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education

From Textbook Rentals to Education Provider

by Loknath Das September 11, 2019

written by Loknath Das

Image result for From Textbook Rentals to Education Provider Student services company Chegg announced plans last week to acquire the online coding school Thinkful. To investors in the ed-tech space, the deal was not a surprising one — lots of ed-tech companies have been busy acquiring boot camps of late. Earlier this year, online program management company 2U snapped up Trilogy Education for a cool $750 million, and Zovio (formerly Bridgepoint Education) acquired Fullstack Academy for $17.5 million in cash plus 4.5 million shares of common stock.

But for Chegg, which started out as a textbook rental company, the deal represents a notable departure. Chegg already offers a wide range of educational services, such as online tutoring and test prep, but this acquisition marks its first big step into educational provider territory. It is also Chegg’s biggest acquisition to date.

Thinkful, which Chegg plans to acquire for approximately $80 million, currently offers online courses in software engineering, data science, data analytics and product design. The software engineering and data science programs take five months to complete on a full-time basis and cost north of $16,000. The data analytics and product design programs are offered part-time and cost about $8,000 up-front.

Darrell Silver, CEO and co-founder of Thinkful, said the brand will continue to operate as an independent entity. Silver said he and Chegg CEO and president Dan Rosensweig have a shared vision to help people obtain desirable jobs quickly and affordably.

Silver said that with Chegg’s support, Thinkful will be able to lower its prices and attract younger people to its programs. Currently the average Thinkful student is in her early 30s. College students in the U.S. — Chegg’s primary consumer — skew younger.

How exactly Thinkful will be able to lower its prices without compromising on quality is yet to be determined. It’s possible that Thinkful may develop shorter, more affordable courses, said Silver. Thinkful may also roll Chegg’s existing tutoring services and technology into its programs. Chegg’s relationship with millions of students could also help Thinkful reach economies of scale that would not previously have been possible.

“We’ll try a bunch of things,” said Silver. “I don’t think college students today are going to spend Thinkful prices.”

The possibility of lowering prices, and thus making Thinkful courses more accessible to a larger group of people, was the “number one thing that got us most excited” about Chegg’s offer, said Silver. “We’ve seen prices slowly tick up across the industry. It’s been a slow ooze to the status quo,” he said.

Chegg has consistently demonstrated a commitment to affordable pricing for students, said Silver. A Chegg Study subscription, which includes access to tens of thousands of textbook homework solutions, expert Q&A access and online tutoring, has been fixed at $14.95 per month for several years. Chegg reported earlier this year that it has around 3.1 million student subscribers.

Thinkful offers a range of payment options to its students, including income-sharing arrangements and a money-back guarantee for students who pay up-front but are unable to find a job six months after graduation. The company also offers full-time and part-time study options. Silver expects this flexibility to remain. “The roadmap for us is the same, except we’re going to do it faster,” he said.

Nathan Schultz, Chegg’s president of learning services, and Marc Boxser, its vice president of communications and policy, said the acquisition of Thinkful was a logical next step for the company, which has been watching the adult education landscape for years.

“We’ve been looking at the market, trying to understand where it’s going and listening in the background,” said Schultz. “We wanted to be part of the change agents.”

Chegg’s plan for Thinkful is to “vastly expand the catalog of programs they offer in in-demand areas,” said Boxser. Once a catalog of programs has been built, students may have the option to “dip into programs as they progress through their college career.” But Chegg is also looking to attract people who don’t go to college.

“Chegg started with a college focus, we morphed out of serving student needs into a whole range of services,” said Schultz. “Now we don’t just serve college students, we serve high school students, half of whom don’t to go college. Of those that do go to college, half won’t graduate. We want to serve those gaps in the market.”

Liz Eggleston, co-founder of Course Report, an organization that studies boot camps, said the recent spate of acquisitions demonstrates the industry has achieved “mainstream status.”

Bootcamps were considered “an underground education option” just a few years ago, she said. Chegg’s acquisition of Thinkful “makes sense” as the company already works with large numbers of young people.

It will be interesting to see how Thinkful’s program offerings change over time, said Eggleston. She noted that early on, Thinkful offered “a ton of low-cost courses” but gradually pared its portfolio to a handful of immersive, high-touch programs.

Daniel Pianko, co-founder and managing director of University Ventures, an investment firm with holdings in online coding school Galvanize, said that every major education company is looking to have “some version of a boot camp in its stable.”

“The number of deals getting done indicates the strength of opportunity in the market,” he said.

Chegg, which already works with millions of students, is looking to add value to that relationship, said Pianko. “This is a logical extension. They have a funnel of people who are looking for opportunities.”

The market for high-quality coding instruction is competitive, and there won’t be a radical shift in tuition prices until the cost of instruction goes down, said Pianko. “I doubt lower prices are going to happen across the board, but we will see different methods of payment — ISAs, job guarantees, etc.”

It will be interesting to see whether Chegg, which sells directly to students, will be able to compete with Trilogy, which builds relationships with university partners, said Pianko.

“This is still a rapidly growing ecosystem.”

[“source=insidehighered”]

September 11, 2019 0 comment

Education

Navigating The Road To Education & Workplace Success

by Loknath Das September 4, 2019

written by Loknath Das

Image result for Navigating The Road To Education & Workplace Success Based on media coverage of the college admissions process, the “road to college” is often portrayed just as that: a metaphorical road.

