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Category: EdTechUpdate

EdTechUpdate

  • Google Gets Into The Tablets For Education Business

    The education sector has become big business for tech companies in recent years thanks to classrooms embracing new technologies like tablets and educational software. Apple and Amazon are both big players in the tablets for education arena, and now Google is tossing its hat in as well.

    Google announced today its launching a new education initiative called Tablets with Google Play for Education. As the name implies, Google will be working with schools to supply students with Android tablets and the necessary educational software for each grade.

    Here’s how Google describes it:

    Google Play for Education is an extension of Google Play designed for schools. Here educators can discover apps approved by teachers for teachers, as well as educational videos and a collection of classic books for their classroom. Teachers can search for approved apps by grade, subject and standard, including Common Core, pay using a purchase order, and deploy the content to students instantly.

    So, what about the tablets? Starting now, schools can purchase Nexus 7 tablets from Google starting at $229 per tablet. Early next year, Google’s offerings will expand to include the 10-inch ASUS Transformer Pad and the 8-inch HP Slate 8 Pro. Google will also charge a $30 management fee for every tablet running Google Play for Education.

    While this program will now be rolling out across the U.S., Google had New Jersey’s Hillsborough Township Public School system try out Tablets with Google Play for Education a while back. Here are the results:

    If you want to learn more about Google Apps for Education or the tablet program, check out Google’s education Web site.

    [Image: Google in Education/YouTube]

  • Educational Toys Top Indian and American Toy Lists

    20131112toy2_13111365

    If toy-makers are looking to grab Indian parents’ toy-budgeting funds, recent press indicates their R&D ought to be aimed toward educational toys. A New Kerala article is catching notice this week, saying that “edutainment” toys (those promoting learning through play) have the potential for 15 percent year-on-year growth over the next five years.

    Much of what US parents see in this year’s top toy lists leans toward tech-heavy toys. Though not out for this holiday season, Google is putting its toy-hopes (and potential hiring future) in the hands of Play-i, which will release its programmable robots in 2014. The gadgets, nicknamed Bo and Yana, are round robots which can be programmed through a smartphone and tablet and are being promoted for kids 5 and older.

    Toy-maker VTech is garnering high awards (20 based on this count) and topping holiday shopping lists for its developmental, electronic learning toys. Highest acclaim going to the VTech InnoTab 3S Learning Tablet, which is being promoted by, “respected toy industry lists,” such as Parents Magazine, Dr. Toy, and Amazon.com among others.

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    The educational toy list provided by Shyam Makhija, director of Pegasus ToyKraft business development, is a little more tactile, “The categories which fit the bill most appropriately are educational jigsaw puzzles, tile puzzles, memory-based games, do-it-yourself art and craft kits, builder blocks and construction sets.”

    In India, the industry uses seminars for parents, teachers, psychologists and social scientists to educate on educational toy prerequisites. Indian toy experts advocate toys that are boredom-resistant and curiosity-stimulating, but also age and gender appropriate; gender alone having become a hot topic in the toy industry.

    And just in case parents on any continent need additional guidance for tots to teens, Toys “R” Us is debuting a Toy Channel (YouTube-based), “for exclusive, original and entertaining programming for kids and families on all things toys.”

    [Images via Toys “R” Us, VTech, and ToyKraft official Facebook pages.]

  • Educational Toys In Demand For India

    The parents of children in India value their children’s education as much as any other country. Studies show the need for educational toys in India is expected to grow fifteen percent over the next five years.

    “In the coming days demand for educational toys will be more as the parents want more cerebral games for their children,” the director of business development of Pegasus ToyKraft, Shyam Makhija, said. “Educational toys have the potential to grow at around 15 percent year-on-year in the next five years.”

    The toys they are discussing are not elaborate electronic games, however they are things as simple as blocks and puzzles. “From a purist’s point of view we can look at an edutainment toy as one which provides direct and immediate educational learning through play. The categories which fit the bill most appropriately are educational jigsaw puzzles, tile puzzles, memory-based games, do-it-yourself art and craft kits, builder blocks and construction sets,” Makhija said.

    The president of the Toy Association of India, Sunil Nanda, told IANS, “The scope of the educational toy industry is growing among the literate class of society. There had always been a relationship between learning and playing and it is very important to understand that.” He continued discussing the estimated size of the toy industry being approximately Rs.10,000 crore (US$16 billion), with parents spending approximately Rs.600 to 700 ($10) per child on educational toys.

