Ed Tech
The tools, platforms, and AI shaping teaching, learning, and campus operations
Monday, October 12
TopSciNet Tools
DATAMETA LAB, TopSciNet, Oct 12, 2026 This looks like a really useful set of tools: "Free online tools with no signup: line counter, image resizer, compressor, PDF converter, QR generator, percentage calculator and more. Everything runs in your browser, so your files never leave your device." What's funny is that I…
downes.caA Small Boat Facing New Horizons
Yaretzy Gabriela Calamaco Munguia, unitwin-unoe, Oct 12, 2026 This post from a primary school teacher and Master's student from the Benemérita Escuela Normal de Coahuila (BENC) in Mexico recounts her experience attending the UNESCO's Digital Learning Week 2026 in France. "It was not a feeling of smallness as a synonym…
downes.caMedia helped create the crisis it finds itself in
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak, Songs on the Security of Networks, Oct 12, 2026 This article is much too long and has a but of a tone, but it is chock full of evidence to back up what it says, and what it says is important: the media itself is responsible for the near total control of the tech industry over its…
downes.caAcademic urban legends
Ole Bjørn Rekdal, Social Studies of Science, Oct 12, 2026 Via a Mastodon post from Alfie Kohn posted today I encountered this great 2014 article on how urban legends are perpetuated in academic writing. The article looks at the chain of commentary around the idea that spinach is a great source of iron (it isn't). You…
downes.caWhy Leaving Academia Feels Like Withdrawal
Claudio Cinà, Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Events and Jobs, Oct 12, 2026 "Many who succeed in academia become reliant on the recognition of its gatekeepers - tenure committees, journal editors, prize juries—until that recognition becomes the currency of existence." See also: qualifications and brain…
downes.caUser-Driven UI
Brad Woods, Brad Woods Digital Garden, Oct 12, 2026 The is the approach I'm trying to take with CList: "With the capabilities of natural language processors, we can create a new approach to teaching UIs. User-driven UI. Instead of pushing features onto the user, the user pulls them in when needed. The software always…
downes.caGoogle Offers 500 Free Tech Certifications Through Miami Nonprofit
Grow With Google is working with the Miami nonprofit Get Tech Knowledge to offer three- to six-month certifications in building tech businesses, turning data into decisions, and IT or cybersecurity.
govtech.comChoosing National Priorities for Open Education: Listening Session Hosted by CCCOER & OEA
Open Education is a solution to many challenges facing education today, but too often isn't part of the conversation among leaders and policymakers. This fall, CCCOER is collaborating with the Open Education Association on a field-wide conversation about how Open Education can have a larger impact for learners. The…
cccoer.orgSailPoint Rolls Out New Capabilities to Address Agentic AI Identity Security Challenge
AI agents are quickly moving from experiments into everyday enterprise environments, but the security controls around them are not keeping pace, according to enterprise identity security company SailPoint.
campustechnology.comBuilding responsible AI in EdTech: A learner protection framework
In this post, we look at why these three make up the AWS CAF-AI perspectives EdTech leaders should mature first, and what building each one looks like in practice.
aws.amazon.comHave any student Mac users have the CONTENT area of their classes blocked?
Hi, everyone! I just spoke with a student who installed the new MacOS 27 Golden Gate. It included a Safari update and she could access every other tab except the CONTENT one. It was like this in 2 of her classes. If this happens to anyone else, she got it working through Chrome, but has anyone else run into this issue?
community.d2l.comReview: Logitech Spotlight 2 Helps Faculty Stay Focused on Teaching
Great presentations are rarely about great slides. Instead, they come from instructors who connect naturally with students, maintain eye contact and keep technology from interrupting the learning experience. While presentation remotes have existed for years, most simply replace a keyboard’s arrow keys. Logitech's…
edtechmagazine.comUniversity of Arizona researchers accelerate rare pediatric disease drug repurposing with AWS
At the University of Arizona (U of A) College of Medicine – Phoenix, a translational neuroscience lab of eight researchers is pursuing a mission to find and repurpose existing drugs as potential treatments for rare pediatric disorders. Working with Amazon Web Services (AWS), the team connected four AWS services into…
aws.amazon.comThe Pivotal College Requirement: When AI Has the Answers, How You Think Matters Most
To prepare students for an uncertain future, higher education must teach not only what to learn, but how to question, adapt and...
theeduledger.comHEPI / Ellucian webinar: Big is beautiful? What should the future shape and size of the higher education sector look like?
