Education IT News For VARs — January 8, 2015
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
The news includes Ed Tech predictions for 2015 and education companies included on the Inc. 5000 list. Also, one school district is using a mobile router mounted on a bus to provide Internet access to students in economically disadvantaged areas.
Ed Tech Predictions For 2015
This article from Tech Crunch predicts trends for 2015. From embedded technology, to commitment to cloud adoption, expectations are that classroom technologies will grow. The New Year will also see teachers giving in to smartphone use, and curation will become critical. Also, parents will use technology to follow their children’s progress.
Inc. 5000 List Includes Fast-Growing EdTech Companies
This article from Education Week highlights the fact that 40 education businesses made it onto the latest Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies. Among those selected by Inc. are PresenceLearning, Schoolwires, Pediatric Therapeutic Services, Achieve3000, and ClassBook.
District Utilizes Mobile Router On Bus To Provide Internet Access
According to Education Week, one California school district, Coachella Valley Unified School District, one of the poorest districts in the nation, is trying to respond to the need for greater connectivity among its student populations by offering a mobile Wi-Fi router that can provide Internet access to students whose homes are not wired. President Obama mentioned the effort in a recent speech in Washington, praising the district for leveraging underutilized resources to provide services.
Education IT Talking Points
Campus Technology reported that Carnegie Mellon University has been awarded a five-year, $2 million grant to train humanities graduate students and faculty to use technology-enhanced learning (TEL). The grant came from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The program will be launched with weeklong, intensive summer courses providing basic training for TEL. The courses in TEL and digital humanities will then be universally available via online modules. CMU has a "well-established legacy of pioneering TEL and through its Simon Initiative, a strategic, university-wide commitment to use TEL to improve learning outcomes for all students," according to a news release from the university.
According to the Houston Chronicle, the number of colleges that are developing courses to focus on the $21.5 billion video game industry is accelerating. Among them is University of Texas at Austin, which has a new program for studying video game business; and New York University’s Game Center, part of the Tisch School of the Arts, which studies video games as an art form. The goal of the program at the University of Texas is to teach future leaders of the gaming industry and to provide business and management skills to video game artists and programmers. The NYU program aims to educate designers and developers and foster advanced scholarship and study in the gaming field.
For more news and insights, visit BSMinfo’s Education IT Resource Center.