Open Cloud Academy a new "advanced technology training" certification program

How Rackspace is taking on Amazon now - Fortune Tech: " . . . Rackspace, along with its various partners and customers, seems to be having a hard time finding enough technical workers with "open" cloud computing skills. "The skills needed to build websites, like HTML and PHP [computer languages used in web development] are pretty mature," says Graham Weston, chairman and co-founder of Rackspace. "But the new skills are running those apps on a cloud-based server infrastructure--you just can't go to college to learn those languages." That's why Weston, a real estate tycoon who got his start marketing organic pork, is launching the Open Cloud Academy, a new certification program which aims to provide the "advanced technology training" needed to become a "top entry-level open cloud technologist." The small school, based in San Antonio (near Rackspace's headquarters), will teach six- to eight-week-long courses in software development, network security and cyber security. Rackspace says 91 people are already enrolled in the first pilot program, free of charge (future students will pay about $3,500 for the course). The new academy will give preference to military veterans, and Weston says Rackspace will hire about a third of graduating students. Eventually, he hopes to reach upwards of 1,000 graduates and open up online-only courses. "It's an intensive, boot camp style of learning--there's no lollygagging or football games here," says Weston. . . . "


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Streaming Ebooks - A New Distribution Model for Schools

Streaming Ebooks: A New Distribution Model for Schools | Digital Book World: " . . . Solution: A streaming model for schools - Some new digital publishing companies have begun to listen. One such company is StarWalk Kids Media, founded by author Seymour Simon and former Sesame Street Creative Director Liz Nealon. Through their research—they frequently visit schools and attend education conferences—Simon and Nealon recognized this unmet need in the K-12 education sector. They were looking for a way to use digital media to bring life to backlist children’s books. The two conceived of a business that offers ebook content to schools via the internet for a monthly subscription price. After talking to librarians and teachers, “it was clear to us that a multiple, simultaneous streaming model was the way to go,” says Nealon. StarWalk defines “simultaneous streaming” as unlimited, anytime access to their entire booklist via any device, streamed via the internet to as many users as are covered within the subscription parameters. Subscriptions are usually based on a school site or district. . ."


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The dirty secret of online learning

The dirty little secret of online learning: Students are bored and dropping out
Quartz
Because if online education is going to be useful for learners, then it's time for online learning to grow up. Hundreds of ... The four major MOOC platforms (Coursera, edX, Udacity and Udemy) have attracted at least 4 million sign-ups to date. Many of ...

Digital learning startup Benchprep expands into video-based software training ...
GigaOM
Benchprep, a digital learning startup based in Chicago, is rolling out video-based software training courses targeting college and high school students, not adults looking for professional development. BenchPrep. When Benchprep launched two years ago ...

GigaOM

Online learning: Campus 2.0 | education's digital future
When campus president Wallace Loh walked into Juan Uriagereka's office last August, he got right to the point. “We need courses for this thing — yesterday!” ...
edf.stanford.edu/readings/online-learning-campus-20

Digital Learning Now! Grades States on Ed-Tech Policies
Education Week News (blog)
Out of those, 152 of them were signed into law, allowing students to take classes online, equipping students and teachers with mobile devices, and providing schools the flexibility to embrace blended-learning models. The report found that many of the ...

Faculty describe experiments with digital learning on MacVicar Day
MIT News
Attendees at the MacVicar Day celebration on Friday, March 15, became participants in anonline-learning experiment led by Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Anette “Peko” Hosoi. She asked the crowd in Bartos Theatre, “What is the first ...

Online learning popular at AITE
The Advocate
Mark Mucceri, far left, Chief Learning Officer of Virtual High School, speaks during a meeting aboutonline learning at the Academy of Information Technology & Engineering in Stamford on Thursday, March 21, 2013. Photo: Lindsay Perry | Buy This Photo ...

4 States Address Online Learning, Student Information and Digital ...
States across the country are working on legislation and finding funding for digital resources.
www.centerdigitaled.com/.../4-States-Address-Online-Learning...

