Bill Gates’ $100 million database to track students Text smaller Text bigger By Michael F. Haverluck Over the past 18 months, a massive $100 million public-school database spearheaded by the $36.4 billion-strong Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been in the making that freely shares student information with private companies. The system has been in operation for several months and already contains millions of K-12 students’ personal identification ‒ ranging from name, address, Social Security number, attendance, test scores, homework completion, career goals, learning disabilities, and even hobbies and attitudes about school. Claiming that the national database will enhance education, the main funder of the project, the Gates Foundation, entered the joint venture with the Carnegie Corporation of New York and school officials from a number of states. School officials and private companies doing business with districts might have plenty to be happy about with this information-sharing system, but ParentalRights.org President Michael P.
Horizon Report > 2013 Higher Education Edition Login or Create New Account Member Spotlights RIT Launches Nation’s First Minor in Free and Open Source Software and Free Culture Partner News HP LIFE e-Learning Raffle: Win an Amazon Gift Card! iTUNES U Ideas that Matter and More High Quality, Free EdTech Content Sparking innovation, learning and creativity. > Publications > NMC on iTunes U > Creative Commons NMC Horizon Report > 2013 Higher Education Edition The NMC Horizon Report > 2013 Higher Education Edition is a collaborative effort between the NMC and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), an EDUCAUSE Program. The tenth edition describes annual findings from the NMC Horizon Project, a decade-long research project designed to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in higher education. Tags: 2013 135638 reads Sparking innovation, learning and creativity. Identifying the impact of emerging technologies. News Events Members Projects Connections Publications Horizon About
The Trouble With Online College First, student attrition rates — around 90 percent for some huge online courses — appear to be a problem even in small-scale online courses when compared with traditional face-to-face classes. Second, courses delivered solely online may be fine for highly skilled, highly motivated people, but they are inappropriate for struggling students who make up a significant portion of college enrollment and who need close contact with instructors to succeed. Online classes are already common in colleges, and, on the whole, the record is not encouraging. The research has shown over and over again that community college students who enroll in online courses are significantly more likely to fail or withdraw than those in traditional classes, which means that they spend hard-earned tuition dollars and get nothing in return. A five-year study, issued in 2011, tracked 51,000 students enrolled in Washington State community and technical colleges.
2013 Horizon.K12: The Interim Results Login or Create New Account Member Spotlights RIT Launches Nation’s First Minor in Free and Open Source Software and Free Culture Submit Your Projects: NMC Horizon Report > 2014 K-12 Edition iTUNES U Ideas that Matter and More High Quality, Free EdTech Content Sparking innovation, learning and creativity. > NMC News > NMC Blogs > NMC Member Spotlights > NMC Member News > NMC Most Engaging 2013 Horizon.K12: The Interim Results Posted April 3, 2013 by Samantha Becker The NMC is pleased to announce the interim results of the 2013 Horizon.K12 Project, as presented at the 2013 CoSN Conference in San Diego. This Short List will inform the decisions of the advisory board as they embark on the final round of rankings, in which the list of technologies, trends, and challenges will be cut in half for the final report. Near-Term Horizon: One Year or Less * BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) * Cloud Computing * Mobile Learning * Online Learning Top 10 Trends (alphabetical order) Top 10 Challenges (alphabetical order)
Here’s why schools are wary of edtech: Coursesmart crashes before student exams By Erin Griffith On April 25, 2013 Earlier this month, edtech company CourseSmart was awash in press for its new, albeit somewhat controversial, learning tools. Using digital textbooks, CourseSmart shows teachers and professors exactly how much time each student has spent with an assignment. Naturally this ignited concerns about privacy and the message it sends to students. But this week, the company experienced a software company’s worst nightmare: It crashed. What’s worse is that CourseSmart isn’t a lean startup iterating its way to success. @coursesmart This is more than an inconvenience, we have exams. Wrong day for coursesmart to crash on me. @coursesmart I have a final exam tomorrow at 9 am with two chapters left to read. Ever feel like spending a crap load of money on something that will fail when you need it most? coursesmart is really not working right now…..the day i have a test…really? The Facebook comments were not much better.
Collaboration: The Legacy Dipping my toes... For the first three months of 2013, I took part in my first MOOC, 'Designing a New Learning Environment' offered by Stanford University via an initiative called Venture Lab. I signed up because it ties in with my Octopus's Garden Project and also because I wanted to experience this Flat Classroom-global-type of learning for myself. The course required us to watch weekly lectures and complete readings; for assessment we had to submit five individual assignments, one final team assignment and five peer assessments of other final projects. We signed up for teams of our choice and developed an area within new learning environments; developing our final project design based on our findings, readings and experience. Leading & Contributing I became team leader late on in the project as the original one, the one who set up the actual topic, went quiet and dropped off the radar. The inability to use the tools I suggested and the absolute reluctance to even try baffled me.
