Author Archives: sherianncheng

Exo Labs Brings iPad Capabilities to Microscopes

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This article is cross-posted from edtechtimes.com, where I currently serve as editor-in-chief.

Exo_Labs_LogoSeattle-based startup, Exo Labs, has launched a microscope camera that connects your classroom microscope to an iPad.  This innovation turns a time-honored, traditional “wait-your-turn” lab experience into a shared learning experience that allows students to interact with the world under the microscope.

The Focus Microscope Camera incorporates the following classroom-friendly features into its design:

  • App-based ability to take pictures, make measurements, add annotations to microscope images.  Users can pinch and zoom to control their image view on the iPad.
  • Versatility to adapt to different microscope eyepieces.
  • Image sharing through projection, email or embedding in documents.
  • Durable hardware construction for rugged classroom use.
  • Charging capability for iPad during camera use.
  • Interchangeable lenses for stand-alone use.

A single unit can be incorporated into microscope stations to simplify the unknowns of introductory microscope techniques.  Imagine an intro lab without “drawings” of students’ eyelashes, or the tapping of pencils drawing “dots” from unfocused dirty optics.

Additionally, microscope-based labs tend to exclude partially visually-impaired students from participating in the full richness of the microscopic world.  With this adaptive technology, students with light sensitivity no longer have to stare directly into a magnified microscope lamp, and students with other visual impairments can use the app in conjunction with iPad accessibility features to enhance their experience.

Exo Labs offers the Focus Microscope Camera on their website for $599, with an educator discount available by inquiry.

Xconomy and GeekWire provided early looks at the Focus Microscope Camera back in January, reporting on Exo Labs’ appearances in local and national startup competitions such as  Northwest Entrepreneur Network First Look Forum, Seattle Angel Conference investment competition, and the MIT Enterprise Forum Northwest Startup Demo.

Sheri Cheng can be reached at sheri@edtechtimes.com

Student Demand for Online Courses May Not be as Strong as Colleges Think

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This article is cross-posted from edtechtimes.com, where I currently serve as editor-in-chief.

CCRC_ColumbiaA new study from the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Columbia University’s Teachers College and a corresponding article from Inside Higher Ed digs into the student perspective of online courses at community colleges.  While the scope of this study was small and relied on in-person interview methods, it raised questions as to whether the enthusiasm of MOOCs in the community college setting may be misplaced.

From the study:

  • The study interviewed 46 of students who had taken at least one online course at two community colleges.
  • Students reported that they only took courses online if they felt they could learn the material on their own: If they expected a course to be difficult, or “really wanted to learn something,” they preferred face-to-face courses.
  • Students indicated a strong preference for a traditional classroom when taking courses they considered interesting or important, particularly those in their major.
  • The study suggests that without substantial improvements in online teacher-student interaction, it is likely that students will continue to prefer face-to-face courses in subjects they perceive as more challenging or incompatible with the online format.

The article from Inside Higher Education, highlights these additional insights from CCRC researcher Susan Jaggars:

  • While a good MOOC might make students feel like they know a professor, “it won’t make you think they know you,” and that loss of personal interaction and support can be problematic, particularly for students who need extra help.
  • Teachers always have other little things to talk about in the class, and stories and examples, which is something you don’t get quite as much with online instruction.

The same article offers some caveats within its reporting as well as in the comments:

  • Russell Poulin, deputy director for research and analysis at the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies, cited the limited sample size as a warning for drawing larger-scale conclusions.  However, Poulin also noted that given their tight budgets, community colleges need to be strategic about where to add online options, and that “being discerning makes sense.”
  • Commenter John Ebersole notes:  “While it is gratifying to see Teachers College involved in the study of online education, this particular study, and the larger effort that it is taken from, are seriously flawed in that they do not appear to have controlled for either student AGE or TYPE of online course…while interesting, there are too many unconsidered variables here to be much more than a provocative observation.”

Read the complete study.

Read the article at Inside Higher Ed.

About CCRC

The Community College Research Center (CCRC) is the leading independent authority on the nation’s nearly 1,200 two-year colleges. Founded in 1996, CCRC conducts research on the major issues affecting community colleges in the United States in order to identify practices and policies that expand access to higher education and promote success for all students.

EdReach, Stitcher Radio, Form Partnership to Take Education Forward

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This article is cross-posted from edtechtimes.com, where I currently serve as editor-in-chief.

