20 awesome BYOD and mobile learning apps — from edutopia.org by Vicki Davis; updated 2/4/16

Excerpt:

We have now been Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) for three years, and boy, do the students bring it. They bring it all! We have iPads, Surface, iPhones, Droids, Chromebooks, Macs, and PC laptops. Here’s my current thinking.

 

 

 

7 best Google apps and tools — from interestingengineering.com

  1. Google Keep
  2. Google Scholar
  3. Gmailify
  4. Google Lego
  5. Google Mars
  6. Google Developers
  7. Google Sky

 

GoogleSky-April2016

 

 

 

Chrome Music Lab

Excerpt:

Music is for everyone. So this year for Music In Our Schools month, we wanted to make learning music a bit more accessible to everyone by using technology that’s open to everyone: the web. Chrome Music Lab is a collection of experiments that let anyone, at any age, explore how music works. They’re collaborations between musicians and coders, all built with the freely available Web Audio API. These experiments are just a start. Check out each experiment to find open-source code you can use to build your own.

 

ChromeMusicLab-March2016

 

 

 

My challenge to you – 8 things all teachers should learn about #edtech — from ictevangelist.com by Mark Anderson

Excerpt:

I love the School Report scheme that the BBC run via Newsround. We all remember the Newsrounds of our youth. For me it was John Craven who made me watch it whenever it was on. It was this report I saw recently on eight things teachers should learn, which got me thinking about eight things I thought teachers should learn about edtech.

My work sees me regularly helping teachers learn different things related to the use of technology and so in this post, I’m going to talk about the eight things I think teachers should learn with #edtech to help support their use of technology to enhance learning in the classroom.

Mark mentions: Google, Padlet, Kahoot, Socrative, Camera, Microphone, Twitter, Videoconferencing software

 

 

 

Quiz accommodations for students in Canvas and Moodle — from thejournal.com by Emmett Dulaney03/16/16

Excerpt:

As we move toward interacting more with students who have an individualized education program (IEP) indicating that they need additional time on tests and quizzes or just need to deal with life issues, it is imperative that the learning management system (LMS) depended upon by an instructor and student alike be properly configured for such accommodations. Canvas and Moodle are currently two of the most popular learning management systems, and both offer the ability to make adjustments to quiz functions within the course without compromising the overall structure of the course. In this article, we will examine how to do so and offer some tips on situations where they are relevant.

 

 

 

Use these Chrome apps to unleash students’ creativity — from educatorstechnology.com

Excerpt:

[The] Chrome web store is packed full of all kinds of educational apps and extensions some of which are also integrated with Google Drive. For those of you looking for a handy resource of Chrome apps to use with students in class, check out this comprehensive chart. In today’s post we are sharing with you a collection of some practical Chrome extensions to unleash learners creativity. Using these resources, students will be able to engage in a number of creative literacy activities that will allow them to multimodally communicate their thoughts, share their ideas and develop new learning skills.

 

 

 

Integrating technology and literacy — from edutopia.org by Frank Ward

Excerpt:

How do you work technology into the pedagogy, instead of just using something cool? That task can be especially daunting in language arts literacy classrooms where reading and writing skill development is the crux of daily lessons. However, as 1:1 technology initiatives roll out, integrating technology into the classroom is our reality.

With hundreds of sites, apps, Chrome extensions, and platforms available, choosing the right ones can seem overwhelming. As an eighth-grade language arts teacher, I’ve experienced this myself. Following are four tools that can help provide immediate formative assessment data as well as top-of-the-rotation feedback to help students develop personal learning goals.

If, like my school, you’re in a “Chromebook District,” these suggested tools will work well because all integrate perfectly when you sign in with your Google ID, limiting the need for multiple passwords. This saves a lot of student confusion, too.

 

 

 

Teachers are using theater and dance to teach math — and it’s working — from washingtonpost.com by Moriah Balingit

Excerpt:

This giggly play session actually was a serious math lesson about big and small and non-standard measurements. Dreamed up by Richardson and kindergarten teacher Carol Hunt, it aims to get the children to think of animal steps as units of measurement, using them to mark how many it takes each animal to get from a starting line to the target.

