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In the USDOE Educational Technology plan, Universal Design for Learning standards require that information be presented in a way that is accessible to people with disabilities such as sight or hearing impairment. I found this article about automatic text-to-sign avatar software that would seem to be a no-brainer for anybody who is creating an eLearning experience that is primarily text-based. We have text-to-speech, which is as easy as opening a document and having a robot read the text for you. I wonder if there are any text-to-sign avatars that are available in English.

sign language in online chat rooms 

This is really interesting! I never considered how primarily speaking through sign-language might thwart opportunities in video-chatting; especially with such a great technology as Google+. Good find!

Amanda, thanks for sharing. I have a soft spot for sign language as I taught a camper years ago with a hearing impairment which resulted in me pursuing some ASL classes in undergrad because I loved being a part of that world! Accessibility is a hot topic in education and to see it being addressed in a more mainstream market makes me very excited for the possibilities!

Augmented reality is bridging divide between signing and non-signing communities.

Interesting list to reflect on. "Here are 8 signs that your online college is just another extension of the School of Hard Knocks handing out Masters Degrees in Gullibility."

An interesting article on how resistant to change different types of organizations are. Educational institutions rank pretty highly resistant. Though it is interesting to note that businesses rank the most adaptive (non resistant)--so the education technology and startup trend may be a good sign!

Interesting. from where I am from (=Japan), business organizations with long history with the majority of employees committed until retirement age of 60 (slowly this is changing though), maybe NPO and even government (with so much shuffling going on) would rank higher...

The author makes a good point that heightened market competition seems to contribute to reduced resistance. I noticed that the more-resistant organizations operate in more highly regulated markets, which would seem to create internal cultures more oriented to compliance and, thus, resistance.

The Knight Center's MOOC on data visualization was a bit smaller than traditional MOOCs (it actually capped enrollment at 2000), but the second version of the same class already has 4000 students registered. It sounds like the professor gave a lot of attention to the students and the projects, and the fact that the numbers went up is a good sign.

''Previously, standardized tests accounted for 100% of a school's API (academic performance index). Under the new rules California high schools will have no more than 60% of students' test scores contribute to their API. ''

California collage students to get free digital textbooks as early as next year.

in response to Jen Lavalle's post about games having to go cross-platform to survive. Adobe, makes of the Flash platform, have announced they are stopping further development of the plugin for mobile devices. They are instead now going to focus on open standards (like HTML5), to allow content to be viewed on all modern devices (mobile and computers) with no plug in required. They will also focus on tools to allow developers to push content speciically to the app stores of today's most popular mobile devices. This is a good & bad sign for app developers who use Flash (lots of them, it's been an industry standard for years. Flash has suffered from terrible performance on mobile devices, so it's good to see Adobe acknowledging the need to do something different for their mobile strategy. But what this means for the tools developers will (need to learn to) use? TBD...

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) - More online courses from top universities. Not surprisingly, most people signing up are from other countries. How long these courses will remain free? At some point, will the universities try to make money from online courses?

An article describing the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to help deaf children learn American Sign Language (ASL).

I think this is what Uche is talking about with respect to enabling teachers with a school specific voice mail system that is also mobile. In my department office there is 1 phone for 10 teachers. The department chair is the only one who checks messages (once a day each morning) and it's difficult to use the phone because, even though we often deal in confidential information, we don't have any privacy for conversation. I'm signing up!

In Victoria, Australia, schools are signing up for the eSmart program, a cyber-safety program that is intended help students learn safe ways to surf the net.

"This cyber-safety program will eventually be provided to all Victorian government schools and about 300 Catholic schools in the next three years."

Going back to our discussions on augmented reality, here's an app that takes us a step closer to the kind of future that was shown in a video in one of Professor Dede's presentations - instant translation!

I wonder if this type of technology might be augmented to "replace" physical QR codes and instead, if you hold up your phone to a building name plaque (e.g.Empire State Building) - could you get statistical/historical data associated with just the name text?

For the business-type folks in the class, McGraw-Hill just sold its Education division to a private equity company. They think that education will continue to be a good investment.

Yeah, I thought it was weird. I looked into that--I think the sale is to a different "Apollo" group. UPhoenix is something like "Apollo Group" whereas McGraw Hill sold their division to "Apollo Global Management". I think they are different entities, but it is hard to tell. If they are the same organization, it is definitely a weird sign of shifting investments.

Cole, you're absolutely right, I missed that Apollo Global Mgmt is a VC firm.

"Coursera announced its employee-matching service, called Coursera Career Services. Some high-profile tech companies have already signed up-including Facebook and Twitter"

You have to sign in to Edutopia to download the PDF, but it's free and its a great resource.

The issue

HGSET561

This is a really interesting article, and coupled with the edX / Anant Agarwal article below from Douglas, I think it brings up additional questions. Even with all the features that Anant says will be added to edX, I feel like they are all just part of the "convenience" factor and in many cases (like grading, discussion forum), more convenience for the teaching staff than the students. It is convenient for the students to do online labwork instead of going to a physical lab, for example. So I wonder if that type of convenience is enough to convince more students to sign up to MOOCs, or if they have to fundamentally change to add more types of value?

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!