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State legislation passed in the spring could put up-to-the-minute instructional content at students' fingertips-either online or in customized printed form-eliminating the mass-market hardback textbook.

TX, CA, and FL markets drive the textbook industry. If TX leads the way, eliminating mass market textbooks, then they will undoubtedly revolutionize the publishing industry. Tablet textbooks may be the wave of the future, but let's just hope publishers don't think revolutionizing the textbook industry means reading textbooks on a screen.

Re: Khan Academy- Let's just do it! In another class we talked about the simplicity of Khan's presentation being an asset; no fancy production values. So this should be easy, no? As long as we have the tools.

It isn't so much the fact that this camera can do what it can. It's how its inventor conceptualized the possibilities of firing packets of photons many times and capturing it to form an image. There were ripples of light! Amazing possibilities in store for the imaginative educator...

I've heard of 3D printers before. I thought it would be interesting to try out in schools. For example, if students were designing towns to learn volume and surface area. This could help with spatial learning, which is essential to understanding math. I don't know how feasible this it though...

Hi Irina, Yes! Nothing like seeing your ideas take a concrete shape. Looks like the cost of these printers is comparable to that of SmartBoards, so it may be feasible to try them out in classrooms pretty soon. That said, unless the projects are well integrated into the curriculum, they will end up as another fancy toy.

Harvey and I had a conversation about these last week - Harvey spoke of the way that these printers could open up opportunities for those who can visualize their creations in their heads, but have trouble putting those ideas in tangible form. We spoke of the potential in art and design.

This online assessment tool, designed by HGSE grad Zach Stein, may feed into last week's discussion re: assessment...

This online assessment tool, designed by HGSE grad Zach Stein, may feed into last week's discussion re: assessment... Has anyone seen or used this tool?

This consortium is charging more than $4,000 a course. Seems like a lot.

Afghanistan has launched a new literacy program that enables Afghan women deprived of a basic education during decades of war to learn to read and write using a mobile phone.

This is really deep, Janet. I sense that sometimes there's a double standard between our expectations of what children's education should be versus adult education. There's always push-back when we consider using mobile devices as a primary teaching tool for kids. But I sense there's less push-back when we offer it in adult education. Is this because we think adults can learn better on their own? Or perhaps teachers are important in children's socialization process? Or that education is a basic right for all children, but not necessarily for adults? At the core, these women were once children deprived of an education during their most formative years.

I really appreciate your comments on this topic, Pearl. And, like you, I wonder at the effectiveness of a mobile literacy program. But I also find it interesting that there is even an attempt to reach women who were deprived of an education earlier in their lives.

Conference at MIT "Across Boundaries: Innovation & The Future of Education." February 1-2, 2013, MIT Tang Center, Cambridge, MA (http://learnlaunchconference2013.eventbrite.com).

I am wondering if this is the most disruptive form of education for college-age students...

Building on Maria's link from GeekWire, here is another article about a bubble forming in ed tech...and building on Jason's comment about not wanting to investmenting in ed tech, it seems like a lot of wealthy people aren't worried about it! This article goes into the numbers a little more on trying to show the bubble effect, such as the number of investment rounds and startups. It also talks a bit about Christensen's "innovator" profile and how a lot of the ed tech folks now are mission-driven people who are innovating like Christensen describes. Not sure if what they are doing will work, but trying because they are passionate about it

Can Ed tech start-ups be classified into those driven by a desire to improve education and children's lives or those simply seeking to make a lot of money? Or are motives and intentions always impossible to judge and inextricable from behavior.

Thanks for sharing. I liked the last message of this article. "But as long as we remember that it takes both the tool and the teacher to create success, the mission-driven innovators will outnumber the market-driven copycats. And innovation will outshine the bubbles.". EdSurge is one of my favorite source too. One of my former client at Hedge Fund in HK messaged me earlier this month ''btw u might be spot on on this education stuff. this should offer a sizable business opportunity in coming years u should go grab some" - def. he is one of those guys out there who might contribute to the bubble in the future...

This is the link to a MOOC orchestrated by Stephen Downes, "Change in Formal Education Systems". Unlike the MOOCs that are getting all the press, like Coursera and EdX which are largely replicating a model that pushes content to the learner, this MOOC is actually trying to change the dynamics of teacher-learner interactions. The live session described here is about interaction. "Interaction - The various types and methods by which interaction is supported in formal education, especially student-student, student-content and student-teacher interactions. We look especially at the capacity to substitute one form of interaction for another based on funding, time subject and context."

Interesting article about teaching ESL that brings up the question "is learning another language based largely on interpersonal relationships?" Language is essentially about communicating with other people, whether in spoken or written form, so computers may actually not be that helpful in this process.

If you start watching at the 30-minute mark, you can get a peek at how he uses technology in the design of his course and to shape participation during class. At the 34:00 minute mark he is describing a jigsaw reading activity, similar to the study groups we are often encouraged to form. You won't believe where he and his students go with this. I love his statement, "There are no natives here." So true. I can't find the other video where he shows his collaborative notetaking platform that he uses in a 200-student class, but it's very cool. That's where I got the idea for some kind of wiki or google doc that might allow us to manage lecture notes and the backchannel.

In contrast with the deployment issues of OLPC, here's an article on 1-1 initiative that focused on professional development, teacher collaboration, switching to a teacher selected, digital based curriculum with formative assessments, and a leased laptop support & deployment model.  (Full disclosure - the vendor is Apple).

"The notion of literacy has radically changed in the face of technologies that allow for different forms of expressions and levels of interaction, which is why teachers must adapt"

New AR capabilities in Sony's about to be released PlayStation Vita. Very cool

I've never seen something that can take objects form the real world and make it part of the game experience for characters to jump off and bullets can ricochet off of real worl items.

Fantastic possibilities for entertainment and gaming. I can imagine doing a Parcour in my living room :-) It will be interesting to see who will invest the money and effort to bring this incredible technology to the educational area on portable gaming devices.

More and more, we see how technology is used as an enabler, in formative assessments and helping the teacher to help the student where it is most needed.

And other assessment tools.

The app only contains Math and Language Arts.

Great place for teachers and districts to share and discover common formative assessments and track mastery of state and Common Core standards.

This infographic is especially interesting because, as far as I saw it, most of these "innovative" approaches didn't actually seem all that extraordinary. More generally, it's puzzling (and troubling, really) that despite advances in ed-tech in primary and secondary school, higher education institutions are quite far behind the curve as far as innovative uses of technology goes.

I agree - besides a lot of back-office and stick-stuff-online applications, only Mixable stood out (forming study groups), and that seems not to have much scope.

Here is a website with a virtual world game for kids. You travel around a world called miamiopia in the form of a balloon avatar. You come across questions from content domains and I think then you answer questions and earn coins. If you can't answer the questions, as happened to me when trying to earn coins by answering questions identifying dinosaurs, you are taken to a web site with the information so you can learn it.