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January 23, 2012, 04:53 PM ET

Stanford Professor Gives Up Teaching Position, Hopes to Reach 500,000 Students at Online Start-Up

The Stanford University professor who taught an online artificial-intelligence course to more than 160,000 students has abandoned his teaching position to aim for an even bigger audience. Sebastian Thrun, a research professor of computer science at Stanford, revealed today that he had given up his teaching role at the institution to found Udacity, a start-up offering low-cost online classes. He made the surprising announcement during a presentation at the Digital–Life–Design conference, in Munich, Germany. The development was first reported earlier today by Reuters. During his talk, Mr. Thrun explored the origins of his popular online course at Stanford, which initially featured videos produced with nothing more than "a camera, a pen, and a napkin." Despite the low production quality, many of the 200 Stanford students taking the course in the classroom flocked to the videos because... Read More
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January 22, 2012, 04:42 PM ET

Campus Reactions to Apple's Entry Into E-Textbook Market

Last week Apple released free software to make e-books for the iPad, declaring that the company intended to "reinvent the textbook." Apple also updated its iTunesU service, first released four years ago, to make it possible for professors to put syllabi, lecture videos and audio recordings, and e-textbooks into one spot for students.College administrators and professors had mixed reactions to the news: some said it could spur far greater adoption of digital textbooks, while others criticized the product for relying too heavily on Apple products, leaving out key support for PC's and tablets running Android software. Below are some points made by campus leaders, in interviews or on their blogs: Making it easy-to-create books will help authors keep textbooks more up-to-date. "Providing constant content updates through the Cloud is key," argues Jed Macosko, associate professor of physics ... Read More

January 20, 2012, 11:54 AM ET

Students' Video Game Tests New Artificial-Intelligence Engine—at the Prom

Few rituals conjure a storm of emotions like the high-school prom. Some remember the night forever, and others try to forget it as soon as they leave the gym. A team of students at the University of California at Santa Cruz saw opportunity in that pre-prom angst. They used their new artificial intelligence engine to build an online game that re-creates the prom and all of its attendant social scheming. The designers say their experiment, dubbed Prom Week, makes social interactions richer and less predictable than those of other games on the market. In the game, players help high-school characters realize their prom-night dreams, such as claiming the prom king’s crown or brokering peace with a rival. Players lead characters through social interactions with their peers, and each choice influences how the characters’ relationships evolve. Prom Week lets players achieve their goals by...

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January 19, 2012, 05:22 PM ET

Company Powering Apple's Siri Introduces Education Site of Its Own

Calculus The influential company providing brainpower for the iPhone personal assistant, Siri, has joined the group of education firms debuting new products around the time of Apple's entry into the e-textbook market. Wolfram Research, whose Wolfram Alpha engine provides Siri's fact-finding abilities, unveiled its Wolfram Education Portal yesterday. The new site brings Wolfram’s learning tools and teaching resources together under one tent. It includes an interactive textbook, lesson plans, and demonstrations created with Mathematica, the company’s computing software. Course materials for algebra and calculus have already been posted, with more soon to come. Students who are working on a problem can click on "hot spots," which will take them to Wolfram Alpha's site for the solution and an explanation, according to Crystal Fantry, a senior educational outreach specialist at Wolfram Research... Read More

January 19, 2012, 12:29 PM ET

Online Course Provider, StraighterLine, to Offer Critical-Thinking Tests to Students

As alternatives to the college diploma have been bandied about recently, one question always seems to emerge: How do you validate badges or individual classes as a credential in the absence of a degree? One company that has been hailed by some as revolutionizing introductory courses might have an answer. The company, StraighterLine, announced on Thursday that beginning this fall it will offer students access to three leading critical-thinking tests, allowing them to take their results to employers or colleges to demonstrate their proficiency in certain academic areas. The tests—the Collegiate Learning Assessment, sponsored by the Council for Aid to Education, and the Proficiency Profile, from the Educational Testing Service—each measure critical thinking and writing, among other academic areas. The iSkills test, also from ETS, measures the ability of a student to navigate and... Read More

