Lucky 13 comes in with a bang at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show.
While in the real world, you might catch the flu in the exhibit halls
of the Las Vegas Convention Center, in the virtual world there’s no
viruses to speak of – just a lot of chatter that’s being monitored at
high frequency by Salesforce.
Dell’s Latitude 10 earns some noteworthiness as an early work-oriented Windows 8 tablet, but it isn’t what we’d call cheap with a $650 base price. The crew in Round Rock is mending that with a new essentials level that scales things back. It sheds the active digitizer and removable battery in the name of a lower $579 price for a 64GB version that’s available to order today. Price-sensitive slate shoppers can go one step further in the near future: Dell is promising a properly frugal 32GB version for $499 that should ship in the months ahead. There’s still a stiff fight ahead when Windows RT tablets already undercut the Latitude, but the essentials tiers could be low-hanging fruit for pros and students still hanging on to legacy apps. Check out our hands-on with the slate past the break.
Gallery: Dell Latitude hands-on
Continue reading Dell Latitude 10 essentials trim pushes pro Windows 8 tablets down to $499 (video)
Source: Dell
Dell’s Latitude 10 earns some noteworthiness as an early work-oriented Windows 8 tablet, but it isn’t what we’d call cheap with a $650 base price. The crew in Round Rock is mending that with a new essentials level that scales things back. It sheds the active digitizer and removable battery in the name of a lower $579 price for a 64GB version that’s available to order today. Price-sensitive slate shoppers can go one step further in the near future: Dell is promising a properly frugal 32GB version for $499 that should ship in the months ahead. There’s still a stiff fight ahead when Windows RT tablets already undercut the Latitude, but the essentials tiers could be low-hanging fruit for pros and students still hanging on to legacy apps.
Continue reading Dell Latitude 10 essentials trim pushes pro Windows 8 tablets down to $499
Source: Dell
For many startups, creating the educational platform (and learning experience) of the future began with reinventing the presentation, distribution — really, the essence — of educational content. And what is the most familiar package for that content? The good ole textbook, in all its rigid and bulky glory. As such, startups like Kno, Inkling and Boundless have been helping to make textbooks and learning content digital, interactive and personalized. Of course, generally speaking, these startups have had to fight tooth and nail against the incumbents of the space — the controllers of content — the big, bad publishers.
Self-publishing platforms and open content resources have grown in popularity and startups have begun experimenting with new ways to present learning material, all of which has threatened the old guard, forcing them to make moves. Adapt or go the way of the dinosaur. Although they’ve been known to stand in the way of innovation. This morning, textbook publishing giant, McGraw-Hill, showed that it’s been taking these changes seriously and may just be ready to play ball. Not your average CES startup, the company unveiled its new suite of interactive and adaptive learning products that aim to personalize the learning process and help students improve their performance.
The suite leverages adaptive learning technology — one of the hottest topics in education this past year — which, simply put, seeks to personalize the educational experience by collecting data on student comprehension (knowledge, skill and confidence), employing algorithms to create customized study plans/paths based on that data. The goal being to keep students engaged (and improving) by helping them to identify and focus on areas where they’re struggling.
Traditionally, adaptive learning tech has focused on study tools, but with its new suite, McGraw-Hill is looking to go beyond that to create a fully adaptive course. The company launched its own study tool, LearnSmart, back in 2009, which gives its new products the advantage of a ready-made user base and a ton of data to work with thanks to its one million unique student users, who have answered more than one billion questions to date.
While the suite will include products like a “before-the-course” adaptive resource (that lets students warm up before difficult classes begin), a “photo-realistic virtual lab” and a comprehensive adaptive learning system, the stand-out was its unveiling of SmartBook, an adaptive eTextbook for laptops, desktops and tablets that adjusts to students’ comprehension and speed as they go. It’s not quite the Textbook of the future, as the experience is comparable to reading your average textbook, but it’s a clear sign of which way things are going. Instead of having to quiz yourself, your SmartBook will assess your knowledge as you read, highlighting content and concepts that students need to master.
