iBerry

by Free Tech 4 Teachers

Udemy, an online course hosting service that I’ve previously written about, recently launched a new project called The Faculty Project. The Faculty Project is a series of free online courses developed by professors from top-notch universities including Northwestern, Dartmouth, and Vassar. The courses will be conducted through Udemy’s platform of video, slides, and PDFs. While it’s not clear if the professors will or will not be checking-in on the courses, there are discussion boards for students in each course to correspond with each other.

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2012/01/faculty-project-free-courses-from.html

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By KAITLYN BYRNE, the Reflector

During the fall 2011 semester, 201 cases of academic dishonesty were reported at Mississippi State University. By comparison, 271 cases of academic dishonesty were reported for the entire 2010-2011 academic year. James Orr, director of the student honor code office, said the increase in reported academic dishonesty cases is not due to an increase in cheating. Instead, the increase is due to professors taking a more active involvement in reporting students who are caught cheating. “Faculty members and other students are vigilant in reporting and discovering academic dishonesty,” Orr said. “Professors understand that a major part of deterring academic dishonesty involves reporting incidents and ensuring that students receive the appropriate sanction.” Orr said sanctions for violating the student honor code could include receiving a zero on the assignment, lowered course grade, dismissal from MSU and/or the course grade of “XF.”

http://www.reflector-online.com/mobile/news/cheating-reports-continue-to-increase-1.2691143

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by Peter Murray, Singularity Hub

 This past August fellow Singularity Hub writer Aaron Saenz wrote about Udacity, the online university created by Stanford artificial intelligence professor and Google autonomous vehicle leader, Sebastian Thrun. At the time Thrun was gearing up to teach his Introduction to Artificial Intelligence course to a class of 200 at Stanford. But why teach 200 when you can teach 1,000…or 160,000? With Udacity, Thrun and fellow AI giant Peter Norvig created an online version of the course, and anyone that wanted to enroll could – for free. The homework assignments and exams would be the same as the ones given to the Stanford students, and they would be graded in the same way so online enrollees could see how they stacked up to some of the brightest students in the world. It was to be a grand experiment in education.

http://singularityhub.com/2012/01/28/sebastian-thrun-aims-to-revolutionize-university-education-with-udacity/

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by David Zax, Technology Review

Wearable electronics gets a new boost, with a new platform from Adafruit Industries, the brainchild of DIY-goddess Limor Fried (hacker handle: Ladyada). The new platform, dubbed the Flora, points to a future where people are wearing TV screens–or at least, something vaguely like them–on their T-shirts. The Flora board is quite small, less than 2” in diameter (the thing has to be wearable, after all), and has built-in USB support (“this means you plug it in to program it, it just shows up,” says the site). CNET says the new platform is designed so that anyone can “craft a matrix of hundreds or someday, more than 1,000 small LED ‘pixels.’” Currently the Flora, which is being beta tested, can support no more than 500 linked pixels. Of course, 500 pixels isn’t an immense number–you might want to stick to your television to watch a movie–but it’s a start.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/helloworld/27535/?p1=A4

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by Christopher Mims, Technology Review

New Hanover County, North Carolina, just rolled out Super Wi-Fi, which is its actual name, not just a patronizing euphemism I’m deploying because I think you can’t handle “a new Wi-Fi standard operating in the ‘white spaces’ between 50-700Mhz, where previously only television stations were allowed to transmit.” Aside: here’s a very accessible primer on what Super Wi-Fi is and why you should care about it (http://gizmodo.com/5646259/what-is-super-wi+fi) .

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/27531/?p1=blogs

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By Rachel Metz. Technology Review

The market for sweetly named smart-phone assistants is heating up, as Siri, Apple’s iPhone-based virtual helper, just got a new “frenemy” named Evi. Created by True Knowledge, a Cambridge, U.K.-based semantic technology startup, Evi, like Siri, can answer questions posed aloud in a conversational manner. But unlike Siri, which is only loaded on the latest iPhone, Evi is available as an app for the iPhone and phones running Google’s Android software.

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/39560/?p1=A3

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The recent 2012 State of the Union address has received a great deal of attention for its emphasis on improving college affordability and holding colleges and universities accountable for contributing directly to that effort. However, to get the administration’s vision for the role of technology in addressing the affordability challenge, we need to look at an array of policies and proposals put forward over the last couple of years.

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Abstract: The institutional processes for supporting campus identity management initiatives are fraught with policy challenges, including privacy considerations.  The legal and policy concerns intensify under a model of federated identity management where the Personally Identifiable Information collected and managed by a campus is shared as "attributes" with service providers outside the campus.  And new concerns arise as U.S. campuses extend their collaborations and resources internationally, and need to be responsive to these international partners.  This webinar will discuss the privacy benefits of federations, explore the emerging policy questions, and identity international efforts to find workable solutions.

Speakers:

Steven Carmody, IT Architect, Brown University

Ken Klingenstein, Director, Middleware and Security, Internet2

Moderator:

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While the focus here is on K-12 school systems, Higher Ed would be wise to take note of this new federal program regarding digital textbooks:

FCC Chairman Genachowski's Remarks: http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2012/db0201/DOC-312248A1.pdf

FCC Fact Sheet: http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2012/db0201/DOC-312244A1.pdf

FCC Digital Textbook Playbook: http://transition.fcc.gov/files/Digital_Textbook_Playbook.pdf

Digital Textbook Playbook Homepage: http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/digital-textbook-playbook

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“This is as important a time as there has ever been for the CIO to have a seat at the table with the president or provost of an institution. It is also a key time for the IT organization to be seen as a partner. It is absolutely essential for the IT organization to run first-class, cost-effective, efficient services to support the institutional missions… The IT organization can help the college or university balance centralization and commoditization, address funding challenges, and preserve knowledge.”
― Michael A. McRobbie, President, Indiana University

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Senate HELP Committee Hearing on "Innovations in College Affordability" on Feb. 2, 2012, at 10:20 am EST:

WITNESSES: Education Undersecretary Martha Kanter; Kevin Carey, Education Policy Director for Education Sector; Charlie Earl, Executive Director of the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, Olympia, Wash.; Robert Mendenhall, President of the Western Governors University, Salt Lake City, Utah; and Carol Quillen, President of Davidson College, Davidson, N.C.

