Teaching Is Not a Business - Masters and PhDs

Today’s education reformers believe that schools are broken and that business can supply the remedy. Some place their faith in the idea of competition. Others embrace disruptive innovation, mainly through online learning. Both camps share the belief that the solution resides in the impersonal, whether it’s the invisible hand of the market or the transformative power of technology.

Neither strategy has lived up to its hype, and with good reason. It’s impossible to improve education by doing an end run around inherently complicated and messy human relationships. All youngsters need to believe that they have a stake in the future, a goal worth striving for, if they’re going to make it in school. They need a champion, someone who believes in them, and that’s where teachers enter the picture. The most effective approaches foster bonds of caring between teachers and their students.

 

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End of Google Authorship

The idea behind Google Authorship seemed extremely promising when it patented Agent Rank/Author Rank back in 2007. The idea was to influence page rankings based on the reputation of its authors by using digital signatures. So, trusted agents would receive a higher score than someone who hadn’t yet earned their stripes.

This was just an idea until June 2011. During this time Google began to encourage webmasters to use the rel=”author” and rel=”me” tags for pieces of content that an author wrote. When Google+ was unveiled, the entire Google Authorship plan came together is there was a way to connect content with its authors.

Within the first year, the experiment seemed promising.Searchmetrics found that 17% of SERPs were showing the rel=author tag, which was higher than expected. Unfortunately, Authorship didn’t take off as expected.

Stone Temple Consulting discovered in a recent study that 70% of authors made no effort in connecting their content with authorship. In addition to that staggering figure, out of 150 pages sampled, 50 did not have author pages, while ¾ gave no attribution to an author. Furthermore, there were issues with confusing authors and containing no links to Google+ profiles.

 

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What counts for academic productivity in research universities? - Masters and PhDs

Research universities focus mainly on research accomplishment: this is their core mission and what is key to the rankings and the achievement of high global status. But measuring research productivity is problematical. The global rankings count journals that are indexed in main global indices – such as the Science Citation Index, Web of Science or Scopus, or their equivalents for other disciplines. These indices list only a small number of journals and tend to favour publications in English – the global scientific language.

 

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ICT Brings Students and Communities Together in the DR Congo - Masters and PhDs

Inveneo teamed up with United Methodist Communications (UMCom) and Steve Bryant from the General Board of Discipleship to begin building a power and financially sustainable Computer Center serving three institutions of higher learning in Kamina. Currently, Kamina Methodist University (KMU) is unable to offer students in its ICT program a functioning computer lab, a loss which results in the inability to do hands-on work to support their theoretical learnings. Once completed, however, the Computer Center will be used by KMU students, the Health Sciences College, the Teachers College, and local community members as a place to gather knowledge and build skills. It will serve 1,000 people!

 

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The Education Revolution Is Here Right Now - Don't Miss It - Masters and PhDs

Innovative organizations who can leverage new approaches to learning, while meeting consumer needs in a lower cost manner, will do well. And most incumbent institutions have the ability to meet this soon-to-be future state successfully, if they couple this ability with institutional will. The “will” part of it is probably the biggest challenge. On the other hand we may look back seven to ten years from now and ask where did all the colleges go? I guess one way to think about this is that for sure there will be winners and losers.

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New Report: Transforming Teaching Through Tablets - Masters and PhDs

Education in Haiti is vastly changing. Where teachers once had a few books to offer their students, now they have an incredible wealth of resources available to them through Google Nexus 7 Tablets. And thanks to Inveneo and our partners like Google and the Craig Newmark Philanthropic Fund, we have made these educational tools to over 1,000 students in Haiti.

 

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Mobile testing for Ebola gains renewed urgency as outbreak grows - About Health Degrees

One small company, PositiveID, of Delray Beach, Fla., has developed a prototype device for testing for Ebola and other viruses and bio-threats, relying largely upon millions in federal dollars to fund its research. Developed in a lab in Pleasanton, Calif., the device looks like a mini-clamshell laptop. When closed, it is somewhat smaller in width and length than the iPad Mini, but much thicker — about 2 in. It weighs about 2 lbs.

Called the Firefly DX, it can be used to test a sample of a person’s blood or other bodily fluid for the presence of Ebola and other diseases at an airport screening area or a remote field location within 10 to 15 minutes.

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Metacognition: The Brain is a Muscle -

Metacognitive strategies encourage learners to reflect on their learning activities, monitor them, and refine them to enhance memory, retention, and understanding.

