The Right Ingredients for Innovation

Innovation is crucial for growing a business in today's increasingly competitive global marketplace. In fact, 61% of CEOs surveyed in a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers report said that innovation is a priority or a primary focus of their business strategies.

But creating an environment that fosters innovation and creativity can be a tough code to crack. Based on the survey, Mindjet put together an infographic that illustrates the key ingredients a business needs to build an innovative work environment.

Unsurprisingly, a culture that is supportive of innovation tops the list, followed by strong visionary leadership and a willingness to take risks and challenge organizational norms.

View the full graphic on Mindjet's blog.

Image: Flickr, Dell Inc.

BY REBECCA HISCOTT1 HOUR AGO

http://mashable.com/2013/10/07/business-innovation/?utm_campaign=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial&utm_cid=Mash-Prod-RSS-Feedburner-All-Partial&utm_medium=feed&utm_source=feedly

Employment growth being stymied by the digital advance?

Progress in information technology may be causing long-term job destruction, warns a report from two MIT researchers.

Coined by Joseph Schumpeter, the term ‘creative destruction’ – basically meaning a process whereby the advent of new techniques wipe out whole areas of the economy – has long been part of our lexicon. Now however, two researchers at MIT are sharpening its focus by studying the impact on employment of the surge in computerization. The research findings of Brynjolfsson and McAfee are all the more troubling since they seem to confirm that job destruction brought on by such advances as software development and robotics is proving to be greater than the job creation which such progress often entails. They point to an overall ‘decoupling’ of the two trends, suggesting that the overspill theory – jobs from one sector being displaced or transferred to another when new technology appears – as formulated by French economist Alfred Sauvy, no longer applies. This trend, if it were to continue, might even lead to the resurgence of a Luddite-type movement ideologically opposed to any technical progress which eliminated human jobs.

Productivity increases coupled with widespread job destruction
The two economists point to the conjunction of two trends, which they believe to be directly linked: on the one hand an increase in US productivity and, in parallel, ongoing job destruction over the same period of time, which also coincides with the surge of IT-related technology – robotics, APIs, Big Data etc. There has been clear overall shrinkage in the job market in the United States and in most other developing countries. While the number of jobs in the US grew by around 20% between the late 1970s and the turn of the century, the decade of the 2000s saw the job market contract by 1%. One of the report’s authors, Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, underlines: “It’s the great paradox of our era (…). Productivity is at record levels, innovation has never been faster, and yet at the same time we have a falling median income and the labor participation rate, the share of workers that are in the workforce out of the total population, has fallen off a cliff.” According to former Stanford University economics professor Brian Arthur, we are witnessing the emergence of the ‘autonomous economy’, which involves “digital processes talking to other digital processes and creating new processes”, thus reducing the central role of the human worker in both the production and decision-making chains.

New paradigm calls for appropriate training
One of the factors discussed by the two MIT researchers is the lack of training – vital to prepare people for the transition to jobs which are more focused on the new technologies and require appropriate skillsets – on offer. We are seeing a definite polarization, with on the one hand an increase in well-paid jobs that require creative thinking and the ability to solve complex problems; and on the other hand a growing need for workers to fill very low-qualified jobs. In this situation, middle-echelon jobs, including those involving basic administrative tasks, are gradually disappearing. For example, a software developer who creates a computer program to automate tax preparation might see his income triple in a short space of time, while eliminating the need for countless accountants. Thus we are seeing a new class of ‘digital losers’ who are not able to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by the IT advance. However, now that industrial robots are being simplified and their safety and flexibility enhanced, the factory is also changing into a hybrid workplace featuring increased direct collaboration between humans and machines. Some tasks still remain the exclusive preserve of humans, as John Leonard, Professor of Mechanical and Ocean Engineering at MIT points out: “People and robots working together can happen much more quickly than robots simply replacing humans.” Which means that education systems and training programmes will need to be improved and re-focused if the productivity gains achieved by the transition to digital are to be more fairly shared.

By Thomas Meyer September 30, 2013

http://www.atelier.net/en/trends/articles/employment-growth-being-stymied-digital-advance_424258?utm_source=feedly

Why We Hate Change?

The horrors of New Coke have not been easy for the American public to forget. We do not handle change well, especially when it comes to the brands that we've been conditioned to love. But did New Coke really taste that bad? And likewise, is the new Yahoo! logo really that atrocious? And is iOS7 really the flaming train wreck of a redesign that some folks are making it out to be? Or is the problem not within the product, but rather, within ourselves?

