According to data released by the CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) the number of mobile Internet users in China rose by over 11% to 557 million in 2014 compared to 2013. This means that over 86% of Internet users in Mainland China are accessing the web via their mobile phone, an increase by 5%. The overall Internet access rate is now at 48% with 649 million Chinese using the world wide web in total. 27% of Internet users are located in rural areas. 35% of Internet users own a tablet, the number goes up to 51% for users in higher education. The group of Internet users who consume video on a mobile phone is slightly bigger than those who watch videos on a computer or tablet. These numbers clearly show that edtech startups who want to reach learners in China need to provide a native mobile experience, even more so in the years to come. Further Reading China now has 557M mobile internet users, grand total of 649M netizens | Tech in Asia China Reaches 649M Internet Users in 2014: Report | TechNode Links Cyberspace Administration of China Picture License  Some rights reserved by the measure of mike

The higher education landscape will change more in the next ten years than it has in the previous one hundred and fifty. Technology has challenged traditional assumptions about learning, and the proliferation of MOOCs and vocational training programs has led to new choices for aspiring students. Education is undoubtedly becoming more global, with record numbers of students seeking to go abroad for further study. These shifts all point to one truth: students all over the world face an increasing number of choices about what, how, and where to study. Theoretically, it has never been easier for a Korean teenager who decides that she wants to pursue an education at one of Britain’s world-class universities to do so. She might opt to become one of over four hundred thousand international students studying in the UK for many reasons—not least because four of the world’s top ten universities are in the UK—and if she did so, it wouldn’t be just her who benefits. A recent report estimated international students’ financial contribution to the UK at over £14 billion pounds. From a cultural standpoint, international students are integral to creating a diverse university environment that can help prepare all students for a globally interconnected world. We can largely credit technology for creating massive shifts in how we think about education; technology has facilitated our ability to know about other educational options, travel with ease to study in different places, and even learn from a distance (MOOCs). Yet this rapidly evolving education landscape is not serving its students well. The fact is that the way that many students are making decisions is at best misguided and at worst detrimental to their futures. Nothing illustrates this better than the case of international students, who face the additional hurdle of navigating an unfamiliar and bureaucratic process with less support. Too many students finish their undergraduate degrees only to report that they didn’t attend a majority of their lectures, or were left uninspired by their chosen course, or with no real sense of how to translate their studies into a career. There are, of course, many reasons for these shortcomings, but we need to ask why we aren’t focusing more on how students make decisions and what to study in the first place. Are students’ chosen universities necessarily a good fit for them? This question, I believe, is one that applies to international and domestic students alike. The money that is being spent (and there is a lot of it) is resulting in gross inefficiencies that mean students are underserved by the status quo. In the case of international students, universities are painfully reliant on the agent model, in which recruiters receive commission for sending students to a given university. The problem with agents is that they are incentivised by the universities. They are only accountable to universities that pay them to recruit students; finding a match for the student was never their priority. Outside of agents, students can employ expensive private counsellors to help them think about how to make higher education decisions. But it is only the wealthy who can realistically afford these services, and particularly for international students who are operating in an environment where their schools may know little about international admissions processes or may have limited resources, the problem is exacerbated. Students whose parents didn’t go to university are even more disadvantaged in that the confusing university applications process may appear even more opaque. The truth is that we are failing our students, and the collateral damage of this failure is an increasingly unequal educational system whereby we are not maximising the potential of our students, and we aren’t getting enough different types of students through the door in the first place. As the education sector is disrupted by exciting advances that have the potential to revolutionise education, it is increasingly important to rethink what options serve students—and our educational system itself—best. In my opinion, technology presents a massive opportunity to democratise access to higher education by making students aware of the options they have and encouraging them to explore, think critically, and find universities that are good matches for them academically, socially and financially. It is only by scrutinising how students are making decisions about what and where they study that we will get closer to creating a higher education landscape that is fairer, more diverse and a better fit for our students’ needs. Picture License  Some rights reserved by ToastyKen

Blackboard shares in this infographic ‘best practices’ and ‘lessons learned’ from some of their cutting-edge professional college and university clients about their journeys into online learning. Click image above to enlarge

