education

Researchers at the University of Illinois may not be unveiling a major technological breakthrough, but their "Scientific Animations Without Borders" initiative could inspire a paradigm shift in the world of health and sustainable development education.

Currently, this kind of education outreach tends to be both expensive and time-consuming, with researchers often flying great distances for several weeks or months to teach, say, Haitians how to avoid cholera exposure, often with minimal follow-up.

So a team of extension educators in Champagne, Ill., is developing two-minute educational animations viewable on cell phones (see example here)--a tool that could save … Read more

Safety issues aside, only three things are required to be happy in your job: do interesting work, get paid fairly, and get along with your boss. I can't help you with the last one, but if you're not happy with the work you're doing or your salary, one possible solution is to learn new skills that will translate into more challenging and financially rewarding work.

Tongue-in-cheek suggestions for avoiding the ax Any employment-related advice on the Web or elsewhere has to be taken with a grain of salt, especially when it comes to generic recommendations about successful … Read more

FirstWords Deluxe is a reading game for toddlers that helps teach letter recognition. This deluxe version combines all the words from the original FirstWords apps (for Vehicles, Animals, At Home, Colors, and Shapes, giving you 147 words in all) into a single app.

The friendly, cartoony interface is simple: once you tap one of the categories on the front page, you're shown a page with an object (such as a taxi or a color or a cat) along with scattered letter tiles that make up the object's name--which a toddler can then drag and drop into the correct … Read more

We live in a world of free expression. It's just that sometimes we pay a large price for it.

I give you--for she is now free to express herself however she wants--Melissa Petro.

Petro was an elementary school teacher in the Bronx. She taught art. And it just so happened she used to be paid for performance art. Yes, Petro used to be a stripper and a prostitute.

You can imagine that, when her school found out, it wasn't overcome with pleasure. Indeed, it suspended her, which, according to CBS New York, drove her to a resigned state. … Read more

It seems only yesterday that a group of sensitive schoolchildren decided to use Facebook to organize an "Attack A Teacher Day."

Well, what kids do on Facebook, adults, being far more sophisticated, do on a blog.

I am grateful to the Bucks County Courier Times which assailed me with the story of a now-suspended teacher who, it seems, wasn't entirely happy about her work life.

So she reportedly took to her blog to express her feelings in as literary way as she possibly could.

Natalie Munroe, a teacher at the Central Bucks East High School, created a … Read more

With today's proliferation of tablets it can be hard to distinguish one device from the next. But here's something that sets the Kno Textbook Tablet apart (besides its big dual displays and focus on students): it's getting stress-tested by a Lego robot.

The Kno product development team needed a way to automate tests of the ambient light sensor and the note-taking stylus' interaction with the LCD touch screen. So they built a Lego robotic arm (they give it the far less sexy name of "accelerated life test apparatus") to shoulder the repetitive work.

In the behind-the-scenes video below, you'll see the arm directing the pen back and forth and up and down across a screen, while another robot makes the device itself go back and forth. The team has been testing the stylus for touch, sweep, and flick motions that mimic those of a non-robotic user taking handwritten notes. … Read more

Wolfram Research, a software company with deep mathematical and scientific expertise, is expanding to the broad education market with a range of mobile apps.

But although those apps hold the promise of turning smartphones into sophisticated next-generation calculators, they also raise questions about the best way for students to learn.

Wolfram Research got its start with the hard-core Mathematica software, itself an offshoot of Stephen Wolfram's attempt to explain his mathematical view of the universe embodied in his book, A New Kind of Science. It was therefore fitting that the company's "knowledge engine," Wolfram Alpha, took … Read more

Microsoft today unveiled five new plans for its Office 365 suite aimed at giving educational institutions access to hosted Office services, as well as a licensed version of the Office software.

The educational version of Microsoft's Office 365 service, which Microsoft says will be available to K-12 institutions later this year, runs from a free plan that brings things like Web e-mail and antivirus protection, all the way to a $17-per-month plan that includes VoIP and a license to MS Office Professional Plus for faculty and staff. This top-end plan can be had by students for $5 a month: … Read more

Microsoft is now providing e-mail, calendaring, and instant-messaging programs for students of the State University of New York.

SUNY's 64 campuses are part of a university-wide Live@edu agreement that covers more than 465,000 students with Microsoft's online productivity suite. Besides the aforementioned tools, this includes things like online storage, video conferencing, and access to Microsoft's Office Web Apps--all of which are offered up free of charge.

In a post yesterday announcing the rollout, Microsoft U.S. Education CTO Cameron Evans said that the deal is saving Monroe Community College--one of the SUNY schools involved with … Read more