Educational Technology and Change Journal

Schools changing texting policies from eSchool News
Texting is one of the best ways to communicate with young people, but due to misconduct issues, many schools do not allow teachers and staff to communicate with students via texting. A school in Ohio sees the benefits of texting as a means of communication so is addressing the issue by sending home permission slips.

Addressing Bullying: Schoolwide Solutions by Nicole Yetter  from Education Week
This article reports on the 2011 “State of K-12 Cyberethics, Cybersafety, and Cybersecurity Curriculum in the United States” report published by the National Cyber Security Alliance and sponsored by Microsoft. This study found that schools needs to take a more active role in educating “students to be safe in today’s digitally connected age.”

Technology is not used effectively in schools is a report from The Information Daily.com
The National Endowment for Science, Technology, and the Arts (NESTA) in the UK has found that, despite schools spending millions of pounds on technology, it is not being used effectively. They found that teachers and pupils lack sufficient training in how to use technology as educational tools.

New frontier for scaling up online classes: credit by Justin Pope, AP Education Writer
MOOCs have opened up university courses to anyone who wants to take them. However, students do not receive university credit upon completion of these free courses. The sheer volume of students, grading, and concerns about cheating  are some of the issues that Pope explores.

Formative Assessment Is Foundational to Blended Learning by Michael Horn and Heather Staker from THE Journal
After explaining what formative assessment is – ongoing assessment – Horn and Staker look at the importance of formative assessment in the blended environment.  They assert that “formative assessment software appears to work best in blended learning environments if it helps students direct their own learning.”

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Nov. 19, 2012
Hi Jim,

As the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area continues to struggle in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, it’s important to remember the far-reaching implications of putting life on hold in the middle of November. In New York City alone, over 75,000 students missed school last week, as 48 schools were left devastated by the storm and dozens were left without heat or power. Although not as urgent as providing housing, food, or fuel, those students’ educations must also be restored.

Photo from Huff Post 11.1.12

That’s why Noodle Education Inc., a New York-based education search provider, is setting up the Emergency Education Directory. Noodle will help connect students in the affected areas with volunteer educators willing to donate their time to teaching, tutoring, and guidance, as well as facilities with heat, power and resources to house displaced students and teachers for these sessions.

Supporting Noodle Education is the Education Industry Association (EIA), which represents and will help recruit more K-12 education companies to be listed on the Emergency Education Directory.

Already, Sandy has caused an estimated $50 billion in damages in the Northeast. A concerted effort by education providers will aid the recovery effort by helping students in the region stay on track with their schooling.

The more educators and students made aware of the Emergency Education Directory, the more effective the program will be. We think this issue would be of great interest to your readers and hope you will aid us in getting the word out.

Please let me know if you have any questions, or if I can connect you with Richard Katzman (rkatzman@noodle.org), Noodle’s point of contact on this matter. [Nov. 14 press release.]

Best,
Sylvie I. Calman
Account Executive
The Cutler Group
sylvie@cutlergrp.com

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Schools provide teachers with the training tools for flipping the classroom by Wylie Wong from EdTech Magazine
In order for innovative ideas such as flipped classrooms to work, teachers and administrators have to understand how to use the technology as well as technology integration.

Is the technology ‘ready’ for blended learning? By Michael Horn from Forbes
Horn asserts that blended learning and technology have not caught up with one another. Different needs and different models contribute to the challenges.

To Make Blended Learning Work, Teachers Try Different Tactics By Katrina Schwartz
from MindShift
In another article about blended learning, Schwartz talks about how blended learning is often an attempt to use traditional teaching methods with new technology. Some teachers easily integrate technology into their lessons and their classrooms, while others have less success. Some teachers are overwhelmed by the new technologies while others thrive on the challenges it presents for taking leaning in different directions.

Teachers: Technology changing how students learn  by Matt Ritchel from The New York Times
Two independent studies with teacher participants, one by the Pew Research Center and the other by Common Sense Media, seem to show that while teachers think the Internet and other technology has had a positive impact on student research skills they are concerned that technology contributes to students’ short attention span and their ability to focus.

