ROADBAND AND STUDENT PERFORMANCE GAPS

 https://quello.msu.edu/broadbandgap/

Background & Motivation

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Broadband and Student Performance Gaps is the result of a project designed to understand the repercussions of poor or no home Internet access on student performance and the associated costs to society. The Quello Center at Michigan State University (MSU) and Merit Network, in December 2018, brought together the K12 Citizen Science Working Group, a small group of stakeholders from Michigan school districts. From this group, three Intermediate School Districts (ISDs) volunteered to work with the Quello Center and Merit Network to develop and pilot an approach to measure rates of home connectivity among their students and explore the relationship between connectivity and student performance.

53% of Americans Say the Internet Has Been Essential During the COVID-19 Outbreak

Americans with lower incomes are particularly likely to have concerns related to the digital divide and the digital “homework gap”

BY EMILY A. VOGELS, ANDREW PERRIN, LEE RAINIE AND MONICA ANDERSON

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2020/04/30/53-of-americans-say-the-internet-has-been-essential-during-the-covid-19-outbreak/

Why rural Americans are having a hard time working from home

By Harmeet Kaur, CNN

Updated 1214 GMT (2014 HKT) April 29, 2020

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/29/us/rural-broadband-access-coronavirus-trnd/index.html

Internet to the home quote!

Technology was supposed to bring about “the death of distance” and allow people to work anywhere they wanted to live. Instead, just the opposite has happened. A “great divergence” — as some economists call it —is piling jobs upon jobs in certain high-tech capitals while leaving rural communities behind.

VIRGINIA TAKES A BIG STEP ON RURAL BROADBAND

Published by The Franklin News Post on June 12, 2019

Technology was supposed to bring about “the death of distance” and allow people to work anywhere they wanted to live. Instead, just the opposite has happened. A “great divergence” — as some economists call it —is piling jobs upon jobs in certain high-tech capitals while leaving rural communities behind.

There are few things that both liberals and conservatives agree on but here’s one of them: To bring more economic growth to rural areas, we need to wire them with broadband internet. Think of this as the modern-day equivalent of rural electrification. The Massachusetts technology company Akamai used to produce an annual report on internet speeds. It hasn’t done so since 2017 but here’s what that last report showed: Many of Virginia’s cities that year had internet speeds that zipped along at more than 20 megabits per second. Many parts of rural Virginia, though, had internet speeds that crept along in the single digits – slower than many countries in the developing world. If you want to be blunt about it, much of rural Virginia operates at Third World levels. This isn’t just a problem for technology companies or people who want to see the latest cat video; even your most traditional employer has a front office that probably has to do some work over the internet.

It’s hard to blame the telecom companies. They’re for-profit entities but that black ink starts turning into red ink if they have to lay miles and miles of fiber across rural America. That’s led even the most ardent free marketers to recognize that government needs to step in if rural America is going to have the infrastructure for a 21st century economy. In the 2017 governor’s race, both candidates were in favor of rural broadband, which meant it didn’t get much attention — there wasn’t much to debate. Ralph Northam’s specific goal was to get the entire state wired on broadband by 2022 — an ambitious goal that won’t be met. In reality, the whole state will never get wired 100 percent — there’s always that hunting cabin in the backwoods of Highland County that’s off the grid in lots of ways. State officials conclude a more realistic goal is 97 percent. To reach the final 3 percent, the cost doubles. Or, put another way, the state can cut the cost in half if aims for 97 percent.

The Federal Communications Commission says that right now 91.7 percent of Virginians have broadband access, so we’re really focused on that final 5.3 percent to get to 97 percent. Are we really that wired already? It’s unclear. “There is good reason to believe these numbers are exaggerated,” reads a recent state report on Virginia’s rural broadband plan. The FCC data is sometimes pretty vague because internet providers aren’t required to say who exactly has service and at what speeds — and they’re reluctant to provide them for competitive reasons. That’s created a conundrum: How can the state help expand rural broadband if it doesn’t know who has broadband and who doesn’t?

Experts are furious over the FCC’s rosy picture of broadband access

The data the agency uses has been criticized as flawed

By Colin Lecher@colinlecher May 30, 2019, 12:16pm EDT

https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/30/18644726/fcc-broadband-report-high-speed-rural-statistics-reactions

Here is a survey of what people think should be in an ultimate school setting.

