Hack Education

Blackboard now has an Android app that includes information about Athletics, Courses, Directory, Library, Maps, and News. Blackboard makes me grumpy, but you can see via this video interview by Robert Scoble that Blackboard has a good mobile strategy, thanks to its acquisition of Terribly Clever. Kno did promise its...

Rather depressing findings from the Girl Scouts Research Institute, which finds that social networking doesn't do much good for girls' self image. Social learning network Edmodo has released its Android app. comScore has released its latest stats, and found that PBS KIDS is the #1 kid-oriented site for online videos....

Study finds texting undercovers disrupts kids' sleep. Thank you, science, otherwise we never would have known that staying awake to do things at night actually, ya know, keeps kids awake. Will new E-Rate rules contain language about cyberbullying? iPad textbook publisher Inkling offers a new book on learning photography, based...

Online language learning community busuu.com has entered into a strategic partnership with the publisher Collins. The partnership involves Grammar Guides (for Spanish, French, German, Italian) integrated into the platform at a cost of �7,99 for premium users and �9,99 for free users of the site. busuu.com says that in the...

Via Free Technology for Teachers, there's now an instant search, a la Google Instant, for Khan Academy videos: Khan Instant. Google has launched a program to promote computational thinking at the K-12 level. For more information, see the Google Student Blog. The World Bank's Ed-Tech blog has an interesting story...

I spent the weekend at THATCamp PNW, an unconference that examines technology and the humanities. It was a gathering of folks that, despite my considering myself a "recovering academic," are very much "my people" -- English PhDs, archivists, librarians, Composition and Rhetoric folks, humanities scholars, historians, geeks. My favorite session...

The educational publishing industry, both at the K-12 and higher education levels, is a beast - a dinosaur, even. A lot of educators and a lot of companies are working towards re-shaping what textbooks will look like. And converting paper-bound books to digital books is only one small part of...

MIT OpenCourseWare and OpenStudy have teamed up to provide interactive study groups about a dozen MIT OCW classes, giving learners an opportunity to discuss and collaborate with others moving through the same course material. The pilot program has been phenomenally successful. Read more at RWW. And speaking of open education,...

I spent the day yesterday at Startup School, an event co-sponsored by Y Combinator and BASES, an association at Stanford for entrepreneurial students. The room was packed full of young entrepreneurs. I felt old. No, really. I sat behind Max Swisher. I am old. Eleven speakers talked yesterday at Startup...

Which side are you on? -- Florence Reece, Harlan County, 1931 There seemed to be a lot of handwringing in some circles with the resignation this week of Michelle Rhee, the chancellor of the DC Schools and one of the stars of the documentary Waiting for Superman. It's hard for...