HGSET561

IDEO serves as a design and innovation firm for businesses and start-ups... but what about helping schools with instructional design and development?

Pros: -Many Students Already Own Devices -Upfront Cost Savings -Shorter Implementations Cons: -Disparate Equipment and Operating Systems -Not all Students Have Their own Devices -IT Service Levels Will Vary Across Devices

A news story from Cornell talking about integrating mobile devices into higher ed...paints an unfortunate, yet realistic picture of the discrepancies between research/trends and practice  

Report from Alliance for Excellent Education on linking Teaching, Technology and Time to drive "Digital Learning".

"While some federal initiatives, such as The Investing in Innovation Fund (i3), have been aimed at promoting innovation in education, some of the fiscal requirements of two large federal education programs--namely Title I and IDEA Part B--stand in the way. This paper identifies three fiscal requirements of these programs that encourage the status quo, instilling in districts a profound deference for existing staffing and spending patterns."

Thanks for posting this, Hessa. I would add a few reasons to the list, most pressingly: the lack of research/proven results that districts considering blended learning can cite to justify their transition, and school cultures, which are very difficult to change!

Seems like a cool and useful product for teachers: aggregating the data gathered by the many apps and ed tech tools teachers use in the classroom in a single platform, with data visualization support

Description and video of Google's new 'Ingress' game, which is a pretty wild (and maybe a little frightening) glimpse into the potential directions of AR, ubiquitous computing, and gaming

If you don't know Clay Shirky, you can find TED talks and books about technology and/or web 2.0. I recommend Cognitive Surplus if you want more.

"In the US, an undergraduate education used to be an option, one way to get into the middle class. Now it's a hostage situation, required to avoid falling out of it. And if some of the hostages having trouble coming up with the ransom conclude that our current system is a completely terrible idea, then learning will come unbundled from the pursuit of a degree just as as songs came unbundled from CDs."

This consortium is charging more than $4,000 a course. Seems like a lot.

Quite a good critique of the Khan Academy model

two useful reports on competency-based and student-centered learning

Voters in Idaho voted 2:1 to repeal a RTTT-inspired state law that would have brought 1:1 laptop programs to all high schools and required all students to take 2 online or blended courses in order to graduate from high school. The public felt that the law would have "diverted taxpayer dollars to technology corporations and marginalized teachers."

Idaho voted down several education measures including one to require participation in an online course before high school graduation and a shift to 1-to-1 computing in schools.

...yet another reason why we need to equip students with information literacy skills! ><

This is very "hot" in India at the moment. The president of India has given 200 of these to the university I work at and they are distributing it, for free, to loads if other institutes. It costs $25!! I haven't seen the quality of the device, but I have seen other low cost, about $150, tablets and I don't like them AT ALL. D you think e device quality and user experience will not be deterrent given the price point?

Mohit, I've heard a lot about the poor quality of the device and very little about HOW universities intend on using these tablets. It seems like another case of top-down intervention that's tech-driven rather than learning-driven, which is rather unfortunate. Also seems even more unfortunate that even though it's a tech-driven initiative, they haven't thought out the *quality* component of the tech. Oy... See this article for critiques of the tablet: http://www.techulator.com/resources/5523-Most-Annoying-Defects-Flows-Datawinds.aspx

A new "Semester Online" program is being tried and tested by ten universities.

A new experiment in online learning: MIT OpenCourseWare, Codecademy, OpenStudy and P2PU are partnering together to offer a new kind of MOOC. The first course is "A Gentle Introduction to Python." It sends out emails to thousands of small groups pointing them to lectures, tutorials, and exercises - but also encourages learners to think for themselves and share additional resources with each other. It provides a map to learning Python, but doesn't discourage folks from careening off the beaten path.