Worthy of Note — K-20
April 16, 2013
SREB News
Other Webinars
Broadband Access
Evidence of Data Collection
Technology Trends
Online and Blended Learning
State Authorization
Ponder Future of Google and Internet
Security Issues
Grading Software
MOOCs
Education Standards
Waivers
IT and Professional Development
Resources
SREB News
Join the 2013 National Online Teacher of the Year and finalists as they highlight how
Building Relationships + Creating Connections + Making College and Career
Readiness = STUDENT SUCCESS!
WEBINARS
Tuesday, April 16, 2013 at 10:00 AM (EDT)
Follow Your Compass: Strategies for Creating Meaningful Connections with your
Students
Michelle Licata
National Online Teacher of the Year Finalist
Florida Virtual School
Registration Link: http://notyml041613.eventbrite.com
Wednesday, April 17, 2013 at 10:00 AM (EDT)
Creating a Culture of Success: Building Relationships and Community in the Online
Classroom
Jen Currin
National Online Teacher of the Year Finalist
North Carolina Virtual Public School
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Registration Link: http://notyjc041713.eventbrite.com
Thursday, April 18, 2013 at 10:00 AM (EDT)
College and Career Readiness: Making It Happen Online
Renee Citlau
National Online Teacher of the Year
Anaheim Union High School District
Registration Link: http://notyrc041813.eventbrite.com
SREB Publication
Southern States See Changes in Virtual Education (SREB publication)
Victoria O'Dea, Education Week, Digital Education, March 28, 2013
Online learning has undergone a series of significant changes in recent years as it
has entered the mainstream of K-12 education, concludes a new report.
The Southern Regional Education Board's latest report about online learning
examines the evolution of the region's state-run virtual schools over the past
seven years as well as examining how e-learning has grown at the district level.
Other Webinars
Meet the New Digital Parents
SchoolWires, Webinar, Parental Involvement Series
Reaching the New Digital Parents
Tuesday, April 23, 2013 11:00 am
Eastern Daylight Time (New York, GMT-04:00)
A new group of digitally proactive parents is emerging within the K-12 school
community. Meet the new digital parents! Join us for 30 minutes and find out how
they’re driving change in the classroom and in school-to-home communications.
This is part of a series of online events brought to you by SchoolWires and Project
Tomorrow. Three additional events will follow.
Julie Evans, a speaker at this event, has been CEO of Project Tomorrow, one of
the nation’s leading education nonprofit organizations, since 1999. She developed
the Speak Up National Research Project in 2003 and has served as the chief
researcher on this project. See the article posted under Technology Trends below:
Parental Communication in the Digital Age.
Digital School Districts Survey Overview Webinar 4/24/2013
Each year, the Center for Digital Education, in partnership with the National
School Boards Association, invites all U.S. public school districts to participate in
its annual Digital School Districts Survey.
This survey recognizes districts and school boards that are making exemplary use
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of technology to provide better communication, to support student learning and to
utilize effective technologies.
Register for the Webinar here.
Broadband Access for Students — An Appeal
Invest in classroom broadband connectivity…
ISTE, Petitions at WhiteHouse.gov, April 1, 2013
During the first week of April, ISTE submitted a petition to the White House
regarding broadband access for students. We were able to get the 150 signatures
needed for the petition to go up on the White House website, but there is still a
long way to go to reach the 100,000 signatures needed by the end of April so that
it goes in front of committees. It's an audacious goal, but one we're eyeing. Please
share the link with your SIG listserves, professional networks, friends, families and
colleagues and invite them to sign. Together, our voices will carry.
Thank you in advance for taking the time to support this critical advocacy initiative.
April is Advocacy Month, and we're determined to make the most of it!
Here's the link: http://wh.gov/LVL7. For more information, contact:
Lauren Suveges
Volunteer Leadership Manager
International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)
180 W. 8th Avenue, Suite 300
Eugene, OR 97401
Direct: 541-434-8906 ext 257
www.iste.org
Evidence of Data Collection
The Heart of the Digital University
Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology, April 04, 2013
In a Q&A, authors Frank McCluskey and Melanie Winter discuss how the forces
that have brought about the current crop of challenges in higher education are the
same ones that can help solve them.
Recently, the authors spoke with CampusTechnology.com about what changes in
an environment where continual data collection is possible, how one university
was able to keep its tuition the same for more than a decade, and why institutions
need to become learning-centered (rather than teacher-centered or bureaucracycentered) organizations.
