Digital Literacy for St. Cloud State University
• Monday
Basics of HTML
• Tuesday
Basics of CSS and/or Java Script
• Wednesday
Basics of mobile apps programing
• Thursday
Basics of HTML5
• Friday
Basics of XML
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/coding-new-foreign-language-requirement-helen-mowers
In terms of cognitive advantages, learning a system of signs, symbols and rules used to communicate — that is, language study — improves thinking by challenging the brain to recognize, negotiate meaning and master different language patterns. Coding does the same thing. Students who speak English and Mandarin are better multitaskers because they’re used to switching between language structures. Coding, likewise, involves understanding and working within structures.
Foreign language instruction today emphasizes practical communication — what students can do with the language. Similarly, coding is practical, empowering and critical to the daily life of everyone living in the 21st century.
Programming is the global language, more common than spoken languages like English, Chinese or Spanish.
5 Reasons Why You Should Teach Kids to Code ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning
http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/10/5-reasons-why-you-should-teach-kids-to.html
http://www.middleweb.com/11559/learning-coding-in-writing-class/
http://www.educationdive.com/news/should-coding-replace-foreign-language-requirements/361398/
Washington state and Kentucky have both proposed legislation that mirrors this trend, with Washington asking that students be allowed to count two years of computer science courses as two years of foreign language studies.
In an October post, Washington Post columnist Valerie Strauss wrote that coding is something like “cursive 2.0” — a practice that will soon become compulsory in schools across the nation.
| Technology Instruction Week: Hybrid and Distributive Learning March 4 – March 8 MC 205 | 1:00pm – 2:00pm Monday |
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Register for the 1:00pm session at (not required): http://huskynet.stcloudstate.edu/help/training/ Follow us on Twitter: @SCSUtechInstruc | #techworkshop |
https://www.ecampusnews.com/2021/12/22/higher-eds-essential-role-in-upskilling-and-reskilling/
Institutions of higher education have a chance to play a role in transforming the outdated perception of what college is–via strategies including upskilling
There is a greater need than ever before to provide increasingly specialized disciplinary knowledge, coupled with advanced workforce skills, without diminishing the role and importance of a broad-based education that ensures critical thinking and analytical reasoning along with social and communications skills and understanding. Simultaneously, in the context of millions of employees with some or no college and no degree, there is a need for academia to play an increased role in facilitating the continued employability of people already in the workforce through short-term credentials and certifications, enabling an updating of their knowledge and skills base.
Coskilling: The integration of knowledge (broad based and specialized) and relevant job skills into degree programs so that both facets are mastered simultaneously requires that institutions of higher ed focus on four key aspects simultaneously: (a) Increase opportunities for students to gain a well-rounded education intertwined with professional skills; (b) Respond at a significantly faster pace to the needs of the job market and be better aligned with advances in technology and information; (c) Create more flexible and personalized pathways for students to convert knowledge and learning to skills that result in earnings capacity; and (d) Change the “stove pipe” structure between academe and the workplace to enable greater alignment between the curriculum and new areas of workforce need.
Coding and “skills-building” bootcamps, enhanced career development services, and credentials and certificates are increasingly being offered by community colleges and universities either by themselves, or in conjunction with, external entities. Some are forming partnerships with corporate giants such as Boeing, Amazon Web Services, Cisco, and Google,
Upskilling
a greater need for employees to be “upskilled–mastering new skills, developing an understanding of a higher level of use of technology, and operating in a highly data-driven world. While a portion of upskilling can be undertaken “on the job,” institutions of higher education have the responsibility and opportunity to develop new certificates and courses, both self-standing and stackable, towards post-baccalaureate degrees that will build on existing levels of knowledge and skill sets.
https://recruit.apo.ucla.edu/JPF06841
The center is focused on enterprise applications, workforce training in XR, narrative structures for XR storytelling, and (UX) User Experience in XR. This XR program is focused on training individuals to become XR content developers. The emphasis of this certificate is not on advanced coding or hardware development. Areas of recruitment include:
UCLA Extension is considered one of the top programs of its kind, offering to more than 35,000 students per year approximately 4,500 classes and non-degree certificate programs to meet the professional development, continuing education and personal enrichment needs of the full spectrum of nontraditional students as well as companies and organizations throughout and beyond the Los Angeles region.
Special Conditions of Employment
Instructors are hired on a quarterly contract basis.
Because Extension is a division of UCLA, all Extension degree-credit instructors and courses must be formally approved according to the regulations of the Academic Senate of the University of California. Eligibility to teach a course is contingent upon this formal academic approval. Once approved, teaching assignments are “by agreement.” The Instructor’s Contract outlines the deliverables for the course, the course schedule, and the compensation terms, subject to Extension policies and procedures. UCLA Extension makes no commitment to hire an instructor until it has sent and received a signed
Instructor Contract. Should the course section an instructor plans to teach be cancelled for any reason, the Instructor Contract, including rights to compensation for future section meetings, is voided.
