Latest education updates from around the world
Report: Meta Wins Bid to Acquire VR Fitness Studio Behind ‘Supernatural’, Awaiting FTC Appeal
In 2021 Meta announced it was set to acquire Within, the studio behind popular VR fitness app Supernatural, however the reportedly $400 million deal became subject to investigations by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in respect to Meta’s supposed monopolization of the VR fitness space. Now, according to a Bloomberg report, it appears the FTC has lost an important suit to block Meta’s acquisition of Within.
Unreleased documents from the closed court proceedings appear to vindicate Meta’s acquisition of Within, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the ruling. The sealed decision was made Wednesday morning by US District Judge […]
Best Document Cameras for Teachers
Get the best document camera for teachers to make the classroom more digitally immersive.
VR Education Startup Raises $12.5M to Teach Math and More Using VR in Schools
Prisms VR, an immersive platform for teaching math, announced it’s raised $12.5 million in a Series A round, which the company says will be used to expand its VR math literacy platform to more schools across the US.
Led by Andreessen Horowitz, the latest funding round brings Prisms VR’s lifetime funding to $19.1 million, according to CrunchBase.
Launched in 2021, Prisms focuses on teaching math in VR through problem-driven, tactile and visual learning. Essentially, it immerses students by confronting them with real-world problems—a far sight from the sort of drab word problems which typically involve far too many […]
GPTZero – Another Tool to Detect Writing Created by AI
Yesterday, I shared a brief overview of AI Text Classifier which can be used to determine the likelihood that a article was written with ChatGPT. Today, I have a similar tool to share with you. GPTZero is a free tool that analyzes text to determine whether or not it was written by an artificial intelligence program.
At first glance GPTZero works much like the other AI detection tools that I’ve tried in the last couple of weeks. To use it you paste a block of writing (at least […]
5 Google Classroom Tips From Its Developers
The Google Classroom product manager and adaptive learning project manager at Google share tips for utilizing the popular learning management system
Focusable – Fitness Tracking for Your Mind
Focusable is a free app and website that I started using at the start of this school year. It’s a tool that anyone can use to teach themselves to focus on completing difficult tasks, to ignore cheap social media distractions, and to recharge after completing a stressful task. Since September I’ve used Focusable as a progress journal and I’ve used Focusable as an aid to avoid procrastination.
Throughout this school year Focusable has added new features and refined existing features to make the user experience […]
Meta Reality Labs Earnings Reveal a Less Successful Holiday Season & Highest Operating Costs Yet
Meta today revealed its latest quarterly earnings results, showing that Reality Labs, the company’s XR and metaverse arm, had a smaller holiday season than the last, while operating costs have reached their highest levels yet.
Today during the company’s Q4 earnings call, Meta revealed the latest revenue and operating cost figures for its XR and metaverse division, Reality Labs, providing one of the clearest indicators of the success the company is seeing in this space.
The fourth quarter has consistently been the best performer for Reality Labs, no doubt thanks to the holiday season driving sales of the company’s offerings.
In […]
The 10000 Hours Rule: Why Hard Work is Essential for Success
Do you ever wonder why some people seem to be more successful than others? It could be because they understand the power of hard work and dedication. This concept is famously known as the 10000 Hour Rule, which states that it takes roughly 10,000 hours of practice for a person to become an expert in something.
Meta Optimizes Quest Developer Tool for Apple’s Mac M-series Chips
Last week Meta released the latest version of the Meta Quest Developer Hub tool which has been optimized to work natively on Apple’s M-series chips for better performance.
The Meta Quest Developer Hub (MQDH) is a collection of tools to make VR development easier for Quest developers. In addition to giving devs an easy way to manage their headset and the files on it, it also provides access to Meta’s various VR SDKs, and includes tools to profiling and optimizing VR applications.
While MQDH has supported MacOS since it launched back in late 2020, the latest version v3.2, is […]
Mil-Sim Shooter ‘Onward’ to Drop Quest 1 Support Later This Year
Meta-owned developer Downpour Interactive announced it’s pulling Quest 1 support for Onward, the hit team-based mil-sim shooter.
First launched on PC VR headsets in Early Access back in 2016, Onward managed to garner a hardcore following over the years thanks to its realistic squad-based gameplay and unrelentingly faithful reproduction of real-world weaponry.
In mid-2020, Downpour decidedly slimmed down Onward across the board with its Early Access launch on Quest—just a few months before Meta launched the more powerful Quest 2. Its launch on the original Quest was met with some pretty intense backlash from the PC VR-playing community at the […]
The Makers of ChatGPT Have Launched a Tool to Detect Text Written With AI
In this week’s Practical Ed Tech newsletter I included a video overview of a tool called AI Writing Check that detects whether or not an article has been written with the use of a tool like ChatGPT. Two days after publishing my newsletter, the makers of ChatGPT announced the launch of their own tool designed to detect whether or not an article has been written by ChatGPT.
AI Text Classifier is a new tool from Open AI, the makers of ChatGPT, that will detect whether or not a […]
Get Ready for Groundhog Day With These Short Lessons
Tomorrow is Groundhog Day! Those of you who teach pre-K or early elementary grades you may have some students who are as excited about it as my pre-K and Kindergarten daughters are. If that’s the case, you may be interested in watching the following videos that provide brief explanations of the origins of Groundhog Day.
