Virtual Learning
Hurdles Remain Before College Classrooms Go Completely Digital
OnlineUniversities.com came out with an optimistic infographic last week about how college classrooms are going digital.
The days of shuffling that 10-pound textbook to class or those countless fiction novels in your backpack are slowly but steadily coming to a close. With ebooks , your wallet may gain a few pounds as well, as you will be spending a lot less money on books. Check out these five digital text services. With synchronized convenience and interactive, cost-effective methods, life is on its way to becoming a little bit easier for readers on the go. <p style="text-align:right;color:#A8A8A8"></p>
5 Places to Get Digital Textbooks Mashable 5 Places to Get Digital Textbooks | The top source for social and digital news
The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia - The Chronicle Review
By Timothy Messer-Kruse For the past 10 years I've immersed myself in the details of one of the most famous events in American labor history, the Haymarket riot and trial of 1886. Along the way I've written two books and a couple of articles about the episode. In some circles that affords me a presumption of expertise on the subject. Not, however, on Wikipedia.
MIT launches free online 'fully automated' course
Want to learn about the history of modern China from a professor who has taught at Dartmouth since 1985? Until Thursday, your best bet was probably to cough up some serious SAT scores and even more serious tuition. Now Udemy is giving you access to an online courses by professors with such qualifications — for free. The startup online learning platform launched a new site called " The Faculty Project " Thursday that offers free course content from professors. The site's first 15 courses include teachers from Stanford, Yale, Northwestern and Dartmouth. When users enroll for a course on Thursday, they'll be emailed when the professor adds new lessons to it.
Udemy Puts Ivy-League Profs on Your Desktop for Free
Pearson and Knewton Team Up to Make Learning Personal
One of the largest textbook publishers in the world is making its digital course offerings more data-driven and individualized. Pearson announced Tuesday an extensive partnership with Knewton, a startup that specializes in adaptive learning technology. The technology personalizes the presentation of educational material based on students' strengths and weaknesses. Pearson, McGraw-Hill and other publishers have developed products that incorporate this kind of technology. Knewton plans to power Pearson's product MyLabs , which has more than 750 titles.
Pearson-backed Startup Aims to Be the Zynga for Learning
Skeptical. I doubt it will achieve the same social value that Zynga has. by Feb 2
Connections Education: The rise of an education tech startup
The Baltimore-Washington corridor is an economic powerhouse in many areas -- federal contracting, anyone? -- but it may soon become known as the nexus of another, growing industry: online education. The $400 million purchase of a local education technology startup by a British company this fall is the latest sign that the region is successfully producing firms that develop cutting-edge technologies for schools or seek to transform them entirely. The purchase of Connections Education Inc. by Pearson PLC , a London-based education publishing conglomerate and owner of the Financial Times newspaper, was also among the biggest acquisitions of a Baltimore company in years.
"About 40,000 students in 21 states receive their public school education through Connections, though none of its virtual public schools are in Maryland.
Nationwide, about 250,000 students are enrolled in full-time online public school programs, according to Susan Patrick, president of the International Association of K-12 Online Learning, a trade group representing education companies.
The numbers are still small compared with the nation's total K-12 student population of 50 million, Patrick said." by Dec 19
"In addition to Educate Inc., other Baltimore education firms with ties to Sylvan include Laureate Inc., which runs for-profit international universities in 28 countries; Prometric Services, which offers student testing and assessment in more than 160 nations and is now part of ETS; and Walden University, an accredited online university that has graduated nearly 50,000 students from more than 120 countries.
The companies are all privately owned and do not release
financial figures." by Dec 19
"In the heady days of the Internet bubble more than a decade ago, Baltimore's startup scene was fueled by a $500 million venture capital fund and an incubator focused on education and technology.
The fund was Sylvan Ventures, the investment arm of Sylvan Learning Systems, a tutoring center business that's now part of Baltimore-based Educate Inc. Sylvan seeded a bunch of small companies. Some failed, some flourished.
Connections Education, now a $200 million-a-year firm, was among those that flourished. Its majority owner was Apollo Management, a New York-based private-equity investment firm." by Dec 19
"The $400 million purchase of a local education technology startup by a British company this fall is the latest sign that the region is successfully producing firms that develop cutting-edge technologies for schools or seek to transform them entirely.
The purchase of Connections Education Inc. by Pearson PLC, a London-based education publishing conglomerate and owner of the Financial Times newspaper, was also among the biggest acquisitions of a Baltimore company in years. Private investors did not disclose returns but said they were pleased by the deal." by Dec 19
Online Degrees From MIT
I was at a dinner last week about technology and higher education, and the one thing the speakers all agreed on was that America's elite universities—Harvard and Princeton were the particular examples they cited—were just fundamentally and totally opposed to expanding the number of students they serve and this is a fixed point of the landscape. And then there's MIT : "on Monday, MIT is announcing that for the first time it will offer credentials – under the name 'MITx' – to students who complete the online version of certain courses, starting with a pilot program this spring." Fancy American colleges engage in a lot of cartel-like behavior, but outside the realm of athletics they don't have much in the way of formal cartel powers.
"MIT is announcing that for the first time it will offer credentials – under the name 'MITx' – to students who complete the online version of certain courses, starting with a pilot program this spring." by Dec 22
Khan Academy Integrates With Digital Textbooks
The 12-minute video lectures that Bill Gates has called "the start of a revolution" will now be linked with the material in some digital textbooks. Etextbook maker Kno announced Monday that it will integrate thousands of tutorial videos from Khan Academy into its books. Khan Academy has been praised and funded by both Gates and Google. At its core, it's a database of instructional YouTube videos that its founder, Salman Khan, started creating in order to help his cousins with their math homework.
Khan Academy Blends Its YouTube Approach With Classrooms
He can see that a girl sitting against the wall is zipping through geometry exercises; that a boy with long curls over his eyes is stuck on a lesson on long equations; and that another boy in the front row is getting a handle on probability. Each student’s math journey shows up instantly on the laptop Mr. Roe carries as he wanders the room.Virtual schools are multiplying, but some question their educational value
Exclusive: What Electronic Textbook Provider Has The Biggest Library? [STUDY]
Just about every electronic textbook company declares that it has the most books available for download. Coursesmart calls itself “the world’s largest digital course materials provider.” Sellers like Barnes & Noble and Amazon return absurdly high numbers for searches in their etextbooks sections that include novels and other general books used in classes. Textbooks.com boasts the “biggest selection of used & new college textbooks.”JSTOR opens limited free access option for non-subscribing scholars
Making You More Awesome: The Red-Hot World of Online Learning Services
"It's not just about amassing human capital to maximize your employability or workplace effectiveness. Another set of startups is emerging that is focused on skill building and life change outside of work. Startups like DailyPath, MightyBell and Obvious Corp-backed Lift could be described as instrumenting self-actualization through social software.
Whether at work or in life, there is a continuum of skill levels that we all can be understood within; you could say it goes from "low task," in which people must be told what to do and how to do it, to "high task" circumstances in which people are capable of being given a general direction and then figuring it out on their own. We probably all sit in different places in that continuum in different circumstances in our lives." by Dec 24
"Treehouse is a subscription site where you can view videos about and acquire skills in web and mobile application design and development. Founder Ryan Carson says a number of factors have contributed to his startup's rapid early growth.
OpenSesame aggregates training content from more than 100 providers with 10,000 different courses. "We're creating Amazon.com for courses," Turnbull says. "And many of the content creators are individuals who didn't previously have access to the corporate market. It's also a chance to make education more affordable and broadly available." by Dec 24