Technology, Education | featured news

In what is shaping up as an academic Battle of the Titans — one that offers vast new learning opportunities for students around the world — Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Wednesday announced a new nonprofit partnership, known as edX, to offer free online courses from both universities.

... some machine-based tutoring is approaching the effect size of real human tutoring—and there is less variation than one might expect as the grain size of tutoring becomes finer. This finding is a startling observation.

Apple on Thursday lifted the veil on its plans to remake the educational landscape in a way that centers on its best-selling tablet computer, the iPad. "Education is deep in Apple's DNA and iPad may be our most exciting education product yet," Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of marketing, said in a statement.

Apple is slated to announce the fruits of its labor on improving the use of technology in education at its special media event on Thursday, January 19. While speculation has so far centered on digital textbooks, sources close to the matter have confirmed to Ars that Apple will announce tools to help create interactive e-books—the “GarageBand for e-books,” so to speak—and expand its current platform to distribute them to iPhone and iPad users.

South Korea, one of the world's highest-rated education systems, aims to consolidate its position by digitising its entire curriculum. By 2015, it wants to be able to deliver all its curriculum materials in a digital form through computers. The information that would once have been in paper textbooks will be delivered on screen.

With hack days and e-petitions they're pushing for education to keep up with the digital economy. People of an older vintage tend to balk when they see seven-year-olds blithely reprogramming their TV sets, or changing the background on their smartphones. But a few among them believe kids have even more potential when it comes to software — they can actually create programs, if they’re only taught how.

Seventh-grade history teacher Mark Stevens bellowed a set of 21st-century instructions as students streamed into class one recent Friday at Fairfax County’s Glasgow Middle School. “Get a computer, please! Log on,” he said, “and go to your textbook.”

President Barack Obama, seeking to rally support for his jobs plan in two states pivotal in next year's election, suggested that the nation needs to regain a competitive edge in technology and education.

Harvard University's website was hacked this morning in what appeared to be a Syrian-related attack.

I have been awarded a golden ticket to the heart of Silicon Valley: the Thiel Fellowship. The catch? For two years, I cannot be enrolled as a full-time student at an academic institution.