TechEd News

MIT unveils computer chip that thinks like the human brain, Skynet just around the corner
By Chris Barylick, engadget.com

It may be a bit on the Uncanny Valley side of things to have a computer chip that can mimic the human brain's activity, but it's still undeniably cool. Over at MIT, researchers have unveiled a chip that mimics how the brain's neurons adapt to new information (a process known as plasticity) which could help in understanding assorted brain functions, including learning and memory. The silicon chip contains about 400 transistors and can simulate the activity of a single brain synapse -- the space between two neurons that allows information to flow from one to the other.

Researchers anticipate this chip will help neuroscientists learn much more about how the brain works, and could also be used in neural prosthetic devices such as artificial retinas. Moving into the realm of "super cool things we could do with the chip," MIT's researchers have outlined plans to model specific neural functions, such as the visual processing system. Such systems could be much faster than digital computers and where it might take hours or days to simulate a simple brain circuit, the chip -- which functions on an analog method -- could be even faster than the biological system itself. In other news, the chip will gladly handle next week's grocery run, since it knows which foods are better for you than you ever could.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/15/mit-unveils-computer-chip-that-thinks-like-the-human-brain-skyn/

PBS Kids launches augmented reality game for iOS, says all the cool kids are counting sushi
By Chris Barylick, engadget.com

It's official: Kids today have way cooler toys than you did when you were growing up. PBS Kids has just outed its first augmented reality mobile app for iOS -- a game called Fetch! Launch Rush that aims to take the sting out of learning to do addition and subtraction in your head. If you're up on PBS' children's programming (and why wouldn't you be?), you'll recognize that pooch Ruff Ruffman as the game show host in the animated show Fetch! Here, he's a legendary movie director trying to make sure there's enough sushi for his movie crew (grown-up problems, right?).

That's where the augmented reality comes in: bits of raw fish floating around screen. Though it's worth noting that this isn't augmented reality in the strictest sense of the term, in that you have to print out game cards to use with your iPhone or iPod touch's camera. The free app requires an iPhone or iPod touch (fourth-gen or later) or an iPad / iPad 2 running iOS 4.0. While we can't say we're a bit envious of those six- to eight-year-olds with their very own iPod touches, but then again, will they ever know the sheer joy of hunting in Oregon Trail over and over again?

http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/15/pbs-kids-launches-augmented-reality-game-for-ios-says-all-the-c/

Blended Learning on the Rise, Report Says
By Katie Ash, Education Week

The eighth annual Keeping Pace with K-12 Online Learning, released today at the Virtual School Symposium in Indianapolis, finds that single-district online programs—many of which include blended learning—are the fastest-growing segment of online education this year. (Single-district online programs are created by a district for the students in that district only.)

Another area of growth is consortium programs, which usually involve several districts banding together to pool resources and share expertise. Part of the reason for this is the decrease in state funding available for state-level virtual education opportunities, the report says.

The report notes that state virtual schools are also splitting into two categories—those with sustainable funding models that are making a significant impact on learning, and those that are not receiving reliable support from states. State virtual schools accounted for 536,000 course enrollments for the 2010-11 school year, an increase of 19 percent over the previous year.

Other factors, such as the Common Core state standards as well as the frequent mergers of private online education providers, have significantly affected the landscape of online education in the U.S., the report says. In addition, several states have passed laws that will affect the way that virtual education operates in those states, the report notes.

This year marks a shift in the way that educators are thinking about online learning, the report states. Those wishing to be innovative are steering away from 'traditional' virtual school models of fully online virtual education and instead opting for blended learning or other methods instead.

Says the report:

A tangible sense exists in many states that there is no need for a state virtual school; that pioneering states and educators should instead look for the next thing. Certainly further innovation is a worthy goal, but this view leaves behind the students in nearly all states who do not have widespread access to online options.

The Keeping Pace report also includes state profiles of virtual learning initiatives, definitions of online learning terms, as well as an entire section that defines and explains blended learning.

There is also a breakdown of key policy issues, such as funding, demographics of online students, accreditation, pre-service online teacher training, and online learning graduation requirements.

Clearly, there is a lot to absorb in this year's report, which can be downloaded for free from the Keeping Pace website.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/DigitalEducation/2011/11/blended_learning_on_the_rise_r.html

Education Secretary Appeals for Financial Literacy, Planning Instruction in Schools
By Kenneth Corbin, onwallstreet.com

Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Tuesday urged a special advisory council to dig deep as it crafts recommendations for improving Americans' financial literacy though education and training programs, arguing that personal finance should be integrated early into the curriculum as a core subject.

Speaking here at the Treasury Department, Duncan was addressing the Advisory Council on Financial Capability that President Obama convened in January 2010 in response to the perception that far too many people lack the requisite financial planning skills to handle their money wisely and invest responsibly for their future.