Homeschool Pop offers a good explanation of Groundhog Day for kids. The video explains the origins of the tradition, where it’s celebrated, and a couple of fun facts about groundhogs.
Three Things You Should Know How to Do With TinyURL
I’m not 100% certain of this, but I’d make a substantial wager that TinyURL was the first URL shortener I ever used. I know I was using it before I started this blog and that’s going on 16 years this year. The point being that TinyURL has been around a long time. It’s that longevity that contributes to it often being the first tool people think of when they need to shorten URLs.
Like all web tools that have been around for a long time, there are features of TinyURL that people overlook or […]
Best Student Cloud Data Storage Options 2023
The best student cloud data storage choices are plentiful, but which is the best for you right now?
12 Great History Documentaries on Netflix
Netflix provides a wide range of historical documentaries, from WWII to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. From dramatic reenactments to interviews with experts and veterans, these films offer an up-close perspective on some of the most influential events in history. Whether you’re looking for something educational or entertaining, Netflix has something for everyone. Here are some of the best history documentaries on Netflix that you can watch right now.
1. Hitler’s Circle of Evil, 2017|TV-14
This 10-part documentary series takes a chilling look at the madmen behind one of history’s most notorious regimes. Through […]
Best Teacher Memoirs Every Educator Should Read
The Most Popular Posts of the Month on Free Technology for Teachers
Good evening from Maine where the sun has set on the month of January. It was a busy and fun month for me. I hope it was a good start to the year for you as well.
This month I hosted a new Practical Ed Tech course called How to Create and Sell Your Digital Products in 2023. Dozens of people joined me in the course and many more have asked when I’ll host it again. The answer is, soon. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter to find out when my next […]
Meta Plans to Shut Down One of Its Most Popular and Long-standing Multiplayer VR Games
Meta and its child-studio Ready at Dawn today announced plans to shut down the popular free-to-play multiplayer game Echo VR, with plans to turn off severs come August 1st.
Echo VR has had a storied journey, having originally launched as an Oculus Rift exclusive title all the way back in 2017. In 2020 the game made the leap to Quest, allowing cross-play multiplayer between Rift and Quest players. Shortly thereafter, Meta announced that it had acquired the game’s developer, Ready at Dawn.
And though it stands as one of the best-rated and most popular free titles on the Quest store, Meta […]
How to Remove Apps and Files from Your Android Phone
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A couple of weeks ago I wrote about why you should remove unused apps from your Google account and from your Android phone. One reader correctly pointed out that while I explained why you should do that, I didn’t explain how to remove unused apps from your Android phone. To remedy that, I created a short screencast video. If you want to know how to clean-up your Android phone, watch the video that is embedded below.
Video – How to Remove Apps and Files from Your Android Phone
75 Google Documents Tutorials
Last week I published a new tutorial about how to add footnotes to Google Documents. After publishing it I decided that it was time to continue on my quest to bring some better organization to my YouTube channel. The next step in that quest was to create a playlist of my Google Documents tutorials.
I didn’t add every video that I’ve ever made about Google Docs to my new playlist. I only included the ones that are relevant today (the ones that were 14 years old got left […]
Meta’s Social VR App is Coming to Web & Mobile Soon, Alpha Begins for Members-only Rooms
Horizon Worlds, Meta’s social VR platform for Quest users, is expanding with alpha tests of new members-only spaces, allowing creators to manage up to 150 card-carrying members in their private worlds. Meta says it’s also gearing up to release Horizon Worlds on non-Quest devices for the first time.
Meta is now rolling out alpha access to its new members-only worlds, which aims to let creators build and cultivate a space in Horizon Worlds. Each members-only world can have up to 150 members, although only 25 concurrent visitors can gather at any given time.
“Every community develops its own norms, etiquette, and […]
Terry Freedman’s Article Planner and Writing Prompts
Last week I published a video about creating writing prompts with Spinner Wheel. Terry Freedman took that idea and ran with it to start the week on his Eclecticism Substack. In Terry’s latest article he shared the Spinner Wheel of writing prompts that he created. Additionally, he shared his article planner.
Terry Freedman’s article planner is available to use in Google Sheets and in Excel format. The planner has two purposes. The first purpose is keeping track of the progress you’re making toward publishing a […]
Report: Sony Reduces PSVR 2 Production Forecast Amid Lackluster Preorders
Sony is reportedly lowering near term sales figures for its upcoming PSVR 2 headset, allegedly halving initial sales projections based on lackluster preorders.
Slated to launch on February 22nd, Sony was expected to produce an initial run of two million PSVR 2 headsets, however a recent Bloomberg report maintains the company has reduced those forecasts to just one million in the first quarter.
Citing people familiar with deliberations, Sony reportedly told a supply partner to expect reduced display panel orders, allegedly stating that it only expects to sell only 1.5 million units between April 2023 and March 2024.
Only Aiming […]
What is Zearn and How Can it Be Used to Teach? Tips & Tricks
Zearn is on online video and interaction based math learning system designed for student individuals and groups.
A Comprehensive Guide to Creating Engaging classroom Teaching Videos
Educational videos can be a great way to engage students and create a more interactive learning experience. With the right tools and a bit of creativity, anyone can create an educational video that’s both informative and engaging.
