Daily Education and Technology News for Schools 01/27/2012

• The Press Association: Brown wants global education fund

  Move to global education fund but funding is hard to come by. This article implies it is easier to raise money for diseases than to educate people. That is sad. "All 193 United Nations member states are signed up to a Global Millennium Goal for primary school education to be accessed by every child by 2015, agreed at the New York Millennium Summit in 2000. In the current funding set-up, countries with the biggest out-of-school populations, such as Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, are not eligible for grants from the World Bank's Global Partnership for Education (GPE). Despite being the leading worldwide education fund, the GPE recently failed to raise a pledges target of 2.5 billion US dollars (£1.6 billion) over three years and has been criticised for a lack of flexibility in allocating grants.".

  tags: education news

• Anonymous Goes After World Governments in Wake of Anti-SOPA Protests | Threat Level | Wired.com

  Conversation has moved from SOPA to ACTA, an international treaty supposedly supported by the enetertainment industry. Hackers are targeting governments and businesses in opposition to SOPA and now are targeting those in support of this new treaty which does not require legislative approval in most countries.

  tags: education news copyright ip intellectualproperty

• British Council and Microsoft launch joint digital partnership in Sub-Saharan Africa | British Council Africa

  Expanding ICT in sub-Saharan Africa is a great thing. How far will $1million go when the Internet is so expensive in many parts of Africa. But it is a start for this joint partnership announced at Microsoft's partners in learning conference in DC this past November.

  tags: education news

• Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Enhances its Social Studies Online Content with SpeechStream Literacy Support from Texthelp Systems | EON: Enhanced Online News

  Integrating text to speech is great but it should be in every e textbook for every student. At least this is a start. ".HMH is proud to be the first to offer text-to-speech functionality with every online social studies student edition for grades 6-12,” to said Melissa Counihan, Vice President, K-12 Literacy and Social Studies Segment Management, HMH"

  tags: education news ebook

• India Shining - Bharat Drowning | GroundReport

  India is upset over a recent international test that put their 15 year olds second from the bottom in test scores. ".Comparing scores, it’s estimated that an Indian eighth grader is at the level of a South Korean third grader in math abilities or a second-year student from Shanghai when it comes to reading skills."

  tags: education news

• MPAA chairman Chris Dodd expresses regret over pro-SOPA strategy, calls for compromise | The Verge

  Understand one of the leaders behind SOPA and you'll know that this is not going away any time soon. 
  
  "Dodd blames the bills' reduced support on a slow timeline that allowed opposition to mobilize, but also on a strategy that ended up making the anti-piracy effort seem specifically about helping Hollywood. His own efforts were also limited by a law that prevents him from lobbying Congress directly within two years of leaving office."

  tags: sopa news

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.