What's in a Brand?

The modern world is dominated by brands. Defined by the American Marketing Association as the "name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's product distinct from those of other sellers," brands got their start as a means of determining cattle ownership. Unique identifying marks were burned—or branded—onto the animals' hides with hot irons, and the tradition soon spread to all areas of commerce.

But brands don't just tell us that we're drinking Coke instead of Pepsi or reading Gizmodo rather than the Verge. They represent all the associated feelings and emotions we have with the product, sort of our overall concept of the brand. So, for example, think of the brands Microsoft and Apple. Just mentioning the company names is likely to dredge up a slew of positive (or negative) feelings, memories, and associations you have with those brands that, when taken as a whole, constitute the brand concept. This, as Norman H. Anderson argues in the Foundations of Information Integration Theory, is the result of both multi-sensory perception—how the product tastes, smells, feels, etc—and a bit of cognitive algebra that involves trying to make sense of these data inputs. "Emotional branding," as the practice is known, is far more potent than simply pointing out categorical differences between your product and a competitor's.

In fact, in a 2004 study examining the Pepsi Challenge—wherein people would supposedly prefer Pepsi over Coke in a a blind taste-test—researchers noted that a region of the brain associated with strong emotions lit up MRI scans far more when the subject was shown a Coke label over a Pepsi. However, patients with ventromedial prefrontal cortex damage did not exhibit the same neurological response, and they consistently preferred Pepsi in the blind taste test as well. Remember kids—only people with brain damage drink Pepsi.

And once we form emotional connections with a brand, even if it's as benign as associating it with "quality," that brand can take on a life of its own. Known as the "brand personality," it can be anthropomorphized like the Geico gecko or Sonic the Hedgehog. It can span numerous products and entire industries like GE or CBS. It can even become a pop culture icon like Campbell's Tomato Soup or McDonald's Golden Arches. By projecting human traits and cultural ideals onto the brand, people form deeper emotional associations with the product, making them more likely to purchase it again. Marlboro's long running "come to where the flavor is" tagline, one of Phillip Morris' most successful ad campaigns of all time, for example, evokes thoughts of an American West filled with rugged cowboys—a powerful cultural touchstone for the US consumer. But moreover, these brand personalities allow consumers to differentiate between products even when they're virtually identical, like top shelf vodkas or produce (seriously, name a brand of bananas other than Chiquita).

An even deeper level of consumer-brand interaction occurs when the consumer is socially engaged—this is known as "brand participation." It's the difference between passively watching a Levi's ad on TV versus actively custom-designing a pair of jeans on the company website, or tweeting about how great you look in them, or posting selfies of yourself wearing them to Facebook. When a consumer actively engages with a brand, they develop a sense of ownership of that brand—and that can lead to issues down the line if that brand changes, even insignificantly.

We Hate Losing More Than We Love Winning

You have a choice. You could receive $100 right now or flip a coin with a 50/50 chance of winning $200. Which do you go for? The overwhelming majority of people will go for the immediate sure thing rather than the greater, delayed reward. And conversely, if given the choice between definitely losing $100 or flipping a coin with a 50/50 chance of losing $200, most people will actually take the coin flip despite the potential greater loss. This phenomenon is known "loss aversion."

Originally put forth by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in their seminal 1979 paper on Prospect Theory, loss aversion is people's tendency to strongly prefer avoiding losses over potential gains, and to become irrationally risk-tolerant when protecting their capital. Some studies have suggested that our negative reactions to loss impact our psyches twice as hard as the rush of making gains does.

Loss aversion also manifests itself in what's known as the "endowment effect." This is people's tendency to place a higher price on an item they own compared to an identical item that they don't—essentially, it's the added value of ownership. This is why people can't ever seem to get rid of items with "sentimental" value. As Dr. Gizem Saka of Psychology Today explains, the initial study that illustrated this effect worked as such:

Two groups of participants were asked to come to the laboratory. They were asked to sit in two separate rooms. Participants in the first group were endowed with a mug. In other words, the experimenter gave each person a mug, and told them that they now owned the mug. Participants in the second room, however, were just shown the mug. The experimenter in the second room stood in front of the room with the mug in his hands, not giving it to the subjects. Participants, however, were asked to inspect the item. The mug, by the way, had the college's insignia on it.

