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"The Federal Government currently invests billions of taxpayer dollars each year in programs that include the creation of educational, training, and instructional materials through grants, contracts, and other cooperative agreements. This investment produces educational resources ranging from innovative curricular resources to workforce training materials to English language learning tools. While these materials are created for the public good, they are generally not open to the members of the public who paid for them. At a time when educational opportunity, workforce development and access to knowledge are critical to America's future, these valuable publicly-funded resources should be openly available to students, teachers, businesses, workers and the public to use in new and innovative ways."

"Last fall, Alberta Education sent two 2013 diploma-exam questions along with nearly 1,900 student essay answers that had been graded by teachers to LightSide, a Pennsylvania company that develops computer software to score student essays. LightSide's automated algorithms outperformed human reliability in the Alberta study by about 20 per cent, said the company's January 2014 report to the government."

"The unusual approach is called a "holacracy." Developed by a former software entrepreneur, the idea is to replace the traditional corporate chain of command with a series of overlapping, self-governing "circles." In theory, this gives employees more of a voice in the way the company is run."

Stacy Zemke has been named the Open Educational Resources (OER) Coordinator for the University of Oklahoma Libraries. As the OER Coordinator, Zemke will assist in the creation, promotion and utilization of open educational resources and open access content in support of OU's goal to reduce textbook costs through the development of open access educational resources for both students and faculty.

Robots are opening new channels of communication for students on the autism spectrum or those with other disabilities. Educators at New York City's special education District 75 say the NAO robot-a bright-eyed, two-foot-tall humanoid developed by Aldebaran Robotics-is now considered a virtual classmate by some students.

"Of the various professional development opportunities available, social media reigned supreme as the most popular way for educators to keep themselves up to speed on current issues in the education world. And while the report does note, "Most survey participants were pooled from social media websites, resulting in a sampling bias," other sources of information educators use to stay afloat extend beyond social media--Internet search, blogs, academic/education conferences, and news articles all topped 70% (see graph to the right)."

The working group has heard and received suggestions across a broad range of topics. Here are a few examples: Make an institutional commitment to fostering high-quality hybrid instruction (online and face-to-face) and provide the IT infrastructure to support course development and redevelopment along those lines. Establish an experimental college with the freedom to innovate in different course formats and individualized interdisciplinary majors. Require an e-portfolio of all undergraduate students, connecting the first-year experience and co-curricular activities to their major field of study and career preparation.

"Welcome to the University of Mary Washington's Domain of One's Own project. A Domain of One's Own provides domain names and Web space to members of the UMW community, encouraging individuals to explore the creation and development of their digital identities."

"Faculty and students at UC Davis, meanwhile, are developing what they call "hyperlibraries" of faculty writings, homework questions, research and other content available online that are then vetted, and, like a Wikipedia page, constantly expanded and adapted to meet specific needs. The goal is to produce e-textbooks in the chemistry, biology, statistics, math, physics and geology fields - dubbed ChemiWiki, BioWiki, MathWiki, etc. - that eventually will supplant traditional texts, which can cost up to $300 per copy, said UC Davis chemistry professor Delmar Larsen. A pilot study of the ChemWiki last spring found that students in a general chemistry class who used the online materials would have spent about $125,000 had they bought new textbooks, Larsen said."

"Righting the ship will require borrowing a page from the community-college playbook, by adding employment-ready programs like nursing (as Holy Family has done) and computing to entice disaffected degree-seekers. Developing online and hybrid teaching methods might also raise revenue from adult learners. Mostly, self-preservation will require both professors and administrators to accept cost-cutting, which will hardly be easy. Even though St. Joe's ended the year with a $7 million surplus by embracing some of these measures, its administration became cannon fodder for faculty. But if more schools don't follow suit, it could spell closures. "For those college presidents unwilling to reboot," Hartman warns. "I've got one word for them: Detroit.""

