Tag: BACKTOSCHOOL

As Facebook has grown in popularity, we've gotten some slightly surprising friend requests. There are the long-lost kindergarten classmates, the relative strangers and the former coworkers. But our favorites have always been the teachers. If we're lucky, we all had one or two teachers between grade school and high school that really spoke to us, whether bestowing upon us a love for their favored ...

We've already heard about how students are clinging to printed textbooks despite many of the advantages provided by e-books. Sales of electronic textbooks are expected to increase in the coming years, but growth may be relatively slow, with optimistic estimates projecting a 15-percent adoption rate by the end of 2012. But a new report from the Chronicle of Higher Education claims that some ...

Professional athletes already employ motion-capture technology and 3-D imaging to identify weaknesses in their various swings, gaits and throwing motions. Now, another group of dedicated and intense professionals hopes to perfect the techniques of its members through a similar system of video analysis. According to CNET, the second-grade classroom at Cesar Chavez Elementary School in San ...

Confronted with an ongoing app revolution and a prosperous surge of versatile handheld devices, calculators may seem condemned to being bygone gadgets of yore. A defiant and inspired Casio, however, apparently believes its calculators -- equipped with new, cutting-edge capabilities -- remain highly relevant and necessary mathematical tools. Older fogies (especially the bumbling ones who -- ...

Kno blew a few minds at this year's D8 with its dual-screen tablet aimed at students. The Linux-powered digital textbook offered two 14.1-inch capacitive touchscreens and a powerful Tegra 2 chipset from NVIDIA for "less than $1,000." Now, the 5.5-pound behemoth has a single-screened little brother that will be priced "much lower" than the two-screened model. The more traditional tablet-style Kno ...

The New York Times reports that Mark Zuckerberg, now the 35th wealthiest American according to Forbes, will announce a $100 million donation to Newark, New Jersey's troubled school system on the 'Oprah Winfrey Show' this Friday. The announcement's timing may have been carefully chosen to offset the potential public relations fiasco of David Fincher's 'The Social Network,' premiering Friday evening ...

Last week, a 17-year-old Pennsylvania student received $33,000 in settlement money from the Tunkhannock Area School District, which the student (and her lawyers, from the American Civil Liberties Union) accused of illegally searching her cell phone. The lawsuit was initiated in May, after the student -- named in court documents only as "N.N." -- had her phone confiscated while using it in class ...

Hey, student! Did you like our list of the best PDF-reading iPad apps last week? We know that you can't get through your classes with just a handful of essays loaded onto your 'Pad, though, so we've come up with a list of note-taking apps that will help you ditch the spiral notebook and go entirely digital. We're not masters at typing on the iPad's touchscreen just yet, and we find those ...

The peer-to-peer microloan site Kiva is drastically expanding its scope with the launch of a student loan program. Traditionally, Kiva connects entrepreneurs in the developing world with lenders who are free to give as little as $25 to help a needy business person get off the ground. Now, the site is featuring students from Bolivia, Paraguay and Ecuador who need help paying for their education. ...

It looks like the kids are alright, after all. A new study from the University of Maryland shows that more time spent in front of a computer doesn't hurt a child's academic performance, and, in some cases, actually improves test scores. Led by family science professor Sandra L. Hofferth, the six-year study followed a group of 1,000 children, who were between the ages of six and 12 in 1997, and ...

The Internet presents kids with unlimited educational opportunities, so -- unsurprisingly -- kids don't actually use it to discover new information. Like a shiny new toy rapidly losing its luster in a dusty corner, kids ignore the infinite search possibilities afforded by the Web, and instead prefer bookmarks, remembered favorites and paid subscription services to fulfill their online needs. A ...

The school year's already begun for most American college students, and they are no doubt racked with the same problem that we had as undergrads: carrying around countless handouts, course packets, articles, essays and notes. Depending on the breadth of your study and the wickedness of your professors, you could be faced with a small mountain of paper for each class. (Your author recalls, not so ...

The only blackouts most college students experience typically involve homemade absinthe and late night stomach pumps. This week, however, students at one university in Pennsylvania will have to endure an entirely different -- and perhaps more terrifying -- brand of blackout: a digital one. As of today, access to all social networking sites and instant messaging programs will be blocked across ...

The inescapable and unstoppable robots from DARPA and Boston Dynamics frequently incite nerdy references to Skynet and the destruction of humanity. But, two groups of university eggheads -- who realistically should know better -- are apparently engaged in a competition to produce the most horrifying, nightmarish robots ever to grace (and eventually destroy) the planet. One-upping their ...

Defying skeptics everywhere, the gadget with the funny name and an absurdly low price will reportedly arrive in India this January. Rumors concerning the Sakshat -- a minimally priced, government-endorsed Indian Android tablet -- have circulated for more than a year. The device, which was designed for students and folks typically unable to afford a computer, reportedly has a manufacturer, a ...