Participants in both rooms were given decision sheets and were asked to report the value at which they would sell or buy the mug. An endowed subject, with the mug in his hands, would report a "selling" price: I would ask $5 to sell the mug (willingness to accept). The second group would report "buying" prices: I would pay $5 for the mug (i.e. willingness to buy).

Endowment effect is the difference between willingness to accept and willingness to buy. In the initial study, the mean price sellers asked for was $5.78, and the mean price buyers were willing to pay was $2.21.

People's fear of loss and coveting of existing capital, when taken together, violate the Coase theorem—"the allocation of resources will be independent of the assignment of property rights when costless trades are possible"—and instead lead to a status quo bias, or strong and irrational preference for the current state of affairs. Numerous clinical and field studies have revealed that the status quo bias routinely plays a role in people's decision making.

Basically, a person will weigh the potential gains of switching from the status quo against the potential losses. But due to loss aversion, he or she will weigh the potential losses twice as heavily. And thanks to the endowment effect, he'll value his current capital twice as much as any potential future gains. It's a win-win situation for the status quo.

It's Not the Brand, It's You

So what the heck do these behavioral economic and marketing theories have to do with you freaking out every time iOS undergoes a UI redesign? Well, everything, actually.RELATED

Apple has spent decades building its brand from a home computing afterthought to one of the world's premiere fashion labels. It has carefully choreographed billion dollar marketing efforts to instill a core brand identity of clean, easy to use, beautiful products within the minds of consumers. "It just works," right? What's more, Apple's products aren't like McDonald's hamburgers—they aren't just 1,500-calorie widgets that are consumed and promptly forgotten until they give you the runs 20 minutes later. These are valuable devices that provide a host of services while flagging their user's financial superiority to the rest of society (see: Gold iPhones). Apple's phones are not just mobile computing platforms, they're status symbols, they're part of their owners identities.

So when iOS 7 trades in 1OS 6's simulated depth for a flatter, cartoonishly-colored UI, of course all hell is going break loose. It violates the status quo, introduces an element of uncertainty—what's the new UI going to be like? Am I going to have to reinstall all my apps? How do I even do that?!?—and results in the-sky-is-falling hysterics.

And yes, while some branding changes really are that bad—I'm looking at you Crystal Pepsi—most of the time you simply need to take a breath and realize it's really not as bad as you think.

ANDREW TARANTOLA
Today 2:41pm

http://gizmodo.com/why-we-hate-change-1263949872/@whitsongordon

Connected Cars: Better Driving Experience but Systems Security Risks

Within ten years or so, nearly two thirds of all cars on the road will be Internet-connected. So what are the advantages and drawbacks of a connected vehicle?

By 2025, 60% of all the cars on the road will be connected to the Internet, according to a recentanalysis by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a professional association dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence. Jeffrey Miller, IEEE member and Associate Professor in the Computer Systems Engineering department at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, believes that “widespread adoption of connected cars will allow consumers to treat their vehicles as just another one of their devices (…) and purchasing data packages from wireless providers will be commonplace in the future.” However, while the spread of connected technologies in the automotive sector looks set to bring about safer driving conditions, many experts are still concerned about the risks.

Potential vulnerability to hackers

Vehicle-to-vehicle communication promises to make driving safer and more pleasant. Vehicles – and their drivers – will automatically be informed of hazardous weather conditions or congested roadways so that they can reroute. “Because of these features, human error will nearly be removed from driving,” predicts Christoph Stiller, an IEEE member and Professor at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. However, connected cars are likely to become increasingly vulnerable to malicious software hacks. Moreover, a high degree of interconnectivity between vehicle networks means that a breach in one network may cause havoc in another. In order to combat this, manufacturers need to begin putting firewalls in place to restrict access from integrated systems, IEEE experts underline.

Next step: autonomous vehicles

In fact the IEEE predicts that, as dependence on connected devices in daily life increases, consumer demand for completely automated vehicles will also grow. According to the Institute’s report, 75% of all cars on the road will be autonomous by 2040. Traditional vehicle manufacturer Nissan has pledged to deliver ‘Autonomous Drive’ technologies in its mass production vehicles by 2020. Meanwhile web giants such as Google and Cisco Systems have not failed to spot the opportunities which this rising trend offers them. Google has already been testing fully autonomous cars, while Cisco is teaming up with automotive supplier Continental to provide auto-makers with connected car technology.

