Techno-News Blog

by PYMNTS

TechCrunch, the leading media property devoted to startups and tech, today expands into the online education space with the debut of CrunchU, developed in partnership with online learning marketplace Udemy. Inspired by the rise of self-directed, lifelong learning, CrunchU aims to help TechCrunch readers power up their skill-sets via renowned instructors through 30 TechCrunch-curated courses, including offerings from Eric Ries, Dave McClure, Jack Welch, and others. Course topics range from “Creating Responsive Web Design” and “Sales and Persuasion Skills for Startups” to “Android Apps in 1 Hour: No Coding Required” and “Raising Money for Startups.”

http://www.pymnts.com/news/businesswire-feed/2013/may/08/techcrunch-unveils-online-learning-destination-crunchu-in-partnership-with-udemy-20130508006271

by Christina Farr, VB/Entrepreneur

Coursera, the online course provider, is one of the fastest-growing startups that is transforming how we learn. Today, the company announced a partnership with a fellow ed-tech startup, Chegg, and is striking deals with the largest publishers. The goal is to make it easier for students of online courses to access relevant academic content on the web. Large publishing companies, including Cengage Learning, Macmillan Higher Education, Oxford University Press, SAGE, and Wiley will experiment with offering Coursera students versions of their digital textbooks, delivered via Chegg’s e-Reader. Students won’t be charged to access these materials while they’re enrolled on a course.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/08/coursera-partners-with-publishers-to-bring-digital-textbooks-to-the-masses/

by The News Tribune

The Internet keeps on disrupting higher education – sometimes even in a good way. The latest example is the Open Course Library just completed by Washington’s two-year colleges. The library (opencourselibrary.org) is an online trove of free courses and free or low-cost textbooks developed by local faculty members. The materials cover 81 of Washington’s most popular lower-division classes – principles of accounting, microbiology, symbolic logic, English composition, etc. The whole enterprise, begun in 2011, bypasses the traditional trappings of college. No big, expensive textbooks, no snoozing in the back of lecture halls, no classrooms.

http://blog.thenewstribune.com/opinion/2013/05/06/a-web-raid-on-traditional-higher-ed/

By Patrick Tucker, Technology Review

As digital data expands, anonymity may become a mathematical impossibility. Data science and personal information are converging to shape the Internet’s most powerful and surprising consumer products. In 1995, the European Union introduced privacy legislation that defined “personal data” as any information that could identify a person, directly or indirectly. The legislators were apparently thinking of things like documents with an identification number, and they wanted them protected just as if they carried your name. Today, that definition encompasses far more information than those European legislators could ever have imagined—easily more than all the bits and bytes in the entire world when they wrote their law 18 years ago.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/514351/has-big-data-made-anonymity-impossible/

By Don Clark, Wall Street Journal

Computer-based educational systems have long helped impart information to students and assess their understanding of it. The next step, one company in the field says, is using their behavior to make predictions. That’s the aim of technology being announced Tuesday by Desire2Learn, a Canadian company that specializes in cloud-based based learning systems it markets to colleges, schools and companies. Desire2Learn, launched in 1999, competes with companies like Blackboard and Instructure. It claims that 10 million learners at a range of institutions have made use of its technology, including some at big U.S. university systems.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/05/07/online-learning-system-aims-at-predicting-success-or-failure/

by SRI

Speaking at the Ed Tech Industry Summit in San Francisco, Jeremy Roschelle, Ph.D., co-director of SRI International’s Center for Technology in Learning, highlighted how education researchers can best leverage the vast amount of data about online learning that is now available for their studies. In a shift from traditional research methods, Dr. Roschelle described how both researchers and developers can use large amounts of detailed data to evaluate student learning outcomes and enhance educational products. The presentation at the annual gathering for educational technology industry executives followed a well-attended workshop last year, which gathered extensive input from leaders on their needs for research, their frustrations with the slowness of traditional research methods, and their ideas on how to use newly available online learning data to improve products and students’ outcomes. The presentation highlighted the new synergies possible among learning scientists and the educational technology industry, in which learning scientists can play a key role in harvesting data for innovation.