In an effort to promote and maintain a healthy environment for our students, visitors and employees, UCLA is a smoke-free site. Smoking is prohibited within the boundaries of all UCLA owned, occupied, leased, and associated building and facilities. UCLA Extension is an Equal Opportunity Employer that values a diverse workforce.
To Apply:
Please follow the “apply now” link to submit the following:
Completed application form
Current CV
Link to portfolio or work samples if available
Cover letter”
Department: https://recruit.apo.ucla.edu/JPF06841
India’s Byju’s
Few companies have tackled the full range of learners since the days when Pearson was touted as the world’s largest learning company. Those that do, however, are increasingly huge (like PowerSchool, which had an IPO this week) and work across international borders.
Chinese education giants, including TAL and New Oriental.
The meteoric rise of Chinese edtech companies has dimmed recently as the Chinese government shifted regulations around online tutoring, in an effort to “protect students’ right to rest, improve the quality of school education and reduce the burden on parents.”
Acquisitions and partnerships are a cornerstone of Byju’s early learning programs: It bought Palo Alto-based Osmo in 2019, which combines digital learning with manipulatives, an approach the companies call “phygital.” For instance: Using a tablet’s camera and Osmo’s artificial intelligence software, the system tracks what a child is doing on a (physical) worksheet and responds accordingly to right and wrong answers. “It’s almost like having a teacher looking over you,
My note: this can be come disastrous when combined with the China’s “social credit” system.
By contrast, Byju’s FutureSchool (launched in the U.S. this past spring) aims to offer one-to-one tutoring sessions starting with coding (based in part on WhiteHat Jr., which it acquired in August 2020) and eventually including music, fine arts and English to students in the U.S., Brazil, the U.K., Indonesia and others. The company has recruited 11,000 teachers in India to staff the sessions
In mid-July, Byju’s bought California-based reading platform Epic for $500 million. That product opens up a path for Byju’s to schools. Epic offers a digital library of more than 40,000 books for students ages 12 and under. Consumers pay about $80 a year for the library. It’s free to schools. Epic says that more than 1 million teachers in 90 percent of U.S. elementary schools have signed up for accounts.
That raises provocative questions for U.S. educators. Among them:
Computational thinking is one of the biggest buzzwords in education—it’s even been called the ‘5th C’ of 21st century skills.
Document-based questions have long been a staple of social studies classrooms
Since the human brain is essentially wired to recognize patterns, computational thinking—somewhat paradoxically—doesn’t necessarily require the use of computers at all.
In a 2006 paper for the Association for Computing Machinery, computer scientist Jeanette Wing wrote a definition of computational thinking that used terms native her field—even when she was citing everyday examples. Thus, a student preparing her backpack for the day is “prefetching and caching.” Finding the shortest line at the supermarket is “performance modeling.” And performing a cost-benefit analysis on whether it makes more sense to rent versus buy is running an “online algorithm.” “Computational thinking will have become ingrained in everyone’s lives when words like algorithm and precondition are part of everyone’s vocabulary,” she writes.
three main steps:
Looking at the data: Deciding what’s worth including in the final data set, and what should be left out. What are the different tools that can help manipulate this data—from GIS tools to pen and paper?
Looking for patterns: Typically, this involves shifting to greater levels of abstraction—or conversely, getting more granular.
Decomposition: What’s a trend versus what’s an outlier to the trend? Where do things correlate, and where can you find causal inference?
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more on critical thinking in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=critical+thinking
By: Emma Annette Wilson
Print ISBN: 9781538116449, 1538116448
Digital Humanities For Librarians. Some librarians are born to digital humanities; some aspire to digital humanities; and some have digital humanities thrust upon them. Digital Humanities For Librarians is a one-stop resource for librarians and LIS students working in this growing new area of academic librarianship. The book begins by introducing digital humanities, addressing key questions such as, “What is it?”, “Who does it?”, “How do they do it?”, “Why do they do it?”, and “How can I do it?”. This broad overview is followed by a series of practical chapters answering those questions with step-by-step approaches to both the digital and the human elements of digital humanities librarianship. Digital Humanities For Librarians covers a wide range of technologies currently used in the field, from creating digital exhibits, archives, and databases, to digital mapping, text encoding, and computational text analysis (big data for the humanities). However, the book never loses sight of the all-important human component to digital humanities work, and culminates in a series of chapters on management and personnel strategies in this area. These chapters walk readers through approaches to project management, effective collaboration, outreach, the reference interview for digital humanities, sustainability, and data management, making this a valuable resource for administrators as well as librarians directly involved in digital humanities work. There is also a consideration of budgeting questions, including strategies for supporting digital humanities work on a shoestring. Special features include: Case studies of a wide range of projects and management issues Digital instructional documents guiding readers through specific digital technologies and techniques An accompanying website featuring digital humanities tools and resources and digital interviews with librarians and scholars leading the way in digital humanities work across North America, from a range of larger and smaller institutionsWhether you are a librarian primarily working in digital humanities for the first time, a student hoping to do so, or a librarian in a cognate area newly-charged with these responsibilities, Digital Humanities For Librarians will be with you every step of the way, drawing on the author’s experiences and those of a network of librarians and scholars to give you the practical support and guidance needed to bring your digital humanities initiatives to life.
