News

San Francisco Chronicle�
School is starting in late August, and already a few universities are touting their decision to make the iPad a part of the classroom. But these universities might run into problems in making the device’s functions work for the average college student. The lack of a USB port limits the iPad’s ability to [...]

Education Week�
There’s been building momentum to address the discrepancy between the demand for workers in computer science fields and the supply of qualified candidates produced by the educational system. Now, the U.S. Congress may have a chance to enact legislation on it.
Colorado Rep. Jared Polis, a Democrat, introduced the Computer Science Education Act on Friday, [...]

Ars Technica�
As seasoned internet veterans know, just because a site shows up high on Google’s search rankings doesn’t mean it’s the most credible source on a topic. But that bit of wisdom apparently has not made it all the way down to the current generation of college students. According to research out of Northwestern University, [...]

eCampus News�
Wikipedia enthusiasts may have a new way to argue their case to professors skeptical of the online encyclopedia: Cancer researchers said in June that Wikipedia was nearly as accurate as a well-respected, peer-reviewed database, although the wiki entries were a bit more boring.
Yaacov Lawrence, an assistant professor in Thomas Jefferson University’s Department of Radiation [...]

New York Times �
The internet, with its unparalleled ability to connect people throughout the world, is changing the way that many people learn languages. There is no still way to avoid the hard slog through vocabulary lists and grammar rules, but the books, tapes, and even CDs of yesteryear are being replaced by eMail, video chats, [...]

Education Week �
A Senate subcommittee added $100 million to the proposed fiscal 2011 appropriation for the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program yesterday. This sounds good, right? But not so fast, as after-school advocates say the addition may actually take money away from after-school programs and shift those dollars to efforts to support longer school days [...]

THE Journal�
Three leading consultants in educational technology offer their opinions on the best Web 2.0 tools for encouraging collaboration in learning and teaching. Blogs, Google Docs, and Twitter are among the standouts — for reasons including their ease of use and their ability to reach many users instantaneously — that can be used by students [...]

Washington Post�
Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., plans to introduce an online privacy bill that would create standards for how consumer information is collected and used for marketing. The bill also would give users more control over how their internet activity and profiles are accessed by advertisers and web sites. Kerry’s bill, announced in a July [...]

Education Week�
The federal Race to the Top program would be renewed for another year under a spending bill approved today by the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that deals with education spending—but wouldn’t receive nearly as much money as President Barack Obama has sought. Also under the Senate language, districts would be allowed, for the first time, to [...]

Education Week�
Education Secretary Arne Duncan picked 19 finalists, including Hawaii and Arizona as surprise picks, to compete in the interview portion of the Race to the Top Round Two competition. That means each state will assemble a group of five people to come to Washington the week of August 9 to make their final, last-ditch [...]

eCampus News�
The Education Department proposed much-anticipated regulations July 23 that would cut off federal aid to for-profit college programs—including many of the nation’s largest online schools— if too many of their students default on loans or don’t earn enough after graduation to repay them. To qualify for federal student aid programs, career college programs must [...]

eSchool News�
It looks like an iPad, only it’s one-fourteenth the cost: India has unveiled the prototype of a $35 basic touch-screen tablet aimed at students, which it hopes to bring into production by 2011.
If the government can find a manufacturer, the Linux operating system-based computer would be the latest in a string of “world’s cheapest” [...]

Yahoo! News �
The Obama administration on July 23 offered a series of proposals aimed at enhancing access to web sites for people with disabilities. Most of the proposals are aimed primarily at improved access for the deaf and the blind. With the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act on July 26, the Justice Department [...]

eSchool News�
In a move to help rural schools keep pace with more developed districts, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) said it will create an Online Learning Registry that will provide access to historical, artistic, and scientific primary-source materials. The registry is one of the recommendations the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) made in its National [...]

CNET�
Seven Republican senators have announced a plan to curb the Obama administration’s push to impose net-neutrality regulations on the internet. On July 21, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and six other GOP senators introduced legislation that would dramatically limit the Federal Communications Commission’s ability to regulate broadband providers. The new bill—called the Freedom for [...]

THE Journal�
Faculty at the University of Arizona are developing a Facebook application to empower students in grades 6-12 to take charge of their own education. The Teach Ourselves program allows users to earn points by completing homework, critiquing others’ writing, demonstrating how to solve math equations and creating Web-based learning tools. The project will focus [...]

Education Week�
Advocates for education redesign are encouraged by a U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations panel’s decision to extend the Race to the Top program for an additional year.
If the extension makes it into the final spending bills for fiscal year 2011, advocates say, that could mean more states will take the reform-minded steps emphasized in [...]

THE Journal�
A new program at Carnegie Mellon University is aimed at capitalizing on students’ interest in robots to encourage them to study science, technology, engineering and math. Officials with the Fostering Innovation through Robotics Exploration — or FIRE — initiative plan to create robotics competitions, develop computer programs for students and create computerized tutors to [...]

HealthDay News�
U.S. researchers said they were able to distinguish children who are developing normally from those who were diagnosed with autism or language delays by analyzing the sounds from a recording system worn by young children during the day. More research is needed, but the device potentially could be used to screen for language delays [...]

Ars Technica�
According to new research out of Northwestern University, students who use social networking sites don’t seem to suffer academically. In a recent paper titled “Predictors and consequences of differentiated practices on social network sites,” researchers found that heavy use of sites like Facebook and MySpace doesn’t affect college students’ grade point averages. In fact, [...]

eSchool News�
Working with national arts organizations, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) has developed a first-of-its-kind Arts skills map that clearly defines how arts education promotes key 21st-century skills. The map, the fifth in a series of core content maps from P21 (others include Geography, Science, Social Studies, and English), gives examples how critical [...]

eSchool News�
Google Inc. is giving researchers nearly a half-million dollars to test the academic value of its rapidly growing online library. The grants announced July 14 will be used to help pay for 12 humanities projects studying questions that will require sifting through thousands of books to reach meaningful conclusions.
Google is hoping the research will [...]

Yahoo News  �
Federal officials are beginning work on a comprehensive inventory of the nation’s radio spectrum in hopes of finding more capacity for wireless high-speed internet connections. Federal Communications Commission Julius Genachowski said his agency is working closely with the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration to catalog current spectrum usage. The FCC and NTIA hope [...]

Education Week �
Online credit-recovery programs are being established in many school districts, including Boston, New York City and Chicago, as part of efforts to improve graduation rates and student achievement under No Child Left Behind. The programs often allow students to earn credits based on subject mastery rather than time spent in the classroom — which [...]

Education Week�
Given the ways computer technology—from the iPhone and YouTube to uses in medical research and national security—is changing so many facets of life, you might imagine that schools have been stepping up students’ exposure to computer science to help drive the digital revolution.
But recent data suggest otherwise. One survey indicates a sizable drop in [...]

USA Today�
Digital librarian Brewster Kahle is campaigning to double the number of titles in the Internet Archive, a virtual library he founded to provide free access to books for people with dyslexia or visual or physical impairments. The archive contains more than 1 million titles that can be downloaded to a hand-held device in a [...]

Education Week�
Experts say for-profit providers of online courses—long seen as an option for home-schoolers and a potential rival to public schools—are breaking into the public education mainstream as more schools mix face-to-face classes and online courses to expand their curricular offerings. With demand for that “blended” approach expected to grow, other players in the online-coursetaking [...]

Education Week�
A rural education non-profit frustrated with the i3 grant process says it will investigate how small and rural school districts fare under the Obama administration’s policy of federal competitive grants.
The Rural Schools and Community Trust reported in Rural Policy Matters that it would look at the process and outcome of the current Investing in [...]

eSchool News�
An interface that allows hearing-impaired people to communicate with others using an augmented-reality environment took home the grand prize of $25,000 in the eighth annual Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals in Poland, a prestigious international programming contest for high school and college students. Team Skeek, a team of university students from Thailand, was responsible for [...]

eSchool News�
U.S. schools’ average overall scores on an annual survey designed to measure their progress toward implementing 21st-century classrooms and learning skills increased less than 1 percent from 2009, even though schools did improve on four out of five measures of progress.
The Vision K-20 survey, from the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), was developed [...]

New York Times�
Google is bringing Android software development to the masses. The company will offer a software tool, starting July 12, that is intended to make it easy for people to write applications for its Android smart phones. The free software, called Google App Inventor for Android, has been under development for a year. User [...]

New York Times �
Computer scientists are developing machines that can teach people simple skills, like household tasks and vocabulary. In a handful of laboratories around the world, computer scientists are developing robots: highly programmed machines that can engage people and teach them simple skills. So far, the teaching has been very basic, delivered mostly in experimental settings, [...]

New York Times �
Researchers are finding little educational benefit to students in low-income households having computers at home and, in some cases, are finding a decrease in students’ academic performance. A study by Duke University professors found that math performance declined among middle-school students — primarily from low-income areas — after broadband service was installed. Another [...]

eSchool News�
Educators say there’s a simple reason they believe the Apple iPad pilot programs coming to colleges and universities this fall will run smoother than previous trials with popular eReaders: the apps.
Sprawling research university campuses and rural community colleges alike will test the iPad in small groups when students return to school in August and [...]

Washington Post�
Most people agree that the internet has and will continue to be positive for social relations. But according to a survey by the Pew Research Center, it’s also presented many more challenges, and perhaps opportunities, for how reputations are made, tarnished, and remade.
In its annual future of social relations survey, the Pew Internet & [...]

eSchool News�
School districts would get $10 billion in additional funding to help them avoid laying off teachers, and college students would get $5 billion more in Pell Grant money to account for a shortfall in that program, under a supplementary spending bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives July 1. But the additional funding [...]

Yahoo News  �
When it comes to accessing the web over mobile devices, Americans are far behind their internet-connected counterparts in Japan, South Korea, and parts of Europe. The latest survey from the Center for the Digital Future, conducted last year, found that 25 percent of U.S. internet users went online using their cell phones. That is [...]

Yahoo! News  �
Video chat is all the rage when it comes to new smart phones like the HTC Evo 4G and the iPhone 4, but Samsung’s latest Android smart phone comes to the fore with a different would-be killer feature: a tiny “pico” projector, good for throwing an image up to 50 inches across on a [...]

eSchool News�
As eReading devices and the software that runs them become more advanced in an increasingly competitive market, researchers are creating applications that could take reading to a whole new level, with tools such as Text 2.0—a reading technology that personalizes the user’s experience by tracking eye movements.
Created by researchers Ralf Biedert, Georg Buscher, and [...]

eCampus News�
Colleges and universities will be among the anchor institutions in an ultra high-speed nationwide internet network after President Obama on July 2 announced more than $760 million in grants designed to expand broadband web access.
Among the grants that most directly affect higher education is the $62.5 million set aside for a national education research [...]

CNET�
Video game aficionados might have to enter a credit card or find another way to verify their age before playing a networked game, thanks to a new push from advocacy groups who say they want to protect minors from in-game advertising messages. In-game marketing has become so advanced that it “allows advertisers to track game [...]

Yahoo! News �
U.S. President Barack Obama is slated to announce on July 2 nearly $800 million in loans and grants for the build-out of broadband networks to reach homes, schools, and hospitals. The grants and loans, which will be matched by another $200 million in outside investment, are part of Obama’s massive federal stimulus package. The [...]

Education Week�
Demand is far outpacing resources in one hot segment of the education innovation market, as districts, schools, and nonprofits pitch reform proposals worth $12.8 billion for competitive grants to be awarded under the federal Investing in Innovation Fund, or “i3”—nearly 20 times what the U.S. Department of Education has available.
The $650 million competition funded [...]

eSchool News�
According to a new report, 21st-century teaching and learning can only occur if teachers and school staff work together as a collaborative team; simple adjustments to antiquated school policies and structures that are already in place won’t help.
The research brief, titled “Team Up for 21st Century Teaching and Learning: What Research and Practice Reveal [...]

The Seattle Times �
An elite group of student engineers will gather in Poland from July 3-8 to crunch code for Microsoft’s Imagine Cup. The competition will feature students showing off software aimed at fighting global problems—such as reducing hunger and poverty, and improving education and child health.
The Imagine Cup competition has drawn 325,000 students from 100 [...]

Indiana Assistive Technology Blog�
As Apple launches their iPhone 4, new accessibility features will be available to help people with disabilities. Accessibility features provide support for vision, hearing, and physical and motor skill disabilities. The following are some of the new accessibility features that the new Apple iPhone 4 will provide: Screen Reading with VoiceOver, Support for Wireless [...]

eSchool News�
School librarians fear another round of budget cuts in districts across the nation could severely impair students’ development of information literacy and other key 21st-century skills.
As the school budget crisis deepens, administrators have started to view school libraries as luxuries that can be axed, rather than places where kids learn to love reading and [...]