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Technology Trends
5 Emerging Technology Categories that Exist Across Horizon Reports
Tanya Roscoria, Center for Digital Education, March 27, 2013
Five key categories describe a decade of emerging technologies that the
annual NMC Horizon Reports outline.
An analysis conducted by Ruben Puentedura — founder and president of the ed
tech consulting firm Hippasus — revealed that social, mobility, visualization,
storytelling and gaming categories all appear in these reports, which identify
emerging technology that could become mainstream in K-12 and higher
education.
Parental Communication in the Digital Age
Julie Evans, Education Channel Partner, April 10, 2013
Bridging the gap between home and school has long been a top priority of school
leaders. According to new data from Project Tomorrow, one-third of administrators
now believe that involving parents as "co-teachers" in their child’s education is
essential to improving their college matriculation and career readiness, and
educators increasingly see digital tools as key to this effort. As parents step up the
challenge of co-teaching, they want their child’s school to take advantage of digital
tools to streamline their interaction with teachers and administrators.
In fall 2012, more than 38,000 parents and 6,000 administrators responded to
Speak Up survey questions about the use of digital tools and social media for
school-to-home communications.
Strategic Mobilization: A Model for the Future: A Q&A with Robbie K. Melton
Mary Grush, Campus Technology, April 03, 2013
As Associate Vice Chancellor for Mobilization and Emerging Technology for the
Tennessee Board of Regents, Robbie Melton oversees mobilization strategies
and initiatives for the sixth largest statewide system of public higher education in
the country: TBR serves more than two hundred thousand students enrolled in 46
institutions throughout the state--six state universities, 27 technology centers for
technical/vocational education, and every one of the state's 13 community
colleges.
A key part of Melton's role is keeping an eye on the future of mobile and
organizing cross-disciplinary teams to study the technology and its education
applications. TBR has included mobilization as an important part of its strategic
plan, recognizing the technology's ubiquity and reach into students' lives, its rapid
technical evolution, and its unique transformative potential for education. Here,
Melton shares how she works to build and extend TBR's model for strategic
mobilization.
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2013 Q1 Special Report: Smart Infrastructure Alternative link
Center for Digital Education, White Paper, March 6, 2013
The technological changes occurring on K-20 campuses can move alarmingly fast
for education leaders who are trying to keep their heads above water. But the
simple truth is that these demands are only going to become more complex as
mobile adoption continues to increase; learning environments evolve to include
blended, online and hybrid models; online assessments, backed by Common
Core State Standards requirements, become standard operating procedure; and
data storage capacity needs to scale to petabyte levels. As education institutions
try to keep up with these truths, one common obstacle stands in their way:
outdated IT infrastructures. This Center for Digital Education Special Report looks
at some of the key trends that are impacting IT infrastructures and gives specific
guidance on what smart strategies, decisions and solutions K-20 institutions can
implement to ensure that they are well prepared to take advantage of the
inevitable technological changes coming their way.
Mobile Devices in Education
Center for Digital Education, White Paper, Sponsored by Dell, March 25, 2013
Many K-12 school districts and institutions of higher learning are embracing the
reality of increased mobile device usage and bring your own device (BYOD)
initiatives on their campuses, and the impact this will have on IT. Those pressed
with supporting this change are wrestling with how to manage a broad assortment
of end-user devices now connecting to their IT environments. These devices
include consumer-oriented smartphones, tablets and laptops, as well as products
designed for use within a managed environment. This paper outlines an approach
that Dell has developed and tested to meet the unique needs of education.
Conceived as an easy-to-use solution for education institutions, it is designed to
be simple to implement and manage, and to address a variety of mobile devices.
Simplifying Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) in Education
Center for Digital Education, White Paper, Sponsored by HP, March 27, 2013
Due to the rapid proliferation of mobile technology among school-aged
populations, BYOD programs are an intriguing way for educational institutions to
leverage the power of emerging digital learning tools without busting their budgets
on fleets of school-owned mobile devices. When students and staff provide their
own devices, schools can save money while still embracing the digital revolution.
At the same time, however, BYOD poses many security and device management
issues — and these concerns are heightened when minors are involved. This brief
from HP focuses on best practices in BYOD security and management in
education, highlighting an innovative unified solution from HP.
