There are two important pieces of news on our curated list of global tech news that will interest you; find out why Donald Trump's Twitter account was briefly deactivated and a $175 million VC backed edtech startup is shutting down two of its revolutionary classrooms.
The deactivation Donald Trump's Twitter account
On Thursday, the Twitter account of the US President was briefly deactivated. Searches to @realDonaldTrump returned an error page "Sorry, that page doesn't exist!".
The US President is known for controversial tweets via his handle and reportedly wiped $5.7 billion off Amazon's stock market valuation with a single tweet he posted in August.
Even though the account was down for 11 minutes, there were speculations as to whether Twitter had banned the president for violating its policies. But the micro blogging platform later announced that an employee briefly deactivated the president's account on their last day on the job.
AltSchool; the $175 million edtech experiment
AltSchool, an educational startup that specialises in software development and a group of technologically reinforced schools is shutting down another of its four locations in California and New York. This is the second in two days.
The schools have classrooms equipped with ceiling-mounted video cameras, computers, custom apps, robots and 3D printers. Former Google executive Max Ventilla raised $175 million (some reports say $170 million) from VCs like Peter Thiel, Andreessen Horowitz and Mark Zuckerberg to build modern, technology-infused schools to revolutionize education. But apparently the educational arm of the startup was not working.
According to Bloomberg Technology, vice president of schools at AltSchool, Sam Franklin, sent an email to parents of AltSchool students on Thursday night to inform them of this development.
The startup will shift focus to providing educational technology to other schools. This was supposed to be a revolutionary movement in edtech as we know it.
Let the best of tech news come to you
Give it a try, you can unsubscribe anytime. Privacy Policy.