    Children learn through playing, especially younger children. This is the reason that more Indian parents are seeking out the toys that provide some educational benefit for their children. “An educational toy should be able to add some cognitive value to the child. The presentation has to be very good so that a child doesn’t get bored and it can arouse some curiosity in the child. Learning should happening subtly,” Nanda said.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Miss Utah Flubs Question About Income Inequality, Wants to ‘Create Education Better’

    Miss Connecticut Erin Brady may have won Sunday night’s Miss USA contest, but it’s her fellow pageant participant that’s on the receiving end of a lot of viral buzz this morning.

    Miss Utah, the Bulgarian-born Laura Chukanov, had a little bit of trouble last night during the Q&A portion of the annual contest. Ok, she bombed it, let’s be honest.

    “Real Housewives of Atlanta” star NeNe Leakes asked Chukanov a question about income inequality – the fact that women continue to make less than men despite being the primary breadwinners in 40% of households these days. What happened next is kind of hard to watch. Most definitely cringeworthy.

    Check it out:

    Yeah, it was a dumb answer. But it’s also quite easy to lob jokes from the peanut gallery. The following is a popular sentiment floating around Twitter right now:

    Well said. Plus, as long as we have YouTube, we’ll always have Miss Teen South Carolina. Cheer up, Miss Utah. It could be a lot worse:

    Still, at least for the time being, it looks like “create education better” has replaced “most U.S. Americans don’t have maps” and “like, such as” in the highly-contested realm of beauty pageant screwups.

  • Google Taps Donald And Daisy Duck For Cybersafety Education

    Google Taps Donald And Daisy Duck For Cybersafety Education

    Google teamed up with industry associations and public and private partners, including Disney, apparently, to produce 300,000 copies of a special edition of Donald Duck magazine in Norway.

    The issue focuses on cybersafety, and features Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, among other familiar Disney duck faces.

    Google ducks

    Google ducks

    Google ducks

    “Kids growing up in this digital age use the Internet for pretty much everything; entertainment, communication, education and when they get that far; new technologies will play an important role in their work,” says Martin Ruby for Google Public Policy, Copenhagen. “Never has a generation needed digital guidance as the one growing up now. And we were thinking: who would be a better digital guide for kids than Donald Duck?”

    “In the book, Donald gets himself into trouble,” explains Ruby. “He is guarding his uncle’s fortune with the help of a gigantic robot but trying as always to charm Daisy Duck – this time on the Internet. An unsuspecting Donald is lured into downloading a virus and giving away his password to Magica de Spell on ‘Duckbook’. No surprise: she takes control of the robot and the fortune.

    Good thing it’s realistically practical, acknowledging that far more ducks are using Duckbook than Duck+.

    Ruby notes that it all ends well, and Donald gets a prize for his digital skills.

    You can actually peruse the issue here (pdf).

  • Get Your Bone-Safe Yoga Education From Google

    Google has posted a video to its Google Tech Talks YouTube channel about bone-safe yoga. In the talk, Kathleen Cody, Shelley Powers and Annie Appleby discuss the topic for about an hour.

    In case you’re wondering why Google would put out a video about bone-safe yoga, the company reminds us that its Tech Talks are designed to disseminate a wide spectrum of views on topics including current affairs, science, medicine, engineering, business, humanities, law, entertainment, and the arts. I guess bone-safe yoga falls in there somewhere.

  • iPad Mini Event Will Focus On Education

    iPad Mini Event Will Focus On Education

    Education is obviously important to Apple. The company took time out in January to devote an entire press conference to iBooks 2 and interactive textbooks. Since then, schools around the world have ditched books in favor of giving every student an iPad. The company may be putting the focus back on education again according to a recent report.

    Bloomberg reports that Apple’s iPad Mini event set for tomorrow will focus on education. The iPad Mini is set to be a much cheaper device with some reports saying it will only cost $250 for the standard model. It would be much easier for schools to outfit their student body with tablets.

    Apple’s iPad has already proven to be a leader in education, but it’s starting to face some stiff competition. Just last week, Amazon revealed Whispersync, a new software that allows schools to send out course materials to all Kindle owners across its network. A cheaper Kindle Fire and Whispersync could draw educators away from the iPad. The iPad Mini, with its rumored low price, could bring those educators back.

    Consumer technology is still the battleground in which all three companies – Apple, Google and Amazon – will be fighting over this holiday season. Education doesn’t have the long term year-after-year success like the consumer market, but educators are big upfront buyers. Where else is Apple going to sell thousands of tablets to a single party?

    Apple and Amazon will now be competing for educators’ dollars, but what about Google? Google’s main platform is the Web with hardware being just one mean to that end. I still wouldn’t be surprised, however, if Google were to announce some new education incentives of their own in the near future. That probably won’t happen at next Monday’s Android event, but there could be something early next year.