Online and Blended Learning
Changing Course: Ten Years of Tracking Online Education in the United States
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Sloan Consortium
The tenth annual survey, a collaborative effort between the Babson Survey
Research Group and the College Board, is the leading barometer of online
learning in the United States. Based on responses from over 2,800 academic
leaders, the complete survey report, "Changing Course: Ten Years of Tracking
Online Education in the United States" can be downloaded here. Read the
press release.
Teacher Knows if You’ve Done the E-Reading
David Streitfeld, New York Times, April 8, 2013
Several Texas A&M professors know something that generations of teachers
could only hope to guess: whether students are reading their textbooks. They,
along with colleagues at eight other colleges, are testing technology from a Silicon
Valley start-up, CourseSmart that allows them to track their students’ progress
with digital textbooks.
Hybrid Models of Instruction: Not Just for College Students?
Ilana Garon, Ed Week, Teacher, April 4, 2013
An alert reader sent me this article, about the efficacy of "hybrid" educational
models--specifically, a blend of computerized course-work and in-person
education with a teacher. In a study involving students at six public universities,
findings indicated that students who utilized the hybrid model (working on the
computers and meeting with instructors one hour a week) performed the same as
students who received only face-to-face instruction.
I wondered if these findings would have applications at the high school level. I
admit I have some innate resistance to the hybrid model, in that--at the end of the
day--it definitely makes my job less necessary. Fewer hours of in-person
instruction requires fewer teachers. Read more…
First Blended Charter School Set to Open in Rhode Island
Keeping Pace Staff, April 12, 2013
The Village Green Virtual Public Charter High School is promoting a blended
learning model for 9th and 10th graders, with the intention of expanding to include
grades 11 and 12 over a three-year period. One of the missions of Village Green
is to use the students’ time as productively and creatively as possible. The goal is
to give students a more realistic idea of managing time in a career-based setting.
For instance, if it takes 1.5 hours for a student to get through an English lesson
and 30 minutes for science, then that time will be used as needed instead of
splitting it evenly. This allows each student to take the time he or she needs to
truly understand each lesson, instead of being controlled by the clock or the pace
of a full class. Village Green estimates that most students will use 40% of their
time working with the teachers, and the other 60% will be online or in small
groups.
Online classes likely to become more common
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Lisa Singleton-Rickman – TNValleyNow.com – Decatur Daily.com, April 8, 2013
Alabama educators have long known that online classes provide experience and
preparation students need for life after high school, either for college or the
workforce.
But the state has never done much more than suggest schools implement them in
the curriculum, until now. Under the state’s new diploma requirements, which go
into effect this fall and begin with incoming ninth-graders, there’s a required
college and career preparedness course that incorporates computer applications.
Though Alabama schools have discretion as to how to implement that part of the
career preparedness course, online classes will likely become more
commonplace, according to Alabama Department of Education officials.
What College Students Really Think About Online Courses
Tanya Roscoria, Center for Digital Education, April 3, 2013
A group of student leaders has tried online classes, talked with other college
students about their experience and traded their insight with educators. And as
more colleges expand their online offerings, education administrators and policymakers could learn something from these students.
Thirty-two percent of higher education students took at least one course online in
fall 2011, according to the Sloan Consortium report Changing Course: Ten Years
of Tracking Online Education in the United States, released in January. At
NorthWest Arkansas Community College, 42 percent of its 8,069 students
enrolled in at least one online class, an increase of 17 percent since last spring.
State Authorization
Navigating the Current State Authorization Kerfuffle for On-Campus Instruction
Russ Poulin, WCET Frontiers, April 6, 2013
Russ has been following this confusing information. He says: from your emails to
me, these stories have been a bit confusing and confounding to many of
you. Some people are worried about losing their federal financial aid for
students. I have been following this issue and thought it would be helpful to give
my interpretations and results of my conversations with Dr. McArdle of the US
Department of Education in today's blog WCET Frontiers posting.
Most of the state authorization discussions that we've had thus far have been
about distance education. This current issue is about authorization and federal
financial aid for students in your local face-to-face classroom.
State Lines May Ease for Classes Held Online
Tamar Lewin, New York Times, April 11, 2013
Higher education leaders have proposed a way to make it easier for universities to
offer online courses across state lines.
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The proposal would replace a cumbersome patchwork of rules and fees that make
it costly for universities to offer online courses to students in different states. With
some seven million students enrolled in online college courses for credit — a
number that is growing rapidly — higher education officials say it is crucial to
simplify the system.
