The Internet of Things (IoT), augmented reality, and advancements in online learning have changed the way universities reach prospective students, engage with their current student body, and provide them the resources they need.
The Internet of Things has opened up a whole new world of possibilities in higher education. The increased connectivity between devices and “everyday things” means better data tracking and analytics, and improved communication between student, professor, and institution, often without ever saying a word. IoT is making it easier for students to learn when, how, and where they want, while providing professors support to create a more flexible and connected learning environment.
Virtual/Augmented Reality
Virtual and augmented reality technologies have begun to take Higher Ed into the realm of what used to be considered science fiction.
By 2020 more than 50 billion things, ranging from cranes to coffee machines, will be connected to the internet. That means a lot of data will be created — too much data, in fact, to be manageable or to be kept forever affordably.
One by-product of more devices creating more data is that they are speaking lots of different programming languages. Machines are still using languages from the 1970s and 80s as well as the new languages of today. In short, applications need to have data translated for them — by an IoT babelfish, if you will — before they can make sense of the information.
Then there are analytics and data storage.
security becomes even more important as there is little human interaction in the flow of data from device to datacentre — so called machine-to-machine communication.
The education program, which aims to reach as many as 1.8 million Girl Scouts in kindergarten through sixth grade, is being developed in a partnership between the Girl Scouts and Palo Alto Networks, a security company, the organization said in a press release.
some of the findings in Kahoot!’s first-ever EdTrends Report : Google is gaining a stronghold in United States classrooms, with Chrome OS expanding its presence on school computers, while Apple’s iOS has been on the decline since the first quarter of 2015 among students and teachers.
Chromebook had the highest number of users among teachers (44 percent) and students (46 percent), when they were asked about their top devices used. Google’s Productivity Suite (G Suite or Classroom) was the most widely used productivity suite in U.S. classrooms, with 57 percent saying they used it, compared to 23 percent saying they used Microsoft Office 365.
a majority of educators (more than 60 percent) said the purpose of adopting education technology was to increase student productivity and efficiency. Their key educational priorities for 2017-18 are “to improve student learning and outcomes” (88 percent), and to “better leverage available time and motivate students” (71 percent).
Educators saw the top ed tech trends in the next school year as:
Digital platforms for teaching, learning and assessment;
Personalized learning;
Computational thinking, coding and robotics;
Increased understanding of data; and
Gamificiation.
Some other key findings in the report include:
A majority of U.S. public school educators surveyed said they are challenged with budget restraints and lack of resources when it comes to implementing education technology;
A majority of U.S. private school educators said they lack training to understand or adopt new technology;
Many public and private school educators said they saw the adoption of “technology for the sake of technology” as a challenge;
Educators in California struggle with lack of training and “technology for the sake of technology,” while teachers in Texas struggle with bureaucracy, budget constraints and a lack of resources.
MPS students will be receiving devices that come with 3GB of high-speed LTE data (with unlimited data available at 2G speeds if usage exceeds that amount). Students can keep their device up to four years while they are in high school no cost, according to initiative site. Additionally, devices are equipped with filters to block adult content that cannot be disabled and are Free Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) compliant.
a number of recommendations for helping online programs attract students, including:
Cater to students’ career goals. “Since online students are so career focused, understanding which programs will best educate students for the job market is critical to online program success,” the researchers noted;
Make sure admissions offices provide fast responses to online students, as well as upfront figures on financial aid and transfer credits; and
Adapt online access to accommodate mobile technology.
The design of blended learning curriculum will be more diversified and personalized with the integration of creative in-class active learning strategies and innovative educational technologies, such as adaptive learning, virtual reality, mobile technologies
Quality assurance is the biggest challenge with implementing blended learning in the higher education environment today. I would propose institutions to adopt evidence-based standards for course evaluations. For instance, the OLC Quality Scorecard for Blended Learning Programs
Hosted by Yale University Library’s Todd Gilman, this webinar offers multiple expert perspectives on the transformation of libraries as information organizations, the influence of technology on how we provide academic information resources and services in a digital and global environment, and the various career opportunities available for academic librarians now and in the future. The speakers offer broad and diverse views, ranging from those of senior administrators and practitioners working in North American academic libraries large and small to thought leaders from recognized non-profit organizations devoted to research and strategic guidance for libraries in the digital age, to library school faculty. What emerges is a library landscape at once full of promise and exciting initiatives yet beset by seemingly insurmountable challenges-how to attract and retain the talent needed for current and future professional roles, how to keep up with ever-advancing computer technology, and how to pay for all this along with the vast quantity of research materials our ambitious and accomplished patrons demand.
Anxiety can present as fear, restlessness, an inability to focus at work or school, finding it hard to fall or stay asleep at night, or getting easily irritated. In social situations, it can make it hard to talk to others; you might feel like you’re constantly being judged, or have symptoms such as stuttering, sweating, blushing or an upset stomach.
Research shows that if it’s left untreated, anxiety can lead to depression, early death and suicide. And while it can indeed lead to such serious health consequences, the medication that is prescribed to treat anxiety doesn’t often work in the long-term. Symptoms often return and you’re back where you started.
People often want to do something “perfectly” or to wait for the “perfect time” before starting. But this can lead to procrastination, long delays or even prevent us from doing it at all. And that causes stress – and anxiety.
Are you particularly critical of yourself and the blunders you make? people with anxiety often do this to themselves so frequently that they don’t even realize it anymore. They’re just not kind to themselves.
Another effective strategy is to “wait to worry”. If something went wrong and you feel compelled to worry (because you think you screwed up), don’t do this immediately. Instead, postpone your worry – set aside 10 minutes each day during which you can worry about anything.
Videotapes Are Becoming Unwatchable As Archivists Work To Save Them
Scott Greenstone
Kidd and the others are archivists and preservationists, and they’re part of a group called XFR Collective (pronounced Transfer Collective). Most work professionally, but they volunteer their free time to do this.
That’s because research suggests that tapes like this aren’t going to live beyond 15 to 20 years. Some call this the “magnetic media crisis,” and archivists, preservationists, and librarians like the ones in the XFR Collective are trying to reverse it.
Some are old videos of police brutality; others are just weddings or old public access TV that isn’t saved anywhere else. All tapes are from people who want their content to be publicly available, and after the tapes are transferred, they’re stored on the nonprofit Internet Archive. To date, they’ve transferred 155 tapes—67 hours in total.
Of course, this doesn’t guarantee that they will be saved forever. Digital has its own problems, and Lukk says that some film preservationists argue we should be looking back to before magnetic media for stable preservation — many Hollywood films, for instance, are often stored on film in salt mines, where they can last 100 years.