The University of Florida has implemented the next-gen computing architecture of Internet2, the consortium of universities and research institutions. The Innovation Platform should bring superfast connections and software-defined networking (SDN) to campuses across the country. Read more »
Professors at San Jose State University argue that massive open online courses (MOOCs) could seriously compromise the quality of education at public universities. Read more »
Echo360, a education technology company supported by the Revolution Growth Fund, has acquired social learning startup ThinkBinder. Read more »
TechStars-backed EverTrue has raised $5.25 million to help colleges and prep schools build alumni networking mobile apps. Read more »
In his State of the Union speech, President Obama recognized the IBM-backed Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH) in New York. Rashid Davis, P-TECH’s principal, chats with GigaOM about what makes his school work and how it could be replicated around the country. Read more »
A group of educators, including online course startup Udacity, today released a “Bill of Rights” meant to protect the interests of students in online education. Read more »
Online education startup Coursera has announced that it will charge students $30 to $100 for “verified certificates” that authenticate students’ identity and provide a more valuable credential. At launch, the program includes four universities out of the company’s nearly three dozen partners. Read more »
With its new employer-matching service, Coursera has opened up a key revenue stream in which it receives payment from employers in exchange for information about students who may be good job candidates. Read more »
Online learning startup Coursera is working with the American Council on Education to evaluate course equivalency for its courses. The company said the process will start in early 2013 and hopes it encourages more students to ultimately pursue a college degree. Read more »
USEED is like a Kickstarter for education that helps students raise money for research and philanthropic programs, but also provides guidane and encouragement for skills like idea pitching and social media marketing. Read more »
San Francisco startup Degreed is challenging the traditional college diploma with an online service that tracks and scores educational achievements from established institutions as well as new online learning platforms. Ahead of a public launch in 2013, Degreed this week began a crowd funding campaign. Read more »
This week, online education startup Coursera said that it would no longer be able to offer courses to residents of Minnesota because of a decades-old policy. Now, it’s raising questions among the states’s local tech community. Read more »
BenchPrep, a Chicago-based startup providing interactive test prep courses, is adding several new publishing partners, including Pearson Education, Inc.,O’Reilly Media, Inc., Microsoft Press. The new partnerships put the company on track to offer 200 courses by the end of September, up from 120. Read more »
Despite LinkedIn’s push to attract college students and recent college graduates, career site AfterCollege is on Tuesday announcing a new professional networking layer built on top of its job platform that targets college-age users. Read more »
Facing a lawsuit from major publishers, Boston-based free textbook startup Boundless Learning is now available for students at any university. Just in time for the new school year, the startup is opening to the public with an updated, more comprehensive platform. Read more »
Earlier this week, online ed startup Coursera said it added a dozen new universities and raised an additional $6 million. A contract between the company and a university partner, obtained by the Chronicle of Higher Education, reveals hints about how it plans to profit. Read more »
The use of “clickers,” which let students respond to professors during class, is gaining adoption in college classrooms nationwide. But Top Hat Monocle, which Wednesday announced $8 million in new funds, aims to replace those devices with software that runs on any student device. Read more »
In addition to announcing $6 million in new funding, online education startup Coursera Tuesday announced that was adding a dozen new university partners, including three international partners. Read more »
Rafter, a course materials management platform that grew out of textbook rental site Bookrenter earlier this year, today announced that it had acquired four-month-old startup HubEdu. Read more »
Higher education costs have skyrocketed by over 430 percent since the 1980s. Now two startups aim to make college courses more affordable. Coursera offers free online courses from universities like Stanford and Princeton. And a new tool from Akademos helps professors find less expensive — or free — textbooks for their courses. Read more at paidContent »
Inkling, the company that makes interactive, digital versions of textbooks for the iPad, is set to release its version of The Professional Chef, the official textbook of The Culinary Institute of America. It’s the first Inkling title that could have major appeal beyond the classroom. Read more »
The truly unique gem of iTunes is not its music, movies, television, books, podcasts or apps. It’s the collection university lecture series on iTunes U. With more than 350,000 lectures from more than 800 institutions, there’s definitely something out there for everyone to learn. Read more »
Apple rolled out a new, budget-priced iMac early Monday morning, but it comes with a catch: You have to be an educational institution to get the deal. The $999 iMac also features slightly less impressive specs when compared to its consumer retail siblings. Read more »
The latest IBM CEO study reports, “More than 62% of development projects fail to meet the intended schedule and 30% of project costs are due to rework and poor execution of requirements.” IBM Jazz is working to address these problems through greater support of developer collaboration. Read more »
Are students watching so much Netflix that fellow class members don’t have any bandwidth left to study? Officials at Ohio University think so, and they briefly instituted a complete ban on all Netflix video streaming on their campus network this week. Read more »