    Besides education and the iPad Mini, Apple will probably show off a few more things of interest at its last big press event of the year. We’ll be bringing you all the news as it happens. Be sure to check out our extensive iPad Mini coverage to catch up on all the rumors and leaks.

  • Minnesota Gets Tough on the Enemy That Is Free, Online Education

    Free online education platform Coursera says they are “education for everyone.” But after a decision by one U.S. state, they may have to throw an “almost” into that motto.

    In a truly baffling display of governmental ignorance, the state of Minnesota has outlawed Coursera. Yes, the state of Minnesota has outlawed free, online education. As The Chronicle of Higher Education reports it, the ban cites a decades-old law that forces educational institutions to get permission from the state before they begin operating there.

    A spokesperson for Minnesota’s Office of Higher Education defended the declaration by saying,

    “This has been a longtime requirement in Minnesota (at least 20 years) and applies to online and brick-and-mortar postsecondary institutions that offer instruction to Minnesota residents as part of our overall responsibility to provide consumer protection for students.”

    From Coursera’s standpoint, the Minnesota law focuses on degree-granting programs – which Coursera is not. Of course, a decades-old law would not have been able to foresee free, online education providers – but it begs the questions: Why would the state expand the scope of the law to include them?

    Adding to the odd nature of the decision, it’s entirely unclear how the state plans to enforce the new law. And it’s also unclear whether the state has included other similar online education services like edX and Udacity in its ban.

    Either way, Coursera has done their part to inform Minnesota residents of the decree. They’ve posted this in their terms:

    Coursera has been informed by the Minnesota Office of Higher Education that under Minnesota Statutes (136A.61 to 136A.71), a university cannot offer online courses to Minnesota residents unless the university has received authorization from the State of Minnesota to do so. If you are a resident of Minnesota, you agree that either (1) you will not take courses on Coursera, or (2) for each class that you take, the majority of work you do for the class will be done from outside the State of Minnesota.

    Sorry, Minnesotans who wish to expand their knowledge. I’m sure you can find everything you need to know on Facebook.

    Coursera was launched earlier this year by computer science professors from Stanford University. As of today, knowledge-seekers can access 198 different courses in 18 different categories ranging from biology to business & management, from economics to engineering. Coursera currently boasts 33 University partners.

  • U.S. Life Expectancy Down For White Women With Less Education

    New research has found that, while life expectancy for Americans is rising overall, those with less than a high school education lag far behind others with more education. This disparity is most pronounced when taking race into account.

    “The most highly educated white men live about 14 years longer than the least educated black men,” said S. Jay Olshansky, professor of epidemiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health and lead author of the study. “The least educated black women live about 10 years less than the most educated white women.”

    One of the most striking findings of the study, which was published last month in the journal Health Affairs, is that the life expectancy for white women with less than 12 years of education has actually fallen since 1990. Women with less than 12 years of education can now expect to live to age 73.5, where in 1990 that number was four years higher. White women with a college degree or more can expect to live to 83.9.

    The reasons for this drop in life expectancy aren’t certain, but The New York Times’ report on the study quotes researchers as stating that prescription drug overdoses, higher rates of smoking, obesity, and a lack of health insurance may be part of the cause.

    The study looked at life expectancy by race, sex, and education from 1990 through 2008. The results were profound. The life expectancy for white men with less than 12 years of education was also found to have dropped over that period, by around 3 years. White men with a college degree or better can expect to live to 80.4, while those who don’t graduate high school can only expect to live 67.5 years.

    To put things in perspective, Olshansky pointed out that life expectancy for less-educated Americans is similar to that of Americans in the 50’s, 60’s, or 70’s. Less-educated black men have a life expectancy similar to the average in 1954, black women 1962, white women 1964, and white men 1972.

    “It’s as if Americans with the least education are living in a time warp,” said Olshansky. “There are essentially two Americas.”

    The researchers concluded that education and socioeconomic status are “extremely important” variables in determining life expectancy. As such, they suggest that lifelong education is important to closing the gap between how long poor and rich Americans live.

    Olshansky can be heard speaking about his research below, in a video provided by the University of Illinois at Chicago.

  • Your Brain Benefits From Even A Little Music Education

    Music is extremely important to the development of young children. Research has proven again and again that music education helps young children succeed. Parents take this as an excuse to shove their children into music classes for the next 10 years of their life and push them ever onward to perfection. As it turns out, just a few years of music training will return the same results.

