Hasta La Gadget!

It’s not really practical to give universities a meaningful test drive. Not without ample amounts of money and time to throw at a practice semester, at least. It’s about to become comparatively trivial. Arizona State, the University of Cincinnati and 38 other institutions are teaming up with Academic Partnerships to offer the first course from certain online degrees for free — and, more importantly, to make it count as credit. Money only matters to participants (and Academic Partnerships) if they move on to the full program. Prospective students will have to wait until the spring to sign up for what’s ultimately a freemium education, but patience could be a virtue if it means understanding the workload before committing to what may be years of higher learning.

[Image credit: Dave Herholz, Flickr]

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Via: New York Times

Source: MOOC2Degree

SimCity is a video game that allows you to build, run, and even destroy your very own city. One of the things I always liked about SimCity was building up your city and then setting loose monsters or other plagues on its inhabitants. A lot of schools are using video games to help kids learn while having fun.

When I was in school, the only games we had to play more things like Lemonade Stand or Oregon Trail. The good news is you won’t catch dysentery while playing SimCityEDU. EA and GlassLab have announced the development of an online educational community based on the award-winning SimCity game. SimCityEDU will serve as a resource for classroom teachers that have a strong interest in utilizing digital platforms to help kids learn.

The new classroom resource is intended to drive student interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Using the classroom resource teachers will be able to create and share digital SimCity-based lesson plans to encourage students to think critically about issues facing modern cities. EA says that SimCity is the perfect place for students to learn urban planning, environmental management, and socio-economic development.

The SimCity video game is set to launch on March 5. The game will be available for PC and Mac gamers and allows players to build their own custom cities. The new version of SimCity also marks the first time in the franchise that a player’s decisions will have long-lasting repercussions extend beyond their city limits. Players will have to work together to address climate change, search for renewable resources, and combat natural disasters.

[via SimCity]

EA and GlassLab announce SimCityEDU is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
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Lenovo announced today that it will be introducing a special version of its ThinkPad X131e, an education-focused notebook, running Google’s Chrome OS, ZDNet’s James Kendrick reports. The Chromebook will be sold exclusively to the education market, and the K-12 segment in particular, beginning February 26 via special bid for volume subscription ordering through schools.

The Chromebook is a version of the existing X131e, which runs Windows and which Lenovo already sells to the education market, but running Google’s lightweight OS. It’ll manage an entire school day’s worth of work on its 6-cell battery, the company claims, with a 1366×768 resolution screen, Intel processor and 4-pound body weight. The company also said that it will be making the new Chromebooks available with customization options designed to help schools configure them to suit their specific needs, Kendrick reports.

Unlike other Chromebooks already on the market, the ThinkPad X131e has a degree of ruggedization that should help it better withstand the rigors of being lugged around and used by younger children. Google has promoted the Chromebook as particularly well suited to classroom adoption, and even ran a program discounting the Series 5 from Samsung to $99 during the 2012 holiday season to try to encourage its adoption.

This is a definite win for Google, which gets to capitalize on Lenovo’s brand to help it further the Chromebook cause, specifically in education where it clearly wants more mindshare. And for Lenovo, it’s another way to attach a market it wants to get into in a bad way. Back in August, Lenovo North America VP and General Manager spoke to Bloomberg about how the company wants to take over Dell’s strong position in the education market, and he said at the time that his company can do so with agressive pricing and “the right products.” A Chromebook is another attack vector for challenging Dell, one that could potentially allow for considerable pricing advantages, since Chrome OS doesn’t carry the hefty licensing fees of Microsoft’s Windows.

Working alongside college professors at San Jose State, online course start-up Udacity will launch a pilot program for remedial and college-level algebra. Importantly, these classes won’t simply result in a nice certificate, but genuine college credit. Students will have to stump up $150 for each three-unit course, with the intake limited to 300; half will come from San Jose State, while the remaining places will be given to those attending nearby community colleges and high schools. The online course start-up, founded by former Stanford professor Sebastian Thurn, says that its own mentors will assist university staff in administering the course, which will include instructional video and web-based quizzes.

MIT and Harvard’s similar EdX course saw promising results during its own pilot tests at San Jose. While 40 percent in the traditional class arrangement got a C grade or lower, only 9 percent using the blended online course picked up the same grades. California Governor Jerry Brown hopes that the courses might help reduce barriers to college education entry — more than 50 percent of entrants are unable to meet the college’s basic requirements in math and English.

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Via: The Verge

Source: New York Times

Google loves inspiring kids to go wild with ideas in its annual Doodle 4 Google competition, and that tradition is carrying on for 2013. This year’s just-started drawing exhibition asks American kids to visualize what they imagine would be their best day ever — no mean feat, as you’ll see in the video after the break. The K-12 student who wins on the national level may find all that daydreaming worth the effort, however, as the top prizes are about as grand as they were for 2012. Along with seeing their drawing become the homepage doodle for a day, the top-ranking child gets a $50,000 technology grant for their current school, a $30,000 college scholarship, a Chromebook and a Wacom tablet to foster that now-obvious creative talent. Budding young artists need to get their entries to Google’s real or virtual doorsteps by March 22nd; we have a hunch the winner’s best day ever will be May 23rd, when millions of searchers will catch a glimpse of that early magnum opus.

Continue reading Doodle 4 Google 2013 challenges kids to dream big, describe their best day (video)

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Via: SlashGear

Source: Doodle 4 Google