Student loan refinancer CommonBond announced a strategic partnership with education planning and financing provider Nelnet. As part of the deal Nelnet invested an undisclosed amount in CommonBond and agreed to finance at least $150 million of CommonBond's annual loan volume. The announcement comes on the heels of SoFi’s $200 million Series D at a $1.3 billion valuation. Founded in 2011, CommonBond raised over $100 million in venture capital to date. Nelnet is the first participant in CommonBond’s new forward flow program which lets interested capital providers buy loans directly on the CommonBond platform. "We believe that having a diversity of funding sources and funder profiles makes the most sense for building a strong and sustainable financial marketplace," states David Klein, Chief Executive and Co-Founder of CommonBond in the press release. The company also expanded its loan financing options to over 700 programs in the US. CommonBond connects students with alumni investors to offer easier and cheaper student loans. These investors tend to be genuinely interested in supporting grad students which leads to CommonBond’s other goal: building a community around the product. Further Reading CommonBond Announces Innovative Financing Partnership With Nelnet | PR Newswire CommonBond Obtains $150 Million in Boom for Online Lenders | Bloomberg CommonBond goes from disruptor to player | Crain’s CommonBond Boosts Its Student Loan Refi Footprint With $150 Million Investment From Nelnet | Forbes Links commonbond.co | Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | CrunchBase | AngelList

Few things have changed in the last few centuries as much as the way we learn. Students have gone from attending one-room school houses to having the world at their fingertips in the classroom. Here’s a look at how evolving technology has impacted education. Courtesy EdTechTimes

In January 2014 I started my first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) after reading a blogpost on Poets & Quants. I did not know back then this would be the start of the many MOOCs I would complete in the next 10 months. Over the course of these 10 months I learned 3 important things about this new way to gain knowledge: The wealth of knowledge accessible through MOOCs is enormous Whether you want to study about the work of Scandinavian authors, the intricacies of app programming or just want to know something about horses there is a MOOC that will fit. The wealth of knowledge that is currently available through MOOCs is amazing. They cater to people with different needs from those who are working towards a MBA equivalent (I am one of them) to people who just want to know more about their field of interest and professionals with many years of experience. This wide range of people have something in common though: the desire to learn something new and to update their knowledge. This is great in an economy which requires everyone to keep on learning after they left formal education. Completing a MOOC requires a good amount of discipline With completion rates around 10% there is a fair chance you will not finish a MOOC you sign up for. Even though this low completion rate is not necessary a bad thing, it does indicate it requires a fair amount of discipline to complete a MOOC successfully. As there are no incentives other than your own motivation and discipline to continue learning, dropping out becomes easy. Where you have peer support and financial incentives (you already paid your tuition fee for the whole year) to help you to continue studying if it gets tough, these things are all absent in MOOCs. This is why MOOC users fall back on traditional forms of support such as study groups to maintain their motivation. Employers do not yet know how to treat MOOCs If you completed one or more MOOCs you might put it on your CV to demonstrate your learning. However, you just might soon find yourself explaining what MOOCs are to potential employers. As a recent graduate who was looking for a job I was in contact with several recruiters, none of which knew how to interpret those 3 lines on my CV. During the initial phone screening this was something that came up regularly. The most interesting questions I got was when I intended to finish my MOOC studies. As I see MOOCs as part of a lifelong learning strategy I kindly answered him I probably would never finish after which I explained the idea behind this answer. These interactions with recruiters show to me employers do not yet fully understand the potential impact of MOOCs can have on the professional development of their employees. Having enjoyed this new learning opportunities, I continue in my journey towards new knowledge. This post has first been published on LinkedIn. Picture License  Some rights reserved by Photomatt28

Do you pin? There are plenty of educators who are in fact pinning via Pinterest, sharing quotes, lectures, notes, research material, and more. This infographic depicts Pinterest’s role in education. For a text version of the ‘Using Pinterest in Education’ guide, check out ‘The Teacher’s Quick Guide to Pinterest.’ Source: WorldWideLearn, via Edudemic

