Mike Silagadze isn’t shy about his desire to take market share from the largest college textbook publishers through his classroom software company Top Hat. He believes his company’s brand of digital textbooks beats anything Pearson, McGraw-Hill and their ilk can provide.
Founded in 2009, Top Hat claims that 2.7 million students access its digital course materials, including those at 750 of the top 1,000 higher education institutions in North America.
Silagadze believes younger faculty members and future generations of college students will help drive institutions to adopt digital materials instead of print.
Top Hat has challenged tangible goods for a long time now. Its first offering was a digital version of clickers to measure student responses in the classroom. In 2017, the company launched a marketplace for e-textbooks, working with authors and offering openly licensed content from the likes of OpenStax as well.
Last year, the company ceased sales of individual assessment tools to instead offer a bundle of its products. Students pay $48 for one year of Top Hat’s products. Interactive textbooks on Top Hat cost an average of $35.
Institutional support for accessibility technologies
Blended data center (on premises and cloud based)
Incorporation of mobile devices in teaching and learning
Open educational resources
Technologies for improving analysis of student data
Security analytics
Integrated student success planning and advising systems
Mobile apps for enterprise applications
Predictive analytics for student success (institutional level)
At least 35% of institutions are tracking these five technologies in 2020: Support for 5G; Wi-Fi 6 (802.11 ax, AX Wi-Fi); Identity as a Service (IDaaS); Digital microcredentials (including badging); Uses of the Internet of Things for teaching and learning; and Next-generation digital learning environment
Cases of burnout have been increasing at an alarming rate in recent years among millennials and Gen Zers. It’s a growing problem in today’s workplace because of trends like rising workloads, limited staff and resources and long hours.
a recent study by Mind Share Partners, Qualtrics and SAP reveals that half of millennials and 75% of Gen Zers have left a job for mental health reasons.
Another recent study, by the American Psychological Association, found the percentage of young adults experiencing certain types of mental health disorders has increased significantly in the past decade. In particular, the percentage of people dealing with suicidal thoughts increased 47 percent from 2008 to 2017.
Jean Twenge, author of iGen, a book about the effect technology has on this generation, says that “the rise of the smartphone and social media have at least something to do with it.”
But Peter Gray, a research professor at Boston College, said that it’s not social media or young people’s fractured attention spans that are causing their anxiety; it is school itself.
In 2014, there were 1 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs globally. By 2021, it’s estimated that number will grow to 3.5 million. Exposing K-12 students to cybersecurity through a well-designed curriculum and set of activities will help alleviate the shortage by increasing the interest and skills of the new generation. Unfortunately, current secondary school curricula across the country leave students and educators with minimal or no exposure to cybersecurity topics.
Many K-12 school districts are looking for ways to create cybersecurity training programs. This edWebinar will focus on best practices for teaching and learning cybersecurity skills, including the following learning objectives:
What skills does the instructor need to teach an introductory cybersecurity course?
What are some best practices for teaching an introductory cybersecurity course?
Where can instructors get help teaching their courses?
What tools/resources do students and instructors need to teach an introductory cybersecurity course?
This edWebinar will be of interest to middle school through higher education teachers and school and district leaders. There will be time to have your questions answered at the end of the presentation. Learn more.
Britney Spears does have more appeal than most quadratic equations. With thousands of dollars of high-tech digital engineering spent on every word uttered, or in this case, sung, how can the typical college professor compete?
MTV Learners are seeking warp-speed answers to their life issues. They want to know: “What does this information (your course) have to do with me (self-actualization)?” and “What does this information (your course) have to do with my career (my choice of vocation)?”
Be democratic, not autocratic. Instead of management by fiat, try taking regular opinion polls and surveys of your students to determine the specific methods of teaching your course.
Try to eliminate the lecture-test, lecture-test, lecture-test format and substitute other learning models that accentuate the choices of the MTV Learner. Focus on the quality of your syllabus as a giant “master operating agreement” that presents the learning objectives of your course and related policies in a manner that is as clear and as easy to understand as possible. Without sounding too litigious on your syllabus, present the consequences of missed absences, overdue work, incomplete assignments, and the like.
Young people may be expert social-media and smartphone users, but many lack the digital skills they need for today’s jobs. How can we set them up for success?
