1. I am headed to EduCon tomorrow. I can't begin to tell you how excited I am to go. I have been attending ed-tech conferences since 1997, but always as staff running either the registration or the event side of things. I'm thrilled to actually attend. There will be a lot of educators there that I admire, and I really can't do the work I do -- be an education technology journalist -- without, ya know, talking to educators.

2. I had a guest post on Edutopia's blog on the National Educational Technology Plan yesterday. I think the piece turned out quite nicely. I'm not holding my breath, unfortunately, for the implementation of the NETP to be so finely wrought.

3. Google made a big announcement this week by rolling out an educational category in the Apps Marketplace. It's a big deal -- for schools and for ed-tech startups. Here's my ReadWriteWeb coverage. The whole marketplace concept has me thinking a lot about how we can better identify, promote, buy/sell from companies who get education. More to come soon on that topic.

4. If you are education technology startup, and you give an exclusive to Techcrunch, you're doing it wrong.