Hasta La Gadget!

Social media has continued to evolve over the course of the last decade.
From social networking to social gaming to social commerce, the common
belief is that social will continue to bleed into other categories.
Social Finance is SM’s latest iteration and there are a number of
exciting start-ups trying to attack the trillion-dollar student debt
problem in the U.S.

With the advancement in technology these days, course materials handed out to students in university has transitioned from being physical copies to being directed to online blackboard portals where the slides and notes can be downloaded digitally. With such systems in place, it is not an uncommon sight to see students in classes take out laptops and tablets to take down notes and refer to course materials rather than the typical pen and paper setup, but apparently not everyone is a fan of such conveniences. In an interview with NYU Local, Professor Vincent Renzi, director of the MAP’s program’s Foundation of Scientific Enquiry, revealed his particular dislike of having laptops in classrooms.

He feels that laptops create a physical barrier between the student and the lecturer, preventing “immediate interpersonal communication”. Next he also feels that laptops allow for outright transcription as opposed to “real” note taking. To a certain extent we know what he means – since typing is a lot faster than writing, students are able to record word for word what the lecturer is saying, instead of taking relevant notes that they would personally understand. Last but not least Renzi feels that laptops give students the opportunity to mess around on the internet instead of paying attention in class. All valid points, but what do you guys think? Do you agree with Renzi’s sentiments?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Tinkermite Tablet is a wooden toy that teaches your kids about technology, Apple reveals they sold twice as many iPads compared to Macs to the education sector,

Google is well-known for projects with unexpected origins. It’s almost natural, then, that the code Google used to build a web course has led to a full-fledged tool for online education. The open-source Course Builder project lets anyone make their own learning resources, complete with scheduled activities and lessons, if they’ve got some skill with HTML and JavaScript. There’s also an avenue for live teaching or office hours: the obligatory Google+ tie-in lets educators announce Hangouts on Air sessions. Code is available immediately, although you won’t need to be grading virtual papers to see the benefit. A handful of schools that include Stanford, UC San Diego and Indiana University are at least exploring the use of Course Builder in their own initiatives, which could lead to more elegant internet learning — if also fewer excuses for slacking.

Filed under: Internet

Google releases Course Builder, takes online learning down an open-source road originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 11 Sep 2012 20:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In this day and age where owning tablets is becoming more commonplace, it’s not unusual to see kids playing with them at restaurants or in school, and since this seems to be the natural progress of the culture and society we live in, why not make it an educational experience at the same time, right? Dubbed the Tinkermite Tablet, this is a Kickstarter project that aims to teach kids about technology and how things work (to a certain extent) without the aid of electronics, making this a learning experience that many of us were probably familiar with back in the day.

Now instead of getting kids to fit shapes in their respective holes, the Tinkermite Tablet will actually show the anatomy of a tablet, teaching children about technology and how some of the gadgets they play with these days works. The innards of the tablet can be disassembled and reassembled as a smartphone, both of which are reminiscent of the iPad and iPhone, so let’s hope there will be no lawsuits headed their way! Jokes aside, the Tinkermite Tablet will show where components like the camera goes, the CPU, the memory, and etc. It certainly sounds like great idea and a great way to get kids involved and interested in technology, so if you’d like to learn more about the project or donate to it, head on over to its Kickstarter page for the details.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: The BERO Kickstarter project is a 4″ robot that can be controlled via your smartphone, The Instacube is a gadget that will let you stream Instagram photos,

This week evolutionary ecologist Peter Mayhew has presented a set of findings which show the rate of climate change in the Earth to be detrimental to the number of species of animals on our planet. While findings in the past have shown that periods of warmth on our blue globe have also been times when the number of different species of animals has risen, the speed at which the Earth is warming here in the present is, as Mayhew suggests, too rapid for the increase in species to outweigh the number of species that are becoming extinct. The new study Mayhew presents works with a new way of looking at the number of species in each geological period studied with only well-sampled periods rather than with simple tallies of the first and last appearances of each species.

The results of the newest findings here with Peter Mayhew’s group resolve a previous contradiction in the study of climate change in which high and low temperatures both showed growth or decline in numbers of species on the planet. The current article referred to this week “Biodiversity tracks temperature over time” will be appearing in PNAS immediately if not soon, and includes authors P. J. Mayhew, M. A. Bell, T. G. Benton, and A. J. McGowan, who let it be known that with their new findings worked with number of known families of marine invertebrates and sea-surface temperatures over the course of 540 million years.

OF SPECIAL NOTE – Scott Wing, palaeobiologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, reacted to the article in a couple ways – the first of which will be important to those of you looking for information on what this all has to do with us humans:

“This article has nothing to say about the effects of global warming at any timescale of interest to most humans.” – Wing

So keep that in mind – you can certainly take what you want from it, but note that the paper does not comment on the effect climate change is having on humans – that’s a talk for a different day.

What findings in this study do show is that when temperatures were high in the history of our planet, biodiversity was high, and when temperatures were low, biodiversity was low as well. These findings, as the group make clear, contradict previous work (that includes work by Mayhew’s group, amongst others), which showed temperature to have the opposite effect on biodiversity.

The rate at which the planet gets warmer or cooler, the group reports, has a direct effect on the biodiversity of the planet. The rate of change can have giant effects on how biodiversity is affected. With the rate of extinctions that are occurring at the rapid change in temperature we’re in now, for example, diversity will likely not rise fast enough to make up for the loss.

Professor Tim Benton, Biological Sciences at the University of Leeds, reacted to this particular possibility according to U of York:

“Science progresses by constantly re-examining conclusions in the light of better data. Our results seem to show that temperature improves biodiversity through time as well as across space. However, they do not suggest that current global warming is good for existing species. Increases in global diversity take millions of years, and in the meantime we expect extinctions to occur.” – Benton

Mayhew adds that the next step is to study longer periods of time, and as Shanan Peters, palaeobiologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, notes: the more interesting study in the future will be findings on major climate transitions, like the one we’re very possibly in right this minute.

“The time periods we’re really interested in now are decades and hundreds of years — at maximum 1,000 years. … You can’t get that kind of detail by looking into the deep past. If you want to know how temperature change is affecting things on that timescale, you’re going to have to look at the more recent fossil record.” – Mayhew

*EDITORS NERD NOTE: Though it would be ironic beyond comprehension if it were true, the ecologist Peter Mayhew and the actor Peter Mayhew are not one in the same. SlashGear awards 5 bonus nerd points to anyone who knows Peter Mayhew’s most famous and iconic role without looking it up!

Climate Change rate said to kill more species than it creates is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
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