The most important educational news of the week: here's a how-to guide on how to play the marvelous guitar logo Google created in honor of Les Paul's birthday.
Note-taking app Evernote introduced a new app this week, Evernote Peek. It's the first app of its kind, taking advantage of the new Smart Cover for iPad. The app lets you turn your Evernote notes into flash cards, quizzing yourself using the Smart Cover to hide the answers.
Apple released an update to its e-books app, iBooks. Among the new features is a built-in "read aloud" option for select children's books.
The Kauffman Foundation's new education technology accelerator program graduated its inaugural class of startups this week. 23 entrepreneurs had participated in the four-month long program.
Nielsen released a report on how the Class of 2011 engages with media, finding that -- no surprise -- teens out-text-message any other age group, more than doubling the rate of the next highest age group. (That's an average of 3364 texts per month for 13-17 year olds and about 1640 for 18-24 year olds.) Although teens are the heaviest users of mobile video, they watch less television than any other age group.
Looking for an easier way to shop for textbooks while saving money compare? SwoopThat launched this week to do just that. The student-built site pulls course information and helps locate the places where the cheapest versions of textbooks can be found, assessing new and used books, rentals and e-books as well.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the free online University of the People has partnered with NYU in order to steer students towards the latter's university in Abu Dhabi.
The Delaware Department of Education announced this week that it has chosen to go with Microsoft's Live@edu for its cloud-based email and productivity solution. I have lost score in the ongoing battle between Microsoft and Google for this market, but if someone is still tracking on how the companies are divvying up the states, here's one for the Microsoft column.
As MindShift reported yesterday, the education-technology company Wireless Generation has been awarded a $27 million no-bid contract with the New York City Public Schools. The deal has raised eyebrows since Wireless Generation is now owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, the latter having recently hired former schools chancellor Joel Klein to lead its education efforts.