NMC Content Manager, Michele Cummins, highlights the significant stories on our radar this month in our ongoing research for the NMC Horizon Project in the new "EdTech Rec" series. The September edition features how the TI-83 Plus graphing calculator captured the essence of edtech, major challenges to be overcome in assistive technology for disabled students, a finding at the University of Washington that could lead to our devices running on wireless signals without needing batteries, and how CloudU may affect the ever-changing model of online learning.
Go Ahead, Mess With Texas Instruments
This essay focuses on a piece of technology that has been around since the 90's, the TI-83 Plus graphing calculator that most students were required to have for algebra class. The author emphasizes how this tool opened creative doors for him, when he began teaching himself to program it and create his own games, explaining that the power of technology to enable exploration and creativity is not a new concept.
Photo: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/08/go-ahead-mess-with-texas-instruments/278899/
Assistive Technology: A Necessity for Student Success
It is still a challenge for students with dissablities to access technologies that are now becoming more and more prevalent as enablers of learning. Related to this article, a video from the BBC discusses work being done to create the first braille smartphone for visually impaired phone users. It is surprising that the smartphone has been around for years yet is just now being tailored for use by those who are visually-impaired.
No Batteries Required: New Wireless Technology May Power Range Of Mobile/Wearable Devices
This article discusses what may be a big step toward powering the Internet of Things. University of Washington engineers have discovered a new way to repurpose wireless signals that are already around us into both a source of power and a communication medium. The video below explains Ambient Backscatter to enable interactive devices without batteries.
Rethink higher education to exploit digital platforms
Many of us have been standing by as the MOOC hype has mellowed into a larger discussion of how to create hybrid classes that leverage the wide availibility and depth of online resources. The authors of this article describe a hypothetical Cloud U in which students define their own educational paths, choosing from a variety of different styles of online courses, some more social or interactive, allowing students to co-create lessons even, and some geared to be a quick micro-tutorial.Cloud U evaluation would comprise portfolios of student work and assessments by external evaluators, peers and instructors, aggregated in an easily searchable format.
Creative Commons Thumbnail Photo: http://evengrounds.com/blog/how-do-blind-people-use-the-computer