Digital Education�
More students and teachers appear open to online learning, according to a survey showing that enrollment in virtual high-school courses rose to 27% in 2009. About 14% were enrolled in such courses in 2008. However, even as more students appear interested in online learning, officials say limited funds have hindered the availability of the [...]

eSchool News�
Just 8 percent of high school teachers said that technology is fully integrated into the classroom; and the technology that is available is primarily used by teachers, and not students, according to the results of a national survey of more than 1,000 high school students, faculty, and IT staff members. As a result, 43 [...]

eSchool News�
Contrary to popular opinion, newer teachers aren’t any more likely to use technology in their lessons than veteran teachers, and a lack of access to technology does not appear to be the main reason why teachers do not use it: These are among the common perceptions about education technology that new research from Walden [...]

Newsweek  �
A slew of recent studies show that the problem for women in math and science is related to something both larger and more nuanced: culture. In high school, girls only take 17 percent of computer-science AP tests. They earn only 18 percent of computer and information-science degrees in college, and they make up just under [...]

Education Week�
K-12 and postsecondary institutions are moving toward a vision of technology-rich, 21st-century education, albeit very slowly, says a new survey by the education division of the Washington-based Software and Information Industry Association, or SIIA. The vision, outlined by SIIA, measures schools on 21st century tools, anytime/anywhere access, differentiated learning, assessment tools, and enterprise support. [...]

eSchool News�
Schools with one-to-one computing programs have fewer discipline problems, lower dropout rates, and higher rates of college attendance than schools with a higher ratio of students to computers, according to the results of a major new study. But for one-to-one programs to boost student achievement as well, they must be properly implemented, the study [...]

eSchool News�
Two large coalitions of states are competing for federal “Race to the Top” dollars to create a series of new national academic tests to replace the current patchwork system. In the current system, every state gives a different test to its students. In some states, passing the exam is a graduation requirement.
The federal government [...]

New York Times�
The Obama administration is seeking to nearly double the wireless communications spectrum available for commercial use over the next 10 years, an effort that could greatly enhance the ability of consumers to send and receive video and data with smartphones and other hand-held devices. President Obama will sign a presidential memorandum on Monday [...]

eSchool News�
Some of the nation’s largest online colleges could be barred from tying recruiters’ pay to the number of students they enroll if the Obama administration’s new list of rules for for-profit institutions becomes federal policy. The administration’s set of 14 proposed guidelines for for-profit colleges—announced June 16—was created in response to widespread student complaints [...]

eSchool News�
In a high-stakes legal battle with important implications for the future of the internet, U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton in New York sided with Google Inc. on June 23 as he rebuffed media company Viacom Inc.’s attempt to collect more than $1 billion in damages for alleged copyright infringement by the Google-owned web site [...]

eSchool News�
Speakers at a recent education technology industry summit had a key piece of advice for the company executives who make and sell products for schools: Go mobile.
Hosted by the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA), the summit was intended to keep company executives abreast of the latest trends and recent developments in school technology. [...]

CNET�
McAfee’s study, Secret Life of Teens, is a reassuring portrait of how most young people are exercising reasonable caution in their use of technology. The study, conducted by Harris Interactive, reported that “almost half of youth (46 percent) admit to having given out their personal information to someone they didn’t know over the internet,” but when [...]

Make your voice heard! The NAEYC has produced a position paper on the importance of access to technology for young children. They are inviting comments until July 16, 2010. Be sure to represent the needs of children with disabilities and special needs.

CNET�
In a preliminary study a few years back, researchers found that an educational, online comic strip geared toward 8- to 10-year-old black girls helped them eat better and exercise more. Now, the program’s creators are set to really put the comic strips to the test when they launch a larger study, with 400 volunteers and [...]

Education Week�
The Education Department has made good on promises to disclose more data on the 1,600-plus applicants for the $650 million Investing in Innovation, or i3, fund.
Officials have created a user-friendly Web portral that allows you to splice the information apart in dozens of ways. You can examine the data by geography, and figure out [...]

USA Today�
Efforts are under way nationwide to recruit tech-savvy students to pursue careers in protecting the safety and security of the Internet. College and high-school students are being encouraged to participate in contests that pit the young cyber-experts in virtual battles against hackers, spies and data thieves, while two Maryland school districts are working cybersecurity [...]

THE Journal�
Arizona State University’s first completely online graduate certificate program will offer educators training in the teaching of online K-12 courses. The program is designed for teachers who want to develop, implement and assess Web-based or hybrid online programs at their schools, and it will include classes in policies, theories, course development and field applications [...]

New York Times �
For the deaf and hearing impaired, more captions are coming to the web versions of shows on television, where captions are mandated—and yet there is still great disparity among various content. Media companies say they are working hard to make online video more accessible. YouTube, the world’s biggest video web site by far, [...]

New York Times�
A new technology called Swype allows users to glide a finger across the virtual keyboard of their mobile phone to spell words, rather than tapping out letters. Back in the 1990s, typing out “hello” on most cell phones required an exhausting 13 taps on the number keys, like so: 44-33-555-555-666. That was before [...]

eSchool News�
Federal regulators are reconsidering the rules that govern high-speed internet connections, wading into a bitter policy dispute that could be tied up in Congress and the courts for years. The dispute has important implications for schools and colleges, many of which are hoping for clear rules that prevent service providers from discriminating against certain [...]

HealthDay News �
Technologies, including robots, toys and computer-generated avatars, are helping children with autism learn skills and improve their social interactions. Studies have shown that practicing with some of these tools has helped some children smile, clap and look at people when talking with them.
Full story

Digital Education�
Closing the digital divide by providing access to computers with high-speed Internet to all students seems like an admirable and worthy goal, but a new study by researchers at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy suggests that having a computer at home may actually lower student test scores, especially for low-income students.
Full story

New York Times�
A company called SocialShield has launched new technology aimed at keeping children and teens safe on social networking sites like Facebook. Using patent-pending “Safety Engines,” the service scans a child’s social networking profile to look for inappropriate, dangerous, or otherwise suspicious content or behavior. When it finds questionable material, parents are alerted immediately [...]

eSchool News�
Reluctant faculty members, challenges in scanning old texts with foreign characters, and conflicting ideas about whether information should be commodified or made free on the internet have been barriers to educators and librarians who advocate for digital libraries, according to research conducted by digital media experts from Rice University and the University of Michigan.
Their [...]

The Idea of Order: Transforming Research Collections for 21st Century Scholarship was released June 2 by the Washington, D.C.-based Council on Library and Information Resources, a nonprofit group that advocates for greater access to information. The research examines factors that have been barriers to educators and librarians who advocate for digital libraries, such as reluctant faculty members, challenges [...]

Education Week�
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that as many as 35 percent of teens have experienced some kind of “electronic aggression,” threats, rumors or other bullying behavior expressed through cell phones or the Internet. But if students are using their own computers and their own time to bully others, administrators’ hands are [...]

eSchool News �
While such use of the technology is not quite the subject of a national dialogue yet, Vail and other districts have helped launch a discussion among experts about the benefits and drawbacks of merging Internet access with school transit. As with every new technology idea, concerns arise about cost, online content filtering and safety, [...]

New York Times�
Ever since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks exposed the communications difficulty that police, fire, and other personnel had in a crisis, government and public safety officials have wrestled with how to rebuild the nation’s emergency networks. Nine years later, that effort has reached a showdown between the FCC and public safety officials. [...]

eSchool News�
Some schools are using tools such as speech recognition technology to give students a personal reading coach inside the classroom. Others are taking advantage of mobile technology to help students build the skills they need for reading fluency in their spare time, wherever they might be, by downloading audio books or applications to their [...]

WIRED�
Two prominent United States Senators have told the Federal Communications Commission that it’s time to fast track “white space” devices for sending and receiving broadband. “We request that you prioritize action on white spaces and urge the FCC to adhere to its Broadband Action Agenda and complete final rules in the third quarter of 2010,” [...]

PC Mag�
Apple’s latest version of the iPhone features a new video application called FaceTime that can be used by people who cannot hear to communicate from separate locations using sign language. The application is similar to tools such as Skype and iChat but expands videoconferencing to mobile technology.
Full story

eSchool News �
Whether teachers are in a school like Quest to Learn or a traditional classroom, providing professional development to address the challenges presented by transitioning to game-based teaching and learning methods is essential to supporting effective instruction, experts say.
Locating and undergoing the training necessary to integrate games into the classroom is difficult, however, and that [...]

eSchool News �
Virtual schools have become a popular alternative for students with special needs who may not be successful in traditional school environments, but experts differ on whether online learning — in its current form — is a good fit for special education. Many educators say the benefits include fewer distractions, a self-paced curriculum and the [...]

SmartBlog�
From easy computer access to the “passback effect” (parents passing their mobile devices to the back seat of the car to keep children occupied), children as young as  age 3 are preparing to take part in the social-media revolution. The good news and bad news is that children are natural socializers and are rarely shy [...]

New York Times�
Schools across the country are incorporating project-based engineering lessons into the science curriculum — even at the kindergarten level — prompted by concerns about preparing U.S. students to compete in a global economy. Supporters say the engineering focus stimulates creativity and problem-solving while reinforcing science and math skills, but critics question whether students [...]

eSchool News�
A new encrypted search feature that internet search giant Google Inc. rolled out last month is causing problems for schools, which say the service keeps them from complying with the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) and could put their federal e-Rate funding at risk. The service lets users search the web in a way [...]

Digital Directions�
Just a few years ago, social networking meant little more to educators than the headache of determining whether to penalize students for inappropriate activities captured on Facebook or MySpace. Now, teachers and students have a vast array of social-networking sites and tools—from Ning to VoiceThread and Second Life—to draw on for such serious uses [...]

eSchool News�
The national Parent Teacher Association (PTA) and Facebook are joining forces to promote internet safety through a set of tools and resources for children, schools, and parents. The world’s largest online social network and the National PTA will work together to build a program to provide information and support about such issues as cyber [...]

eSchool News �
How can technology be leveraged to deliver a world-class education affordably to students in developing countries? That’s the question a new competition asks, and the best idea will earn $10,000 for its creator.
Many school-age children in developing countries need access to educational opportunities, and the publication The Economist and InnoCentive Inc. have turned to [...]

eSchool News�
Research and a recent pilot program that put eReaders in college students’ hands suggest that most students aren’t ready to read their textbooks electronically, despite the proliferation of internet-ready mobile devices on campuses nationwide.
In fact, 74 percent of students surveyed by the National Association of College Stores (NACS), a nonprofit trade organization representing 3,000 [...]

eSchool News �
A federal online safety task force issued a report June 4, noting that the real world and the online lives of today’s students are overlapping. Although internet safety education is essential, the report says, scare tactics do little to influence the behavior of children and teenagers, who spend a large part of their lives [...]

New York Times�
Wal-Mart is dipping its toe into the online-education waters, working with a web-based university to offer its employees in the United States affordable college degrees. The partnership with American Public University, a for-profit school with about 70,000 online students, will allow some Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club employees to earn credits in areas like [...]

Science Daily �
VI Fit, a project at the University of Nevada, Reno, helps children who are blind become more physically active and healthy through video games. The human-computer interaction research team in the computer science and engineering department has developed a motion-sensing-based tennis and bowling exergame.
Full story

CNET �
A new study finds that educational iPhone apps can increase a child’s vocabulary acquisition by as much as 31 percent within two weeks. The study is part of a larger look at the relationship between technology and education, administered by PBS and funded by a grant from the Department of Education.
Full story

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette �
Twenty states will receive $250 million in federal stimulus money to create longitudinal data systems and track students’ performance throughout the educational careers, the Education Department announced Friday.
Full story

Popular Science�
Researchers at the University of Southern California are using robots to study how children with autism recognize and respond to facial expressions and social cues. A shortage of trained experts to diagnose, study and treat the growing number of children with the disorder has prompted the approach, which researchers say holds promise for improving [...]

Yahoo! News�
The Federal Communications Commission wants to find out whether broadband providers are delivering internet connections that are as fast as advertised—and so the agency is seeking 10,000 volunteers to take part in a study of residential broadband speeds. Specialized equipment will be installed in homes across the country to measure internet connections. Those results [...]