The “cars” on this road all move in one direction. For the most part, they travel at the speed limit, rarely hit potholes, never run out of gas — and exit at the intended logical off-ramp: college. Once the students in these cars are safely dropped off, they stay in school for four more years before hitting the road again, this time traveling to entry-level jobs.

But this metaphor is a myth. The reality is much messier, and begs the question, “Who gets to travel in these cars on the road to education and workplace success?”

Diversity, Or History’s Lack Thereof

ACT was founded in 1959. When I look back at photos from our first tests, the images are black and white, but the students are almost all white. That likely reflects the opportunities present during that era — before the civil rights movement, before the desegregation of many schools, and before college education was regarded as an opportunity for everyone rather than a privilege for the few.

Thankfully, those days are behind us. In 2014, America’s public schools became majority minority. In 2018, the number of ACT-tested Hispanic students exceeded 300,000, a huge increase from the 115,000 Hispanic students tested in 2008. There were also significant increases in ACT-tested African American and Asian students, reflecting our nation’s evolving demographics and increasing opportunities.

Still, the road to matriculation can be treacherous. According to ACT’s Condition of College and Career Readiness report, many students who want to attend college don’t enroll. In 2017, 82% of ACT-tested high school graduates wanted to go to college, but only 66% did. If this “aspirations gap” were closed, an additional 320,000 high school graduates would have attended college last year alone. Multiply that number times 10 years, or 60, and it’s clear our nation is leaving a huge amount of talent on the table.

However, the story isn’t over yet. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, the six-year college graduation rate for “first-time, full-time undergraduate students” (i.e., those who DO make it to college) is 60%. So, even if you make it to college, there’s a real chance you won’t make it to graduation. We need to rethink the systems that result in those numbers.

In short, the issue isn’t only diversity. It’s also inclusion.

Inclusion: Still Real Work To Do

As I noted, ACT was founded in 1959, about the same time as the interstate highway system. To extend my road metaphor, if the higher education system was a freeway in the 1950s, it’s a toll road today.

By some reports, the typical total cost of a public university education in 1959 was about $1,000, and for private schools, $2,400. Adjust that for 880% inflation, and the cost is still less than $10,000 for a public institution and less than $25,000 for a private. That’s not cheap, but it’s a bargain by today’s prices.

However, think about the students attending those schools at the time. The National Defense Student Loan Program, the first of its kind, wasn’t signed into law until 1958. As a result, in 1959, it’s likely that most colleges and universities were primarily populated with students from middle- and upper-class backgrounds, reducing the diversity that could have enriched all students’ educations.

Today, we may be more intentional about being inclusive, but we still have real work to do. At ACT, we offer fee waivers and free score reporting to students from low-income families; unfortunately, too many don’t take us up on that opportunity.

Why? It may be they have trouble getting to Saturday test centers when school buses aren’t running. It may be they don’t think they’ll be able to afford college even if they get admitted, or can’t afford to give up the jobs that already support their families.

Just as eliminating one obstacle generally doesn’t resolve highway gridlock, an isolated intervention often isn’t enough to clear paths to academic success for many of these students. It takes several sequenced, integrated actions before traffic starts flowing again.

Good News

The good news is that we have more talent in the United States and around the world now than at any time in history. For the most part, we have a consensus that every student deserves the chance to succeed, and we know that it takes an integrated system — with all of us working in concert — to meet the needs of the infinitely complex students we are privileged to know. How well we work together to clear their paths to success is the extent to which we can characterize ourselves as truly inclusive.

[“source=huffingtonpost”]

September 4, 2019 0 comment

Education

Protest leaflets claim relationship education teaches infants masturbation

by Loknath Das August 30, 2019

written by Loknath Das

Rohit Dasgupta

Leaflets claiming that new relationship education lessons will encourage primary school children to masturbate have been handed out in east London, the BBC has learned.

It comes after protests in Birmingham against LGBT teaching made headlines.

Other leaflets said parents “will be questioned on the day of judgement” if they do not challenge the lessons.

Labour councillor Rohit Dasgupta said local officials had a “duty” to counter the “misinformation”.

The School Gate Campaign – which distributed the leaflets – has now removed the specific accusation that infants would be “encouraged to masturbate” in its literature, but Mr Dasgupta argued the damage had already been done.

The new flyers (example, below) say some teaching resources will introduce words like masturbation to juniors. This is written in draft teaching guidance for at least one local authority in England.

The campaign said it stood by the leaflets’ other claims – including that relationships education lessons would promote “transgenderism and homosexual lifestyles”.

From September next year it will be compulsory to teach relationships education in primary schools in England, and relationships and sex education (RSE) in secondary schools.

The government wants primary schools to include teaching about things like single parents, adoption and same-sex relationships – but said it will be for individual schools to decide what is “age appropriate”.

The proposal has led to leafleting campaigns and hundreds of mainly Muslim campaigners protesting at the gates of some primary schools, most notably in Birmingham.

There were fears the row was “being exploited” by Islamist and far-right activists.

Some parents there objected to a set of teaching resources called No Outsiders, which includes stories about a boy who wants to dress as a mermaid, and a penguin who has two fathers.

With the new school term approaching, Mr Dasgupta described the leaflets being handed out in his area in Newham, east London, as a form of “intimidation” and containing “untruths”.