Why Teaching Digital Citizenship Doesn’t Work « Looking Up Spend time with children and you learn that lists of rules don’t work well. Kids are too smart and love to find loopholes. No matter how long you spend crafting a list that covers all scenarios a 5-year-old will bite someone and point out that you didn’t say he couldn’t. A better approach is positive general principles. Attentive Listening- Pay close attention to what others are saying. These agreements cover most situations, describe behavior in positive terms and support the development of critical thinking skills. This approach works better than long lists of rules, and so I’m confused by the common approach to encouraging good Digital Citizenship. Digital Citizenship is often promoted by listing the many things students cannot or should not do. Students may not Such lists are too narrow, quickly become outdated and don’t allow students to think critically. More importantly the whole concept of digital citizenship is backwards. Like this: Like Loading... Related April 13, 2015 June 2, 2013
Empower Digital Citzenship In my post "What is human? What is humanity?" I explored the future possibilities of technology with particular reference to education. My thinking summised that the "the future will never be without teachers" but rather our roles will change; technology will allow teaching and learning to be "more effective"and will allow educators to become "enablers and supporters" rather than "lecturers and controllers". I would argue that it already has - this change should already have happened. As outlined by the Flat Classroom book, there are five areas of awareness to use as a lens for viewing digital citizenship choices: Technical AwarenessIndividual AwarenessSocial AwarenessCultural AwarenessGlobal Awareness My Quadblog assignment post, "Digital Citizenship: Individual Awareness" focuses, obviously, on Individual Awareness, about how individuals understand online behaviour and how they chooses to behave online.
Why Professors at San Jose State Won't Use a Harvard Professor's MOOC - Technology By Steve Kolowich Professors in the philosophy department at San Jose State University are refusing to teach a philosophy course developed by edX, saying they do not want to enable what they see as a push to "replace professors, dismantle departments, and provide a diminished education for students in public universities." The San Jose State professors also called out Michael Sandel, the Harvard government professor who developed the course for edX, suggesting that professors who develop MOOCs are complicit in how public universities might use them. In an open letter this week addressed to Mr. Sandel, the philosophy professors decried a dean's request that the department integrate a MOOC version of "Justice," the Harvard professor's famous survey course, into the curriculum at San Jose State. San Jose State's Experiment Under Mohammad H. Students in that section passed at a much higher rate than those in the traditional sections. Peter J. "I think he will answer it in good faith," said Mr.
Free Learning! For learning-junkies - like me - Coursera allows you to search for, enrol and take part in interesting and varied courses, offered by legitimate universities - for free! I have written before about taking control of our own learning; whilst I am lucky enough to be in a school that values Professional Learning highly, that funds PL and devotes one afternoon session a week to helping staff learn, not everyone is so lucky. However, as explored in Kristen Swanson's book, 'Professional Learning in a Digital Age', the advent of technology and the Internet, means our learning can be 'user-generated' - we take control. Organisations such as Venture Lab and Coursera make this even easier. This year online, for free, I have taken part in the following online courses:- Designing a New Learning Environment (via Stanford University, through Venture Lab)E-Learning and Digital Cultures (via The University of Edinburgh)
Are iPads and Other Classroom Gadgets Really Helping Kids Learn? For the last six years, the buzz about educational technology has grown deafening. Schools across the nation are scrambling to figure out just how a new generation of technology—software and devices both in the marketplace and still to be developed—might better educate kids. The experiments are far-reaching. Currently, there are roughly 275,000 K-12 students from 31 states who are taking classes online. Other schools, including a rapidly expanding chain of charter schools that serve low-income children, are employing what they call a “blended learning” model. At another chain of charter high schools, kids sit in what resembles a call center, receive videotaped lectures and interactive lessons on a monitor, and get pulled into smaller, teacher-led groups to get a particular lesson refreshed or reinforced. The purpose of at least some of this new technology is to make education—a sprawling, complicated enterprise—more streamlined, targeted and efficient. “Is it a bubble?”
Free Learning! For learning-junkies - like me - Coursera allows you to search for, enrol and take part in interesting and varied courses, offered by legitimate universities - for free! I have written before about taking control of our own learning; whilst I am lucky enough to be in a school that values Professional Learning highly, that funds PL and devotes one afternoon session a week to helping staff learn, not everyone is so lucky. However, as explored in Kristen Swanson's book, 'Professional Learning in a Digital Age', the advent of technology and the Internet, means our learning can be 'user-generated' - we take control. This year online, for free, I have taken part in the following online courses:- Designing a New Learning Environment (via Stanford University, through Venture Lab)E-Learning and Digital Cultures (via The University of Edinburgh) I am also signed up to show interest in taking the following courses over the remainder of the year:-
Much Ado About MOOCs The debates are just beginning to boil. Last week, Georgia Tech plunged into the ether by announcing it will award a Master's degree in Computer Science to students who go through its program with Udacity. Faculty around the U.S. are raising plenty of questions about what such programs will mean for them, their institutions and their students: From the philosophy department at San Jose State University to Harvard professor, Michael Sandel, whose course, JusticeX, is offered via edX: "There is no pedagogical problem in our department that JusticeX solves, nor do we have a shortage of faculty capable of teaching an equivalent course." Dip a toe in the blogosphere and you will find plenty of thoughtful debate: "At the moment, the classism of the MOOCs is most clear in the central unexamined assumption--that the “best” teachers are at the “best” universities. "A first myth is that university brand is a surrogate for teaching quality. This is hardly a comprehensive survey of the debate.