blended and flipped
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more on blended and flipped learning in this IMS blog
Archive of ‘mobile learning’ category
mlearning vs elearning
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more on mlearning
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=mlearning
and
elearning
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=elearning
in this IMS blog
Alphabet Nest and Android
Alphabet is breaking up Nest, its standalone smart-home gadgets company, and moving Nest’s software group back into Google.
enerally speaking, Google has very limited interest in making hardware in the first place. The cost of building things is high, the margins are low, and Google’s real specialty is in web services like Gmail and search anyway.
Google started signaling that Android, the most popular operating system in the world, and Chrome OS, its more niche operating system for laptops, were going to get smashed together. The result, ideally, will be a version of Android that can extend its smartphone dominance to tablets and laptops…which is why Android 7.0, the most recent release, makes split-screen multitasking such a tentpole feature.
the real business opportunity for Google is to compel a broad range of companies to create gadgets and home appliances using its software. The hardware is secondary. In fact, building its own hardware can even work against Google: The more successful Google is at selling its own hardware, the less likely other hardware makers want to use its software, since they view Google as a competitor.
Putting all its efforts behind expanding and extending Android has made Google a top player in the smartphone market, even after its late start against Apple and the iPhone.
SPED rules for virtual schools
Feds Say Virtual Schools Need to Follow Special Ed Rules
By Dian Schaffhauser 08/25/16
“Dear Colleague” letter issued to virtual schools by the U.S. Department of Education. The agency isn’t creating or imposing “new legal requirements,” is intended to help state education agencies and districts meet their existing obligations under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
feedback at virtualschools@ed.gov.
The letter is available on the Education Department website here.
zaption is zapped
Zap! Zaption Sold to Workday
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2016-06-30-zap-zaption-sold-to-workday
http://blog.zaption.com/post/146724427719/zaption-joins-workday
Are there any other platforms like Zaption that you recommend?
For K12 users, we recommend you look at EDpuzzle or Nearpod. Both allow you to quickly create high-quality interactive content. For Higher Ed, we encourage you to look at HapYak or H5P – an open source interactive media platform. Finally, Vizia offers another simple but effective option for users of any kind.
Zaption is shutting down. Thankfully, educators have alternatives
For those looking to replace Zaption, Vizia is a viable alternative for creating interactive video content.
https://blog.vizia.co/2016/07/01/zaption-alternative-interactive-video-tool/
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More on Zaption in this blog:
more on badges
Badging: Not Quite the Next Big Thing
While badging and digital credentialing are gaining acceptance in the business world and, to some extent, higher education, K-12 educators — and even students — are slower to see the value.
By Michael Hart 07/20/16
https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/07/20/badging-not-quite-the-next-big-thing.aspx
That’s when the MacArthur Foundation highlighted the winning projects of its Badges for Lifelong Learning competition at the Digital Media and Learning Conference in Chicago. The competition, co-sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Mozilla Foundation, had attracted nearly 100 competitors a year earlier. The winners shared $2 million worth of development grants.
Evidence of Lifelong Learning
A digital badge or credential is a validation, via technology, that a person has earned an accomplishment, learned a skill or gained command of specific content. Typically, it is an interactive image posted on a web page and connected to a certain body of information that communicates the badge earner’s competency.
Credly is a company that offers off-the-shelf credentialing and badging for organizations, companies and educational institutions. One of its projects, BadgeStack, which has since been renamed BadgeOS, was a winner in the 2013 MacArthur competition. Virtually any individual or organization can use its platform to determine criteria for digital credentials and then award them, often taking advantage of an open-source tool like WordPress. The credential recipient can then use the BadgeOS platform to manage the use of the credential, choosing to display badges on social media profiles or uploading achievements to a digital resume, for instance.
Finkelstein and others see, with the persistently growing interest in competency-based education (CBE), that badging is a way to assess and document competency.
Colorado Education Initiative, (see webinar report in this IMS blog https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2016/06/20/colorados-digital-badging-initiative/)
There are obstacles, though, to universal acceptance of digital credentialing.
For one, not every community, company or organization sees a badge as something of value.
When a player earns points for his or her success in a game, those points have no value outside of the environment in which the game is played. For points, badges, credentials — however you want to define them — to be perceived as evidence of competency, they have to have portability and be viewed with value outside of their own environment.
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More on badges in this IMS blog:
academic search engines
A Good Infographic Featuring 10 Academic Search Engines for Educators
http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2016/07/a-good-infographic-featuring-10.html
Tablet Shipments Remain Strong Despite 2-Year Decline
By Joshua Bolkan 06/02/16
Global tablet shipments will drop for the second straight year, dipping 9.6 percent below 2015 totals, according to a new forecast from International Data Corp. (IDC), and will face another down year in 2017 before rebounding slightly in 2018 on the strength of detachables. Currently, detachable tablets make up 16 percent of the tablet market, but IDC predicts that share to nearly double to 31 percent by 2020.
In the detachable segment of the market, Windows devices have fared much better, with a 70 percent share last year, and will continue to do so, according to IDC, with a 49 percent share this year and 51 percent in 2020. iOS detachables, which captured 14 percent of the market segment last year, are forecast to account for 38 percent of the segment this year and 29 percent in 2020. Android devices made up 16 percent of detachable shipments in 2015 and will account for 12 percent and 20 percent of devices sold in 2016 and 2020, respectively, according to IDC’s forecast.
More on tablets and detachables in this IMS blog:
storytelling and virtual reality
Is storytelling the key to VR’s future?
Virtual reality may be the closest to teleportation we will ever have in our lifetime.
More on virtual reality in this IMS blog:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=virtual+reality
more on storytelling in this IMS blog:
faculty and online teaching
Moving beyond smile sheets: A case study on the evaluation and iterative improvement of an online faculty development program
The eCampus Quality Instruction Program (eQIP) is an online faculty development program developed to train faculty in designing and teaching fully online courses.
What is the best way to design and develop high- quality online courses and support faculty as they teach online?
Given faculty’s competing priorities and limited time, we contend that it is important for institutions, and specifically faculty developers, to analyze how much time faculty are spending in online faculty development activities as well as which parts are taking the most (or least) time. (p. 5)
A successful online faculty development program must include pedagogical support, technology support, and design and development support (Baran & Correia, 2014) that overcome obstacles about time, expertise, and motivation of faculty (Henning, 2012).(p. 17)
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more on online learning in this IMS blog