    A recent study from the Journal of Neuroscience sought to find out how much music training is needed to actually make an impact on the mind of a child. The study used 45 adults with varying degrees of music education. They were split up based upon how much music training they received as children and were then tasked to respond to complex sounds ranging in pitch. The results are actually pretty surprising.

    The researchers from Northwestern University’s Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory found that adults who studied music as a child were better able to process the sounds being played. What’s interesting is that the amount of music training didn’t matter. Those with even a minimum amount of training (one to two years) were able to pull out low frequency sounds from the test noises.

    So what does this say about music? It’s imperative that everybody be exposed to some kind of music education as a child. You don’t have to force children to take years of grueling music theory courses. They just need to take a few years of piano or another instrument in elementary school and they’ll be set for life.

    The study only tested the participant’s ability to hear and pick out sounds. Music training definitely enhances your ability to hear, but it does so much more. Music is essentially the steroids for your brain. It makes children better at reading and math. There are probably other benefits that we don’t even know about yet. Most important of all, however, is that music is just fun. Inspiring a love of music into children at a young age guarantees them a life of at least occasional happiness as music is a great stress reliever.

    Unfortunately, public funding for music and arts education is always declining. Schools are forced to focus on what they see as more important subjects like math and science. This latest study might help to convince some schools that music and art are just as important in fostering the kind of intellectual development that math and science require.

    Just be sure that your music education is strictly about the classics. Modern pop music will probably just degrade your mind to the intellectual equivalent of a spoon.

    [h/t: Scientific American]

  • Bill Gates Says The PC Is Still Best For Education

    Apple has really been pushing education for the past few years with the iPad. They even held a huge event earlier this year that was entirely focused on education and the arrival of interactive textbooks on the iPad. Schools are starting to buy into the craze by buying all of their students iPads for learning and work. Some would say it’s working, while the initiative still has some naysayers. One of the biggest naysayers is apparently Bill Gates.

    In a recent interview with Bill Gates, The Chronicle questions the Microsoft founder’s views on education and ways to improve it. It’s a fascinating talk that’s worth a read, but there’s one really interesting part near the middle where he comments on the use of tablets in the classrooms.

    The interviewer asks Gates what he thinks about the use of tablets in the classroom. With the recent announcement of the Surface, it would be safe to assume that he would praise the Microsoft tablet as the next innovation in education. It’s surprising then when he says that tablets aren’t the right fit. He feels that low-cost PCs, like the Raspberry Pi, will be driving education in the future.

    Just giving people devices has a really horrible track record. You really have to change the curriculum and the teacher. And it’s never going to work on a device where you don’t have a keyboard-type input. Students aren’t there just to read things. They’re actually supposed to be able to write and communicate. And so it’s going to be more in the PC realm—it’s going to be a low-cost PC that lets them be highly interactive.

    Gates goes on to say that we need to fix education itself first before we start throwing tablets and PCs at students.

    But the device is not the key limiting factor at this point, at least in most countries. If we ever get the curriculum to be super, super good, then the access piece, which is the most expensive part, will be challenging, requiring special policies to let people get access. The device, you’ll be able to check out of the library a portable PC, so I don’t see that as the key thing right now.

    At first glance, it looks like Gates is just trying to say that the PC is relevant when Apple says we’re in a post-PC world. In a way that’s true, but I think that Gates is onto something even bigger here. Tablets are for consumption and they always will be. They’re not great for creation and a good education consists of equal parts consumption and creation.

    As technology moves forward, tablets may no longer be the big thing. We may come full circle back to the PC or move on to even greater heights. The point that Gates is trying to make is that the device doesn’t matter as much as the means. While he definitely thinks a PC is better for education than an iPad, an iPad can be a powerful learning tool in the right hands. Unfortunately, the current thinking seems to be that handing a kid a tablet will automatically turn them into a star pupil without any input from the teacher themselves.

    Here’s a video of the interview where Gates talks about tablets in the classroom:

  • Google Discusses Innovation in Classrooms with the International Society for Technology in Education

    Today Google is out meeting with thousands of educators and administrators at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference in sunny San Diego.

    The subject matter of the conference, as you would imagine, is how to bring more technology into the classroom. More specifically, Google’s apps for education.

    While Google may already have tens of thousands of apps in the App Store, they are about to add a couple more, and these ones specifically aimed at classroom education.

    Here’s what they had to say about the additions on their official blog:

    It’s been really amazing to see how the web is impacting schools. We’ve heard great real-world stories about Google Apps for Education, but lately we’re hearing more and more about schools extending the functionality of Google Apps with educational apps available on the Chrome Web Store. There are tens of thousands of apps in the Chrome Web Store, and today we’re adding some new ones: ST Math, VoiceThread and Acheive3000.