EdREach-logo-Home-pagePopular education podcast provider, EdReach has announced a partnership with Stitcher Radio, a leader in Internet radio.  EdReach CEO Daniel Rezac announced today that a partnership with Stitcher helps EdReach broaden their audience with content distribution, accessibility, and increased exposure, establishing EdReach.us as a go-to broadcast network for education content.

EdReach’s podcasts are now available as a Stitcher channel, and followers can access the podcasts by downloading the Stitcher App, or through Stitcher’s website.  Currently, approximately 40,000 active teachers download EdReach podcasts each month, often listening and learning while on their morning or afternoon commute by listening to EdReach shows.

On EdReach, Rezac cites Stitcher’s presence as an innovator, its user-friendly flexibility between devices, and its richness of listener data as boons for their partnership.  He also offers the following endorsements from partners and users:

Rachel Eaton, Stitcher’s Director of Content Partnerships says:

“We are proud to be working with EdReach. We believe in their mission of Taking Education Forward and are happy to provide a platform that will help them reach their audience to expand that mission.”

Wesley Fryer, Oklahoma educator and edtech innovator says of EdReach:

“Amidst the negative barrage of news amplified by mainstream media outlets today, we need EdReach and the educator voices it seeks to amplify- more than ever. Check out the podcast shownotes for more links to follow and subscribe to EdReach. Consider not only becoming an EdReach Network follower, but also a contributor!”

EdReach has already appeared in the Stitcher Top 100 shows for educators, supporting their mission of “taking education forward, by bringing voices together.”

Find the original announcement over at EdReach.

Sheri Cheng can be reached at sheri@edtechtimes.com.

HotChalk Education Index Identifies Current Online Learning Trends

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This article is cross-posted from edtechtimes.com, where I currently serve as editor-in-chief.

HOTCHALK LOGOEducation technology company HotChalk announced the release of the HotChalk Education Index report at the Arizona State University/GSV EdInnovation Summit last Thursday, April 17. The HotChalk Education Index is based on the company’s analysis of more than 30 billion data points and 25,000 surveys collected during a 90 day window; representing teachers, parents, students, administrators and tutors from every wired country on the planet.

“Understanding our planet’s educational intent, from Internet users seeking education outcomes, is revolutionary,” explained Edward Fields, HotChalk Chairman & CEO. “The HotChalk Education Index helps education innovators, technologists, publishers and investors understand the online education market with unprecedented scale, depth and precision.”

The HotChalk Education Index is based on anonymized education data from the HotChalk Network, a proprietary collection of more than 160 education focused websites, serving more than 200 million pages of free content to 50 million unique visitors from around the world each month.

Some of the findings in HotChalk’s Q1 report include:

A mixed-bag on attitudes toward in-person/onsite and online education.  Both students and teachers in the survey seem to exhibit no preference towards in-person/onsite or online education.  This could be an indication that while the online education movement has great traction in the education media, its effects are still trickling down to the end users of the product, resulting in a state of no-preference.  As HotChalk continues to survey its users, it will be interesting to follow this question to see how attitudes towards in/person or online education may change over time.

2013_Q1_HC_Education_Index_Page_10

The favorite price is still free.  While this information in itself is not surprising, the breakdown of paid content usage habits generates new questions about who pays for content and why.  A higher percentage of administrators describe themselves as either exclusively using paid content or using paid and free content equally than students and teachers.  A higher percentage of teachers describe themselves as exclusively or mostly using free content than students or administrators.  By digging deeper into this type of data and other statistics, product developers will have to decide whether to respond to expectations or challenge the status quo for these different user groups.

2013_Q1_HC_Education_Index_Page_12

HotChalk will release the HotChalk Education Index quarterly providing data driven insights and surveys on topics including, free vs. paid education content; education technology efficacy; educator technology adoption rates; student access by geography; subject matter consumption rates; and more. The Index will be available for custom research projects beginning in Q3 2013.

For more information and to download a PDF copy of the report, visit www.educationinamerica.com.

ISTE launches White House petition to invest in school broadband connectivity

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This article is cross-posted from edtechtimes.com, where I currently serve as editor-in-chief.

iste

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) launched a petition to the White House today asking the Obama Administration to invest in school broadband connectivity.

ISTE’s website states that “only 13 percent of schools have the broadband they need to give students the same online access that most Americans have at home, work or even in a coffee shop.”  Without broadband online connectivity, students and educators are limited in their digital access of widespread educational technology resources available in the market.