One of the major tasks for college and university students is to stay organized. Away from the (loving) supervision of parents keeping track of what is due and when can become overwhelming, especially when the student has difficulties to set up a proper learning and work routine. WhatsDue aims to help organizationally challenged learners to keep up with their assignments through a simple to use app that reminds them of due dates through customizable reminders. Introduce your startup and give a short description of what you are doing. WhatsDue is the simplest way for students to keep track of due dates. Professors or students send us their syllabi and we input all of the due dates into our system. Then, students simply subscribe to their courses in our app on iOS or Android and have all their due dates in one place. Students receive automatic reminders before due dates as well as push notifications when assignment details change. Who are the founders, how did you meet, what are your different roles in the startup. WhatsDue has four co-founders: Dan Green, Aaron Taylor, Brennan Gleason, and Techtone. Dan is the technical director of WhatsDue and our sole developer. When he isn’t writing code, Dan can be found testing out new features for WhatsDue. Aaron is responsible for business development, growth, operations, and making sure that WhatsDue grows as quickly as possible. Dan and Aaron met 3 years ago at the start of their studies at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel. Both are completing business degrees with a specialization in finance and are set to graduate in 2015. Techtone is a cloud integration firm based in Vancouver, Canada whose founder Omer Segoly is a long time friend and former classmate of Dan’s. Techtone ensures that no matter how many students are using WhatsDue, the app will always be quick and reliable. Brennan Gleason is our graphic designer, responsible for all of WhatsDue’s gorgeous graphics and interfaces. Brennan and his designs have been featured in the Daily Mail UK, as well as on ABC News. What is the main problem in education that you aim to solve. Many students have a hard time keeping track of due dates. Most schools recognize this problem and are trying to find solutions, but they rely on archaic learning management systems (LMSs) like Moodle or Blackboard. Most LMSs don’t offer students a place where they can see all of their due dates in one place, and this problem is amplified by many professors not using the LMSs properly. We address this problem at every level. First and foremost, our app is easy to use for students and gives them exactly what they want: every due date in one place. Instead of relying on professors to use complex systems, WhatsDue employees input syllabi into our database. Any changes to assignments are immediately reported to all users via push notifications. But we didn’t stop there. In order to make sure that nobody using our app ever forgets to start an assignment, we added customizable reminders. Our ultimate goal is to help students succeed by tearing down a major barrier to academic success: forgetting what’s due and when. In which markets / regions are you active. What markets / regions are next. We are currently active at select universities in the US, Canada, and Israel. We also have a number of K-12 teachers testing the app for their classes. Who is your target audience. Our target audience is university students who are organizationally challenged. These students often have dozens of assignments to complete throughout each semester and need some extra help keeping up with the workload. How do you engage with your target audience. How do you convert them into users of your product. The core of WhatsDue’s strength is our team. Our campus ambassadors are students who share their enthusiasm for WhatsDue with their peers and professors. We convert students into users by making their lives easier by helping them keep organized. What is your business model. How much does your product / service cost. WhatsDue is free and will always be free. For the time being, we are focused on gaining users. When we hit critical mass, we will earn revenue by offering school-related services that students normally use. These may include buying textbooks, hiring tutors, or searching for jobs. Who are your main competitors? What sets you apart from them? Our main competitors are homework apps like iStudiez and myHomework Planner. However, students need to enter all their own due dates into these apps, which is time consuming and a barrier to the organizationally challenged. With WhatsDue, this isn’t necessary; students only need to select their class in the app. As a bonus, we keep the students updated about changes to assignments. As soon as we verify one, everyone subscribed gets a push notification. If you raised funding, how much did you raise. Who are your investors. If not, are you planning to raise funding. We are actively looking for funding. Are there milestones you are especially proud of and would like to share. We did an alpha launch at Dan and Aaron’s university, and approximately half of the roughly 1000 students in the international program became regular users. What are the next steps in growing your startup. We are experimenting with different techniques for user acquisition, and our most promising one so far is working with professors. We have found that professors are excited about WhatsDue, especially because we don’t ask them to do anything other than send us a syllabus. Once we get the seed funding we need, we will expand our data entry team and target more North American universities. How can people get in touch with you. aaron@whatsdueapp.com www.whatsdueapp.com @whatsdue facebook.com/whatsdue

Results from the 10th annual survey conducted by the Sloan Consortium, the Babson Survey Research Group, and the College Board, are now available in the complete survey report titled, Changing Course: Ten Years of Tracking Online Education in the United States. This annual study has become the leading barometer of online learning in the United States. Some of the key report findings include: Over 6.7 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2011 term, an increase of 570,000 students over the previous year. 32% of higher education students now take at least one course online. 76% of academic leaders rate the learning outcomes in online education as the same or superior to those in face-to-face. Only 30.2% of chief academic officers believe that their faculty accept the value and legitimacy of online education - a rate that is lower than recorded in 2004 The complete report can be downloaded here. This infographic below highlights a few more of the key takeaways from the study. Click image above to enlarge

Google Helpouts will be shut down due to "slower than expected growth" on April 20th. Users can download their Helpouts history until November 1st using Google Takeout. Launched in November 2013, Google Helpouts was an expert directory built upon the Google Hangouts infrastructure. At launch, the platform was used by several education companies including Coursera, Rosetta Stone and Alliance Française. On the one hand, it is not unusual for Google to shut down products that do not gain enough traction, even though those products might have a dedicated group of users. On the other hand, there is a growing number of startups that offer the same service focused on a specific vertical. Berlin-based Flexperto offers its platform to banks and insurance companies, Miami-based LiveNinja offers its Katana platform to a broader range of businesses that want to offer video chat based advice to their customers. And then there is of course Chegg which uses InstaEDU’s on-demand technology to offer a low-cost college guidance counseling service. After being acquired by Chegg in June 2014, InstaEDU (now Chegg Tutors) offers on-demand tutoring sessions for students who are stuck during their studies or prepare for an exam at $0.40 per minute. via The Verge Further Reading Helpouts is shutting down | Google Coursera, Rosetta Stone, Alliance Française among the first to offer Google Helpouts | EDUKWEST Chegg Launches Affordable Online College Guidance Counseling Service | PR Newswire HEDLINE: Chegg acquires InstaEDU for $30 million | EDUKWEST

