The $38 Tablet

Yes there is an actual tablet for $38 and my initial review is that its actually not that bad. One of my students recently bought one and gave me a few minutes to play around with it. The tablet is a Ubislate. It runs Android 4.2.2. While its not very powerful, as in it has 512 mb ram, it does function as a full tablet. You have access to the android google play store and it has wifi. Honestly it looks, feels, and functions just like any other tablet. Its just has lower end components but for $38 I think its worth it. I would give this a buy for every single person that does not currently own a tablet. Also a quick note – it does ship from over seas and my student said it took her about a week to come in.

Here is the link: http://ubislate.us/

New smartband

I believe this looks awesome and has a lot of potential. Currently it will tell you when you have texts, emails, phone calls, and monitor your workouts and sleep habits. What I am most excited for is for devices like this to really manage our lives. They can tell us what our body temp is, if we have a sickness, what our heart rate is. Eventually we will be able to talk to it and it will respond back. I see these replacing many of the abilities smartphones have as voice technology gets better. That is not to say we wont still have smartphones but both might be very common in the future. Article here

What College Will Be Like in 2023

An article about the future of education that I can somewhat agree with. This is one point made that I think is dead on:

“In the future, tuition will drop dramatically. No, just kidding.

The expansion of online delivery has led some to believe that universities will be able to scale up their classes and reduce their costs per student. While this will happen in a few cases—Georgia Tech is now offering an online computer science master’s for $6,600—it won’t transform the university cost structure. That’s because so many of the added costs are the result of the expansion of university administrations and other nonacademic functions, from career counseling to student activities.

Technology will help increase the class size, says Anthony P. Carnevale, the director of Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, “but that’s pocket change in the whole scheme of things.”

read the entire article here

Facebook admits young teens are losing interest in the site

Now this is an interesting headline on cnnmoney this morning. For those who are not paying attention, more teens are shying away from facebook. Why? Its just not as cool when your parents are on it too (and probably reading your posts haha). Teens like to be using the ‘next big thing’ before everyone else. They do not like to follow the typical trends that everyone else does. If you dont believe me look at their music collection:) So what are they using? Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumlr to name a few. Go ahead, see if your kids are on these sites. You might be surprised to see what you find.

Global Learning Technology Conference in Wilmington, NC, OCTOBER 10-11, 2013

Faculty, administrators, e-learning and instructional design specialists, LMS system administrators – you may be interested!

Global Learning Technology Conference in Wilmington, NC, OCTOBER 10-11, 2013

This conference located at Hilton Wilmington Riverside Hotel will provide an opportunity for those working or teaching in the Instructional Design and Technology field to learn new tools, strategies, and network with one another.

GLTC will consist of half-day workshops. These hands-on presentations are in lab settings and explore various technologies for teaching and learning. The conference keynote and presentations offer those interested in improving the quality of education the opportunity to gain information and exchange ideas on the applications of learning technologies for education and training.

GLTC 2013 themes

· Innovative Instructional Strategies

· Community Partnerships

· Training & Professional Development

Visit our website for more information http://uncw.edu/ed/gltc/ or email us at e-learning@uncw.edu

MS Surface tablet review

So I have not had my surface tablet for a whole summer and here is my review. I will also compare to my other tablets – iPad (1 and 3) and Kindle Fire.

Pros:

-Functions as laptop – ie it IS a laptop
-Has full version of windows 8-Plugs right into a mouse and has a physical keyboard
-Its a PC so it works with all software
-Good battery life
-Same size as ipad (although thicker/heavier)
Cons:

-Price. The pro is almost a $1000 dollars but it does replace a laptop
-Heavier and thicker than an ipad but not by too much.-Lack of apps. While it does do everything since its a full laptop it just doesnt have good app functionality. For instance, the facebook app is terrible and I am not even sure it was made by facebook.

Overall if I had to choose this vs the ipad or kindle, I would definitely choose this. Its a full laptop. It does everything. I cannot do much on my ipad other than browse the web and check email. I love the physical keyboard and mouse capabilities of this as well. This is definitely what every single business person needs instead of an ipad. Hands down this is much better to take to meetings and such. Having said that, if price is a concern the ipad/kindle are much more affordable. Also if you are just going to browser the web, go on facebook, and play with apps the ipad might be your best bet. Its all going to come down to your personal use. For me, this surface tablet takes the cake. Good job MS.

What happens when MOOCs count for college credit?