Additionally, ISTE notes that, “as students and educators embrace personalized instruction, online and mobile learning, adaptive assessments and data-driven decision making, and develop critical thinking, collaboration, communication and digital citizenship skills, demands on school networks will continue to skyrocket.”  While acknowledging the success of E-Rate, established in 1996 to assist schools & libraries in obtaining affordable telecommunications and internet access, ISTE also notes that the program is not enough to meet rapidly growing broadband needs of schools.

How does this affect the larger educational technology community?  As part of a greater message, this petition helps to raise awareness that the expanding educational technology market is limited by this lack of broadband access.  Any product or service which relies on connectivity may have limited traction until broadband access becomes ubiquitous in schools.

Read the ISTE press release.

Read the White House petition.

 

 

Texas A&M professors know if you’re e-reading with CourseSmart

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This article is cross-posted from edtechtimes.com, where I currently serve as editor-in-chief.

coursesmart

Texas A&M business school professors know whether you’ve been doing your e-reading homework or not.  Along with eight other colleges, Texas A&M is testing CourseSmart technology which organizes digital textbook usage data by class so that each professor has comparative data at his or her fingertips.  Professors are now able to tell whether students have actually read e-textbook chapters as assigned, or if they are cramming at the last minute.

From the New York Times article, student reactions ranged from feeling “caught” to complaining about “software bugs” that didn’t accurately track all the times the textbook was open.  (According to CourseSmart, they are not aware of any such software bugs.)  Other students are concerned that by not using the tools provided with the e-textbooks, they will garner low engagement scores and create a negative perception about their study habits.

CourseSmart’s CEO, Sean Devine, sees the data collection as the beginning of further analysis. From the article, Devine says, “We’ll ultimately show how the student traverses the book.  There’s a correlation and causality between engagement and success.”

 

Read the New York Times article.

 

More articles about CourseSmart from EdTech Times:

CourseSmart Launches CourseSmart Analytics Beta, November 12, 2012

CourseSmart Releases A New Reader, March 16, 2012

Election ugliness: a politics ostrich and (social) media

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110511_Election

This post on a friend’s Facebook wall really hit me in the gut.  It was an instant call to a bevy of emotions that I have been feeling about this election season and why I worry about the state of the world beyond the election of a single man at the helm of our country.  Why is it inevitable that politics devolve into an ugly chorus?  Where is the beauty of the democracy that we were taught in our elementary school classes?

I used to be an adamant politics “ostrich”, preferring to stick my head way in the sand rather than picking a side in each election’s inevitable ugliness.  I’ve actually uttered the words “I’m not really into the politics thing” and meant it.

Before bashing this Facebook friend, his words, or his method of delivery, I had to check myself:

  • We are not close friends, nor have we ever been.  We have not had remotely similar experiences in our life beyond our high school days.  It has been a long time since we exchanged words in person, possibly long before we were ever out of high school.
  • I have learned more about viewpoints that are dissimilar to mine, in a way that would not be possible without the advent of social media.  I have been forced to examine a few issues and either re-form my opinions and or re-confirm my beliefs.
  • I don’t believe for one minute that my friend is ignorant, radical, or redneck.  I also don’t believe that he is troll-baiting either, but one never knows about that until you engage.
  • I have not “unfriended” him because I have been honestly interested in understanding how other people might view the world, and I also have a healthy worry about “filter bubbles” that present us with information that only strengthens the reality that we believe in.  (See Eli Pariser’s TED talk on filter bubbles:  http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html).

However, this post really got me.  It hasn’t left my head since he posted it on Saturday.  Why do these specific words speak louder than the din of ugly election advertisement? 

It boils down to one big thing: Respect for others’ personal choices.  You know, come Wednesday (maybe) when all the dust has settled and things have been decided, the country has spoken, and under the system in this “beautiful” democracy of imperfect (wo)men, there will have been a decision that many have made based on some subset of personal values.  Why should I feel guilty for choosing what I believe is right for me and MY future children and grandchildren?

I have navigated this election by speaking about my priorities.  And if my priorities cause others to shift their priorities and change their mind, well, that’s cool.  And I listen to other people’s priorities.  And if that causes me to change my mind, that’s cool too.

I have never told anyone that their priorities are stupid.  And I feel like this post hit right at that nerve.  It has put a dent in the smooth stream of informed discourse that I have come to expect from him, and has forever changed how I will read his world.

Tomorrow, I will vote for President Barack Obama.  I will vote for Elizabeth Warren in MA.  My priorities are to protect my body, my interests, and to preserve the hope that a “post-racial” America might exist. Those are my priorities, and they don’t have to be yours.  You can vote for whoever you want to based on your own priorities, and I will not tell you that they are stupid.  I will continue to try to see the world through your eyes as long as you don’t tell me that I can’t see it through my eyes.

