I've been a big fan of Startup Weekend for a long, long time -- well before the organization opted to create a special vertical devoted to education. But the news this week that Startup Weekend EDU has partnered with Pearson, the largest education company in the world, gives me a bit of pause. Can the Startup Weekend EDU initiative remain innovative with these financial strings? Will education startups want to participate, knowing that one of their biggest rivals is Pearson? Will teachers want to participate, knowing that Pearson is, in a lot of the ways, "part of the problem"? [...]
Google+ Opens to Teens: Will Teens Care? Will Schools Use It?
Google+ is finally open to those over age 13, Google VP Bradley Horowitz announced today. It's been a little over six months since Google launched G+ and up until now, it's been restricted to those over 18. In opening the doors, Google has added a series of "safety enhancements" to help protect teens from over-sharing. Lots of questions remain: will teens want to use G+? Will this be integrated with Google Apps for Education? [...]
Google Says Chromebooks Now in "Hundreds of Schools"
When Google said it would be making an announcement at FETC about Chromebooks, I knew it wasn't going to be something that fulfilled one of my 2012 predictions (that Chromebooks get the ax). You don't take to the stage at a major ed-tech conference to say "so long!" to an education initiative. Instead Google offered some idea of how well the Chromebook adoption is going: "hundreds of schools." Vague? Maybe. But it's a pattern that matches how schools took to Google Apps for Education, project manager Rajen Sheth says. [...]
Weekly Ed-Tech Podcast with Steve Hargadon
Each week, Steve Hargadon and I sit down (virtually) to discuss the latest ed-tech news. This week's episode looks at the Internet's anti-SOPA protests, libraries as incubators, and of course the big Apple textbook announcement. The anger in my voice in this episode is palpable, I think. But I also think this is the best episode we've recorded yet. [...]
MIT OCW Scholar Launches the First of Its 2012 Classes: Linear Algebra
Well, well, well. 2012 is going to be very interesting for online learning and opencourseware, I predict. Hot on the heels of the news of Sebastian Thrun's departure from Stanford, here is the launch of the latest round of MIT OCW Scholar courses. The OCW Scholar courses are part of a new MIT OCW initiative, taking the opencourseware material and designing online courses specifically geared towards independent learners. Launching this week, 18.06SC Linear Algebra. [...]
Alumn.us: Building an Alumni Network for Public Schools
I met Alumn.us co-founder Kevin Adler at a Startup Weekend EDU event last fall. In fact, his company won the competition that weekend, with his project to build out an alumni network for public schools and community colleges, something that can foster mentorship and fundraising. This isn't Classmates v2.0. [...]
Stanford AI Professor Thrun Leaves University to Start Udacity, an Online Learning Startup
Stanford AI Professor Sebastian Thrun has announced he's leaving the university to launch Udacity, an online learning startup. Thrun was one of the professors who taught Stanford's wildly popular Artificial Intelligence class last fall -- a class that had over 160,000 students enroll. "We believe university-level education can be both high quality and low cost," reads the startup website. "Using the economics of the Internet, we've connected some of the greatest teachers to hundreds of thousands of students all over the world." [...]
A Win for Math Students and a Win for the Web: Desmos Goes HTML 5
I chose Desmos as one of my picks for the top education startups of 2011. This week, the company unveiled a newly redesigned/re-engineered version of its free online graphing calculator. It's made the switch from Flash to HTML5 -- that's a win for the Web and a win for cross-platform support -- both of which I think mean a win for students. [...]
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Audrey Watters is a technology journalist, freelance writer, ed-tech advocate, recovering academic, rabble-rouser, and single mom.
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(Shorter) Hack Ed — Ed-Tech Links
- The fourth R--Research, and the skills we all need January 27, 2012
- Apple, iBooks Author, and Open Textbooks: RIP K-12 Publishers as We Know Them January 26, 2012
- The Evolution of Bill Gates, Education Philanthropist January 26, 2012
- iPad Textbooks: Reality Less Revolutionary Than Hardware January 26, 2012
- On iBooks 2 And iBooks Author January 26, 2012
- Stanford AI class, some off-the cuff reactions, envisioning a future of technical learning online January 25, 2012
- Why We Need a 4th R: Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic, algoRithms January 25, 2012
- Utah Moves to Open Textbooks January 25, 2012
- Making Universities Obsolete January 25, 2012
- On the mathematical impossibility of Spongebob’s pineapple... January 24, 2012
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