Friday, January 29 | 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. | Online
NVivo is a qualitative data management, coding and markup tool, that facilitates powerful querying and exploration of source materials for both mixed methods and qualitative analysis. It integrates well with tools that assist in data collection and can handle a wide variety of source materials. This workshop introduces the basic functions of NVivo, with no prior experience necessary. Learn more and register for Introduction to NVivo on Mac.
Friday, February 5 | 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. | Online
NVivo is a qualitative data management, coding and markup tool, that facilitates powerful querying and exploration of source materials for both mixed methods and qualitative analysis. It integrates well with tools that assist in data collection and can handle a wide variety of source materials. This workshop introduces the basic functions of NVivo, with no prior experience necessary. Learn more and register for Introduction to NVivo on Windows.
Radianti, J., Majchrzak, T. A., Fromm, J., & Wohlgenannt, I. (2020). A systematic review of immersive virtual reality applications for higher education: Design elements, lessons learned, and research agenda. Computers & Education, 147, 103778. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2019.103778
p. 3
2.2. Learning paradigms
An understanding of the existing learning paradigms is essential for performing an analysis of the current state of VR applications in higher education. Thus, we introduce the main ideas behind the existing learning paradigms. Literature distinguishes between behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism (Schunk, 2012). Other scholars also include experiential learning (Kolb & Kolb, 2012) to this list and, recently, connectivism has been introduced as a new learning paradigm (Kathleen Dunaway, 2011; Siemens, 2014). Each learning paradigm has developed various theories about educational goals and outcomes (Schunk, 2012). Each of these theories also offers a different perspective on the learning goals, motivational process, learning performance, transfer of knowledge process, the role of emotions, and implications for the teaching methods.
Behaviorism assumes that knowledge is a repertoire of behavioral responses to environmental stimuli (Shuell, 1986; Skinner, 1989). Thus, learning is considered to be a passive absorption of a predefined body of knowledge by the learner. According to this paradigm, learning requires repetition and learning motivation is extrinsic, involving positive and negative reinforcement. The teacher serves as a role model who transfers the correct behavioral response.
Cognitivism understands the acquisition of knowledge systems as actively constructed by learners based on pre-existing prior knowledge structures. Hence, the proponents of cognitivism view learning as an active, constructive, and goal-oriented process, which involves active assimilation and accommodation of new information to an existing body of knowledge. The learning motivation is intrinsic and learners should be capable of defining their own goals and motivating themselves to learn. Learning is supported by providing an environment that encourages discovery and assimilation or accommodation of knowledge (Shuell, 1986),RN23. Cognitivism views learning as more complex cognitive processes such as thinking, problem-solving, verbal information, concept formation, and information processing. It addresses the issues of how information is received, organized, stored, and retrieved by the mind. Knowledge acquisition is a mental activity consisting of internal coding and structuring by the learner. Digital media, including VR-based learning can strengthen cognitivist learning design (Dede, 2008). Cognitive strategies such as schematic organization, analogical reasoning, and algorithmic problem solving will fit learning tasks requiring an increased level of processing, e.g. classifications, rule or procedural executions (Ertmer & Newby, 1993) and be supported by digital media (Dede, 2008).
Constructivism posits that learning is an active, constructive process. Learners serve as information constructors who actively construct their subjective representations and comprehensions of reality. New information is linked to the prior knowledge of each learner and, thus, mental representations are subjective (Fosnot, 2013; Fosnot & Perry, 1996). Therefore, constructivists argue that the instructional learning design has to provide macro and micro support to assist the learners in constructing their knowledge and engaging them for meaningful learning. The macro support tools include related cases, information resources, cognitive tools, conversation, and collaboration tools, and social or contextual support. A micro strategy makes use of multimedia and principles such as the spatial contiguity principle, coherence principle, modality principle, and redundancy principle to strengthen the learning process. VR-based learning fits the constructivist learning design (Lee & Wong, 2008; Sharma, Agada, & Ruffin, 2013). Constructivist strategies such as situated learning, cognitive apprenticeships, and social negotiation are appropriate for learning tasks demanding high levels of processing, for instance, heuristic problem solving, personal selection, and monitoring of cognitive strategies (Ertmer & Newby, 1993).
Experientialism describes learning as following a cycle of experiential stages, from concrete experience, observation and reflection, and abstract conceptualization to testing concepts in new situations. Experientialism adopts the constructivist’s point of view to some extent—e.g., that learning should be drawn from a learner’s personal experience. The teacher takes on the role of a facilitator to motivate learners to address the various stages of the learning cycle (Kolb & Kolb, 2012).
Connectivism takes into account the digital-age by assuming that people process information by forming connections. This newly introduced paradigm suggests that people do not stop learning after completing their formal education. They continue to search for and gain knowledge outside of traditional education channels, such as job skills, networking, experience, and access to information, by making use of new technology tools (Siemens, 2014).