Face to face meetings keep getting better, despite long-distance communications tech
Even though communication and information technologies have made constant communication
between clients, coworkers, and supervisors even easier, the Bureau of Labor Statistics last month said remote work and telecommuting has actually remained flat since the mid 1990's, and that only around 24 percent of employed Americans said they work from home even just a few hours a week.
The U.S. Department of Education, meanwhile, found comparable statistics for students engaged in distance learning and Web-based education. In 2009, twenty percent of undergrad students took an online or distance learning course of some sort.
The democratization of higher ed continues: $49 e-textbook launches
In early summer 2011, Nature Publishing Group's Educational branch debuted its "born digital" textbook Principles of Biology, which would cost the student only $49 and contribute to the movement to democratize higher education with technology. Nature's approach was so different that it basically destroyed the old business model of publishing and rebuilt it for the digital age.
Today, Nature Education has made the Principles of Biology available to the education world at large. The e-textbook is available either as a one-time purchase of $49 for individual students (which includes lifetime updates,) or it is available to learning institutions as a site license, which gives on-site access to all students coming from the school's IP address.
Mr. University President, please don't adopt Apple's iBooks 2 platform
I'm a second year doctoral student, and I've got some concern about something I heard today that I want to share with any forward-thinking university president, but also with you.
Many schools will be looking at a new e-textbook platform from Apple that will have long-lasting impact on curriculum, students, teaching and cost of education.
If you're a teacher, you're nuts not to use Google+
This week I gave a talk on Web 2.0 and teaching to a group of higher-education faculty ("cloud" isn't yet pervasive in academia). I won't bore you with the details, but I made the basic argument that using cloud-based tools could help educators create better learning environments for their students through the collaboration, mobility and engagement opportunities the cloud affords. I gave examples of several different tools that could help do this, like collaborative documents, mobile video broadcasting, and group citation indexes. Then I ended with what they all really wanted to talk about: social media.
In addition to being the hottest iteration of cloud computing to the general public, social media holds much potential for education. Social media allows for effortless individual and collective communication between teacher and student(s). It breaks down the walls of the traditional classroom, allowing for conversation and active learning to exist 24/7, in real time and asynchronously, right in the palm of a student's hand.
In defense of netbooks
This morning, Gizmodo’s Brian Barret posted "Remember Netbooks? No One Else Does, Either" In the post, Barret cites recent data from ABI Research that indicates the rise of tablet computers at the expense of netbooks: "Media tablet shipments surpassed netbook shipments this quarter, reaching 13.6 million units, compared to just 7.3 million netbooks. Netbooks had previously led the way with 8.4 million shipments in 1Q11, compared to just 6.4 million media tablets".
Barret takes this research as an opportunity to gleefully dance on the grave of the netbook computer, stating that it is now "very hard to find a compelling argument as to why you'd prefer one [a netbook] over a tablet". I disagree.
Pearson adds free learning management tools to Google Apps for Education
Publishing and educational tools company Pearson on Thursday launched the beta version of OpenClass, a free, cloud-based learning management system (LMS) that is integrated with Google Apps for Education, and will be available in the Google Apps Marketplace.
Earlier today, techie Ryan Tyler wrote an article for us about Gadgets in higher education, which are certainly a big part of on-site learning. But for remote learning, independent study, scheduling, collaboration, testing, and submission of assignments, the cloud plays a huge, and ever-growing role in higher education.
Higher Ed should get over its love affair with iPad
It's no secret iPad owners love their devices. The American Customer Satisfaction Index and NPD both report unusually high satisfaction rates for iPad. Just in second quarter, Apple sold more than 9 million tablets, generating $6 billion in revenue. Despite the best efforts of competitors, most of which offer tablets running Android OS, nothing has yet put a dent in iPad’s dominance among consumers. The fact of the matter is that, if you own a tablet right now, it most likely is iPad.
There’s another group equally smitten by iPad: higher education. I’m not talking about students, faculty or university administrators that own the tablets (I would lump these people in with the consumer category), but rather the growing number of higher-ed institutions around the country that currently issue iPads to their students.
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