art is no longer read, but instead, experienced? What new questions are raised when it’s possible to visit an author’s home or stroll through the streets of an ancient city? How will our interpretations of literature, art, history and archaeology change when we are no longer passive recipients but co-constructors and actors in immersive experiences? How will this challenge us to think outside our current learning paradigms? These and other questions arise when we examine the impact of immersive technologies on the humanities and the social sciences.
Microsoft is launching its own answer to virtual reality today, taking on HTC and Oculus in the process. Windows Mixed Reality will be available in the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, and headsets are now available to buy. Here’s everything you need to know about Windows Mixed Reality.
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Microsoft is offering movement tracking (six degrees of freedom) without the need for traditional external sensors placed throughout a room. Windows Mixed Reality headsets have cameras and sensors to track the motion controllers.
…Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, is setting its sights on virtual reality. Imagine this, says Katie Finnegan, who heads Walmart’s tech incubator: You need a tent for your next camping trip. If all goes to plan, you could one day virtually swoop in to your campsite and see any given tent in action. “You could unzip it, lay down, look left and right and say, ‘Oh, this is supposed to be a two-person tent? It’s kind of tight,’ ” she said. And then you could move on to the next tent — without leaving your couch.
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Here are the five ideas the Bentonville, Ark.-based company says could be making their way online:
3-D holograms at Bonobos.com, the male clothing site Walmart acquired this year for $310 million, that would make it possible for shoppers to try on virtual clothing for fit and style.
At ModCloth, the women’s clothing site Walmart took over in March, customers may one day be able to take 3-D photos of themselves using their smartphones, and use those images to get an idea of how something might look on.
An “interactive virtual store” for designer Rebecca Minkoff, whose items are sold at Walmart.com, would allow customers to sit in on fashion shows and shop directly from the runway.
Tired of shopping online alone? If Walmart gets its way, you may soon be interacting with other shoppers and experts as you pick out items for your virtual cart.
Electric outlets, stove tops and door handles can all be child safety hazards — and soon, an online tool could peek inside your home and tell you where the biggest risks are lurking.
NASA and Google have teamed up to build a new virtual experience that lets space enthusiasts explore the red planet without having to leave their homes. Dubbed as “Access Mars”, the new project virtually transports users, wherever they are, to Earth’s neighboring planet in the solar system.
Artificial intelligence is predicted to fundamentally alter the nature of society by 2040. Investment in AI start-ups was estimated at $6-$9 billion in 2016, up from US$415 million four years earlier. While futurist Ray Kurzweil argues that AI will help us to address the grand challenges facing humanity, Elon Musk warns us that artificial intelligence will be our “biggest existential threat.” Others argue that artificial intelligence is the future of growth. Everything depends on how we manage the transition to this AI-era.
In 2016 the Obama administration released a national strategic plan for artificial intelligence and, while we do not all suddenly now need a plan for artificial intelligence, we do need to stay up to date on how AI is being implemented. Much of AI’s potential is yet to be realized, but AI is already running our lives, from Siri to Netflix recommendations to automated air traffic control. We all need to become more aware of how we are algorithmically shaped by our tools.
This Australian discussion paper on the implications of AI, automation and 21st-century skills, shows how AI will not just affect blue-collar truck drivers and cleaners, it will also affect white-collar lawyers and doctors. Automated pharmacy systems with robots dispensing medication exist, Domino’s pizza delivery by drone has already occurred, and a fully automated farm is opening in Japan.
Education reformers need to plan for our AI-driven future and its implications for education, both in schools and beyond. The never-ending debate about the sorts of skills needed in the future and the role of schools in teaching and assessing them is becoming a whole lot more urgent and intense.
The right to due process was inscribed into the US constitution with a pen. A new report from leading researchers in artificial intelligence cautions it is now being undermined by computer code.
Public agencies responsible for areas such as criminal justice, health, and welfare increasingly use scoring systems and software to steer or make decisions on life-changing events like granting bail, sentencing, enforcement, and prioritizing services. The report from AI Now, a research institute at NYU that studies the social implications of artificial intelligence, says too many of those systems are opaque to the citizens they hold power over.
The AI Now report calls for agencies to refrain from what it calls “black box” systems opaque to outside scrutiny. Kate Crawford, a researcher at Microsoft and cofounder of AI Now, says citizens should be able to know how systems making decisions about them operate and have been tested or validated. Such systems are expected to get more complex as technologies such as machine learning used by tech companies become more widely available.
“We should have equivalent due-process protections for algorithmic decisions as for human decisions,” Crawford says. She says it can be possible to disclose information about systems and their performance without disclosing their code, which is sometimes protected intellectual property.