Source: CollegeStats.org

My friend has a son who is an exceptional musician, and was recently accepted to one of the most prestigious college music programs in the country. The other weekend my friend went to visit his son, who took him to the music lab to show his dad what he was learning about the science of harmonization, and how music that sounds spontaneous is actually the result of complex scientific principles. [dfads params='groups=2593&limit=1&orderby=random'] Like any parent would be, my friend is immensely proud of his son. And, like any good parent would be, he wonders how his son will take what he learns in school and translate that to a lucrative career—or at least one that pays the bills, and opens even the possibility of supporting my friend’s hoped-for future grandchildren. It’s a scary thing if you've invested a significant amount of money in an education other people label "useless". But as someone who has hired people for a long time now, I don’t believe any degree is "useless". If I can’t see the value of someone who understands the science of harmonization could bring to my organization, then I am doing a poor job as a hiring manager. And I’m missing the chance to bring some outside of the box thinking and potential for innovation into my business. That said, it’s still the job candidate's responsibility to find a way to demonstrate how their education has increased their ability to think critically and bring a fresh perspective. Job Training vs. Education The infamous "underwater basket weaving degree" doesn’t exist. Next to that, art history might be the most dismissed major, at least in pop culture. However, art history is defined as "the study of art in its historical development and context". Remove the word art, and think of that sentence in a different way. If someone can understand historical development and context, they can surely be taught the more practical aspects of most jobs. Our tendency to conflate job training and education is a mistake. If we really believe in the power of the free market and creative destruction, than by definition most jobs people get trained for are in the process of becoming obsolete. People do need to be trained to do whatever it is they are going to do for a living, but they also need to know how to think critically, observe and understand patterns, and be forward thinking - among many other things. If they don’t know how to do those things not only will the workforce leave them behind, but the companies that hire them will eventually be left behind as well. Those qualities can be developed in a variety of places, but a liberal arts degree is one of those places. And, as Walter Isaacson said in this post, we do need engineers and computer scientists, but we also need people who understand what it means to be human. Uphill Climb All of that aside, if you are someone with a degree that others may dismiss, and you aren’t becoming a curator or a musician, you face an uphill climb. Hiring managers are short on time and long on candidates, and it’s on you to show how your education impacted the way you think, not just what you know--because, for the vast majority of professions, how you think is more important than what you know. That’s true for any recent college grad, but it’s especially true if you just spent a significant amount of money on a degree that others don’t always view favorably. Finding ways to demonstrate your value, critical thinking skills, and entrepreneurial drive is not easy, but it is easier than it used to be. Write a blog, design an app, start a nonprofit—do something that shows you are more than just a piece of paper and that what you learned actually gave you a skill set that others may find valuable. The only thing useless is accepting a paradigm that doesn't have to be true. Picture License  Some rights reserved by quinn.anya

Learn how to design online sessions that students can fully participate from a mobile device using the Blackboard Collaborate mobile app. During this online workshop offered 2/28/2013 we explored the features available of the Blackboard Collaborate mobile app for iOS for students to participate during a live online session and see the student experience participating from a mobile device. We also offered tips for designing web conferencing sessions that maximize the features of Blackboard Collaborate mobile, offering the best possible collaborative learning experience for students. | view podcast in iTunes | view mp4 For links to archives of other online workshops offered by NIU Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center, visit our YouTube channel

As part of his project Scholas Occurentes Pope Francis announced the launch of Scholas Labs last week. Scholas Labs is a four-month edtech accelerator program which offers support with fundraising, mentorship and product tests in the Scholas network. The accelerator is supported by several tech companies like Microsoft, Google and Grupo Telecom. In September Pope Francis launched Scholas.Social, a global, multi-religious and multi-cultural network that aims to connect schools through collaboration, encounter and shared interest. Scholas Occurentes is based on the task to create an online platform that would transform the way students learn. It is modelled after two projects he ran as Archbishop of Buenos Aires. Further Reading Startup Accelerator Scholas.Labs Announced by Pope Francis | Inquistr Nasce Scholas Labs, l’incubatore di startup del Papa | Wired Pope Francis launches Global Online School Network Scholas.Social | EDUKWEST Links scholaslabs.org

