Currently, Texas has the lowest number of adults over the age of 25 that have a high school diploma. Out of all 50 states, Texas has the fewest adults that graduated high school. There are a number of reasons for this. Texas, as do other states, has a large influx of illegal aliens and migrant […]

Music teachers often have great difficulty finding free sheet music - especially due to copyright issues. The Mutopia Project was formed to help alleviate this difficult and provide free sheet music that can be downloaded from the Internet. The Mutopia Project describes itself as, The Mutopia Project offers sheet music editions of classical music for […]

Today Kaplan announced the twelve edtech startups that will take part in its second accelerator program. The Kaplan EdTech Accelerator is in partnership with Techstars and takes place in New York City over the course of three months. The participants were chosen out of a total of 500 applications which is 50% more compared with last year’s batch according to Ed Hanapole, CIO at Kaplan. Eight of the twelve participants come out of New York City. Each startup, with one exemption, will receive $20k from Techstars in return for equity and an option for a $150k convertible debt note from Kaplan. The exemption is Grockit which was acquired by Kaplan in 2013. It is the first Kaplan team to join the company’s accelerator. Like last year the startups will receive mentorship from Kaplan executives as well as external industry leaders and investors including Brad Feld and Techstars founder David Cohen. The demo day for the class of 2014 will be on October 22nd. Branching Minds Branching Minds is an online tool to help identify, understand, and address students’ cognitive strengths and weaknesses while tracking and reporting data across grade levels, classes, and the home-school divide. Links branchingminds.com | Twitter ClassWallet ClassWallet is a digital wallet and e-commerce platform letting donors easily give and track donations to K12 classes and also giving teachers decision-making power over budgets and purchases for their classrooms. Links classwallet.com | Twitter | Facebook Cognotion Cognotion teaches students language and career skills through story-telling, using online video narratives, gamification features, live simulation, and social media tools. Links cognotion.com | Twitter | Facebook CreatorBox CreatorBox helps children ages 7-12 years old develop their creativity and practical science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills through a monthly series of engaging building projects. Links creatorbox.com | Twitter Edvisor.io Edvisor.io aims to increase access to global educational opportunities by seamlessly connecting schools and educational travel agencies via a worldwide distribution system with integrated web tools. Links edvisor.io | Twitter Grockit Grockit is an online tool using adaptive learning, peer-to-peer learning, and game-like motivational features to help students prepare for standardized exams; originally founded in 2007, Grockit was acquired by Kaplan in July 2013. Links grockit.com | Twitter | Facebook Lea(R)n Lea(R)n runs cost-effective pre-clinical and clinical trials to validate emerging education technologies’ impact on learning outcomes. Links learntrials.com | Twitter | LinkedIn reKode reKode teaches computer coding skills to children and young adults—including those with learning challenges and disabilities—in a face-to-face environment, emphasizing peer-to-peer learning, positive development and creativity. Links rekode.com | Twitter | Facebook RobotsLab RobotsLAB creates robots as in-classroom teaching aids that help K-12 educators bring to life abstract math and science concepts in fun, engaging ways. Links robotslab.com | Twitter | Facebook SmartOn SmartOn teaches "new economy skills" in areas such as coding, data science, social media, and design. Links smarton.co | Twitter | Facebook Story to College Story To College offers online and in-person courses that leverage the neuroscience of storytelling to help students write impactful, effective admissions essays. Links storytocollege.com | Twitter | Facebook TuvaLabs TuvaLabs teaches data literacy skills by engaging students through the exploration and use of real data related to students’ own favorite topics and interests. Links tuvalabs.com | Twitter | Facebook Further Reading Presenting the Accelerator’s Class of 2014 | Kaplan

Gaming in the classroom is becoming a big topic for trends in the classroom. Most teachers use gaming to teach content at some point or another. Gaming is being used to teach programming and more advanced concepts versus used to just fill time. PBS Learning Media is offering the following gaming resources to help start […]

September 17 - 23, 2014 is Constitution Week commemorating one of our country’s most notable and important documents. The Daughters of the American Revolution website shares, The aims of the Constitution Week celebration are to: Emphasize citizens’ responsibilities for protecting and defending the Constitution. Inform people that the Constitution is the basis for America’s great […]