In fact, the book will actually talk to you, offering voice instructions and coaching students on the most effective way to read the material. If they answer incorrectly, it guides them to the material they need to re-read. Pretty cool.
McGraw-Hill says that it expects to launch its SmartBooks this spring on Mac, PC, iOS and Android. Collectively, the SmartBooks will cover 90 different subject areas and cost $20 and up (per book).
From what we’ve seen, the product isn’t the sexiest out there, but it does make good use of innovations in digital textbooks like those we’ve seen from Kno and Inkling, offering dynamic text and, unlike the others, voice instruction. To be sure, it’s a space that’s becoming more crowded and competitive, with Pearson employing Knewton’s adaptive learning technology to upgrade its digital learning tools — and Wiley, for that matter.
What’s more, it will be interesting to see what the launch of McGraw-Hill’s SmartBooks means for relationships it has with startups like Kno, which has been helping to digitize the publisher’s textbooks and make them more interactive. McGraw-Hill instead turned to its adaptive tech partner Area9 to help it develop its SmartBooks.
Not to be outdone by its publishing partner, Kno announced a new product today at CES as well, unveiling “Kno Me,” a personal study dashboard that helps students monitor their progress as they read. The dashboard allows students to check-in to view realtime stats on their study behavior, time management, interaction levels and progress. Users can then share these results with peers or follow the engagement levels of their peers.
The product will complement Kno’s interactive, digital textbooks, which now span over 200K titles and contain content from 65 of the top publishers. The smart textbooks offer more than 70 interactive features designed to boost engagement and help students reduce the amount of time they spend studying by improving efficiency.
With Kno Me, the startup is trying to take that efficiency one step further by giving students deeper insight into their reading habits. Kno Co-founder Osman Rashid says that the idea is really to help students answer the question, “how much am I really studying?” Generally, the only assessment in this regard is a grade, and by that point, it’s generally too late anyway. It’s not exactly adaptive learning, but it does personalize and add granularity to the learning process, allowing students to see the average time they spend interacting with textbooks, the percentage of pages annotated, glossary terms mastered, and so on.
Kno Me is now available on all Kno interactive textbooks for iPad, Windows 8 and web browsers and will soon be available for Android and Windows 7.
And, for good measure, Pathbrite — the educational portfolio startup that allows students and teachers to collect, organize and present their learning achievements, course completion and so on — also got in on the action today, announcing a new product and a new agreement with textbook behemoth Pearson.
As a result of the partnership, the startup will be integrating its portfolio platform into Pearson’s personalized learning environment, now used by more than nine million students each year. It’s a big win for the young edtech startup, giving it access to a huge new audience.
When textbooks were actually books they were good for flattening posters and bringing monitors to eye-level. Now their ebook personas may really force you to learn. Grim, I know. More »
McGraw-Hill is taking on the one-size-fits-all approach to textbooks with its freshly unveiled SmartBook: an e-book that is claimed to adapt to student’s learning patterns. Aimed at college students, the SmartBook service peppers users with questions as they read and determines what topics it should present to reinforce learning. Come sometime this spring, the SmartBook will be available for more than 90 course areas starting at $20. It’ll be joined by a handful of similar tools for driving home the curriculum, including something called LearnSmart Achieve, which is designed to serve up videos and other interactive embellishments in response to automatically detected areas of weakness. When you’re ready to hit the books, just be careful they don’t hit you back.
Continue reading McGraw-Hill reveals the SmartBook: an ‘adaptive’ e-book for students
Filed under: Software
Polaroid’s newish image as a digital media company got one more boost today, with the launch of a new, $150 Android tablet aimed specifically at children. Simply/obviously branded the “Polaroid kids tablet,” the 7-inch device has sidestepped the holiday shopping rush to try its luck instead launching among the throng at the CES show later this month in Las Vegas.
The news comes one day after Polaroid also announced a new retail strategy, the launch of at least 10 new stores this year dedicated to digital printing, which will also become a key place also to showcase its devices.
You might legitimately criticize Google’s Android for breeding a lot of fragmentation in the mobile market, but what the open-source OS has also done is help make wireless devices like tablets and smartphones truly mainstream, and, by way of being a ‘free’ OS, pave the way for some interesting devices that cater specifically to particular market segments. The Polaroid kids tablet is part of both of those trends.
