The 100-page study presents data from 1,140 college students from 4-year colleges in the United States concerning their use of specialized library technology, group and individual study rooms. The report enables its end users to answer questions such as: which students use individual and group study rooms? Which use specialized technology rooms? How often do they use them?
Data in the report is presented in the aggregate and then broken out separately for sixteen different variables including but not limited to: college grades, gender, income level, year of college standing, SAT/ACT scores, regional origin, age, sexual orientation, race & ethnicity, college major and other personal variables, and by Carnegie class, enrollment size and public/private status of the survey participants institutions of higher education.
Guess what … I searched for Brenda Perea (in hopes of maybe getting some information on how they set up their system) … One of her current positions is with Credly … Do we still want to reach out to her?
94%: Institutions offering alternative credentials
1 in 5: Colleges and universities that issue badges
Nearly 2/3: Institutions that cited alternative credentials as an important strategy for the future.
-Source: “Demographic Shifts in Educational Demand and the Rise of Alternative Credentials,” University Professional and Continuing Education Association and Pearson, 2016
According to the Digiconomist blog that follows cryptocurrencies, all the Bitcoin mining computers worldwide consume more power collectively than the entire nation of Czech Republic.
When the value of a traded Bitcoin soared to almost $20,000 late last year, a Bitcoin mining rush hit lots of places with cheap power, from Louisiana to Washington State.
https://www-wired-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.wired.com/story/187-things-the-blockchain-is-supposed-to-fix/amp
Blockchains, which use advanced cryptography to store information across networks of computers, could eliminate the need for trusted third parties, like banks, in transactions, legal agreements, and other contracts. The most ardent blockchain-heads believe it has the power to reshape the global financial system, and possibly even the internet as we know it.
Now, as the technology expands from a fringe hacker toy to legitimate business applications, opportunists have flooded the field. Some of the seekers are mercenaries pitching shady or fraudulent tokens, others are businesses looking to cash in on a hot trend, and still others are true believers in the revolutionary and disruptive powers of distributed networks.
Mentions of blockchains and digital currencies on corporate earnings calls doubled in 2017 over the year prior, according to Fortune. Last week at Consensus, the country’s largest blockchain conference, 100 sponsors, including top corporate consulting firms and law firms, hawked their wares.
Here is a noncomprehensive list of the ways blockchain promoters say they will change the world. They run the spectrum from industry-specific (a blockchain project designed to increase blockchain adoption) to global ambitions (fixing the global supply chain’s apparent $9 trillion cash flow issue).
Things Blockchain Technology Will Fix
Bots with nefarious intent
Skynet
People not taking their medicine
Device storage that could be used for bitcoin mining
The European Union‘s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, goes into effect on May 25
The objective of the regulation, which passed in 2016, is to simplify and consolidate rules that companies need to follow in order to protect their data and to return control to EU citizens and residents over their personal information.
Individuals in the EU will have the right to access or request that companies erase or migrate their data elsewhere. When asked, companies must prove to authorities that they have satisfactory policies and procedures in place to protect their data, or they will face huge fines. How huge? If your company’s not compliant, the fines could be as large as 20 million Euros (about $24 million) or four percent of your annual global revenue, whichever is higher.
“A U.S. tourist who visits Germany for one day and returns to the U.S. has rights under the law if that person used [a service like] Facebook while on the trip,” Alex Stern, an attorney wrote on his firm’s blog.
Session Title: Measuring Learning Outcomes of New Library Initiatives Coordinator: Professor Plamen Miltenoff, Ph.D., MLIS, St. Cloud State University, USA Contact: pmiltenoff@stcloudstate.edu Scope & rationale: The advent of new technologies, such as virtual/augmented/mixed reality, and new pedagogical concepts, such as gaming and gamification, steers academic libraries in uncharted territories. There is not yet sufficiently compiled research and, respectively, proof to justify financial and workforce investment in such endeavors. On the other hand, dwindling resources for education presses administration to demand justification for new endeavors. As it has been established already, technology does not teach; teachers do; a growing body of literature questions the impact of educational technology on educational outcomes. This session seeks to bring together presentations and discussion, both qualitative and quantitative research, related to new pedagogical and technological endeavors in academic libraries as part of education on campus. By experimenting with new technologies such as Video 360 degrees and new pedagogical approaches such as gaming and gamification, does the library improve learning? By experimenting with new technologies and pedagogical approaches, does the library help campus faculty to adopt these methods and improve their teaching? How can results be measured, demonstrated?
The SAMR (substitution, augmentation, modification, redefinition) model and TPACK (technological pedagogical content knowledge) model can help schools as they transition to using more digital tools.
In a recent edWebinar, Michelle Luhtala, library department chair at New Canaan High School in Connecticut, reviewed these models and discussed apps that can take teaching, learning and reading to the next level.
The SAMR model determines the level of technology integration of a tool: substitution, which doesn’t add value; augmentation, which adds a few features with only a little improvement; modification, which redesigns some structures; and redefinition, which allows the creation of new tasks and is the ultimate learning goal. Transformation in how educators are teaching and how students are understanding content happens in the modification and redefinition parts of the model.
MackinVIA’s Classroom allows educators to create a collection of digital content for students; build assignment around it; and share the collection, or an individual book, with the classroom. Students can also highlight text, make annotations, and save these to Google Drive.
Emerging Tech for Schools and Libraries is a free professional learning community where school librarians, teachers, and administrators can explore all the ways to integrate technology and 21st century learning into school library programs.
Google’s sites in London, Madrid, Tel Aviv, Seoul, São Paulo and Warsaw (in a converted former vodka distillery) are hubs for entrepreneurs, providing workspace for startup founders as well as networking and educational events.
the recent offer from Sidewalk Labs – a company owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company – to redevelop Toronto’s waterfront as a reason to be concerned about the company’s interests in potentially extracting data from cities.
Google’s history of tax evasion and mass surveillance as examples of actions that make it incompatible with the progressive values of the local area.
