From The New York Times:

SINGAPORE — The newest catchphrase in online education is social learning.

Several start-up companies have begun offering cloud-based platforms that combine education and social media. Companies like Teamie, based in Singapore, provide software that lets teachers create, share and manage academic content, and also let students collaborate on assignments on platforms that are similar to the "walls" used on Facebook.

Read the full article in The New York Times...

From The Verge:

Telecom company AT&T will invest $3.8 million into a video games-based education program, the largest donation ever made by the company.

The program, developed by nonprofit startup company GameDesk, aims to test whether gaming can aid at-risk students by motivating them to stay in school, raise test scores and enjoy learning.

Read the full article in The Verge...

From KQED Mind/Shift:

Educators have been tapping into the wildly popular online game Minecraft for its potential as a learning tool for a while now — to teach physics, math, and computer science. But until recently, the game was mostly the territory of computer science teachers, and even they were forced to use the commercial version of the online game.

So a few months ago, two teachers, Santeri Koivisto and Joel Levin, decided to make the software more accessible and relevant to teachers. They joined forces to found MinecraftEdu and started offering discounted educator licenses to Minecraft. MinecraftEdu now offers a plug-in, which enables teachers to tailor the software to individual curriculum. And a fresh new wiki is dedicated to sharing ideas with topic suggestions such as "How To Use Redstone, (a fictional mineral) To Teach Electricity." Teachers can also work with others to co-develop lesson plans within the game software.

Read the full article in KQED Mind/Shift...

From The New York Times:

My Thursday column is about the winners in my essay contest about bullying, but the column is too short to publish more than excerpts there. So here are the full versions of the winning essays.

But first, a thanks to my partners in this effort. Teen Ink, a magazine for teenage writing, was hugely helpful in sifting through all 1,200 submissions and narrowing them to 59 finalists for me to go through along with my assistant, Natalie Kitroeff. Stephanie and John Meyer of Teen Ink offered important suggestions for how to run the contest and a digest of important themes that resonated through the many submissions. Some writing about bullying can also be seen on Teen Ink's website and here at The New York Times Learning Network, as well as on Harvard Education School's Ed. magazine.

Read the winning essays in The New York Times...

From the Harvard Education Letter:

Schools and bullies are so closely linked that even young kids who feel threatened know to avoid unsupervised areas: school yards, locker rooms, stairwells, cafeterias, the school bus. The only problem is, of course, they can't.

Now comes a documentary that will make even the most complacent adult feel the terror that school bullies can inspire. Bully, which opened nationally April 13, offers a hard look at the kind of violent and emotional abuse many children face daily when they leave for school in the morning.

Read the full article in The Harvard Education Letter...

From The Hudson Star-Observer:

Today's second-graders aren't easy to fool.

"Wisconsin," a youngster named Luke said when the students in Mrs. Julie Warren's classroom were asked where in the world Miss Amara was.

Luke was the second to volunteer an answer, and he was right.

Read the full article in The Hudson Star-Observer...

From The Los Angeles Times:

Students at Locke High School are faring better than their peers in nearby traditional schools, but achievement overall remains low at the charter-managed campus near Watts, according to a new study.

Still, the Locke students were more likely to graduate and to have taken courses needed to apply to a four-year state college, according to the UCLA-based National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing. The ongoing research has been funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Read the full article in The Los Angeles Times...