"I think the challenge we face now," Duncan said, "is that we don't have a financially literate population," arguing that the shortfall in people's financial understanding can be attributed to the absence of systemic instruction on the subject in schools, as well as at home and in the workplace.

"As important as reading and math and social studies and science, I think today more than ever financial literacy has to be part of that," he said. "To continue to have a population that is relatively illiterate in these matters I think has real negative consequences to our democracy."

Too many people, he argued, are either "underbanked" or without a bank account altogether, let alone equipped to make longer-term planning decisions about investments and retirement.

Adding a financial planning component to the public-school curriculum would instruct students about the mechanics of common retirement plans such as 401k employer-matching programs, and aim to attract broader investment in the stock market. It would also cover the nuts and bolts of personal finance such as credit cards and loan offers.

Many of the symptomatic blights of the gloomy macroeconomic situation, such as the mortgage crisis, low savings rates and lack of investment in markets and startup community businesses, can be attributed in part to the woeful state of financial literacy, according to Duncan.

"If we don't do things differently we're going to perpetuate these problems," he said. "This is not a place where we just need to get a little better. We've got to get a lot better, and we've got to get better faster."

The notion of developing a segment of the public-school curriculum around financial literacy assumes another urgency at a time when the employer-funded, defined-benefit pension is a vanishing breed, Duncan said. That Americans bear more personal responsibility for funding their retirements than ever before elevates financial literacy to a high national priority on the social welfare front, while also offering a plausible explanation for why the subject has never been meaningfully integrated into the standard K-12 curriculum.

 As far as Duncan is concerned, the earlier the lessons come the better.

"I always think you have to start young. So if this is just one course, half a semester [or] a semester senior year, [it's] definitely late in the game," he said, suggesting that schools should begin incorporating basic financial instruction as early as kindergarten. He admitted, however, that the Department of Education has limited ability to implement such a move, given the broad authority that states and localities have over their own curricula.

http://www.onwallstreet.com/news/education-secretary-duncan-financial-literacy-education-2675914-1.html

Annual report reveals online learning’s rapid rise
eSchoolNews

K-12 online and blended learning continued to grow rapidly across the country in 2011 as new consortia and single-district online education programs outstripped the continued expansion of more traditional eLearning programs, according to an annual report that measures the growth of K-12 virtual education.

“2011 Keeping Pace with Online K-12 Learning: An Annual Review of Policy and Practice,” from the Evergreen Education Group, was unveiled Nov. 9 at the 2011 Virtual School Symposium hosted by the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL).

As of late 2011, online and blended learning opportunities existed for at least some students in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia, but no state had a full suite of full-time and supplemental options for students at all grade levels.

Thirty states now have full-time, multi-district schools that enrolled an estimated 250,000 students in the 2010-11 academic year—a 25-percent increase in enrollment over the previous year. Forty states had a state virtual school or similar state-led initiative in the 2010-11 school year, delivering 536,000 course enrollments (one student taking one semester course), a rise of 19 percent over the prior year.

“2011 was in many ways a watershed year for K-12 online learning in this country,” said Susan Patrick, president and chief executive officer of iNACOL. “Over the past year, online and blended learning programs took root in classrooms around the country. We’re encouraged by the rapid growth we saw in the number and variety of online [education] programs being made available to students in 2011.”

The report reveals that while these now-familiar and important segments of the K-12 online learning field have continued to grow, relatively new forms—such as online learning consortia and single-district programs—are expanding even more rapidly, as is the range of private eLearning providers competing to work with districts.

In fact, single-district programs, which are usually blended learning models that combine face-to-face and online instruction, are the fastest growing segment of online and blended learning programs. Though data on these programs is unavailable at the state level, published reports and unpublished research suggest fully 50 percent of districts nationwide have at least one student taking an online course. Riverside, Calif.; Plano, Texas; Broward County, Fla.; and Chicago are among the major single-district programs offering online courses in 2011

Read more: http://www.eschoolnews.com/2011/11/10/annual-report-reveals-elearnings-rapid-rise/

The Pen That’s Smarter Than the…Pen
By Jennifer Netherby, T.H.E. Journal

A few years ago, science teacher Janice Crowley noticed a student in one of her classes who had failed the same course the previous year. She learned the student had failed because he had a full-time job and didn’t have time to study during the week. By the time he got around to the course material on the weekend, he had forgotten the lesson.

Concerned that things might not be much different the second time around, Crowley told him she would create a downloadable “pencast” of each lesson, essentially an audio recording of the spoken lecture synced with the notes she wrote during class, to help him re-experience the lesson at his convenience.

