Typing will be replaced with…

Typing will soon become a thing of the past.

That was the prediction debated by a group of speakers the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

New technology is here to replace that tip-tap sound of typing echoing throughout your office and home, as well as buttons, knobs and other user interfaces. What will it look like? Mostly like two technologies we’re already familiar with: Siri and Kinect.

That is, voice and gesture recognition. More here.

Report: Using Ed Tech to Boost Development of Social-Emotional Learning Skills

“Educational technology can help students develop social and emotional learning skills such as collaboration, communication and problem solving, which are critical factors for success in the 21st century job market, according to a new report from the World Economic Forum, prepared in collaboration with The Boston Consulting Group”. Full version of the report New Vision for Education: Fostering Social and Emotional Learning through Technology is available online.

Adding annotations to video

As always, great tips from Free Technology for Teachers!

One of the suggested activities for flipped lesson is to have students submit videos to you that they locate, review, and annotate.

VideoANT allows annotations to any publicly accessible YouTube video (see how to  reading his post and watching his video here ).

Vialogues is a free service that allows you to build online discussions around videos online or videos that you have saved on your computer (see how to here).

 MoocNote is a free tool for adding timestamped comments, questions, and links to videos. You and/or your students can even organize videos as playslist!

Free learning design kit

St. Petersburg College and Smart Sparrow have partnered to launch the Learning Design Starter Kit, a free tool designed to help faculty create their own digital learning resources.

“Smart use of adaptive learning has to start with faculty-led planning and instructional design,” said Dawn Joyce, professor of communications at St. Petersburg College, in a prepared statement. “The Learning Design Starter Kit is an important resource because it gives faculty an opportunity to see how engaging adaptive learning technology is for students. Change is always intimidating, but the Learning Design Starter Kit helps faculty in this transitional phase by providing resources and support every step of the way.”

“With the toolkit, faculty will learn how to design online resources rooted in cutting-edge learning science, capture user data to evaluate student engagement, and create rich, interactive, and adaptive courseware,” according to a news release.

Features of the toolkit include:

  • Resources on learning design;
  • Adaptive lessons focused on planning and designing for each student;
  • Case studies from faculty and instructional designers;
  • The opportunity to create rich, adaptive and interactive courseware; and
  • Other tools and support.”

Details about and access to the Learning Design Starter Kit is available here.

Marzano’s 13 best practices for teaching strategies and behaviors

Though a post about Marzano’s 13 best practices for teaching strategies and behaviors proven to increase student achievement is complied for secondary education, many of these practices are applicable for higher education as well. Who can argues with these:

  1. Communicating course/assignment rules and procedures
  2. Providing students with all materials needed to complete an assignment
  3. Clearly presenting the goal/objective for each assignment.

Get the rest together with the implementation tips and challenges here.