Developing Teachers | CE Credits Online

Engaging the Social Responsibility side of student life is forefront in today's Education Ecosystem. CE Credits Online provides a means through which Teachers are able to keep up with professional growth and requirements. CE Credits online assists Teachers towards creating a culture of learning. https://www.cecreditsonline.org/ is not only about pay scale. It is also about being the best Teacher you can be in a ever changing workplace. The most important thing Teachers can do to not sell themselves short is to keep getting better at reaching students who hunger to learn. Over 2 million users are consuming online courses in the United States every year.

Generation Z is Kicking Our Technological Butt!

Technology can authenticate learning for many students. While some older students might engage more slowly, younger students identify as Digital Natives. Try comparing your teaching with some of the engagement opportunities that are described at http://teachwithyouripad.wikispaces.com/ipad+apps. I found this information with my FREE account on MERLOT ( merlot.org ) which is a resource at California State University. MERLOT is part of a larger class of teaching tools included in Open Education Resources. Hands on learning, and open education resources might be the foundation for new project or new direction in your teaching.

Blockchain is The TRUST Protocol

Blockchain sure is a funny sounding word that most people have not heard about. We are talking about building 21st-Century institutions that will look more like digital networks than the vertically integrated hierarchies of the industrial age. How can we talk about Blockchain and education in the same post? Blockchain provides a transparent platform upon which we can create a global network for education. Blockchains use public key infrastructure to establish a secure connection. In the Blockchain individual blocks are "closed" using hash "keys" and the individual blocks fit into a chain of other blocks. For someone to alter the state of a block - They would also have to change the state of the previous blocks that are already registered on millions of computers. Theoretically it is impossible to corrupt a Blockchain. SONY Global Education has adapted this technology in an "Open Data Exchange Protocol" allowing SONY to securely share official academic records around the world. The MIT Media Lab uses Blockchain to reward community members for valuable work. Pedagogy in modern education is long overdue for innovation. The instructors that are to remain relevant will abandon the traditional lecture, and start conversing with and listening to students. Basic Skills in Education is ripe for a Blockchain ledger that can track free education provided to people who require this service, and record the students achievements at the same time.

edTech rEvolution

In competency based education - CBE - the turn-around time for grading an assessment or responding to a question becomes critical. At least that is one finding from the University of Wisconsin Extension ( https://www.uwex.edu ) Why try something new in higher education? The goal being to provide modern education concepts to non-traditional students. Traditional education is working overtime to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse student spectrum. CBE programs allow students to progress at their own pace. One product created at UoW is the University Learning Store offering competency-based credentials in non-degree programs. The University Learning store is a collaboration among several institutions. These institutions include: Georgia Tech,UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCLA Extension, and the University of Washington Continuum College. A second product from UW-Extension Flexible Option Program is designed from the ground up using open technologies. Even the tuition structure in these programs is different. Students pay a flat fee for 3 months and complete as much education as they are able in the time period. Using an Agile approach there is project underway to develop a prototype eTranscript based on IMS Global standards. IMS Global has been very active in competency-based education in many areas.

Instructor Development on Edutopia.org

Chances are excellent computer-science literacy will be increasingly relevant for jobs in demand today. Credible instructors know that the ability to read and write code is a developmental 21st-century competency. Instructors know there is so much to teach - many students get little exposure to these concepts in any instructional environment. These choices are more restricted for low-income students. To address these realities, there are a variety of free resources that can help teachers of all grades and subjects give students exposure to computer science. I am constantly harping about https://w3schools.com with super instructional content and super sand box tools so instructors and students can experiment in class together. W3Schools tools are opportunities to develop skills required to approach coding problems and have a basic understanding of how code and coding is changing our technology ecosystems in education.