Protesters gathered outside Anderton Park, 24 May — Image captionProtests have taken place outside school gates in Birmingham

He showed the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme an example that claimed RSE would promote “transgenderism and homosexual lifestyles” and “pervert the course of natural child development”.

It added that “children in infant school will be encouraged to masturbate. First sexual experiences will be encouraged by the age of 12.”

Mr Dasgupta said parents had also been targeted through messaging apps, with many being told there would be “consequences” if they did not attend an upcoming parents’ meeting about RSE.

Asked why it was not legitimate for parents to want a say in their child’s education, he said while they should be “told exactly what their children are taught”, head teachers should ultimately decide, as the experts. He added the government should have the “backbone” to support them.

“This is about making sure we teach our children about equality,” he said.

The School Gate Campaign said “the majority of parents do not agree with the current approach to sex education, which demands ever more explicit sex education at ever younger ages”.

Javid Iqbal, whose children and grandchildren have both attended Parkfield School – the centre of the Birmingham protests – is now calling for the protests to stop.

He used to speak on behalf of the Parkfield Parents Group, but said the demonstrations were “not helpful at all”.

“We’re adults – we’re educated enough to sit round a table to resolve these issues instead of standing outside a school shouting and screaming.”

Mr Iqbal also criticised those from outside the local community who had become involved in the local dispute, saying they were “just here for publicity”.

Earlier this month the BBC reported that a “homophobic” video and far-right material linked to protests against LGBT relationship lessons were being investigated by police.

Mr Iqbal said “a lot of parents” had removed their children from the school to look for alternatives in the area, unhappy at how it had managed the situation.

Yehudis Fletcher, from Manchester, has spoken out publicly in favour of the lessons, and said others had contacted her to say they supported her viewpoint but did not wish to voice it openly.

She said this was because there was “such a loud opposition… and fear of putting your head above the parapet”.

Ms Fletcher, an orthodox Jew who has three young children, said some of those running orthodox schools in the area did not want to teach RSE.

“There are people who want children to remain largely ignorant about sex and relationships because they want them to carry on with the traditional way, in which they’re married at a very early age without much knowledge of what they’re getting into,” she said.

The Department for Education has said RSE is a “vital” subject and schools would be supported to deliver lessons “to a high standard”.

It said it was working closely with schools which had volunteered to introduce the subject next month, and was setting up a working group including parents, young people and representatives of faith and minority groups to consider the delivery of the lessons.

Parents with concerns were urged to “talk to their child’s school in a calm and constructive way”.

[“source=bbc”]

August 30, 2019 0 comment

Education

School closures triple in Central and Western Africa as education comes under fire

by Loknath Das August 24, 2019

written by Loknath Das

In a new report detailing threats of violence against schools across the region and issues as a ‘Child Alert’, the UN agency warned that a generation of children risks being denied the right to learn.

“Nearly two million children are out of school due to conflict, so it is not an easy number,” UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, Muzoon Almellehan, told journalists in Geneva. “It is important to highlight those challenges, to highlight the struggle of those people. They need us, they need our attention.”

From Burkina Faso to Nigeria, more than 9,200 schools shut

Data gathered by UNICEF to June indicates that 9,272 schools have been closed in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Niger and Nigeria as a result of insecurity – three times the number at the end of 2017.

“Schools are being shut down,” according to UNICEF Deputy Executive Director, Charlotte Petri Gornitzka. “Over the past two years, the number of schools that have been shut down has tripled; over 9,000 schools due to the insecurity have been attacked.”

The UNICEF report notes how spreading insecurity across north-west and south-west Cameroon has left more than 4,400 schools forcibly closed.

In Burkina Faso, more than 2,000 schools are closed, along with more than 900 in Mali, owing to increasing violence in both countries.

In the central Sahel region, moreover, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have witnessed a six-fold increase in school closures owing to attacks and threats of violence in just over two years, from 512 in April 2017, to more than 3,000 by June this year.

School closures in the four countries affected by crisis in the Lake Chad Basin – Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria – remained at around 1,000 between the end of 2017 and June 2019.

Education is crucial when you’ve fled violence – UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador

Just back from visiting a camp for people displaced by violence in central Mali, Ms. Almellehan insisted in Geneva that for many people, herself included, education was vitally important in giving children hope for a better future.

“I had to flee my homeland in Syria in 2013 and I also had to live in refugee camps,” she explained. “It wasn’t easy for me and also I can feel like those children who can’t go to school, because education is something really, really important to me, myself.”

One direct result of children not getting an education is that they are more vulnerable to recruitment by extremists or abuse at their hands such as forced marriage, the UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador insisted.

“When a child is not at a school, especially if the child suffers from a very bad economic situation, when they are in poverty, when they don’t have enough awareness, all of that can affect that child and can lead that child to being exploited easily,” she said.

On a wider level, the lack of schooling “is casting a foreboding shadow upon children”, their families, their communities and society at large,” UNICEF said in a statement, noting that more than 40 million six to 14-year-olds are already missing out on school in Central and West Africa.

The agency is working with education authorities and communities to support alternative learning opportunities including community learning centres, radio school programmes, technology for teaching and learning, and faith-based learning initiatives.

It is also providing tools for teachers who work in dangerous locations, and psychosocial support and care for schoolchildren emotionally scarred by violence.