“We announce the appointment of a minister for artificial intelligence. The next global wave is artificial intelligence and we want the UAE to be more prepared for it.”
Tech Giants Are Paying Huge Salaries for Scarce A.I. Talent— from nytimes.com by Cade Metz Nearly all big tech companies have an artificial intelligence project, and they are willing to pay experts millions of dollars to help get it done.
Excerpt:
Tech’s biggest companies are placing huge bets on artificial intelligence, banking on things ranging from face-scanning smartphones and conversational coffee-table gadgets to computerized health care and autonomous vehicles. As they chase this future, they are doling out salaries that are startling even in an industry that has never been shy about lavishing a fortune on its top talent.
Typical A.I. specialists, including both Ph.D.s fresh out of school and people with less education and just a few years of experience, can be paid from $300,000 to $500,000 a year or more in salary and company stock, according to nine people who work for major tech companies or have entertained job offers from them. All of them requested anonymity because they did not want to damage their professional prospects.
With so few A.I. specialists available, big tech companies are also hiring the best and brightest of academia. In the process, they are limiting the number of professors who can teach the technology.
Now the two organizations have produced a free online guide that covers tools and resources to help students undertake 360-degree production. Among the topics: how to identify the “big ideas” worth exploring and personalize them; how to do 360-degree recording and handle pre-production, production and post-production; and how to share the film “with the world” and assess its impact. There’s also an educator resource on integrating video production into the curriculum.
The combination of rapidly-accumulating research on the effectiveness of active learning combined with improvements in technology have created an ideal environment for almost any instructor to move their courses from a traditional to a flipped model.
Many articles on flipped learning contain misconceptions that can lead potential practitioners into error or away from using flipped learning entirely, to the detriment of their students and themselves.
This article looks at some of the myths about flipped learning and provides contradictory facts about this pedagogical approach.
Flipped learning, sometimes called the “flipped classroom,” is a pedagogical approach which uses time and space in a different way from the way courses are typically taught. In traditional instruction, students’ first contact with new ideas happens in class, usually through direct instruction from the professor; after exposure to the basics, students are turned out of the classroom to tackle the most difficult tasks in learning — those that involve application, analysis, synthesis, and creativity — in their individual spaces. Flipped learning reverses this, by moving first contact with new concepts to the individual space and using the newly-expanded time in class for students to pursue difficult, higher-level tasks together, with the instructor as a guide.
Flipped learning is a pedagogical approach whose time has come. The combination of rapidly-accumulating research on the effectiveness of active learning combined with improvements in technology have created an ideal environment for almost any instructor to move their courses from a traditional to a flipped model. At the same time, despite its popularity and the efforts of groups like the Flipped Learning Network to explain and operationalize flipped learning, it remains a somewhat poorly-understood concept among many. Many published articles on flipped learning contain misconceptions that can lead potential practitioners into error or away from using flipped learning entirely, to the detriment of their students and themselves.
Let’s take a look at some of the myths about flipped learning and try to find the facts.
It’s the start of a new school year and the air is full of promise. I’ve set up my room, made my copies and attended all of my meetings. As students flood into the school, I’m charged with positive energy and hope.
But as I peruse my class list and the academic data that accompanies it, anxiety sets in. I’ve committed to personalizing learning, but how can I do that for every student in my inclusion classroom when the range of abilities among them is so vast?
This is my third year teaching at William Penn High School in the Colonial School District in New Castle, Delaware. Dually certified in special education and English Language Arts, I teach an ELA inclusion class to 11th and 12th graders, which means I serve students with and without Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) in the same setting. Additionally, I manage a caseload of 18 students with IEPs, and enter goals and progress for over 60 other students.
A core element of my job has always been to consider how I can tailor instruction to meet the needs of each student—that’s the crux of special education. IEPs are legal documents designed to include specific goals, objectives and strategies for how to modify instruction to meet each student’s needs. Personalized learning doesn’t seem that far off—but meeting the needs of every student in an inclusion class when some have IEPs and some do not can get hairy.
It also raises some questions around where special education practices and personalized learning intersect.
Does personalized learning mean every student gets an IEP? Does it mean that students who had an IEP no longer need one because now every learner is receiving tailored instruction? Can I use the same measuring tools to gauge growth for all students? Should it be different than how I was teaching before?
I’d like to see special education take a front seat in conversations about personalized learning.
Jason took ownership of his class project, exhibiting agency. Students who take ownership go beyond mere responsibility and conscientiously completing assignments. These students are focused on their learning, rather than their grade. They are genuinely interested in their work and are as likely as not to get up and work on a project on a Saturday morning, even though they don’t have to (and without considerations of extra credit.)
