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An all-too-familiar tale of school districts hailing software as a "silver bullet" and then getting frustrated when student achievement gains didn't live up to expectations--even though teachers implemented it for a tiny fraction of the recommended use time...

Toy and book set to help little girls get involved in engineering

Good read to get a pulse on an online course at Coursera. Students registered online 11,800; students registered in in-person class 20. Only three weeks into the course and student feedback has been very positive.

As our digital devices become part of our everyday lives, and part of the everyday lives of students, what does this say about our "relationship" with technology? Our devices often get more attention than our human relationships. Here is an interesting article on Cyborg Anthropology

Via Instapundit: In Technology Review, Michael Fitzgerald reports on an innovate approach to make digital versions of expensive textbooks available to cost-conscious students.

Wow, pretty interesting that Coursera is getting into this game. I always thought that was a strong suit of Udacity and one possible way for them to get sustainable revenue.

Article on how the government and philanthropies can support innovation in education.

What's the big barrier (besides government reluctance to spend money on education) to this? Historically, I thought that education funding was left to states as "states rights", hence the fact that the Federal government has even put up any money should be a step forward. I would be interested in hearing what people think are the levers for getting the Federal government to invest more...should education research be treated like NSF or NIH "basic research" and get core government support?

I believe that the federal government used to spend more dollars for basic research in education, but that number has been reduced dramatically over the years. I agree 100% that we need to increase this type of investment, and the federal government is the natural source. These social innovation funds are a separate type of investment, distinct from basic research. These grants are "translational" in that they seek to help commercialize promising research, but are not intended to fund the basic research. For a healthy and dynamic ecosystem of innovation in education, we need both.

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

A A Clay Christensen literally wrote the book on disruption, so it's worth paying attention to him when he talks about where the disruption fueled by the web is going to strike next.

This article describes the efforts that individual teachers in Utah are making to rewrite textbooks to be aligned to the standards that they are teaching in class. These teachers are writing eBooks and getting a lot of positive feedback from state officials because of the use of technology to meet student needs. They did not have a textbook that fit their integrated approach to teaching math, which they aligned to CCSS, so they took the matter of creating a textbook into their own hands. I think this is a prelude to how textbook creation is changing as a result of technology. Teachers are now able to construct books in a way that fit exactly the objectives they are covering and meeting there students where they are at.

California collage students to get free digital textbooks as early as next year.

Seems to be getting some coverage on this topic lately. Interesting comment here. Probably reactions many disruptive innovation driver will face. Doesnt mean they are failing though. Reactions from their users seem to be relatively muted. It is the skeptics and traditional players who is making big deal out of it. 'Obviously, the company does not want to say that its free content is cannibalizing the revenue generated from charging students and institutions for premium features and content, but it's clear that the company didn't quite get the balance right.' 'Unfortunately, although Flat World would never admit it, this announcement certainly serves as validation of the doubt over Open Educational Resources (OER) as a business concept.' Whatever you do though, the business model should be sustainable..

Opinion article from Reynol Junco at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society on why most educational technology startups aren't that great...they don't base their products on research, proven pedagogy, or work with educators.

It does seem like there is a shift going on right now- more educators on start up teams and more interest in developing innovations from the educators themselves. That being said, the market continues to get flooded. I think in the long run this will be very good for teaching and learning, but I would not want to be an investor in this space.

I think that is great that more educators are getting on the teams...but yeah, there are a lot of very fragmented / disperse initiatives that make it hard to tell what will succeed or catch on.

An unfortunate article about student understanding in which the author thinks the only solution is a private tutor. How can we address this through technology? What technologies can change this issue in the classroom? How can we offer students personalized help?

Helpful list for getting to know the edtech space (and possible future employers!) 

thanks for posting....amazing how many of these I do not know!

As consumers wise up about education spending, for-profit colleges are getting schooled. Institutions such as Apollo Group Inc.'s University of Phoenix, DeVry Inc. and Washington Post Co.'s Kaplan-who only a few years ago reported double-digit student gains on a regular basis and posted hundreds of millions in profits-now are hemorrhaging students.

Gateway source for all students: high school and college composition and journalism and student of life. Bookmark this source and then bookmark the hyperlinks in this article. Do you have the 10 (11 for the bonus) tech skills down? I certainly can improve in some of these areas.