By Natasha Lomas. Berlin-based MOOCs startup iversity, which last year began a pivot away from online learning collaboration tools with the aim of becoming the Coursera of Europe, is launching its first clutch of free online courses today.
Back in March, iversity told TechCrunch it was hoping to attract six-digits’ worth of students at the launch of its MOOCs. And it’s managed to do so — saying initial student sign-ups have exceeded 100,000. More...

By Christina Quattrocchi. Pair MOOC provider, Coursera, with teacher training experts at the New Teacher Center, and you get a different breed of professional development--one where teachers choose and there are options for everyone. This is in stark contrast to the one-size-fits-all trainings typically mandated by districts.
Coursera began its foray into the teacher professional development world last May when it launched new partnerships with the likes of John Hopkins University School of Education, Relay Graduate School, and the New Teacher Center. More...

By Xuyang Jingjing. As students in Peking University and Tsinghua University, two top universities in China, start their fall semester, tens of thousands of people who did not make it through the elite schools' grueling admissions process will also be able to take classes there - in front of their computer. The two schools are joining the world's top universities in the MOOC movement.
A MOOC, short for massive online open course, brings together top professors from elite universities from around the world to anyone anywhere with Internet access. The movement has been described as an avalanche permanently altering the landscape of higher education. More...

By Michael Horn. The emerging world of K–12 blended learning remains a young field full of promise for personalizing learning and boosting outcomes for all students. More and more bright spots are emerging every day.
But there are also challenges. With the buzz surrounding 1:1 device programs and new classroom apps, there are risks that people might just take education technologies and layer it over the existing monolithic classroom processes and not fundamentally change the way students learn. The hype around and cramming of technology remains a serious risk to the field. More...

Sur le blog Educpros de François Fourcade. C’était le titre un brin provocateur d’un dossier récent de Courrier International. Il faut dire que la décision de l’abandon de l’apprentissage obligatoire de l’écriture cursive dans 45 États américains à l’école primaire à l’horizon 2015 a bien lieu d’interroger. Et même d’inquiéter ! Voir l'article...

Sur le blog Educpros de Brigitte Fournier. Tandis que les États-Unis découvrent les  SPOCs (les cours en ligne soumis à un processus de sélection et destinés  à un nombre restreints de participants), l’Europe se réconcilie enfin avec les MOOCs(les cours en ligne ouverts et massifs, voir précédent article). Le mois dernier, la Commission européenne a lancé Open Education Europa, un site web qui servira de porte d’entrée unique à l’éducation ouverte européenne. Ce lancement fait partie de l’initiative « Ouvrir l’éducation », lancée aussi en septembre par la Commission « pour stimuler l’innovation et les compétences numériques dans les écoles et les universités ». Dans l’enseignement supérieur, cela se traduit par la facilitation de l’introduction des MOOCS dans les institutions. More...

Pas moins de 37 000 jeunes se sont inscrits à des cours de chinois cette année en France. Cela représente une hausse de 400 % par rapport à il y a dix ans, et de 11 % par rapport à 2012 !
Après un retour aux racines et des cours de journalisme en langue corse, l'Île de Beauté se tourne vers l'horizon et se met… au mandarin ! Cette année, pour la première fois, le chinois est en effet proposé dans toutes les académies françaises. Et c'était une nécessité : en dix ans, le nombre de jeunes voulant se lancer dans les idéogrammes a augmenté… de 400 % ! Rien que depuis 2012, l'augmentation a été de 11 %. More...

By Andrew Jacobs. It is hard to know exactly which transgression propelled Xia Yeliang, an accomplished Peking University economist, from opinionated irritant to a marked enemy of the ruling Communist Party. There was his 2009 public letter that ridiculed the technical school degree held by the nation’s propaganda minister and the interview he gave last year to Radio Free Asia, describing China as a “Communist one-party dictatorship.”
But Professor Xia, a former teenage Red Guard turned free-market advocate, says he most likely crossed a line last year when he posted an online jeremiad calling on Chinese intellectuals to gather in public squares to debate political reform. “That seemed to really upset school administrators,” he said recently. It also apparently upset powerful figures in the Communist Party. More...