Apparently nothing. No one does it. This is not really surprising. Here are some quotes from an article in the chronicle:

“Meanwhile, several projects aimed at helping MOOC students navigate existing pathways to college credit have attracted little or no interest. Colorado State University-Global Campus has seen no takers since offering last fall to award credit to students who performed well in a computer-science MOOC offered through Udacity. Likewise, the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning, which helps students translate nontraditional learning into college credit through its LearningCounts program, has not seen any students attempt to redeem MOOC certificates for credit.”

Who really wants more online courses and why?

Thought this article on the chronicle was pretty much spot on. Very good piece:

Source: http://chronicle.com/article/Who-Is-Driving-the-Online/140505/

“Proponents of online learning often use train metaphors to describe its growing impact on the educational landscape. Those of us who teach at two-year colleges, especially, are constantly encouraged, prodded, hectored, cajoled—and sometimes even ordered—to get on board. Otherwise, we’re told, we’re likely to be run over.

As one who is skeptical regarding the long-term benefits of online learning, I would attest that the train metaphor is pretty apt. I sometimes feel as though I’m standing on the tracks, signaling “proceed with caution,” while the online locomotive bears down on me, air horn reverberating.

I suspect others share that vivid nightmare. But what makes it especially sobering now is that, with the advent of MOOCs, the train is picking up steam and we’re no longer alone in its destructive path. These days entire departments, disciplines, and even institutions potentially stand in the way, at risk of being pulverized along with the rest of us.

Thinking about that phenomenon has led me to wonder, lately, just who is at the throttle. I think that’s a question well worth asking, and the answer ought to inform our response as faculty members. It seems to me that there are only a handful of possibilities:

Students. Supposedly everything we do in higher education is for the students, and we tend to be especially insistent on that point whenever we fear people might question our motives. Online learning is a perfect example. The reason we keep offering more and more classes online is that students are demanding them. Right?

Well, maybe. It’s true that during the past decade, the number of students enrolled in online courses grew at a significant rate. But according to a recent study, that growth started leveling off in the fall of 2010, when about 31 percent of all postsecondary students were taking at least one online class. Researchers concluded that “the slower rate of growth … compared to previous years may be the first sign that the upward rise in online enrollments is approaching a plateau.”

Moreover, a survey conducted this year by the Community College Research Center at Columbia University found that students at two-year campuses, in particular, prefer face-to-face over online instruction, especially for courses they deem difficult.

So while some students want, need, and benefit from online classes, the argument that students in general are clamoring for them doesn’t exactly hold up.

Faculty members. Are they driving the train by demanding to teach more and more classes online? After all, faculty members are often faulted for putting their own scheduling preferences ahead of students’ needs and desires. Is this simply another case of professorial self-centeredness?

I don’t think so. Speaking anecdotally for a moment, I’ve talked to literally scores of people who teach online, at my institution and others. Hardly any of them prefer it. Oh, they might prefer it in the sense that teaching online allows them more flexibility or reduces their commute. But the overwhelming majority of them tell me that, all things being equal, they would much prefer to teach in a traditional classroom, because they enjoy the personal interaction with students.

According to a 2009 report by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, only about 36 percent of faculty members have any experience developing or teaching an online course—a number that conforms closely to the roughly one-third of students who take classes online. Moreover, according to The Chronicle’s report, the study also found that professors’ general attitude toward online courses remains unfavorable—even among those who teach online: “70 percent of all faculty members believe the learning outcomes of online courses to be either inferior or somewhat inferior, compared with face-to-face instruction.”

When it comes to MOOCs, even fewer faculty members are on board. In fact, as we saw during the recent exchange between San Jose State University’s philosophy department and the Harvard professor Michael Sandel, for every faculty member developing a MOOC, there appear to be dozens who object to using such courses in lieu of more traditional offerings.

More telling, perhaps, is the recent Chronicle survey that found that 72 percent of faculty members who teach MOOCs don’t believe their students should receive college credit. In other words, even supporters of MOOCs don’t think they’re as good as face-to-face instruction.

So it’s not our colleagues at the throttle of the monstrous locomotive threatening to squash the rest of us.

Employers. Maybe it’s the end users, the companies that hire our graduates, who insist on more and more—and bigger and bigger—online offerings. Certainly, if you listen to the administrators and politicians (and yes, I’ll get to them in a moment), that would seem to be the case.

Unfortunately, that theory doesn’t wash, either. Another recent survey conducted for The Chronicle found that employers have a favorable impression of all types of colleges and universities—except for online institutions. And while there’s certainly a difference between students who complete their entire degrees online and those who just take a few online courses, the findings clearly suggest that employers don’t trust online instruction as much as traditional methods.

