Returning to School: Why Video Is Here to Stay — from gettingsmart.com by Jessica Slusser

Excerpt:

Here are a few reasons video can be powerful and a few ways to incorporate it into your lesson plans:

  • Agency. We know some learners built a deep sense of agency while learning from home. Through video, students can tell their story, use a different format than they’ve used before to explain work and build and share their own lessons with classmates. Imagine the power of flipped student presentations.
  • Flip Your Classroom. Utilize the power of video by recording some of your direct instruction plans for learners to watch as “homework” then spending class time diving into work and building understanding.
  • Enriched Station Rotation. Create differentiated videos for each of your small group stations so students can watch a video that you created and be working on different review activities in their different stations. This also helps build a library of content you can use in the future.
  • Built in Assessment. Educators can create videos that are embedded in a Google Form that serves as a quick assessment. If a student gets the answer wrong, they’re moved into a new branch of the form that has a video to help build understanding, then when finished they go back to the original question to reassess. Students can also respond to assessment questions or submit work.
  • Better than Red Ink. What if instead of writing a learner’s grade with short feedback on their next written assignment, you could record a quick 30-second video that explains your grade and give real-time feedback that is more robust than the traditional red pen.
 

Recording of “The Future of Education Collaborative for Higher Education” on 8/12/21 — this event was sponsored by Instructure and AWS

From DSC:
One of the most interesting items for me in this was to hear how one university is allowing students to drive the Request For Proposal (RFP) process – giving students much more VOICE. Staff and faculty are consultants but students have the final say! Wow! 

Also, I agree with the idea that the market will drive changes within higher education. But for that to occur more significantly:

  • Employers need to hire more people from a variety of backgrounds and that come into their interviews with a greater variety of credentials.
  • The accrediting agencies involved with higher ed are going to need to become more innovative and flexible.
  • And the elephant in the room for me is that faculty members are going to have to come to the realization that those organizations/courses of the future that will thrive and have the most impact will be much more team-based and will be based upon what the market needs (i.e., better alignment is needed between the corporate/business world and the world of higher education). For far too long, the faculty member has been the sole person at the table….the person holding the steering wheel…the person in control of everything that gets presented and how it gets presented….the person who decides what they want to teach (vs. what the market actually needs) and how they want to teach it.

Finally, I bet AWS and Zoom could have said a LOT more than they actually said.

#learningfromthelivingclassroom

 

HOW SCHOOLS ARE REWRITING THE RULES ON CLASS TIME FOR STUDENTS—AND EVEN DITCHING GRADE LEVELS — from wsj.com by Yoree Koh
Educators are testing competency-based education, a form of personalized learning that emphasizes mastery of skills over hours spent in a classroom

 

 

How Next Gen TV Can Help Close The Digital Divide — from by Erik Ofgang
A new prototype utilizes Next Gen TV and QR codes to allow two-way communication between teachers and students via broadcast.

Excerpts:

Efforts to close the digital divide have ramped up during the pandemic, yet despite creative solutions from district, town, and state officials across the country, between 9 and 12 million students still lack adequate internet access.

However, a new application developed by The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) could help close this gap by utilizing cutting-edge broadcast TV technology to allow students to receive and respond to work assigned by their teachers.

What Is Next Gen TV and This Application?

Next Gen TV, also known as ATSC 3.0, is a new standard for broadcasting that is currently being launched at broadcast stations throughout the U.S. It is based on internet protocols and allows for targeted broadcasts to be sent as well as more robust datacasting (sending data via broadcasting). Schools can use datacasting to send tests, reading materials, or other assignments that take the form of word documents, excel sheets, and much more. Students can also complete tests and save the work on their own devices.

Also see:

Educational Equity With NextGen TV

Educational Equity With NextGen TV

 

Top 10 Free Coding Resources for Students — from gocoderz.com

Excerpt:

With computer science and technology being such a crucial part of student’s future success, it’s important that every student receives equitable access to programs and resources that can help them build their coding and programming knowledge early on. Exposure to coding resources increases student interest in computer science and technology careers and provides them with foundational knowledge that they can improve and refine as their education progresses to be successful in these future professions.

 

 

 

Are College Students Comfortable Using Edtech? Maybe Not — from edsurge.com by Rebecca Koenig

Excerpt:

Eighty percent of survey respondents indicated that they were confident in learning new edtech tools, while 20 percent said they struggled. That suggests to Barbaro that stereotypes painting all young people as “digital natives,” and all students as masters of technology, are not accurate.

From DSC:
This jibes with my experience teaching the Foundations of Information Technology class at Calvin University for many years (online and face-to-face). Prior to that course, surveys/feedback showed that many students had very little experience, confidence, and/or self-efficacy with their use of a variety of technologies (such as using HTML, designing websites, blogging, using Microsoft Excel, understanding networks or the Internet of Things, etc).

 

There’s a New Wave of AI Research Coming to Transform Education — from edsurge.com by Nadia Tamez-Robledo

Preparing for Students’ Second Act
With a focus on adult learners, the AI Institute for Adult Learning and Online Education, or ALOE, will look to improve online education for the more than 100 million American workers who will need to “reskill” over the next 10 years.

It will also learn from the massive amounts of data generated by online students that isn’t accessible in traditional in-person classes.