Teachers call such melding of art and traditional subjects “art integration,” and it’s a new and increasingly popular way of bringing the arts into the classroom. Instead of art as a stand-alone subject, teachers are using dance, drama and the visual arts to teach a variety of academic subjects in a more engaging way.

 

 

Some older items include:

Tech Tip: Using Nearpod for math instruction — from smartblogs.com

 

Storytelling app a hit; launches a new chapter in transmedia — from blogs.vancouversun.com

Excerpt:

Paul Pattison and Luke Minaker knew they were onto something when they got an email from the mother of a nine-year-old who read the first instalment of their interactive story, Weirdwood Manor.

She wrote that she couldn’t get her son to pick up a book,” said Pattison, technical director of All Play No Work, producer of the iPad app. “She got the app for her son and he went through it in two nights. He finished both books.

And then because we don’t have book 3 out yet, unprompted by her he went over to the bookshelf and pulled off a paperback and started reading chapter books again.

.

 

 

 

 

Now anyone can use Google’s deep learning techniques — from futurism.com by Sarah Marquart

In Brief:

Google announced a new machine learning platform for developers. The company is also open-sourcing tools such as Tensorflow to allow the community to take its internal tools, adapt them for their own uses, and improve them.

Google has announced a new machine learning platform for developers at its NEXT Google Cloud Platform user conference. Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman, explained that Google believes machine learning is “what’s next.”

 

GoogleNEXT16

 

 

Using artificial intelligence in the classroom — from educationdive.com by Erin McIntyre

Dive Brief:

  • After Google’s artificially intelligent (AI) computer system beat world champion “Go” player Lee Sedol of South Korea, some are wondering if man-made neural networks can be applied in educational settings to benefit learning.
  • Companies like Pearson have begun to examine the subject; the company recently released a pamphlet called Intelligence Unleashed: An argument for AI in Education that argues software may soon be able to provide instant and deeper feedback regarding student progress, eliminating traditional standardized testing.
  • Pearson also conceptualized something called a “lifelong learning companion” for students, which essentially could be seen as an interactive cloud that asked questions, provided encouragement, offered suggestions and connected learners to resources.

 

 

AI-in-Education--2016

Excerpts:

ALGORITHM
A defined list of steps for solving a problem. A computer program can be viewed as an elaborate algorithm. In AI, an algorithm is usually a small procedure that solves a recurrent problem.

MACHINE LEARNING
Computer systems that learn from data, enabling them to make increasingly better predictions.

DECISION THEORY
The mathematical study of strategies for optimal decision-making between options involving different risks or expectations of gain or loss depending on the outcome.

 

It can be difficult to define artificial intelligence (AI), even for experts. One reason is that what AI includes is constantly shifting. As Nick Bostrom, a leading AI expert from Oxford University, explains: “[a] lot of cutting edge AI has filtered into general applications, often without being called AI because once something becomes useful enough and common enough it is not labeled AI anymore.” Instead, it is considered a computer program, or an algorithm, or an app, but not AI.

Another reason for the difficulty in defining AI is the interdisciplinary nature of the field. Anthropologists, biologists, computer scientists, linguists, philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists all contribute to the field of AI, and each group brings their own perspective and terminology.

For our purposes, we define AI as computer systems that have been designed to interact with the world through capabilities (for example, visual perception and speech recognition) and intelligent behaviours (for example, assessing the available information and then taking the most sensible action to achieve a stated goal) that we would think of as essentially human.

 

 

IBM’s Rometty wants you to know they’re a ‘cognitive solutions cloud platform company’ — from barrons.com by Tiernan Ray

Excerpt:

Rometty says she is the first IBM chief to ever offer a keynote at the show [CES]. Her framework for everything this evening is that the “future is cognitive,” and we’re headed to a “cognitive IoT.”

