I used to joke around about how I have learned so much more from YouTube than I ever did in school. I’m not joking anymore. Here’s a nice animation from Kurzgesagt that simplifies all you need to know about the Big Bang. It’s this type of education that plants a seed in my brain for future Wikipedia rabbit holes and YouTube note taking. All hail YouTube Class of 2014.
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Despite the move to eBooks and tablets, papers and printed reports are still a part of life. At least, they are, if you had a course in school where you had to turn in papers and all. Writing the actual paper is hard enough. While printing is relatively easy, stapling everything gets a bit complicated, especially if you don’t have a big-enough stapler.
Cue the Center Stapler, which is designed to staple the center of the book or papers so you don’t have to use half of a regular stapler and bend the wire ends manually.
The device has a bottom that can be separated from the top part, so both parts are on opposite sides of the paper. One part “connects” to the other by way of magnets. When you’re ready to staple, just push down and you’re done.
The Center Stapler is a concept by Daehyun Kwon, who was nominated for a 2013 SPARK award for the design.
[via Yanko Design]
Yeah, it’s easy to romanticize the past, but there’s something almost sweet about Confiscation Cabinets, an exhibition at the V&A’s Museum of Childhood showing 30 years’ worth of contraband swiped from kids at over 150 schools in London.
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Just a week after it began the first phase of putting iPads in the hands of all 640,000 students in the region, the Los Angeles school district already has a fight on its hands. In a matter of days, 300 children at Theodore Roosevelt High School managed to work around protective measures placed on the Apple tablets, giving them complete access to features — including Facebook, Twitter and other apps — that should otherwise have been blocked.
Students bypassed the security lock on the device by deleting a personal profile preloaded in the settings — a simple trick that has the school district police chief recommending the board limit the $1 billion rollout (including hardware and other related expenses) before it turns into a “runaway train scenario.” For now, officials have banned home use of the iPads while they assess ways to better restrict access — they would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for those meddling kids.
[Original image credit: flickingerbrad, Flickr]
Via: Fox News
Source: LA Times
I’m sure a lot of little girls wanted to become mermaids at some point in their lives. I’m guessing probably after they watched The Little Mermaid or some other movie which featured the mythical creatures.
There’s no way you can actually become a mermaid, but now you can learn how to be one (or at least, swim like one) at an actual school located in Manila, Philippines.
The school is called the Philippine Mermaid Swimming Academy and they’ll basically teach you how to swim like a mermaid. Students will be outfitted with “mono-tails” and will be taught basic mermaid moves like dolphin kicks and handstands.
The classes are being taught by professional divers and swimmers, with each 2-hour lesson costing approximately $62.
Through the lessons, instructor Annabelle Jimenez hopes to impart the playfulness and beauty that’s often associated with mermaids to her wards.
[via The Telegraph via TAXI]
Oh, education. So necessary, but so grueling. Particularly for oodles of grade-school instructors who are forced to swallow their fresh-out-of-college ambitions and fall into the system if they ever hope to level up in academia. We’ve seen glimmers of hope here and there, with certain schools getting outside of their comfort zones long enough to try new methodologies, and Pinterest’s latest project certainly holds a lot of promise. Teachers on Pinterest is a hub that showcases a variety of lesson plans and teaching tools, and through a partnership with Edutopia, it’s hoping to build out a full-bodied community for instructors. Hit up the source link below for a closer look, and remember: teachers rule.
Filed under: Software
Source: Pinterest Blog, Teachers on Pinterest
An article by Tim Lahey suggests that medical schools could change the admissions process to make sure the most deserving students get in by replacing the traditional student interview with, of all things, an MRI brain scan. Never gonna happen, for every reason you’ve already thought of. But even so… is it maybe a good idea?
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Intel’s new education-focused tablets won’t stir much envy among the iPad-toting kids of L.A., but they may suit more budget-conscious school districts. There are 10-inch and 7-inch versions, both simply branded “Education Tablets” and both running Atom Z2460 processors with low-end specs (laid out at the source link) and either Android 4.0 or 4.1. The hardware should just about cope with the bundled software, which includes titles like Kno Textbooks, Intellisense’s camera app that works with a snap-on magnification lens and PASCO’s SPARKvue science app that hooks up to thermal probes and other sensors that will likely require careful teacher supervision. We wish we had clear prices for these things, but there’s a whole step-by-step consultation process to wade through before Intel talks money.
Filed under: Tablets, Software, Intel
Via: Phone Arena, Android Community, Android Headlines
Source: Intel
If you thought Microsoft’s effort to push Surface RT tablets into classrooms would stop with a 10,000-unit giveaway, you’d be mistaken. Ryan Lowdermilk, a technology evangelist for the company, revealed that it’s offering 32GB Surface RT slates to K-12 and higher education institutions in 25 countries for $199, more than 50 percent off the $499 retail sticker price. Dropping $249 for each unit will snag organizations keyboard-infused Touch Covers, while bumping the cost to $289 will add Type Covers to the package. Education outfits can take advantage of the deal until August 31st (or while supplies last), but individual students won’t be able to snag a Surface at such a deep discount on their own. The post announcing the program has gone offline since its unveiling, but we’ve reached out to Lowdermilk to confirm that the offer is still valid. In the meantime, you can hit the second source link to snatch an order form for school administrators.
Update: It appears the order form has been pulled, so we’ve replaced the second source link with a mirror of the document.
[Thanks, Suraj-Sun]
Filed under: Tablets, Microsoft
Source: Ryan Lowdermilk (Google Cache), Surface for Education Order Form (PDF)
By conventional wisdom, the things we own don’t define us—no matter how much we hope they will. But according to science, there are some reliable correlations between who we are and what we own.
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