Brent Sordyl's blog

There’s a scene in the movie “Good Will Hunting” where Will shames an arrogant Harvard student by pointing out that he wasted his money because he “dropped 150 grand on a … education you could’ve got for $1.50 in late charges at the public library.” Today that line would be written as “dropped 150 grand on a … education you could’ve got for free on the Internet.” But just as few people in 1997 replaced their formal education with visits to the library despite the massive price differential, so too will most people continue to require structure and a supportive learning environment in the modern age of online education.

(Full Story: http://pandodaily.com/2013/04/25/why-online-education-is-mostly-a-fantasy/ )

4.0 Schools:
Center for Educational Technology Incubator:
Imagine K12:
Learning Technologies:
Macmillan New Ventures:
SIIA Innovation Incubator Program:
Socratic Labs:
Stanford Learning, Design and Technology:
Startl:
Startup Weekend EDU:

(Full Story: 10 Cool EdTech Incubators Aiming to Change Education)

At MyEdu, our mission is to help all students achieve their goals and get the best return from what they invest in their education. We call it return on education or ROE. It is our way to measure the various civic, academic, and professional outcomes of higher education against the investment each student makes.

(Full Story: MyEdu – Professor ratings, average GPA, class schedule and degree tools)

Today, Top Hat Monocle is used by 65,000 college students at 150 universities across North America, including Harvard and Johns Hopkins. This morning, the 32-person Toronto-based company announced that it’s raised $8 million in venture funding from Emergence Capital and iNovia Capital. Top Hat previously raised $1.5 million in angel funding in July 2011.

The company offers software that helps professors harness students’ phones for classroom lessons and activities, instead of Twitter and Temple Runner. At its simplest, professors use the software to present slideshows and handouts on students’ phones and laptops. Instructors can create more interactive digital activities, like polls, quizzes, and open-ended question and answer exercises. (It’s also a pretty painless way to gauge attendance.) Versions of the software work for feature phones up through iOS and Android devices.

(Full Story: The Startup That Turns Phones Into Teaching Assistants – Forbes)