What happens when everyone becomes digital, she asks. What will differentiate people is understanding all that data. That is the “cognitive era.” “Cognitive is an era of business and an era of technology,” she says. 80% of data out here is “black, invisible,” and “that’s what’s changing,” she says.

Rometty clarifies cognitive is not synonymous with A.I. It is not about systems you program. It is about systems that learn.

Her point is that all that “vast IoT data is going to do nothing for you unless you can bring cognitive to it.”

Her big point: “IBM is no longer a hardware, software company,” but a “cognitive solutions cloud platform company.”

 

 

 

SoftBank’s Pepper robot to get even brainier with IBM’s Watson technology — from thenextweb.com by Natt Garun

Excerpt:

When it launched last year, SoftBank’s emotion-reading robot Pepper sold out in just one minute despite its limited utility. Now, Pepper’s about to get smarter thanks to a partnership with IBM to integrate Watson cognitive system into its brains.

With Watson, developers hope to help Pepper understand human emotions more thoroughly to appropriately respond and engage with its users. IBM and SoftBank say the collaboration will also allow Pepper to gather new information from social media to learn how people interact with brands so it knows how to personally reach out to people.

 

 

 

FlexspaceDotOrg-March2016

The Flexible Learning Environments eXchange – FLEXspace – is a robust, open access repository populated with examples of learning spaces. It contains high resolution images and related information that describes detailed attributes of these spaces from institutions across the globe. The incentive for participation is to showcase innovative design solutions open to peer review ranking and comments. As more contributions are received, the repository will emerge into a very useful planning resource for education and supporting entities at multiple levels.

 

From DSC:
You can browse images, video, and documents.

You can get some new ideas, sources of inspiration…and get the creative juices going. The site covers a variety of learning spaces — from large lecture halls to library lounges to active learning spaces.

 

 

 

 

Amazon Education to launch new website for open education resources — from marketbrief.edweek.org by Michele Molnar

Excerpt:

Amazon Education is working on a new platform that will allow schools to upload, manage, share, and discover open education resources from a home page that in some ways resembles the one shoppers are accustomed to accessing on the massive online retailer’s website.

School administrators learned about the site, to be called Amazon Inspire, during a “Transitioning to OER” session Friday as part of the National Conference on Education of the AASA, the School Superintendents Association, held here.

The new platform is in beta testing now, and is scheduled to be released publicly within the next two to three months, according to Andrew Joseph, vice president of strategic relations for Amazon Education.

 

What technology trends will radically transform businesses in 2016 and beyond? — from frogdesign.com

The proposed trends/topics include:

  • Blockchain Beyond Bitcoin
  • Data-Driven Design Takes Center Stage
  • Microbiome Makes Health Personal
  • AI Saves Financial Services
  • VR Medical Therapy
  • FDA-Approved Video Games
  • Human-Centered Design is Automated
  • VR Breaks Down Borders
  • Film Reviews, Written By Your Heartbeat
  • AI In Special Education
  • Sensors Start to Combine & Disappear
  • Haptic Feedback Gets Real
  • Alternative Credit Scoring
  • The Open Enterprise

 

In the future, we’ll see a rise in robotic toys that serve counselors and playmates to children with various learning disabilities like Autism. Studies have shown that AI toys are extremely effective in getting withdrawn ASD kids in engaging in personal, playful interactions. Special Education departments will soon have whole classrooms of intelligent toys to play with.

 

 

U.S. Department of Education Releases 2016 National Education Technology Plan — from ed.gov

Excerpts:

The U.S. Department of Education  announced [on 12/10/15] the release of the 2016 National Education Technology Plan and new commitments to support personalized professional learning for district leaders across the country working to improve teaching and student achievement through the effective use of technology.

Updated every five years, the plan is the flagship educational technology policy document for the United States. The 2016 plan outlines a vision of equity, active use, and collaborative leadership to make everywhere, all-the-time learning possible. 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.

