Educators for years have tried to shake up the classroom—by, among other things, integrating technology, shaking up traditional teaching methods, setting new standards, encouraging more interest in science and math and proposing higher pay for the best teachers. In particular, recent technological leaps in areas such as video accessibility and increases in bandwidth and connectivity have accelerated the process.

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Videos: Innovation in Education

How well do you know what's happening on the cutting edge of education? Take this quiz and find out. Answers follow below.
1. Match the person with an education experiment they're known for.
a) Bill Gates b) Sugata Mitra
c) Joel Klein d) Sal Khan
1) Offering free online video lectures in thousands of subjects
2) Proposing an online school directed by students for students
3) Measuring teachers by how much their students' test scores improve
4) Videotaping teachers' classes to see what works
2. A New York City charter school made a splash in 2009 when it began a bold new experiment: paying teachers like lawyers. The Equity Project school hired teachers for $125,000 a year. How does this compare with the rest of the country? What was the average U.S. public-school teacher's salary in 2011-12 (excluding health-insurance and pension benefits)?
a) $36,551 b) $42,086
c) $56,643 d) $73,253
Bonus question: Adjusted for inflation, how much have teachers' salaries increased since 1971-72?
a) -1% b) 6%
c) 29% d) 34%
3. Teachers in New York, Atlanta and elsewhere have used the videogame "Angry Birds" in the classroom. What concepts do they teach through the game?
a) The laws of physics
b) Biodiversity
c) Storytelling structure in AP English
d) Interpersonal relationships and anger management
4. Which of the following digital learning games still played today was released first?
a) "Oregon Trail"
b) "Math Blaster"
c) "Lemonade Stand"
d) "Where in the World Is
Carmen Sandiego?"
5.True or false: The federal government has created a set of new curriculum standards that all states are required to put in place.
6. Match the actual math standard taken from the Common Core curriculum standards with the grade level.
a) Apply the Pythagorean theorem to determine unknown side lengths in right triangles in real-world and mathematical problems in two and three dimensions.
b) Measure areas by counting unit squares (square centimeters, square meters, square inches, square feet and improvised units).
c) Given a rectangle, parallelogram, trapezoid or regular polygon, describe the rotations and reflections that carry it onto itself.
d) Solve addition and subtraction word problems, and add and subtract within 10, e.g., by using objects or drawings to represent the problem.
1) Kindergarten 2) Third grade
3) Eighth grade 4) High school
7. There are only two major countries in which women who receive bachelor's and other higher-level degrees in computer science outnumber men. Which of these is one of them?
a) Israel b) Saudi Arabia
c) Switzerland d) U.S.
8.Massive open online courses, or MOOCs, have emerged in the past few years and are doing much to drive education innovation. Although there were earlier pioneers, the MOOC that first demonstrated the potential of the concept was a free, 2011 Stanford University class, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence. About how many students took the class?
a) 3,500 b) 47,000
c) 160,000 d) 1.3 million
9.Several companies have formed to offer MOOCs, which promise to upend the traditional college classroom. Which of these is not a provider of MOOCs?
a) Coursera b) edX
c) Learnopolis d) Udacity
Ms. Fleisher is a Wall Street Journal staff reporter in New York. She can be reached at lisa.fleisher@wsj.com.
Answers
1. a) 4; b) 2; c) 3; d) 1
2. c) $56,643. Teachers in New York, one of the country's most expensive places to live, have an average salary of $74,449, while South Dakota's teachers are paid on average $39,850.
Bonus question: b) 6%
3. a) Laws of physics. Frank Noschese, for one, a high-school teacher in Cross River, N.Y., used Angry Birds to teach about the motion of projectiles, conservation of momentum, and gravity.
4. c) "Lemonade Stand." The 1973 game challenges players to run a successful lemonade stand by pricing the product correctly, purchasing ingredients and advertising. "Oregon Trail" and "Carmen Sandiego" were introduced in 1985, followed by "Math Blaster" in 1987.
5. False. New curriculum standards that overhaul how math and English are taught were created by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers. The Common Core Curriculum Standards have been fully adopted by 45 states and Washington, D.C. But the U.S. Department of Education leaned on states to use the new standards by making an adoption of rigorous standards a requirement of receiving a grant through the Race to the Top program. The Common Core were the most obvious, and some say only, option available to satisfy the requirement.
6. a) 3; b) 2; c) 4; d) 1
7.b) Saudi Arabia. Nearly 60% of people receiving computer-science degrees in Saudi Arabia in 2010 were women, according to the National Center for Education Statistics at the U.S. Department of Education. This might be surprising, given that women in Saudi Arabia are still fighting for the right to drive a car. But a university degree far from guarantees a job. Nearly 80% of unemployed Saudi women have degrees, according to a Booz & Co. study.
Indonesia is the runner-up, with 52% female computer-science graduates. In Switzerland, 8% of computer-science degrees go to women. The percentage is 25% in Israel and 21% in the U.S.
8. c) 160,000
9. c) Learnopolis is fictional. Coursera is a private company founded by two Stanford University professors; edX is a nonprofit founded by Harvard University and MIT; Udacity Inc. is a for-profit company co-founded by Sebastian Thrun, a Stanford research professor and founder of Google's X Labs.