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Education is already seeing some major changes in light of new, cutting-edge technologies. Students can now access educational information from virtually anywhere at any time, and mobile devices are influencing some to flip their classrooms, changing the educational experience altogether. While current technologies are making waves, further changes linked to upcoming technologies may be on the horizon. One of the most hyped and anticipated devices over the past year has been Google's soon-to-be-released glasses. These glasses will enable users to get real-time information about the places, people, and objects around them, right on the lens of the glasses. While it will be a long time before these glasses ever show up in the classroom (they currently cost $1,500 and are available only to developers), when they do, educators and students can expect to see some of these amazing changes to the educational experience.

While there are more than 7,000 business incubators around the world, very few focus specifically on education technology. In fact, only in the past few years has there been major growth in the number of these highly-focused incubators. Part of this increased attention is an outgrowth of a mission to genuinely help education. Yet these kinds of incubators are also thriving simply because edtech is a solid investment, as the education technology market is poised to grow by leaps and bounds in the coming years. A handful of successful startups have already come out of these edtech incubators, but as the number and variety of these incubators grows worldwide, the ranks of edtech superstars likely will, too, which could have major ramifications for the future of education. Here, we highlight just a few of the edtech incubators that are making waves in the world today, a list that's sure to grow rapidly over the next decade.

"he influx of investment money is a relatively new and exciting experience for the education sector. Over the past couple years, we've seen millions of dollars poured into the 'hottest' startups in education. From Chegg to Coursera, there's been a renewed interest in shaping the future of education. We explore this idea in the upcoming October issue of Edudemic Magazine but hopefully this useful infographic by Boundless can hold you over until then. It's a great look behind the financial curtain of education. Prepare to either be outraged, excited, or both!"

"These examples bring me to the point of my story. It's not enough to drive system change through pedagogy and educational practices. System change is systemic. It starts with how we conduct our business, how nimble, creative and adaptive we choose to be, and how quickly we are able to modify what we do to take advantage of how to do what we do better. If the educational ship of state creaks along dragged down by the weight of outmoded business practices, then the result will be a weakened, badly positioned American higher education system. That outcome will diminish our productivity as citizens, workers and liberally educated thinkers. It will be bad economics, worse politics and a missed opportunity.  "

The Department of Education released a draft report about big data and education today. It's called "Enhancing Teaching and Learning through Educational Data Mining and Learning Analytics," a title that's unlikely to win any converts to the notion of a data-curious* view of learning. Part of what's going to get stuck in the craw is that phrase "data mining," I reckon. Despite all the potential and all the buzz about (big) data, data-mining remains something with a fairly negative connotation. Advertisers. Political campaigns. Big government. All sifting through your personal data, trying to uncover the things that nobody knows about, trying to get you to buy or sell or vote. Add to that now the knowledge that every click we make online -- every YouTube view and Facebook like and Google query -- is eminently trackable, it's enough to make all those unsolicited phone calls and junk mail seem quite benign, not to mention old-fashioned.

This paper analyses the role of "disruptive" innovative technologies in higher education. In this country and elsewhere, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have invested significant sums in learning technologies, with Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) being more or less universal, but these technologies have not been universally adopted and used by students and staff. Instead, other technologies not owned or controlled by HEIs are widely used to support learning and teaching. According to Christensen's theory of Disruptive Innovation, these disruptive technologies are not designed explicitly to support learning and teaching in higher education, but have educational potential. This study uses Activity Theory and Expansive Learning to analyse data regarding the impact of disruptive technologies. The data were obtained through a questionnaire survey about awareness and use of technologies, and through observation and interviews, exploring participants' actual practice. The survey answers tended to endorse Disruptive Innovation theory, with participants establishing meanings for technologies through their use of them, rather than in keeping with a designer's intentions. Observation revealed that learners use a narrow range of technologies to support learning, but with a tendency to use resources other than those supplied by their HEIs. Interviews showed that participants use simple and convenient technologies to support their learning and teaching. This study identifies a contradiction between learning technologies made available by HEIs, and technologies used in practice. There is no evidence to suggest that a wide range of technologies is being used to support learning and teaching. Instead, a small range of technologies is being used for a wide range of tasks. Students and lecturers are not dependent on their HEIs to support learning and teaching. Instead, they self-select technologies, with use weighted towards established brands. The use of technologies

