Items tagged with school
It's hard to believe that anyone would think that a $1.3 billion roll out of iPads to students would be a good idea, or deliver the kind of return-of-investment to warrant it, but it's apparent that a Los Angeles school district did. Earlier this year, we reported on how the pilot program failed spectacularly. There weren't enough iPads to go around, and that tends to be a major issue when it's expected that everyone will have one. We'd imagine that if lesser-expensive tablets were chosen, not top-tier models, that issue might not have been encountered. In addition to the iPads themselves, part of this funding went towards educational software that was to be used, which supposedly turned out...
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If your kiddos are griping about how soon they start back to school (or, if you are heading that way yourself, begrudgingly), it's probably high time you took inventory. Is that aging netbook really going to get you through another semester? Is that Gingerbread handset up to the task of piloting you through yet another straight-A year? Take solace, a tech refresh or complete makeover can be rather refreshing.Back to school season is in full swing, and we're here to offer up the best of the best in a few key categories. If you're shopping for phones, desktops, laptops, or accessories, we've got picks for each. We've taken budget, form factor, and ease-of-use into account, and for most items, we'll...
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A research group in the UK has found that nearly 70 percent of schools there are using tablets in the classroom. That probably won’t surprise teachers in the U.S., where Apple has already delivered more than 10 million iPads to schools. It’s easy to see why teachers and administrators favor tablets and inexpensive laptops (like Google’s Chromebook, which has also been making inroads in the education market): they’re easy to distribute, easy to use, and easy to collect and put away when necessary. What’s less clear is whether the flood of computing devices is actually improving education for students.Images credit: AppleThe study, run by research group Family, Kids and Youth, couldn’t make a connection...
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It's that time again. The time of year when students and parents frantically hit e-tailers that offer fast shipping in order to get that all-important back-to-school technology into a dorm room or backpack before classes begins. It's back-to-school season, and whether you've started classes recently or are awaiting (dreading?) that first 8AM lecture, there may be a few bits of techno-shopping that need to be taken care of before you can be on your way to that straight-A report card. Whether you're about to begin the Fall semester of college or your senior year in high school (or something else entirely), you'll probably need the right hardware to get you through. In the pages ahead, we'll be...
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It's that time again. The time of year when students and parents frantically hit e-tailers that offer fast shipping in order to get that all-important back-to-school technology into a dorm room or backpack before classes begins. It's back-to-school season, and whether you've started classes recently or are awaiting (dreading?) that first 8AM lecture, there may be a few bits of techno-shopping that need to be taken care of before you can be on your way to that straight-A report card. Hot Hardware's Back-To-School Shopping Guide In the pages ahead, we'll be taking a look at today's latest and greatest when it comes to full systems, mobile devices, and peripherals that could prove useful for any...
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Privacy and security have been steaming-hot topics these past few months, and as evidenced in comment sections around the Web, they're topics not everyone can agree on. This latest story, of a school district in Glendale, California, is likely to have the same divided opinion. To help keep an eye on student goings-on for the sake of "student safety", the Glendale Unified School District has hired a company called Geo Listening that specializes in monitoring the social networking accounts of students. The company is clear to state that it monitors only public posts, which would make sense given private posts would be (or should be) inaccessible to them. Geo Listening works not by having real people...
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What if you could take an online course from a third-party site (not necessarily a university), and get college credit for it? Wouldn't that be ideal? In today's take on "Living In The Future," we're seeing a Silicon Valley start-up partner with San Jose State University in order to make those kinds of dreams come true. Udacity is in the business of creating online college courses, while SJSU is in the business of handing out degrees to those who complete coursework, and preparing the younger generation for the working world ahead. Udacity falls into the MOOC sector -- also known as "massive open online course." In general, these are frowned upon, seen as "not real" schoolwork. But in the Internet...