Southern States See Changes in Virtual Education
Education Week News (blog)
Increased access to online learning, particularly at the district level, has states working to formalize their relationships with school districts to improve the delivery and quality of online courses—a trend Education Week explored in Technology ...

Education Week News (blog)

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College Should Encourage Entrepreneurialism Not Narcissism

Common College App Should Encourage Entrepreneurialism, Not Narcissism - Forbes: "Given that getting into college no longer brings with it the expectation of a good job in an economy that is starting to appear as if it discriminates against too much education in entry-level positions, maybe an alternative question should be substituted.  Why not ask aspiring students if they ever started a business, worked in a new business, know an entrepreneur, or might themselves want to create a new business?  This simple change or addition to the required essays could be the first great lesson colleges might teach."


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Education, Innovation, Jobs

Need a Job? Invent It - NYTimes.com: By Thomas L. Friedman - When Tony Wagner, the Harvard education specialist, describes his job today, he says he’s “a translator between two hostile tribes” — the education world and the business world, the people who teach our kids and the people who give them jobs. Wagner’s argument in his book “Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World” is that our K-12 and college tracks are not consistently “adding the value and teaching the skills that matter most in the marketplace.” . . . Who is doing it right? “Finland is one of the most innovative economies in the world,” he said, “and it is the only country where students leave high school ‘innovation-ready.’ They learn concepts and creativity more than facts, and have a choice of many electives — all with a shorter school day, little homework, and almost no testing. In the U.S., 500 K-12 schools affiliated with Hewlett Foundation’s Deeper Learning Initiative and a consortium of 100 school districts called EdLeader21 are developing new approaches to teaching 21st-century skills. There are also a growing number of ‘reinvented’ colleges like the Olin College of Engineering, the M.I.T. Media Lab and the ‘D-school’ at Stanford where students learn to innovate.” Finding a job is so 20th century. That is why young people today need to be more “innovation ready” than “college ready.” read more at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/opinion/sunday/friedman-need-a-job-invent-it.html?smid=pl-share


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Stanford - a startup incubator with football team

Silicon Valley, Start-Ups, and the End of Stanford? : The New Yorker: "Is Stanford still a university? The Wall Street Journal recently reported that more than a dozen students—both undergraduate and graduate—have left school to work on a new technology start-up called Clinkle. Faculty members have invested, the former dean of Stanford’s business school is on the board, and one computer-science professor who taught several of the employees now owns shares. The founder of Clinkle was an undergraduate advisee of the president of the university, John Hennessey, who has also been advising the company. . . " Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/04/silicon-valley-start-ups-and-the-end-of-stanford.html#ixzz2Q1AiflsB


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Asking the Right Questions

The Future is Uncertain. It's Time to Start Asking the Right Questions. | Big Think TV | Big Think: "Asking questions is essential to learning. That was an essential lesson from one of history's first great teachers, Socrates. Or, as the wise Rabbi Steven Greenberg puts it: "we train children at the Passover seder to ask why, because tyrants are undone and liberty is won with a good question." And yet, children are not asking questions nearly enough. In fact, data from the U.S. school systems tells us that the average high school student asks one question of substance per month in a classroom."


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Rosetta Stone buys Livemocha

Rosetta Stone nabs online language biz Livemocha to accelerate cloud path | ZDNet: "Rosetta Stone, arguably the leader in foreign language education software, is keen on making a jump to the cloud. By the looks of its latest acquisition, the Arlington, Va.-based business wants to do that as fast as possible. That purchase consists of Livemocha, a online language learning community with a cloud-based education platform. . . ."


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Higher Education and Diversity!

Suzy Lee Weiss: To (All) the Colleges That Rejected Me - WSJ.com: ". . . . For starters, had I known two years ago what I know now, I would have gladly worn a headdress to school. Show me to any closet, and I would've happily come out of it. "Diversity!" I offer about as much diversity as a saltine cracker. If it were up to me, I would've been any of the diversities: Navajo, Pacific Islander, anything. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, I salute you and your 1/32 Cherokee heritage. . . ." (read more at link above)

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Vivek Wadhwa No Longer Advises Startups to Hire MBAs

Vivek Wadhwa: Why I No Longer Advise Startups to Hire M.B.A.s - The Accelerators - WSJ: " . . . Instead of M.B.A.s, what I advise students with technology backgrounds to complete are one-year long masters of engineering-management programs like the one at Duke University—where I teach. These teach management, marketing, law and accounting skills and skim over the intricacies of finance and investment banking. And they are half the price of an M.B.A. After all, the skills that startups care about aren’t how to conceive new types of financial products, but how to create technologies that actually do good for the world."