http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20130506-904001.html

by Ina Fried, All Things D

Adobe announced a fairly big shake-up of its business Monday, saying that the latest version of core products such as Photoshop and Illustrator will be available only as part of a subscription service. The company said that it has new versions of the desktop apps, but said they will be available only as part of an update to its year-old Creative Cloud service. Adobe said that the service, which launched in April 2012, has more than 500,000 paid members and two million total members. “By focusing our energy — and our talented engineers — on Creative Cloud, we’re able to put innovation in our members’ hands at a much faster pace,” Adobe Senior VP David Wadhwani said in a statement.

http://allthingsd.com/20130506/adobe-plans-big-shift-to-cloud-says-near-term-finances-wont-take-a-hit/

by RYAN LAWLER, TechCrunch

Over the last few years, Samsung has been working hard on building technology to improve the communication between its connected TVs and mobile devices, whether they be iOS or Android phones or tablets. Well, the company has acquired MOVL, a startup that should provide even more help in that category. MOVL is the maker of the Kontrol.tv API platform, which lets developers create apps to connect TVs via the cloud, as well as mobile phones on home networks. The platform was fully launched last fall, after a year-and-a-half that the MOVL team spent building the system.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/06/samsung-acquired-movl/

by Kevin C. Tofel, GigaOM

Does Intel still stand a chance in the highly-competitive mobile chip market? Yes, if the company’s new Silvermont chip lives up to its promise of 3x the performance of today’s Atom or 5x the power efficiency.

http://gigaom.com/2013/05/06/intel-debuts-silvermont-mobile-chips-with-powerful-battery-sipping-abilities/

By Tom Simonite, Technology Review

Mobile network speeds in urban areas could dramatically increase if consumers connected small, public base stations to their home broadband. Mobile chipmaker Qualcomm and some U.S. wireless carriers are investigating an idea that would see small cellular base stations installed in homes to serve passing smartphone users. That approach is believed to be a more efficient way of meeting the rising demand for data and fixing patchy coverage than building more traditional cell-phone towers.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/514531/qualcomm-proposes-a-cell-phone-network-by-the-people-for-the-people/

By David Talbot, Technology Review

Early next year, an emerging wireless technology known as LTE Broadcast will essentially make it possible for carriers to put a TV-like broadcast stream within LTE cellular signals. Putting data in broadcast mode reduces congestion but makes the most sense in situations where everyone is watching the same newscast, sports match, or other special piece of content at the same time. In such situations, using LTE Broadcast mode, a carriers’ transmitter needs to just send a signal out over one channel rather than separate ones for each mobile device. That’s how the traditional TV broadcast works: it doesn’t matter if 100 or a million people are watching, because the content is out there for the taking.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/513311/broadcast-video-will-soon-be-packed-into-smartphone-signals/

By Larry Gordon, Los Angeles Times

While Jennifer Clay was at home taking an online exam for her business law class, a proctor a few hundred miles away was watching her every move. Using a webcam mounted in Clay’s Los Angeles apartment, the monitor in Phoenix tracked how frequently her eyes shifted from the computer screen and listened for the telltale sounds of a possible helper in the room. Her computer browser was locked — remotely — to prevent Internet searches, and her typing pattern was analyzed to make sure she was who she said she was: Did she enter her password with the same rhythm as she had in the past? Or was she slowing down? In the battle against cheating, this is the cutting edge — and a key to bolstering integrity in the booming field of online education.

http://www.courierpress.com/news/2013/may/05/using-technology-to-fight-cheating-in-online/?partner=RSS

By Nick Anderson, Washington Post

The start-up, a year old as of last Thursday, conveys a casual/hectic vibe in its office suite in Cambridge. Catered lunch and granola bars sustain the 20- and 30-somethings who work long hours building and servicing the Web platform. (One spring day there is Quiche Lorraine, tortellini and apple-cranberry salad.) For diversion, there is a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle of polar bears in progress on a table near the break room. A monitor hanging from the ceiling delivers real-time metrics on usage of the Web site. Sheets of paper posted on a wall seem to indicate the number of certificates earned by students who had passed edX courses: 31,291 as of late March. EdX spokesman Dan O’Connell later said that that total was based on incomplete data. The sheets have been taken down. The Web site, which now counts 890,000 unique users, does not have a full tally of MOOC students who have earned certificates, he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/edx-turns-1-now-what/2013/05/02/649236e0-b32d-11e2-9a98-4be1688d7d84_story.html