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It's back-to-school season again, and whether you've started classes recently or are awaiting (dreading?) that first 8AM lecture, there may be a few bits of techno-shopping that need to be taken care of before you can be on your way to that straight-A report card. Whether you're about to begin the fall semester of college or your senior year in high school (or something else entirely), you'll probably need the right hardware to get you through. In the pages to come, we're taking a look at today's latest and greatest when it comes to systems, hardware and peripherals that could prove useful for any dutiful student. Handling 21 hours of classes while still maintaining some sort of social life (which...
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It's that time again. The time of year when students and parents frantically hit e-tailers with fast shipping in order to get that all-important back-to-school technology into a dorm room or backpack before classes begins. It's back-to-school season, and whether you've started classes recently or are awaiting (dreading?) that first 8AM lecture, there may be a few bits of techno-shopping that need to be taken care of before you can be on your way to that straight-A report card. Credit: Seton Hall University Whether you're about to begin the Fall semester of college or your senior year in high school (or something...
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Lenovo is hoping to attract the attention of schools and students with the introduction of a new laptop that has been ruggedized for education. Lenovo recognizes that kids can be hard on electronics, so the company has designed the new ThinkPad X130e with a reinforced and extra durable top cover, keyboard and hinges. Key durability features include a top cover rubber bumper, reinforced and recessed ports, stronger hinges, and a stronger bezel. This 11.6-inch ultraportable laptop offers AMD Fusion E-300 and E-450 or Intel second generation Core i3-2367M ULV processors. You'll also find AMD Radeon or Intel HD-powered graphics onboard. The ThinkPad X130e weighs less than four pounds and touts a...
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The education market is changing rapidly, and in major ways. Just ten years ago, there was just one way to get a degree, and that was to show up at campus each day throughout the year and work away class after class. Today, you've got a variety of options, and the amount of alternatives are growing by the day. There are online courses and video conference classes for starters, but one thing that has continued to plague distance learners is exams. In a lot of scenarios, students have still been forced to show back up on campus to take vital exams, often because they simply "need" to be supervised. An American company is hoping to lend a hand. U.S. firm Software Secure has engineered a software...
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Former rapper Will Smith had it completely wrong when he waxed poetic about how parents just don't understand. It's the principal who has it all backwards, or at least that's what you'll hear if you talk to the students of Benjamin Franklin Middle School in Ridgewood, New Jersey. So what is it that has students in an uproar? In an email to parents earlier this week, Anthony Orsini, the school principal, pleaded with parents to turn their children away from social networking and to more closely monitor their text messaging. Here's part of what he wrote: Please do the following: sit down with your child (and they are just children still) and tell them that they are not allowed to be a member of...
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Uniforms, tighter schedules, banning of cellphones; could school possibly get any less organized? We're sure it could, but the higher-ups at Nintendo want to affect schools in a positive way by introducing their products into them, of course. We have previously heard of Dance Dance Revolution being used in select Physical Education programs in order to get students to become active when they otherwise wouldn't, but we have yet to hear of any school making a sweeping measure to accept gaming consoles as a part of their teachings. Nintendo Game Designer, Shigeru Miyamotocredit: Associated PressShigeru Miyamoto, who has had a hand in some of Nintendo's most popular titles,...
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"Kids these days" has never had a deeper meaning. Back in our day, rolling along on the school bus was a painful experience. The only chance we had to break from the misery was to bust out a textbook and start studying (not gonna happen), or if we were lucky, we'd get a driver nice enough to allow us to use our Walkman while riding.These days, kids have it made. A school in the south of Arizona has been experimenting with a new kind of bus, and apparently the results have been incredible. Bus No. 92 near Vail, AZ is equipped with Wi-Fi, and students are not only allowed to surf the Web while riding to and from school, they're encouraged to do so. It's not that having the Internet on a vehicle...
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Abilene Christian University may be one of the small universities in the vast state of Texas, but it is surely making a name for itself in the media market. Particularly the market that pays close attention to Apple.ACU made waves across the educational and technology markets back when it decided to hand out iPhone 3GS phones to incoming freshmen, and now it's the first major institution to commit to bringing its school paper to the iPad. Apple clearly designed the iPad to be used by newspapers, and we already know that big ones like the New York Times will be jumping onboard to bring their content to Apple's first tablet.But in our estimation, it will be the reaction of the smaller outlets and...
