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"Starting next fall, the University of Pennsylvania will offer what it says is the first online bachelor's degree at an Ivy League college, an illustration of the growing credibility and popularity of online education."

"Preliminary results of a study of 16 massive open online courses offered through the University of Pennsylvania show that only a small percentage of people who start the courses finish them-and that, on average, only half of those who register for the courses even watch the first lecture. The study, conducted by the university's Graduate School of Education, is reviewing data from about a million users of the courses, which Penn offered on the Coursera platform, from June 2012 to June 2013. Two of the seven researchers involved-Laura W. Perna, a professor of higher education, and Alan Ruby, senior fellow for international education-described the study on Thursday in a presentation at the MOOC Research Conference now under way in Arlington, Tex."

In Pennsylvania, the issue is primarily addressed at the local level with districts setting policy. For the most part, the use of such devices is banned during the school day. Some districts ban possession of such devices altogether while others allow students to bring them to school as long as they remain out of sight during the regular school day. Steel Valley School District officials are examining a policy already on the books that allows students to bring devices to school but requires the devices be turned over to school officials. A district committee recently discussed allowing students in secondary grades to stow their devices in their lockers rather than check them in each morning.

"the charter schools seem to mine the local district of low-cost special education students while leaving the traditional schools with students who have the most severe disabilities. He points to data showing the district's charter schools tends to serve high proportions of low-cost special needs students - those with speech and hearing disabilities, for instance - while serving low proportions of high-cost special needs students, such as those with autism or emotional problems."

"Last fall, Alberta Education sent two 2013 diploma-exam questions along with nearly 1,900 student essay answers that had been graded by teachers to LightSide, a Pennsylvania company that develops computer software to score student essays. LightSide's automated algorithms outperformed human reliability in the Alberta study by about 20 per cent, said the company's January 2014 report to the government."

"Although schools will open in Philadelphia next week, the district and the city have a long year ahead of them while Governor Corbett's charter movement continues to gain strength. In a year or two, we will all look back at this historic event and talk about how Tom Corbett turned the School District of Philadelphia into Sodom and Gomorrah."

"Penn is strongly committed to open learning - a vital part of our mission to increase access, around the world, to the educational resources that can change people's lives. Our goals as early adopters of massively open online courses are to create and disseminate knowledge, drive teaching innovation, and expand Penn's global presence.  We invite you to learn more below about our Coursera courses and the outstanding Penn faculty members who teach them."

"We want to challenge both the president's and the faculty member's narratives, not because we want to replace them with a "better" or "truer" one, but because the most interesting conversations happen when people on both sides of the argument start realizing that the situation is more complicated than they thought it was."

"Across all geographic regions, the study found that MOOC students have high levels of educational attainment: 83 percent of those who responded said they had earned either a two- or four-year post-secondary degree, far more than international averages."

"We contend that the real issue - and the one that largely goes unaddressed - is that the majority of people who teach online are given virtually no assistance in learning how to teach online. Professional development for these instructors is limited to lunch 'n' learns, basic learning platform support, and other technology-related resources, but generally fails to expose instructors to the best techniques for online instruction."