Educational Technology News

"Want to make video games? Awesome! First, just learn to code and then get ready for a lot of hard work. Or maybe not. Pixel Press wants to let anyone of any age create their own video game levels with just a pencil, graph paper, and an iPad or iPhone... 'Pixel Press' is a game where players create their own levels using pencil and graph paper, without knowing how to code."

"...in a political environment hostile to taxes, many public universities are desperately short of the funding needed to sustain their goals of providing equitable access to all who are qualified as well as to continue to lead the world with the best opportunities for advanced education.  Like private universities, public institutions have little alternative other than raising fees, which increases the cynicism of conservative politicians towards higher education and puts a degree out of reach of ever more young Americans."

"The Georgia Institute of Technology plans to offer a $7,000 online master’s degree to 10,000 new students over the next three years without hiring much more than a handful of new instructors."

"Technology has entered society like a massive, happy storm, and left few things unaffected. It was only a generation ago that technology took the form of cordless phones, cable television, and the soul-deleting wizardry of the digital clock. Today there are mobile supercomputers shrunk down to the size of an index card in the pocket of students, a staggering reality that’s easy to take for granted. Computers in your pocket. What this means for education is, well, that education needs to be rethought."

"It's no secret that the business world is experiencing unprecedented change and heightened global competition while weathering persistently harsh economic conditions. In this challenging climate's wake, countless aspiring business professionals are seeking opportunities to grow professionally, gain real-life work experience, and advance their careers."

Are you concerned about annoying imperfections lingering in your course?... This is the intervention your eLearning courses have been crying out for, so take a deep breath… and let’s get started.

Here are some tips and strategies to keep in mind for introducing all one-to-one devices in your classroom.

"Seriously though, one aspect of moocs that I think requires urgent attention is the sense that many participants feel of being overwhelmed. This was certainly the case for some in the EDCMOOC, and I fear I was too dismissive of the issue in my previous blog post."

"Academic institutions need to take steps to protect themselves against distributed denial of service(DDoS) attacks, a new report finds. Right now, many online systems used by colleges and universities are vulnerable to hacker hijacking."

As online technologies have exploded into mainstream education and corporate training, the need for professionals who are highly qualified in designing, developing, implementing, and assessing instruction has increased. However, the roles and responsibilities of educational technologists have become as varied as the employers who hire them and the tools they use. In order to shed some light on the matter, 161 EdTech professionals were surveyed in order to define the role(s) they play in K-12, higher education, corporate, and government work environments.

"Mobile computing is the wave of the future. While the high school economics book still has a chapter on 'balancing the checkbook,' I do my banking between grocery lines with mobile banking apps, rarely even seeing a check. I shop on Amazon, I send gifts remotely, and Google share important business and school materials for collaboration. Then I Skype or do a Google Hangout for remote collaboration. Why, then must students use paper agendas, put their phones away, and use a pencil and paper?  Students can do so much with an iPhone (or an Android, or even a BlackBerry). It can truly help them work smarter, not harder. How?"

"Online Teacher of the Year Renee Citlau offers advice for taking K–12 learning virtual. Itching to launch an online course at your school? Here are five steps the nation’s best online teacher says every program should take."

"Is innovation, I wondered, just a euphemism for anxiety? In one small-group conversation I sat in on recently, for example, a colleague observed that when she arrived at her new institution, a meeting was called summoning all those individuals on campus who, like her, possessed the word innovation in their job titles – 90 people attended the meeting, she said. That’s a lot of innovation. Or is it something else?"

Blogging has positive impacts on kindergarten students. It is a comparatively easy method to engage students by reflecting their thoughts and your teaching methods.

"Important research compiled on the effects of students multitasking while learning shows that they are losing depth of learning, getting mentally fatigued, and are weakening their ability to transfer what they have learned to other subjects and situations."

A napster moment; the end of boring lectures; a tipping point. These are all common responses to the emergence of MOOCs – Massive Open Online Courses.

"Augmented reality is exactly what the name implies — a medium through which the known world fuses with current technology to create a uniquely blended interactive experience. While still more or less a nascent entity in the frequently Luddite education industry, more and more teachers, researchers, and developers contribute their ideas and inventions towards the cause of more interactive learning environments. Many of these result in some of the most creative, engaging experiences imaginable, and as adherence grows, so too will students of all ages."

See how mobile education is helping students to improve their 21st century skills, and complement traditional teaching methods and facilitate improved learning outcomes.

"Interview is one of the most important part of the hiring process and is important for the interviewer as well as interviewee. There are various types of questions that are asked in an interview and some of these questions are general while others are specifically related to job post and job profile of the candidate.  There are many questions that are generally asked in all types of job interviews irrespective of the job post and the answers given by the candidate for these questions play a major role for getting selected for a job. In the following part of the article we will let you some of these most commonly asked questions and way to answer them."

Websites & mobile apps to set up a flipped classroom / blended learning environment, such as Educreations, Khan Academy, BrainPOP, Edmodo, Camtasia, etc.