(Photo: Fanpop)

If The Breakfast Club taught us anything, it's that anyone--even the popular girl and the nerd!--can land in detention. It's highly unlikely, however, that an entire school would be sent to detention simultaneously, no matter how Mean Girls they get.

But that's exactly what happened at a secondary school in Nelson, New Zealand, when a computer glitch accidentally sent out text messages to the parents of almost every student notifying them that their child had to report to detention.

"[Student name] has an after school attendance detention on Thurs 11 April 2013. Contact year tutor for further information," read the message. It's unclear exactly what caused the computer glitch, but we like to think a kid who actually had detention hacked the system to get out of it.

"We have 1500 students who theoretically are on detention but in actual fact very few of them are," the school's principal clarified. No word on whether or not the kids who are actually serving detention will mess with the bull and get the horns.

The Coursekit Office

Coursekit, a graduate of TechStars NY which bills itself as an academic social network, has raised $5 million in a Series A round of venture capital financing. Led by the Social+Capital Partnership, a new Silicon Valley venture firm started by former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya, the round includes existing investors IA Ventures and new angel investors Joel Spolsky, the CEO of StackExchange, and Michael Kearns, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Ted Maidenberg, a partner at Social+Capital and a former board member at LivingSocial, has joined Coursekit’s board.

The startup, founded by Wharton dropout Jospeh Cohen, hopes to take on the billion dollar incumbent, Blackboard, by selling direct to professors and bypassing the red tape and slow sales cycle of academic IT departments. Blackboard rakes in $400 million of the $500 million spent on this type of software per year, Mr. Cohen said, but Coursekit isn’t interested in that money. “Our business model is not to compete with Blackboard by selling software,” Mr. Cohen told Betabeat. “It’s to create large audiences of students and teachers that we can then leverage for all sorts of things.”

By borrowing from the conventions of today's social networks, Coursekit hopes to create an environment that will get students excited to share materials. “It’s mostly a question of how students interact with each other. That is pretty much everything for a class. For that, Coursekit is really helpful,” said Sharka Hyland, a professor at UPenn. “I have no problem talking to my students, but it’s so much more difficult to have them engage with each other. I think Coursekit is really good for that because in class I can force them to talk to each other, but it comes naturally when they use the software."

Little kid's backpacks are out of control

Dust off those protractors and get some fresh batteries for that TI-83 kids, because summer's almost over and it's time for some tech tutorials that will put you on the right track to those mobile millions.

As usual, General Assembly has a slate of classes lined up for the aspiring app maker. News You Can Use goes down tonight, an introduction to the New York Time's API. Charlie O'Donnell describes the Grey Lady's interface, "Vast! Powerful! A little confusing! All of these describe the New York Times data services, the amazing collection of more than a dozen API’s granting direct, real-time access to a huge assortment of information."

Farther afield is Baruch College’s course on Mobile Application Development. According to Time Out, "You’ll design an icon, write action-scripting code, create scrolling pages and register your program with the Apple App Store or Android Market. Some prior knowledge of Flash is required." Wonder if the App Store's inscrutable gate keepers have a soft spot for student software ...

From the Don't Waste Your Money Department, Media Bistro is offering a $350 course in blogging. If you're a retiree looking for a new creative outlet with plenty of cash to spare, this might be a decent option. But anyone honestly looking to make a name for themselves as a blogger should realize the entire medium is built around crafting a fresh, intimate voice, not the kind of thing you learn in a classroom.

Last but not least, Betabeat will be hosting a Skillshare class this Wednesday at our offices in Midtown. Skillshare co-founder Malcolm Ong will reprise his sold out Programming Concepts for Non-Programmers from 7-8:30pm. The class  is not officially open for registration yet, and sold out in just twenty minutes the last time Mr. Ong offered it, so watch our tweet stream today for first chance to sign up.