The Livescribe smartpen, the tool that makes pencasting possible, is essentially a mini computer that records what the user hears or says while he or she takes notes on specially coded paper that syncs the written word with the audio file. Users can replay the lesson either by touching the smartpen directly to the paper—at any point in the notes the audio file will sync up. Teachers can also upload the synced pencast to a computer, where students can hear the audio and see the written notes in broadcast fashion. Although Livescribe is relatively new to the K-12 market, teachers and students are already using the technology in a number of ways to improve student performance and extend teacher instruction beyond the classroom.

A Tool for Review

By the time Crowley interceded on behalf of her struggling student, she was already a convert to smartpen technology, which she was using in her high school chemistry classes at Wichita Collegiate School, a private K-12 school in Wichita, KS. For these classes, Crowley creates pencasts of her lessons, then uploads them to Moodle, where her students can access them at home to review what they learned in class, or what they missed if they were absent from class. She’s also slowly built up a library of her lessons, recorded during her planning period.

Because of their versatility, Livescribe smartpens are being used by teachers in every subject, but math and science teachers have found them particularly useful, due to the step-by-step nature of those subjects, according to Holly De Leon, vice president of sales for its Livescribe’s K-12 division.

“A lot of math and science teachers are using it to be able to ensure students get all the parts (of a lesson),” she says. “If a student got parts one and two, and then was stumped on three and four, they can listen to just the portion they’re stumped on.”

Crowley finds this especially true for her chemistry classes, where she uses pencasts particularly to explain difficult concepts. “When a teacher is teaching hard material, kids’ brains shut down,” she says. “I don’t want students not getting it and going home with only a blank piece of paper.”

Metacognitive Tools

The smartpen not only fills in gaps for the student regarding course content; it can fill in the teacher too on what the student’s doing.

For example, once Crowley posts a pencast, she can see if and when students access it to make sure they’re studying. Last year, one of her students who had gotten A’s before the Christmas break fell behind after the vacation, which is not uncommon, according to Crowley.

She sent a message to the student’s parents, who responded by saying their son had told them the material had gotten too difficult. At a meeting with the parents, she shared with them the student’s grades, explained how pencast worked, and then showed them that he had stopped accessing the pencasts around the same time that his grades dropped off.

“He admitted he wasn’t doing the work,” Crowley says. The parents “saw the tool. They loved it. It was a win-win. They were able to see he was successful when looking at the pencasts.”

Livescribe can also be a valuable tool to help teachers see how students are thinking about learning. Last year, Karen Blumberg, ed tech integrator at The School at Columbia University, a K-8 school in New York City, introduced the pens to four math teachers in a beta test. One of her teachers began letting students take class notes with the pen, which they then posted online and shared with their classmates.

There’s more: http://thejournal.com/articles/2011/11/03/livescribe.aspx

Games for Science Learning and Scientific Discovery
By Audrey Watters, edutopia.org

Even though more people are recognizing the potential for teaching and learning through video games, there are still plenty of skeptics -- those who see video games as a mindless distraction, as entertainment and not education. But the work of a research center at the University of Washington may be at the forefront of challenging that notion. And this isn't just about how students can benefit from educational gaming either; it's about how scientific discovery can benefit from gamers.

That latter element has found UW's Center for Game Science in the news a lot lately, as one of the games it developed has helped lead to a breakthrough in AIDS research.

Creative Research Outsourcing

The game in question is called Fold.it, an online protein-folding game. Fold.it asks players to work with proteins' 3D structures (in other words, how the proteins "fold"). The game evaluates how good of a fold the player has made, gives them a score, and rates them on a leaderboard so that players from around the world can compete with one another.

Since the game's release, some 100,000 people have played Foldit, most of whom have little or no background in biochemistry. This hasn't stopped the players from developing folding models superior to other computer-based or lab-created models -- so much so that Fold.it players recently solved a scientific problem in three weeks' time that has stumped researchers for more than a decade. For some 14 years, scientists have been trying to figure out the structure of a particular protein-cutting enzyme from an AIDS-like virus, but failing to do so, turned the information over to the game's players, challenging them to see if they could produce an accurate model.

"We wanted to see if human intuition could succeed where automated methods had failed," Dr. Firas Khatib of the University of Washington Department of Biochemistry told Science Daily. And indeed, it did. In this case, by playing Fold.it, the gamers generated models that were good enough for the researchers to determine the enzyme's actual structure, something that in turn could help scientists develop drugs to target the enzyme.

Learn more: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/games-science-learning-discovery-audrey-watters

A Home for Netbooks at School
By Dian Schaffhauser. T.H.E. Journal

Pushing a netbook program in a school setting these days is a bit like suggesting the purchase of an external modem or analog surveillance camera. Sure, it might work, but aren't the technologies a bit dated? Besides, the lackadaisical laptop computing experience offered by the typical netbook no longer seems to be enough; users want the intrigue of smartphones or tablet computing.

