Digital literacy skills are too important to relegate to the margins of the curriculum, Tahneer Oksman writes. “Write a brief history of your relationship to digital technologies, including social media.”
The latest news related to the meaningful and effective implementation of educational technology and e-learning in K-12, higher education, corporate and government sectors.
Watch this video to learn more about the fully online, accelerated, project-based Master of Education in Educational Technology at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. For more information, visit: https://www.utrgv.edu/edtech/index.htm
EDTECH@UTRGV's insight:
This 30-hour accelerated program designed to prepare persons in K-12, higher education, corporate, and military settings to develop the skills and knowledge necessary for the classrooms and boardrooms of tomorrow. Students in this program have the opportunity to earn one or more graduate certificates in E-Learning, Technology Leadership, and Online Instructional Design.
This is a fantastic program! Its practical, real-world based and applicable to many areas of industry where teaching and learning, training and development are used.
"A decade ago, while contemplating innovation I wrote (HERE) about how meaningful change in education spreads through diffusion rather than replication. This is an idea that David Albury has written and spoken about regularly and been very influential in my thinking. As we navigate the integration of generative AI in our schools today, this principle resonates more strongly than ever."
EDTECH@UTRGV's insight:
"Some teachers find AI to be a powerful tool for providing immediate feedback on student writing. Others are using it to generate personalized practice problems in mathematics. The common thread isn’t the specific application – it’s the thoughtful consideration of how these tools can serve their students’ needs."
"To celebrate the two year anniversary of ChatGPT, we have to think about its impact on the real world."
EDTECH@UTRGV's insight:
“The American public as a whole remains on the fence with artificial intelligence, according to many polls, but in education, adoption among teachers and students is rapidly rising.”
"Before she returned to teaching last spring after a leave of absence, Amy Clukey braced for the possibility that her students might cheat with ChatGPT. She’d heard complaints from her fellow professors and thought, sure, that’s not good. But plagiarism had never been much of a problem in her English classes."
EDTECH@UTRGV's insight:
"Faculty members are overwhelmed, and the solutions aren’t clear."
Learn about how AI role-play enhances Learning and Development by offering immersive scenario-based training.
EDTECH@UTRGV's insight:
"AI role-play enhances Learning and Development by offering immersive scenario-based training. Through realistic simulations, organizations can enhance communication, problem-solving, and decision-making skills in a cost-effective and scalable way."
The University of Michigan devoted considerable resources to proprietary generative AI tools. Next month it will launch a public-facing chatbot to connect prospective college students with funding opportunities.
EDTECH@UTRGV's insight:
"In June 2023, a university advisory committee published a report intended to guide the institution's use of AI in the future. Recommendations included creating a generative AI committee, creating an online information hub for the campus community, ensuring access to generative AI tools for everyone, and proactively integrating generative AI into education and research."
Studies show that maintaining digital courtesy might be the secret weapon for both building stronger emotional intelligence and getting superior results from AI systems.
EDTECH@UTRGV's insight:
"New research reveals a compelling dual benefit to treating AI systems with respect: it not only enhances our leadership abilities but also improves the quality of AI outputs."
Build a safe Internet of Things ecosystem that protects student data, even on the go.
EDTECH@UTRGV's insight:
"As schools work to improve connectivity and close the digital divide, school bus networks can fill the void left by unreliable internet at home for millions of students."
Institutions, faculty and students are exploring a wide array of ways to use GenAI in the higher education teaching and learning environment.
EDTECH@UTRGV's insight:
"There is consensus in higher education that AI is here to stay. Nearly all (90 percent) of instructor respondents agree that generative AI technology will play an increasingly important role in education in the coming years. In 2023, just 73 percent agreed with that statement.
In looking at how AI can support teaching and learning, the report offers five use cases."
Grammarly Authorship has some great features that could help teach about citation and prevent AI cheating, but it won’t solve all the problems around AI writing, says our contributing writer.
EDTECH@UTRGV's insight:
"Grammarly recently launched Grammarly Authorship, a new feature designed to track the provenance of writing and guard against unauthorized AI use or more traditional forms of plagiarism."
"The rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) in educational systems has generated a need for reliable methods to distinguish between human-written and AI-generated content. This is particularly relevant in academic settings, where AI detection tools are employed to ensure the originality of student submissions."