    To help fuel innovation in the classroom and to give students improved web access, Leyden High School District in Illinois is rolling out Chromebooks to all of their 3,500 students and getting them more engaged in one on one learning initiatives.

    Google comments on the one to one learning initiative at the school:

    It’s great to see that many schools are choosing Chromebooks as an effective and affordable 1-to-1 education tool. There are more than 500 districts in the U.S. and Europe actively using Chromebooks, and today we’re pleased to welcome a few more to the community, including Rockingham Country Schools, N.C., Transylvania County Schools, N.C., and Fond du Lac School District, Wis.

    Chromebooks are always new—just last month we announced new devices, an updated, app-centric user interface and new pricing for schools. Chromebooks also make it just as easy for administrators to distribute 10, 100 or 1,000 Chromebooks, saving precious summer vacation time previously spent installing software and policies on computers. And great news for schools looking to make hardware purchases: the PARCC and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortia confirmed Chromebooks meet hardware and operating system requirements for student assessments in the 2014-2015 school year.

    At the conference today, Google is introducing something new for schools that use Chromebooks as part of their educational resources. Take a look at what they offer:

    * Grade-level application packs are groups of Chrome Web Store apps that integrate tightly with Google’s suite of Apps for Education, divided by grade levels to meet different classroom needs. These packs are installable from the Chromebook management console. Many of them are free and we’ve worked with the app makers to offer discounts for bulk purchases.

    * Organization-specific web app collections in the Chrome Web Store give administrators the ability to recommend apps to students, teachers and staff. The collection is visible only to the school, and admins can curate apps from the Chrome Web Store, application packs and web apps purchased elsewhere or private apps developed by the school. (This feature is also available to Chromebooks for Business customers from the control panel.)

    According to Google, all you really need is the web for classroom instruction. They are doing their part to introduce as much technology as they can and make it accessible in the classroom. Google has participated in the ISTE for the past several years, and they are excited about bringing Chromebook and their apps to a wider audience.

  • Apple Education Pricing For New Macs – Plus $100 iTunes Card

    Apple Education Pricing For New Macs – Plus $100 iTunes Card

    Apple’s 2012 Back to School promotion also began with yesterday’s launch of new Macs. College students and others that qualify will now get a $100 iTunes gift card with a Mac purchase. Those getting an iPad will get a $50 card for iTunes.

    The promotion runs from June 11 to September 21, 2012, which means, in order to qualify, you must actually make your Mac purchase between those dates. The Back to School gift Card may be used on books, apps, music and videos.

    To qualify for the Back to School Gift Card offer, you must be a college student, a student who has been accepted into a university, a parent buying for a college student, or a faculty member from any grade level. Students and teachers will also qualify for Apple Education Pricing, which could save them a little money on hardware.

    Buy a qualifying Mac from the Apple Online Store for Education, the Apple Retail store, or an Apple Authorized Campus Store to receive the free gift card, which can be used in iTunes or the iOS and Mac App Stores as well as iBookstore.

    Apple also went to the trouble of creating a special section in the Back to School website that highlights Mac and iPad Apps that will useful to students.

    Getting a $100 gift card isn’t much when you are paying 1 and a half or 2 thousand dollars for a new laptop, but for those dedicated to purchasing one, the promotion will be an added bonus. Apple isn’t known to drop prices, so anything they do to sweeten the deal is always welcome.

    [Apple Insider]

  • Google and GroupM Next Launch SPARK Education Series

    Yesterday, on Google’s Agency Blog they announced a new partnership with GroupM Next. GoupM Next’s innovation unit is called Spark and Google wants to help them deliver some valuable marketing education specifically geared toward branding.

    The duo will deliver a series of events, the first of which started yesterday, to address topics that directly impact brand opportunity and performance in digital spaces. Sparks is a unique opportunity to gain insights and hear examples on topics which are seldom covered elsewhere regarding branding.

    The series takes a client-focused approach and is specifically designed “to cultivate education and dialogue for verticals that are under-represented in the broader digital media space in terms of data, research and opportunity“. You already missed the first installment of the series, but take look below to see what you missed out on.