FRS launched the Rural Telecom Educational Series as part of an ongoing effort to promote rural telecom and educate those who will determine its future. The series has played a vital role in educating both national and local policy-makers on the issues facing community-based telecom providers. FRS publishes papers on an ongoing basis that highlight critical issues to rural telecommunications, such as universal service, net neutrality and wireless technology. One copy of each paper is complimentary; additional copies are available for purchase. Please visit the FRS E-Store to place your order.

"One way to help students gain agency over their own education is through technology. Despite the Internet revolution, the field of K-12 education has been relatively slow to respond to digital media. That's why I paid a visit last week to the site of a promising experiment in digital learning in New York: the Bea Fuller Rodgers Middle School in Washington Heights. Last year, CFY, a nonprofit organization, provided home computers (and arranged for discounted broadband access) to every one of the sixth grade students in the school. (Almost all the school's families are Hispanics who qualify for the federal government's free or reduced lunch program. Currently, half of all Hispanics in the United States lack broadband.). In addition, CFY provided a four-hour training for the students and their parents in a free Web-based platform CFY developed called PowerMyLearning which contains 1,000 (soon to be 2,800) digital learning activities and games from across the Web that have been carefully selected and categorized by teachers and education specialists. Finally, CFY provided onsite training to the school's sixth grade teachers in how to integrate PowerMyLearning into their classrooms (practicing what educators call "blended learning"

The Europe 2020 strategy acknowledges that a fundamental transformation of education and training  is needed to address the new skills and competences required if Europe is to remain competitive, overcome  the current economic crisis and grasp new opportunities. The strategic framework for European cooperation  in education and training ('ET 2020') recognizes that education and training have a crucial role to play  in meeting the many socio-economic, demographic, environmental and technological challenges facing  Europe and its citizens today and in the years ahead. However, to determine how education and training  policy can adequately prepare learners for life in the future society, there is a need to envisage what  competences will be relevant and how these will be acquired in 2020-2030. 

I have always been intrigued by the promise of online education. It is easy to see how geographic and economic boundaries can be overcome through technology. Educational institutions can compete for students well beyond their traditional local boundaries, growing nationally and internationally while bringing down their per-seat costs. Schools no longer need expensive classrooms and dormitories to grow. Small, innovative institutions can grow globally and as rapidly as they dare to dream. High-quality teaching faculty can be recruited from anywhere on the planet -- to teach thousands of students simultaneously. Students can study anytime and attend classes from anywhere. In addition, growth of free, high-quality education sites such as Khan Academy and open-source courses such as Opencourseware at MIT, along with global satellite and broadband communications networks, have removed economic, social, and geographic barriers to high-quality education.

The notion is widespread that higher education, and maybe all education, is about to be transformed by technology. This hope or fear (depending on where you sit) is fed by the breakneck pace at which new technologies burst upon the scene. Enterprises like Google and Facebook are among the poster children for this observation, and who can fail to be astounded by the way first the iPhone and then seemingly ten minutes later the iPad transformed first the cell phone and then the portable computing industries. Perhaps most important, these devices have quickly transformed the way many of us communicate, read, and organize many aspects of our lives.

