Hack (Higher) Education

Stephen Downes made a comment in passing yesterday, calling Khan Academy's online video library a MacGuffin, "something [that] provokes learning, but isn't." I've been stewing about the analogy ever since.

"Flipping the classroom" has become one of the most popular catch phrases of the year. The idea: watch the video as homework and use the time in class -- the face-to-face time -- to hold discussions, work together, build and solve problems. Let's extend that to the conference. Why do we sit and listen to lectures and panels when what we want most out of our time together is, well, time together?

MOOCs seem to be gathering a lot of media attention lately, particularly on the heels of the popularity of Stanford's AI class. But how do these new computer-science focused classes, several of which are being offered now by for-profit startups rather than non-profit educational institutions, differ from earlier MOOCs? Are these new manifestations centered on the learner and the learning? Or something else?

Late Nite Labs is a startup that offers schools Web-based science labs. Can this type of virtual lab replace the offline version? And can a more accessible, and perhaps even more imaginative, lab help keep students engaged in science classes and STEM majors?

Bookrenter is spilling out a separate company today called Rafter, aiming to help offer universities better deliver course materials. This isn't just about finding cheaper textbooks (although that's part of it), but rather providing a technology infrastructure to help campuses better purchase, manage and distribute educational content.

Textyard has open sourced the tool it build for harvesting course and textbook data from college textbooks. Textyard used this to build its textbook price comparison site, and now that the startup's founders are moving on to a new project, they're releasing the technology in the hopes that other students and programmers can build projects with it.

Next week, InternMatch is offering what it's calling "the largest ever internship hangout" on Google+. The startup, as its name suggests, helps match students with internship opportunities, challenging what it argues is a broken process on many campuses.

A look at the 2012 Horizon Report and some thoughts about how the metaphor of "the horizon" -- always moving beyond reach -- works so well for ed-tech.