Courtesy OnlineCollege.org

McGraw-Hill Education announced a partnership with Cerego, a provider of memory management tools. Under the partnership the companies will work on adaptive language learning products for K-12 students. The first world languages program to be powered by Cerego is "Asi se dice" for the Spanish market, becoming available for classroom use beginning in Fall 2015. Last month, Cerego announced a partnership with MOOC platform edcast to add personalized and adaptive learning features to online courses. Cerego’s technology joins McGraw-Hill’s other adaptive learning products ALEKS and LearnSmart. The latter has been developed by Danish edtech startup area9 which McGraw-Hill Education acquired in February 2014. Further Reading McGraw-Hill Education Teams with Cerego to Power Adaptive Learning Experiences to Help K-12 Students Learn World Languages More Effectively | PR Newswire Live from TransformingEDU 2015: EdCast and Cerego Partner to Create a Comprehensive MOOC Solution for Universities, Companies and Organizations | PRWeb HEDLINE: McGraw-Hill Education acquires Area9, David Levin new CEO | EDUKWEST Links mheonline.com/ceregodemo

Renaissance Learning announced the acquisition of UClass, a cloud storage and content management platform that allows school districts to upload their entire curricula. Founded in 2012, UClass was used by 5,000 schools at the time of the acquisition having uploaded some 16 million items, including lesson plans, videos and games. It will now be integrated into Renaissance Learning’s suite of assessment and analytics tools with the team staying on board. According to Jack Lynch, CEO of Renaissance Learning, the acquisition complements the company’s offerings. Renaissance Learning made headlines in March of last year when it got acquired by private equity firm Hellman and Friedman for $1.1 billion. The acquisition came less than a month after Google Capital had put $40 million into the company at a valuation of $1 billion. Renaissance Learning covers one third of US schools and is present in 60 countries with around 20 million students using the offerings at a cost of $5 per student. Further Reading Renaissance Learning Acquires UClass, Bridges K12 Assessment and Instruction | PR Newswire HEDLINE: Renaissance Learning acquired for $1.1 billion | EDUKWEST Links uclass.io

By now, you likely may have already heard of the announcement from Google that Google Reader will be shut down as of July 1, 2013. Since the announcement, there has been much commotion online from loyal Google Reader users expressing their disappointment in Google for "pulling the plug" on yet another service that had many education uses. I thought I’d use this opportunity to reflect on my own use of Google Reader and RSS to this point, reevaluate what steps I will take moving forward to transition to a new solution for reading and sharing news online, and share the steps I have since taken to begin my transition away from Google Reader. How I Use RSS Today I began using Google Reader back in 2005 when it was first released as a Google Labs experimental project. At the outset, Google Reader was my sole solution for subscribing to blogs and also for setting-up and following Google Alerts for topic-specific news headlines. Over the years, as Google allowed through APIs for other services to access and manipulate RSS contents, I began to try other RSS aggregators and apps, most recently Reader, Flipboard, and Mr. Reader, that provided a better overall user experience (better UI, more sharing features, mobile-optimized, etc.). Yet, Google Reader remained my central hub for news and information online. Subscribing to blogs and other news sites in Google Reader, it became the primary source for me to read and share news with others. I would star articles, search through my subscriptions for articles I had previously read, and share articles from Google Reader to other social media services using tools like Buffer. In fact, if you follow me on Twitter, the vast majority of the links that I’ve shared over the years came directly from Google Reader. the most compelling use of Google Reader. Google Reader had become the "plumbing" for my online consumption and sharing of news and resources with others. While I was using other apps to manage my Google Reader subscriptions, read articles, etc., I was able to seamlessly move from one app to the other to read and share news as it happened, with the services I used syncing through Google Reader. Why I Chose Feedly While there are indeed many different options for subscribing to and consuming news content today, what I was looking for most was a great experience on my smart phone, tablet, and desktop computer which all would synchronize so that I could continue to move from one to the other as desired. I find that today I primarily read my news on my iPad, but also at times my iPhone when my iPad isn’t handy. In my searching, I came across Feedly’s promise for a seamless transition for Google Reader users to it’s Google Reader clone, Normandy. In addition, I saw that Feedly already had mobile and tablet apps along with a desktop browser plugin that would all synchronize my activity for now over Google Reader, and eventually its new cloud-based synchronization platform Normandy. That was enough to convince me….I decided to give Feedly a try! Thus far, the experience has indeed been seamless and I recommend that those looking for a replacement to Google Reader definitely try Feedly. Getting Started with Feedly If you already have a Google Reader account, getting setup on Feedly is simply…just login with your Google account that you used for Google Reader. I’d recommend then taking this brief guided tour as well as viewing the following tutorial to get an understanding for how Feedly is similar, yet different from Google Reader. I viewed both, and in no time I felt right at home in the Feedly mobile app as well as browser interface. I was able to setup my Pocket (used for saving select articles for reading later) and Buffer (used for time-delayed sharing on Twitter) accounts within to easily share to either of those services directly from within Feedly. In short, so far I am very pleased with Feedly and do hope that Feedly takes advantage of the opportunity created by Google Reader’s demise to grow their features and API integrations with other services. Only time will tell… Have you tried Feedly? If so, what has been your experience thus far? Or, if you are considering a different news reading tool, which one and why? Leave a comment with your thoughts!

