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The issue of wealth inequality across the United States is well known, but this video shows you the extent of that imbalance in dramatic and graphic fashion.

"All large-scale, multi-user communities and online social networks that rely on users to contribute content or build services share one property: most users don't participate very much. Often, they simply lurk in the background. In contrast, a tiny minority of users usually accounts for a disproportionately large amount of the content and other system activity. This phenomenon of participation inequality was first studied in depth by Will Hill in the early '90s, when he worked down the hall from me at Bell Communications Research"

"What will online education look like if students' access to the internet is more compounded by their structural inequalities than it is already? How can we, in good conscience, use online technologies to increase access to higher education if the cost of using the internet rises while corporate control of the internet increases?"

A true educational Commons would be a force for reducing academic hierarchy and income inequality. I'm all in favor of that. You say you are too. But is that what you are telling your partners in finance and university administration? Or are you telling them that they can accumulate even more of what they already have-money and prestige-while appearing to be giving it away? I will know my course has been successful when my students understand Coursera's business model behind offering free higher education globally (along with the promise of greater social equality) as an exciting venture capital investment opportunity through which to increase privately-held wealth and lock in existing educational hierarchies.

The crisis that is about to break out involves student debt and how we finance higher education. Like the housing crisis that preceded it, this crisis is intimately connected to America's soaring inequality, and how, as Americans on the bottom rungs of the ladder strive to climb up, they are inevitably pulled down - some to a point even lower than where they began.

"Assumptions about young people's familiarity with technologies risk exacerbating inequality. Access to devices and connectivity isn't equal across all young people, and neither is support in developing skills - from peers, parent/carers, or schools, equally distributed. Socioeconomic status remains a key issue in relation to access, with a small but significant number of young people having very limited access."

Now ability grouping has re-emerged in classrooms all over the country - a trend that has surprised education experts who believed the outcry had all but ended its use. A new analysis from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a Census-like agency for school statistics, shows that of the fourth-grade teachers surveyed, 71 percent said they had grouped students by reading ability in 2009, up from 28 percent in 1998. In math, 61 percent of fourth-grade teachers reported ability grouping in 2011, up from 40 percent in 1996. "These practices were essentially stigmatized,"

Under the new effort, paid for by the College Board, high-achieving low-income students will also receive a packet of information on selective colleges, as well as waivers for the application fee. The information includes details on admission and financial aid policies, as well as on the variation in graduation rates at different colleges.

"Until we address the scarcity in children's lives and schools, addressing teacher quality is a futile distraction, just as continuing to change standards and tests is a futile distraction. Instead of labeling, ranking, and then firing teachers, our first best step would be to end the cult of high-stakes testing because the problems of education are mostly systemic (social and educational) and not the adults who choose to teach or the children we seek to serve."

"For those who can crack the top 20 percent, there is great promise. Most people in that elite group, Rank told me, will spend at least part of their careers among the truly affluent, earning more than $250,000 a year. For those at work in the much larger pool, there will be falling or stagnant wages and far greater uncertainty. A college degree is an advantage, but it no longer offers any guarantee, especially for those who graduate from lower-ranked for-profit schools."

"My situation is not unique. 76% of instructional staff appointments in US higher education are now not even full-time jobs"

"The technology industry, by sequestering itself from the community it inhabits, has transformed the Bay Area without being changed by it-in a sense, without getting its hands dirty. Throughout most of Silicon Valley's history, its executives have displayed a libertarian instinct to stay as far from politics and government as possible. "

"A new online data tool being made public Monday finds a strong correlation between where people are raised and their chances of achieving the American dream."

"It's also one piece of evidence that changing the college trajectories of America's low-income students will require efforts more extensive than low-cost "nudges." "It's a good lesson in thinking about the limitations of these kinds of interventions," said Lindsay Page, a University of Pittsburgh researcher who has studied text messaging reminders to students. "Be cautious of the long-run benefits from $6 solutions.""