One day he may lead Club members in a lesson on building digital resumes that can be customized quickly and make job-seeking easier when applying online. Another day they may create a blog. On this particular day, they drew up a budget for an upcoming event using a spreadsheet. For kids who are often glued to their smartphones, these types of digital tasks, surprisingly, can be new experiences.
The vast majority of young Americans have access to a smartphone, and nearly half say they are online “almost constantly.”
But although smartphones can be powerful learning tools when applied productively, these reports of hyperconnectivity and technological proficiency mask a deeper paucity of digital skills. This often-overlooked phenomenon is limiting some young people’s ability—particularly those in rural and low-income communities—to succeed in school and the workplace, where digital skills are increasingly required to collaborate effectively and complete everyday tasks.
According to a survey by Pew Research Center, only 17 percent of Americans are “digitally ready”—that is, confident using digital tools for learning. Meanwhile, in a separate study, American millennials ranked last among a group of their international peers when it came to “problem-solving in technology-rich environments,” such as sending and saving digital information
teach his sophomore pupils the technology skills they need in the workplace, as well as soft skills like teamwork.
Not only does the coaching model benefit principals and teachers, it retains veteran educators who have spent most of their professional lives honing their teaching craft. Not all educators want to climb the administrative hierarchy, and the coaching model gives this group the opportunity to become teacher leaders who pass on their insight to the next generation.
October 8, 10AM Central Time
Bill Cherne, VP Customer Success & Support, Sonic Foundry, has 20 years experience in both the AV and digital media industry and in managing and deploying enterprise applications and infrastructure. He has worked with Fortune 500 enterprises including American Family Insurance, Ford Motor Company, Ford Treasury and Ernst & Young, administering server infrastructures and providing consultation and design services for major software applications. In 2006, Bill joined Sonic Foundry and today leads the sales engineering team responsible for providing consultation and implementation services for Mediasite deployments and delivering customer-focused training solutions
Tammy Jackson is the Vice President of Marketing & Communications at Sonic Foundry. Tammy oversees the efforts of the company’s marketing team, developing the marketing, communication and community strategies to drive lead generation, build brand awareness and foster customer loyalty. Prior to Sonic Foundry, Tammy worked as a broadcast and print journalist for more than a decade, where she honed her passion for sharing the stories of others. She’s parlayed that passion into sharing customer successes as they creatively integrate academic and enterprise multi-media into their daily lives.
Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) or Gen Z (born after 1996)
Today’s youth culture lives in apps—not for the sake of the technology itself, but for the rich social, psychological identity-driven mash-up that define a person, group, interactions and opinions.
When a Millennial or Gen Z-er accesses a new consumer app, it is as simple as opening the morning newspaper is for their parents or grandparents. However, when the same people look at a college schedule, fill out paperwork or an online form, access or save records that they may need later, and, eventually, try to conjure it all at the end of this process, they are stopped in their tracks.
Building a Brand, User Testing Apps, Social Media Marketing
By contrast, when brands and memes compete on social media, young people pay attention.
Without those social signals as well as continual feedback from their friends and influencers— what the younger generations rely on for context—they are likely on very different wavelengths from the colleges who want them to attend and stay, training and outreach opportunities vying for their attention, and employers who need reliable entry hires.
Each generational shift suffers a cultural communication schism, noticeable at home and in school, that in the past was navigable by the time young people focused on college or career training, or entered the workforce. Today, this is not happening.
The gap between the traditional practices and the social and consumer app world is serious. Simply creating app-like technology to mimic older processes is not the answer.
Equity is more than creating more organizational programs or developing more ineffective websites without adequate measures for engaging and empowering young people who need support.
Evanston, Illinois, Public Library is one of a dozen or so libraries across the country to offer the public access to digital pop-up libraries.
Digital pop-up libraries seem to be especially geared to cellphone and tablet users… Research shows that 77 percent of Americans now own a smartphone, over double the 35 percent that owned one in 2011. This growth is reflected in almost all age groups and demographics in the U.S. And on top of that, an increasing number of Americans, particularly the younger generation, are getting their news on mobile devices.
cutting out the administrative burden of library cards, accounts, and fines. A “low-maintenance, high-impact” approach, according to Baker and Taylor.
Hotspots expand the reach of the library service and remove the barriers associated with a physical building.