Teachers concerned about students’ online research skills  from eSchool News
In a slight contradiction of the New York Times report, this article, also reporting on the Pew Research Center project, says that while teachers think that student access to research tools is improved, they are not necessarily good consumers of what they find. There is so much information available that they can become easily distracted and lose focus.

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By Jim Baumann
Esri Writer

Oakland, California, lies directly across the bay from San Francisco. During the California Gold Rush in the mid-eighteenth century, it served as the main staging point for miners and cargo traveling between the Bay Area and the Sierra foothills. Today, the city continues to serve as a major cargo terminus, and its seaport is the fourth busiest container port in the United States.

Due to the economic opportunities provided by the Gold Rush, the city was a destination for immigrants looking for greater prosperity. As a result of this and successive migrations, Oakland is now known for its ethnic diversity, with significant populations of African-American, Hispanic, Asian, and Caucasian residents. While valuable from a cultural perspective, this poses certain challenges for local government, particularly the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), which must accommodate the diverse needs of its students, who speak more than 70 languages at home.

OUSD includes 61 elementary schools, 16 middle schools, 20 high schools, three K–8 schools, and one 6–12 school, as well as special education, independent studies, and early childhood education centers. It is the seventieth largest school district in the United States, and there are about 38,000 students in its K–12 programs. Chronic absenteeism is a major concern for the district, with nearly 40 percent of students in the East Oakland areas dropping out of high school before graduation. OUSD works with the Urban Strategies Council (USC), a nonprofit organization located in Oakland, to collect and analyze data related to school attendance and other social issues in the city.

Implementing a Community Data Portal with ArcGIS for Server

USC has used Esri‘s ArcGIS software for more than 20 years, applying it to a wide range of urban policy and reform initiatives affecting Alameda County, where Oakland is located, including health care services, affordable housing, violence prevention, education analysis, urban planning, disaster mitigation, and school absenteeism. It recently launched InfoAlamedaCounty Map Room, a free data portal that provides access to public datasets to the community for research, application development, civic engagement, and analysis.

Continue reading →

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One of the marvelous things about the Internet is that it allows people to take courses anywhere anytime. While the Internet may give us that capability, the reality is that there are other issues that come into play. No, I am not talking about lack of Internet access or lack of infrastructure or resistance from instructors. I am referring to state laws and requirements about what can be taught in their state and how it can be taught.

A recent story on Planet Money at NPR brought this issue to light. In Warning to Minnesota Residents: Don’t Take Stanford Profs’ Free, Online Courses, Jacob Goldstein wrote about Coursera’s caveat to Minnesota residents that they cannot take the company’s free online classes except under very specific conditions, one of which is to complete most of the course outside of Minnesota.  A state department official said that part of the rationale for this 20-year-old law was to serve a consumer protection function for students.  In a response the day after this story appeared, the director of Minnesota’s Office of Higher Education said that the law obviously needs to be updated so that Minnesotans can take advantage of such free opportunities for lifelong learning.

One reason this piece caught my eye was that we have recently run into some related situations. Our graduate programs are going more and more online, and in order to increase enrollment, we want to go outside the state boundaries. However, it turns out that we have agreements with certain states and not with others. Recently we have had to turn away potential students from states with whom we don’t have agreements. I was surprised to learn that some states even require hefty (up to $1,000) fees to register your online course/program in their state.

It seems that possibilities offered by ever-changing technology are often hampered by challenges that are two steps behind where the technology is. Maybe the pace will never be equal, and maybe that’s not a bad thing altogether. It keeps everyone on their toes.

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By Frank B. Withrow

Several factors are acting on traditional education programs. Stringent budgets are limiting school options. Content is increasingly available in digital formats such as accessible video, computer lessons and even educational games. Core academic standards are available in content areas. Most important is that better digital management and assessment systems are becoming available. Home schooling has provided a model that can be expanded into a blended education environment.