Just a few weeks ago, in “Giving Employers What They Don’t Really Want,” Robert J. Sternberg, president of the University of Wyoming, tackled this issue directly. He noted that most of the employers surveyed by The Chronicle said they were looking to hire people with “a demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems” as well as having “ethical judgment and integrity; intercultural skills; and the capacity for continued new learning.” The problem, Sternberg said, is that “those are not skills optimally developed through passive learning … including MOOCs.”

Whatever we’ve been told, I don’t believe employers are demanding that students take more online classes or sign up for MOOCs. Which brings us to …

Administrators. Since the “online revolution” began in the mid-1990s, I’ve taught at three different two-year colleges, visited many others, and sat through countless conference presentations trumpeting the latest technological breakthrough. My observation is that administrators, along with a handful of true believers among the faculty, have always been the primary proponents of online learning. On campus, at least, they’re the ones driving the train.

Why? The main reason, I believe, is money. Online courses enable colleges to enroll students and “deliver content” inexpensively, since they don’t require classrooms, parking spaces, restrooms, or, in some cases, even faculty offices. I’ve heard people argue that, done well, online courses can cost just as much as the face-to-face variety. That may be true, but I dare say that at most two-year colleges, they are offered as cheaply as possible, and that is one of the reasons, if not the main reason, for their existence.

California’s higher-education leaders basically admitted as much when they considered, a few months ago, the possibility of “outsourcing” some of their course offerings. The problem as they saw it was that they couldn’t afford to offer all the classes students wanted; and the solution, they thought, might just be MOOCs, which would enable them to provide those courses (in a manner of speaking) at comparatively low cost. Fortunately, that idea fell through.

Another reason that campus leaders—especially at two-year colleges—seem so anxious to embrace online learning is that it’s “innovative.” If there’s one thing every community-college president wants carved on his or her tombstone, it’s that he or she was “an innovator.” (That, and maybe a “transformational leader.”) Ironically, for many of those presidents, being innovative seems to mean doing exactly what everybody else is doing, only more of it.

Clearly, the online train that threatens to roll right over us has an administrator at the throttle, gleefully pushing the handle toward “full power.”

Politicians. On the other hand, administrators are not alone. Joining them in driving the train is a politician (or two, or a dozen) shouting encouragement, or perhaps threats.

Administrators, after all, especially at public institutions (which nearly all community colleges are), serve at the pleasure of politicians. And what is it that pleases politicians? Apparently, it’s for as many students as possible to take as many online classes as possible.

Exhibit A is an opinion essay by Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, and Randy Best that ran in Inside Higher Ed back in May. Entitled “Higher Ed in 2018,” the essay foresees an educational landscape in which “more than 80 percent of professional degree programs [sic] … will be earned online.” Why? Because “rising tuition, declining government subsidies, stagnant endowments, and increased competition are challenging higher education like never before.”

In other words, it’s all about the cost. As the friend who sent me that essay noted, nowhere does it say anything about the quality of education people will be receiving in this brave new world. That’s because all too often politicians, like administrators, aren’t concerned with quality; they’re more interested in the bottom line. And it’s not just Republican politicians, like Jeb Bush, who fall into that category: The state senator in California who originally proposed outsourcing to MOOCs is a Democrat.

I understand that politicians have a duty to be good stewards of public money, as do college administrators; and I certainly don’t have any objection to cutting costs where we can. But when our primary objective becomes making degrees as cheap as possible, rather than providing the best education possible, we’re missing the mark as educators and doing no good for the future of our students or our nation.

That’s why it’s so important for us as faculty members to realize who’s driving the online locomotive. It’s not students, only about a third of whom take any online classes. It’s not our colleagues, the vast majority of whom still aren’t fully on board with online learning in general, much less with MOOCs. And it’s certainly not employers, who over all seem to prefer that students take most of their coursework in traditional classrooms. It’s the administrators and the politicians, whose priorities—let’s be honest—are not the same as ours.

I sometimes wonder if the train is so big, and moving so fast, that it’s just going to derail itself due to basic physics. But unless that happens, and until it does, the only way to slow it down is for enough of us to refuse to get on board and instead line the tracks, signaling “proceed with caution” with all our might.

Rob Jenkins is an associate professor of English at Georgia Perimeter College and author of “Building a Career in America’s Community Colleges.” He writes monthly for our community-college column and blogs for “On Hiring.” The opinions expressed here are his own and not necessarily those of his employer.”