They complete their homework on time and may well go above and beyond, and they have interesting thoughts to add to classroom dialog. For many teachers, they are a joy to teach, but they are also the ones who may ask the hard questions and they may be quick to point out what they see as hypocrisy in the authority figures.
“Responsible” students, on the other hand, are compliant. Most teachers think they are a joy to teach. They complete their homework without fail, and pay attention and participate in class. These are the kids typically considered “good” students. They usually win most of the academic awards because they are thought of as the “best and brightest.”
Responsible students are concerned about their grades, and can be identified when they ask questions like::
“Will that be on the test?”
“How many words do I have to write?”
“What does it take to get an A?”
Students who take ownership, on the other hand ask questions like:
“There are several different viewpoints on this subject so why is that, and what does it mean?
“Is what you are teaching, or what is in my textbook, consistent with my research?”
“Why is this important?”
Compliance or agency? We need to decide.
The past decades have been the age of the responsible, compliant student. Students who used to be able to get into college and then immediately secure a good job. But the world and the workforce have changed.
Video has become as ubiquitous in higher education classrooms as big screens in the fitness center and Hulu in residential halls. The use cases abound. The most popular use right now is to help with remote teaching and learning; 73 percent of institutions in a recent survey report the use of video for that purpose. That’s followed by the showing of video in classrooms (70 percent), as supplementary course material (66 percent) and for lecture capture (65 percent). But video is also gaining steam in student assignments, teaching skills and recording students as they practice them, recording campus events for on-demand viewing, as part of library media collections, to deliver personal introductions and to give feedback on student assignments and instructor teaching practices.
These examples aren’t the only ones cited in the latest results of Kaltura’s “The State of Video in Education.” The 2017 survey, done in May and June 2017, drew responses from more than a thousand people, 81 percent of whom work in higher ed (the rest from K–12 and other educational organizations). Most of the survey respondents hold one of four primary roles: instructional design, IT, faculty and media. Kaltura is a company that sells video products and services.
Also see:
Survey: Blended Learning on the Rise — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly Most faculty in our second annual Teaching with Technology Survey said they employ a mix of online and face-to-face instruction, and many are using the flipped model in their courses.
Excerpt:
In a nationwide survey on the use of technology for teaching and learning, an increasing number of higher education faculty members said they employ a mix of online and face-to-face learning in their courses. A full 73 percent of respondents said they use the blended model — that’s up from 71 percent in 2016. And while 15 percent of faculty are still teaching exclusively face-to-face, 12 percent have gone fully online (an increase from 10 percent teaching online in 2016).
Those findings came out of Campus Technology‘s 2017 Teaching with Technology Survey, in which we asked faculty to dish on their approach to teaching, use of technology, views of the future and more.
From DSC: The vast majority of the lessons being offered within K-12 and the lectures (if we’re going to continue to offer them) within higher education should be recorded.
Why do I say this?
Well…first of all…let me speak as a parent of 3 kids, one of whom requires a team of specialists to help her learn. When she misses school because she’s out sick, it’s a major effort to get her caught up.As a parent, it would be soooooo great to log into a system and obtain an updated digital playlist of the lessons that she’s missed. She and I could click on the links to the recordings in order to see how the teacher wants our daughter to learn concepts A, B, and C. We could pause, rewind, fast forward, and replay the recording over and over again until our daughter gets it (and I as a parent get it too!).
I realize that I’m not saying anything especially new here, but we need to do a far better job of providing our overworked teachers with more time, funding, and/or other types of resources — such as instructional designers, videographers and/or One-Button Studios, other multimedia specialists, etc. — to develop these recordings. Perhaps each teacher — or team — could be paid to record and contribute their lessons to a pool of content that could be used over and over again. Also, the use of RSS feeds and content aggregators such as Feedly could come in handy here as well. Parents/learners could subscribe to streams of content.
Such a system would be a huge help to the teachers as well. They could refer students to these digital playlists as appropriate — having updated the missing students’ playlists based on what the teacher has covered that day (and who was out sick, at another school-sponsored event, etc.). They wouldn’t have to re-explain something as many times if they had recordings to reference.
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Also, within the realm of higher education, having recordings/transcripts of lectures and presentations would be especially helpful to learners who take more time to process what’s being said. And while that might include ESL learners here in the U.S., such recordings could benefit the majority of learners. From my days in college, I can remember trying to write down much of what the professor was saying, but not having a chance to really process much of the information until later, when I looked over my notes. Finally, learners who wanted to review some concepts before a mid-term or final would greatly appreciate these recordings.