Science Daily�
Four out of five children can’t tell when they are talking to an adult posing as a child on the internet, according to researchers working on software to track pedophiles online. Computer Scientists at Lancaster University have been working on a tool which can work out a person’s age and gender using language analysis [...]

eSchool News�
The Education Division of the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) showcased some of the leading growth companies in the education technology market and recognized the best among them as part of the Innovation Incubator Program at its annual Ed Tech Industry Summit, held May 24, 2010, in San Francisco. The Innovation Incubator Program [...]

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette�
Research shows that video games — even violent games — can improve vision and other brain functions, including math performance, according to presenters at a New York University conference on using games for learning. One researcher said she believes video games will eventually become part of school curricula. “We are testing this hypothesis that [...]

A new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, Reputation Management and Social Media, suggests that young adults are leading the pack in online reputation management, especially when it comes to social networking sites. The study found that young adults ages 18-29 are the most likely to limit the amount of personal information they share online—and the least likely to trust [...]

Education Week�
After a couple of false starts in recent weeks amid partisan wrangling, the U.S. House of Representatives today approved a bill to reauthorize the America COMPETES Act, legislation that contains a strong focus on improving education in the STEM fields—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
The final vote was 262 to 150, with 17 Republicans joining [...]

eSchool News�
From public relations in social media to the potential marketing power of “mommy bloggers,” colleges and universities are offering graduate-level certificates focusing on the business side of Twitter, Facebook, and a host of other sites that draw Americans from every demographic.
Social media courses have sprung up on college campuses as social media web sites—once [...]

A survey sponsored by Intel indicates that 89 percent of health care decision makers believe telehealth technology, specifically video conferencing and collaboration, will have a significant positive effect on patient care and the health care industry over the next ten years. Many survey respondents predicted that it will improve patient care as well as lower [...]

New York Times�
Two top Democratic legislators said Monday that they would begin a process to modernize telecommunications laws that were last overhauled in 1996 but barely mention the internet. Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, and Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, chairman of [...]

THE Journal �
The 2010 We Can Change the World Challenge awarded top prizes to teams of K-8 students that developed the best plans rooted in science, technology, engineering and math that would spur community action to improve the environment.
Full story

Education Week �
President Barack Obama has said that America faces “few more urgent challenges than preparing our children to compete in a global economy.” Being able to understand and make use of the world’s vast telecommunications infrastructure is certainly part of that preparation. So it was no surprise when the White House issued its Cyberspace Policy [...]

eSchool News�
A project to show youth-produced videos on 2,200 Los Angeles city buses, the next generation of a graphical programming language that allows young people to create their own interactive features, and an online game that teaches kids the environmental impact of their personal choices are among 10 winning projects that will share $1.7 million [...]

eSchool News�
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has proposed new e-Rate rules designed to simplify the program and bring discounts on networking services to more schools and libraries. Among other actions, the FCC wants to index the e-Rate to inflation. That would result in the first increase in funding to the $2.25 billion-a-year program since it [...]

MercuryNews.com �
One chapter is closing—and another is opening—as Stanford University moves toward the creation of its first “bookless library,” a smaller but more efficient and largely electronic library that can accommodate the vast, expanding, and interrelated literature of Physics, Computer Science, and Engineering. “The role of this new library is less to do with shelving and [...]

eSchool News�
It was strike two for a major science funding bill on May 19 as House Republicans again united to derail legislation they said was too expensive. Going down to defeat was an updated version of the America COMPETES Act, legislation that would have committed more than $40 billion over three years to boost funding [...]

eSchool News�
School libraries are an important resource that should be leveraged as state and local leaders implement the recommendations in the National Education Technology Plan, the American Library Association (ALA) says. In comments filed with the U.S. Department of Education (ED) on May 17, ALA said it applauds many of the plan’s recommendations. The organization [...]

CNET�
The Federal Communications Commission warned May 20 in a new report that the wireless industry is becoming more concentrated. In its annual report on competition, the FCC reversed years of findings that the market is competitive. The report didn’t say that the market is not competitive, rather that it has become more concentrated over recent [...]

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette�
A Web-based science game being designed to interest more girls in science and gaming technology won $200,000 in the MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Competition. The Carnegie Science Center’s Click!Online game will feature a fictional spy agency where girls can solve real-world challenges in environmental protection, “expressive technology” and biomedical science. “Senior agents” will [...]

eSchool News�
Researchers at the University of Southern California have created an online game that simulates the college-application process for students. More than 100 students in Los Angeles-area high schools tested the Pathfinder game this year, and USC hopes to win funding to offer the Web-based tool for free to schools, where resources for college counseling [...]

Yahoo! News �
The American Heart Association and Nintendo Co. are teaming up to promote the popular Wii video game console as the health advocacy group concedes that its campaign for traditional exercise isn’t working. The surprising partnership, announced May 17, comes amid growing concern about obesity among kids who spend much of their time watching television [...]

NY1 (New York City)�
A new device is being tested to help people with visual impairments walk with canes. The WiiCane features Wii motion-tracking technology to help users practice making turns indoors and walking in a straight line — offering audio signals based on whether they’re off course. “Evidence shows that once learned, those skills are [...]

eSchool News�
Alarmed at what they see as a potential setback in federal support for education technology, several dozen state and national education groups and high-tech companies have sent letters to House and Senate lawmakers, urging them to continue funding the Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) block-grant program in fiscal 2011.
The letters expressed concerns about President [...]

Scotland and the Netherlands both invest significantly more federal money per student in information and communications technologies (ICT) than the United States, and they both view ICT as essential to classroom teaching and learning and in developing 21st-century skills, a delegation of education technology advocates discovered during a recent visit to the two countries. The [...]

Education Week �
Do you have some big ideas about the way that online learning can help overcome barriers to universal education in developing nations around the world? If so, you may be a candidate for the 21st Century Cyberschools Challenge, hosted by The Economist and InnoCentive Inc., which fosters innovation in corporate, government, and nonprofit organizations.
People [...]

eSchool News�
The social networking web site Ning, which many educators have used to establish online groups with similar professional interests, will remain free for educators despite moving to a fee-based model this summer, the site announced May 4. But some education technology experts believe Ning could see dwindling interest among teachers and college professors because [...]

eSchool News�
A small but growing number of schools across the nation are turning classroom lessons into engaging experiences with augmented reality (AR), a technology that overlays digital information on top of real-world surroundings as viewed through a smart phone or other handheld, GPS-enabled device.
Full story

New York Times�
Google is continuing with its effort to become the one-stop translation shop, announcing May 11 that it has added speech capabilities to more languages on Google Translate, its polylingual text translation tool. The feature uses the open-source speech synthesizer eSpeak to turn text into sound, giving Google Translate users the ability to hear [...]

Federal Computer Week�
The Education Department is being urged to revise its draft version of the National Education Technology Plan to include measures on adult education and on accessibility for people with learning disabilities. The department published the draft plan in March and welcomes public comments until May 14. After that date, the draft will be [...]

Yahoo! News �
Even as audio versions of best-sellers fill store shelves and new technology fuels the popularity of digitized books, the number of titles accessible to people who are blind or dyslexic is minuscule. But a new service by the nonprofit Internet Archive in San Francisco is trying to change that. The group has hired hundreds [...]

Yahoo! News �
Federal regulators plan to examine whether Apple Inc. is violating antitrust rules by requiring software developers to use Apple programming tools to create applications for the iPhone and iPad.
Full story

Disability Scoop �
A new online tool from the Department of Labor is intended to clarify the protections afforded employees with disabilities, given the unique circumstances of each work environment. The interactive Disability Nondiscrimination Law Advisor allows users to input details of a particular employment situation such as the number of employees a company has and whether [...]

The results from Unleashing the Future: Educators “Speak Up” about the use of Emerging Technologies for Learning, a recent survey on education technology, suggest that schools are making progress on integrating technology into the curriculum—but the survey also reveals key disparities in how students, educators, administrators, and even aspiring teachers think of various technology tools.
To read [...]

The Washington Post�
The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission has indicated he wants to keep broadband services deregulated—even as a federal court decision has exposed weaknesses in the agency’s ability to be a strong watchdog over the companies that provide access to the web. The FCC currently has “ancillary” authority over broadband providers such as [...]

eSchool News�
Aiming to engage students who are multitasking with different forms of technology, companies are creating collaborative learning spaces online where students can help one another solve homework problems and study—all while building important 21st-century skills.
Full story

Education Week�
At a time when it’s hard to find bipartisanship in Washington, it appears that legislation to reauthorize the America COMPETES Act may prove a noteworthy exception. Yesterday, the House Science and Technology Committee by a vote of 29-8 approved a wide-ranging bill to reauthorize the law, which includes a strong emphasis on improving education [...]

New York Times�
Twitter’s donation of its archives to the Library of Congress offers vast potential—as well as challenges—for historians. Twitter users now broadcast about 55 million Tweets a day. In just four years, about 10 billion of these brief messages have accumulated. Not a few are pure drivel—but, taken together, they are likely to be [...]

Education Week�
Just as the model of blended learning is pulling the worlds of virtual and brick-and-mortar schools together, new theories within virtual learning are bridging the divide between synchronous and asynchronous instructional methods. Online educators say they once debated whether to deliver courses synchronously, by allowing access to instruction during a given time, or asynchronously, [...]

Education Week�
While there are examples of innovative funding models for virtual schools and online course programs, most struggle to secure sustainable, adequate, and equitable funding, experts in the field say. One of the biggest areas of funding concern for online education advocates is state-led programs, the vast majority of which are paid for through state [...]

Education Week �
As educators and experts look to create an online-learning framework that spans the country — or maybe even the globe — some say that restrictive policies and other barriers will need to be removed. Funding is also an obstacle to creating online-learning networks that are not restricted to a single state. And while publicly [...]

eSchool News�
Since Ning launched its social network that lets members create groups on any topic back in 2007, thousands of educators have used the online tool to connect with their peers across the globe. Now, the company says it soon will “phase out” its free service, forcing educators to find other alternatives or pay to [...]

Education Week �
Not all school accreditation agencies are set up to handle the operations of online education providers, but the accelerating growth of virtual schools is prompting many accreditors to adapt to evaluate those types of programs.
Full story

New York Times�
To make up for a decline in visits, many museums are taking their programs to the classroom through traveling programs, video conferencing, or computer-based lessons, reports the New York Times. Over the last few years, many schools have eliminated or cut back on museum trips—partly because of tight budgets that make it hard [...]

eSchool News�
In a move that could spur more widespread use of online tools for communicating and collaborating within K-12 education, software giant Microsoft Corp. has announced a strategic partnership with ePals, which provides a safe online platform for teachers and students to share information and work together on projects.
Full story

eSchool News�
Many health experts point to the amount of “screen time” that today’s students are logging as a key contributing factor in the child obesity epidemic. Now, backed by a campaign launched by First Lady Michelle Obama earlier this year, some schools are using the same technologies that have many kids glued to their cell [...]

eSchool News�
Handheld devices that display 3-D animation could soon be used in the classroom, technology advocates say. New 3-D technology being developed for devices such as Nintendo DS could help students engage in learning with technology they are already using to play video games outside of school, the advocates suggest. “3-D will really benefit education [...]

March 2010 statistics revealing the employment landscape for people with disabilities have been released. Learn more about the labor force representation of individuals with disabilities.

Yahoo! News �
Apple’s new iPad and its applications are attracting interest from advocates who are considering its potential as a cost-effective communications tool for people with disabilities. The device’s large touchscreen is also an improvement over the smaller screens of the iPhone and iPod Touch, the executive director for the Alliance for Technology Access said. “It’s [...]

eSchool News�
Federal officials are leading the charge to develop a new generation of summative, end-of-year exams that are delivered and scored by computer; focus on a deeper understanding of the curriculum, instead of just multiple choice; and can measure students’ readiness for college or a career more accurately.
Full story

eSchool News�
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Feb. 18 approved a motion allowing school systems to let members of their community use e-Rate funded infrastructure after school hours. The FCC’s order waives the rule requiring schools to use e-Rate funded equipment and services only for “educational purposes,” and it’s part of the agency’s larger strategy [...]

eSchool News �
Distance-learning enrollment in American community colleges jumped by 22 percent during the 2008-09 academic year, an increase fueled in part by an influx of nontraditional students who require the flexibility of online courses, according to a survey conducted by the Instructional Technology Council (ITC).
Full story

Business Insider �
Facebook has named the first recipients of its new fellowship program for Ph.D. candidates doing research in areas related to “the social web and internet technology,” reports the San Francisco Chronicle. The five fellowships went to students working in cloud computing, social computing, behavioral economics, machine learning, and internet economics. The fellowships cover tuition [...]

