school

I am writing this with a cold compress on my head and a milk chocolate digestive biscuit in my mouth.

Both are to soothe my furrowed thoughts.

For this is another tale of peculiarity from the antiseptic-smelling hallways of America's high schools.

It has been well-established that strange things happen in the nation's places of youth education.

You can get expelled and arrested for putting toilet cleaner and foil in a water bottle on school premises.

You can also get suspended for tweeting that you don't think your high school has very good sports teams.

Wesley Teague, … Read more

Pinckney Community High School in Pinckney, Mich., is the site of a robotics experiment gone very, very right. Junior Nick Torrance has muscular dystrophy. He uses a wheelchair to get around, but the muscle disease makes it difficult to handle simple activities, like opening up his locker.

The high school already has a top-notch robotics class. Seniors Micah Stuhldreher and Wyatt Smrcka won the 2012 SkillsUSA national robotics competition, so they were a natural choice to tackle the locker door problem with a robotics solution.… Read more

There is a huge volume of calendar and timekeeping apps on the App Store. The number seems to grow exponentially with each update of the App Store, making it nearly impossible to tell one from another. So it's rare to find an app like School Timetable HD that succinctly resolves the issues it was designed for without extraneous features, messy design, or buggy operation.

School Timetable HD is designed to keep track of your classes Monday through Friday, with notes for each class period and teacher. The app opens with a grid showing Monday through Friday and five rows. … Read more

Think back to middle school. What was the most awesome class you took? Chances are you didn't have the opportunity to sign up for the most awesome junior high class ever conceived: zombie survival skills. Unfortunately, it turns out nobody will have the chance to complete the course.

Social studies teacher Rich Harshberger at Armand Larive Middle School in Hermiston, Ore., offered an extracurricular class in zombie survival skills. Once the school district found out, they put an end to it, much like Michonne taking her katana to a shuffling undead zombie on "The Walking Dead." Total bummer.… Read more

The world has come to this. An armor manufacturer in Maryland has created a bulletproof whiteboard designed to protect teachers and students in the event of an emergency.

Hardwire specializes in military and law enforcement armor ranging from ballistic armor panels to bulletproof shields. It's now turning its expertise in military armor towards creating armor for the classroom.

The Bulletproof Whiteboard comes with two handles on the back. If there is a threat, the teacher is supposed to take the whiteboard and hold it out. It is designed to absorb multiple clips of ammunition. The product description also says, "Blends well with classroom - no psychological impact on students."… Read more

Forty of the nation's best and brightest high school seniors have been chosen as finalists for Intel's 2013 Science Talent Search.

Offered by the Society for Science & the Public, the Intel-sponsored program chooses finalists based on several factors, including their own scientific research, their achievements, and their leadership, both inside and outside of school.

The competition asks students to come up with scientific solutions to answer questions and resolve problems that affect the entire world.

"This year's Intel Science Talent Search finalists are presenting a wide range of research, from optimizing algae oil for biofuel … Read more

MyScript Calculator (iOS|Android) is an app for both iOS and Android that lets you perform mathematical operations with freehand writing of expressions on your touch screen. This app won the Mobile App Showdown award at CES 2013 and after some time spent using it, it's easy to see why.

The simple-looking interface mimics the look of graph paper. In the top right of the screen you have buttons for undo and redo, and a trash can for when you want to clear the screen completely. In the upper left you can open a menu where you can access … Read more

Subscribe to Crave:

iTunes (HD) | iTunes (SD) | iTunes (HQ)

RSS (HD) | RSS (SD) | RSS (HQ)

On this week's show, we check out Tailly, a wearable robotic tail that wags when you get excited. If that gets you wagging, then you'll definitely want to have a look at the Satis Bluetooth toilet that can flush with your smartphone. And in honor of winter, we look at how a snowflake is born. It's the last show of 2012, and we bid you farewell until the new year. The show returns on January 18. … Read more

Steven Sinofsky, who recently left Microsoft after running the Windows division for six years, tweeted this morning that he will teach at Harvard Business School this spring.

"Excited to return to @HarvardHBS to teach again this spring!" Sinofsky wrote. "New perspectives, recharge, share experiences, write."

In response to a question on Twitter, Sinofsky said he intends to teach "product development" as well as write articles about the topic.

Sinofsky has some history at Harvard Business School. He served as a "visiting scholar" there in 1998. He also co-authored a book on organizational … Read more