Apart from reading great literature, some educators struggle to come up with new ways to make English class engaging. Edtech has a lot to offer teachers who want to foster a deep love of language in their students. One of the most affordable pieces of edtech, Amazon’s Alexa, can be a simple way for students to engage in reading and writing at a deeper level. Most students love the silly games and interesting stories that are available to captivate their attention on this playful device. If you have been trying to figure to how to use Alexa to make English class more engaging, here are five of the top programs your students will enjoy.
Changing demographics, wide-ranging competition and shifting funding sources are together forcing higher education to adapt. Offering more online courses and vocational training are typical responses, but they’re not the only ways to bolster public institutions, argues a new report from Deloitte’s Center for Higher Education Excellence and Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities. The pair suggests five approaches public institutions can take in response. Those include sharing resources among campuses, aligning with the state’s economic needs, offering more lifelong learning opportunities and partnering with the private sector. However, change is needed in order to execute these models effectively, including a shift to student-centered decision-making, updated financial models and stronger state education leadership.
To make education more accessible and equitable for the blind and visually-impaired (BVI) students, Wawasan Open University (WOU) and St Nicholas Home for the Blind have signed a memorandum of agreement (MoA) to make web accessible e-learning educational resources available to BVIs. WOU acting vice-chancellor Prof Dr Zoraini Wati Abas said that WOU was committed to provide knowledge transfer services to St Nicholas Home through technical support on server-related issues and consultations on Learning Management System (LMS) related issues.
Many people living in smaller towns and cities in India have no way to learn a subject as important and intricate as accountancy in the towns and cities where they live. This is why for such aspiring accountants learning accountancy online is the preferred way to master the subject. Another reason why learning accountancy online is a great way to learn is simply that doing so saves people from the drudgery of a regular commute to and from a classroom. This is especially useful for those who suffer from physical disabilities and for whom a regular commute to and from a classroom is not possible. Learning online is also beneficial because as the student does not travel to a classroom, considerable money in traveling expenses is saved. Also while most regular courses take time to create a curriculum for dynamic new topics such as GST, online courses on such subjects are taught by qualified instructors today.
You have probably heard the term “hackathon,” but you may not be sure of what it means. A hackathon is most commonly associated with hackers or computer programmers. However, while hacking typically involves computers, hackathons are primarily events where groups of people gather to “hack” an idea. At these major events, people come together to take an idea and turn it into something real using technology. As schools are focusing on STEM education, it is only natural for educators to consider adding hackathons to their lesson plans. Why? In addition to encouraging creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration, hackathons are fun! Students will learn how to take an idea and bring it to reality in a competitive (but collaborative) atmosphere.
Among Top Math Students, Why Does a Gender Gap Persist?
The gender gap at average levels of math performance has declined a lot over time, which is great. But if you look at these higher levels — like the 95th percentile or the 99th percentile — the gender gap is high and growing as you go to higher and higher levels of performance, which is not so good. We see a much higher gender gap at these higher levels of performance than we see even at the, say, SAT 800 level. At the highest levels of performance, we observe in our data the gender gap is about 10-to-1. This is something we’ve observed looking at just 2007. This is just a snapshot of data. We speculated that this is something we can track over time, so that’s what we were trying to get at in this paper. Is this something that evolves over time? If so, how does it evolve over time?
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The company is offering its computer science curriculum — and kicking in some funds — to 10 institutions this academic year, with more to follow. A pilot program for computer science and data science courses is underway this fall at eight institutions, which have begun offering at least one of two introductory computer science and data science courses geared toward students with little to no experience in the disciplines. The program will expand next year as three of the eight institutions, as well as two others, offer an intensive 10-week machine learning seminar, with enrollment open to students across the country. This initiative is separate from Google’s new online certificate program in entry-level IT, which more than 25 community colleges and Northeastern University are offering for credit.
How Well Do Americans Really Know Today’s Students?
How well do we Americans really know today’s students? The answer will surprise you.
62% of respondents believe most first-year students live on campus—but this is the experience of only about 13% of first-year students.
Only 37% of respondents correctly stated that most of today’s college students don’t depend on parents or family for financial assistance.
And only 47% of people correctly identified that Hispanic and African American college students are less likely to complete their degree than their white peers.
National Poll: How Well Do Americans Really Know Today’s Students?
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“Gamified” active learning has been shown to increase students’ academic performance, engagement, and make more social connections than standard course settings. However, the costs to use an educational game design with efficient delivery of the game/course plan can be problematic. Our first objective was to evaluate the effectiveness of gamification by using existing techniques (e.g., simple HTML-based games) and readily available collaborative tools (e.g., Wikis) from a typical learning management system (LMS) such as Blackboard. Moreover, our second objective was to examine students’ attitudes towards gamification (e.g., usefulness). Data were collected from 2015 to 2017 (n = 80) at a Midwestern university in the United State using a mixed methods approach. For the quantitative method, online surveys were conducted in an experimental group (class with implementation of gamification) and control group (class without any gamified activities) that were randomly selected from graduate level statistics courses. For the qualitative method, the researcher conducted semi-structured interviews with subjects who addressed their interests to be interviewed during the online survey. A Welch’s independent t-test revealed a significant difference (p < 0.001) in the mean exam scores of experiment and control groups. A difference favored the classes with gamification. More than 70 % of students agreed that gamified activities were either extremely or highly useful in helping them review and/or understand fundamental concepts. In conclusion, using built-in LMS tools to design gamified learning activities may enhance students’ learning outcome/effectiveness, provide more diversified learning methods and motivation, and offer easy modifications for different learning needs.