Flipkart, India’s biggest online retailer, has apparently raised $1 billion in new funds which would make this the biggest ever investment raised by an Indian e-commerce company and one of the biggest rounds of 2014 worldwide. Given the amount of new investment reported by the Economic Times to be accurate, Flipkart’s total funding raised comes to $1.7 billion at a $5 billion valuation. The official announcement of the round is expected in the coming weeks. Update: Flipkart confirmed the $1 billion round on July 29th via Twitter. Massive milestone for us... we have raised $1 billion in fresh funding. Huzzah! @binnybansal @_sachinbansal pic.twitter.com/NDbIQCeEJl — Flipkart (@Flipkart) July 29, 2014 This latest Flipkart round has significance for the online education market on multiple levels. Founded in 2007 by brothers Sachin and Binny Bansal the Bangalore-based company crossed $1 billion in sales in March. Now, Flipkart supposedly felt it was the right moment to raise such a big round in order to cement its position on the subcontinent as its far from being the only company that eyes the lucrative Indian market. The ubiquitous Amazon launched its India operations last June and already has 25 product categories today. Tapping into E-Learning Homegrown competitor Snapdeal announced the launch of an education marketplace in February with the goal to reach its $1 billion turnover target. The company also raised an additional $100 million in new funds in May. According to Kunal Bahl, co-founder of Snapdeal, the online education market in India is expected to reach $3-4 billion in the coming years and that the company plans to make 20% of its revenue from selling services. The fact that online education is a hot market on the subcontinent gets confirmed by the launch of a dedicated e-learning category on Flipkart this week. The new category enables learners to browse and search for online courses as well as physical products such as CDs or DVDs and test preparation or certificate courses. The learning itself happens of course through the websites of the respective course providers but the argument of convenience of browsing one website only instead of comparing offers from different websites might actually pay off for Flipkart. Nipun Mehra, senior director of retail at Flipkart, states "The availability of eBooks, certificate courses and online tests - all on one platform — will make the entire process of buying/accessing elearning material very easy for students who form a significant part of our customer base today." Low Cost Smartphones and Tablets Another strategy of Flipkart to get the attention of potential customers is to provide them with budget smartphones. Earlier this month the company introduced its own Android smartphones, priced at around $45. Like the idea behind the Amazon Fire phone and Kindle Fire tablets which encourage its owners to buy even more from Amazon, the Flipkart smartphones as well as the recently launched Flipkart Digiflip Pro XT712 tablet follow a similar concept. Undoubtedly, they are designed and priced affordably to animate even more Indians to shop online and use Flipkart’s different services like the new education marketplace.. It is also worth noting that Flipkart was faster than Amazon, Google and also Mozilla with the launch of a low cost line of smartphones for the subcontinent. It is obvious that nobody in the Android realm wants to miss out on the world’s fastest growing smartphone market. And again, we can make a conclusion for elearning. As so often, what establishes itself in the general consumer and e-commerce markets will eventually find its way into online education. Mobile Learning Learning on a smartphone is established in Asia for years, and mobile learning is becoming more popular in Europe and the US at a rapid pace. busuu co-founder and CEO Bernhard Niesner told me in September 2013 that the language learning startup already has more mobile users than web users. At the time busuu had seen more than 30 million downloads of its mobile apps, 62% of which were iOS and 38% Android users. Top countries are the US, Germany and Russia. Therefore, it is not far-fetched to imagine Indian providers and students alike quickly adopt a mobile strategy for learning when devices come at competitive prices and the content offer is there, too. Another interesting puzzle piece comes from language learning startup Duolingo which just launched its Test Center offering $20 remote proctored language exams this week. The test center being launched on Android and Google Chrome first clearly indicates that emerging markets like India are of high interest for the startup. If you are interested in the growing edtech market in India, we created a dedicated channel in which you will find all our coverage of this exciting region. Further Reading India’s biggest online retailer Flipkart sets a new benchmark, raises $1 billion in fresh funds | The Economic Times Snapdeal clicks on services space to hit $1bn | Times of India Flipkart’s new elearning category makes it as easy to search for courses as it is to find books | Tech in Asia Flipkart launches budget smartphones, beats Google and Mozilla to the punch | Tech in Asia

There are many link curation sites out there to compile a hotlist of links to create portfolios or a list for students to use when doing research or online projects. Below I share my top 5 list. The premises are all the same about compiling resources - the format and manner in which the links […]