LOCATION: 430 Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C.

Webcast:  http://www.help.senate.gov/hearings/hearing/?id=a3f52183-5056-9502-5de6-a9c486cfa17d

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by Sue Gee, I-programmer

Online Computer Science classes that have attracted tens of thousands of students have been put back for a couple of weeks. Is this on account of Sebastian Thrun’s resignation from Stanford? Students who are signed up for Stanford University Online Computer Science Classes in Cryptography, Natural Language Processing, Human-Computer Interaction and Design and Analysis of Algorithms I, which were due to start during January, were sent emails telling them of the delay:

Unfortunately, there are still a few administrative i’s to dot and t’s to cross. We’re still hopeful that we’ll go live very soon, and we’ll let you know a firm date as soon as we possibly can.

http://www.i-programmer.info/news/150-training-a-education/3659-delay-for-january-stanford-online-courses.html

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by Philjaelearning, Philadelphia Online Learning

With significant advancement in the field of information technology, many impressive changes have taken place in many sectors including education. Previously, only classroom courses were available, but nowadays, lots of online college courses are offered. Students from any part of the world can enroll and finish the class by going to virtual classes. These programs include lectures, assignments, tests, multimedia presentations, and readings. And many courses even offer face-to-face teacher facilities to talk over issues online.

http://philjaelearning.org/online-college-courses-make-learning-more-accessible/

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By Barrett W. Sheridan and Brendan Greeley, Business Week

Free online courses are instructing non-techies in JavaScript and other coding and design of Web apps. A growing number of people agree that not only should Congress understand how software is made, so should everyone. Designers, economists, doctors, and others with no direct connection to the technology world are embracing coding as a way to advance their careers, automate boring tasks, or just a means of self-improvement, a hobby like learning Spanish or doing crossword puzzles. And they have access to an expanding universe of free online coding tutorials from startups and universities such as Stanford and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Programming is becoming “a much more fundamental piece of knowledge, similar to reading or writing,” says Andy Weissman, a partner at New York’s Union Square Venures, which led a $2.5 million investment round for Codecademy, a site that teaches people basic programming skills.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/computer-coding-not-for-geeks-only-01262012.html

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Tune in to the next IAM Online, which will take place Wednesday, February 8, 2012, at 3 p.m. EST, to learn more about "Policy and Privacy Considerations for Identity and Access Management in a Federated World" with speakers Steven Carmody (Brown University) and Ken Klingenstein (Internet2). Rodney Petersen (EDUCAUSE) will moderate this discussion. For more details, or to access archived sessions, visit http://www.incommon.org/iamonline.

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In mid-January I spent a wonderful day at American University learning about (and presenting on) the changing educational landscape, technology, and the practices and activities of learners. The slides from my presentation are below:

Social Networked Learning

ELI has released a new white paper, Analytics in Higher Education: Establishing a Common Language, by Angela van Barneveld, Kimberly Arnold, and John P. Campbell, Purdue University.

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BY BOB ADELMANN, New American

The impact of that credential from MIT will be huge. Richard DeMillo at Georgia Institute of Technology, said this is “a very big deal because the traditional higher education reaction to online programs [in the past] was, yeah, but it’s not a credential. So I think MIT’s offering a credential [is] quite a splash. If I were still in industry and someone came in with an MITx credential, I’d take it.” The Times noted that MIT would open its MITx software platform to any other university around the world to offer their own courses online for free. And that is going to change the entire paradigm of higher education. Writing for the Chronicle of Higher Education, Kevin Carey saw immediately the threat the MITx program presents to its peers: Most world-famous universities got that way through a process of exclusion. Their degrees are coveted and valuable precisely because they’re expensive and hard to acquire. If an Ivy League university starts giving degrees away for free, why would anyone clamor to be admitted to any Ivy League university?

http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/education/10672-mits-online-threat-to-the-higher-education-cartel

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by Cowra Community News

Many students in regional New South Wales are expected to study at TAFE Western institutes via distance education or online in 2012. “Distance or online learning has many advantages for students – particularly those who may live in more remote communities – including being able to fit study around work, family and life commitments as well as not having to spend time travelling to and from classes,” says the institute’s learning and innovation manager, Sally Brownlow. “Distance or online learning is a great way to gain a qualification when and where it suits you. Students who study in this way are self starters who are committed to learning a new skill and disciplined in their approach to studying. “My top tips for any student considering distance or online learning are… (see URL)

http://cowracommunitynews.com/viewnews.php?newsid=9198&id=47

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by Udemy

Udemy, a marketplace for online learning, today announced the debut of The Faculty Project ( www.facultyproject.com ), a remarkable initiative that brings together outstanding educators from many of America’s most prestigious universities to teach free courses online. Staffed by professors from such world-class institutions as Dartmouth, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, Vassar, Duke, Northwestern, the University of Virginia and others, the new Web site will enable people from all over the world to benefit from college-level learning on a variety of stimulating and practical subjects–at no cost whatsoever.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/top-us-professors-unite-with-the-faculty-project-to-offer-free-online-courses-2012-01-26

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