When Don Bitzer developed the PLATO system, he dreamed that the learner could be assessed and then assigned appropriate learning materials to move his or her learning forward. Assessment materials would be available to measure the learner’s progress towards a desired level of achievement. This process could be repeated until the learner reached even a 100 percent proficiency. Today this dream is possible with core state standards and digital technologies that allow learning in the home, classroom or even workplace. Handheld media allows learning of content 24/7 year round.

In such a system the role of the teacher becomes more a tutor, a counselor, a mentor and a coach that guides the learner through the desired resources and provides the assessment needed to determine accomplishments by the learners.

Each learner will have an educational plan that they are working towards. Assessment systems will include tests, projects and products that are a part of the learner’s portfolio.

We are a mobile society, therefore each learner will have an education card that holds his or her records, accomplishments and portfolio of work. Much learning will take place in classrooms, but a large amount of content will be learned at home through libraries of lessons available anytime-anywhere in video formats, computer lessons and educational games. Team learning will be emphasized both in classrooms and through social media.

The school and community will become integrated. Education will become learner centric. School facilities will be laboratories where teams of learners work together to reach high levels of scientific achievements.

Children and families will be encouraged to contribute digital resources of their learning experiences on such things as family vacations or other significant family events.

Education in the 21^st Century will be learner centric and more digital in nature with students bringing their own digital devices to the learning environment. The world is at our fingertips. We must be wise enough to use it.

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By Jessica Knott
Associate Editor
Editor, Twitter

AT&T recently announced a $350 million initiative designed to increase high school graduation rates and place at-risk students more firmly on the career track. The Aspire Mentoring Academy plans to fund three different types of mentoring, in many cases provided by AT&T’s employees, and encompassing job mentoring, skills mentoring and e-mentoring.*

Job mentors are AT&T employees, sharing their experiences via project-based activities. According to Kat Bockli, PR representative for AT&T, employees sign up through the Aspire Mentoring Academy internal website. They are then provided with preparatory materials and training. Most of the training is online, but AT&T also plans partnerships with non-profits such as Junior Achievement, We Teach Science and The LEAD Program. “As our organizations work together to increase U.S. high school graduation rates, giving students real-world learning experiences is key to showing them the importance of staying in school,” said Jack E. Kosakowski, president and chief executive officer of Junior Achievement USA(r). “By working with AT&T employees at Aspire Mentoring Academy, students understand how what they learn in school applies to their lives after graduation.”

When it comes to project assessment, the program is interested in “data-driven outcomes that improve high school graduation rates,” according to Janiece Evans-Page, AVP for Community Engagement at AT&T. “Other on-track to graduate indicators, or ‘smaller metrics,’ include on-time promotion to the next grade and improved attendance rates. These shorter term metrics are key to achieving the high school graduation goal and will be included in how we measure our success.”

To be effective, the initiative requires significant support from AT&T employees. “I was mentored by a young professional when in high school. It made a big difference in the path my life took,” said Clara Garza, Aspire Academy mentor and Lead Chief of Staff for Executive Operations at AT&T, Dallas. “One of the best things about AMA is there are several mentoring opportunities the employee can choose from. You can participate in short-term mentoring events in the workplace or in classroom settings or choose a long-term mentoring option with a series of classroom settings or student mentoring. AMA is also fully customized – you can do it on your own time, when there is a particular need and they give you the tools to be successful.”

More information on Aspire Mentoring Academy can be found at http://www.att.com/gen/corporate-citizenship?pid=11547.
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* Update submitted by Kat Bockli, AT&T, on 10.24.12: “AT&T has launched AT&T Aspire, a $350 million initiative designed to increase high school graduation rates and place at-risk students more firmly on the career track. The Aspire Mentoring Academy is the key community engagement program of Aspire that plans to fund three different types of mentoring provided by AT&T’s employees, and encompassing job mentoring, skills mentoring and e-mentoring.”

Edited 10.24.12 at 07:00.

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