January 19, 2012, 06:52 AM ET

Live Blogging the Apple Education Announcement

New York -- Apple managed to make news simply by announcing that it would hold a press conference on the topic of education. All week long, other education-technology companies have seized the moment to push out their own announcements, trying to ride a wave of mainstream attention to how technology is changing education. This morning starting at 10 a.m. EST, the company is set to make its announcement, and The Chronicle's Wired Campus blog, along with the ProfHacker blog, will be there, posting live updates. [Update: Below is an archive of our live blogging. For more coverage, see a story in The Chronicle and a post on the ProfHacker blog.] ------ 10:57: Presentation is over. Now we'll have a chance to demo the new software tools here. Stay tuned for a Chronicle article later today. ------ @kfitz: Back to Phil. "Apple exists at the intersection between liberal arts and technology.... Read More

January 18, 2012, 10:27 PM ET

Syracuse U. Won't Expel Graduate Student Over Facebook Posting

A Syracuse University graduate student who had been prohibited from student-teaching because of a Facebook posting will be allowed to finish his degree this spring, the university said on Wednesday. The decision came just a few hours after a free-speech group publicly denounced Syracuse's handling of the matter. Matthew S. Werenczak, a master's student in social-studies education, made the comment on Facebook last July while he was a tutor at a local high school as part of a Syracuse class. Mr. Werenczak said that during a field trip, he had heard a local NAACP representative say, “We need to start hiring our teachers from historically black colleges.” Since he and another tutor had just introduced themselves as Syracuse students, Mr. Werenczak said he found the remarks offensive. On his personal Facebook page, he wrote that the comment was an example of “racism” and implied ... Read More

January 18, 2012, 03:12 PM ET

Internet Sites Go Dark to Protest Anti-Piracy Bills

Students counting on Wikipedia today to help them finish papers or prep for exams are out of luck. The online encyclopedia's English-language site has gone dark for 24 hours as part of a Web-wide blackout to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (HR 3261), or SOPA, a bill being considered by the U.S. House of Representatives, and its Senate counterpart, the Protect IP Act (S 968), or PIPA. Both bills have come under heavy fire from the tech industry and from Internet-freedom advocates because they would make it possible to shut down Web sites that link to unauthorized content. That puts sites with a lot of user-generated content especially at risk. Many Web sites joined Wikipedia today in going dark, including the Internet Archive, Wired.com, and Reddit. Boing Boing put up a "503: Service Unavailable" page. Google censored its own iconic logo with a black bar. One site, The Oatmeal, has an... Read More

January 13, 2012, 03:55 PM ET

You Can Summarize Your Thesis in a Tweet, but Should You?

Thesis ResearchCall it the ultimate exercise in brevity. Or the digital equivalent of an academic elevator pitch. Just don’t call it simple. Students across the world are using the Twitter hashtag #tweetyourthesis to shrink their academic thesis work down to single 140-character posts. The concept isn’t new: Boston University held a #BUthesis contest in April 2010, and #TweCon, a Twitter conference, has happened twice. But this week, the thesis-shrinking idea went viral and #tweetyourthesis sparked a debate among academics on Twitter about the social network’s potential for sharpening an idea. Susan Greenberg, a senior lecturer in English and creative writing at the University of Roehampton, in London, first used the #tweetyourthesis hashtag on Wednesday. She said the idea was hatched over dinner with some research students from University College London, where she is a part-time doctoral... Read More

January 13, 2012, 10:32 AM ET

JSTOR Tests Free, Read-Only Access to Some Articles

It's about to get a little easier—emphasis on "a little"—for users without subscriptions to tap JSTOR's enormous digital archive of journal articles. In the coming weeks, JSTOR will make available the beta version of a new program, Register & Read, which will give researchers read-only access to some journal articles, no payment required. All users have to do is to sign up for a free "MyJSTOR" account, which will create a virtual shelf on which to store the desired articles. But there are limits. Users won't be able to download the articles; they will be able to access only three at a time, and there will be a minimum viewing time frame of 14 days per article, which means that a user can't consume lots of content in a short period. Depending on the journal and the publisher, users may have an option to pay for and download an article if they choose. To start, the program will... Read More