You asked, and we listened. Last year, we polled our Global WebSphere Community members asking you what WebSphere topics you were most interested in having additional training information on from the GWC. The results came back showing a strong interest in WebSphere Application Server and WebSphere MQ. The Global WebSphere Community is pleased to announce the availability of the following complimentary IBM WebSphere Education courses available to our GWC members:
One of the blogging activities that I often suggest in my workshops is having students record and share on-the-spot observations during field trips. To do this your students should have a mobile blogging application on their iOS and Android devices. If your students dont have iOS or Android devices if they have a mobile device that has a web browser or email client they can post via email to Blogger. Heres a short run-down of mobile blogging options on the blog platforms that I usually recommend to teachers.
You may have ‘Big Data’ and not know it… can you protect it?
To many security executives the word “Big Data” seems to being something that someone else has and thus not applicable to ones own enterprise. Many Security managers assume that their own data-center is traditional and that ‘Big Data’ is something that enterprises like Amazon or Google use. Such thinking cannot be further from the truth. With the rise in machine-to-machine M2M communication, i.e. interconnectivity, there is a huge rise in the data that is available and logged. So if you have website and have logs of all the activity on the website then you certainly have ‘big data’.
Phew – we now have the play on the words out of the way!
Even the most conservative enterprise has a huge amount of log files that can provide great insight into their own operations or customer needs. As organizations try to ingest and manage this useful data, there is also the implication that this data is useful to anyone who can break in and access this data. Organizations also need to be aware that much of this data could be sensitive data such as financial, health, and personal or other types of sensitive information that are subject to regulations or even sensitive to the business like revenue data.
Dan Ariely speaking at TED (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Back in November we gave you a heads up on A Beginner’s Guide to Irrational Behavior, a MOOC being created by Dan Ariely. If you’re a frequent visitor to our site, you know that Ariely is a professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University, who has previously explained by why well-intentioned people lie, and why CEOs repeatedly get outsized bonuses that have no basis in rationality. Ariely’s six-week course finally begins tomorrow (Monday the 25th), so, before you miss the boat, reserve your free seat today.
A Beginner’s Guide to Irrational Behavior now appears on our list of 300 Free MOOCs from Great Universities.
English: iPads can be a distraction to learning (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We go on and on about iPads, tablets, phablets, and just about every other piece of technology out there. But the discussion is slowly changing. It’s becoming less and less about how to deploy as much technology as possible. Instead, the discussion is shifting (luckily) back over to effectively connecting with students. Check out the recent post by George Couros to see what I’m talking about. It’s easy to see that there is a slow pivot happening in education right now where we’re becoming a little less enamored by shiny new iGadgets and other tech tools. Instead, we want to figure out how to effectively use what we have in order to actually connect with students.
So that’s why it was interesting to see a comment pop up on a recent post here on Edudemic about iPads. In that post, someone who wrote as ‘student 21′ pointed out the problem of deploying iPads in school. They’re not always effectively used. This goes for iPads as much as any other learning resource (electronic or not). It’s all in how the device is used.
US Navy 100727-N-4304M-001 A student at a science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) summer camp at Ryken High School in Leonardtown, Md (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There’s no escaping the urgency for better science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) instruction in the nation’s K–12 schools. If you don’t know by now that U.S. students have struggled to keep pace with their international counterparts in important core subjects, such as math and science, we’ll assume that you’ve spent the last several years teaching under a rock.
But just how bad is the problem—and what can U.S. schools do to better prepare students for the demands of an increasingly technical, STEM-intensive future?
We recently came across this interesting infographic from nonprofit Edutopia, which illustrates how a firm math and technology-based education can improve students’ long-term job and career prospects.
Should teachers use social media? What are the best practices for flipped classrooms? How are educators in other countries using computers and networks?
These were but a few of the 400 session topics at the 68th annual meeting of the ASCD this past weekend in Chicago, where technology‘s impact on teachers, students and institutions dominated much of the discussion. This year, the nonprofit’s three-day conference and exhibit drew more than 10,000 educators and administrators, as well as hundreds of vendors.
But technology isn’t a panacea, said ASCD speakers and attendees.
“We must think through how to help students use technology as a tool rather than having that tool rule our lives,” Freeman A. Hrabowski III, president of the University of Maryland, declared during his keynote in the first general session Saturday. Rather than focus on tech skills per se, Hrabowski said, “the key skill every student should have coming to college, other than reading, is the ability to ask good questions.”
Technology Map – Tutornet (Photo credit: steven w)
Technology is changing at a rapid pace, so much so that it’s challenging to grasp.
While there is little uniformity in technology, there are some trends worth noting that have spurred tangent innovation, including speed (a shift from dial-up top broad band), size (from huge computers to small handheld devices), and connectivity (through always-on apps and social media).
In fact, we have some to expect nearly instant obsolescence—smartphone contracts that last a mere 24 months seem like ages. Whether this is a matter of trend or function is a matter of perspective, but it’s true that technology is changing—and not just as a matter of power, but tone.
In 2013, technology has become not just a tool, but a standard and matter of credibility. While learning by no means requires technology, to design learning without technology is an exercise in spite—proving a point at the cost of potential. And it’s difficult to forget how new this is.
Fifteen years ago, a current high school sophomore was born.
Up until now, if you wanted to send content from a website directly to your Kindle for later reading, you had to install a browser extension. Now, however, you don’t necessarily have to if the site in question has implemented Amazon’s new “Send to Kindle” button. Made just for web publishers and WordPressbloggers, you can already see it on The Washington Post, TIME and Boing Boingwebsites. Publishers can design how they want the button to look to a certain degree via limited customization of the font, color, size and theme. Like all the other Send to Kindle shortcuts, all readers need to do is select the article they want to ship over, hit the button and they’ll see it on their favorite Kindle reader, be it the app or the device.
picture of an e-learning classroom (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This collaboratively written article provides some great ideas for leveraging today’s mobile technologies to help students enhance those vital writing skills.
The use of smartphones in the classroom is no longer clearly something to be frowned upon. In fact, some teachers are now looking to use them as tools to get the best out of their students. Initially, smartphones were distractions, with students playing games or engaging in texting, taking attention away from group activities or lectures. But as today’s society embraces technology to an increasing degree, there is much to be said for leveraging it in the classroom. Traditional dynamics still have a place – the teacher is still the source and disseminator of information and the students are still the recipients, but with technology in the classroom, students can pursue independent learning even further, guided by the instructor.