$221 million appeal across seven countries only 28 per cent funded

“Now more than ever, governments must reaffirm their commitment to education and protect spending on education for their youngest citizens,” the UNICEF report insists. “Now is the time for renewed efforts to make sure the potential of a generation of young people is not wasted,” it emphasized, highlighting a funding gap of 72 per cent of the $221 million required for educational programmes across seven countries in the region.

[“source=un”]

August 24, 2019 0 comment

Education

Making the Grade: What’s the state of Apple in education in 2019?

by Loknath Das August 18, 2019

written by Loknath Das

Apple’s long had an interesting in their products being used in primary, secondary, and university settings. I believe this is partly due to the revenue opportunities (including e-rate), but I also know that Apple truly does care about the learning environment of students. One thing to consider for Apple is by investing in education, they are investing in their future customers and future employees. After attending the ISTE conference in Philadelphia, I have a clearer picture of where Apple is at, and where they are headed in Education. I love some of their strategies, and I have concerns about other parts, so I wanted to put all my thoughts together in a State of Apple in Education in 2019.

About Making The Grade: Every Saturday, Bradley Chambers publishes a new article about Apple in education. He has been managing Apple devices in an education environment since 2009. Through his experience deploying and managing 100s of Macs and 100s of iPads, Bradley will highlight ways in which Apple’s products work at scale, stories from the trenches of IT management, and ways Apple could improve its products for students.

In March of 2018, I attended Apple’s education event and came away less than impressed.

They need to build an “all in solution.” Apple is targeting teachers, but Google is targeting IT departments. Google is touting ease-of-management and deployment. Apple is touting new apps with Apple Pencil support.
Apple’s problems in education actually have less to do with the iPad being $299 or $259. They have a lot more to do with the story that they are framing in education being considered a pipe dream for a lot of the education market.
Education didn’t need a faster iPad. Education didn’t need Apple Pencil support. Those are great features for a consumer-friendly iPad, but education needed a clearer signal from Apple that they understand how school districts actually operate around the country and around the globe.
At the end of the day, students still have to pass standardized tests. They still have to meet all of their mandated requirements. I’m not sure an iPad with Apple Pencil support and some new GarageBand sound packs are really going to make that big of a difference as fun as they may be.

Since then, Apple has continued to double down on its “Everyone Can Create” strategy. Last fall, they released Evryone Can Create Curriculum on Apple Books.

Designed to help unleash kids’ creativity throughout their school day, Everyone Can Create teaches students to develop and communicate ideas through drawing, music, video and photos on iPad. The new, free project guides give teachers fun and meaningful tools to easily fold these skills into any lesson, assignment and subject. Everyone Can Create joins Apple’s successful Everyone Can Code initiative as one-of-a-kind programs for teachers that keep students excited and engaged.

As I’ve sat back and watched Apple and Google’s strategies from 40,000 feet, it’s clear they see education moving in different ways. Google values knowledge work (research, reports, spreadsheets, etc) where Apple values creativity (photo editing, augmented reality, music creation, podcasting, video creation, etc). Which one is right? I think modern students need a mix of both. Both types of devices (Chromebook and iPad) are well suited to the strengths of each company’s software platforms.

Going back to the ISTE conference, Apple took a unique approach this year. Instead of a booth in the Expo Hall, they took over multiple rooms in a connecting hotel to create a pop-up classroom experience. I was impressed. While Apple can often get the reputation of ignoring conferences in favor of their own events, they put in some serious effort to ISTE. Don’t take my word for it, though. I got to speak with Math teach from Texas on her thoughts:

Apple’s Pop-Up Classroom at ISTE leveraged a space theme across 6 stations of activities, transporting educators with an out-of-this-world experience. Lessons designed to utilize photo, video, music, drawing, coding, and augmented reality were shared in a playground format centered around creativity. Opportunities to interact with Apple Distinguished Educators and members of the Apple education team allowed for an irreplaceable human connection with one-on-one or small, intimate groups as participants moved at their own pace throughout the room. Personalized conversations proved inspirational as the relative magnitude of the large conference seemed a far reach from the calming environment of the Pop-Up Classroom.
This hands-on digital playground sparked creative lesson design as the participants were welcomed and encouraged to take the Apple Pop-Up Classroom Workbook, including completed tasks, with them upon exiting the experience. And, sample activities and resources to take back to school were made accessible on the Apple Teacher Learning Center at appleteacher.apple.com for everyone, including those who did not attend ISTE.
The augmented reality (AR) station in the Pop-Up Classroom highlighted the AR Makr app loaded with space-themed elements to coordinate with the rest of the stations. The possibilities for AR in schools are only restricted by the imagination. Opportunities for lesson design with AR spans storytelling to language acquisition practice, geography, re-creation of historical scenes, and mathematical scale and geometric spatial reasoning, just to name a few. – Mary Kemper, Director of Mathematics at Coppell Independent School District.

You can get a clear vision of what Apple wants education to be about. They want more of students getting to express themselves in new and exciting ways using the latest technology. I want that as well, and I think most teachers do as well. For Apple to realize that vision, they have some work to do, though. Here’s what I think Apple needs to focus on in education in 2019 and beyond.

