The issue focuses on cybersafety, and features Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, among other familiar Disney duck faces.

“Kids growing up in this digital age use the Internet for pretty much everything; entertainment, communication, education and when they get that far; new technologies will play an important role in their work,” says Martin Ruby for Google Public Policy, Copenhagen. “Never has a generation needed digital guidance as the one growing up now. And we were thinking: who would be a better digital guide for kids than Donald Duck?”

“In the book, Donald gets himself into trouble,” explains Ruby. “He is guarding his uncle’s fortune with the help of a gigantic robot but trying as always to charm Daisy Duck – this time on the Internet. An unsuspecting Donald is lured into downloading a virus and giving away his password to Magica de Spell on ‘Duckbook’. No surprise: she takes control of the robot and the fortune.

Good thing it’s realistically practical, acknowledging that far more ducks are using Duckbook than Duck+.

Ruby notes that it all ends well, and Donald gets a prize for his digital skills.

You can actually peruse the issue here (pdf).

“It’s inspiring to see what educators and students of all types are doing with iTunes U,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “With the incredible content offered on iTunes U, students can learn like never before―there are now iTunes U courses with more than 250,000 students enrolled in them, which is a phenomenal shift in the way we teach and learn.”

According to Apple, iTunes U currently caters to over 1,200 colleges and universities as well as 1,200 K-12 schools. In all, iTunes U offers more than 2,500 public courses, and “thousands” (unspecific) of smaller private ones.

iTunes U courses can be created in 30 countries, and are accessible in 155. Although Apple touts strong interest in the U.S. (a single Ohio State chemistry course enrolling 100,000 in just one year) over 60% of iTunes U app downloads come from an international audience.

The folks at Online Degrees recently created an infographic that shows how 3D printing will have a profound impact on the future of education. Of course, the most obvious benefit will be for design students using 3D printers to bring their creations to life. That being said, pretty much every discipline will be able to benefit from 3D printing in the future.

Of course, 3D printers and expensive, and schools are having to slash budgets. That’s where the innovative entrepreneurs comes in. A recent Kickstarter was offering two 3D printers for only $700. The goal was to get as many of these things into schools as possible. Unfortunately, the project wasn’t able to meet it’s funding goal. An equally exciting cheap 3D printing project, the 3Doodler, has recently smashed its funding goal, however, and could prove extremely useful in certain disciplines.

Today, Foursquare is announcing a new connected app – ProPublica’s Opportunity Gap.

When you check into a school, the app will give you a fact about the school: facts like “did you know 7% of students at PS 234 Independence School receive free or reduced lunch?”

You can then click through to access a more-detailed set of statistics like the number of students, teachers, AP courses offered, “inexperienced teachers,” and more.

“With their new Foursquare integration, you can connect your Foursquare account to instantly see statistics for schools you’ve checked in to before. And when you’re out, you can instantly get stats about a school on your phone whenever you check in to one. It’s a great example of how news organizations can use Foursquare to reach their readers with relevant information when they’re out in the real world,” says Foursquare.

“A year ago when we launched the first version of our “Opportunity Gap” news application, we tightly integrated Facebook in order to make it easy for readers to compare schools and share their school comparisons. Today’s relaunch adds Foursquare, along with adding a slew of new data to the app as well as algorithmically generate narratives by Narrative Science,” says ProPublica.

Data should be available for around 50,000 schools, they say.

You can connect your Foursquare account to the app and start receiving school info by going here.

TED announced today that it’s teaming up with PBS to broadcast a series of lectures called TED Talks Education. The first three speakers lined up are all major proponents of education reform. They are Bill Gates, Geoffrey Canada and Sir Ken Robinson. These speakers will all tackle the challenge of how to combat the increasing number of high school dropouts in our nation.

The first event is scheduled to air on PBS on April 16. The series will be broadcast nationally so everybody will have a chance to see what these men have to say.

You can check out some of the speakers’ past TED lectures on education below:

Google announced today that it’s partnering with DonorsChoose.org to offer $99 Chromebooks to classrooms across the country. Not just any Chromebook, however, as Google is offering its top of the line Samsung Series 5 Chromebook. The computer usually retails for $429, but teachers can now get the computer, management console and support for only $99 each.

Teachers have until December 21 to post their request for new Chromebooks on the DonorsChoose Web site. From there, people from all over the world can contribute money to help buy Chromebooks for the school in question. Teachers are limited to only 30 Chromebooks, but that should be enough for any classroom.

Helping to bring cheap computers to classrooms in need isn’t the only way Google is celebrating the holidays. The company is also paying tribute to Festivus in its search results. There are sure to be many more holiday themed easter eggs from the search engine as it gets closer to Christmas.

The topics range from burial suits to prisoners of war.

“The Icelandic songstress has, over the years, starred in a musical that turned a factory into a space for song and created an ‘app album’ to give deeper resonance to her compositions about nature and science,” says Kate Torgovnick on the TED blog. “So we’re not too surprised that her favorite TED Talks have a delightfully quirky edge to them.”

Jae Rhim Lee: My mushroom burial suit

Suzanne Lee: Grow your own clothes

Rachel Armstrong: Architecture that repairs itself?

Brenda Brathwaite: Gaming for understanding

Aaron Huey: America’s native prisoners of war

Eric Whitacre: A virtual choir 2,000 voices strong

In fact, they’ve become so popular that despite being completely free to watch online, they’re being sold as bootleg DVDs in China:

Emily McManus writes on the TED Blog:

In Shanghai, China, directly across the street from a pirated DVD shop called Movie Star is another pirated DVD shop called Better Than Movie Star … and that’s where TED’s founding video director, Jason Wishnow, discovered this pirated DVD (which, sigh, but it’s too good not to share).

It’s a bootleg copy of one of our most popular Netflix shows, a curated collection called “Sex, Secrets and Love.” You can watch this collection yourself on Netflix Streaming, or find it on DailyMotion. Or, if you’d prefer a hard copy, did you know: You can order up a DVD of your favorite six TED Talks through our DVD on Demand service. And as with this bootleg above, you can make your own cover art …

Here’s TEDTalks: Sex, Secrets & Love on Netflix, if you’re interested.

What next? Bootlegs of Khan Academy videos?

Here’s a look:

No word on the potential release of an Android app, but it seems fairly likely that one will be released eventually, given the number of people using Android devices and Khan Academy’s aspirations to reach anyone who wants to learn.

Plus, Google and Khan Academy have been pretty tight. Not only are the site’s thousands of videos hosted on Google’s YouTube, but Google has provided millions of dollars to fund it. It was one of the winners of Google Project 10 to the 100. Earlier this year, Google’s first hire even left the company for Khan Academy.

Here’s more on what the iPad app has to offer. We should see soon what features are available on the iPhone version.

“Discover how your individual vote contributes to the popular vote and your state’s electoral vote in different ways–and see how votes are counted on both state and national levels,” the TED Education YouTube channel explains.

The animation was done by Marked Animation.