July 26, 2012, 5:10 pm
By Angela Chen
Everyone can now use the iTunesU platform to deliver course material, Apple announced on Wednesday. Before, only professors at a university working with iTunesU—which collects free lectures from partner universities—could post audio and video clips, syllabi, and documents via the platform.
Typically, universities apply to form a partnership with iTunesU. After Apple verifies that the applicant is an academically accredited institution, professors can post course materials on the platform, either for public access or privately for a select group of students.
With the change, any user, regardless of affiliation, can distribute content for up to 12 different courses. The courses must be private and limited to 50 students each. Professors must use the iTunesU app, which made its debut in January, to deliver the course, but students can access the content using the PC-compatible…
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July 11, 2012, 4:13 pm
By Angela Chen
From clickers to programs like Learning Catalytics—which data-mines to match students with discussion partners—student-response systems are becoming more and more sophisticated. But Liam Kaufman, a graduate of the University of Toronto, thinks that the key to effective feedback is a tool with fewer bells and whistles.
Mr. Kaufman is the developer of Understoodit, a browser-based app that lets students indicate their level of comprehension during class, and then see how much everyone else understands.
The idea is that, during a lecture, everyone runs the Understoodit Web site, which is also accessible via mobile and tablet devices. Students press buttons to indicate that they either understand the material or are confused by it. The feedback is displayed in real time, in the form of a “confus-o-meter” and an “understand-o-meter,” which show the percentage of students who…
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June 14, 2012, 2:48 pm
By Angela Chen
Image from U.S. Ignite
Washington—The White House and the National Science Foundation today announced a new technology effort to increase broadband coverage and develop apps for education, health care, public safety, energy, and manufacturing.
The effort, called U.S. Ignite, is designed to help various government departments connect with start-ups, businesses, and universities developing wireless technologies. Founding sponsors include Mozilla, Verizon, AT&T, and Cisco.
At an event at the White House to announce the project, Tom Kalil, deputy director for policy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said one goal is to spur student engagement in technology. “One part that is particularly important is the role of students in fostering innovation,” Mr. Kalil said. …
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June 13, 2012, 4:59 pm
By Marc Parry
Behavioral nudges help people quit smoking, exercise, and vote. Can they help students finish college, too?
A start-up company is banking on just that hope, with a new service that directs nudges to the devices that students carry at all times: mobile phones.
The venture, Persistence Plus, bills itself as “the Weight Watchers of college completion.” It draws on behavioral research to deliver personalized messages to students through an iPhone app or text messages. Say, for example, a group of students has a forthcoming math test. The program will send messages to them asking when and where they plan to study for the exam, says Jill Frankfort, who co-founded the company in August 2011.
“Reminders don’t actually change behavior that much,” she explains. “But when you can help someone actually plan out their time and create a mental map of when they’re going to do a behavior,…
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November 1, 2011, 3:11 pm
By Collin Eaton
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. announced on Tuesday the winners of a contest dubbed Apps Against Abuse, a White House-issued challenge to developers to build a mobile application that helps prevent sexual abuse on campuses. On Watch, a mobile app that allows students to connect to friends and family members “instantly and discreetly” with two thumbstrokes, won the challenge alongside Circle of 6, a mobile app that allows students to connect to a small group of friends and provide their location or request an interrupting phone call. On Watch features alarms, a flashlight, and a series of alert levels, as well as links to sexual-assault hotlines. Circle of 6 also requires just two swipes at the buttons to send out a preset signal. Both applications will be available for download in January.
October 20, 2011, 12:01 am
By Alexandra Rice
This year has seen a substantial increase in the number of colleges offering mobile apps for campus resources and services. But the use of Web-based services, known as “the cloud,” for administrative services is growing slowly, according to a national survey of campus-technology leaders.
Only 37.1 percent of the 496 colleges that responded to the survey reported that they did not have a mobile app and were neither planning for one for this academic year nor reviewing one for the future, the Campus Computing Project found. The results are scheduled to be released today at the Educause conference, in Philadelphia.
The survey also found that lecture-capture systems, which instructors use to record what happens in their classes, are becoming more prominent. Public four-year colleges saw the biggest growth, with just over 6 percent of classes using a such systems, up from 3.7 percent …
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August 16, 2011, 4:03 pm
By Jie Jenny Zou
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab has announced the creation of the New Center for Mobile Learning, with start-up support from Google. The research center, to be led by three professors at MIT, is focused on building innovative mobile technologies in education, such as interactive games for children that use GPS. The first project involves creating new features and versions of Google’s App Inventor for Android, which allows programmers to easily build applications for the company’s smartphone operating system.
August 5, 2011, 2:18 pm
By Jie Jenny Zou
An app being developed at Reed College will allow dancers to read and write dance notation such as the score shown here. The dance is "Possession," notated by Rachael Leyva in 2003.
When Reed College in Oregon invited faculty members last fall to submit app ideas for the iPad tablet, Hannah J. Kosstrin immediately thought of what she knew best—dance.
Ms. Kosstrin, a visiting assistant professor of dance at Reed, is now working with the college’s chief technology officer, Martin Ringle, and Ohio State University to develop an app that allows dancers to easily read and write complex choreography. The project received a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, which awards money for innovative digital programs.
“It’s very much like a piece of music,” said Ms. Kosstrin …
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August 3, 2011, 3:32 pm
By Jie Jenny Zou
When scanned, QR codes such as the one shown above, for Wired Campus, quickly direct users to Web pages on their smartphones.
Students touring Wittenberg University, in Ohio, can hear campus history come alive with help from their smartphones and little squares with black-and-white patterns affixed to buildings on the 100-acre campus.
Universities like Wittenberg have begun using these QR codes, which can be printed onto any flat surface, as a way to market themselves to a generation of smartphone users. Like bar codes on supermarket items, QR codes–it stands for “Quick Response”–can be scanned by a computer. But instead of returning the price of a carton of milk, these codes are directions to a multimedia-rich Web page. And the scanner, in this case, is the camera in a smartphone.
Using phone…
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May 2, 2011, 3:06 pm
By Josh Fischman
U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan frequently have trouble talking with local residents, who speak Pashto, which has 44 letters and its own unique calligraphy. Now there’s a free iPad app that provides a tutorial, and it will work even in remote areas because the entire program resides on the tablet computer.
“We assumed some users will be in the military, who will use it in areas without any data connection,” says Sukhrob Karimov, an information and communication technology specialist at Indiana University’s Center for Languages of the Central Asian Region. “So we decided to build it so all the sources are in the app. Once installed on the iPad you can use it anywhere.”
Users can watch and listen to video recordings of Pashto speakers pronouncing each letter. It also has animations of Pashto calligraphy. Users can practice by tracing the letters on the screen,…
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