Cambridge and Newcastle among universities to change deals with Turnitin over concerns on AI
No-Cost Cloud Resources Your Faculty Should Know About
By Daphne McCanse, Strategic Research Communications Consultant Many faculty, researchers, and students desire to use cloud resources but often lack funding to access them. Here is what they may not know: There are federally funded options available at no cost. The National Science Foundation and its partners support…
internet2.eduGreat chat. What’s next?
The post Great chat. What’s next? appeared first on Kaltura.
corp.kaltura.comHow higher ed can fight fraud without collecting more student data
As students settle into the academic year, colleges and universities are managing a growing identity challenge that extends far beyond enrollment. The post How higher ed can fight fraud without collecting more student data appeared first on eCampus News.
ecampusnews.comAI Literacy and the New Admissions Disadvantage
Admission offices should be transparent about their AI-detection policies and procedures.
insidehighered.com‘Obsolete’ Emergency Phones Illuminate Campus Sexual Assault Myths
Some parents and students say they feel unsafe after the University of Connecticut became the latest institution to decommission its blue-light phones and transition to a safety app. But experts say both technologies focus on the wrong problem.
insidehighered.com
Sunday, October 11
At a Loss for Words
Canvas LMS is coming in 2027
Discernment in the Age of Agents
Calls to pace the frontier and slow AI development for safety miss the very real changes ubiquitous AI brings to our professional and personal lives.
marcwatkins.substack.com
Friday, October 9
In the world of LLMs, the description is the hyperlink
The Memex has arrived, for anyone with the sense to see it.
mikecaulfield.substack.comOpinion: How AI Is Changing IT Career Pathways in Higher Ed
The accelerating development of artificial intelligence is changing the value of certain skills, the long-term outlook of certain careers and what aspiring IT professionals should do to stay ahead of the curve.
govtech.comEDUCAUSE ’26: Higher Ed Should Teach Baseline AI Skills
EDUCAUSE Senior Researcher Nicole Muscanell says neither education nor workforce leaders know what the future of work will look like, so higher education should focus on providing students with a few key AI skills.
govtech.comWhat’s the point of an assignment?
This week included a quick trip to New York City to share a few thoughts on AI-aware teaching with the editors at W. W. Norton. During their annual editors retreat, they spent some time thinking about AI, how its changing higher education, and what that means for a textbook publisher …
derekbruff.orgThe People in Your Neighborhood
2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.comHow Higher Ed Institutions Can Rethink Cyber Risk in Terms of Financial Exposure
Quantifying cyber risk in terms of financial exposure helps higher education IT teams justify their spending and make the case that security is an enterprise-critical endeavor. This approach pushes districts to audit existing security tools, prioritize threats based on potential financial impact and measure success in…
edtechmagazine.com5 Questions To Ask To Manage Cloud Spending in Higher Ed
Shifting applications to the cloud has been a decade-long success story. Now that the initial chaos and learning curve are in the rearview mirror, higher ed IT managers and administrators are looking at the bill and asking, “Am I paying too much?” Here’s what to find out. [end web only] 1. Where Is Our Money Going?…
edtechmagazine.comFlashpoint Patents Ransomware Risk Model, Tying Vulnerabilites to Likelihood of Attack
Cybersecurity company Flashpoint recently announced it has received U.S. Patent No. 12,705,360 for its Ransomware Risk model, a methodology designed to help security teams determine which newly disclosed vulnerabilities more closely resemble those historically used in ransomware attacks.
campustechnology.comYour AI Policy Is Slop
Bans reward outdated skills. Grade judgment instead. GUEST COLUMN | by Chris Rohlfs In September, Los Angeles Unified disallowed student AI use across district devices for a year, and New York City Public Schools banned it through eighth grade. Similar moratoriums have been proposed in San Francisco, Seattle, and the…
edtechdigest.comReport: Convergence of AI, Quantum Risks Impacting Cybersecurity
New research from Thales highlights how AI adoption and emerging quantum computing threats are putting pressure on existing security measures.
