Hack Education

I don't have any New Year's resolutions to "write more." I'm quite sure that in 2011, I will write plenty. But I am trying to put some frameworks in place to help me better create and curate content. Social Bookmarking When Yahoo's plans to "sunset" Delicious were leaked, there was...

Well, I did say the competing cloud announcements from Microsoft and Google had been "tit-for-tat" this year when I wrote yesterday that Microsoft had announced it had signed a contract with SUNY to provide the schools Live@edu, Microsoft's cloud-based productivity suite. Information Week reports that Google is challenging Microsoft's claim...

It's been tit-for-tat much of the year, as different schools and states announce they've opted to "Go Google" or "Go Microsoft." Yesterday, it was the latter's turn to boast a new contract as the State University of New York announced it was making Live@edu available to its 64 campuses. As...

The Oregon Department of Education has decided that students will have the option of spell checking their work before submitting state exams in 2011. It's one of those stories that seems to beg for "shock" and "scandal" and "kids these days" sorts of ledes and headlines. The Huffington Post, for...

The writers at ReadWriteWeb are busy putting together our list of predictions for 2011; and without spoiling all my crystal-ball-gazing, I'll say that I think one of the major areas for tech innovation next year will be around "data science." I predict "data-driven" will be the next buzzword-adjective, joining the...

Intuit's Mint.com is teaming up with Scholastic to offer a free online program to teach personal finance to middle school students, teachers, and families. Scholastic and Mint.com have designed a game, the Quest for Money, to help teach financial literacy. The aim of the game and the curriculum is to...

Free online gradebook LearnBoost rolled out a translation tool this week. The startup will crowdsource the translation of its gradebook, a process that will echo Facebook's translation project (but, as to be expected from LearnBoost, with some very cool open source tech on the back end). Android App Inventor is...

The iPad has great potential as a learning device for toddlers, if you don't mind the smudgy fingerprints on your screen. And a new iPad app by GoodieWords is aimed specifically at that sort of early education. The free app is aimed to help toddlers who are in their "What...

It appears that Delicious, one of the oldest tools in my web tech toolbox, may be closing (or, as Yahoo has just said, may be sold). A leaked slide from a Yahoo all-hands meeting hit Twitter yesterday, showing that the company plans to "sunset" the social bookmarking service. For many...

Nielsen has a new report out that examines mobile phone adoption among youth around the world. The report finds that across all countries surveyed, youth themselves are the ones who are picking out their devices. Price is usually the deciding factor in a mobile phone purchase, except in Russia where...