Instructure has raised a $40 million Series E led by Insight Venture Partners with participation of Bessemer Venture Partners and EPIC Ventures. The venture round brings the total raised by Instructure to around $90 million and it will be the last before the planned IPO later this year. The investment will go into the launch of Instructure’s new business facing product called Bridge, a corporate learning and engagement platform. At launch CLEARLINK, OpenTable and Oregon State University are using the product. Since its launch in 2011, Instructure’s Canvas LMS has been used by over 18 million students and teachers from more than 1,200 universities, colleges and K-12 school districts across the globe. With Bridge, Instructure aims to create a similar success in the corporate market. Further Reading Instructure Secures $40 Million in a Pre-IPO Series E Round | PR Newswire On The Way To An IPO, Education Technology Startup Instructure Is Close To Raising A Big New Round | TechCrunch Education tech startup Instructure has raised $40 million | Business Insider Instructure Expands in Corporate Market With New Funding | Inside Higher Ed Links getbridge.com

For quite some time, I have been frustrated with the lack of options within Blackboard for customizing the entry point of the course. While an instructor can set any tool or content area to be the default entry point in a course, there’s only so much that can be done in a Blackboard content area or page using the current built-in functionality. When Blackboard introduced the "Home Page" as the new default entry point, students were given access to a variety of information streams when logging into the course. However, these information modules are still primarily system driven and can not be easily customized or new modules setup by the instructor. With a few further customizations, the Home Page could become a much more useful tool. For years, the Announcements page was the default entry point in Blackboard. With the release of Blackboard Learn 9, the Home Page was added which includes various information modules for the user, such as: Needs Attention, What’s New, My Tasks, Alerts, etc. Home Page in Blackboard Learn   While the Home Page tool was a step in the right direction, it is still very restricted and falls short in allowing faculty to customize at the level in which it can be a true "Communication Dashboard" for the course. I’ve shared this feedback with Blackboard product developers at BbWorld and the Blackboard Idea Exchange over the past nearly 2 years, but since I’ve yet to see my suggestions implemented, I’m sharing them here as well so that perhaps others can echo the value of such a feature enhancement. What follows is my rationale for why I’ve desired a more instructor-customizable communication dashboard as the entry point for a Blackboard course as well as a sample of my "homemade" solution. In future posts, I’ll then share more specifics for how to create a customized communication dashboard in Blackboard and incorporate a variety of different information sources within the dashboard. Needs In my teaching, I’m often introducing in-service teachers to new technology tools and practices that they can apply into K-12 classroom teaching. My students and I use 3rd party blog, sms, calendar, and other tools in addition to Blackboard and I would like to be able to provide information about accessing these tools as well as streams of information from them in a single communication portal. Basically, I’ve simply been looking for a customizable and yet visually appealing area within Blackboard where different information sources can be embedded. In particular, these are the tools that I use and want to easily share with my students: Latest Blog Posts - During the course, my students and I each setup and post to individual 3rd party blogs. Even though my students are instructed to subscribe via RSS to my blog as well as the blogs of their classmates, I want to display clickable titles of the last several posts from my blog. Course Calendar - While Blackboard’s Calendar is greatly improving with the release of the new Blackboard Calendar in Service Pack 11, up until this point, the built-in calendar hasn’t been acceptable and I create a Google Calendar for each class. I would like for a version of that calendar for the upcoming 7 days to be embedded and viewable by my students. Texting List Sign-up - In my teaching, I use Remind101.com and encourage my student to opt-in to my texting news list powered by Remind101. I would like to provide the information for signing-up to join the texting list. Course Podcast Player - I’ve setup a podcast for my course and would like to embed a player so that right from the course entry page, students can listen to the most recent episodes of the podcast. I’ve previously shared steps for how I setup my podcast using Dropbox. Class Blogs - The students in the course each setup their own blogs and post to throughout the course. I would like to include links for each of my students’ blogs. Instructor’s Tweets - Twitter is another important communication means used during the course. I would like at the outset of the course to include a Twitter widget displaying the latest tweets from the instructor, with the widget to be changed after Twitter is introduced to students and they begin tweeting, to display latest tweets using a course hashtag. Dashboard With a little HTML and CSS know-how, I’ve gone ahead and created this course communication dashboard that I now use in my Blackboard courses. It includes the communication streams and information sources that I want my students to see when they login to my Blackboard course. Students have commented on how helpful having such a communication dashboard available upon entry to the course has been and as a result, I’ve continued to include my homemade version in the courses I teach. The dashboard is a simple html page (more details to be shared in a future post how to setup) set as the default entry point for the course. For this particular course I’ve shared, the dashboard contains the following information items: Class Photo Roster - Students were requested to provide a digital portrait during the first week of the course. These photos are displayed along with their preferred first name to be used during the course. Announcements - Latest several course announcements, also posted and sent via email using the Announcements tool in the course, are displayed for students. Latest on Dr. J’s Blog - Utilizing a simple javascript RSS embed utility, Feed2JS, an embedded script that displays the latest 5 blog post titles from my blog that students can click on to go directly to those latest posts. Course Calendar - Google Calendar I’ve setup for the course. News & Reminders - Details for how students can sign-up to opt into our course texting group. Course Podcast - Embeddable player using BigContact to play the latest episodes of the course podcast. iTunes U - Details for how students can sign-up to try the iTunes U version of the course being made available as an experimental trial during the course. Class Blogs - List of all class members’ blogs. Tweets from Dr. J - Instructor’s tweets, to be adjusted later in the course to instead display most recent tweets using course hashtag Ideal Solution This "homemade" dashboard I’ve created isn’t ideal, but it is closer to my ideal course entry point than the current Home Page tool in Blackboard. It’s conceivable that Blackboard could develop a customizable dashboard, based on the Home Page tool but redesigned, which could take the information modules already in the Home Page and build in additional flexibility of the layout (2 columns, 3 columns, 1 wide column & 2 narrow columns, etc.) as well as include module types where faculty could embed various other information sources, images, scripts, or HTML. Students could still perhaps add other personalized modules, but the instructor should have much more flexibility in how the Home Page is formatted and be able to embed other types of content or information streams. I envision this communication dashboard being much more instructor-driven than the current Home Page tool, affording the instructor the ability to develop "social presence" within the course by featuring at the login page the various communication streams for the course. I hope this solution will eventually be considered by Blackboard Product Development and I welcome any opportunity to provide further input. What entry point do you use for your Blackboard course, the Home Page, Announcements, or something else? What features would you like to see in an ideal course entry point? Leave a comment with your suggestions!