THE Journal �
Cloud computing and gaming are among the six technologies that will have a major positive impact on K-12 education in the next few years, according to researchers. But education also faces some critical challenges in that timeframe, including challenges that may require fundamental changes to the way we educate in the United States. This [...]

eSchool News �
While many school stakeholders say there’s a lot to like in the new National Education Technology Plan (NETP), such as its emphasis on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and using open educational resources to improve instruction, others are concerned about what they see as a fundamental conflict between the plan’s call for innovation on [...]

Associated Press �
Facebook has launched a revamped internal site designed to help people stay safe and report threats while on the popular online hangout. Facebook’s “”Safety Center,”” which features new tools for parents, teachers, teens and law enforcement, is the first major endeavor from the social networking site and its four-month-old global safety advisory board.
Full story

New York Times�
Students’ online behavior is getting more attention as an important part of teaching children how to use the Internet. Schools in a number of states are considering the use of a free curriculum by Common Sense Media, which provides research-based lessons on a number of ethical issues associated with Internet use, including students’ [...]

Yahoo! News �
The Federal Communications Commission said April 8 that it intends to move forward quickly with key recommendations in its national broadband plan—even though a federal appeals court this week undermined the agency’s legal authority to regulate high-speed internet access. The FCC needs that authority to push ahead with many parts of the broadband plan, [...]

New York Times�
A number of websites have compiled free online resources for educators. The OpenCourseWare Consortium offers free course materials and lectures in multiple languages from 250 universities worldwide, as long as members post 10 courses within two years. Another Massachusetts Institute of Technology website offers introductory courses in calculus, physics and biology to prepare [...]

New York Times�
Putting free courseware online was a first step in reimagining education. So what now? Wiki universities, smart courses, and—maybe—improved learning. A decade has passed since MIT decided to give much of its course materials to the public in an act of largesse. The MIT OpenCourseWare Initiative helped usher in the “open educational resources” [...]

eSchool News�
The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) and the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) have teamed up on a new awards program that will recognize an outstanding online teacher for his or her exceptional contributions to virtual K-12 education.
Full story

Digital Education �
The report, from the Cyberbullying Research Center, used data from nearly 2,000 randomly selected youths from a large school district in the south. Of those students, it found cyberbullying victims were almost twice as likely to have attempted suicide as those who hadn’t experienced cyberbullying.
The study noted a connection between all forms of bullying [...]

eSchool News �
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the FCC lacks the authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all internet traffic flowing over their networks. That was a big victory for Comcast Corp., the nation’s largest cable company, which had challenged the FCC’s authority to impose [...]

eSchool News�
More than 150,000 applications for Apple’s iPad are now available for download, and many have been designed for students and teachers. One application offers students a visual exploration of the periodic table, and one sponsored by the language-learning site Hello-Hello.com allows users to study Spanish or connect with native speakers of that and other [...]

THE Journal �
The company Realityworks has developed a set of Internet-based games to help students experience scenarios and apply business strategies to solve problems. The Entrepreneurship Game teaches students how to launch a product and respond to consumer and market demands, while The Business Game teaches them the basics of bringing a new product to market. [...]

eSchool News�
Employers are looking for candidates who can navigate, critically evaluate, and make sense of the wealth of information available through digital media—and now educators have a new way to determine a student’s baseline digital literacy with a certification exam that measures the test-taker’s ability to assess information, think critically, and perform a range of [...]

eSchool News�
Employers are looking for candidates who can navigate, critically evaluate, and make sense of the wealth of information available through digital media—and now educators have a new way to determine a student’s baseline digital literacy with a certification exam that measures the test-taker’s ability to assess information, think critically, and perform a range of [...]

Fast Company�
Smartphones and other hand-held, networked devices have the ability to revolutionize the way educators teach and children learn — and companies, government entities and organizations alike are launching programs to unlock their potential. The Education Department has set aside $5 billion for pilot technology programs, foundations have started educational-investing ventures and companies such as [...]

New York Times�
As companies turn to social media to engage customers on a personal level, several top business schools are incorporating courses on social networks into their curricula, reports the New York Times. These include Harvard Business School, London Business School, and Insead, the international business school based in Fontainebleau, France. Social networking courses aim [...]

PC World�
Imagine controlling Apple iTunes from inside Microsoft Word without having to switch applications. That could be possible thanks to the efforts of researchers at the University of Washington who are working on a project that could essentially make any proprietary software act like open source. “Microsoft and Apple aren’t going to open up all [...]

WIRED �
For most blind computer users, surfing the internet or catching up on e-mail means reading just one line at a time, because commercially available braille displays can’t show full pages of text. Researchers from North Carolina State University now say they have devised a display that would allow visually challenged users to read a full [...]

Digital Education �
iNACOL’s parents’ guide to choosing online programs aims to make sure parents get the information they need to make informed decisions about their children’s education. The document breaks down the different types of programs and talks about how to evaluate the quality and effectiveness of each. It outlines a list of questions that parents [...]

eSchool News�
School officials need to share information via a variety of media platforms in order to reach today’s “on-the-go” news consumers, a new study suggests.
According to the study from the Pew Internet and American Life project, while 99 percent of American adults access news daily, only 7 percent use just one media platform to do [...]

New York Times �
Social-networking tools are proving a vital link for people who are disabled or seriously ill, letting them share essential information and build much-needed support networks, according to research. From general socializing to dedicated networks targeting specific diseases or disabilities, the Web and social networks serve as a valuable source of emotional support and [...]

Digital Education�
Most educators seem to have an open mind about using open-source software for teaching and learning. But they might have to study up a bit more before they can use it for online testing.
That is the conclusion of a study released today(PDF) by technology research firm Grunwald Associates that fuses 81 interviews with testing, [...]

The Hill�
A new coalition, called the Digital Adoption Coalition, has formed with the goal of spurring the increase of broadband Internet adoption among the poorest households in the U.S. The coalition includes One Economy, Connected Nation, AT&T, Comcast, Dell, Intel, Time Warner Cable and USTelecom, among others. The group intends work with the Department of [...]

Positive Gaming™ has released the Positive Gaming™ iDANCE2 software. The dance game contains an array of features that make it ideal for creating a fun and engaging environment for players of all ages while also providing cognitive, social and physical development benefits. The system was designed specifically for environments such as fitness centers, schools, YMCAs, [...]

Education Week�
A Game Boy-like device now being used by 40,000 students in 15 states aims to improve the reading skills of K-2 students. Much attention has been paid to how mobile-learning devices can be incorporated into middle and high schools, but Seth Weinberger is targeting a different set of students: kindergartners through 2nd graders.
“The sweet [...]

Education Week �
Experts say more-rigorous research is needed to build a case for mobile learning. For their fans and promoters, mobile devices—whether smartphones, gaming gadgets, MP3 players, or netbooks—have the potential to transform teaching and learning by engaging students more deeply in lessons and promoting anytime, anywhere learning. Only problem is, they can’t quite prove it [...]

KomoNews.com
A group of computer and engineering students at the University of Washington has created five mobile-phone applications to help simplify everyday tasks for people with disabilities. An application called BrailleLearn helps children learn Braille through a virtual pet game, while another program helps people with visual or hearing impairments determine their location and find points [...]

Roll Call
A coalition of business groups is lobbying Congress for more federal support for science and math education programs. The Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Education Coalition wants to set a goal of graduating 400,000 university students in STEM subjects by the year 2020, which is double the number today. “We need to help the [...]

Education Week
The National Broadband Plan released by the Federal Communications Commission today outlines a number of recommendations that could directly affect K-12 schools: revamping the federal E-rate program to offer more flexible use of the aid and streamline the application process; removing technological and policy barriers to online coursetaking; and improving the collection and transparency [...]

Digital Education
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation held an event on March 11, 2010 featuring FCC Broadband Strategy Director Blair Levin and the National Purpose team. FCC Education Director Steve Midgley started his portion of the presentation by showing examples of the positive impact broadband technology could have on education, such as personalizing instruction and offering higher quality [...]

eSchool News
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced the creation of the FCC’s “Children’s Agenda for Digital Opportunity,” which he said will build on the four pillars of digital access, digital literacy, digital citizenship, and digital safety. The Children’s Agenda is part of the National Broadband Plan to be released this week.
Full story

Education Week
A new business and industry coalition set to be announced tomorrow aims to “”enhance and elevate”” the U.S. commitment to STEM education, with participants representing diverse sectors, from the aerospace, manufacturing, and even entertainment industries to biotechnology, software engineers, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Full story

eSchool News
Four universities are giving students the chance to complete certificate and degree programs by downloading class material to mobile devices like iPhones and iPods in a distance-learning initiative that could be one day be commonplace.
Full story

Education Daily
In a race to reauthorize the America COMPETES Act this year, the House Science and Technology Committee gleaned input from industry stakeholders on ways to advance student achievement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics by scaling effective programs authorized in the legislation and through other strategies such as public-private partnerships.

THE Journal
In a presentation to stakeholders Wednesday, FCC Director of Education Steve Midgley provided a preview of the forthcoming National Broadband Plan, which will be formally released next week. The plan, as it pertains to education, calls for an expansion of E-Rate and new federal supports for the promotion and delivery of online learning.
Full story

Education Week
A new study finds that scientists’ initial interest in their subject is often sparked before they enter middle school, a conclusion the researchers suggest has implications for rethinking policy efforts aimed at getting more young people to become scientists.
The federally funded study examines the experiences reported by 116 scientists and graduate students that first [...]

Education Week
With millions of grant dollars on the line, representatives of the 16 state finalists for federal Race to the Top prize money will go to Washington next week to make final, in-person pitches to the U.S. Department of Education for investment in their brand of school reform.
Full story

Google News
First lady Michelle Obama is calling on video-game and software developers to design applications that encourage children to adopt a healthier lifestyle. As part of her “Let’s Move!” campaign against childhood obesity, the Apps for Healthy Kids challenge offers winners a share of $40,000 in federal prize money. Developers who create programs that help [...]

USA Today
At a handful of institutions, students working toward degrees online are meeting outside of class via the web to form online clubs as well. These extracurricular organizations offer online students what many feel they are missing: the social and professional opportunities that historically have been part of the college experience.
Full story

CNET.com
Researchers at IBM, India’s National Institute of Design and the University of Tokyo’s Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology are collaborating to create mobile devices that are more accessible for a range of people, including those with disabilities. “By focusing on mobile devices, which have a tremendous potential to empower them, we believe the [...]

eSchool News
James Shelton, assistant deputy secretary for ED’s Office of Innovation and Improvement, acknowledged that the innovation pipeline is fractured and there are obstacles making it difficult to get from the research and development phase to taking a product or idea to scale. Specifically, Shelton said he is worried that applicants might have problems providing [...]

eCampus News
Student response systems, or clickers—not unlike gadgets used on television game shows—first appeared in college classrooms over a decade ago and have since spread to just about every college and university in the country, thanks to cheaper and better technology. But as clickers have become commonplace, a divide has emerged over just how sophisticated [...]

Education Daily
Educational technology advocates told policymakers federal education technology funding streams should not be consolidated, as called for by the Obama administration’s FY 2011 budget request, in order for education reforms to succeed.

eSchool News
The federal government’s investment in education technology is an opportunity for the publishing industry, which must respond by creating more engaging content that is relevant for today’s tech-savvy students, said Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
Full story

The New York Times
Google’s network pushes the limits of translation technology and has become a favored source of translations for millions of people. The company’s free Google Translate service handles 52 languages, more than any similar system, and people use it hundreds of millions of times a week to translate web pages and other text. [...]

CNET.com
Google is building on its partnership with the World Bank, U.S. Census Bureau, and other gatherers of statistics to present an array of data in visual form within Google Labs. Google Public Data Explorer went live March 8. The site takes public data regarding schools, population, crime, and other topics to construct charts and graphs [...]

Education Daily  �
Stakeholders on Capitol Hill this week urged Congress to salvage the main federal education technology funding stream, which President Obama proposed to eliminate in his FY 2011 budget request. More than 200 educators at the Washington Education Technology Summit pledged to work with legislators to restore funding for key initiatives they say are necessary [...]

Yahoo! News
Federal regulators trying to bring high-speed internet connections to all Americans will propose tapping the government program that now subsidizes telephone service in poor and rural areas. The Federal Communications Commission will include a proposal to revamp the Universal Service Fund (USF) as part of a national broadband plan due to Congress on March [...]