"The Really Useful #EdTechBook' is about experiences, reflections, hopes, passions, expectations, and professionalism of those working with, in, and for the use of technology in education. Not only is it an insight into how, or why, we work with these technologies, it's about how we as learning professionals got to where we are and how we go forward with our own development."

The book examines the underlying principles that guide effective teaching in an age when everyone,and in particular the students we are teaching, are using technology. A framework for making decisions about your teaching is provided, while understanding that every subject is different, and every instructor has something unique and special to bring to their teaching.The book enables teachers and instructors to help students develop the knowledge and skills they will need in a digital age: not so much the IT skills, but the thinking and attitudes to learning that will bring them success.

""My entire critique of higher education started with curricular reform at Penn," he says. "General education is nonexistent. It's effectively a buffet, and when you have a noncurated academic experience, you effectively don't get educated. You get a random collection of information. Liberal-arts education is about developing the intellectual capacity of the individual, and learning to be a productive member of society. And you cannot do that without a curriculum.""

"Assumptions about young people's familiarity with technologies risk exacerbating inequality. Access to devices and connectivity isn't equal across all young people, and neither is support in developing skills - from peers, parent/carers, or schools, equally distributed. Socioeconomic status remains a key issue in relation to access, with a small but significant number of young people having very limited access."

"In this volume, Martin Weller examines four key areas that have been central to the developments within open education: open access, MOOCs, open education resources and open scholarship. Exploring the tensions within these key arenas, he argues that ownership over the future direction of openness is significant to all those with an interest in education."

Chrystal chose to come down on the side of internal development. "We want to do in-house instructional design with our curriculum people, our professors and our production people. We really feel then that we can make quick changes the way we want them. If something doesn't work, we can make the change right now. We don't have to be in line with the four other clients that the company has."

"Rather than providing information about students at risk, we aimed to develop a system that would broadly inform instructors about all their enrolled students, providing summarized institutional data about the aggregate characteristics of the students enrolled in their respective classes. We call it the Student Profile Report (SPR), a short document that summarizes student records, intended to provide a useful snapshot of information about the population of students taking a course prior to the start of a semester. "

"This site is developed by and for the international community of Xerte toolkit users working at every stage of education. Xerte toolkits is a free, open source content creation tool. Every tutor and every learner in your organisation can create interactive content with rich media and high accessibility. Xerte toolkits integrate well with online videos and many other web-based tools. Learning objects created with Xerte can be easily shared and repurposed or exported for off-line use."

" SOLUTIONS FOR EDUCATION AND LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS (LMS) The Biomids Biometric solutions address needs in online education and other forms of corporate training and professional development, often facilitated through Learning Management Systems (LMS). They confirm the identity of participants (Authentication) and deter and detect cheating on remotely administered tests and assessments (Proctoring) through the use of advanced biometric technologies. The Biomids Authenticator and Proctor - Is a fully automated Authentication and Proctoring system, available in both web-based and download versions, that provides highly effective, convenient and cost-effective means of ensuring testing validity. Authenticates participants at the beginning and throughout the test/assessment (Persistent Authentication). Validates test results confirming that the participant has completed the assessment without unauthorized assistance through the use of video capture and website monitoring (Proctoring). Try a free 30-day trial download demo: The following video explains how the Biomids Authenticator and Proctor works in the case of test proctoring in online education. The Biomids Authenticator and Proctor is one of the most effective, convenient and economical proctoring systems available in the market today: * Low fixed cost - Allows frequent use for both Authentication and Proctoring. * Assured authentication - Utilizes powerful advanced facial recognition technology. * High integrity - Persistent Authentication throughout the test/assessment period. * Convenience - No need to schedule a human proctor - test taking anytime, anywhere. * Dashboard - Concise results uploaded to instructor or designated staff."

"The U.S. Military Academy at West Point is among 45 schools worldwide whose students are developing programs to battle extremism, but not with fighter jets or ground troops. It's a war of ideas in which participants use the same social media and other marketing tactics that have been harnessed aggressively as recruitment armaments for the Islamic State."