We all would like to be better communicators. Whether you give formal presentations or simply share ideas informally with others, we always can become even more skilled at communicating. These slides share 10 tips that anyone who communicates. Courtesy HubSpot

In this episode, Marissa Lowman from LearnLaunch joins MEP to talk about the Boston education technology community, what it takes to build an engaged community, and the first cohort of their accelerator:  LearnLaunchX. Don’t miss it! Marissa Lowman is the Executive Director and a co-founder of LearnLaunch. She is also the founder of EdTechup (now part of LearnLaunch), an organization that brings together education technology entrepreneurs and educators in the Boston area to collaborate with one another. Most recently, she worked in sales and marketing at mobile payments startup AisleBuyer, which was acquired by Intuit (NASDAQ: INTU). Lowman taught in Germany on a Fulbright Fellowship, worked for Teach For America and helped grow the National Partnership for Educational Access (NPEA) at The Steppingstone Foundation. She also served as a member of the steering committee of the Boston Leaders for the Future of Education (BLFE) from 2010-2011. In addition, she served as the Marketing Director for DartBoston, which helps emerging entrepreneurs start companies. Lowman received her BA from Johns Hopkins University. Social Media: Marissa Lowman on Twitter Shout Outs: Upcoming LearnLaunch Events Boundless Learning EverTrue For more episodes featuring thought leaders in education visit MeetEducationProject.com, subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and follow Nick DiNardo on Twitter.

