Education IT News For VARs — September 24, 2014
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
In news, the Education Records Bureau builds a better iPad exam, and Education Dive examines six solutions to student success and seven challengers to Apple’s iPad. Schools might also be approaching Ed Tech all wrong, and EdCast is raising money to fund its “multiversities.”
Educational Records Bureau Builds Cheaper, Shorter, Engaging iPad Exam
According to the Wall Street Journal, The Educational Records Bureau went back to the drawing board after receiving requests from schools to create a cheaper, shorter, and more engaging exam for the iPad. The final result is the Admission Assessment for Beginning Learners (AABL), which clocks in at only 50 minutes (instead of the 75 minutes of the previous exam), costs only $65 (instead of the previous $568), and has a turnaround time of three-to-five days (versus three weeks). Beyond improvements in the price and time, the ERB made efforts to engage students taking the test by hiring professional illustrators for its iPad exam.
6 Solutions Helping Institutions Bolster Student Success
This article from Education Dive examines six solutions that are helping institutions with student retention and achievement rates. They include Starfish Retention Solutions, Blackboard Retention Center, EBI MAP-Works, Ellucian Banner, Colleague, and Degree Works, Pearson MyStudentSuccessLab, and Hobsons Radius with AgileGrad and Retain.
7 Challengers To Apple’s Share Of The Ed Tech Pie
Education Dive examines some of the devices that can provide stiff competition to Apple’s share of the Ed Tech pie. They include Chromebooks, Amplify tablets, the 3E tablet, KUNO, Microsoft Surface 2, Amazon Kindle, and Barnes & Noble’s NOOK. The article looks as plusses and minuses for each device as they might be applied in the classroom.
Education IT Talking Points
In this article, Forbes contributor Jordan Shapiro warns against implementing technology into the classroom too quickly without first considering the “implicit” messaging of the device being used. Shapiro says students read implicit messaging before explicit messaging, so it’s important to understand what message they are taking away — especially if schools are being run with business practices in mind. He believes that, despite buzz about implementing tech into classrooms as quickly as possible, educators must first know why they want to use that tech because inserting it just to call a class “innovative” is not going to be beneficial in the long run.
According to Venture Beat, EdCast has raised $6 million in venture funding from Menlo Ventures, Novel TMT Ventures, Mitch Kapor, Cervin Ventures, Aarin Capital, NewSchools Venture Fund and the Stanford StartX Fund in a round led by Softbank Capital. The funding will help EdCast further its concept of “multiversities” that exist beyond single institutions via the cloud using its Knowledge Cloud platform to facilitate inter-university collaboration. The company’s 39 university partners currently using Knowledge Cloud, which was build using OpenEdX, can use the platform to create their own MOOCs, and EdCast envisions the educational collaboration expanding to include companies and governments alongside the schools.
For more news and insights, visit BSMinfo’s Education IT Resource Center.