It recently occurred to me just how reliant we are on the technologies with which we operate our society; few more so than the Internet. Today, I want to try something entirely different. Today, I want you all to imagine what life would be like if it were to simply…stop.
The Wall Street Journal has raised an interesting question: when, exactly, is it OK to use technology in class?
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Udacity’s first partnership with an institution of higher learning might not have turned out as well as it hoped, but a setback at San Jose State University won’t cause the online learning portal to call it quits on college campuses. Quite the contrary, in fact. Today, Udacity announced the creation of the Open Education Alliance to “bridge the gap between the skills employers need and what traditional universities teach.” The alliance is comprised of both Silicon Valley heavyweights like Google, AT&T and NVIDIA and educators including Georgia Tech and Khan Academy. The OEA’s goal is to enlist the help of both companies and educators in building a new curriculum to help students learn what they need to choose and succeed in a modern career.
Here at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2013, Udacity CEO Sebastian Thrun and California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom discussed the need for a shift in our educational system, and consequently the OEA. “It’s important to be creative about this,” said Thrun, “we need to move away from an ‘industry of drones’ by enabling students to learn at their own speed.” Naturally, accomplishing this task requires a combination of Udacity’s online learning tools to give folks on-demand access to learning materials they need and a physical classroom environment to keep students on task. According to Newsom, “It’s not mass education anymore, it’s personalized.”
Source: Udacity blog, Open Education Alliance
When it comes to learning programming, so far we’ve seen camps set up that will teach kids how to program, not to mention that there are various books, classes, and online resources where one can pick up the necessary skills, but what about learning how to program through a board game? That’s the concept behind the board game called Robot Turtles. It was designed by the CEO of Google Comparison, Dan Shapiro, and the board game will introduce programming concepts to the player while playing like a regular board game where players have to move the turtle pieces on the board. (more…)
Robot Turtles Is A Board Game Designed To Teach Kids Programming Concepts original content from Ubergizmo. 
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It’s pretty common knowledge that the U.S. isn’t producing enough mathematicians, scientists and engineers to support demand in "STEM" fields. And reports come and go that other countries are facing similar shortages. But like all things that are definitely true, it’s actually pretty complicated to prove that the trend really exists. Robert N. Charette of IEEE Spectrum got suspicious and began combing data from the last six decades. His conclusion is that we actually have plenty of STEM workers, and the hype about a shortage may be doing more harm than good.
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Online privacy has always been a nebulous thing, particularly given the culture of paranoia that’s grown around western society in recent days. Nowhere is this more clear than with the saga of Edward Snowden. Today – in a bit of a departure from my usual fare -I’m going to explain to you why the Snowden saga should concern you.
Today, I’m going to explore something a lot of pirates don’t seem aware of – the marked impact piracy can actually have on developers, particularly if they’re independent. Sit back, ladies and gents, and let me tell you the long, sad tale of Gentlemen!
There’ll also be some stuff in there for all you developers, as well. Sit tight.
In late 2007, One Laptop Per Child launched its “Give 1 Get 1” program. While the do-gooder organization had originally shrugged off suggestions that it should offer its XO Laptop as a commercial product, OLPC finally gave in, letting consumers get their own device for a $399 donation (that price also paid to send one to a child in a developing nation). Unveiled back at CES, the Android-powered XO Tablet marks OLPC’s first proper foray into the consumer space, with the device available for $149 at major retailers like Walmart and Target. So is it any good?
Filed under: Tablets
Squigz by Fat Brain is a whole different building toy experience! Like
other building toys, Squigz are brightly colored and are made to stick
together. That’s basically where the similarities end.
Most of the million+ $35/$25 Raspberry Pi microcomputers shipped to buyers to-date have been helping U.S.- and U.K.-based makers realise their electronics’ dreams. But the original mission of the project — to inspire a new generation of programmers — remains undimmed. Which makes this Indiegogo campaign, to kit out a rural African primary school with a Pi-powered computer lab, worth a nod.
Earlier this year, the Raspberry Pi Foundation flagged up a self-funded project by a Belgian volunteer group which took a bunch of Pis out to Cameroon to set up a computer lab in another rural African school. The Pi’s low cost price-tag, low energy consumption and support for open source software gives it plenty of potential to gain ground as a first computing platform in developing nations — provided the initial funding can be found to get the hardware out to where it’s needed. So enter crowdfunding platform Indiegogo, in the latest example, to help people push Pi further.
As with the Cameroon project, the Swaziland-based project creators behind the Indiegogo campaign want to use Pi to equip a school — namely Sidvokodvo Nazarane Primary School – with a computer lab for teaching purposes. They’re seeking to raise $2,550 to fund 10 Raspberry Pis used in conjunction with Motorola Atrix laptop docks (a neat combination if you want to use a Pi as a laptop) so they can function as standalone machines without the need to buy monitors and keyboards, plus connectors and spare parts to keep the lab running.
The project is almost at its target, with just over $200 left to raise. If it exceeds the target the money will go towards buying more Pi to increase the number of machines in the lab. One of the people behind the campaign, Piers Duffell, an American volunteer working in Swaziland, notes the Pis will be used for typing tutorials, word processing programs, access to offline versions of Wikipedia, the Khan Academy for mathematics, and may also be used to let kids dabble with programming. Which is exactly what the Pi Foundation was aiming for.
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