By AMNA H. HASHMI, Harvard Crimson

Sandel’s teaching in the edX “Justice” course was criticized by philosophy professors at San Jose State University. The Philosophy Department at San Jose State University condemned Harvard government professor Michael J. Sandel’s teaching of the edX course ER22x: “Justice” in an open letter sent this week. “We regard such courses as a serious compromise of quality of education and, ironically for a social justice course, a case of social injustice,” the letter read. As edX approaches the first anniversary of its founding, it has received criticism from faculty members at several institutions of higher learning across the country.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/5/3/san-jose-state-edx/

by Alex Layne, GigaOM

Plenty of iOS features have found their way into Apple’s desktop OS over the past couple of years. But Apple should also consider moving some Mac features into its mobile OS.

http://gigaom.com/2013/05/04/6-things-ios-can-learn-from-os-x/

by Michael Yang, GigaOM

The wearable fitness tech market is booming but also crowded and some evidence suggests it’s already ripe for major consolidation. For companies – and the entire segment – to survive and thrive, a few key issues need to be addressed.

http://gigaom.com/2013/05/04/for-the-wearable-tech-market-to-thrive-it-needs-to-get-in-better-shape/

by Larry Gordon, LA Times

While Jennifer Clay was at home taking an online exam for her business law class, a proctor a few hundred miles away was watching her every move.  Using a webcam mounted in Clay’s Los Angeles apartment, the monitor in Phoenix tracked how frequently her eyes shifted from the computer screen and listened for the telltale sounds of a possible helper in the room.  Her computer browser was locked — remotely — to prevent Internet searches, and her typing pattern was analyzed to make sure she was who she said she was: Did she enter her password with the same rhythm as she had in the past? Or was she slowing down?  In the battle against cheating, this is the cutting edge — and a key to bolstering integrity in the booming field of online education.

http://www.hispanicbusiness.com/2013/5/2/using_technology_to_fight_cheating_in.htm

By Jason Pontin, MIT Technology Review Magazine

Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) project, which President Obama announced in his State of the Union address in February, will be a decade-long effort to understand the nature of thought (See “Why Obama’s Brain-Mapping Project Matters.”) The project, which inevitably evokes the Human Genome Project, will demand billions in research funding and require the coöperation of many government agencies, universities, and foundations. Miyoung Chun, a molecular geneticist and vice president for science programs at the Kavli Foundation, has been coördinating communication among those involved since planning began 18 months ago.

http://www.technologyreview.com/qa/513476/interview-with-brain-project-pioneer-miyoung-chun/

By Tom Simonite, Technology Review

Mobile chipmaker Qualcomm and some U.S. wireless carriers are investigating an idea that would see small cellular base stations installed in homes to serve passing smartphone users. That approach is believed to be a more efficient way of meeting the rising demand for data and fixing patchy coverage than building more traditional cell-phone towers. Qualcomm’s chief technology officer, Mat Grob, pitched the idea at an event in Santa Clara, California, on Tuesday, showing off a base station small enough to be integrated into a set top box or home router.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/514531/qualcomm-proposes-a-cell-phone-network-by-the-people-for-the-people/

By Brian T. Horowitz, eWeek

The Michael J. Fox Foundation has been looking at how crowd-sourcing and analysis of mobile data can bring better outcomes for Parkinson’s patients. The Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF) for Parkinson’s Research has been seeking insights on how mobile data can aid Parkinson’s patients. As part of this effort, the foundation launched a Parkinson’s Challenge in February with a $10,000 prize to encourage use of patient data from smartphones for monitoring and treatment of Parkinson’s. Kaggle.com a crowd-sourcing data analytics service, hosted the challenge.

http://www.eweek.com/mobile/michael-j.-fox-foundation-uses-smartphones-in-parkinsons-research/

By REUTERS

Intel Corp chose veteran insider Brian Krzanich as chief executive, disappointing some investors who hoped an outsider would push for aggressive changes to help the world’s largest chipmaker catch up in the mobile revolution. The company also announced on Thursday that software honcho Renée James, 48, had been elevated to the post of president. Her appointment signaled to some that Intel, while likely intending to stick with its formula of intense investment to keep it ahead in the microchip technology game, is willing to explore new growth areas.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2013/05/02/business/02reuters-intel-ceo.html