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CreativeLive An Online Education Giant (video)

CreativeLive Is a Quiet Online Education Giant - AllThingsD's Liz Gannes speaks with Mika Salmi of CreativeLive about how doing it live really is different.


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Data caps could diminish online learning potential

Data caps could dim online learning's bright future - Stanford Graduate School of Education ... Data caps could dim online learning's bright future ...But even that debate rests on a fundamental assumption that access to the courses themselves is not a barrier. Today, data caps—monthly limits that force Internet users to pay for a specific amount of data and bill them even more if they exceed the limit—are proliferating. They threaten to put the brakes on this potential online revolution.
edf.stanford.edu/.../data-caps-could-dim-online-learnings-brig...

What Teens Get About the Internet That Parents Don't - Mimi Ito - The Atlantic: " . . . Young people are desperate for learning that is relevant and part of the fabric of their social lives, where they are making choices about how, when, and what to learn, without it all being mapped for them in advance. Learning on the Internet is about posting a burning question on a forum like Quora or Stack Exchange, searching for a how to video on YouTube or Vimeo, or browsing a site like Instructables, Skillshare, and Mentormob for a new project to pick up. It's not just professors who have something to share, but everyone who has knowledge and skills. When my daughter graduates from college, I want her to be able to ask interesting questions, make wise choices in where to direct her time and attention, and find a career that is about contributing to a purpose that's more than her own self-advancement. I am proud of her for managing a rigorous course of study both in school and out of school, but I'm also delighted that she finds the time to cultivate interests in a self-directed way that is about contributing to her community of peers. The Internet and her friends have offered my daughter a lifeline to explore new interests that are not just about the resume and getting ahead of everyone else. In today's high-pressure climate for teens, the Internet is feeling more and more like one of the few havens they can find for the lessons that matter most."

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Bill Gates: future of education is data

Bill Gates at SXSWedu: The future of education is data - GeekWire: "“I think this is a special time for technology in education,” he began. But then he immediately cautioned, perhaps in light of some less-than-successful early Gates-funded initiatives (such as small high schools within high schools), “we try not to be naïve about how complex it’s going to be.”. . . . Jessie Woolley-Wilson, head ofDreamBox Learning, said its adaptive web platform currently used for elementary math personalizes instruction by not just tracking which problems are solved, but how they are solved. It isn’t, she said, that teachers don’t have a lot of data now. “They don’t have data that’s easy, that’s relevant, and that’s easy to metabolize.” Similarly, Iwan Streichenberger, CEO of the Gates-spun-out non-profit inBloom (formerly called theShared Learning Collaborative), cited one Massachusetts school district pilot-testing inBloom’s web-based warehouse for storing and connecting all of its student data, and then making sense of how to apply the data to instruction. The district, Streichenberger said, has been using 20 different testing engines, meaning it had 20 different data sources and 20 different log-in accounts to manage. As to intelligently using all the disparate data? “There are probably as many reports as people.” Gates’ keynote, with its undercurrent of data, was a fitting end to a SXSWedu conference where both the promise, and fears about misuse, of education data permeated discussions among the approximately 5,000 attendees. (So much so, that the audience of one sessionwas polled on which three words to ban the panelists from using, with the winners clearly “disrupt,” “personalize” and “data.”) . . . . "

Google debuts Lenovo ThinkPad x131e, the first Chromebook just for schools | ZDNet: "The first Google Chromebook to be specifically aimed at school children, the Lenovo Thinkpad X131e Chromebook, has been launched in the US. The ruggedised $459 (£295) device is designed to handle the rigours of school life and will be exclusively available to the education market. . . . "


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