Literacy with ICT

"Once in a blue moon, a technology comes along that meets the needs of learners, classrooms, and is sufficiently powerful to create opportunities beyond the limits of our imagination. The BBC micro:bit may just be that rarest of edtech unicorn."

"Higher education leaders and decision makers use the annual Issues, Technologies, and Trends resources to know what's important and where to focus in their IT planning and management activities. When viewed together the resources provide more complete and nuanced guidance on institutional IT priorities.

The lists are created by the community for the community, with support from EDUCAUSE staff. The Top 10 IT Issues list is developed by a panel of experts comprised of IT and non-IT leaders, CIOs, and faculty members and then voted on by EDUCAUSE members in an annual survey. 

The Trend Watch and Strategic Technologies reports are derived from authoritative sources that annually identify emerging and maturing technologies and trends in higher education. The ELI Key Issues in Teaching and Learning list is crowd-sourced by surveying the higher education teaching and learning community to identify the issues and topics most important to them. The NMC Horizon Report identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have an impact on learning, teaching, and creative inquiry in education. "

"Everyone agrees that it's important for children to learn new technologies such as 3D printing, robotics, and virtual reality. The challenge lies in finding the best way to teach those skills to young students. Plenty of organizations have taken on that challenge and have come up with creative ways to teach kids about technology while allowing them to have fun as they learn. One of those companies is 3DBear, a Finnish startup founded three years ago by Jussi Kajala and Kristo Lehtonen.

3DBear is an app that allows children to 3D design their own toys in augmented reality. Available for both iOS and Android, the app is simple enough for kids to use, allowing them to superimpose their own designs on their surroundings using their phone's camera. Kajala and Lehtonen wanted to capitalize on the popularity of such games as Pokémon Go and use the appeal of augmented reality to educate, not just entertain."

"Want to record a phone call from a Mac? Maybe you're interviewing someone for a podcast and want to record both sides of the conversation? Maybe you want to record a phone call for quality and training purposes? Whatever the purpose, there are several different ways to record a phone call from a Mac, but we're going to go with perhaps the easiest method that is decidedly low tech but highly reliable.

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Rather than expecting to be immersed in learning that shines a light on the path forward the notion of searching for driftwood that suits the learner's needs is very empowering. It requires an imagining of learning as a very active process where the learner is aware of their context, their current understanding and what they might need to move forward. It demands a conscious practice of reflection and a disposition towards taking charge of one's learning. It is a very agentic view where learning is something that you do, not something that happens to you. 

"What do remote controllers, routers, and robots all have in common? Microcontrollers! These days, beginner-friendly microcontrollers are easy to use and program with just a laptop, a USB cable, and some (free) open-source software. Woohoo!! All the projects, here we come!

The catch? There are like, 4324302* different microcontrollers and it can be daunting to get started, especially if you're just getting into electronics. Where the heck do you start?!

Right here, bbies, I got chu. Whether you are looking to build some cool electronic projects, learn programming/tech, or wanting to teach others about electronics, this tutorial will help you figure out what microcontroller is right for your needs, goals, and budgets. Yay! Let's get started!"

Modern data science emerged in tech, from optimizing Google search rankings and LinkedIn recommendations to influencing the headlines Buzzfeed editors run. But it's poised to transform all sectors, from retail, telecommunications, and agriculture to health, trucking, and the penal system. Yet the terms "data science" and "data scientist" aren't always easily understood, and are used to describe a wide range of data-related work.

What, exactly, is it that data scientists do? As the host of the DataCamp podcast DataFramed, I have had the pleasure of speaking with over 30 data scientists across a wide array of industries and academic disciplines. Among other things, I've asked them about what their jobs entail.

"We live in an era where robotics and artificial intelligence will replace many of our current jobs. Global connectivity will continue to allow companies to outsource labor to other countries. Our students will likely change jobs every five to seven years. The corporate ladder is gone and in its place, is a complex maze. They will inhabit a world of constant change. But how do we help students navigate that maze?

We often hear that our current students will work in jobs that don't exist right now. But here's another reality: our current students will be the ones who create those jobs.

Not every student will create the next Google or Pixar or Lyft. Some students will be engineers or artists or accountants. Some will work in technology, others in traditional corporate spaces and still others in social or civic spaces. Some of them will work in high-skilled manufacturing. But no matter how diverse their industries will be, our students will all someday face a common reality. They will need to be self-starters and self-managers.