The kids tablet, Polaroid says, will be made extra-durable — as you can see by the illustration here, that will include an extra-large bumper/bezel. Other hardware specifics for the Ice Cream Sandwich-loaded device, made in conjunction with Polaroid licensee Southern Telecom, include 8GB of internal storage with an additional external SD card slot; a 1.0 GHz CORTEX-A8 processor, a rear-only camera, and WiFi-only connectivity.
And, like other connected devices aimed at the youth market, it will come preloaded with parent-controlled security features and links to educational and kids-specific content.
This will include a “Kids Cam”, Music Studio and Draw features, as well as a couple of customized interfaces to deliver children-friendly content. These include a filtered video-streaming app called Kids Vids, as well as an interface called Free Play that presents all the free apps available from a child-filtered Android app store, the App Shop.
As a parent of two young kids myself, I have to admit that I’ve been pretty disappointed with a lot of the “kid friendly” devices on the market to date, which are usually too restricted and closed-source to be truly useful. And kids, after all, like to use tablets and smartphones pretty much like adults do, as evidenced by this Harris Poll study out today on smartphone and computer usage across the U.S.
I personally haven’t taken the time to “child proof” our own connected devices and so am constantly hovering over my children every time they use them, to keep them from lapsing into near-constant browsing of very, very random YouTube content (despite my very best efforts to restrict that browsing to Khans Academy ‘let’s learn math!’ videos). Something like this seems to take advantage of the huge amount of good content out there to keep them interested, while also giving a bit of peace of mind.
Other features include hotlinks to Nook children’s books, Dr. Seuss’ catalogue and interactive books from the Smithsonian.
Polaroid is selling the kids tablet along with its other devices online as well as through Kohl’s stores.
Been staring at that Raspberry Pi trying to figure out where to start? You’re hardly alone. We’ve spent some time with the diminutive Linux machine and even tried to point you in the right direction when booting up your Pi for the first time. If you’re looking for something a little more in depth than our own tutorial however, its worth checking out the just released Raspberry Pi Education Manual. The book, drafted by a team of teachers from Computing at School (CAS) and released under the Creative Commons licence, is available for free either through the Pi Store or at the source link in PDF form. It’s a little more education-focused than say a tome like Getting Started with Raspberry Pi, but it’s certainly an excellent introduction to the platform.
Filed under: Misc
Source: Raspberry Pi
While many of us are still recovering from New Year’s celebrations, Amazon is considerably clearer-headed: it wants us ready for the winter school term that’s about to start. Appropriately, it’s offering a surprisingly steep discount on the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 for students. Americans headed back to class can get $50 off the price of the larger tablet for the whole of January, regardless of the capacity or the presence of LTE. The catch, apart from needing a .edu email address for the Amazon Student program, is the requirement for an active Prime subscription — although that’s no great shakes when Amazon accepts both the free six-month offer and the $39 yearly student plan. At $249, the discounted Kindle Fire HD is tempting for anyone who can do their course shopping at the Kindle Store… or just wants a convenient distraction during mid-terms.
Via: SlashGear
Source: Amazon
Publishers often want to work closely with e-book outlets — possibly a little too closely — but it’s rare that they involve themselves directly. Pearson is taking that uncommon step by making a 5 percent, $89.5 million investment in Nook Media, the joint venture between Barnes & Noble and Microsoft. Some of the reasoning won’t be made public until Barnes & Noble provides holiday sales results on January 3rd, but Pearson is clear that it’s furthering its online education plans: it wants Nook Media’s distribution skills to make a “seamless and effective experience for students.” Just when we’ll see this harmony is still up in the air, though. Nook Media has yet to outline what Microsoft’s partnership means for e-books and e-readers, let alone how Pearson factors in. We’re not expecting a sea change until companies start speaking up.
Continue reading Pearson buys a small stake in Nook Media, wants a fast track for digital education
Filed under: Microsoft
Source: PaidContent
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
