Nokia, Pearson unveil Mobiledu

Nokia and worldwide education company Pearson have unveiled a joint venture to support Mobiledu, Nokia's mobile phone-delivered education service in China, reports Softpedia.

The new entity, called Beijing Mobiledu Technologies, is aimed at accelerating the growth of the educational service, the companies say. The mobile service, which offers materials for learning English, along with other educational content, was unveiled in China back in 2007, says Nokia.

It adds that the content delivered comes from a variety of providers, directly to mobile phones. Customers have the possibility of accessing the content via a software solution preloaded on the handset, or they can do so through visiting the service's mobile Web site.

The Verizon Foundation recently awarded Rutgers University's Graduate School of Education a $150 000 grant in order to enable them to help equip teachers with the required tools and skills needed to prepare students for success in today's digital society, according to TMCnet.

The grant will support a certificate programme called the Educational Leaders of the 21st Century. The programme will consist of three online courses that will help educators establish a foundation for using technology in different educational settings.

The new programme will take advantage of Verizon's net-based Thinkfinity and the first course is scheduled to be available to teachers from January 2011.

New Zealand could save $1.7 billion a year by improving the productivity of its workers using ICT, a report commissioned by the NZ Computer Society claims, writes Computerworld.

With productivity improvement in the front of the public's and government's collective mind, the Computer Society has produced the results of a 'desktop study', said to illustrate a potential improvement in productivity of between one and three hours a week from improving individuals' and businesses' knowledge of ICT.

These figures come from a variety of existing studies of the results of ICT education in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, South America and Asia.