By Ruolin Yang September 17, 2013

http://www.atelier.net/en/trends/articles/connected-cars-better-driving-experience-systems-security-risks_423985?utm_source=feedly

From launch to orbit: The new commercial space pioneers

Who’s who in the new astronautics industry

We all know that many 20th century prophecies of life in the new millennium never came to pass. Among them were flying cars, meals-in-a-pill and annihilation by Skynet, to name but a few. However, taking the crown of unfulfilled expectations has to be private spaceflight for business or pleasure.

With all the rapid space tech development that took place in the 1960s and 1970s, it wasn’t entirely beyond reason for the public to ponder planning a holiday to the moon or their retirement on Mars. The Space Race was, of course, colossally expensive and wouldn’t have been possible without the bottomless pockets of competing Cold War governments.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has already got its Dragon capsule to the International Space Station

With the fall of Communism - Soviet Communism, at least - it seemed all that had passed was the limit of human spaceflight. It had proved too costly. Children who watched the Moon landings came to realise their dreams wouldn’t become reality if left to national programmes. Now a handful of the more successful daydreamers are, at long last, taking matters into their own hands.

They’ve been helped by the falling cost of space technology. They’ve also benefited from freedom from the bureaucracy of massive state-funded agencies and the red tape that bound them. Today’s new wave of space pioneers are well funded from private sources. They’re the tiny mammals to the dinosaurs of NASA and the other official space organisations.

But their long-term goals are no less ambitious. Their early work may be crude and failure rates high, but they are having successes too.

So who are the new space pioneers? The efforts of the wealthy Elon Musk and Richard Branson are well known, but there are a fair few others with their eye on space; some targeting the glamorous business of space tourism, others with more serious, commercial and scientific programmes in mind.

First, then, the teams chasing the media-friendly space tourism opportunities:

Armadillo Aerospace

Having emerged in 2000 from the pile of cash that was John Carmack’s success with iD Software, Armadillo Aerospace ultimately aims to develop a sub-orbital spacecraft for the noble purpose of slinging overweight and overpaying Americans into space so that they can momentarily forget their health issues.

Armadillo’s Stig. Some say...

Although a space-capable craft now seems nowhere in sight, over the years Armadillo has built some interesting kit. In the early days there were several X-Prize vehicles that relied entirely on exhaust vane thrust vectoring for stability control - using fins to guide the rocket blast in order to keep the craft pointing in the right direction. These sub-orbital vehicles have now given way to attempts at a space shot, with its Stig rocket reaching an altitude of 82km in 2012.

Bigelow

In 1999 hotel baron Robert Bigelow envisaged his guests booking into rooms developed from NASA’s cancelled International Space Station (ISS) TransHab programme. Despite his background, Bigelow insists that his inflatable space habitats are destined for more than high-orbital holidays - he claims pharmaceutical research and entertainment applications are all on the cards.

How Bigelow’s BEAM might look when docked to the ISS

Progress over the years has been fruitful. Experimental modules Genesis I and II have been in orbit since 2006-7. NASA has awarded Bigelow a $17.8m contract to put the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) into space as an annex to the ISS in 2015. The catch, however, is that Bigelow has no intention of developing its own launch system, so it must rely on other commercial ventures to succeed in building a suitable vehicle

By Shaun Dormon, 16th September 2013

Read more
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/16/feature_the_new_space_pioneers/

GAZ DE SCHISTE – L’alternative « intéressante » de la fracturation au propane

L’exploitation du gaz de schiste séduit de plus en plus de pays. Nouveau converti à cette énergie non conventionnelle, le Québec envisage d’utiliser une nouvelle technique de fracturation au propane censée être plus écologique.

Interrogé par Le Monde sur la technique de la fracturation au propane que souhaite utiliser le groupe québecois Pétrolia sur l’île d’Anticosti, un expert de l’IFPEN estime qu’il s’agit d’ « une alternative intéressante bien que perfectible ». « Le propane est une alternative intéressante à la fracturation hydraulique, car il résout la question de l’accès à l’eau, surtout dans des régions déjà soumises au stress hydrique comme en Chine ou aux Etats-Unis » affirme François Kalaydjian de Institut français du pétrole et des énergies nouvelles.

