Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

Changes in law aim to protect kids’ internet privacy

Data known as “persistent identifiers,” which allow a child to be tracked over time and across websites, no longer can be collected without a parent’s permission, under the new rules.

Aiming to prevent companies from exploiting online information about children under 13, the Obama administration on Dec. 19 imposed sweeping changes in regulations designed to protect a young generation with easy access to the web.

But some critics of the changes worry they could stifle innovation in the market for educational apps.

Two years in the making, the amended rules to the decade-old Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act go into effect in July. Internet privacy advocates said the changes were long overdue in an era of cell phones, tablets, social networking services, and online stores with cell-phone apps aimed at kids for as little as 99 cents.…Read More

1 2

The 12 most popular eSN stories of 2012

Here’s a list of the 12 most popular stories we’ve published in the last year.

Recently, we published a special “year in review” digital edition in which we recapped what we thought were the 10 biggest ed-tech stories of 2012, and analyzed what these stories might mean for K-12 education in 2013 and beyond.

(You can access this special digital publication by clicking here.)

Now, we’ve assembled a list of the dozen most popular stories we’ve published in the last year, as measured by the number of page views each received. If you missed any of them before, here’s your chance to read them now, simply by clicking on each headline.…Read More

1 2

Educational apps for early learners see huge jump

Educational apps have huge potential for today's students.

As mobile learning devices crop up in classrooms from coast to coast, the market for educational apps appears to be thriving, with educational apps for pre-schoolers and toddlers experiencing a huge jump over the past two years, according to a new report.

“iLearn II: An Analysis of the Education Category of Apple’s App Store,” conducted by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, analyzed the “Education” category in Apple’s App Store in an effort to understand the educational apps market and possible emerging opportunities within that app category.

The report reveals that mobile app revenue is predicted to generate $38 billion by 2015, and Apple’s App Store has paid out more than $2.5 billion to developers. There are currently more than 500,000 apps available on iTunes and more than 300,000 available on Android, although this report examines only Apple’s App Store.…Read More

1 2 3