“The project, often referred to as revolutionary, was first introduced at an inauguration ceremony attended by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in November 2010. Undertaken by the Ministry of Education and supported by the Ministry of Transportation and Communication, the massive project is expected to encompass 570,000 classrooms in 40,000 schools around Turkey once completed.” – World Bulletin

“One CEO of a game company recently told me, “If we build a game in which someone is demotivated or disengaged for 45 seconds, we know we need to improve.” Forty-five seconds! Imagine if we thought this way in education. I think I wentyears demotivated at school when I was growing up. And, that’s likely the norm, not the exception.”

University administrators on campuses around Texas are mulling campus-wide tobacco-free policies as a result of new rules established by the Cancer Research Prevention Institute of Texas. In January, the institute’s oversight committee adopted a policy that requires grant recipients to have policies prohibiting tobacco use in buildings and structures where financed research activities are occurring, as well as at the outdoor areas immediately adjacent to those buildings. The grant recipients must also provide smoking cessation services for community members who desire them.

President Obama asked for almost $70 billion in education spending, a 2.5 percent increase over last year, while he cut several other agencies’ requests. In other education-related stories in Washington, a report by the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that federal aid may drive up college costs because for-profit colleges taking financial aid from students charge about 75% more for tuition that schools that don’t take financial aid.

FastCompany’s list of top education companies includes companies you have probably heard of such as Knewton, 2Tor and Pearson. It also includes some institutions lesser know to the education innovation space, such as Southern New Hampshire University.

Cary and Michael Huang built the universe — at least a nifty virtual version of it anyway.