MercuryNews.com
YouTube has begun automatic captioning of most of its videos in a move that will make the site — including educational content such as university lectures — more accessible to people who are hearing-impaired. Using speech-recognition technology, the auto-captioning is initially available in English only but will eventually allow for translation into multiple languages.
Full story

THE Journal
Researchers at Pennsylvania State University have developed an early-intervention program to improve academic and behavioral skills in kindergarten students thought to be at risk for low achievement. The Focus on Learning program includes laptop applications and games that help students develop reading and vocabulary abilities, an approach to literacy that has students focus on [...]

Science Daily
Regardless of gender or nationality, young people who are exposed to violent video games are more likely to behave more aggressively, and be less caring, than those who are not.
Full Story

Science Daily
Teens who spend more time watching television or using computers appear to have poorer relationships with their parents and peers, according to a report in the March issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Full Story

Wired.com
The Intel Classmate PC has been around for the last three years as a low-cost notebook meant for children to use at school and for learning. Now, Intel is looking to refresh the design with a new, convertible model that can also be used like a tablet. The convertible Classmate PC can be twisted into [...]

Archives of Adolescent & Pediatric Medicine
A recent report on whether toddlers who watched an educational DVD for six weeks improved their word learning found there were no real vocabulary differences between the two groups, except in cases where parents intervened to teach the words to their children.
Researchers from the University of California, Riverside, studied 96 [...]

Education Week
A bipartisan group of U.S. senators this week introduced legislation to promote and improve engineering education in schools.
Full story

eSchool News
Students aren’t getting enough instruction in school on how to use technology and the internet in a safe and responsible manner, a new poll suggests. Released by the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) and supported by Microsoft Corp., the survey found fewer than one-fourth of U.S. teachers have spent more than six hours on [...]

eSchool News
The federal government’s plan to provide fast internet connections to all Americans will have to include some basic instruction in Web 101, a new survey reveals. According to the survey, nearly half of adults who don’t subscribe to broadband say the internet is too dangerous for children—a finding that suggests policy makers and educators [...]

NCTI attended FOSE this year and were surprised at how few IT accessibility and workplace accommodations booths, vendors, and solutions were present. Learn what we did on CAP’s workplace accommodations programs and buyaccessible.gov’s work.

Steppingstones of Technology Innovation for Children With Disabilities notice inviting applications for fiscal year 2010. Grantees will develop, implement, and evaluate innovative technology approaches designed to improve results for children with disabilities. Deadline March 19, 2010.

Readability is a simple tool that makes reading on the web more enjoyable by removing the clutter (ads, flashy text, etc.) around what you’re reading. Users choose text style (newspaper,novel, eBook, or terminal), text size (small, medium, large, extra large), and margins for the page (narrow, medium, wide, extra wide). Users then click the Readability [...]

Textbook publisher Flat World Knowledge and Bookshare, the largest online library for individuals with print disabilities, have teamed up to make more content available to students who cannot turn a page or who cannot see standard print books. Bookshare, a nonprofit launched in 2002, has steadily expanded its catalog thanks to a $32.5 million federal [...]

Nationwide Children’s Hospital has published results from a recent study which suggest that teenagers are more willing to provide sensitive health information via a computer interface than directly to a health care provider or parent. In the study, teenagers used a handheld device, called the Health eTouch pad, to answer questions about sexual activity, drug [...]

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged $12.9 million to fund technology-focused initiatives at community colleges across the U.S. Hilary Pennington, who serves as the director of education, postsecondary success, and special initiatives for the Foundation, says these grants are targeting “the best new ideas that hold the greatest promise for improving the odds [...]

Missoulian
Questia, an online library of humanities and social-sciences research material, recently launched a new iPhone application. The application allows college students to perform academic research on their mobile phones. The Questia app, which launched in September, costs 99 cents to download and includes a one-week access to the entire research collection. After that, it costs [...]

Yahoo! Tech
Historic manuscripts by Sir Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, and other groundbreaking scientists will be published online for the first time. The Royal Society, the world’s oldest scientific institution, will release famous literature on the web that it has published in its journals over the centuries as part of celebrations to mark its 350th anniversary. [...]

U.S. National Ed Tech Plan, released March 5, 2010, sets an ambitious agenda for using technology to transform teaching and learning. Add your comments to the Plan.

USA Today
General Motors is set to announce today that it has joined with the National Federation of the Blind to develop a technology that will make hybrid and electric cars noisier. The cars barely produce sound when in motion and pose a safety risk for pedestrians, particularly those with visual impairments. The NFB is calling [...]

EdWeek
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is giving planning grants of up to $100,000 each to nine school districts and charter groups to help them win Investing in Innovation, or i3, grants from the U.S. Department of Education. For i3, the chosen school district winners are: Philadelphia, New Haven, Conn., New Orleans, Minneapolis, Houston, and [...]

eSchool News
The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission says making broadband internet access universally available is this century’s version of building highways or extending railroads coast-to-coast. Broadband access is critical for the country’s economic development, Julius Genachowski said, adding that putting the infrastructure in place will create jobs, help small businesses, and make the U.S. [...]

eSchool News
The U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) has awarded Bookshare $100K in supplemental funding to create the first accessible versions of open content digital textbooks. The initial planned conversion of open content textbooks, which are distributed freely under a license selected by the author, are math and science textbooks approved [...]

EA Sports
Throughout its history, EA SPORTS has developed video games to bring the challenge and entertainment of sport to players around the world. This year, through a partnership with VTree LLC, EA SPORTS has developed a game that addresses and entirely different set of challenges, yet for very much the same results – bringing the [...]

eSchool News
College and university library officials are largely disappointed with Google’s decision to exclude non-English books from its digital library in a concession to critics of a proposed legal settlement, saying the move would cut Google’s massive online collection in half and could hamper campus research.
The internet search giant will ease its control over millions [...]

eSchool News
President Barack Obama on Nov. 23 announced the launch of several nationwide programs to help motivate and inspire students to excel in science and math, including a grassroots effort called “”National Lab Day”” and a White House science fair. Obama identified three overarching priorities for STEM education: increasing STEM literacy so all students can [...]

The New York Times
At IBM, a team of nearly 100, including mathematicians and software developers, is working on a project to create an automatic translation tool that has the speed and accuracy to be used in instant messaging between speakers of two different languages.
Full story

EdWeek
Over at the  National Journal’s education blog, two top federal education officials have started a lively conversation on the role of innovation in education. The questions being posed by John Easton, the director of the department’s Institute of Education Sciences, and Jim Shelton, the chief of the office of innovation and improvement, are:
What are the [...]

EdWeek
As the U.S. Department of Education prepares final rules for the $650 million Investing in Innovation Fund, officials face strong concerns from school districts and philanthropies that requiring matching funds from the private sector is unworkable and would turn foundations into the gatekeepers for the federal grants. The influential Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the [...]

eSchool News
When school media specialists and educators make an effort to become familiar with the social-networking web sites and technologies that today’s students use each day, they can forge important learning connections with their students: That was one of the key messages to come out of the American Association of School Librarians’ annual conference, held [...]

THE Journal
HumanWare  has debuted a notetaker designed for students who are blind. The new BrailleNote Apex is small, a thin (0.78″”), and light (1.8 lbs.), making it easy to carry and use. It features a full-size Braille keyboard, 8 GB of internal memory, built-in WiFi, Ethernet, and Bluetooth. The BrailleNote Apex also supports high-capacity SDHC [...]

The New York Times
Google unveiled plans Thursday to employ technology that will provide text captions to many videos on YouTube, improving access for people who are deaf or have hearing impairments. The service will provide the captions in English but will allow for an automatic service to translate the captions into 51 other languages. Google [...]

eSchool News
As part of the organization’s latest effort to learn from colleagues abroad, a delegation of U.S. education technology leaders from the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) visited Scotland and the Netherlands last week to learn more about the world’s first national intranet for education, international approaches to online safety, and more.
Full story

THE Journal
The implications for HTML5 technologies on learning are profound. As technologies become more “intelligent” and requirements shift away from the manual skills needed to use them, teaching and learning can focus more clearly on the processes of thinking and application.�
Full Story

CNET.com
The Federal Communications Commission met Nov. 18 to discuss obstacles to enacting a national broadband policy that will provide high-speed internet access to every American. One major issue has to do with the Universal Service Fund, a program funded through extra charges on consumers’ phone bills. Another issue is the fact that broadband service providers [...]

BBC
At an international Internet conference in Egypt, advocates and experts argued for improved Internet access for the estimated 650 million people worldwide who have disabilities. One conference speaker outlined challenges faced by many people with disabilities, including affordability and connectivity as well as accessibility of design. “One of the fundamental problems has been not consulting [...]

EdWeek
More than half of U.S. states now operate online-learning initiatives for K-12 students, an increase over the 15 states that did so just two years ago, according to a new survey. Most of the 26 states that have online programs have seen significant growth in enrollments in recent years, with a dozen of them reporting [...]

EdWeek
The co-founder of Wikipedia has launched a Web site designed to offer free access to thousands of education-related videos for students ages 3-18.
Larry Sanger, who helped create Wikipedia and has since left the organization, says the new site, www.watchknow.org, will allow students and teachers to sort through a library of online videos by content, and [...]

eSchool News
Train every pre-service teacher to teach online in teacher-education programs at colleges and universities; invest in the development of open courseware with federal and state funding; encourage the use of technology to create new forms of assessment that better measure student learning gains; provide national standards for school IT support, with recommendations for optimal [...]

Federal Computer Week
As more Web sites are designed to increase the federal government’s transparency, many still lack features that make them accessible for people with disabilities, advocates say. While many sites meet minimum standards of compliance, advocates argue that new common guidelines are needed to provide developers better accessibility standards to build to. An update [...]

THE Journal
The Tucson-based Partnership for 21st Century Skills has announced the release of its Milestones for Improving Learning and Education (MILE) Guide, a resource designed to aid schools and districts in fully and effectively integrating 21st century skills into policy and curricula. The MILE Guide offers a complete framework for 21st century skills integration into [...]

Featured presenters at day two of NCTI’s annual conference shared their vision for technology in education and policy needs to address research, implementation, funding and other barriers that block the way.

Do differences in individuals’ brains affect the way students learn? Experts speaking at the 2009 NCTI conference suggest that the answer is, “yes.” Confirming a commonplace notion, featured panelists reaffirmed that individual characteristics make differentiated learning valuable not only for students with disabilities, but for all students. Going further, our experts in residence focused light on a complex and sometimes misunderstood subject, sharing findings that individual brains learn differently, that apparently similar skills are not always transferrable, and ability to acquire skills works differently in different life stages.

With pervasive access to Facebook, Twitter, IM and a whole host of other online communication technologies, today’s students are our first generation of digital natives. But with technology coming more slowly to education than other disciplines, NCTI panelists and conference participants wrestled with an important question, “Can Teachers Themselves Become Digital Natives?”

NCTI’s first day keynote, Dr. Dan Domenech, asserts that today’s educational environment is still similar to that of yesterday’s one room schoolhouse. In a world of amazing tools and technologies, we still hold class with a sage on the stage, a piece of chalk and an old fashioned blackboard. In a world of information highways, why is it that the proverbial roadway to our schools remain unpaved?

EdWeek
A new podcast about hearing screenings for public-school students is available on the Web site of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. ASHA says undiagnosed hearing impairments can lead to poor academic performance among students.
Full story

THE Journal
PBS Teacherline, the online preK-12 professional development resource of the Public Broadcasting Service, will provide professional development courses and teaching resources to encourage the teaching of climate change topics in conjunction with science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education. The new services are the result of a NASA Global Climate Change Education (GCCE) Grant.
Full [...]

THE Journal
The winners of the Worldwide Innovative Teacher Awards, presented my Microsoft Partners in Learning were announced Friday at Microsoft’s 2009 Worldwide Innovative Education Forum (IEF) being held in Salvador, Brazil. The awards recognize teachers who demonstrate exemplary use of technology in the classroom to improve student learning.
Full story

ABC News
The Rethink Autism Web site features online tutorials on applied behavioral analysis, one of the most expensive and desired treatments for children with autism. Jamie Pagliaro of Rethink Autism said the Web-based program is meant to help families that might not otherwise have access to ABA. “[It] shouldn’t preclude you from having access to [...]

EdWeek
Word slipped out at today’s meeting of the National Board for Education Sciences that the final regulations for the Race to the Top program, which are due to be published any day now, will include a big focus on science, technology, engineering, and math or STEM subjects.
Full story

Venture Beat
Creators of a $1,500 digital reader by Intel say the design of the device is based on years of research and is aimed at improving quality of life for people with visual impairments. Among other things, the device features text-to-speech technology to read books aloud at varying speeds to its users along with Braille [...]

