News Corp.’s Amplify is latest with a MOOC for the high school crowd

by Ki Mae Heussner, GigaOM

High school kids across the country are getting the chance to make potentially thousands of new Facebook friends. That’s because massive open online courses (MOOCs), which have historically targeted college-age students and lifelong learners, are making their way to the pre-college crowd. This week, News Corp.’s education arm Amplify announced a high school MOOC for AP Computer Science. The course, which kicks off in August, is intended to give students two semesters of academic instruction in preparation for the College Board’s exam. The online program, taught by an experienced high school teacher, is free to students. And an added option, called MOOC Local, which provides schools with students in the CS MOOC additional resources, will cost $200 per student but is free to schools for the first year.

http://gigaom.com/2013/06/28/news-corp-s-amplify-is-latest-with-a-mooc-for-the-high-school-crowd/

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Fighting Distraction in Online Courses

by Courtney Buell, edcetera

Online courses are here to stay, but they present real challenges for today’s learners. In a traditional classroom, distraction is a significant problem, but it’s difficult to sit through an entire lecture without absorbing at least part of the lesson. Online, it’s easy for a student to sit down with the intention of completing a course module or assignment and realize two hours (and ten YouTube videos) later that they didn’t get anything done. Students raised in the fast-paced, multi-tasking, distraction-prone digital age have more access to learning than ever before — but when education is conducted online, next to entertainment and 24-hour updates, students often have a hard time focusing long enough to really learn.

http://edcetera.rafter.com/fighting-distraction-in-online-courses/

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Benefits of Online, Face-to-Face Teacher Professional Development Similar, Study Finds

by Computing Education Blog

These are really exciting results. Done well, on-line professional development is as effective as face-to-face professional development as published in ACM Transactions on Computing Education. These results are promising for our CSLearning4U project. In particular, the benefit that Barry Fishman saw is what we were most hoping for, based on our studies with Klara Benda — it’s all about fitting into the teachers’ lives. Of course, the devil is in how the teacher training is designed and executed. ”There are no shortcuts in professional development,” Fishman stressed. In the study, teachers who received the online professional development weren’t just plopped in front of YouTube. Instead, the group took a series of self-paced “short courses” via computer. They also interacted online with facilitators who helped them through the units and answered their questions.

http://computinged.wordpress.com/2013/07/05/benefits-of-online-face-to-face-professional-development-similar-study-finds/

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Department of Education aims to prevent summer brain drain

By Mackenzie Mays, WVGazette

In a recent survey conducted by the National Summer Learning Association, more than 65 percent of teachers polled reported that it takes them up to four weeks to re-teach the previous year’s skills at the beginning of a new school year. In addition, the survey — which questioned 500 teachers across the country — revealed that for about 25 percent of them, it takes more than five weeks to get students caught up after a summer off. The West Virginia Department of Education recently launched an online initiative to help prevent students from suffering from that summer learning loss.

http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201307060019

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What MOOCs and webinars can teach us about digital engagement

by Jasper Visser, Museum of the Future

The biggest eye-opener for me is that although online communication is often one to one (one organisation talking to one individual in the audience), in many of my webinars the ‘one’ on the receiving end actually was a group of participants sharing the same laptop. I’ve heard of MOOC study groups where people watch the videos together. People online are not necessarily (physically) alone. When thinking about digital engagement this means the people at the receiving end will talk, discuss and exchange ideas outside of the scope of the digital environment and maybe only report some key words back. This provides huge opportunities for facilitators in webinars and other online processes.

http://themuseumofthefuture.com/2013/07/04/what-moocs-and-webinars-can-teach-us-about-digital-engagement

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Using a Smartphone’s Eyes and Ears to Log Your Every Move

By Tom Simonite, Technology Review

New tricks will enable a life-logging app called Saga to figure out not only where you are, but what you’re doing. Having mobile devices closely monitoring our behavior could make them more useful, and open up new business opportunities. Many of us already record the places we go and things we do by using our smartphone to diligently snap photos and videos, and to update social media accounts. A company called ARO is building technology that automatically collects a more comprehensive, automatic record of your life. ARO is behind an app called Saga that automatically records every place that a person goes. Now ARO’s engineers are testing ways to use the barometer, cameras, and microphones in a device, along with a phone’s location sensors, to figure out where someone is and what they are up to. That approach should debut in the Saga app in late summer or early fall.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/516566/using-a-smartphones-eyes-and-ears-to-log-your-every-move/

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Online education expanding in Florida

By ANASTASIA DAWSON, Tampa Tribune

A new law aims to offer more online classes to Florida students than ever before, but making sure it works as intended will take lots of time and planning, school officials say. Gov. Rick Scott signed the bill into law July 1, allowing more out-of-state digital learning companies to partner with developing Florida online classes and requiring the Department of Education to research the effects. Now, the state has to figure out how to hold online teachers and curricula accountable. The goal is to improve education for all Florida students, said Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, one of the bill’s sponsors.

http://staugustine.com/news/florida-news/2013-07-04/online-education-expanding-state#.UdcbjvnVCuY

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