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I've always wondered what drives VC investments in ed tech firms. Today, Union Square Ventures, a New York-based VC firm, began sharing its internal market research. Scroll down and click on "online education" to see what's caught their attention in the sector. It's very interesting to consider what is included--and excluded!

Pretty relevant to what we've discussed in class so far--Verizon is launching a couple of initiatives to encourage mobile ed tech development. One is to encourage students to create educational apps relevant to their communities, while the other is to train teachers on how to use technology and mobile tech in their classrooms. Third part is an online portal for sharing knowledge and materials between teachers.

"Technology in education is one of the "prominent technology trends expected to influence the consumer electronics (CE) industry in the years ahead," according to the 2013 edition of "Five Technology Trends to Watch," a report released this week by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA). The other four tech trends identified were the future of 3D printing, next-generation TVs and displays, the evolution of the audio market, and the mobile revolution in Africa." Basically goes on to state that parents and students support more ed tech (which I think has come up in a couple other articles, too).

This startup, Clever, has a platform to enable the easy integration of other ed tech into the classroom--it stores student data in a single location. Maybe this will also help track student information as they move up grade levels and enable things like mastery-based learning instead of seat-based? They already have 2000 schools and a waiting list!

"We need high-quality education for the fraction of the cost and to give anyone a chance to learn throughout their lifetime."

The report, titled "Conducting and Reporting Product Evaluation Research: Guidelines and Considerations for Educational Technology Publishers and Developers," is authored by Denis Newman, CEO of Empirical Education Inc., and produced by the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA). It's based on Empirical Education's many years of conducting this kind of research, both for publishers and for the U.S. Department of Education (ED). A working group of industry experts also was established for evaluation, and it met monthly for more than a year to sort through the issues and draft a set of considerations.

Sheffield 1972

"I think education is probably the largest, most important, and most screwed up part of the American society and economy,"

Ed platform that integrates social networking, content creation and real-time communications.

Review of edtech development

The Federal Trade Commission is working on updates to COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) with implications for how children's data can be collected online. Is this an opportunity for a new generation of ed tech to use student data in more comprehensive and smarter ways, or a threat to children's privacy?

A news story from Cornell talking about integrating mobile devices into higher ed...paints an unfortunate, yet realistic picture of the discrepancies between research/trends and practice  

Seems like a cool and useful product for teachers: aggregating the data gathered by the many apps and ed tech tools teachers use in the classroom in a single platform, with data visualization support

This article highlights movement towards learning by creating and outlines some platforms that are designed to facilitate that.

Because it is not every day you get to link to poetryfoundation.org for an ed tech course...

For those interested in innovation in higher ed, NCIIA is hosting their annual conference in March in DC. Generally the theme is how to teach technology entrepreneurship, but some of the topics this year are a bit more general. Examples: -- Team-based Learning Pedagogy: Transforming classroom dialogue and learning --Learning space design for creativity and innovation --Simplifying / packaging creative engineering education

Discussion on whether higher ed institutions can save cost by allowing students tograduate in three yrs by integrating the use of mooc. (By prof from yokyo univ. who is attending this)

Forbes prediction for how technology will impact Higher education