EdWeek
The national board that advises the U.S. Department of Education on its research operations voted to weigh in yesterday on the proposed rules for the new Investing in Innovation or “”i3″” program—and just in the nick of time.
The window for commenting on draft guidelines for the $650 million grant program was scheduled to close at [...]

EdWeek
At the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, two epidemiology experts recently hosted a live online webinar about the H1N1 virus for middle- and high-school students nationwide. The “Swine Online” webinar is just one way scientists say they are using technology to give K-12 students insight into their work. “In school, we’re reading right out [...]

Try out this Leaders and Laggards interactive map that displays the 2009 data on state educational innovations and barriers. See how states match up on 8 dimensions.

The Salt Lake Tribune (Utah)
Recently developed video-relay technology is allowing people with hearing impairments to communicate over videophone using American Sign Language, which is translated by ASL interpreters into voice at nationwide relay centers. At a recent conference in Utah, a Gallaudet University professor emphasized that the effectiveness of the technology depends on properly trained [...]

THE Journal
Blackboard and Microsoft have joined forces to offer students access to information from their online courses on Web browsers.
Full story

THE Journal
In order to advance and compete, K-12 students for whom English is not a first language still must learn subjects in addition to English. Quite often, however, teachers are not fully equipped to teach these subjects effectively to English language learners (ELLs). In response, Math Solutions has devised a multimedia professional development resource aimed [...]

Computer World
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation announced $1.85 million in funding for nine research projects involving the design of video-game technology to help people change behavior, manage chronic illness and improve communication. Among the projects that won funding: A study that will look at the effect of facial-perception video games on brain activity and facial-perception [...]

EdWeek
A forum at the Internet company focused on ways to use technology to improve schools.
Full story

Although parents, K-12 students, and educators agree that using technology is essential to learning and student success, parents are largely dissatisfied with the technology skills their children are learning in schools, according to a new analysis of survey data released Oct. 29 by the nonprofit Project Tomorrow and Blackboard Inc.
Read the full story from eSchool [...]

Amid a still-shaky economy, a troubling reality is starting to set in for states and school districts: The budget situation may get a lot worse when the federal economic-stimulus spigot runs dry. As helpful as many state and local officials have found the one-time stimulus aid in coping with current and anticipated revenue shortfalls, it [...]

The nanotechnology industry will employ an estimated 2 million people worldwide by 2015, and with President Obama calling on colleges to ready students for the field, an Illinois-based company has introduced a program designed to teach the complex subject to undergraduates. NanoInk introduced the 12-week learning system, called NanoProfessor, in May.
Read the full story from [...]

The federal stimulus package might have saved thousands of teaching jobs, but many thousands more remain in jeopardy – as well as virtual-school programs, higher-education funding, and other school initiatives – as a result of lingering budget crises in states from coast to coast.
Read the full story from eSchool News.

The director of the Academy Award-winning film “An Inconvenient Truth” wants his new upcoming documentary to fuel the same sense of urgency for improving education that his earlier one did for raising awareness of global warming. Geoff Canada, the president and CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone, thinks the film will put the power of [...]

At last count, there were more than 1 million enrollments in K-12 online schools in the United States. And according to recent research, the number of students taking courses online will jump to more than 10 million in the next five years. But even with this rapid growth (up from zero enrollments in the mid-1990s), [...]

The reviews are mixed for a version of the Kindle DX electronic-reading device that has been adapted for people with visual impairments. Educators and technology specialists who work with people who have visual impairments said the device does not work well for people who have complete vision loss because it does not have text-to-speech features. [...]

The number of students taking courses online will jump to more than 10 million by 2014, according to data released recently by research firm Ambient Insight. Titled “US Self-paced eLearning Market,” the new report highlighted some of the dominant segments in online learning. Of the individual segments spotlighted in the research, healthcare was projected to [...]

On Nov. 16, the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) will have a new leader: Long-time ed-tech industry executive Douglas Levin will take the reins from current SETDA Executive Director Mary Ann Wolf–and with challenges ranging from state funding shortages to the formation of a new national broadband plan, he’ll have his work cut out [...]

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation his taking unprecedented steps to spend millions to influence the way the federal government distributes nearly $5 billion in “Race to the Top” grants to overhaul public schools. The foundation is offering $250,000 apiece to help states apply, so long as they agree with the foundation’s approach. Obama and [...]

College students are using the new multimedia product Connect to browse notes, watch professors’ lectures, and practice exams. Connect expands on the textbook publisher and financial-information provider ’s success in the college and digital products markets, two bright spots in a tough publishing environment. College enrollments have continued to grow, while teachers and students have [...]

For wireless phone companies, the classroom is new territory that they say is worth experimenting with and exploring. Some wireless phone companies are teaming up with schools to demonstrate how smartphones and mobile technologies can be used to increase students’ academic performance.
Read the full story from Education Week.

Indiana University has received more than $1.8 million from the National Institutes of Health to collaborate on a $12.2 million, seven-university project described as a “Facebook for scientists,” IU reports. The goal of the project, known as Vivo, is to link researchers around the country in an online social and research network, while also protecting [...]

New research suggests that more young adults and teens — normally at the cutting edge of technology, but initially slow to adopt Twitter — are finally coming around to the micro-blogging service, using it for school, work, or simply to monitor the minutiae of celebrities’ lives. It is a rare instance of young people adopting [...]

Fees imposed on college students who take online classes can be more than $1,300 at some schools, according to a new survey claiming that internet-based education is often more costly for students than attending classes on campus. According to a survey of 182 institutions conducted by the Campus Computing Project and Western Cooperative for Educational [...]

The internet is set to undergo one of the biggest changes in its four-decade history with the expected approval this week of international domain names, or addresses, that can be written in languages other than English. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN—the nonprofit group that oversees domain names—is holding a meeting [...]

University IT officials concerned that corporate control of the internet would mean that only major schools could afford premium web access lauded the Federal Communication Commission’s step Oct. 22 toward barring broadband providers from discriminating against certain types of internet traffic. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski argued that establishing so-called “open internet” rules would prevent web [...]

Colleges and universities have applied for tens of millions of dollars in federal stimulus grants designed to expand broadband internet access, arguing that university IT infrastructure makes campuses worthy recipients. More than 2,200 applicants asked for a total of $28 billion in broadband funds during this initial application process–roughly seven times the amount available. Most [...]

Project Tomorrow has kicked off Speak Up 2009, the latest in the organization’s series of annual surveys focused on 21st century teaching, learning, parenting, and administration. The survey is used as a gauge of opinion and practices in education, with a particular emphasis on technology topics, such as the use of Web 2.0 tools, mobile [...]

Twitter Inc. is selling the rights to mine its communications hotbed to both Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. in dueling deals that underscore the growing importance of being able to show what’s on people’s minds at any given moment. Microsoft will offer another way to probe into the collective mindset of web users by indexing [...]

Digital books ordered for use on Amazon.com’s Kindle electronic reader soon can be read on personal computers. Amazon will provide a software application that can convert Kindle books to PC-readable ones. The move follows the launch this week of a competing device, the Nook, from bookseller Barnes & Noble that sports a similar function. The [...]

A new study out of Iowa State University finds that people who play video games for 40-plus hours a week have a harder time focusing on certain tasks than those who play just a few hours a week. The study also supports research published earlier this year that found a positive correlation between video game [...]

What does broadband access mean for the disability community? The FCC hosted an all-day workshop to find out.

As pervasive as the Internet has become, there is one group of people that is still unable to realize many of its benefits. However, thanks to the work of CANnect, a consortium of schools and philanthropists dedicated to overcoming this obstacle, the visually impaired may soon acquire unprecedented access to the Web and much of [...]

Increasing numbers of studies are being done that seem to support the notion that blended course delivery or program delivery really captures the best of every possible world and, as such, is an effective way of learning for students.
Read the full story from THE Journal.

Researchers at ArticuLab, part of the communication and engineering schools at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, are studying how humans communicate with and through technology and are helping autistic children participate in conversations by using virtual peers, life-sized, computer-animated children capable of carrying on realistic conversations. Virtual peers invite autistic children to interact and play [...]

What does innovation in education look like? How do we initiate and sustain innovations?  What are the barriers to doing so?  This report from the New Venture School Fund with contributions from the Stupski Foundation and Carnegie Corporation of New York  Foundation looks at these issues in a new report.  �
Opener: “We find ourselves at a [...]

When high school and middle school science teachers engage in extracurricular research work, their students benefit. That’s the result of a new study published in Science last week by researchers at Columbia University. In addition, they found that such extracurricular research work can also bring economic benefits to schools and communities.
Read the full story from [...]

Preliminary results of a survey released in mid-September at the EdNET Conference in Chicago indicate a great deal of interest from educators in using online social networking to connect with colleagues and discuss best practices and ways to improve education. Sponsored jointly by edWeb.net, MCH, and MMS Education, the survey of more than 70,000 education [...]

With single-sex brick-and-mortar classrooms gaining in popularity as a way to tap into teaching methods that may appeal to one gender or the other, the world of online schooling is looking closely at the idea of targeting virtual classes at just boys or just girls. In addition to Michigan Virtual University’s math course aimed at [...]

Members of the U.S. House of Representatives struggled during a Sept. 30 hearing with how to stop the online bullying of children without violating free-speech rights. a House Judiciary subcommittee was told that federal law does not make it a crime to engage in “cyber bullying” that becomes destructive to its young victims. The worst [...]

Google has been aggressively marketing Google Apps to schools, recently launching a centralized site designed to recruit universities and colleges. Now, Google is tweaking Google Docs, which is a part of Google Apps’ productivity suite, by adding a few student-friendly features.
Read more from The Washington Post.

At seven college campuses across the U.S., students are participating in a pilot program to test Amazon’s Kindle DX. Professors and administrators say it is too early to make a determination on the academic applications of the device because students are still getting used to its features.
Read the full story from The Wall Steet Journal.

Yale Law School researchers will team up with a tuition-free online university to study how online higher education is perceived worldwide and document what it takes for internet-based institutions to achieve accreditation.
Read the full story from eCampus News.

A Federal Communications Commission task force says expanding broadband usage throughout the United States will require subsidies and investment in infrastructure upgrades of as much as $350 billion. The FCC is crafting a national broadband plan aimed at increasing usage in rural and urban areas. In a mid-course status report, an FCC task force said [...]

A research team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has won $4.5 million in National Science Foundation grants to study the use of computer games for learning. UW-Madison researchers aim to create ‘computer-generated mentors’ and study gaming as an assessment tool.
The largest of the grants, for $3.5 million, will create a research consortium of three universities [...]

Legislation is being drafted to give web users–such as high school and college students–more control over their personal information. The rise in online social networking, coupled with the evolution of advanced data-tracking techniques, has created a goldmine for internet marketers who now can target their advertising in highly sophisticated ways to individual web users. High [...]

Educators nationwide are bracing for an expected wave of student absences because of swine flu by ensuring that learning can continue even when students are out of school. Many teachers are turning to online options such as posting assignments on a school Web site or interactive Wiki. The Department of Education is recommending teachers use [...]

Schools are increasingly using blogs, e-mail, and other online tools to bring scientific research within students’ reach. Around the country, scientists and education-advocacy groups have become ever more intent on making scientific studies and careers more attractive to young people, particularly underrepresented groups such as women and minorities. One goal is to quash the stereotype [...]

Schools are looking for ways to give students more choices at a time when teachers and classes are being cut. The Virtual High School, a Maynard-based nonprofit consortium, involves more than 400 middle and high schools worldwide and offers online courses taught by teachers all over the world. The collaborative includes more than 9,500 students, [...]

Take the Project RED survey today (www.projectred.org).
What works when integrating technology into teaching and learning?  Your answers will inform Federal and state policy leaders and provide input into the National Educational Technology Plan 2010.
More information about Project RED:
Project RED is a national research and advocacy plan directed by the non-profit One-to-One Institute that is dedicated [...]

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan signaled last week that the Department of Education is poised to launch reauthorization efforts for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. He used a packed meeting of key stakeholders here to underline his likely priorities and stress his sense of urgency.
The new version of the law, he said, will [...]

Designs conceived for the handicapped, such as voice commands for PCs, often lead to products for the masses. Apple (AAPL) is widely celebrated for making devices as easy to use as they are elegantly designed. These features aren’t exactly new—they evolved from software Apple created to help disabled people use PCs. Among them: the new [...]

