Group items tagged

The DHL's Global Connectedness report is interesting. The pillar is composed of trade/capital/information/people. Total rank of connectedness: US 20th. Each page for country analysis is helpful to think about kind of education is required for each country's future growth. 

A couple of youth-oriented websites settled with the government recently because of COPPA (law that protects children's private information online, if they are under 13yo). Now legislatures want to expand COPPA, so it may significantly impact learning games developers, too.

Information about a book being published on necessary education reform and its impact on online learning.

This startup, Clever, has a platform to enable the easy integration of other ed tech into the classroom--it stores student data in a single location. Maybe this will also help track student information as they move up grade levels and enable things like mastery-based learning instead of seat-based? They already have 2000 schools and a waiting list!

LuminAR is another project out of the Fluid Interfaces Group at the MIT Media Lab that combines a camera, projector, and computer into the currently available infrastructure of lamps and sockets to augment reality with additional information.

article on the National School Speed Test to access the quality of Internet access for K-12 schools - critical information in the conversation regarding technology integration

- as technology become more available everywhere, how to deal with its use among children in informal setting is a topic under discussion - for now, it seems like individual parents are providing their own guidance to their children (or no guidance) with no common understanding of what is best for the children of certain age - the pessimistic view in this article claims for the risk of ''the Nobody Scenario'' and seem to believe that there would be many negative cognitive consequences for the children if heavy-used (the definition of 'children' and 'technology' here is not clearly defined) Understanding and cooperation from children's parents would be very important in the process of implementing emerging technologies in school settings thus this type of controversy is interesting to watch.

An interesting breakdown of statistics from MITx's first course last spring. They show some demographic / background information for a subset of 6,000 students who registered for the course (not necessarily completed the course).

Interesting stance from the UK, where the government hopes to raise up the importance of computer science in education, where ICT (information and communication technology) lessons are not up to date with the needs and skills of the 21st century. Kids engaged in ICT classes learn how to use software, and not how software works or how it's created. From the article: "Written by gaming guru Ian Livingstone and visual effects veteran Alex Hope, Next Gen called for programming skills to replace learning about business software in ICT lessons." direct link to the UK Government's response to the 'Next Gen' report: http://www.dcms.gov.uk/publications/8646.aspx

Despite the wealth of information available on the Internet, a recent study suggests that many students lack basic research skills. According to the latest Project Information Literacy Progress Report, 84 percent of students say that when it comes to course-based research, getting started is their biggest challenge.

Mobile learning in some universities making gradually deeper impact. Through mobile learning the classrooms are becoming less about discovering information and more about collboration and knowledge creation. "Increasingly, this is just the way we do things" - Bill Rankin, director of mobile learning and an English professor.

Hybrid learning seems to be a hit in Chandler school. "The key is the teacher involvement, proponents say. Teachers still present the information, and then they monitor students' understanding through online projects, activities or testing."

Samsung establishes "smart classroom" which moves class study from pen and paper style learning to tablet based learning, but also allows schools in remote island, that lack educational infrastructure, connect students through electronic dashboards and share ideas and information.

SIIA (Software & Information Industry Association) is hosting a webinar about its efforts to create a standard metadata framework for tagging and delivering learning resources matched to individuals' needs, in line with . Unfortunately, it is during next week's section, but perhaps it will be archived...

"The ability to tilt along multiple axes distinguishes our display from previous actuatable displays. Such screen versatility opens a range of opportunities for providing an additional integrated information channel to the user. "These opportunities include collaboration, terrain modeling, 3D video that is beyond auto-stereoscopic 3D and tangible gaming. We can imagine many scenarios that would benefit from the physicality offered by Tilt Displays. However, we need to establish whether users can relate to the new experiences and advantages of using such a device."

graduate student at MIT has wearable device that enhances real world with digital information

Describes a group looking at the role of technology in both formal and informal educational settings.

While the technology has summarily 'emerged', Google Earth and a well designed media rich narrative are rethinking lecture dynamics and student participation. Informative video highlights some of the features and offers testimonials about Greenblatt's Humanities 27 being taught at Harvard.

I was speaking with Chris yesterday and we agreed that it was going to be the entertainment industry that would pioneer this technology. At this point, it looks as if Vuzix core market and strategy for growing their AR library is business (training) and academia. The fact that you can see through the lens but ALSO see the 'broadcast' image is huge. Yesterdays AR demo would have been soooo much more immersive had we been able to keep one eye on the R (reality...cars, appraoching hornets, etc) and one I on the AR.

Cute site asking students to use HOTS to solve crimes while learning information about the world. National Geographic hosts.