EdTech 10

Love was in the air this week.  President Obama showed love for Early Education and STEM in this week’s SOTU.  Research revealed that aspiring teachers are showing more love for technology more than practicing teachers. And, as always, there’s a whole week’s worth of news to love right here in this our EdTech 10. (Think of it as our version of heart-shaped chocolates.)

Blended Schools & Tools

1. Cisco Foundation is providing $250,000 to Mind Research Institute, an education non-profit, to make its ST Math programs available to 6,000 elementary and middle school students at 22 public schools across Virginia.
2. As a complement to Tom’s regular Smart Cities category for EdWeek’s Vander Ark on Innovation, Public Impact wrote a guest blog about Connecting Smart Cities that explores the work of CEE-Trust around blended learning and other ed innovations.

Digital Developments

3. Blackboard and the nonprofit Project Tomorrow shared the findings of Learning In the 21st Century: Digital Experiences and Expectations of Tomorrow’s Teachers, a survey of more than 1,350 aspiring teachers in education programs that revealed much higher rates of technology use among pre-service teachers than in-service teachers.
4. Fast Company released The World’s Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Education. Among them–big names like Coursera, Udacity, Amplify, and ClassDojo as well as couple “what were they thinking” picks like South African FunDza and translation site Duolingo.
5. After recently making news for raising over $100M in January, Lynda announced its first acquisition of Video2Brain, a European-based online video training company providing evidence of the growing international demand for online learning.

Cool Tools

6. Kno launched a new tool called “Advance” that can convert a pdf into an interactive ebook in minutes! Publishers can add a new interactive element at anytime, then instantly push that new element to all the readers of their digital book.
7. McGraw-Hill Education announced that its adaptive study tool LearnSmart, designed for post-secondary use, will now be available to high school students. LearnSmart uses adaptive technology to personalize learning and design study paths based on areas that need improvement.

Steamy STEM Gems

8. Giga OM interviewed the principal of P-TECH, a school featured in Obama’s SOTU speech, about its potential as a technology-rich, early high school model for advancing college and career readiness. For more on the SOTU, see Susan Patrick’s reaction.

Getting to the Core

9. This week’s Common Core Roundup from Excel in Ed debunks a host of Common Core State Standards myths. Speaking of the CCSS, check out this guest blog from Paul Warren who offered readers a Digital Toolkit for the Common Core and 3 Simple Tools to Support the CCSS Academic Vocabulary Shift from guest blogger Susan Oxvenad.

Higher, Deeper, Further, Faster Learning

10. The New Media Consortium released the 2013 Horizon Higher Ed Report  that describes six emerging technologies over the next five years that will shape the landscape of higher education.
Disclosures: MIND Research and Excel in Ed are Getting Smart Advocacy Partners.  ClassDojo is a Learn Capital portfolio company, where Tom is a partner. Tom is a director at iNACOL.