campustechnology.comHow Leaders Overcome IT Staffing Shortages Through Retention and Upskilling
The talent tension in higher ed has many dimensions. Attracting IT talent has been a long-standing challenge for a variety of reasons, including compensation, burnout due to workload demand and limited or unclear advancement pathways. As if those challenges weren’t enough, policy changes and enrollment trends have…
edtechmagazine.comMonthly Brightspace Guided Training Webinars
All customers have the opportunity to attend monthly Brightspace Guided Training Webinars and get their questions answered with the help of the D2L Training Team.
community.d2l.comModifying Final Grade with Attendnace
Because one of the courses I teach is highly participatory, the course policy is that a student's final grade is deducted by 6.667% for each unexecused absence beyond 3. For example, if a student has earned a 95% in the class, but has 4 unexcused abscences, their final grade would be a 88.333%. I cannot figure out a…
community.d2l.comWhere to find training on the "formula grading system"?
I use specifications grading, which is always hard to express using an LMS because it operates like a checklist. There are no points or percentages. It was suggested to me that perhaps the "formula grading system" would be a good option for specs grading in Brightspace. However, I am having trouble finding any…
community.d2l.comCan Brightspace Add a Dashboard to View Grades Across All Courses?
My university recently switched to Brightspace, and one feature I really miss is being able to view all of my course grades in one place. Currently, I have to navigate into each course and open the Grades section just to see how I am doing. This becomes frustrating and time-consuming when managing multiple courses. I…
community.d2l.comThe Importance of Scratch-Paper in Online Assessments
As academic institutions enter midterm exam season, teaching staff may be thinking of ways to ensure that their online assessments encourage authentic and thoughtful responses to questions. Many instructors understand the importance of giving students... The post The Importance of Scratch-Paper in Online Assessments…
yuja.comWhy Liberal Arts Thrive at Technological Universities
As colleges confront rapid technological change, liberal arts units at tech universities offer a proven blueprint for innovation...
theeduledger.comEvaluating Speech Data AI: Insights from Education Leaders and Practitioners
U-GAIN Reading R&D Center hosted a two-day virtual workshop on Speech Data for Learning Scientists The post Evaluating Speech Data AI: Insights from Education Leaders and Practitioners appeared first on Digital Promise.
digitalpromise.orgResearch Minute: How Intentional Design Creates Belonging in Online Learning
Research Minute is a faculty spotlight series featuring educators and researchers participating in the D2L Educators-in-Residence program. Each conversation explores a teaching and learning challenge, the research it inspired and... The post Research Minute: How Intentional Design Creates Belonging in Online Learning…
d2l.comTurnitin proposal to train AI on student work draws criticism
5 leadership priorities to become AI-ready
Four years after ChatGPT changed the conversation around AI, many higher education institutions are still asking how they should adopt AI. A more useful question is whether their systems, data, and people are ready to support it. The post 5 leadership priorities to become AI-ready appeared first on eCampus News.
ecampusnews.comThe AI Invasion Has Come for Mathematics
insidehighered.com
Thursday, October 8
EDUCAUSE '26: Colleges Need to Treat Vendor Risk as Institutional Risk
Recent cyber attacks on Canvas and Oracle PeopleSoft showed how a vulnerability in a third-party platform could become a campuswide problem, and why higher-ed institutions need specific contracts with those vendors.
govtech.comMore universities end Turnitin contracts as concerns mount
Build a self-service student assistant with Amazon Bedrock Knowledge Bases
Learn how with Amazon Bedrock Knowledge Bases, you build an assistant that grounds answers in your trusted documents through Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG).
aws.amazon.com2027 EDUCAUSE Top 10 Spotlights an Age of Change
Each year, the EDUCAUSE Top 10 report outlines the major trends, opportunities and challenges facing higher ed technology leaders, highlighting lessons learned from the year prior and forecasting what’s to come in the next year. The 2027 EDUCAUSE Top 10 theme is the Age of Perpetual Change, spotlighting the pace of…
edtechmagazine.com