    Here’s a quick rundown of discussions from the docket at Spark: CPG in the context of marketing for CPG brands (from last night):

    * Making the web work for CPG brands – our take on how the consumer, and world around us, has changed

    * The digital enhanced path, exploring the ever-changing connection between consumers and brands and opportunities that exist through understanding new consumer behaviors and the role of technology

    * Marketing and messaging innovation across multiple screens

    * The power of video and building brands with the power of sight, sound and motion

    * Developing ‘content gifts’ in the social world and capturing opportunities by engaging your brand’s super sharers

    * How mobile commerce can connect shoppers to the places and CPG products they love

    * Fostering fluid innovation across marketing and process to enable agencies and brands to meet the pace of change in consumer dynamics and technology

    You will most likely be able to get caught up on what you missed by visiting Google’s Agency Blog, but you should pay close attention to find out about future Google sponsored GroupM Next brand awareness events. If you wish to fully understand digital brand marketing, this should be a partnership you keep a close eye on.

    Here’s what Google had to say on their Blog:

    “In most cases, Spark will provide brands with insights and education they wouldn’t have access to elsewhere. Additionally, through ongoing collaboration between our companies, GroupM agencies and clients, we’ll identify areas of interest and need for brands across digital media, and foster opportunities as they emerge”

  • Mozilla Reveals its ‘Webmaker’ Education Initiative

    Mozilla Reveals its ‘Webmaker’ Education Initiative

    Today Mozilla launched a new program it is calling “Mozilla Webmaker” to promote more widespread knowledge about how the internet works and how to help create it. Mozilla’s stated goal is to “help millions of people move from using the web to making the web.” It believes web coding should be considered as important as a core school subject.

    “The web is becoming the world’s second language, and a vital 21st century skill — as important as reading, writing and arithmetic,” said Mark Surman, Mozilla’s executive director. “It’s crucial that we give people the skills they need to understand, shape and actively participate in that world, instead of just passively consuming it. That maker spirit and open ethos is vital to Mozilla, our partners, and the web.”

    The announcement came in a post on The Mozilla Blog, where the details of the initiative were outlined. Mozilla Webmaker will provide the tools and projects needed to learn how to make the web and hopes to build a community around web creativity. The Mozilla Webmaker website will officially launch on June 6, where volunteers can gain access to web authoring tools and software, as well as how-tos for all levels of coding experience. Here’s a video Mozilla has provided to promote the idea that everyone should be able to code:

    To kickstart the program, Mozilla is campaigning for what it calls the Summer code Party. Mozilla is encouraging volunteers to host free local Webmaker events and teach-ins all over the world, to help those interested learn how to code for the web. Mozilla has provided event kits and starter projects to make it easy. The Summer Code Party has many partners on-board such as Creative Commons, Tumblr, and SoundCloud.

    Mozilla's 2012 Summer Code Party

    The “Party” starts on June 23 with two days Mozilla is calling the “Global Weekend of Code,” two days of people around the world teaching and learning coding and webmaking together.

  • The Education Foundation and Skype Launch Learning Lab

    Skype has been working to integrate technology into the classroom for some time now and their latest partnership with the United Kingdom’s Educational Foundation will go a long way to bring value and expertise to that effort. The Education Foundation is a place where educators are working with members of the community to enhance learning and bring more resources to students.

    The learning Lab is a physical space in London that serves as a classroom, studio, and laboratory for educating the community and spring-boarding innovative, and state of the art developments. Schools, universities, and other institutions are all welcome.

    Graham Stuart MP and Chair of the Education Select Committee comments on Learning Lab:

    “The Learning Lab is an exciting project that gives companies and partners a great chance to showcase their products, services and innovative work, as well as connect up with leading educators from across the UK”

    Here’s a brief description of the Learning Lab from their website:

    We are currently designing the lab to be flexible enough to cater for a range of uses – from showcasing new products and services as well as hosting one of our major projects on the ‘Future of Technology and Education’. The space will also be made available to policy makers, government officials and partner organisations to hold strategy workshops and roundtable sessions and for leading experts to share these insights through The Education Foundation’s programme of events, which will be broadcast and streamed live to the wider world.

    Here’s a little about what they’re looking for:

    We are always looking for organisations to be our new partners and to support our work in The Learning Lab. The Lab has already attracted a range of high profile people in the education sector and it will attract an audience of thousands of visitors from schools, colleges and universities and government, plus a significant online presence.

    What Skype adds to the equation is communication and social networking. Skype allows educators to reach students in places they would have never been able to travel to, and through the Education Foundation those connections can be made and integrated into classroom learning and online discovery.

    For those who would like to get involved follow these links to the Education Foundation or the Skype in the classroom page. I’ll leave you with a message from Skype about their hopes for the partnership.

    “Our hope for The Learning Lab and our partnership with The Education Foundation is that more opportunities will be created for teachers and students to use technology in the classroom and barriers to communications can be removed, allowing them to connect and learn from others around the globe.”

