You guys have to stop me from writing headlines where the answer is likely “duh” or “hellz yeah.” Over at Inside Higher Ed, I take a look at Microsoft’s new social network for students, So.cl, and I ask the obvious questio...

Big news from MIT today with its announcement of MITx, an online learning platform that will, for a “modest fee,” offer non-enrolled students a certificate for successful course completion. (With that, kudos to Dave Cormier for having one of his 2012 ed-tech predictions already come true!) You can read my thoughts (and my long list ...

I think it’s clear by now — whether you’ve read my series on the top ed-tech trends of 2011 or not — that it’s been a big year for education technology startups. Launches. Updates. Funding. Acquisitions. Adoption. Headlines. Buzz. Woohoo. And stuff. Even with all these developments, making a list of the best new education ...

Politics and Policies Earlier this year, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said that some 82% of U.S. schools were failing to meet the standards required by No Child Left Behind. This week, that figure was revised downward — substantially so. According to a study released this week by the Center for Education Policy, that number ...

1. The iPad 2. Social Media — Adoption and Crackdown 3. Text-messaging 4. Data (Which Still Means Mostly “Standardized Testing”) 5. The Digital Library 6. Khan Academy 7. STEM Education’s Sputnik Moment 8. The Higher Ed...

Part 10 of my Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2011 series On a personal note: I started 2011 as a (consumer, Web) technology blogger — one that, much to the consternation of her editors, wanted to write about education technology. “No one cares about ed-tech,” I was repeatedly told. “It’s just your personal passion.” Focus on ...

Yes, please. But even if we don’t require it for graduation, we really should teach it. We can’t rely on a future where only the Matthew Brodericks of the world are coders. If you need a better argument than that, you can read a more from m...

Number 9 in my Top 10 Ed-Tech Trends of 2011 Series When I made my 10 tech predictions for 2011 for RWW last year, I included the following: 6. Openly-licensed content – open education resources, open source, open data – will thrive, as more people question outmoded intellectual property laws. Nonetheless, there’ll still be patent ...

Earlier this week, Inside Higher Ed’s Steve Kolowich looked at the success Stanford University has had this fall by offering 3 of its engineering courses online. The courses — Introductions to Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Databases – were available on the Web for free; anyone could register, and hundreds of thousands of people did. It’s hardly a new idea to put university ...

Part 8 of my Top Ed-Tech Trends Series To Uncollege One of the most interesting people I met this year was Dale Stephens. Dale is just 19, but he’s an incredibly intelligent and poised young man. Dale is a college dropout. He is also a world traveler, a speaker, a Thiel Foundation scholar, and a ...