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Putting off those college applications to the last possible minute? Can't get motivated to further your education? Well, have a look at what's offered over at ACU. Years after Duke University began handing out iPods to incoming freshmen, Abilene Christian University in Texas has one-upped the aforesaid institution by distributing the new iPhone 3GS to new students for "mobile learning." As the first college to do so, ACU has already handed out a wave of the handsets to incoming freshmen so that they can get familiar with the features over the summer. According to ACU, the second phase of implementation of mobile devices will continue ACU’s efforts to provide new opportunities for professors and...
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Dell is trying to pull a fast one on the competition by getting ahead on the valuable back-to-school notebook frenzy, only this time with netbooks. The company is offering schools the opportunity to take up on their Latitude 2100 netbooks together with private cloud computing software supplied by Stoneware. The webNetwork software gives schools their own cloud computing environment that will help deliver contents and centralize teaching subjects.Dell announced it has, so far, inked deals with 500 school districts across the USA to supply thousands of K-12 students with its Latitude 2100 netbooks. Dell couldn’t be happier about it: “This fall, the Latitude 2100 will make access to customized,...
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In the recent past, parents who wanted their children to grow up and make something of themselves would urge them to go to medical or law school. Forget all that. Start urging your children to become independent console game developers. Take Johnathan Blow, for instance. He wrote Braid, a puzzle-solving romp through what looks like hand-painted landscapes, for the Xbox 360. Distribution of games is not reserved just for big players anymore; Johnathon released his creation on Xbox Live Arcade. The result? In its first week, he estimates it's sold about 55,000 copies. Braid has now been out on Xbox Live Arcade for an entire week, and the week has been a good success. The wave of highly-positive...
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Move over Microsoft; Comcast is taking over the role as being perceived as the next "evil empire." Just ask hackers, Defiant and EBK, who managed to take over Comcast's Web portal for over five hours Wednesday night and into Thursday morning: Thursday, the pair were dealing with their newfound fame, laughing over the press coverage with a mix of glee and nervous excitement. Some reports have speculated that the hackers were retaliating for Comcast's recent sabotage of BitTorrent traffic; Defiant and EBK say that's false: they just hate Comcast in general. "I'm sure they hate us too," says Defiant."Comcast is just a huge corporation, and we wanted to take them out, and we did," he says.The pair...
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Early adopters need not apply for the latest release from HIS, as the company has decided to go retro. Serving the trailing-edge niche' can occasionally make for a reasonably solid business case but with desktop computer graphics we have to wonder, just a little. Though we do sometimes still get the odd reader that pops into our mail bag here (usually Moms or Daddy-o) looking for a way to upgrade the old desktop boat-anchor PC circa 2002 with something that can offer Billy a chance to play Counter Strike with his buddies. Though there's definitely still an install base, especially in under privileged countries, is AGP still worth supporting? HIS seems...
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Look, if the OLPC can be used to surf for porn, why would this surprise anyone? These are MacBooks, after all ... built-in webcam ... and as Apple likes to say, great for multimedia!The State Bureau of Investigation is looking into three Greene County Central High School students accused of creating and sending pornographic material with their school-issued computers.In one case, a 16-year-old student reportedly sent video of himself with his 15-year-old girlfriend to a teacher by mistake.Lesson one: if you're going to email something like this, zip it and encrypt with a password, then double-check the email address. Seriously, though, perhaps this will be turned into one of those Mac vs....
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It seems that we can't turn around in our cubicles without a new story about some European government or agency mentioning Microsoft and anti-trust in the same breath.The latest example is from the United Kingdom where the educational technology group Becta has asked for an immediate halt to any licensing of Vista and/or Office 2007 for educators. Becta claims that the Redmond Giant is violating anti-competitive laws even in the academic software licensing arena. For the time being the government has agreed to halt all license agreement signing until the issues can be cleared up.The issues that Becta wants to see resolved center around the readiness of Vista and the license agreement...
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