  • Chronicle of Higher Education Fires Naomi Schaefer Riley

    Chronicle of Higher Education Fires Naomi Schaefer Riley

    Naomi Schaefer Riley, an affiliate scholar at the Institute for American Values, was fired late last night from the Chronicle of Higher Education after posting an article entitled The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations. The post ruffled some feathers, to say the least, and Schaefer Riley was let go roughly a week and 500 comments later.

    Here is an excerpt of the article in question, to get a basic idea of the ‘civil tone’ of the piece:

    “I just got around to reading The Chronicle’s recent piece on the young guns of black studies. If ever there were a case for eliminating the discipline, the sidebar explaining some of the dissertations being offered by the best and the brightest of black-studies graduate students has made it. What a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap. The best that can be said of these topics is that they’re so irrelevant no one will ever look at them.”

    So, Schaefer Riley essentially wants to eliminate black-studies. This is somewhat of a profound stance to be covered in 520 words, and some people got predictably mad. Some got happy. The Chronicle got nervous. Editor Liz McMillen explained the decision to let Schaefer Riley go:

    “Several thousand of you spoke out in outrage and disappointment that The Chronicle had published an article that did not conform to the journalistic standards and civil tone that you expect from us. We’ve heard you, and we have taken to heart what you said. We now agree that Ms. Riley’s blog posting did not meet The Chronicle’s basic editorial standards for reporting and fairness in opinion articles.”

    Maintaining courage in one’s convictions, regardless of what they might be, can very easily become a sort of 1st world problem in the realm of maintaining a job, as soon as whatever content one espouses hits the internet. And, if one were to look at the vast majority of story comments featured on the bigger news sites online, the world can be very, casually racist – and no one will likely ever be fully satisfied in regards to the internet’s generalized racial taint. Ashton Kutcher was recently vilified for his racist acting in a Popchips ad that was quickly pulled, after the media deemed it was unfunny, regardless of its actual entertainment quality – which some may see as being a bit iffy – card-carrying non-racist racial watchdogs might’ve been reaching a bit in this instance. It’s not clear if critics of the ad disliked Kutcher’s portrayal of a Bollywood producer in India, a position of power in that country which a lot of people in the Western World likely can’t comprehend, or if they were displeased with the portrayal of the southern American hayseed timebomb with prison tats, a non-racial play on a stereotype, though still easily flippable.

    Still, perhaps Schaefer Riley was having a bad day when deciding to attack the work of grad students in such a obvious, button-pushy and sensational way. As with all things to do with hatred, mood typically comes into play. Apparently, a heart disease drug called Propranolol was suggested to calm implicit racial bias in a study of avid racists conducted at Oxford University. The racists were shown to not be so racial after taking these chill pills, and self-destructive idiocy was shown to be quelled for a while. Surely Schaefer Riley will receive some job offers from outlets who are more aligned with the views described in her article, but the ‘civil tone’ of her career has likely changed forever.

  • Google Announces Search Education Website

    Google Announces Search Education Website

    Google’s Search Blog just announced its new Search Education Website, a new platform which can help students in the classroom become better at using search while learning.

    Tasha Bergson-Michelson, Google Search Educator, relates a scenario to where students were able to use Google’s Search by Image tool to find out more about a picture they’d found on a website. The class was very pleased when they were able to locate the source of the original, which ended up being an encyclopedia from 1826. Google seeks to educate students on this new form of problem-solving, to better play detective. All of this is quite a step up from trying to locate Carmen Sandiego.

    Bergson-Michelson states, “Search education provides the technical tools and critical thinking skills crucial to preparing today’s students to be technologically self-reliant, independent learners.” The Google Search Education group has been conducting classes for years to help educators see how valuable Google Search is regarding academic research. Google has also created a Search Education hub, featuring lesson plans built around the Common Core State Standards and “A Google a Day” search challenges, as well as training videos.

  • Coursera Offers a Free World-Class Education

    Coursera Offers a Free World-Class Education

    Students across the world can now access online courses from five prestigious American universities (Stanford, Princeton, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Michigan) thanks to an interactive platform called Coursera.

    The site offers dozens of courses that run from 4-12 weeks in duration. The courses fall into the following categories: Humanities and Social Sciences; Computer Science; Mathematics and Statistics; Healthcare, Medicine, and Biology; Economics, Finance, and Business; and Society, Networks, and Information.

    Each course has a YouTube video where the professor pitches a class to prospective students. It also gives a synopsis about the course, some background information about the instructor, a list of frequently asked questions, and sometimes they even post a syllabus.