If you want to discover how technology will change higher education provision in future, Rome-based International Telematic University Uninettuno, a wholly online institution, which claims to be a pioneer of educational technology, may be a good place to start. It has more than 25,000 students in 167 countries and enrolments jumped by 40% this academic year. It teaches programmes via nine languages – Arabic, English, French, Italian, Greek, and more recently taught in Chinese, Spanish and Russian. Its students learn in interactive virtual classrooms incorporating augmented reality environments such as Second Life. And the entire platform is used as a research laboratory to test and apply new software to teaching and learning – talking textbooks and 3D holographic technology are among the developments currently being studied.
Will community colleges solve education ‘mix-match’ with tech training?
There is a significant imbalance between the types of jobs available in the U.S. and the number of people who have the corresponding education to apply, according to an Urban Institute report, which notes the “mix-match” is more apparent in local markets than nationally. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. jobs require a high school diploma or less at entry level, while 60% of the population has more than a high school diploma. Of adults ages 25 and older who have some level of college education, less than one-third have an associate degree. The remainder have a certificate or no credential. The report said tracking the educational progress of a community or population can help local, state and regional governments identify which industries or businesses to attract or retain. It also can help to create economic development policies that support entrepreneurship and innovation hubs.
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“The problem is networking, or lack of networking,” said Glauser. “If you don’t see people who look like you and you don’t have the right connections,” it can be hard to land an interview even if students have training in tech skills. At Techtonica, she said, students are required to attend tech events and start building that network. Judy Lee, an associate professor and department chair at Golden Gate University, shared that students at her institution, many of whom are adult learners, are encouraged to network on campus. “Adjunct faculty are all working in the Bay Area and we encourage students to network with professors first,” said Lee. Panelists then dove into what companies themselves need to do to address bias in their own organization and hiring practices.
The types of jobs that are at the least risk of being replaced by automation involve problem solving, teamwork, critical thinking, communication, and creativity. The education profession is unlikely to see a dramatic drop in demand for employees given the nature of work in this field. Rather, preparing students for the changing labor market will likely be a central challenge for schools and educators. Policymakers and practitioners must adapt K-12 education to help students develop the skills that are likely to remain in demand (sometimes referred to as “21st century skills”). K-12 education should thus prioritize teaching critical thinking, problem solving, and teamwork across subject areas. Teaching students to become analytical thinkers, problem solvers, and good team members will allow them to remain competitive in the job market even as the nature of work changes. Equally important, these skills form a strong foundation for independent thinking that will serve students well no matter what career(s) they pursue throughout their lives.
Not surprisingly, DeVos, a strong advocate online learning and of virtual charter schools, used her Rethink School tour to once again promote technology-based educational solutions. Among the programs DeVos promoted directly on her tour was the Global Teaching Project, which is currently being used to enhance students’ learning in several under-achieving Mississippi schools, including Holmes County Central High School. At Holmes, which DeVos visited on her tour, students are currently receiving extra support in AP Physics via the Global Teaching Project.
The report offered four key findings. Overall, teachers didn’t appear to be using many published textbooks aligned with newer standards, even though the Common Core “has raised the bar for what students should know and do.” However, the use of online materials that were standards-aligned and content-focused “appeared to rise.” Specifically, TeachersPayTeachers.com and Pinterest.com topped the source list for online materials. More than half of all math and ELA teachers reported using Teacherspayteachers.com and between a third and a half of math and ELA teachers said they used Pinterest.com.
The most common form of phishing email in education tends to include an attached invoice; 66 percent of hacker attempts use the attached invoice ploy to get unwary recipients to click on an infected link; another 28 percent use a payment notification scheme; and 6 percent try online order tricks. The findings were shared by digital security vendor Cofense, in its “State of Phishing Defense 2018” report. The company provides online services to organizations that automates response to suspicious emails and also helps them condition their employees to recognize and report phishing. (In other words, the company facilitates employers sending fake emails to test how savvy their workforce is.) For the report, Cofense used data gathered through the experiences of 1,400 clients in 23 industries around the world covering real attack attempts correlated with customer simulation data.
Universities around the world—including Ivy League schools like Harvard University, Princeton University, and Columbia University—have recently launched hundreds of free online courses, according to Dhawal Shah, the founder of the online course search engine and review site Class Central. Shah has been keeping track of these Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on Class Central since 2011, when MOOCs were first starting to emerge as a trend. (The New York Times called 2012 “The Year of the MOOC.”) Since then, the free course landscape has grown exponentially. “In the past seven years or so, over 800 universities have created around 10,000 of these MOOCs,” he writes on freeCodeCamp’s Medium page. In the last four months alone, 190 universities have made about 600 online courses available online for free.
The Trump administration is planning to propose a set maximum period of authorized stay for international students in the U.S., according to Inside Higher Ed, which notes concern the change will depress the number of international students. The proposal is expected next fall. Currently, international students can retain their student visas for as long as they remain students. The new rule would set a fixed maximum term for certain holders of nonimmigrant visas, including F-1 student visas, though a timeframe has not been specified. Critics of the proposed rule say international students are already carefully vetted and monitored and are valuable additions to U.S. campuses.
Oct. 22-28 is Open Access Week and Mabee Library is hosting several events dedicated to free academic resources and to helping people find ways of getting information for free. The main event will be the showing of, “Paywall: The Business of Scholarship,” a free film about the need for open access to research and science, specifically in journal access. “It’s an open access film about… what they call the antiquated system, this pre-internet system [that] doesn’t work anymore,” said Amanda Luke, open access and public services librarian at Mabee.
According to a 2006 report by the American Psychological Association, “mentored individuals often earn higher performance evaluations, higher salaries, and faster career progress than non-mentored individuals.” Notably, a 2015 analysis of Harvard law school graduates found that women who had not become partners in a firm had fewer mentors during their first five years than either women partners or men who had not achieved partnership status.