Focus on Identity Management and App Roll Out Methods

Clever

I’ll talk about the problem of identity management in education until it’s no longer a problem. For me, it has to be a key part of Apple’s education plans in 2019 and beyond. For learning to be personalized, school districts need easier ways to deal with student login information across multiple apps. One company that is working to address this problem is Clever. Clever is a single sign-on service for K–12. Here’s the interesting pitch: it’s free for schools to use. Clever makes money by charging the applications that want to integrate with it. It’s a pretty simple pitch: Schools who use Clever get a free SSO (single sign-on) service that is geared towards education. Applications that integrate with Clever can promote ease of deployment to potential customers. It’s a win/win for everyone. Clever solves a problem that Apple school’s have. Why hasn’t Apple purchased Clever? If I was running education product marketing at Apple, I would be screaming to acquire them and make their technology at the center of the iPad deployment story. Apple’s app lineup is great, but The App Store has thousands of apps that extend the iPad even further. Clever creates a turn-key approach to app deployment and the iPad excels partly because of the App Store. Clever or Clever-like technology needs to be at the heart of Apple’s iPad story in Education. While they have launched Federated Authentication with Azure AD and Apple School Manager, this doesn’t work with schools who don’t use Azure AD or apps that don’t work with Azure AD.

Continue Desktop Class Safari Focus

As wide-ranging as the apps from the App Store is, Safari is still a crucial tool in K–12. One of the key features of iPadOS 13 is a desktop-class Safari. I wrote in June of 2018 that mobile Safari was holding the iPad back. I stand by everything in that article, and Apple looks to be addressing it. The web is an ever-changing platform, and Apple must continue to make sure Safari on iPadOS is usable for 100% of websites (including Google Drive/Docs/Spreadsheets). As important as the App Store is, school’s need to be able to count on iPad’s version of Safari just like they can with Chrome on Chromebooks. Web apps aren’t going away, and Safari needs to be a key focus of the iPadOS team for Apple to succeed in education in 2019 and beyond.

Wrap Up on Apple Education in 2019

Apple’s pricing for the iPad in K–12 is aggressive (as long as they keep updating the low cost iPad). They’ve got the app ecosystem to compete. They’ve got a vision of where they want education to go (moving away from simply knowledge work to embracing the creativity of students). Their challenge is less vision and more back-end/technical. Schools need an easier way to deploy user accounts across all of their apps. They need to continue to have access to a desktop-class Safari. If Apple keeps moving the ball forward while not forgetting the practicalities of how their products and services are deployed to the end-users, they will be well set up for continued success. Apple’s challenge in the long term is showing their products and services can be deployed and managed just as easy as Google’s can be. Google’s challenge will be expand the capabilities of ChromeOS to match the creative aspects of the iPad.

[“source=9to5mac”]

August 18, 2019 0 comment

Education

UGC recognizes 14 new higher education institutes for open and distance learning

by Loknath Das August 9, 2019

written by Loknath Das

University Grants Commission has recognised 14 new Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) for providing courses through distance education. This list is in addition to 82 such institutes that were recognised by the UGC in May this year.

In December 2012, the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Department of Higher Education, dissolved the Distance Education Council which was the erstwhile regulator of Distance Education programmes and transferred regulatory functions to the University Grants Commission.

UGC recognizes 14 new higher education institutes for open and distance learning

Representative image.

The Ministry of Human Resource Development in a gazette notification published earlier recognised all the degrees awarded through open and distance mode of education by the universities established by an Act of Parliament or State Legislature, Deemed Universities, Institutes of National Importance are eligible for posts and services under the central government, provided they have been approved by the UGC and wherever necessary, by All India Council for Technical Education for the programme for which it is the regulatory authority.

[“source=firstpost”]

August 9, 2019 0 comment

Education

Top 5 Digital Transformation Trends In Education For 2020

by Loknath Das August 2, 2019

written by Loknath Das

uncaptioned

It’s that time of year again where we take a look at the top digital transformation trends in the coming year in several industries. First up: education. As we all know, the only thing constant in digital transformation is change. So, how have digital transformation trends in education changed as we move toward the coming decade? And what, if anything, has stayed the same? The following are my top picks for not just technology trends but overall shifts in how we’ll be learning and connecting through technology moving forward.

Customized Learning Experiences

I have a friend in the private school sector who develops such customized learning experiences for her students that they are able to determine how they’d personally like to express their learning from each lesson—book report, song, art work, or even interpretive dance. Unfortunately, we can’t all send our kids to expensive private schools that put this much emphasis on personalized learning. One of the most maddening things for any parent with children in the public school system is the issue of standardized testing. As all parents and teachers know, all children have different ways of learning—visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc. New digital transformation trends in technology are going to make it easier for students of different learning types to learn in the way most appropriate to them, be it through interactive games, modeling tools, video production, etc. I can certainly see advanced analytics, AI and machine learning playing a role in analyzing individual student learning; although that may be a bit further off than next year.

For everyone considering the massive cuts to public education right now, I want to emphasize: it may not be that the teacher or school itself is providing an avenue to use these games for learning. However, new apps and software will make these learning avenues more accessible to students at home, etc.,which in turn will make their learning experiences that much more personalized.

Accessibility

Do we even need to learn to read anymore? With new digital transformation trends in technology, I’m beginning to wonder. The real answer is yes, of course, but it’s a provocative thought to say the least. One of the most amazing things to me about technology is that it’s making information and knowledge accessible, regardless of how well someone is able to read it. This is true for voice-to-text and text-to-voice transcription technologies that are especially helpful to students with dyslexia and other learning issues. There is also an increasing volume of information available in video and audio form, ensuring that learning is no longer limited by the easy ability to read. Huge!