A commission on online learning led by former Secretary of Education Richard W.
Riley outlined a proposal on Thursday under which any institution that had
received state authorization for its online programs, based on certain quality and
consumer protection standards, would be allowed to enroll students
from other states that met the same basic standards and agreed to reciprocity.
Ponder Future of Google and the Internet
Could Google Someday Answer All Your Questions?
Clair Cain Miller, New York Times Bits, April 4, 2013
Google wants to be the place people go to satisfy all their information needs.
Google asked 150 volunteers to download a mobile app that pinged their phones
at various times during the day to ask about their information needs at that
moment, where they looked for the answer and whether they found it.
Their answers broke down into four categories. The first two Google already does
well — answering simple questions (“when is Columbus Day?”) and more
exploratory ones (“biography of Yves St. Laurent.”) The other two are more
challenging — tasks to complete (“does my local library have this book available
for checkout?”) and complex issues that often do not have a single answer or an
answer findable on the Web (“best path to deal with borderline personality
disorder” or “is my wife picking the kids up from school?”) Read more….
Digital Grab: Corporate Power Has Seized the Internet
Norman Soloman, Common Dreams, March 28, 2013
“Most assessments of the Internet fail to ground it in political economy; they fail to
understand the importance of capitalism in shaping and, for lack of a better term,
domesticating the Internet,” says Robert W. McChesney in his illuminating new
book, Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against
Democracy.
Huge corporations are now running roughshod over the Internet. At the illusionshattering core of Digital Disconnect are a pair of chapters on what corporate
power has already done to the Internet -- the relentless commercialism that stalks
every human online, gathering massive amounts of information to target people
with ads; the decimation of privacy; the data mining and surveillance; the direct
cooperation of Internet service providers, search engine companies, telecomm
firms and other money-driven behemoths with the U.S. military and “national
security” state; the ruthless insatiable drive, led by Apple, Google, Microsoft and
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other digital giants, to maximize profits. In his new book, McChesney cogently
lays out grim Internet realities.
Security Issues
Gartner: Long hard climb to high level of cloud computing security
Ellen Messmer, Network World, April 10, 2013
It's still a long, hard climb to get to a high level of security in cloud computing,
according to Gartner research vice president Jay Heiser, who said business and
government organizations with sensitive data appear likely to hold back from
cloud-based services until things improve.
Top IT Security Worries
Michelle Fredette, Campus Technology, March 4, 2013
It's a dangerous world out there, with IT shops hard pressed to protect their
institutions and users. CT looks at the 4 biggest security worries--and how IT can
fight back. In 2012, 61 educational institutions reported data breaches, involving
more than 2 million records, according to the nonprofit Identity Theft Resource
Center. This story appeared in the March 2013 digital edition of Campus
Technology.
Kentucky Schools Launch Statewide Cloud Based ERP System from Tyler Technologies
Tyler Technologies
173 Kentucky school districts move to Tyler's cloud-based solution for its
reliability, long-term cost savings and statewide disaster-recovery capabilities.
Tyler Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: TYL) has successfully moved 173 Kentucky
school districts from traditional on-premise deployments of its Munis® enterprise
resource planning (ERP) system to a hosted Munis solution. The process took
less than two years and makes Kentucky the largest school system in the U.S. on
a cloud-based financial management system.
The Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) has been a Munis client for 18
years. KDE recommended its school districts migrate to a hosted Munis solution
for numerous benefits. Read more…
Grading Software
Essay-Grading Software Offers Professors a Break
John Markoff, New York Times Science, April 4, 2013
Imagine taking a college exam, and, instead of handing in a blue book and getting
a grade from a professor a few weeks later, clicking the “send” button when you
are done and receiving a grade back instantly, your essay scored by a software
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program. And then, instead of being done with that exam, imagine that the system
would immediately let you rewrite the test to try to improve your grade.
EdX, the nonprofit enterprise founded by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology to offer courses on the Internet, has just introduced such a system
and will make its automated software available free on the Web to any institution
that wants to use it. The software uses artificial intelligence to grade student
essays and short written answers, freeing professors for other tasks.
…but may hamper educational experience says John M. Crisp who teaches in the
English Department at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas, ABC Action
News, April 12, 2013
MOOCs
North Carolina State U To Offer MOOC for School District Leaders
Leila Meyer, Campus Technology, March 19, 2013
The Alliance for Excellent Education and the Friday Institute for Educational
Innovation at North Carolina State University have launched a massive open
online course for educators (MOOC-Ed) called Digital Learning Transition, which
is designed to help school district leaders develop a set of digital learning goals
and strategies to meet the needs of their students.