A new report examines how districts can make the most of education technology funds, and an accompanying guide identifies effective school technology tools. Together, these resources are intended to help school leaders personalize instruction and give teachers the tools they need to succeed with low-income (Title I) student populations.
The report, Leveraging Title I and Title [...]

When the filing window opens later this fall, applicants will find no major changes to next year’s e-Rate, the $2.25 billion-a-year federal program that provides discounts on telecommunications services to eligible schools and libraries. What they will find instead is a program that is more dedicated to helping e-Rate newcomers–as many as half of all [...]

EyesFree, a new interface for Google’s Android mobile phone operating system, provides a way for blind people to use a phone with a touch-sensitive screen, but the corollary is that it also provides sighted people with an easier way to use the phone. In fact, they can make calls without even looking at it.
The idea [...]

As online high schools spread, educators are ramping up efforts to counter the social isolation that some students experience. At the same time, sociologists and child psychologists are examining how online schooling might hinder, or help, the development of social skills.
Read the full story from the Wall Street Journal.

Educators need to embrace Web 2.0 technologies in schools, but they should be given adequate professional development to ensure they learn the proper ways to engage their students through digital media, said experts at a Sept. 21 Capitol Hill briefing.
That was the general consensus of the panel members, which included representatives from the Consortium for [...]

A group of engineering students has developed a portable, low-cost Braille printer that lets the blind and visually impaired easily label objects that feel similar to the touch, like DVDs.
The 6dot Braille Labelmaker is cheaper and easier to use than other label makers, according to the students from MIT, the University of Toronto, and Stanford [...]

Wireless carriers shouldn’t be allowed to block certain types of internet traffic flowing over their networks, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission said Sept. 21 in a speech that predictably got a cool response from the industry, but fell in line with what higher-education IT officials have lobbied for in recent years.
FCC Chairman Julius [...]

President Obama plans to make the nation’s economy more stable in the future by investing in education for high-tech industries. The president unveiled a new “innovation strategy” that builds on $100 billion of economic stimulus funds to support entrepreneurship, education, infrastructure, and other investments. The plan aims to make the U.S. economy more competitive and [...]

A pen that can read information on labels aloud for people who cannot see has been developed in England. The PenFriend scans small bar codes on adhesive labels to play recorded MP3 audio files. Users can record up to 70 hours of audio, labeling items such as medication for identification or later reference.
Read the full [...]

In a move that could help states procure part of the $4.3 billion Race to the Top Fund, the National Governors Association (NGA) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) on Sept. 21 released the first official public draft of their Common Core State Standards.
The college and career readiness standards in English and [...]

The organization Common Core, which calls for giving students strong grounding across academic disciplines, has organized an open letter critiquing the program put forward by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and calling for the group to revise its goals.
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills promotes the cultivation of a broad range of critical-thinking, creative, [...]

The Foundation for Technology Education in cooperation with Pitsco/Hearlihy and Co. has announced a $2,000 Pitsco/Hearlihy/FTE Grant for a K-12 technology teacher as a way to recognize and encourage the integration of a quality technology education program within the school curriculum. Teachers must provide evidence of an effective quality technology education program, show documented success [...]

A Michigan high-school student is suing Amazon.com, alleging the online retailer ruined his homework when it deleted a book from his Kindle. Amazon remotely deleted copies of pirated books from the reading device. A California man is also a plaintiff in the case, which seeks class-action status and asks for unspecified damages for all buyers [...]

The Tech Museum have announced The Tech Awards Laureates 2009, 15 innovators from around the world who have committed their groundbreaking work to solving humanity’s most pressing challenges. The Tech Awards recognizes Laureates in five categories: environment, economic development, education, equality, and health. These Laureates have developed new technological solutions or innovative ways to use [...]

Date: Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Time: 12:00 – 1:00 PM EDT
Presenter: Peter Berking
Many instructional designers have experience creating web-based e-learning, but how do you create content that is optimized for reusability and SCORM 2004 3rd Edition LMSs? This webinar will provide an overview of creating reusable content with SCORM 2004. It will:

Define key terms (such [...]

Chatter about ensuing plans permeates any graduation, though it’s not common for the talk to surround which class projects will receive venture capital funding. This was a hot topic at the first commencement at Singularity University, a school that is backed by Google, operates on NASA’s Silicon Valley campus, and gets its name from futurist [...]

After emphasizing its agreement with President Barack Obama’s education reform agenda for more than half of his first year in office, the National Education Association has formally announced its opposition to core elements of the Obama administration’s proposed guidelines for the $4.35 billion Race to the Top program.
Among other areas, the NEA says it cannot [...]

Starting this fall, Wikipedia will offer an optional feature called “WikiTrust” that will color-code every word of the encyclopedia based on the reliability of its author and the length of time it has persisted on the page. The program assigns a color code to newly edited text using an algorithm that calculates authors’ reputations from [...]

A federal program is under way to replace outmoded audiobook players for people who cannot see or have who visual impairments. The digital devices, which work like iPods and feature improvements such as Braille labels, faster rewind and playback, and reduced size, will initially be distributed to veterans and centenarians who are visually impaired, followed [...]

Rural school advocates say the federal priorities emerging under Mr. Duncan—a former chief executive officer of the 408,000-student Chicago public school system—favor education improvement ideas that are best suited to urban settings. Initiatives such as the Race to the Top Fund competition fail to recognize the distinctive problems facing rural districts, which serve some 13 [...]

The federal government on Aug. 27 said it has received requests for nearly $28 billion from groups that want to expand high-speed internet service in the United States. The total requests outstripped available funds seven to one. States, counties, Indian tribes, nonprofits, phone companies, libraries, colleges, universities, and others — 2,200 requests in all  — [...]

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has proposed new rules for distributing $3.5 billion in Title I School Improvement Grants to turn around the nation’s lowest performing schools. The plan includes flexibility for districts to close struggling schools, replace staff, or adopt a “transformational model” that aims to change the whole school culture, according to each school’s [...]

Every year since 1969, Phi Delta Kappa (PDK) International, a global association of education professionals, and Gallup have created a poll to examine how the country views its educational system. The poll found that most Americans want to change No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and they favor several education reforms backed by the Obama administration, [...]

As technology becomes an increasingly important tool for teaching and learning, a relatively new concept–focusing on how educators can effectively and effortlessly tailor technology to their instructional practices–is making its way into pre-service and in-service teacher education programs.
Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge, or TPACK, is the work of Punya Mishra and Matthew Koehler, both associate professors [...]

The e-Rate can play a significant role in the national broadband plan being developed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), panelists said during an Aug. 20 hearing–but for this to happen, commissioners must raise the program’s funding cap.
Read the full story from eSchool News.

According to a report from the Communications Workers of America, the United States ranks 28th in the world in average internet connection speed and is not making significant progress in building a faster network. It said tests conducted by speedmatters.org found the average U.S. download speed had improved by only nine-tenths of a megabit per [...]

The United States Department of Education is looking to give STEM equity a boost. The department this week announced about $6.3 million in grants to programs aimed at bringing underrepresented groups into STEM careers and pursuing advanced degrees. A total of 32 universities and colleges have been awarded the grants through two individual STEM equity [...]

Librarians, academics, and privacy advocates will gather on the University of California at Berkeley campus Aug. 28 to discuss the implications of Google’s proposed book-scanning settlement with publishers that, if implemented, will allow it to bring millions of books online. At issue are concerns over privacy, quality, and Google’s intent with the project, the only [...]

Founded on the concept that anyone could change its content, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia is now requiring reviews on articles about living people after several embarrassing incidents. Officials at the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit in San Francisco that governs Wikipedia, say that within weeks, the English-language Wikipedia will begin imposing a layer of editorial review [...]

Despite their reputation as early adopters, just 11 percent of Twitter’s users are ages 12 to 17, according to comScore. Twitter’s unparalleled explosion in popularity instead has been driven by a decidedly older group. That success has shattered a widely held belief that young people lead the way to popularizing innovations. In fact, though teenagers [...]

Author of the book Empowering Students with Technology and longtime education technology advocate Alan November told educators and IT administrators last month that schools and colleges should reassess how they fund their ed-tech initiatives. Asking what teachers and students need, November said, should trump the persistent push for more technology staffing and equipment.
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Despite the proliferation [...]

The nonprofit organization that operates the popular internet encyclopedia Wikipedia has received a $500,000 grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to expand its work in bringing free educational content to people around the globe. The foundation says Wikipedia plays an important role in making information freely accessible. It has made more than $100 [...]

Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc., and Amazon.com Inc. are joining a coalition that hopes to rally opposition to Google’s digital book ambitions and ultimately persuade a federal judge to block or revise the internet search leader’s plans. The group, to be called the Open Book Alliance, is being put together by the Internet Archive, a longtime [...]

Vanderbilt University researchers found that a robot designed to interpret body signals is able to accurately read the mood of children with autism spectrum disorders more than 80% of the time. The robot measures the heart rate, skin temperature and other signals of children while they play a video game. If it determines the child [...]

Stress tests conducted by Sydney-based researchers have revealed that the infrastructure-on-demand services offered by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft suffer from regular performance and availability issues. The team of researchers, led by the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in collaboration with other groups, spent seven months stress-testing Amazon’s EC2, Google’s AppLogic, and Microsoft’s Azure cloud-computing [...]

Federal education officials last week pledged that the economic-stimulus program’s $650 million innovation fund will reserve the largest grants for schools, districts, and nonprofit organizations that want to finance programs with proven track records and are ready to grow.
In the U.S. Department of Education’s first substantial preview of the “Investing in Innovation” grant program—newly dubbed [...]

Across the nation, alternative-route program officials say they are seeing increasing enrollments from career-changers with strong backgrounds in the highly sought-after fields of math, science, and technology. But the extent to which school district administrators are primed to take advantage of larger—and in some cases stronger—talent pools in those fields depends on the officials’ ability [...]

Adaptations have created a chemistry lab more accessible to students who cannot see. Modifications at a laboratory at the University of California, San Diego, include a voiced computer and sensors that “read” a liquid’s color and emit a corresponding tone. Students with visual impairments are better able to study and work in chemistry because of [...]

Nokia and the Pearson Foundation have launched a new film series, called “A 21st Century Education,” that profiles a dozen acclaimed school-reform leaders from around the world. In individual, mostly black-and-white documentary profiles, these leaders put forward fresh, sometimes challenging, approaches to learning. Together, the 12 first-person films in the series explore three related themes, [...]

Holding out billions of dollars as a potential windfall, the Obama administration is persuading state after state to rewrite education laws to open the door to more charter schools and expand the use of student test scores for judging teachers. That aggressive use of economic stimulus money by Education Secretary Arne Duncan is provoking heated [...]

Pearson has announced the availability of the new AlgebraPrep: Factoring application at the Apple App Store. Designed for use on the iPhone and iPod Touch, the application offers supplemental help to algebra students in the form of video tutorials and practice tests.
Click here to read more from THE Journal.

As states compete for more than $4 billion in federal “Race to the Top” stimulus grants, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has made it clear that states willing to embrace charter schools and other favored innovations will get preference. That, in turn, could prompt a rise in the number of virtual charter schools and other charters [...]

A group of prominent faculty representatives from the University of California, one of Google’s earliest and closest allies in its plan to digitize books from major libraries, is the latest to raise concerns about important aspects of a high-profile class-action settlement between Google and groups representing authors and publishers.
In a lengthy letter to the court [...]

The deadline for online applications for the first round of the U.S. government’s $7.2 billion program to provide broadband access to all Americans was extended to August 20 from August 14 because of technical problems caused by the high number of applicants. Applicants who started the process using the online Easygrants System will be given [...]

Some publishers and consumer electronics makers are aiming to give e-book buyers more flexibility by rallying around a single technology standard for the books. On Thursday, Sony Electronics, which sells e-book devices under the Reader brand, plans to announce that by the end of the year it will sell digital books only in the ePub [...]

As little as a few years ago, the Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF)–a solution that allows school software applications from various vendors to share information seamlessly–was making slow headway in the nation’s schools, as many districts took a wait-and-see attitude before spending the money for SIF-certified systems and the hardware and software necessary to make them [...]

A social-networking Web site called BetterLesson is allowing teachers to collaborate with colleagues as well as upload and share lesson plans and other ideas. Similar to Facebook, each user has their own profile and can join groups and networks. Members can “colleague” each other and then keep up through a news feed. On each person’s [...]

A team of University of Vermont engineers has developed a thermal eraser for tactile sketch pads – similar to children’s “magic slates” – used by people with visual impairments. The tactile pads create raised lines for users to feel and for sighted users to see. Until this innovation, every mark on a tactile pad was [...]