Pardon the hyperbole, but this may be one of the biggest partnerships in education since chalk met the chalkboard. MIT has officially joined forces with Khan Academy to launch a new set of educational videos. In this new partnership, MIT students will be making videos, not the professors. It's a truly inspiring time in education when you see a school ask its own students to become the teachers. It's like the ultimate flipped classroom. It's a flipped school. "Our students have responded with all the energy and enthusiasm we knew they would. We worked with them to design the program, and the results are fantastic." -Ian A. Waitz, Dean of the School of Engineering and the Jerome C. Hunsaker Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

"A new report by Moody's Investors Service suggests that while MOOCs' exploitation of expanded collaborative networks and technological innovation will benefit higher education in the United States as a whole, their long-term effect on the for-profit sector and smaller not-for-profit institutions could be damaging. MOOCs - massive open online courses - have garnered considerable attention since Stanford University's artificial intelligence course in the autumn 2011 semester attracted nearly 160,000 students. While the course's completion rate was low (15.6%), the scale of the response excited many in the higher education community - from institutions to venture capital companies. Indeed, the report notes that MOOCs represent a "pivotal development" in the evolution of higher education and have the potential to revolutionise the way a centuries-old industry has operated."

Technology and education are pretty intertwined these days and nearly every teacher has a few favorite tech tools that make doing his or her job and connecting with students a little bit easier and more fun for all involved. Yet as with anything related to technology, new tools are hitting the market constantly and older ones rising to prominence, broadening their scope, or just adding new features that make them better matches for education, which can make it hard to keep up with the newest and most useful tools even for the most tech-savvy teachers. Here, we've compiled a list of some of the tech tools, including some that are becoming increasingly popular and widely used, that should be part of any teacher's tech tool arsenal this year, whether for their own personal use or as educational aids in the classroom.

"Higher education is rapidly changing--you don't have to even be paying much attention to see that. Universities have started streaming lectures en masse, schools like Harvard and MIT are teaming up to create content tailored for the web, startups like UniversityNow are creating reasonably priced online universities, and startups like Udacity offer online-only classes from renowned professors. None of this existed 10 years ago, and the field isn't done changing yet. A new report from Pew Internet looks at what higher education will look like in 2020, based on survey responses from over 1,000 "Internet experts, researchers, observers and users.""

"IR.U is a new coalition by the founders of Gig.U that will bring Super Wi-Fi networks - better known to some as White Space networks, or wireless internet over unlicensed and unused TV channels - to over 500 educational institutions across the US. Comprised of higher education associations, public interest groups, and private tech companies like Microsoft and Google, AIR.U aims to offer fast, reliable internet to remote schools and universities in areas otherwise too remote for wired broadband."

Disruption doesn't sound like a pretty word, but in the long run, it can be a beautiful thing. Disruption is about shifting power. Eroding patterns. Breaking the system. In education, this can come from the most unlikely of sources. While brilliant folks struggle to their marrow every day to conjure ideas that will transform education, in other cases, it just seems to happen out of nowhere.

"A growing number of educators are working to turn learning on its head by replacing traditional classroom lectures with video tutorials, an approach popularly called the "flipped classroom." Interest in that teaching method was in full view this summer at the International Society for Technology in Education annual conference in San Diego, where almost every session on the topic was filled to capacity."

Around the world, massive open online courses-MOOCs-are drawing thousands of participants eager to learn sophisticated skills and maybe even pick up some sort of credential or credit. MOOCs are not only becoming a "tool for democratizing higher education," as Tamar Lewin writes in The New York Times, they are also changing educators' atttitudes about teaching.

And the future of robotics education in Africa is ... Chupa Chups? When the African Robotics Network announced their $10 robot design challenge this summer, co-founder Ken Goldberg was careful not to share too many expectations, lest he influence contestants' designs. But he never imagined one of the winning entries would prominently feature a pair of Spanish lollipops. The challenge, hosted by AFRON co-founders Goldberg and Ayorkor Korsah, emphasized inexpensive designs to help bring robotics education to African classrooms. Goldberg announced AFRON's 10 winners in three categories today at Maker Faire, including the lollipop-laden Suckerbot and traditional (roaming) category first prize winner Kilobot, a Harvard-spawned three-legged, vibrating, swarming robot.