Also, most of us will survive 4 years of whatever happens.  To those who may not, think about them, and see where they fall in the scope of your priorities.

One last political plug:  this “beautiful” democracy can’t happen if you don’t vote.  Even if you think your vote doesn’t matter, a non-vote is deference to someone else’s personal choices.  I think back to 2000, when my friend from Miami-Dade County did NOT send his absentee ballot back because he didn’t think it would matter.  Please vote mindfully tomorrow – and respect others’ personal choices.

P.S.  I am not perfect about respecting others – no one is.  But I’d like to think that I try, and that I welcome people to challenge my assumptions.

Picking one thing to be good at

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A blog is supposed to be an extension of a personal brand, an outlet where people can see the “real you” and connect.  At least, that’s what all the career services and career advice people are trying to tell me.  At the same time, all this advice tells me to “edit myself” to a 30-second snippet that has the most important essence about me that will draw people in.  This is one thing I am NOT good at – I can’t even commit to a focus for this blog. 🙂

When I was in high school, I taught myself to play the flute, trombone and french horn.  I also played in city & school orchestras (violin), city & school choirs, concert band, piano lessons, and participating in the school newspaper and the yearbook.  My mom rolled her eyes every time I asked to do something new, saying, “why don’t you just pick one thing and be good at it?”  She was right about one thing – I wasn’t ever really notably great at any of those activities, but I was in it for the knowledge, not the distinction.

This “problem” has grown with time and disposable income.  I get into things for knowledge, I get out of them without much distinction.  I gain a lot of marketable skill in ways that dots can’t sensibly connect.

This has made personal branding excessively difficult – how do i start to tell a recruiter why I spent 6.5 years studying engineering to go into 10 years in education, culminating in a technology position that I am not interested in furthering because I went to business school?  Oh, and I also knit funny hats for fun.  (See picture above: Roscoe is a funny-hat model.)

The only one-phrase tie I can commandeer to describe myself is that I can “make it work”.  Like my hero, style maven Tim Gunn.  I can do enough of everything to fix anything.  I am not lacking in talent or ambition, usually sufficient motivation all I need to get me going.  (Motivation, ah, the fodder for another future musing.)

Is THIS my personal brand?  Making it work?  Other than the fact that it’s someone else’s signature phrase, of course.  I’m going to change my blog title and let that percolate for a bit.

Starting in the middle

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I didn’t really want to start a blog in the “middle”.  It’s a bit like starting a book in the middle – you enter, take a few pages to get your bearings, and decide if you want to restart at the beginning and find out the whole story.  However, there’s no beginning here, and no formed direction yet.  A little like my entire life right now.  What better way to get a hold of where I’m going by taking stock of my choices in words?  I’m going to resist the urge to fill in all the back-story right away, and try to stick to what’s on my mind.  However, I only have marginal success in achieving that in real life, nevermind in print.

Things I think about a lot and therefore may decide to write about over time:

  • Vault 31 – our 10+ year horizon “project house”/lifestyle/source of impending continuous marital dissent
  • Crafting – knitting, sewing, building things that are hilarious, yet completely un-sellable due to the inadequate potential compensation for time and materials.
  • Cooking and Eating (and Fitness) – my lifelong dilemma about eating “healthy” yet refusing to give up things that are delicious.  “Healthy” usually loses out.  I also have a bit of a focus on the cultural implications that are imposed upon us by things being labeled as “healthy”.
  • Music – these days, it’s mostly nostalgic waxing about someone else’s musical genius.  That, and a lot of karaoke.
  • Career – this never-ending search for a new career to “define me”, and/or the grand decision of whether or not the role of my new career is to define me or just to provide me with the capital and moderate purpose to sustain the rest of my interests.

And of course, being a “bad Asian” – I can’t be the only one a little lost in the Asian diaspora.  I am 30-something and marginally living up to the Asian stereotype largely misunderstood by media and loosely defined by the movie the Joy Luck Club.  I spent so many years growing up largely white-identified and wishing people wouldn’t see me through Joy Luck glasses.  Yet, when I finally married Soy Sauce guy (see: Joy Luck Club movie) I kept my last name, fearing that it would strip me of the Asian identity that I had taken so many years to develop.

So here it is.  The first steps of my chronicles as a Bad Asian.  My mom always thought I was the “bad child” anyways.