Accessibility is improving in the geographic sense, as well. Not everyone is lucky enough to live in a great school district or near an amazing college. However, digital transformations trends in education are making it less and less important where you live. For instance, the child with dyslexia mentioned above may live in a rural area that provides little support for learning differences. However, video conferencing makes it easier for even the most remote students to get the specialized support they need.

Internet of Things

While the Internet of Things (IoT) may have yet to pay off when it comes to creating smart cities, it does hold tremendous potential in terms of creating smarter, more connected schools. On the obvious end, it’s helping save money in terms of energy and lighting usage. But in a more obscure way, it’s also helping to keep schools and students safer and more connected. For instance, by using sensors to track traffic throughout the campus, schools may be able to determine where security features like lighting would benefit students and visitors. Using real-time communication tools, they can share homework assignments with parents so they can stay on top of less communicative children. These tools can also let parents know when their child is absent from class. Using time-stamp technology, they can alert parents and students when an assignment has gone missing. The bottom line is that the IoT has the chance to keep all of us more connected, engaged, and on our toes. And that’s always a good thing.

Security

With so many kids online, security is a huge priority for parents. In the past, we’ve relied on apps like Securly. Still, the online world is such a wild mess of content that many parents still wonder how secure their child’s learning environment may be. In the next year, I think we’ll continue to see a push for more transparency and parental controls in online learning. We’ll also see a greater emphasis on things like digital credentialing through blockchain and two-factor authentication to ensure that all students are kept safe, wherever they may be accessing the content that fits their needs.

Schools are strapped

Obviously, one of the growing trends in education overall is a lack of funding. In fact, due to a growing distribution of pension funds in many states, that lack of funding is only going to continue to grow. For instance, in California, school districts paid 8% of their teacher payrolls for pensions in 2013. By 2020, that contribution will rise to 19%. This will force teachers, who already spend a considerable amount of their own money on classroom supplies, into an even tighter corner and will have the potentially to increase the growing tech/educational divide. In the short term, I believe the outgrowth of new technologies and the ease with which even parents can create customized learning plans will lead to an increase in charter schools and homeschooling—completely upending our definition of “education” overall.

We know learning needs to continue to evolve and that technology and tools can help to enable that. Our world is becoming a place where we can rapidly learn anything, and in many fields our experience is only a small part of our ability to learn and achieve. The future of education is exciting and scary. Schools and education must evolve to embrace new learning styles and technologies that can captivate students, while concurrently maintaining integrity of the knowledge in areas like literature and history that help create well rounded people. That should really be at the core of our change and digital transformation efforts in education.

[“source=forbes”]

August 2, 2019 0 comment

Education

Virginia’s Board of Education is considering recommendations to ‘force the hand of the General Assembly’

by Loknath Das July 30, 2019

written by Loknath Das

The Virginia Board of Education is considering a recommendation that would lay out minimum funding requirements for a state budget item used to help at-risk students, a move intended to put pressure on the General Assembly to increase education spending.

The board is going through its regular process of amending the Standards of Quality, or SOQs. SOQs provide guidelines for minimum resources in schools related to staffing, student achievement and graduation, accreditation and other areas.

Per the state Constitution, only the General Assembly can revise the board’s standards of quality. It’s also up to lawmakers to “determine the manner in which funds are to be provided for the cost of maintaining an educational program meeting the prescribed standards of quality,” as well as deciding how costs should be split between the state and local governments.

Lawmakers could fund education according to the standards — though they haven’t in several years, said Jim Livingston, president of the Virginia Education Association.

The boards’ proposed Standards of Quality are “foundational components of Virginia’s education program,” board documents stated.

Adding a standard that addresses how much money a certain fund should get is a maneuver that puts pressure on lawmakers who have been slow to restore education funding to pre-recession levels, Livingston said.

“It’s really a way to force the hand of the General Assembly to say, ‘Look, you’ve been shortchanging K-12 for years and it’s time for you to step up,’” he said.

The standards are revised every two years (which coincides with state budgets) and this round of changes better reflects what’s actually happening in localities, Livingston said.

The General Assembly cut K-12 education funding during the recession and ever since many localities have had to pay for more staff and other items the state no longer covers.

The board discussed the new standards and changes to existing ones this week and will make a decision on them in September.

In total, the board is considering changes that would cost just about a billion dollars per year if funded as presented. Here are some of the items up for consideration:

At-risk add-on funding: The at-risk add on is money distributed for general use by school districts with high concentrations of students on free and reduced lunch. It’s allocated in the budget and can be used for anything a school deems necessary.

The state has limited information on how school districts use at-risk add on money, board documents stated. After lawmakers approved a teacher pay raise this year, some school systems said they could use the at-risk add on money for the local share of the pay raise.

At a committee meeting this week, Department of Education staff suggested clarifying that the at-risk add on had to be used for staff unless 55 percent or more of the school’s population was on free or reduced lunch. Those schools could use additional money for support positions (like nurses) or hiring and retention incentives.

The proposal would cost $4.9 to $77.4 million more a year, depending on the proportion of at-risk students in a given school district.

“If the General Assembly funds the at-risk add on as proposed, it frees up local dollars so those localities can use that money for other things like salary increases,” Livingston said.

In the most recent General Assembly session, lawmakers approved adding $25 million over two years for the at-risk add on fund. Gov. Ralph Northam had proposed putting $35 million more in the fund before the session began.