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Wings and Webs: Transforming Learning Through Social Networking

Find Resources at http://ift.tt/1rbG7GH/

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The Distracted Generation Infographic - e-Learning Infographics

The Distracted Generation Infographic: Tools and Tips to Get Children Refocused!

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Resources for Using iPads in Grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12 by Monica Burns - Edutopia

Edutopia is one of my favourite web sites. It has recently run a series written by Monica Burns aka @ClassTechTips featuring Resources for Using iPads across multiple grade levels. Though I've featured them each individually here on iPads in Education I thought it might be useful to post all of the series in one collection.


Resources for Using iPads in Grades K-2 http://bit.ly/Tag2sg

Resources for Using iPads in Grades 3-5 http://bit.ly/1owxjbR

Resources for Using iPads in Grades 6-8 http://bit.ly/1qHU1j3

Resources for Using iPads in Grades 9-12 http://bit.ly/QPzKrp


Awesome! Thanks Edutopia!

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I so wish I could say: Daddy, thank you so much for the stories.

"My father added a whole dimension to my childhood, one that I took for granted.

 

When my sister and I were little, we had an almost daily ritual with my father: drawing stories.

 

He would sit us on his lap and get out his clipboard, a piece of paper and his black click pen. He’d divide the paper into four parts, and draw as he told a story. Sometimes he drew old favorites and we knew what would be in each of the four drawings. Sometimes he let us decide what he should say and draw. But most of the time, we had no idea what would come next.

 

And that was really fun."

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Lego therapy offered to children with autism – Update with video

Lego Therapy – Autism Daily Newscast often report about the benefits of Lego therapy for children with Autism. In May we reported about Tri-Cities Lego Club who are based in Northeast Tennessee. They offer Lego based therapy for children with autism.

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In Fatal Flash, Gaza Psychologist Switches Roles, Turning Into a Trauma Victim - Masters and PhDs

Hassan al-Zeyada has spent decades counseling fellow residents of the Gaza Strip who experience psychological trauma. Now, as he prepares to aid his neighbors after a new round of combat and carnage, he has a challenging new patient: himself.

An Israeli airstrike demolished Dr. Zeyada’s family home on July 20, killing six close relatives, including his mother and three of his brothers.

“You try to help the people with their suffering,” the doctor said recently in his Gaza City living room, lined with psychology textbooks. “It’s totally different when you have the same experience. 

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Six Majors That Make Employers Drool - Masters and PhDs

When some students graduate from college, they cross their fingers and hope and pray that they’ll get a job offer. But wouldn’t it be better to have employers come looking for you?

So how can you get employers salivating? Your demand in the marketplace may depend on your major, according to a 2014 survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). The Association polled its employer members to determine employment trends and the survey results reveal that some degrees are much more popular among employers than others.

 

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Edison offers affordable and Lego-compatible robotics education

With robots set to play a more prominent role in society in the coming years, it makes sense to find fun ways to educate youngsters on the technology. To that end, Thomas Alva has developed Edison, a palm-sized, bright orange, programmable robot compatible with Lego bricks that is intended as an affordable introduction to programming and robotics.

Named to reflect its “inventive spirit,” Edison features a host of sensors and runs on open source software. Each small bot is programmable and interacts with the world via IR transmitters and receivers, line tracking, barcode reading, playing sounds and music, and sound detection. One Edison can communicate with another over IR, with the units also able to be programmed to by controlled via TV and DVD remotes.

 

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What 6.9 million clicks tell us about how to fix online education - Masters and PhDs

This year edX, the online learning platform co-run by MIT and Harvard University, gave researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) data on the second-by-second viewing habits of more than 100,000 learners perusing more than 6.9 million video sessions.

In a paper published this spring, the CSAIL team outlined some key findings on what online learners want from videos. 

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Sociotechnical Narratives in Rural, High-Poverty Elementary Schools - Masters and PhDs

The article’s purpose is to compare case studies of computer technology use at two rural elementary schools across two international settings. This study uses the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) theory to guide this comparative investigation of how elementary school teachers and students in East Texas and South Asia construct meaning for computer technology. Building off of SCOT theory, the article also introduces the term, “sociotechnical narratives” as part of the analysis of the meaningful descriptions of ways that social groups use tools in relationship to their wider social context. 

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