EDTECH@UTRGV's insight:
A "study by Davalos and Yin (2024) underscores the limitations and inaccuracies of these tools, specifically highlighting issues with false positives (human-written text misclassified as AI-generated) and false negatives (AI-generated text misclassified as human-authored). These errors have profound implications for academic integrity and fairness, prompting a re-evaluation of the role AI detection systems play in education."
Students can develop media literacy skills with edtech tools and engage in the digital and AI-infused world.
EDTECH@UTRGV's insight:
"Media literacy has emerged as a critical skillset in today’s digital landscape. As individuals increasingly consume content from many platforms, understanding how to discern credible information from misinformation has become paramount."
What was surprising about this initiative was the strong reaction of outrage and dismissal. It is only 20 people at GCSE level, in
EDTECH@UTRGV's insight:
"Critical thinking is not some isolated skill taught on its own, it needs domain knowledge and this is what this approach encourages. AI can already critique a claim, debate with you and critique your own work. It will also unpack its own reasoning."
"As research by people like Donald H Taylor and Egle Vinauskaite shows, more instructional designers are using LLMs like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini to complete learning design tasks than ever before - and the numbers seems to be increasing at a rate of knots."
EDTECH@UTRGV's insight:
"The question I have is: how well do these generic, all-purpose LLMs handle the nuanced and complex tasks of instructional design? They may be fast, but are AI tools like Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini actually any good at learning design?"
Once upon a time, educators worried about the dangers of CliffsNotes — study guides that rendered great works of literature as a series of bullet points that many students used as a replacement for actually doing the reading. Today, that sure seems quaint."
EDTECH@UTRGV's insight:
"AI summarizing tools don’t always provide accurate information, due to a phenomenon of large language models known as “hallucinations,” when chatbots guess at facts but present them to users as sure things."
"If you’re a teen, you could be exposed to conspiracy theories and a host of other pieces of misinformation as frequently as every day while scrolling through your social media feeds."
EDTECH@UTRGV's insight:
"How confident are you in your ability to tell fact from fiction?"
Educause recently released its annual Top 10 list of the most important technology issues facing colleges and universities in the coming year, with a familiar trio leading the bunch: data, analytics, and AI. But the report presents these critical technologies through a new lens: restoring trust in higher education.
EDTECH@UTRGV's insight:
""The 2025 Educause Top 10 describes how higher education technology and data leaders and professionals can help to restore trust in the sector by building competent and caring institutions, and through radical collaboration, leverage the fulcrum of leadership to maintain balance between the two."
On the EdSurge Podcast this week, we dive into the question of whether kids should be given smartwatches, talking to an EdSurge reporter who spen
EDTECH@UTRGV's insight:
"[W]hile parents focus on physical safety as they hand kids smartwatches, they may not be considering the downsides of starting a digital life so early"
Anthropic last month took the lead in providing early access to basic AI agents for the masses. This is a huge leap forward from the chat bots that have dominated early generative AI. Anthropic offers the new function that enables its Sonnet version to control your computer: “Claude 3.5 Sonnet is the first frontier AI model to offer computer use in public beta.” This is just the beginning of the next phase of generative AI. Over the coming weeks and months, we will see many platforms offer this capability to users.
EDTECH@UTRGV's insight:
"Anthropic last month took the lead in providing early access to basic AI agents for the masses. This is a huge leap forward from the chat bots that have dominated early generative AI."
With the rise of generative artificial intelligence, students need to develop new skills—and educators need to embrace new ways of teaching.
EDTECH@UTRGV's insight:
"The more comfortable that faculty become with using AI, the better they will be at teaching students how to use this skill ethically and effectively in the years to come."
"Working in the tech sector is, without a doubt, never boring.
Technology is constantly moving and evolving—opening up more and more opportunities and possibilities throughout all sectors of society. Think of the differences in technology between five years ago and today. Nothing stands still; there's always something new happening in the wider landscape."
EDTECH@UTRGV's insight:
"So, now that you’ve decided to expand your technology knowledge horizons, where do you begin? Start by assessing where you are now and what you want to improve."
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"Just as higher education once made the shift, however unevenly, to integrating writing practices and training across the curriculum—an effect largely of postwar shifts toward increased democratization and diversification of colleges—so too it’s time to make the case for digital literacy across the curriculum in higher education."