“Technology has the potential to bring remarkable new possibilities to teaching and learning by providing teachers with opportunities to share best practices, and offer parents platforms for engaging more deeply and immediately in their children’s learning,” said U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan. “It can change the experiences of students in the most challenging circumstances by helping educators to personalize the learning experience based on students’ needs and interests—meeting our students where they are and challenging them to reach even higher. This year’s update to the National Education Technology Plan includes a strong focus on equity because every student deserves an equal chance to engage in educational experiences powered by technology that can support and accelerate learning.”

The plan calls for schools and districts to:

  • Redesign teacher preparation programs to shift from a single technology course to thoughtful use of technology throughout a teacher’s preparation and minimum standards for higher education instructors’ tech proficiency.
  • Set an expectation of equitable access to technology and connectivity inside and outside of school regardless of students’ backgrounds.
  • Adopt high-quality openly licensed educational materials in place of staid, traditional textbooks.
  • Implement universal design principles for accessibility across all educational institutions and include these principles within teacher preparation programs.
  • Improve technology-based assessments to allow for embedded delivery within instruction and making near real-time feedback for educators possible.
  • Establish a robust technology infrastructure that meets current connectivity goals and can be augmented to meet future demand.
 

Apple’s Swift programming language is now open source — from techcrunch.com by John Biggs

Excerpt:

Swift, Apple’s programming language aimed at OS X and iOS developers, has gone open source under the Apache License. This means all of the source code, including the code for a new package manager, will be available to edit and compile and programs can be created without attribution. Apple is also revealing further plans for the language on their new site, swift.org.

 

7 trends that will revolutionize online learning — from ecampusnews.com by Andrew Barbour
A look at new tools and new opportunities to create an instructional experience that is not only different, but better, taking online learning in mainstream higher ed to the next level.

Excerpt:

eCampus News looks at seven trends that have the potential to remake the world of online learning.

  1. Blended Learning Is the Sweet Spot
  2. Video Is King
  3. Interactivity, Not Talking Heads
  4. Mobile Is a Must
  5. Identity Verification and Cheating
  6. Auto-grading
  7. Open, Intuitive Platforms

 

From DSC:
I appreciated their thoughts re: adding interactivity to videos.  A team-based approach may be helpful here.

 

 

 

WordPress now powers 25% of the Web — from by Emil Protalinski

Excerpt:

One in four websites is now powered by WordPress.

Today is a big day for the free and open-source content management system (CMS). To be perfectly clear, the milestone figure doesn’t represent a fraction of all websites that have a CMS: WordPress now powers 25 percent of the Web.

 

WordPress-25Percent

 

What Google’s new open-source software means for artificial-intelligence research — from chronicle.com by Ellen Wexler

Excerpt:

Google wants the artificial-intelligence software that drives the company’s Internet searches to become the standard platform for computer-science scholars in their own experiments.

On Monday, Google announced it would turn its machine-learning software, called TensorFlow, into open-source code, so anyone can use it.

“We hope this will let the machine-learning community — everyone from academic researchers, to engineers, to hobbyists — exchange ideas much more quickly, through working code rather than just research papers,” Google announced on its website.

Until now, researchers have had access to similar open-source software: Torch, built by researchers at New York University, as well as Caffe and Theano, are also open to everyone. TensorFlow is meant to combine the best of the three, Jeff Dean, a top engineer at Google, told Wired.

 

Also see:

Cognitive technologies: The real opportunities for business
Instructor: David Schatsky
A free course from Deloitte University Press | October 19, 2015 – December 8, 2015

Excerpt of description:

Artificial intelligence (AI) may sound like science fiction, but it is real, and becoming increasingly important to companies in every sector. The field of artificial intelligence has produced a wide variety of “cognitive technologies” that simulate human reasoning and perceptual skills, giving businesses entirely new capabilities and enabling organizations to break prevailing tradeoffs between speed, cost, and quality.

Aimed at a general business audience, this course demystifies artificial intelligence, provides an overview of a wide range of cognitive technologies, and offers a framework to help you understand their business implications. Some experts have called artificial intelligence “more important than anything since the industrial revolution.” That makes this course essential for professionals working in business, operations, strategy, IT, and other disciplines. Throughout the course, participants will build a knowledge base on cognitive technologies to equip them to engage in discussions with colleagues, customers, and suppliers and help them shape cognitive technology strategy in their organization.