Google announced the launch of the Translate Community with the aim to improve Google Translate through crowdsourcing better translations for the 80 currently supported languages and to eventually launch new language options with the help of its users. In the community members can vote on existing translations and generate new ones. Google also added a new feature to Google Translate that enables anyone to contribute directly even without signing up to the Translate Community. Over time Google wants to add features that show members the impact of their work and activity across the global community. Using crowdsourcing to translate educational web content has become an established option. Among the first to experiment with this was language learning community Livemocha which turned to its user base to translate the free courses offered on the site into different languages, though with mixed results. Duolingo, the current juggernaut of the language learning space, based its business model on its users translating the web while learning a new language. Given the close relationship between Duolingo founder Luis von Ahn and Google, he sold his previous company reCAPTCHA to the search giant in 2009 and just launched Duolingo Test Center exclusively on Android and Google Chrome, one might speculate that Google took some notes or even advice from him in this project. And I am still pretty sure that Duolingo will end up being acquired by Google. Another leading example for the power of crowdsourcing in the translation space is Viki, an online community that is built around translating and subtitling movies and TV series. The site has been acquired by Rakuten for $200 million in September of last year and there have been rumors that Google was also interested in acquiring the crowdsourcing site. Google also introduced crowdsourcing for one of its other main properties, YouTube. In May YouTube launched an effort to reach out to its creator talent by announcing a couple of new features requested by the community. Among these is the Community Caption Project which lets YouTube content creators tab into the global community to subtitle the videos. Sounds like Viki I hear you say? Well, if you can’t acquire it, clone it. via TechCrunch Further Reading Translate Community: Help us improve Google Translate! | Inside Search Related Links Sunday Review: $200m Viki acquisition, Textbook Scam and Socratic Labs | EDUKWEST Crowdsourcing in Education - How to make it work | EDUKWEST HEDLINE: Duolingo Test Center brings Learners a $20 Version of the TOEFL | EDUKWEST Links translate.google.com/community

The movie called "The Giver" is currently playing and the movie is based on the book by Lois Lowry. I haven’t seen the movie so I am not going to offer a critique as to whether the movie is worth going to see or how closely it resembled the actual novel. If you teach young […]

For developing nations like the Philippines, remittances from oversea workers play an important economic role. According to data from the country’ central bank, remittances made through bank transfers surged 6.1 percent to $10.404 billion in the first five months of 2014 from $9.809 billion in the same period in 2013. And while this is already an astonishing amount in itself, we must not forget that still a large part of the population is unbanked or underbanked and therefore uses other ways of sending and receiving cash. There are currently around 10 million Filipinos working overseas, sending money home to their families in order to support them. Ayannah founder and CEO Mikko Perez told TechCrunch that 8 million of those workers are unbanked or underbanked. Back home around 70 million Filipinos in the country have no access to regular banking, meaning that services like Western Union, Moneygram, Trans-fast, and iRemit handle most of the remittances sent to the Philippines from the U.S., Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the UK, Singapore, Japan, and Hong Kong where most Filipino overseas workers are. 5% of remittances are spent on education - in 2013 around $1.3 billion All in all the remittance market in the Philippines is estimated to be between $25 billion to $60 billion annually but currently this market is also very inefficient and costly for its users. A perfect industry for disruption. Let’s take a look at two startups out of the Philippines that aim to make the remittance process more efficient. Of course, this opportunity is not limited to the Philippines only but all developing countries with a growing overseas workers group, may it be in South America or Africa. Ayannah wants to become the Amazon of the next 4 billion Ayannah does not necessarily want to compete with the aforementioned payment providers or replace them but aims to add services around remittances. This ranges from allowing overseas workers to easily pay for virtual goods, digital goods, gift certificates and so on but also paying for health and micro-insurance for family members back at home through a mobile commerce product called Sendah. Ayannah also offers a B2B platform called Sendah Direct, enabling local stores and businesses to offer digital commerce and payment solutions with the goal to build the largest digital payment network in the Philippines and eventually becoming a major player in the space. The startup just announced a $1 million venture round, bringing the total funding raised to $4.5 million. Links ayannah.com PhilSmile targets the 5% of remittances spent on education Giving the next generation better opportunities through good education plays a major role in remittances; according to Tech in Asia about 5% of the $25 billion USD send home by Filipino workers was spent on education, which is around $1.3 billion USD. The startup raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Eric Barbier, the founder and CEO of remittance service TransferTo. Through PhilSmile, overseas workers can pay directly for the school fees of their children or other family members, removing the need of a third party payment provider. Payments can either be made for a whole year or in small weekly chunks. Through the investment, PhilSmile will be able to tab into TransferTo’s network of merchants who offer more than 200.000 points of sale in countries like Singapore, Hong Kong, the US, the UK and Dubai. Links philsmile.com | Twitter | Facebook Further Reading Ayannah Raises $1M To Serve The Philippines’ Rapidly Growing Remittance Market | TechCrunch OFW remittances hit $10 B in May | philSTAR Filipinos living overseas now have a more convenient way to pay for their families’ education back home | Tech in Asia Picture License  Some rights reserved by Kelvin Servigon