Class sizes: One budget item the Board of Education wants to move under the new at-risk add on standard is funding to keep classrooms at an optimal size.

Class size reduction money has been in the budget since the mid-1990s. The state currently pays for capping class sizes up to third grade at 19 to 24 students, depending on age and the percentage of students on free and reduced lunch.

The original proposal suggested extending class-size reduction measures up to sixth grade, for an annual cost of $213.8 million a year.

The board has directed staff to consider cutting the class size reduction item (and some other proposals) and move that possible future funding under the at-risk add on to give school systems more freedom in deciding how to use money.

More money for certain teachers: The other major standard change the board wanted to move under the at-risk add on was an effort to keep experienced teachers in high-poverty schools.

The proposal would make it standard practice to pay teachers with five or more years of experience $6,000-$12,000 extra a year if they teach at a school with at least 70 percent of its students on free or reduced lunch.

A higher percentage of students on free or reduced lunch would mean more additional pay.

Specialized student support personnel: A new standard would move nurses, school social workers and psychologists into a new staffing category to remove them from the state’s decade-old support staff cap.

The cap limits how many school staff — custodians, nurses, social workers, psychologists and others — the state will pay for. Lawmakers put it in place during the recession.

The proposed standard for nurses, social workers and psychologists would consider four specialized student support positions per 1,000 students an adequate number. It would cost $100 million more per year, VDOE staff estimated.

“While the recommendation … would not specify ratios for each individual position, it would ensure that students across the commonwealth have access to student support services,” board documents stated. “This approach would provide school divisions with flexibility to determine how these positions should be filled based upon local conditions.”

Lifting the support staff cap: The board also wants to reaffirm its 2016 recommendation to lift the support cap. It would be a $371 million annual undertaking.

Sen. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, asked the Senate Finance committee to consider lifting all or some of the support cap earlier this year. She said at the time she didn’t expect lawmakers to do it all at once, so instead asked school divisions what was most important.

Their response: nurses, social workers and psychologists, which the Board of Education has proposed moving out from under the cap.

The board included a number of previously approved standards in this year’s proposal, including its preference for having one guidance counselor for every 250 students in every school.

[“source=virginiamercury”]

July 30, 2019 0 comment

Education

Advisor Farooq reviews functioning of Education department

by Loknath Das July 28, 2019

written by Loknath Das

Advisor to Governor, Farooq Khan, Saturday ordered ban on transfer of teachers (including masters and lecturers) in the entire state for at least two months.

The decision was taken in this regard during a review meeting of the School Education department chaired by Advisor Farooq Khan, here at Civil Secretariat.

Commissioner Secretary Education Sarita Chauhan, Chairperson JKBOSE Veena Pandita, Director School Education Kashmir M Y Malik and other concerned senior officers were present in the meeting.

Advisor Khan also ordered the officials present in the meeting that any application for transfer or posting of teaching faculty should be routed through proper channel.

‘No application for transfer should be accepted at all, except for rare cases which need special consideration after thorough scrutiny’, the Advisor said.

While chairing a meeting, the Advisor also sought details of the number of teachers, masters and lecturers deployed/attached on non-teaching positions-school wise, indicating the period of deployment and the reasons thereof. He said that the teaching staff that has been attached with the Chief Education Offices (CEO) and Zonal Education Offices (ZEO) for two- three years should be transferred with immediate effect. He said that they should not be transferred to soft areas but to places where there is an immediate need.

He also directed the provincial directors to conduct meetings on monthly basis with the concerned CEOs and ZEOs to supervise the functioning of the schools.

The Advisor further asked the officials to identify loopholes if any in the education sector and redress the same for the smooth functioning of the department.The Advisor was informed about the various initiatives that have been undertaken by the Education Department to minimize the gender gap in terms of school enrolment and to address the drop-out ratio. He also asked the officials to check the assured minimum facilities in the schools. Various centrally sponsored schemes also came up for discussion during the meeting.

[“source=greaterkashmir”]

July 28, 2019 0 comment

Education

The future of immersive education will be live, social, and personalized

by Loknath Das July 27, 2019

written by Loknath Das

Live VR training with Axon Park

AR and VR have delivered on the promise to supercharge the enterprise’s education and training industry. From workflow support for sectors like manufacturing where factory floors are made consistently more safe and productive, to teaching employees soft skills that allow them to better adapt to the ever more nuanced demands of the modern workplace, these “embodied” digital formats inherently drive positive results because both our cognition and bodies believe the experience to be real.

Starting in 2016, I began to cover the education niche of VR and primarily through the lens of the remarkable journey traveled by U.K.-based VirtualSpeech; a startup that has never raised a single drop of venture funding and yet (or despite of) has found a viable product-market fit that the team reached through a process of trial and error that has, since last year, positioned them in revenue-positive territory.

VirtualSpeech is based on a hybrid model that pairs VR with traditional course programs like e-learning and in-person training, affording users a chance to practice what they have learnt in realistic environments in order to really absorb and integrate essential soft skills much more effectively.

“User engagement for our courses has also been very encouraging, particularly for the VR part of the courses, where the majority of users complete all their course scenarios. We’ve read about how engagement for online courses is typically low, so we are pleasantly surprised by our engagement levels.” says Dominic Barnard, a cofounder at VirtualSpeech. “As we progress forward, I see the B2B route for us becoming a key avenue for growth, as companies begin to shift budget away from expensive in-person training and into VR training, where users performance can be monitored and ROI accurately measured.”