« Par ailleurs, il est possible de recycler le propane pratiquement à hauteur de 100 % » précise l’ingénieur qui souligne qu’avec le propane, contrairement à l’eau, aucun n’est nécessaire.

Posté par: Rédaction 

28/08/2013

http://www.enviro2b.com/2013/08/28/gaz-de-schiste-lalternative-interessante-de-la-fracturation-au-propane/

ELECTRICITE – Le numérique consomme 10% de la production mondiale

Malgré sa petite taille, un smartphone consommerait plus d’énergie qu’un réfrigérateur. Globalement, l’économie numérique consommerait à elle seule 10% de la production mondiale d’électricité selon une étude publiée par le cabinet de conseil en énergie Digital Power Group.

Bluetooth, wifi, 3G, 4G, cloud… si la révolution numérique est partout présente et à toute heure dans notre vie quotidienne, elle est très gourmande en énergie. Au total, elle consommerait 1 500 térawattheures annuels dans le monde, de l’amont à l’aval (de la production du matériel informatique à l’utilisation en passant par les serveurs et les réseaux).

Et ce n’est pas fini, car le trafic internet via les téléphones mobiles devrait décupler dans les 5 prochaines années, selon le rapport de Digital Power Group.

Posté par: Rédaction 

27/08/2013

http://www.enviro2b.com/2013/08/27/electricite-le-numerique-consomme-10-de-la-production-mondiale/

Making photos their business

MIT alumni took their photo-aggregating app to market with help from the Institute.

PHOTOS FROM THE MIT DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE BY M. SCOTT BRAUER AND DOMINICK REUTER

Today, online photo-sharing is a technological phenomenon, with billions of images shared daily via social media, image-hosting websites and mobile apps.

Back in 2009, when photo-sharing had just become standard fare on social media and the launch of smartphones with built-in cameras had ushered in a “mobile sharing boom,” two MIT entrepreneurs saw photo-sharing as a unique business opportunity — and it paid off handsomely.

While students at MIT, Inaki Berenguer MBA ’09 and Andres Blank MBA ’09 created Pixable, a Web and mobile app that uses algorithms to scan a user’s social-media accounts, collect the most relevant photos, and aggregate them in one place.

To commercialize the app, the two co-founded Pixable in an MIT dorm, later relocating to New York. The startup soon garnered millions in funding and its technology began receiving praise in tech circles as a valuable social-photo organizing tool.

Last year Pixable, which had accumulated five million users, sold to telecommunications giant SingTel for $26.5 million. Now, as a subsidiary of SingTel, Pixable is reaching a wider audience, Berenguer says, with the possibility of expanding in other countries, and is developing new technologies.

Berenguer, who is Pixable’s CEO, attributes the startup’s early success to factors including his team and early help from MIT. Additionally, he says, the startup benefited from “an element of luck” and some foresight in anticipating the popularity of smartphones, social media and photography as a widespread means of communication.

“Early on, we bet on this intersection of mobile, social media and photography,” Berenguer says. “Facebook and Twitter took off. Today, people take pictures with their smartphones and upload them to social media all the time. We knew there was an opportunity there, but we didn’t know smartphones, social media and photography were going to explode the way they did in the last five years, creating many opportunities for entrepreneurs and interest from investors.”

The other Pixable co-founder is Alberto Sheinfeld, now Pixable’s chief innovation officer. The startup has been featured in TechCrunch, The New York Times, Newsweek andThe Atlantic, as well as on the BBC and CNN.

Making ‘a content portal’

The concept behind Pixable dates to 2008, when Berenguer and Blank were students at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

The two had taken several trips abroad with classmates, but couldn’t aggregate all the photos that their classmates had taken and shared on their Facebook, Flickr and Picasa accounts. Wanting something simpler, they created software to aggregate their photos into one place.

To do so, they combined machine-learning algorithms with available technologies. Specifically, Pixable made use of Facebook Connect and other application programming interfaces from various photo repositories, such as Flickr, Twitter and Picasa. “We pulled together these types of ‘off-the-shelf’ new technologies, and created a very novel commercial product,” Berenguer says.

This led Pixable to develop its current core technology, dubbed “WonderRank,” which analyzes dozens of variables associated with a user’s social-media photos (and videos) — such as “likes,” “retweets,” comments and tags — and other metadata to select the most relevant photos for the user. Then, it quickly organizes and displays the photos as categories, such as most popular, most recent or updated Facebook profile photos. It also offers public photo feeds based on user interests, such as sports, style, music or news.