 

U.S. Department of Education Launches Campaign to Encourage Schools to #GoOpen with Educational Resources — from ed.gov, with thanks to Sheila Soule for this resource
Department proposes rule requiring educational materials created with federal grants to be openly licensed so that any school has access

Excerpt:

The U.S. Department of Education announced [on 10/29/15] the launch of #GoOpen, a campaign to encourage states, school districts and educators to use openly licensed educational materials. As part of the campaign, the Department is proposing a new regulation that would require all copyrightable intellectual property created with Department grant funds to have an open license.

“In order to ensure that all students – no matter their zip code – have access to high-quality learning resources, we are encouraging districts and states to move away from traditional textbooks and toward freely accessible, openly-licensed materials,” U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said. “Districts across the country are transforming learning by using materials that can be constantly updated and adjusted to meet students’ needs.”

 

 

What the Future Economy Means for How Kids Learn Today — from kqed.org/mindshift by David Price

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

While this myopic and somewhat irrelevant argument takes place, the gulf in motivation between the learning that our students have to do, and the learning that they choose to do, grows ever wider. Meanwhile, the implementation of standardized testing and high-stakes accountability leaves a devastating legacy of what Yong Zhao calls side effects: increasing student (and staff) disengagement; perceived irrelevance of formal education; and the loss of autonomy and trust in the teaching profession.

If we want to re-engage learners, re-professionalize teachers, and re-think how we prepare students for a globally competitive working life, we need to follow the learners, and develop more open learning systems.

 

New from Educause:
Higher Ed IT Buyers Guide

 

HEITBuyersGuideEducauseApril2015

 

Excerpt:

Quickly search 50+ product and service categories, access thousands of IT solutions specific to the higher ed community, and send multiple RFPs—all in one place. This new Buyers Guide provides a central, go-to online resource for supporting your key purchasing decisions as they relate to your campus’s strategic IT initiatives.

Find the Right Vendors for Higher Education’s Top Strategic Technologies

Three of the Top 10 Strategic Technologies identified by the higher education community this year are mobile computing, business intelligence, and business performance analytics.* The new Buyers Guide connects you to many of the IT vendors your campus can partner with in the following categories related to these leading technologies, as well as many more.

View all 50+ product and service categories.

 

TeachingInADigitalAge-TonyBates-April2015

Teaching in a Digital Age
A.W. (Tony) Bates
Guidelines for designing teaching and learning for a digital age

The book examines the underlying principles that guide effective teaching in an age when everyone, and in particular the students we are teaching, are using technology.  A framework for making decisions about your teaching is provided, while understanding that every subject is different, and every instructor has something unique and special to bring to their teaching. The book enables teachers and instructors to help students develop the knowledge and skills they will need in a digital age: not so much the IT skills, but the thinking and attitudes to learning that will bring them success.

 

As Tony mentions here, his intended audience is primarily:

  • college and university instructors anxious to improve their teaching or facing major challenges in the classroom,
  • school teachers, particularly in secondary or high schools anxious to ensure their students are ready for either post-secondary education or a rapidly changing and highly uncertain job market.

 

An example chapter:
Chapter 7: Pedagogical differences between media

 

 

 

Technology predictions for the second half of the decade — from techcrunch.com by Lance Smith

Excerpts:

  • Big Data and IoT evolve into automated information sharing
  • Self-driving vehicles become mainstream
  • The appearance of artificial intelligent assistants
  • Real-time agility through data virtualization

 

 

EdTech trends for the coming years — from edtechreview.in

Excerpts:

EdTech is about to explode. The coming technology and the new trends on the rise can’t but forecast an extensive technology adoption in schools all around the globe.

Specific apps, systems, codable gadgets and the adaptation of general use elements to the school environment are engaging teachers and opening up the way to new pedagogical approaches. And while we are scratching the surface of some of them, others have just started to buzz persistently.

