education

It would seem course materials, textbooks, and professorial fireside chats are going the way of the newspaper--online. But this Japanese college takes things a step further, offering courses over the phone. Cyber University will live-stream a PowerPoint slide show, accompanied by the instructor's lecture through your cellie's tiny screen and speaker. Imagine sitting on the Tokyo subway, annoying (or intriguing) your fellow passengers with a scholarly discourse on the Egyptian pyramids or (insert obscure scientific topic here).

Yes, of course there's a catch. Like Apple and so many others, for now they've got an exclusive contract … Read more

While most newspapers let the comments fly, students responsible for this school Web site have taken the unusual step of screening each comment before deciding if it deserves a public posting.

Read the full story at SiliconValley.com.

Teachers have an unlimited supply of interesting ideas for classroom projects, but have often been limited to the resources they could afford to contribute from their own pocketbooks.

Seven years ago, a history teacher in the Bronx started a Web site that directly connected teachers and donors to fund classroom projects. This week DonorsChoose announced that its program has expanded to include every public school in America.

This "open source" approach to supporting public schools encourages teachers to be innovative and entrepreneurial. Their proposals compete in the marketplace of ideas to attract support. Everyday citizens are invited to become philanthropists who can make a big difference by pooling their contributions, from $10 on up.

As a donor, I found that my experience on DonorsChoose channels reminded me of the thrill of an eBay purchase. But instead of making an impulse buy for something that I didn't really need, I was making a contribution to a worthy cause. In return, my family has received wonderful thank-you packets from teachers and students that include letters and photos of the projects we funded. … Read more

Something just feels off about the new Facebook app from Embark.

Called College Planner, this widget lets prospective college students research schools and then apply to them without actually leaving their Facebook profiles. You can also see which people on your friends list are interested in the same schools.

Applying to college through Facebook. A little weird, isn't it?

I like to think that it wasn't all that long ago that I was applying to colleges.The world was "wired" enough so that most of my application forms were downloaded off the Internet, but I don'… Read more

DRM and electronic books could help lower college educational expenses while at the same time improving the health of students.

Here's why: the economics of textbook publishing are broken. There's a reason that an introductory biology textbook costs $125 new, and it's not because it's printed on high-quality paper using a special 12-color press. It's because when the student is done with the book, he or she sells it back to the campus bookstore, or to another student. The publisher is thus deprived of recurring revenue on the title. So it raises book prices, heaping … Read more

Following a number of delays, the One Laptop per Child Foundation's much-awaited XO laptop for needy kids has finally gone into mass production. Early Tuesday (local time), Taiwan's Quanta Computer started producing the green-and-white computer in its new Changshu manufacturing center, two hours northwest of Shanghai.

The commencement of mass production means children in developing nations could have the rugged, open-source laptops in hand starting this month. The OLPC has already announced orders for kids in Uruguay and Mongolia. (Residents of the U.S. and Canada participating in the Give 1 Get 1 program--which donates an XO … Read more

Microsoft is apparently on a bi-generational education campaign.

This weekend at the national conference of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) in San Francisco, the software giant hosted an exhibit designed to educate pediatricians on answering parents' questions about children's online safety. More than 750 doctors took Microsoft's 10-question quiz about kids and the Internet to receive a free copy of Vista, according to Adrienne Hall, the company's senior director of Trustworthy Computing.

"Physicians are getting a lot of questions from parents about Net safety, and through this (exercise), their awareness goes up," Hall said.… Read more

Used to turning to Consumer Reports for product reviews? You might want to bookmark MrCoversClassReviews.com.

Sixth graders at Fox Meadow Intermediate Center in Jonesboro, Ark., have started testing consumer products and posting their reviews online. And given their clear and thorough assessments, it looks like Jonesboro may have a future David Pogue or Walt Mossberg in its ranks.

Students in Millard Cover's reading classes are getting gadget-ey to learn to apply analytical and critical skills to nonfiction. "When we review a product, we first review news releases, advertising, packaging, manuals, and other written materials to see how … Read more

Discovery Communications, parent company of the Discovery Channel, TLC and Animal Planet, has made plans to acquire HowStuffWorks, which calls itself "the leading source of credible, unbiased, and easy-to-understand explanations of how the world actually works."

The news was originally reported in The Wall Street Journal, which named a price of $250 million.

Atlanta-based HowStuffWorks, which was founded in 1998 by North Carolina State University professor Marshall Brain (yes, that's his real name), pulls in about 3.8 million unique U.S. visitors per month, according to ComScore. Instead of issuing a press release to announce the … Read more