So what could netbooks possibly offer a district that some other gadget wouldn't be better at? Try this: addressing basic computing needs and providing access to the web at a price that's hard to beat. As long as wireless internet access is available, there are no extra service fees required. Netbooks have a screen size larger than a smartphone and a keyboard that's more familiar than a pad or tablet.

Those are the lures that drew Wentzville School District in Missouri, now in the process of preparing for a 900-netbook rollout to freshman English students in the spring semester. Technology Director Richard Wilson specifically chose Acer Aspire One netbooks because the district has had a good experience with the machines in mobile and science class labs. "They've been really solid and come with a two-year manufacturer's warranty, which is a big thing," he says.

The district was afforded the luxury of buying the netbooks thanks to an anonymous $500,000 donation earmarked for instructional technology. The unexpected gift replaced funding already set aside to purchase interactive whiteboards for classrooms and digital e-books for school libraries. So the budget was redirected to the district's 1-to-1 netbook initiative, which may be powered in part by cloud-based versions of Moodle for course management and Google Apps for Education for collaboration and e-mail.

Wilson admits there was a "lot of discussion" about the relative merits of netbooks and tablets.

The former won out during the first two years of the program because of "the familiarity and comfort level" district staff and teachers have with the mini-laptop device. Price mattered too: Wilson expects to pay between $200 and $300 per netbook; most of the tablets his district has evaluated were more than $500. "Right now, with the resources we have, the netbooks just made more sense. Then, in a few more years, we'll make the transition to the tablets."

Affordability was also a factor at Coleman Tech Charter High School in San Diego. This year-old school is almost entirely cloud-based. At the start of the school year, says Assistant Principal Neil McCurdy, each student receives a netbook, which, like at Wentzville, is an Acer Aspire One.

"Because of the price of [these] now, we can just give the kids a computer when they enroll in the school, and it's theirs to keep as long as they graduate from Coleman Tech," he explains. By then, he adds, "Those computers will be devalued anyway. We won't be able to use them for anything else."

Read more: http://thejournal.com/articles/2011/11/03/a-home-for-netbooks-at-school.aspx

More states look to online learning for students
By Laura Devaney, Managing Editor, eSchoolNews

As more students opt to enroll full-time or part-time in virtual learning programs, a growing number of states are considering proposals mandating that students take at least one online course before graduating from high school.

An important step for states considering such a requirement is to define what they mean by virtual learning and taking an online course, because definitions can vary. The motivation behind the requirement is key, too.

“Access at home and in school is really important,” said Allison Powell, vice president of state and district services at the International Association for K-12 Online learning (iNACOL).

Initiating a virtual learning program to cut teacher jobs and save money is not a good approach, although Powell noted that so far, no one has started an online learning program for these reasons. “The teacher is still the most important person in the child’s education, even in the online world. [Teachers] just need to be trained a little bit differently in order to be successful in the environment—but we still need them,” she said.

In 2010, more than 4 million K-12 students participated in formal virtual learning programs, including 217,000 students in cyber charter schools, according to iNACOL statistics.

State progress

Michigan, Alabama, and Florida are currently the only states to require a virtual learning credit for high school graduation, although many other states and districts—including Idaho and Indiana—have implemented or are considering such requirements.

Read more: http://www.eschoolnews.com/2011/11/02/more-states-look-to-online-learning-for-students/

Demand for online learning increases
eSchoolNews

In just three years, the number of high school students who have access to online learning has tripled, while twice as many middle school students are now learning online, according to a new report.

These figures come from the nonprofit group Project Tomorrow and its most recent Speak Up survey on school technology use. Project Tomorrow first released data from its this survey earlier this spring, but the organization has teamed up with learning management system provider Blackboard Inc. to dig deeper into the results that pertain to online learning.

Project Tomorrow and Blackboard issued a report on these findings during the International Society for Technology in Education’s annual conference June 28.

More than 40 percent of students now designate online classes as an essential component of their learning experience, with administrators and parents also becoming more supportive of this vision, the report says. In two years’ time, 39 percent more administrators and five times as many parents have incorporated online classes into their vision for the ultimate school.

While support for online learning has grown, so, too, has the untapped student demand for online learning as part of their ultimate school. One-third of middle and high school students say they are interested in taking an online course but have not yet, and 30 percent of third through fifth grade students say they’d like to take an online course, according to the survey.

“Online learning is transformative. We are just starting to see a generation rising through middle schools that demand online learning and have a clear insight into how it can change the future of education,” said Julie Evans, CEO of Project Tomorrow. “These students are moving online learning beyond the basic learning paradigm and taking ownership in their learning process—creating an engaging, personalized, and collaborative learning environment.”

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2011/06/29/demand-for-online-learning-increases/?ast=76&astc=6561