Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2012: The Battle to Open Textbooks Part 6 of my Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2012 series Digital Textbooks When I looked at the most significant trends in educational technology last year, I opted to write about the “Digital Library” in lieu of digital textbooks. In May, the Book Industry Study Group released the results of “a first ever survey of college faculty perceptions toward classroom materials” that found that most professors (88%) still prefer (and assign) the printed versions of textbooks and other class materials. Digital textbook provider Coursesmart issued a press release the same month with (not surprisingly) a sunnier view on adoption and usage. But that didn’t stop publishing companies, tech companies, governmental agencies, and non-profits from pushing digital textbooks this year. As I wrote at the time, I was a little dismayed by the PDF and by the oft-touted argument that the main reason we’d “go digital” are to make our kids’ backpacks lighter: (Answer: it's Apple.) Open Textbooks Pearson’s Project Blue Sky.
The 33 Best Educational Technology Blogs for 2012 EduBlog Awards were announced a few days ago and unfortunately Educational Technology and Mobile Learning did not win but was among the finalists. I must admit that I did not even know my blog was among the finalists till today or else I would have been promoting my nomination just like what the other finalists and winners did.This month has been the busiest month in my entire life, everything just got piled up on me , my Master exams, work, working on my blog template, preparing ebooks to publish here later on and the list goes on. One of the things I like about this Edublog Award nominations is that they feature great blogs you might not even have heard of before . This is a good opportunity for you get to know new blogs and follow or subscribe to them. At least in Ed Tech category, I personally know every single blog listed there and I always subscribe to the new ones added to that list.
Las mejores aplicaciones de 2012 para iPhone e iPad Se acerca el final de año, y como es habitual Apple ya ha hecho pública sus listados con las mejores descargas la música, libros, películas y aplicaciones móviles de la App Store durante el año 2012. Y es en el capítulo de las aplicaciones móviles donde centramos nuestro interés. Para iPhone, el título de mejor aplicación ha sido para Action Movie FX, mientras que Apalabrados se ha llevado el galardón al mejor juego. Como finalistas han quedado la aplicación de navegación GPS Waze, y, como juego, Rayman Jungle Run. Éste último ha arrasado en la App Store de Estados Unidos como mejor juego del año. En lo que se refiere al iPad, llama poderosamente la atención que la distinción de mejor aplicación sea para el app oficial de la revista de la prensa rosa ¡HOLA!. Y para no perder la costumbre, a continuación os hablamos de los ganadores y de los finalistas tanto para iPhone como para iPad, por si no las conoces, y quizás te pueden interesar. Mejor juego para iPhone: Apalabrados (Gratis)
This Year in Twitter: 9 Important Milestones With tweets flying through cyberspace every second of the day, we're writing history with the touch of our fingertips. In 2012, Users documented events, political battles and heart-wrenching moments throughout the past year, and Twitter itself made history on a few occasions. Here's a look back at the nine biggest Twitter milestones of 2012. Twitter's Sixth Birthday Single-digit birthdays are usually celebrated with cake, balloons and confetti, but on March 21, 2012, founder Jack Dorsey, recognized Twitter's six-year accomplishment with a tweet — what else would you expect? It's 12:50. James Cameron's Deepest Tweet Take a moment to once again recover from the shock of reliable cellphone service at the bottom of the ocean. Just arrived at the ocean's deepest pt. Rumor has it the next Avatar movie will have some deep underwater footage, but we highly doubt the Na'vi will communicate in 140-character language. Tailored Suggestions Header Image
The five most disruptive technologies of 2012 - Quartz The most disruptive technologies in 2012 include energy storage technology no one thought would ever work, gesture-based interfaces that will make touch screens look as quaint as floppy disks, and computers and connectivity so cheap they’re adding billions more people to the internet. For a technology to make it onto this list, it didn’t have to be invented in 2012; in many cases, it’s enough that there was a significant development this year in its journey toward rewriting our relationship with machines and each other. Leap adds gesture control to any device with a USB port. Leap Motion 1. Controlling computers without touching them Leap Motion, Pointgrab, Elliptic In June I wrote that Leap Motion, the company responsible for a $70 add-on to any computer that could replace every input device save the keyboard, was about to launch the most disruptive technology since the smart phone. …Leap operates in three dimensions rather than two. Google’s Project Glass puts the internet on your face.
Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2012 1. The Business of Ed-Tech 2. The Maker Movement 3. Learning to Code 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. (Notably missing from my list: the student (youth) voice; #Occupy; BYOD; gaming; badges and credentials; the globalization of ed-tech; cheating; crowdsourcing and crowdfunding. Image credits: Hugh Lee 2012 Ed Tech Trends: Insights From Insiders At the end of the year, pundits love to share their versions of summarized lists of what was hot in ed tech in 2012. In addition to the obvious — Common Core curriculum and assessments, games in learning, consumer tech in education — there are others that may be more subtle or even counter-intuitive. Here are five, drawn from first-hand observation at major 2012 industry conferences ranging from the more traditional Association of Educational Publishers’ and Association of American Publishers’ Content in Context to the edgy SXSWedu event in Austin. These represent one perspective of what the education industry itself is seeing, cutting across individual conferences and events. Flickr:remiforall While digital is firing up imaginations and well-equipped classrooms, paper is still the pervasive medium of choice. Technical concerns were front-and-center at a Consortium for School Networking/SIIA Feedback Forum held with district and state officials during the ISTE 2012 conference. 2. Related
The Best of 2012: EdTech Resources | DyKnow It is time for our 2nd annual winter break homework assignment: The Best of 2012 EdTech Resources post has arrived! Below you will find the most popular articles I shared throughout the past 12 months. Each of these articles were read by at least 100 of our friends on Twitter (a few by over 1600) and then re-read via other blog posts and our monthly newsletter. So needless to say they are worthy of the spotlight one more time! To receive these updates in real time as I share them, be sure you follow @DyKnow on Twitter and “Like” us on Facebook. What do you think of this year’s list? Teaching + Professional Development: “Human beings don’t naturally all learn the same material at the same pace and in the same way. Learning + 21st Century Skills: “I get very excited about what is happening in our classrooms when I visit and I see students highly engaged in non-traditional instruction.” One-to-One + BYOD Deployments: EdTech Device + Deployment Management:
E-learning Review of 2012 | Elearning Market 2012 saw some significant developments, which all point to the growing maturity of the elearning market. Our monthly market updates covered the key developments. Growing investment in elearning In January of this year we predicted that businesses would increasingly turn to elearning in order to: Ensure compliance Improve operating margins Respond quickly to changes Enable global reach Grow their business In June we highlighted some interesting research by Cardiff School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University and the LLAKES Centre, Institute of Education, University of London, which found contrary to more pessimistic expectations that employers did not significantly reduce training expenditure per employee in a recession. This was reinforced by research by Opinionmatters for Skillsoft, which found that 93% of companies in the UK planned to either maintain or increase their training budgets over the next 12 months. Market consolidation It’s dog eat dog out there... By Steve Rayson
De qué tuiteamos en 2012 >> Tuitología La mímesis entre el mundo real y el mundo tal y como lo ve Twitter está tan probada, rodada y anotada que lo difícil a estas alturas es que dé sorpresas. Los 10 elementos que conforman la lista de lo más tuiteado en 2012 elaborada por la casa Hootsuite, por ejemplo, casan casi a la perfección con los titulares de lo más sonado del año. Lo cual se puede entender tanto como un signo de madurez de la corrala virtual como un problema de edad: ¿Es esto lo que ha quedado de Twitter, una plataforma que no hace tanto creaba sus propios fenómenos y luego dictaba los titulares que, apresurados, le seguían como un cachorro sin correa? Es posible que ese espíritu tuitero se haya convertido, quizá debido a circunstancias y de forma solo temporal, en algo mucho más sutil. Que por cada cambio mundial que no haya provocado este año haya creado un hashtag, o aportado un detalle, que ha ayudado a todos a entender o valorar un acto. 1. ¿Qué aportó Twitter? 2. ¿Qué aportó Twitter? 3. ¿Qué aportó Twitter?