Above: Practice for your radio interview with a live trainer with VirtualSpeech.

That most of the success cases in the news about VR and AR education have been fairly isolated to the needs of the enterprise isn’t surprising, thanks to the simple fact that the public education sector is by comparison a bureaucratic jungle of red tape that makes it that much more difficult to penetrate for spatial computing startups that have limited resources and runway.

There is, however, the prospect of reshaping, rejuvenating, and revolutionizing the educational landscape for the next generation of youth. After all, spatial computing triggers our physicality and appeals to our imagination; a unique combination that allows this interactive digital format to help us store learning in an emotional and instinctively charged way that has never been possible before.

Calling all ‘volumetric thinkers’

Last month on The AR Show, host Jason McDowall interviewed Amy Peck, the CEO at EndeavorVR, who spent a good chunk of the podcast discussing the promise of spatial computing for early education, a subject that particularly resonates for Peck since she is the mother of two children she describes as being “diametrically opposed learners.” Her eldest, for example, is a very linear academic learner that does well on tests and therefore tends to excel in traditional academic environments. Her younger son, on the other hand, is what she coins a “volumetric thinker”.

“It’s also the kind of intelligence that sadly land him in the principal’s office quite a bit. Because he’s looking for the whys and wheres, and kind of wants to understand how everything works and doesn’t enjoy sitting in a classroom and being taught reading, writing, and arithmetic.” Peck said during the interview. “What happens when kids are at a fairly young age in middle school is, some of them hit the ceiling in their understanding of math and science. And it becomes very, very, difficult to engage all of the students in the way they learn best.”

The idea is whether emerging tech like spatial computing can help unshackle unconventional thinkers or ones that, for whatever reason, lose interest and therefore focus in traditional Prussian-style education settings like Peck’s youngest son (or myself, for that matter).

Individualized curriculums

Although it’s impractical to expect a single teacher to be able to service a group of students in an individualized way, we do see it nevertheless happening in the real world at experimental schools like Agora in Roermond, Netherlands. And with the help of AI, immersive education seems fully capable of offering customized education through a digital format as well.

Peck believes that VR represents the opportunity to create systems that takes the pressure off of teachers to have to “teach to the test” or to the specific standards and instead can serve as guides to the curriculum, really letting the child learn in the way that suits them best personally. This would naturally open up a totally new generation of children that don’t get stunted at 13 and give up on STEM education. They, she says, get an extra six or seven years of STEM education.

The push to make this happen is already underway with social enterprises like TechRow, which already brings immersive technology experiences to over twenty K-12 schools throughout New York City. The non-profit organization leverages immersive technology to build the capacity of schools to support teachers and improve student engagement with the goal of enhancing learning outcomes.

In June, I described how the next generation of mobile connectivity will allow high-fidelity VR and AR to be streamed to the masses in the frictionless manner in which the tech has always been ultimately intended. Indeed, 5G’s potential is mind-blowing insofar as it will allow emerging tech in general to extend their scope of influence by orders of magnitude that, in turn, will allow immersive education to go live and multiplayer at a scale that makes the experiences as persistent and ubiquitous as real life.

Immersive education goes live

Enter Axon Park, the company that is equalizing access to learning by connecting people globally through VR and AI — and live.

Above: Social VR education powered by Axon Park

“When you use virtual classrooms, you are no longer constrained by physical space. It doesn’t matter where the students or best instructors in the world are based, everyone can just pop on a headset and be together.” says Taylor Freeman, founder and CEO at Axon Park. “It’s definitely a form of teleportation. It’s going to create incredible opportunities for people who live outside the metropolitan areas where high quality instruction isn’t as accessible. I definitely expect to see a true revolution in learning with this XR platform shift.”

The platform is hosting their first ever full semester length college course, which will be taught completely in VR this fall, featuring industry vet, Alex Silkin, co-founder and CTO of Survios, as Axon Park’s first live lecturer. Students join Silkin twice a week in order to learn how to build best-in-class immersive worlds with one of the pioneers that has firsthand helped to shape the industry. And like traditional institutions, admission is highly competitive, designed for expert-level developers, and even offers financial aid for students in need.

“I firmly believe in the potential of VR to revolutionize education. We have already seen how much more engaging education is when we introduce videos and interactive experiences.” says Silkin. “VR takes this to the next level by putting the student right in the center of the action, allowing them to experience the subject matter face to face, rather than through a small square window on a 2D screen.”

That real humans can project as teachers who are accessible at scale is already an awesome enough feat, but the tech naturally opens the door for autonomous avatars to step in as assistants, administrators and, perhaps sooner than we think, immersive guides in their own right. Virtual beings ought to make the very idea of recorded lessons obsolete, and their activity will likely prove to be complementary, rather than overlapping or interfering with, the work of human teachers.

Above: A peek into Axon Park’s first live session conducted just earlier this month

“We will build Axon into an embodied AI capable of teaching a student in a custom and adaptive way, similar to how a human tutor might work with a student. Over time, AI instructors will likely become the primary form of knowledge transfer, whereas human teachers will be much more focused on social and emotional intelligence,” Freeman told me. That’s quite a future.

[“source=venturebeat”]

July 27, 2019 0 comment