    I wish more colleges listed courses this way. It would be a great way to boost enrollment because students would be able to get a feel for the instructor and the material that would be covered.

    In the following YouTube video, Michael Kearns, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, pitches his class titled, “Networked Life.”

    According to the course profile, “Networked Life explores recent scientific efforts to explain social, economic and technological structures — and the way these structures interact — on many different scales, from the behavior of individuals or small groups to that of complex networks such as the Internet and the global economy.”

    You can join his class by signing up here.

    Several courses are starting on April 23 so you should register ASAP.

    Completing a course on Coursera will not stand in the place of a course taken at an accredited institution and does not convey academic credit but there are occasions where instructors will grant students a letter of completion.

    Students must be 18 years old to participate (with a few exceptions).

  • Khan Academy Increases Access to a World-Class Education with Free iPad App

    The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere. The founder of the organization, Salman Khan, was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. After earning three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (a BS in mathematics, a BS in electrical engineering and computer science, and an MS in electrical engineering and computer science), he pursued an MBA from Harvard Business School. In 2004, he began tutoring his cousin Nadia in mathematics using Yahoo!’s Doodle notepad. When other relatives and friends continued to ask him for help, he decided it would be more practical to distribute the tutorials on YouTube. This is why Khan decided to create his academy and now he is releasing an app that will make it easier for people to retrieve and process educational materials.

    The Khan Academy iPad app allows users to view Khan Academy’s complete library of over 2,700 videos. The library covers an array of educational topics in the humanities, arts, math, history, and science.

    This free app will help me address my lapses in learning and brush up on trigonometry and learn more about the French and Indian War. This app can also help students prepare for the SAT.

    The iPad app contains downloadable videos and many have subtitles that make them easier to skim through. Once users have an account their progress while logged in is tracked and they can get credit for watching videos and monitor their achievements.

    The application will also feature exercises in the near future.

    While this app is most likely to be used by students, teachers and other individuals involved with formal education settings, the app is also being used heavily by self-directed learners who want to strengthen their areas of weakness.

    The Khan academy is continuing to grow and build its portfolio of corporate employees which now includes former Google employee, Craig Silverstein. Silverstein created some of the company’s original IT components, which were critical in supporting the search engine’s growth. As you can see from some of the talks he’s given, he’s been involved with some of Google’s more educational endeavors.

  • Google Plus Promotes Open Education Resources

    Open Education Resources (OER) “are teaching and learning resources that anyone can share, reuse and remix” and it is predicted that they will play a huge role in helping students gain the skills they will need in the 21st century. Google has been very proactive in “increasing access to a cost-effective, high-quality education” by supporting “the OpenCourseWare Consortium—a collaboration of higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating OER—in organizing Open Education Week 2012, which begins today.”

    In the following video, Cable Green, Director of Global Learning at Creative Commons, explains the importance of changing policies to ensure that teachers and students will have the resources necessary to legally access textbooks, courses, and find resources for research without having to pay any additional fees. Green ties the spirit of Open Education Week to an ongoing project in which educators are developing “a vast pool of resources on the internet open and free for all to use.” He also emphasizes the importance of increasing the amount of “publicly funded education resources that operate on an open license allowing the public to revise, reuse, remix, and redistribute those materials.”

    To increase awareness about Open Education, the U.S. Department of Education will be launching a video competition that highlights how the movement to publicly funded education that uses open policies will benefit Americans: “The competition will award cash prizes for the best short videos that explain the use and promise of free, high-quality Open Educational Resources—or “OER”—and describe the benefits and opportunities these materials create for teachers, students and schools.” Aside from the intrinsic value of making a video about this subject, there are handsome financial rewards for the winners: “Video submissions are accepted until June 5, 2012 and winners will be announced July 18, 2012. Cash prizes, provided by the Open Society Institute, include $25,000 (first), $5,000 (second), and $1,000 (Public Choice Award). Judges include prominent artists and education experts, including Davis Guggenheim, Nina Paley, James Franco, and many others.”

    The top prize reflects the average yearly salary for Adjunct instructors working in community colleges (adjuncts make approximately $2,000 per 15 week course) so i wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of educators decided to compete and get the word out.

    Maggie Johnson, Director of Education and University Relations at Google, explains that Google will “[…] be acknowledging OER week through a panel event in Washington, DC, and over on our +Google in Education page, where we’ll be posting articles, and sharing stories and interviews about the benefits of open education resources. Opening these resources to everyone can improve the quality of education while getting more out of our investments in educational resources.”