LMS Page Designs With Color

Color can make your pages POP !!! Be cautious that you do not accidentally exclude some of your participants. When using color to engage students know what mood you intend to achieve. Less is more when using color on your class pages. Understanding and legibility is more important than aesthetics. Know your audience. Some colors may be exciting to some groups the same color might be offensive to others. Here is an option using Cascading Styles (CSS) where almost an entire page may be set to a specific color. In different LMS software coloring a page may leave out some parts for example headers and footers. However page color is a UI indicator to tell users that something changed. Some instructors change color on the navigation as a wake up technigue on a menu to increase participation. In your html editor for your LMS try this: <div style="background-color:black; color:White"></div>

Shopping for Education

Using 30 Simon Youth Academies in 12 states - Simon Youth Foundation advocates, creates and initiates educational opportunities for students so they can "Start here and Go Anywhere". In partnership with local public school districts, SYF has maintained a 90% graduation rate at its Academies since inception. Simon Youth Foundation has graduated more than 15,660 students and awarded $17 million in scholarships. Primarily located in Shopping malls ( Simon Malls ) Simon Youth academies offer flexible schedules and small class sizes that make learning accessible to students who struggle with educational materials in a traditional classroom environment. Homeless behaviors, bullying, serious illness, parenthood, supporting their families, and facing other challenging personal circumstance are all factors that impact early education and can represent impossible odds for k-12 students and parents.

iframe tags can work in your LMS to include websites on a page

The html iframe tag provides instructors a means through which to combine images, text and possibly active content on a single page in an LMS. This is kind of a "mashup" idea where possibly an image, combined with an instance of google maps, and some text will engage learners. Here is an iframe example from W3Schools: <iframe src="https://www.w3schools.com"></iframe>" The Width and Height attributes work for both html5 and legacy versions of the language. The neat thing about knowing some html is that instructors can increase engagement by mixing up the content where students are seeing instructors try new things also.

HISTORY of DRAG and DROP

The XMLHttpRequest object is an education developer's dream come true since instructors can: 1.) Update a web page without reloading the page. 2.) Request data from a server after the page has loaded. 3.) Receive data from a server after the page has loaded. 4.) Send data to a server in the background. This object behavior is named Ajax, but Ajax is not a single technology. Ajax is a group of technologies. To begin with HTML and CSS can be used in combination to markup and style information. The webpage can then be modified by JavaScript to dynamically display – and allow the user to interact with — the new information. Microsoft invented the XHR object in 1999. It took the Web World 6 six years to catch up and use the new technology. When these technologies are combined in the Ajax model, Web applications are able to make quick, incremental updates to the user interface without reloading the entire browser page. Today many sophisticated Learning Management Systems incorporate Ajax allowing instructors to reconfigure their user view in their online class without reloading the page.

High Powered Web Bots

There are a wide array of high powered bots running on four main distribution channels. Apple is running Siri, IBM created Watson, Amazon fields Alexa, and Microsoft is hosting Cortana. Bots require input from users. How the bots respond depends upon the complexity of the cognitive services they have been programmed with. Chat bots scan phrases or words the bot is programmed to recognize. Some smarter bots are able to learn from interactions with users. Chatbots can be seen as one of the most important ways we will use our phones in the future. Chatbots are sometimes called digital assistants.

Shareable Content Object Reference Model

SCORM is a set of technical standards for e-learning software products. SCORM stands for "Shareable Content Object Reference Model". The shareable part means SCORM content can be shared across different LMS products. ( LMS = Learning Management System ) The "Reference" part means SCORM is a collection of industry standards. SCORM content is produced by ADL, a research group sponsored by the United States Department of Defense. ( DOD ) The Future of SCORM is called the Experience API (xAPI). Experience API represents a forward progression for e-learning.

Mobile Video Support Microlearning

Trying to come up to speed on a new technology? "Microlearning" breaks larger learning into smaller chunks making information easier to consume. Mobile Video supports "Microlearning" and is: 1.) Cost Effective 2.) Represents a measurable - Ease of Creation - for Video today. 3.) Scalability is extremely important so that users are not competing for learning sessions. 4.) Distribution on the World Wide Web brings learning to everyone. Mobile Video supports "Microlearning" on Demand.

Using Div Tags On Your LMS

Div tags are an opportunity to improve engagement with online learning materials. Many learning management systems permit the use of "Style" attributes in html tags on the learning managment system. In line styles result from use of the "Style" attribute in html elements. Training content creators can use Div tags in the Body tag of an html page to open up and style a region on the webpage. Try the following code on your web page: <body style="background-color:powderblue;"> <div style="background-color:pink;"> <h1>This is a heading</h1> <p>This is a paragraph.</p> </div> </body>