 

Fintropolis is an educational Minecraft world that teaching middle schoolers finance — from pixelkin.org

Excerpt:

Two years ago, Ally Financial, a financial services company, hired four interns from Historically Black Colleges and Universities through their Moguls in the Making program to promote financial literacy in younger students. The four college students, Erin Martin (Alabama A&M), Earl Perry and Keishon Smith (Florida A&M), and DeMari Tyner (North Carolina A&T) designed Fintropolis, a world in Minecraft, available now for free in Minecraft and Minecraft: Education Edition.

Also see:

Learn about life-boosting financial skills, including careers & jobs, taxes, budgeting, savings, credit, identity protection and investing.

 

What Is Instructional Scaffolding? — from edtechreview.in by Saniya Khan

Excerpt:

Scaffolding is a bridge used to build on what the students already know to get to something they do not know. If the scaffold is properly administered, it will act as a facilitator, not an enabler” (Benson, 1997).

The process of Scaffolding is based on Lev Vygotsky’s concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). This is the distance between what children can do by themselves and the next learning when they can be helped to achieve with competent assistance. Vygotsky said, “children who can perform their tasks at a particular cognitive level in cooperation and collaboration with others and with adults will be able to perform at a higher level. And this difference between the two levels is the child’s Zone of Proximal Development”. He defined scaffolding instruction as the “role of teachers and others in supporting the learner’s development and providing support structures to get to the next stage or level.”

 

9 Popular Apps For Adolescents Struggling To Read — from edtechreview.in
We’ve curated a list of 9 popular applications to help adolescents struggling to read.

Screenshots of Blending Board

 

IU researchers introduce ambitious new model for large-scale research on student learning — from news.iu.edu

Excerpt:

“The main conclusion of the study — to the great surprise of many teachers — is that there is no overall effect of feedback timing that spans all learning environments,” said Fyfe, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. “The findings should provide some comfort to teachers. If they take a few days to return feedback, there is no evidence that the delay will hamper their students’ progress, and in some cases, the delay might even be helpful.”

From DSC:
I must admit that I publish this with some hesitation, as I’m a big fan of personalized, customized feedback. I just hope that study doesn’t stop or reduce faculty members from providing such valuable feedback.

Also see:

The Science of Studying Student Learning at Scale — podcast and transcript — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly; with Emily Fyfe and Ben Motz at Indiana University

Excerpt:

MOTZ: So ManyClasses is really an attempt to try and expand the scope of research so that what we’re doing in asking a question of how people learn, is expanding beyond the boundaries of any single classroom, really aiming at developing inferences that could generalize beyond that narrow scope, but also that might be able to identify where a practice might have benefits.

FYFE: …I think when we are thinking of ManyClasses as a research team, we’re thinking of it as a new gold standard for how to conduct scientific research in classrooms

And so ManyClasses is a model for sort of combining the rigor of these randomized experiments within these authentic settings. And the goal is to sort of, as Ben said, to do this across many classes, so that we’re not just running one experiment, but we’re replicating it across all of these different authentic educational settings. And so really, at the heart of it, ManyClasses is a new model for conducting research in educational settings.

 

What doors does this type of real-time translation feature open up for learning? [Christian]

From DSC:
For that matter, what does it open up for #JusticeTech? #Legaltech? #A2J? #Telehealth?

 

Learning from the living class room

 

Transforming the classroom with augmented learning — from thetechedvocate.org by Matthew Lynch

Excerpt:

Forbes documented the many ways that augmented reality (AR) has come to life in recent years. They list several award-winning apps that use AR. A few are:

  • The “Gatwick Airport Passenger” App, which helps passengers navigate the airport;
  • The “Dulux Visualizer” App, which  lets you virtually scan and paint your room any color you choose;
  • “Envisioned by the Mine” App, which lets you put 3D images of any type of accessory or furnishing in your home that Lowe’s offers;
  • “Sephora Virtual Artist”, which allows you to “put makeup on” without actually touching brush to face;
  • “Accuvein”, which doctors and nurses use to scan a patient’s vein network (it reduces escalations by 45%);
  • And, of course, there are apps like the “BIC DrawyBook App” just for fun.

But what about the classroom? Can we see a future in transforming the classroom with augmented learning?

From DSC:
Along the lines of developing creativity with edtech…

I saw another item recently about Book Creator, something that’s made this blog before. I love that type of tool because it promotes creativity, unleashes a student’s imagination, promotes their artwork and writing/storytelling and their musical or acting abilities, and it develops skills in design and developing multimedia-based artifacts. For teachers, it could be a nice project-based learning exercise. 

I asked our youngest daughter if she would like to use it…we’ll see. You can get a free account that allows you to publish up to 40 books. (Plus there is pricing for schools and districts.)

And who knows…? This type of thing might just produce the next J.K. Rowling or a J.J. Abrams.

Book Creator -- check it out

Book Creator -- check it out

Book Creator -- check it out

 

In each episode of this podcast, Eric Mazur and Robyn Brinks Lockwood answer a frequently asked question about flipping instruction in higher education.

Flipping Higher Ed | FAQs with Eric Mazur and Robyn Brinks Lockwood — from BAM Radio Network

Description:

The COVID-19 pandemic forced higher education faculty around the world to stop and rethink how to teach their courses. For many, this was the first time they had given any serious thought to the science and art of teaching. The pandemic created a new universe of educators who are new to Flipped Learning and want to learn more about how to do it well. In each episode of this podcast, Eric Mazur and Robyn Brinks Lockwood answer a frequently asked question about flipping instruction in higher education.

 

 
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