On Friday, 3/29/13, I will be giving a keynote presentation from 12:45-1:45PM CDT entitled, Social Teaching Strategies for Engaging Today’s Active Learner at the Annual Western Illinois University Symposium on Teaching, Research and Creative Activities. During the presentation, we’ll consider how students today are using social media in their daily lives and explore together how social media can be used to actively engage students in the learning process, both in and outside the classroom. A social teaching framework will be shared as well as principles and best practices for leveraging social media in teaching and learning. I’ve begun drafting a interactive online handout that will contain presentation slides and resources that I will share. In addition, as I’m always willing to try something new in my presentations, I plan to incorporate for the first time into one of my faculty presentations several interactive pieces that will provide further opportunities for faculty participants to interact live using their mobile devices as well as extend the presentation beyond the "physical walls" of WIU. Live-Tweeting & Twitter Backchannel I’ve selected the hashtag #socialteaching and will be using it extensively over the coming days in sharing resources prior-to, as well as during my presentation. Join the conversation or share additional resources on Twitter related to use of social media in teaching and learning using hashtag #socialteaching. Thanks to the instructions I initially stumbled across from Alan Levine and step-by-step video from Adam Bellow, I plan to live-tweet during my presentation using Keynote Tweet 2 on my Mac. Watch for the #socialteaching Twitter stream on Friday, 3/29 and join the conversation! Mobile/Web-based Polling using PollEverywhere As I’ve been informed that the majority of the faculty who will be attending live will have either a smart phone or tablet, I plan to incorporate numerous polling questions before and during the presentation using PollEverywhere. I’ve signed-up for a presenter plan for 1-month for the sake of this presentation and will be using the PollEverywhere Mac Presenter App to embed live polls in my Keynote slides as well as live-tweeting the polls, with responses able to be received by web, text, or Twitter. Please feel free to respond to the polling questions when you see them become available! Texting Backchannel using Celly I’ve been intrigued for sometime now with the applications for use of text messaging in teaching and have been exploring various text messaging tools. I recently setup a free account with Cel.ly and have created a Celly group @socialteaching that I will be inviting participants (live and virtual) to join and try as another backchannel option before, during, and after the presentation. Whereas the Twitter stream is public and open, the texting backchannel can be made private and has different applications for within a class setting. During the presentation, I plan to send out a couple of different polls that participants can respond to directly via text message. Participants can also share a comment or give other feedback directly via text message. Again, this is another experiment on my behalf and would love to have anyone interested in seeing in action to join the texting group and give it a try! To join, simply text @socialteaching to 23559 or join at cel.ly/c/socialteaching. Google+ Hangout on Air I’m also toying with the idea of doing a Google+ Hangout on Air and live-stream the video of the presentation. I’ve not decided yet if I will try pulling this off, chiefly because I will be relying on a wi-fi connection during the presentation. If my connection seems solid and I can pull off the technical details, announce the live stream on my Twitter and Google+ and the live stream of the video (and later the recording) will be on my YouTube channel. Your Participation is Invited! I’d love for you to participate "virtually" via social media in this presentation! In summary, here again are the ways you can get involved: Join conversation on Twitter, hashtag #socialteaching Respond to polling questions, as they are live-tweeted (will have prefix hashtag #poll for easy identification) Join the texting group to participate in private backchannel and share your insights via text message One more request I will throw out…What suggestions or strategies would you share for faculty who are considering incorporating social media into their teaching? I’d love to include tips as part of the presentation! Feel free to leave a comment here on my blog to tweet using hashtag #socialteaching

As you might know, EDUKWEST was built upon the idea to share the conversations I had with edtech startup founders, investors and thought leaders. Over the years the team and I have added new shows, news coverage and opened up EDUKWEST to contributors from across the edtech landscape. This year again we are going to focus more on our roots. I can already tease that we will get back into recorded interviews very soon here on EDUKWEST. We won’t do video interviews though but focus on podcasts instead, the format of consumption that our audience has favored over the past years. We will start to record our new formats very soon, so stay tuned. But there is more. In the meantime we are thrilled to welcome Nick DiNardo and his Meet Education Project to our site. Enter Nick: I've been an admirer of Kirsten and EDUKWEST for many years. In fact, Kirsten's video interview series was an inspiration for my early work with this podcast! Why did I start this podcast? It's simple. Over the past 10 years, I've had had the chance to sit down with professors, c-suite administrators at higher ed and K-12 schools, ed tech entrepreneurs, and VCs...just based on a curiosity about different perspectives on the future of learning, inside and outside of our traditional education system. Back in early 2013, I asked myself the question: would an audience benefit from these conversations? Should I record them? So I did. Almost two years later, I've been honored to have 75+ interviews with thought leaders and action takers across the industry. It's been a blast, and I can't wait to see what the future holds. I hope to provide some value to you all with some of these conversations. Please let me know what you think on twitter (@nickdinardo33) or through email (ddinardo33@gmail.com). I'm easy to find. I have to thank Nick for his kind words. We also recently sat down for a MEP episode, which you can check out right now on MeetEducationProject.com. Of course, we are going to post it here on EDUKWEST, as well. To give you an idea about this partnership, we will be publishing Nick’s interviews with edtech startup founders and investors, starting with his archives and working our way through to the latest episodes. We plan to publish a MEP episode each Monday.