This technology is similar to what’s used for news aggregation websites, such as Google News and Yahoo News, and, more recently, Flipboard. However, Pixable does something novel by applying the technology to photos, Berenguer says.

“In the end, Pixable is a content portal. But our content is photos,” Berenguer says. “The information is out there — in the form of billions of new photos and videos shared every day on the Internet — but we’re aggregating, reorganizing, ranking and presenting that personalized information to the user.”

Getting on track

In Pixable’s early stages, Berenguer and Blank — who were students in MIT Sloan’s entrepreneurship and innovation track — used a variety of MIT resources to build their startup. During breaks, for instance, the two held meetings with potential employees — primarily MBA classmates and MIT engineers — at the Institute. And, with a prototype in hand, they constantly brainstormed with classmates, garnering “customer” feedback.

“When you are a student building a consumer product, the most important thing is to get feedback from a lot of people, because every person in the world can be a potential customer,” Berenguer says. “At any time, at MIT, we could have 200 students testing our product.”

Through various events, they networked with lawyers, venture capitalists, angel investors, accountants and other members of the local startup community — some of whom would later support Pixable, financially or otherwise. (In its first year, Pixable raised roughly $400,000 in funding from various MIT connections.)

The two also participated in a variety of MIT’s business and professional clubs, such as the Venture Capital and Equity Club, the Venture Mentoring Service, the $100K entrepreneurship competition, and the Marketing Club.

“That’s the beauty of MIT,” Berenguer says. “It sits on an ecosystem of successful entrepreneurs, professionals that understand startups. You go to MIT and you don’t need to even walk outside to get support.”

Berenguer says they even made their class projects about Pixable. When tasked to draw up a marketing plan for a startup, they wrote their plan for Pixable. They did the same for assignments for business plans and financial models. By graduation, they had drawn up solid schematics for Pixable.

But Berenguer says MIT helped him in another way: The Institute gave him confidence and ambition as an entrepreneur. “You’re taught you can’t be afraid of thinking big. You go to MIT and see experienced professors, engineers building and innovating and not afraid to compete with big companies,” he says. “Then, they tell you there were 30 students last year that received funding and started a company. And you say, ‘They had the same access to resources as I have. I can do that too.’”

Rob Matheson, MIT News Office

August 15, 2013

http://www.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/pixable-0815.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mit%2Fnews+%28MIT+-+News%29

The White House pushes for higher-performance connectivity in classrooms

Equipping all United States classrooms with a high-speed Internet connection is now a White House priority.

Technology innovation in the education sector is in full swing. Connected tablets, apps that enable shared note-taking, real-time student assessment software…startups are overflowing with such ideas to shape the school of the future, and many teachers are enthusiastically adopting these tools. A majority of teachers indicate that both they and their students are now using mobile phones and tablets in class to carry out learning assignments and perform other tasks. The only hiccup appears to be the lack of high-speed connectivity in US classrooms. In order to address this problem, President Obama recently launched the ConnectED initiative.

‘ConnectED’ schools and libraries

According to the White House, fewer than 20% of US teachers believe that connectivity in their schools meets their teaching needs. The White House warns that lack of high-quality Internet access in schools puts students at a disadvantage. Accordingly, in June, Barack Obama launched the ‘ConnectED’ initiative, setting out a clear objective. “The ConnectED initiative will, within five years, connect 99% of America’s students to the digital age through next-generation broadband and high-speed wireless in their schools and libraries,” states the White House website. The US President also sees bringing high-quality connectivity into the national education system as a way of supporting both established companies and startups that are developing the educational tools of tomorrow.

FCC moves into action

In the latest move, on 19 July, the Federal Communications Commission began the process of restructuring the ‘E-Rate’. This federal educational technology program, set up in 1997 to provide financing for Internet infrastructure in schools, has already led to all US classrooms being equipped with an Internet connection. The new step is intended to bring about better connectivity on a national scale, especially by giving schools and libraries access to the financing they need and by simplifying the funds allocation process. In a published statement, the US President expressed great enthusiasm for the initiative and the FCC move, which should help to make “21st century classrooms available to every student in America.”

By Alice Gillet July 22, 2013

http://www.atelier.net/en/trends/articles/white-house-pushes-higher-performance-connectivity-classrooms_422924?utm_source=feedly