  • Wearables + Nano/Micro Technology + the Internet of Things
  • 3D + 4D printing
  • Big Data + Data Mining
  • Mobile Learning
  • Coding
  • Artificial Intelligence + Deep Learning
    • Adaptative learning: based on a student’s behaviour and results, an intelligent assistant can predict and readapt the learning path to those necessities. Combined with biometrics and the ubiquitous persona (explained below) a student could have the best experience ever.
    • Automatic courses on the fly, with contents collected by intelligent searching systems (data mining).
    • Virtual tutors.
  • The Ubiquitous Persona + Gamification + Social Media Learning
  • Specialised Staff in Schools

 

 

Phones and wearables will spur tenfold growth in wireless data by 2019 — from recode.net

Excerpts:

Persistent growth in the use of smartphones, plus the adoption of wireless wearable devices, will cause the total amount of global wireless data traffic to rise by 10 times its current levels by 2019, according to a forecast by networking giant Cisco Systems out [on 2/3/15].

The forecast, which Cisco calls its Visual Networking Index, is based in part on the growth of wireless traffic during 2014, which Cisco says reached 30 exabytes, the equivalent of 30 billion gigabytes. If growth patterns remain consistent, Cisco’s analysts reckon, the wireless portion of traffic crossing the global Internet will reach 292 exabytes by the close of the decade.

 

 

9 ed tech trends to watch in 2015 — from the Jan/Feb edition of Campus Technology Magazine

  1. Learning spaces
  2. Badges
  3. Gamification
  4. Analytics
  5. 3D Printing
  6. Openness
  7. Digital
  8. Consumerization
  9. Adaptive & Personalized Learning

 

 

 

Even though I’ve mentioned it before, I’ll mention it again here because it fits the theme of this posting:

NMC Horizon Report > 2015 Higher Education Edition — from nmc.org

Excerpt:

What is on the five-year horizon for higher education institutions? Which trends and technologies will drive educational change? What are the challenges that we consider as solvable or difficult to overcome, and how can we strategize effective solutions? These questions and similar inquiries regarding technology adoption and educational change steered the collaborative research and discussions of a body of 56 experts to produce the NMC Horizon Report: 2015 Higher Education Edition, in partnership with the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI). The NMC Horizon Report series charts the five-year horizon for the impact of emerging technologies in learning communities across the globe. With more than 13 years of research and publications, it can be regarded as the world’s longest-running exploration of emerging technology trends and uptake in education.

 

 



From DSC:
Speaking of trends…although this item isn’t necessarily technology related, I’m going to include it here anyway:

Career trends students should be watching in 2015 — from hackcollege.com by

Excerpt:

Students Need to Pay Attention to Broader Trends, and Get Ready.
For better or worse, the post-college world is changing.

According to a variety of analysis sites, including Forbes, Time, and Bing Predicts, more and more of the workforce will be impacted by increased entrepreneurship, freelancing, work-from-home trends, and non-traditional career paths.

These experts are saying that hiring practices will shift, meaning that students need to prepare LinkedIn profiles, online portfolio, work at internships, and to network to build relationships with potential future employers.

———-

 

Addendum on 3/6/15:
Self-driving car technology could end up in robots — from pcworld.com by Fred O’Connor

Excerpt:

The development of self-driving cars could spur advancements in robotics and cause other ripple effects, potentially benefitting society in a variety of ways.

Autonomous cars as well as robots rely on artificial intelligence, image recognition, GPS and processors, among other technologies, notes a report from consulting firm McKinsey. Some of the hardware used in self-driving cars could find its way into robots, lowering production costs and the price for consumers.

Self-driving cars could also help people grow accustomed to other machines, like robots, that can complete tasks without the need for human intervention.

Addendum on 3/6/15:

  • Top 5 Emerging Technologies In 2015 — from wtvox.com
    Excerpt:
    1) Robotics 2.0
    2) Neuromorphic Engineering
    3) Intelligent Nanobots – Drones
    4) 3D Printing
    5) Precision Medicine
 
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