A discussion draft of the framework for the national assessment of technological literacy, the first to gauge students’ understanding of and skill in using a range of tools, has been presented to the board that oversees the testing program. The computer-based National Assessment of Educational Progress in technological literacy, scheduled to be administered to a [...]

The U.S. Department of Education’s proposed guidelines for awarding $4 billion in Race to the Top Fund money call for states to be judged on 19 education reform criteria, including how friendly they are to charter schools and whether they cut state K-12 funding this year. In addition, the department is setting two absolute preconditions: [...]

A provider of subscription e-textbooks for college students is making its 7,000-plus titles accessible on Apple Inc.’s iPhone and iPod Touch as interest heats up in the digital-textbook arena. The new applications, free for subscribers to CourseSmart LLC, will let students access their full electronic textbooks, read their digital notes and search for specific words [...]

Local people with disabilities are learning computer programming at East Stroudsburg University through Project ENABLE, a pilot program that will spark interest in computer science and, hopefully, lead to jobs. Funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, the computer program teaches students about coding, a major element of computer science, in a visual, [...]

In January, Vikram Savkar, publishing director for Nature Education, launched Scitable, an online learning tool aimed at galvanizing youth interest in the hard sciences. Scitable is essentially a textbook wrapped in a social network. Registered users can search a topic like genetics, and find articles, definitions, images and multimedia. From those pages, users can send [...]

Carnegie Mellon University is getting set to release an updated version of its popular animation-based software program “Alice,” developed by the late “last lecture” professor Randy Pausch to teach computer programming. Pausch, a Carnegie Mellon computer science professor and pioneer of virtual reality research, died at age 47 of pancreatic cancer last July, 10 months [...]

Spurred by a congressional mandate and funding from the stimulus plan, newly named Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski has been evangelizing the need for broadband speed. Genachowski needs to meet terms of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that call for the FCC to submit a national broadband plan to Congress by Feb. 16, [...]

The 2010 Vernier/National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) Technology Award program is now open. Each year, the program awards cash, technology, and travel funds for science teachers who demonstrate innovation in inquiry-based learning activities involving data collection.
This year’s competition will award up to seven prizes to K-12 and post-secondary educators (one elementary, two middle school, three [...]

More than 100 middle and high school students recently took part in a unique program that introduces largely ignored migrant students to the world of computers, offering them the connections to technology and higher education that could point them toward college. The 19-year-old program, called Conexiones, was pioneered by Arizone State University’s Sanford Cohn, an [...]

A new portable device for deaf-blind people allows them to have face-to-face conversations, make phone calls using a text relay service and communicate by SMS.
The DeafBlind Communicator (DBC) consists of a Braille note-taker linked by Bluetooth to a mobile phone. With the Braille note-taker, the deaf-blind person types a message into the device which comes [...]

After just three years, a program called GoArmyEd serves 96,000 troops enrolled in some 200,000 courses taught by 145 accredited colleges and universities. The Army program offers one-stop shopping for troops. By logging onto GoArmyEd, an online portal, soldiers can learn how much tuition aid is available, register for courses, contact colleges and universities, and [...]

The Massachusetts Historical Society has begun posting John Quincy Adams’ diary updates from 200 years ago on Twitter in a program that links history with modern technology. The tweets will include mentions of the sixth U.S. president’s favorite reads, memorable meals, weather updates, and the daily drama of months at sea. Librarians and historians at [...]

Minnesota educator David Glick says the online high school he founded for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students is an environment free of hostility. GLBTQ Online High School is believed to be the first of its kind and is receiving applications from across the nation. Glick says the curriculum will be “GLBTQ-friendly,” but some worry [...]

Web pages have an average lifespan of 77 days, meaning documentation of historical events can vanish with a single click. Critically important documents are moving exclusively to the internet, and the California Digital Library is working closely with academics to preserve web-based information before updates erase current events.
A $2.4 million grant issued by the Library [...]

The second round of stimulus funding for Title I, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), and the Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) program, totaling $11.37 billion in all, will be made available to states by Sept. 1, about a month earlier than originally determined–and the quicker those dollars reach schools, the more jobs and educational technology [...]

Arne Duncan and his team are kick-starting a $650 million grant competition for district-level innovations. Within the next few weeks, the department expects to unveil the criteria for school districts to compete for the “Invest in What Works and Innovation” grants, created as part of the larger American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus package passed [...]

While some educators have been quick to grasp the potential and promise of open source software, many others have been hesitant to stray from the comfortable zone of commercial applications. Yet that’s changing. These educators are beginning to see that the open source philosophy has the power to transform education in several key ways. First, [...]

Microsoft Corp. has finally roped Yahoo Inc. into an Internet search partnership. The 10-year deal announced Wednesday gives Microsoft access to the Internet’s second-largest search engine audience, adding a potentially potent weapon to the software maker’s Internet arsenal as it girds for an all-out assault against online search and advertising leader Google Inc. The extended [...]

Funded through the National Science Foundation, the UW Summer Academy for Advancing Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Computing seeks to diversify the computer-science work force and to encourage deaf and hard-of-hearing students to pursue advanced degrees and high-tech careers. This summer academy — the only one of its kind in the country — introduces [...]

Award-winning eSchool News columnist Nora Carr offers 10 tips for boosting your eCQ (eCommunications Quotient) during the new school year. These tips include tweeting, telling stories, and surveying your audience. To read more, click here.

A study from the Consumer Electronics Association found that three-quarters of teens feel that technology helps with their schoolwork. The study also discovered that 82% of participants ages 13 to 17 use cell phones more than any other electronic device in school. “Teens want more technology to be implemented into the educational process, and they [...]

Federal officials have issued guidance for using more than $650 million in the economic-stimulus package to boost educational technology programs in the nation’s schools.
The guidance for the federal Enhancing Education Through Technology program details how the money should be distributed by states to local grantees and what districts can use it for, and it outlines [...]

Some Kindle fans want Amazon to give up its use of a technology called digital rights management, which allows the company to maintain strict control of its eBooks.
Click here to read the full story from The New York Times.

A new kids’ content company, A Squared Entertainment, has teamed with AOL on a slate of entertainment brands for children. The online episodes will feature personalities like Warren Buffett, Gisele Bundchen, Martha Stewart, and the late Carl Sagan and will teach kids about finance, the environment, creativity, and science.
Click here to read the full story [...]

With Asperger’s, a form of autism, people lack the inner voice that tells them what is, or is not, appropriate behavior. At Fraser Child & Family Center in Minneapolis, staff came up with the idea of programming iPods to act as an electronic substitute for that missing voice.
The staff helped students create a series of [...]

Smartphones now have hundreds of applications meant to educate kids — from graphic calculators to animation programs that teach spelling and phonics. And while most public schools don’t allow the devices because they’re considered distractions — and sometimes portable cheating tools — some school districts have started to put the technology to use. The key, [...]

Education experts are split after a recent proposal published by some influential members of the Democratic Party suggested the government provide electronic reading devices to every student in the United States.
Click here to read the full story from eSchool News.

An innovative and potentially ground-breaking approach to 21st century education is placing baby boomer retirees from STEM fields into “learning teams” with educators in an attempt to give students knowledge from real-life science and math experts.
Click here to read the full story from eSchool News.

Schools don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but some districts are finding federal stimulus funds dedicated for technology a mixed blessing amid budget cuts. Some educators question the value of Smart Boards, mini-laptops or video equipment when schools are losing teachers or cutting arts programs.
Click here to read the full story [...]

An 8,500-mile undersea fiber-optic cable to provide high-speed Internet access on Africa’s Indian Ocean coast went live on Thursday. The cable is expected to reduce the cost of broadband access and boost international connections between the east coast of Africa, India and Europe. Read the full story from Yahoo! Tech.

As technology advances, new discoveries based on brain mapping are helping researchers understand how students learn. And those discoveries, in turn, are enriching and informing classroom practices in a growing number of schools. Read the full story from eSchool News.

Some of the world’s largest technology companies have banded together in a bid to push open-source software on the United States government. They’ve formed a group called Open Source for America, which seeks to make sure that government agencies at least consider open-source software as an option in their buying decisions.
Click here to read the [...]

According to a report released Wednesday by the Internet and American Life Project of the Pew Research Center, a surge in the use of mobile devices by African-Americans and English-speaking Hispanics to access the internet is helping to close a looming digital divide stemming from the high cost of in-home Internet access, which can be [...]

Plastic Logic, which is still gestating its entry in the new market for electronic reading devices, is disclosing a little bit more about its upcoming product.
After announcing this week that Barnes & Noble would manage its electronic book store, the company said Wednesday that AT&T’s 3G network would provide the mobile broadband connection for the [...]

A growing variety of online educational programs offer children access to learning at home and, parents hope, an academic boost. Companies are offering tutoring programs with interactive features such as games and animation. More companies are hiring teachers and advisory teams to design and refine a curriculum, but research has not been done to prove [...]

Microsoft is bringing its widely adopted Live@edu collaboration suite to Moodle, the open source learning management system (LMS) that’s installed at more than 35,000 registered, validated sites worldwide. Microsoft also unveiled today its new Education Labs site, which will serve as a repository for education software developed on an accelerated cycle.
Click here to read the [...]

Wiz World Online, developed by 8D World, helpes Chinese children learn English. Kids choose an avatar and pick a scene, like a castle in a fantasy land or a supermarket in the United States. They are confronted with challenges, like dodging flying monsters or buying fruit, all of which ask them to use English. If [...]

This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for–thought they owned. The MobileReference edition of the novel, “Nineteen Eighty-four,” by George Orwell that was deleted from Kindle e-book readers by [...]

In what could be a result of widespread teacher layoffs, some virtual schools and online learning providers are reporting huge increases in teaching applications for the coming school year.
Click here to read the full story from eSchool News.

Much has been written recently about the impact of social networking tools in teaching and learning and how educators can build on the skills of their students in using these tools. But if educators only integrate the ability of students to connect and socialize, deeper points of learning will be missed. While good teaching and [...]

Classes are changing as a result of technology. Professors are not so much people who stand and spout facts with students taking notes. The Internet has all of the information. And students aren’t going to come to class for a lecture if it’s on a podcast. So that means many instructors are trying to make [...]

Just days after Google announced plans to challenge the dominance of Microsoft’s Windows operating system with a free operating system of its own, intended for netbooks, Microsoft revealed that it will give users free access to a web-based version of its Office suite as it seeks to catch up with Google in online applications. Read [...]

For the last year, the tech world has buzzed with talk of the next big thing: cloud computing. Hailed as a breakthrough that will allow companies to compute without much hardware, the technology has pushed companies such as Microsoft, Amazon.com and Google to stake their claim.
Click here to read more from the Seattle Times.

Because of their portable size, low cost, and ease of use, ed-tech experts say the new generation of digital voice recorders make ideal classroom tools. Digital recorders can be useful tools to create educational podcasts and devices for English-language learners to practice pronunciation or make recordings of certain phrases or words to increase their vocabulary.
Click [...]

Blackboard Inc., a global leader in education technology, today announced a major step in its efforts to support students’ mobile lifestyle with the acquisition of Terriblyclever Design, LLC, makers of MobilEdu, the category defining suite of iPhone and mobile Web applications for education.
MobilEdu allows education institutions to deliver a rich set of campus life services [...]

Some influential members of the Democratic Party want to give electronic reading devices to every student in the country. The Democratic Leadership Council, a left-leaning think tank, argues that government should furnish each student in the country with a digital reading device, which would allow textbooks to be cheaply distributed and updated, and allow teachers [...]

In a place where cell phones might outnumber light bulbs, several nonprofits have begun thinking that the best way to reach the poor and get them much-needed information is through their phones. In Uganda, only 10 percent of the population has electricity, and most people don’t have access to the latest information on disease outbreaks, [...]

Comcast and nonprofit One Economy are teaming on broadband education program, Comcast Digital Connectors, that expands One Economy’s existing Digital Connectors program. Kids 14-21 from “diverse, low-income backgrounds will get digital literacy training both after school and during the summer. They will be trained and expected to do community service in the form of sharing [...]

Educators worry that the long-term burden of tech programs will fall on cash-poor states and districts, but an Obama tech-ed point man says help is on the way.
Launched as part of the No Child Left Behind education reforms in 2002, EETT is designed to train more teachers to use technology in lessons and let states [...]

The technology hasn’t arrived yet, but micro-displays from Micron soon could make it possible to use smart phones to project high-quality images anytime, anywhere.
Click here to read more from CNET.com.