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Amitabh Chandra, professor of public policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, argues in a new video that investments in new medical technology should be done in a cost-effective manner. The video - part of a collaboration between Harvard and New York City nonprofit 92Y - tackles how to approach the costs that come with new medical tech. For example, Chandra points to Proton Beam Therapy as an example of how cost might outweigh benefit. Beam therapy is a new high-tech method for treating men's prostate cancer, but Chandra argues that it hasn't been proven any more useful than other, less expensive forms of treatment.

In a major new development in the world of health IT, the Data Privacy Lab in the Institute of Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University will soon unveil a health record bank (HRB) that allows anyone to own and manage a complete, secure, digital copy of their health records and wellness information with a free account. This is the first time that a prominent academic institution is hosting an HRB for use by the general public and communities nationwide. The service, called MyDataCan, is a secure and trustworthy technical infrastructure for receiving, storing and facilitating consumer-controlled access to personal information, including medical data. Its design is extensible to cover various forms of personal data, customizable through third-party applications, and benefits from a multimillion-dollar investment by Harvard.

Après avoir suscité une onde de choc sans pareil en mettant en ligne l'intégralité de ses cours et supports de cours au travers de l'initiative OpenCourseWare, le Massachusetts institute of technology s'associe cette fois-ci avec Harvard pour lancer un nouveau projet dans la même veine. Le programme « edX » de publication en ligne de contenus multimédia vient en effet d'être annoncé le 2 mai 2012 par les partenaires, qui invitent les universités du monde entier à se joindre à eux ou à réutiliser la plate-forme technique mise à disposition...

We write to communicate an untenable situation facing the Harvard Library. Many large journal publishers have made the scholarly communication environment fiscally unsustainable and academically restrictive. This situation is exacerbated by efforts of certain publishers (called "providers") to acquire, bundle, and increase the pricing on journals. Harvard's annual cost for journals from these providers now approaches $3.75M. In 2010, the comparable amount accounted for more than 20% of all periodical subscription costs and just under 10% of all collection costs for everything the Library acquires. Some journals cost as much as $40,000 per year, others in the tens of thousands. Prices for online content from two providers have increased by about 145% over the past six years, which far exceeds not only the consumer price index, but also the higher education and the library price indices. These journals therefore claim an ever-increasing share of our overall collection budget. Even though scholarly output continues to grow and publishing can be expensive, profit margins of 35% and more suggest that the prices we must pay do not solely result from an increasing supply of new articles.

In what is shaping up as an academic Battle of the Titans - one that offers vast new learning opportunities for students around the world - Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Wednesday announced a new nonprofit partnership, known as edX, to offer free online courses from both universities. News, data and conversation about education in New York. Join us on Facebook » Follow us on Twitter » Harvard's involvement follows M.I.T.'s announcement in December that it was starting an open online learning project to be known as MITx. Its first course, Circuits and Electronics, began in March, enrolling about 120,000 students, some 10,000 of whom made it through the recent midterm exam. Those who complete the course will get a certificate of mastery and a grade, but no official credit. Similarly, edX courses will offer a certificate but will carry no credit

Earlier today, Harvard and MIT announced edX, an open-source technology platform designed to deliver online courses. Now, anyone from around the world with an Internet connection can have access to, what MIT President Susan Hockfield called, "one of the best kept secrets of Cambridge and the entire higher education community" - the "richness of collaborations" between Harvard and MIT.

MIT and Harvard, two neighboring universities which often compete for top students, are now collaborating on free online courseware technology. Starting next fall, both schools will offer free courses using a platform based on MIT's previously announced MITx technology.  MITx enables the creation of online classes that knit together video segments, embedded quizzes, interactive feedback, online labs and student-ranked Q&A.

"A complete list of free online courses offered by Stanford, Coursera, MIT and Harvard led edX (MITx + Harvardx + BerkeleyX), and Udacity"

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.

"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.""

For about the price of a tank of gas each month, you can have your own lawyer, physician and coterie of Harvard educated experts. Pearl.com (like a "pearl of wisdom") launched on Tuesday, and connects users to trained and certified experts who can answer a myriad of questions.

The 2012 Civic Media Conference featured two full days of conversations about (what else?) the future of civic media and democracy. One conversation is particularly worth calling out and sharing with the Govfresh audience: a panel assessing what's gone wrong and what's gone right with open government in the United States over the past three years. The discussion was moderated by Susan Crawford, currently of the Harvard Law School and Kennedy School (and formerly a special advisor at the White House) and featured Mike Norman of Wefunder.com, Mark Headd of Code for America and Chris Vein, Deputy United States Chief Technology Officer for Government Innovation in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. I've embedded the video below:

The slow decline of industrial manufacturing in developed nations and recent failures of financial capitalism across the globe have sent us searching for a new model of economic growth. I see the two movements of Technology Entrepreneurship and Social Entrepreneurship beginning to converge into a promising solution. An increasing number of entrepreneurs are awakening to the possibility of combining the scalable tools and methodology of Technology Entrepreneurship with the world-centric value system of Social Entrepreneurship. Together they create a new type of entrepreneurship that could become our primary source of socioeconomic value creation. What do we call this movement? I propose we call it "Transformational Entrepreneurship."*

Les étudiants de la Graduate School of Design d'Harvard, sous le patronage de leur professeur Jeffrey Schnapp, transforment la bibliothèque en un laboratoire pour leurs expérimentations : inventer la bibliothèque du futur, on a vu des objectifs plus modestes.