What will OLED displays do for us?

Creating a simple AVA room setup Crestron

collaborative learning spaces called Huddle space

collaborative learning spaces called Huddle space. A live demo

THE NMC/COSN HORIZON REPORT: 2017 K–12 Edition at a Glance

THE NMC/COSN HORIZON REPORT: 

2017 K–12 Edition at a Glance

THE REPORT IS ORGANIZED IN THREE MAJOR SECTIONS, AND IN EACH SECTION THERE ARE SIX SETS OF KEY FINDINGS:

Key Trends Accelerating K–12 Tech Adoption 

• Long-Term Trends: Five or More Years

• Advancing Cultures of Innovation
• Deeper Learning Approaches 

• Mid-Term Trends: Three to Five Years

• Growing Focus on Measuring Learning 
• Redesigning Learning Spaces 

• Short Term Trends: The Next One to Two Years

• Coding as a Literacy 
• Rise of STEAM Learning 

Significant Challenges Impeding K–12 Tech Adoption  

• Solvable Challenges: Those We Both Understand and Know How to Solve

• Authentic Learning Experiences 
• Improving Digital Literacy 

• Difficult Challenges: Those We Understand, but Solutions Are Elusive

• Rethinking the Roles of Teachers 
• Teaching Computational Thinking 

• Wicked Challenges: Those That Are Complex to Even Define, Much Less Address

• Achievement Gap 
• Sustaining Innovation through Leadership Changes 

Important Developments in Educational Technology for K–12 Education

•Time-to-Adoption of One Year or Less

• Maker spaces
• Robotics 
•  

• Time-to-Adoption of Two to Three Years

• Analytics Technologies 
• Virtual Reality 

• Time-to-Adoption of Four to Five Years

• Artificial Intelligence 
• Internet of Things
  

Full Horizon Report
https://cdn.nmc.org/media/2017-nmc-cosn-horizon-report-k12-EN.pdf

Is your password secure?

Is your password secure?

What is a patch Panel?

Whitelist API access to your G Suite Domain

White listing API access to your G Suite Domain

Google is trying to encourage diversity in the games that are available by pointing out that while 65% of women play mobile games, yet only 23% of game developers identify as women

Google is trying to encourage diversity in the games that are available by pointing out that while 65% of women play mobile games, yet only 23% of game developers identify as women.

So they have created this challenge to encourage students of all kinds to come up with game ideas and submit them. The students do not have to know how to code, they just need to be able to come up with a compelling game idea. This is an opportunity for any creative person.

Attached is a copy of an information letter you may share. Follow this link to the site, which includes a neat little "game" that will inform the player on many of the issues surrounding gaming and diversity.

The winner will receive a $10,000 college scholarship and $15,00 for their school and the top five will get a trip to the Electronic Entertainment Expo and an opportunity to showcase their game design, receive mentor-ship from leaders in the industry, and join a celebration of women in gaming.

Please help me get the word out on this exciting opportunity by sharing it with other educators.

Link to full details on this program
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XnfeGCf_rY1RuzSpvlSJrDqcF5nvVeco/view?usp=sharing

Release of overdue federal report on ‘homework gap’ validates stakeholder concerns

Release of overdue federal report on ‘homework gap’ validates stakeholder concerns

The Institute of Education Sciences' report shows a "huge gap" in broadband access among children, and it breaks down the data across demographic groups.

https://edscoop.com/ies-homework-gap-report-digital-equity

New Report on Student Internet Access at Home Shows Persisting Digital Divide

New Report on Student Internet Access at Home Shows Persisting Digital Divide
By Chip Slaven

A long-awaited report on access to digital learning hit the newsstands last week with a familiar headline: a digital divide, known as the homework gap in education circles, persists, especially for students of color, students from low-income families, and students in rural areas.

Full article on Digital Divide:
https://all4ed.org/new-report-on-student-internet-access-at-home-shows-persisting-digital-divide/

 

 

 

 

Jamboard from Google a new way to collaborate across the world.

Michigan is starting a new CoSN Chapter.

Michigan is starting a new CoSN Chapter.

This is an exciting time for Michigan. They will be the 28th state chapter.

Closing the "Homework Gap" panel discustion.