This is why metacognition is so vital. Metacognition happens when students analyze tasks, set goals, implement strategies and reflect on what we're learning."

"In the last few years, machine learning applications have quietly entered every aspect of life: social media to speech recognition, radiology to retail, warfare to writing articles, coding to customer service, robotics to route optimization.

During the 40 year information age, we told computers what to do. With advances in artificial intelligence, particularly machine learning, and faster processing chips we can feed computers giant data sets and they can (in narrow slivers) draw some inferences on their own. As we reported in Ask About AI, the rise of code that learns marks the beginning of a new era of augmented intelligence. It's a great opportunity for us to expand access to a great education and for young people to make a big contribution.

Given the importance of relationships in human development, AI will augment rather than replace the work of educators in many ways. We'll all have to get better at collaborating with teams that include smart machines. In other professions, augmentation will lead to automation with the potential for significant dislocation. Amazon's workforce, for example, is about 20% robots."

"The word "deepfakes" refers to using deep learning, a type of machine learning, to add anyone's face and voice to video. It has been mostly found on the internet's dark corners, where some people have used it to insert ex-girlfriends and celebrities into pornography. But BuzzFeed provided a glimpse of a possible future in April when it created a video that supposedly showed Obama mocking Trump, but in reality, Obama's face was superimposed onto footage of Hollywood filmmaker Jordan Peele using deepfake technology.

Deepfakes could pose a greater threat than the fake news and Photoshopped memes that littered the 2016 presidential election because they can be hard to spot and because people are -- for now -- inclined to believe that video is real. But it's not just about individual videos that will spread misinformation: it's also the possibility that videos like these will convince people that they simply can't trust anything they read, hear or see unless it supports the opinions they already hold.

Experts say fake videos that will be all but impossible to identify as such are as little as 12 months away."

"Learn more about how to strengthen the WiFi signal at work or home using a WiFi extender and see what the best three options are.

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"Plays can be bought for pennies and delivered in bulk, inflating videos' popularity and making the social media giant vulnerable to manipulation."

Mere substitution is not going to help our learners maximise the affordances of technology. The challenge is to find ways by which technology can enhance learning. We can be certain that technology is not going to go away and that those who maximise the affordances that it brings are likely to gain the most from it. 

"Gifs4Kids is a new online resource for teachers and students that is aggregating student friendly animated gifs to be used in projects. Popular sites like Giphy, Gfycat, etc. contain gifs that are not appropriate for children. Therefore, Gifs4Kids is an amazing and SAFE resource for educators and students!"

"This lesson/series of lessons is designed to give pupils an introductory understanding of key computational thinking skills and help them to discover that in fact, computers don't solve problems, but are used by us to aid the problem solving process.

This will be shown by using the BBC Micro:Bit device, both emulated via online tools and with a real Micro:Bit if available - and adding a touch of magic."

"n this technology-immersed world, students need to know how to navigate the digital environment safely. From discerning real news from propaganda to managing their reputation online, so much of their future is dependent on possessing digital literacy skills. Teachers have to step up to the plate and integrate digital literacy into the curriculum and model it through their actions. In this article, we will discuss 10 ways that digital age teachers model digital literacy and leadership."

"HERE ARE FOUR NEW BREAKOUT EDU GAMES THAT ARE PERFECT FOR BACK TO SCHOOL!
We hope you had a great summer relaxing and readying yourselves for another awesome school year ahead.

We have added all of these new games, as well as last years' back to school games, to the Featured Games "

"What happens to a bowling ball after you bowl with it? How do vending machines really work? What happens to your luggage when you check it in at the airport? What's inside a street organ?

In 2017, Centre Pompidou museum approached me to create five short films for their kids web show Mon Œil in line with Preposterous. Les machines impossible series (Impossible Machines), a tribute to Rube Goldberg, explores and reinvents what's inside complex mechanisms.

Watch four amusing imaginings from French motion designer Florent Porta: Les machines impossibles - Bowling, above, Soda, Bagage, and Musique:"

"CoderDojo clubs around the world use Scratch both online and offline to enable young people to express themselves, create projects, try new things and learn along with their peers. Scratch has been a vital tool not only in developing creative learning, but in also teaching coding concepts and problem-solving skills. Yesterday the latest version of Scratch was released in Beta. Here are some of the exciting things you have to look forward to and what you need to know!"