The free course is part of the Alliance's "Project 24" initiative and is the first in a
series of MOOC-Eds planned by the Friday Institute. The course is "designed for
school and district leaders, including superintendents, principals, curriculum
directors, technology directors, financial officers, instructional coaches, lead
teachers, and others involved in planning and implementing K-12 digital learning
initiatives," according to a news release from the Alliance.
Online Learning, En Masse
Samantha Stark and Tamar Lewin, Video, New York Times, January 6, 2013
This video offers a good brief description of MOOCs from professors involved.
Sweating the Details of a MOOC in Progress
Karen Head, The Chronicle, Wired Campus, April 3, 2013
Karen Head, a guest blogger for Wired Campus, is an assistant professor in the
Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Literature, Media, and
Communication, and director of the institute’s Communication Center. She reports
periodically on her group’s efforts to develop and offer a massive open online
course in freshman composition.
Education Standards
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A Taxonomy of Education Standards
Brandt Reed, Of That (blog), March 29, 2013
I've previously posted and updated A Four-Layer Framework for Data Standards.
When working with education standards I've also used the following taxonomy
that categorizes standards according to their purpose. For convenience, this
taxonomy is also available in PDF form under a CC0 dedication.
Types of Standards
There are three types of standards that are involved educational efforts:
Academic Standards, Data Standards and Technology Standards.
New Guidelines Call for Broad Changes in Science Education
Justin Gillis, New York Times, April 9, 2013
Educators unveiled new guidelines on Tuesday that call for sweeping changes in
the way science is taught in the United States — including, for the first time, a
recommendation that climate change be taught as early as middle school.
The guidelines also take a firm stand that children must learn about evolution, the
central organizing idea in the biological sciences for more than a century, but one
that still provokes a backlash among some religious conservatives.
The guidelines, known as the Next Generation Science Standards, are the first
broad national recommendations for science instruction since 1996. A consortium
of 26 state governments and several groups representing scientists and teachers
developed them.
Waiver in Liberal Arts
Technically Liberal Arts
Paul Fain, Inside Higher Ed, April 2, 2013
A group of 19 private colleges in Georgia have struck a deep transfer agreement
with the state’s technical college system, guaranteeing admission to any student
with a grade-point average of at least 2.5 and an associate of science or applied
science from one of the state’s 25 technical colleges.
Four of the private institutions went a step farther with the agreement, which was
announced in February. Those colleges -- Brenau University, LaGrange College,
Paine College and Reinhardt University -- agreed to waive their general education
requirements for students who transfer in from the technical college system with
an associate degree in science or, in two cases, in applied science.
Resources
How to Write a Term Paper
Gale Cengage Learning
This guide is designed to support you as you use electronic and print resources to:
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choose a topic
craft a thesis
evaluate thesis and sources
identify a variety of information sources
take efficient notes
begin and organize a research paper
use parenthetical documentation
prepare a Works Cited page
draft and revise a research paper
All steps of the research process will be illustrated by examples that follow the
creation of a research paper exploring Toni Morrison's novel Beloved. You will be
able to track the development of a thesis from initial questions asked during the
reading of Beloved to the documentation of material researched to develop that
thesis. Project Tomorrow has followed research on students using Gale Cengage.
Teacher to Teacher; Critical Thinking in the College Classroom
What is Critical Thinking?
This web site provides personal, practical, and published materials collected to
help you cultivate critical thinking skills in your students, especially first-year
students.
These materials are contained in 14 modules--ten focused on specific critical
thinking skills, and four on specific teaching methods. These modules are then
categorized using Halpern's (2003) framework for teaching critical thinking skills
across disciplines. According to this framework, well-rounded critical thinking
instruction helps students acquire:
How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character (book)
Paul Tough, Houghton Mifflin, 2012
The story we usually tell about childhood and success is the one about
intelligence: success comes to those who score highest on tests, from preschool
admissions to SATs. But in How Children Succeed, Paul Tough argues that the
qualities that matter most have more to do with character: skills like perseverance,
curiosity, conscientiousness, optimism, and self-control.
This publications has served to provide discussion among SREB constitutents.
Read commentary in New York Times: School of Hard Knocks,
Annie Murphy Paul, August 23, 2012
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