Again, I realize this isn’t anything new.But it makes me scratch my head and wonder why we haven’t made more progress in this area, especially at the K-12 level…? It’s 2017. We can do better.
Excerpt from the Conclusion section (emphasis DSC):
Technological change and its impact on labour markets calls for a renewed focus on how the world’s human capital is invested in and leveraged for social well-being and economic prosperity for all. Many of today’s education systems are already disconnected from the skills needed to function in today’s labour markets and the exponential rate of technological and economic change is further increasing the gap between education and labour markets. Furthermore, the premise of current education systems is on developing cognitive skills, yet behavioural and non-cognitive skills that nurture an individual’s capacity to collaborate, innovate, self-direct and problem-solve are increasingly important.Current education systems are also time-compressed in a way that may not be suited to current or future labour markets. They force narrow career and expertise decisions in early youth. The divide between formal education and the labour market needs to be overcome, as learning, R&D, knowledge-sharing, retraining and innovation take place simultaneously throughout the work life cycle, regardless of the job, level or industry.
Insert from DSC…again I ask:
“Is is time to back up a major step and practice design thinking on the entire continuum of lifelong learning?”
Education delivery and financing mechanisms have gone through little change over the last decades. In many countries, many youth and children may find their paths constrained depending on the type of education they are able to afford, while others may not have access to even basic literacy and learning. On the other hand, many developed world education systems have made enormous increases in spending—with little explicit return. Early childhood education and teacher quality remain neglected areas in many developed and developing countries, despite their proven impact on learning outcomes. Both areas also suffer from lack of objective, global data.
Generational shifts also necessitate an urgent focus by governments on human capital investments, one that transcends political cycles. Ageing economies will face a historical first, as more and more of their populations cross into the 65 and over age group and their workforces shrink further, necessitating a better integration of youth, female workers, migrants and older workers. Many emerging economies face change of a different kind as a very large cohort of the next generation—one that is more connected and globalized than ever before—enters the workforce with very different aspirations, expectations and worldviews than their predecessors.
The expansion of the digital economy is accelerating the presence of a new kind of productive entity, somewhere between human capital and physical capital—robots and intelligent algorithms.As a result, some experts expect a potential reduction in the use of human labour as part of economic value creation while others expect a restructuring of the work done by people across economies but stable or growing overall levels of employment.19 Yet others have cautioned of the risks to economic productivity of technological reticence at the cost of realizing the raw potential of new technological advancements unfettered.20 While in the immediate term the link between work and livelihoods remains a basic feature of our societies, the uncertainty around the shifts underway poses fundamental questions about the long-term future structure of economies, societies and work. However, for broad-based transition and successful adaptation towards any one of these or other long-term futures, strategic and deep investments in human capital will be even more—not less—important than before.
“Personalized learning seeks to accelerate student learning by tailoring the instructional environment — what, when, how, and where students learn — to address the individual needs, skills, and interests of each student. Students can take ownership of their own learning, while also developing deep, personal connections with each other, their teachers, and other adults.”
WE’VE ALWAYS HAD FOUR STRONG BELIEFS:
Students’ ownership of their learning is critical to long-term success.
When it comes to learning, students should get more of what they need exactly when they need it.
Ensuring equity requires getting each student what he or she needs to succeed.
It is possible to redesign schools to work much better for students and teachers.
We do not believe that there is yet definitive proof that personalized learning works better than other models. Ultimately, we hope that personalized learning will improve life outcomes for students, with clear evidence to support its efficacy. In the interim, we look to traditional academic measures (e.g. state assessments or assessments like NWEA MAP), to provide early signs of the efficacy of personalized learning.
Despite the lack of conclusive proof, there are two important data sets that we find compelling. First, RAND conducted a study of 11,000 students and 62 personalized learning schools nationally and found that “students made significant gains in mathematics and reading overall, and in elementary and middle schools [1].” More recently, RAND published the third of its studies of personalized learning. It again found statistically significant gains in math, however, the effect size had decreased notably [2].
With Google Earth VR, you can go anywhere in virtual reality. Whether you want to stroll along the canals of Venice, stand at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro or soar through the sky faster than a speeding bullet, there’s no shortage of things to do or ways to explore. We love this sense of possibility, so we’re bringing Street View to Earth VR to make it easier for you to see and experience the world.
This update lets you explore Street View imagery from 85 countries right within Earth VR. Just fly down closer to street level, check your controller to see if Street View is available and enter an immersive 360° photo. You’ll find photos from the Street View team and those shared by people all around the world.
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