Tag Archives: teaching

Ed Tech Is Poised to Go Mainstream

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By Sari Factor Nearly three hours a day. That’s how much time the vast majority of children ages 3 to 7 spend using digital devices, according to a study by the Sesame Workshop. These are “digital...

Forbes 30-Under-30 Honoree, Nic Borg, On Technology Enabled Education

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This is the tenth article in the Education Technology Innovation series, and it is fair to say that Nic Borg’s background is unlike any of the other entrepreneurs featured in the series. Like others...

Robots Teach Young Children How To Code

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With a future increasingly overlaid in all things digital, it makes sense to raise an ever enlarging number of kids to become programmers; we’re going to need them, after all. And while learning the specifics of a coding language is better done after a certain age, getting acquainted with the concepts underlying programming can be done somewhat sooner. Play-i’s Bo and Yana robots are being introduced for just this purpose. It gives children as young as 5 the opportunity to control them by selecting a series of visual presets that trigger particular behaviours. By doing so, they get acquainted with the “if/then nature of programming”, and rub elbows with concepts that will become central to their potential later careers. Bo is the three-wheeled bot on the right, while Yana is the stationary one on the left. Obviously, their abilities will be limited by their physical attributes so the robot that does more things costs a bit more. Right now a pledge of $149 for Bo and $49 for Yana will get you in the game, although full funding needs to be achieved first and that’s not done yet. Hit the links below to get your chance to move that along a bit.

[ Product Page ] VIA [ Engadget ]

Udacity launches Open Education Alliance to help modernize university curriculums

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Udacity launches Open Education Alliance to help modernize educational system

Udacity's first partnership with an institution of higher learning might not have turned out as well as it hoped, but a setback at San Jose State University won't cause the online learning portal to call it quits on college campuses. Quite the contrary, in fact. Today, Udacity announced the creation of the Open Education Alliance to "bridge the gap between the skills employers need and what traditional universities teach." The alliance is comprised of both Silicon Valley heavyweights like Google, AT&T and NVIDIA and educators including Georgia Tech and Khan Academy. The OEA's goal is to enlist the help of both companies and educators in building a new curriculum to help students learn what they need to choose and succeed in a modern career.

Here at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2013, Udacity CEO Sebastian Thrun and California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom discussed the need for a shift in our educational system, and consequently the OEA. "It's important to be creative about this," said Thrun, "we need to move away from an 'industry of drones' by enabling students to learn at their own speed." Naturally, accomplishing this task requires a combination of Udacity's online learning tools to give folks on-demand access to learning materials they need and a physical classroom environment to keep students on task. According to Newsom, "It's not mass education anymore, it's personalized."

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Source: Udacity blog, Open Education Alliance

Pioneering astronaut Neil Armstrong dies at 82

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Pioneering astronaut Neil Armstrong dies at 82

It's a story that we hoped we'd never have to report. Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on Earth's Moon, has died at the age of 82 after complications from heart surgery three weeks earlier. His greatest accomplishment very nearly speaks for itself -- along with help from fellow NASA astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, he changed the landscape of space exploration through a set of footprints. It's still important to stress his accomplishments both before and after the historic Apollo 11 flight, though. He was instrumental to the Gemini and X-series test programs in the years before Apollo, and followed his moonshot with roles in teaching aerospace engineering as well as investigating the Apollo 13 and Space Shuttle Challenger incidents. What more can we say? Although he only spent a very small portion of his life beyond Earth's atmosphere, he's still widely considered the greatest space hero in the US, if not the world, and inspired a whole generation of astronauts. We'll miss him.

[Image credit: NASA Apollo Archive]

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Pioneering astronaut Neil Armstrong dies at 82 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 25 Aug 2012 15:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google pumps cash into UK classrooms, will buy Arduino, Raspberry Pi sets for kids

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Eric Schmidt has said that Google will make cash available through its investment into Teach First to buy Raspberry Pi and Arduino units for British schoolchildren. He was at the UK's Science Museum to talk about Mountain View's partnership with the charity, which puts top university graduates into schools to teach disadvantaged kids. The Android-maker wrote a cheque to fund over 100 places on the scheme, aiming to get bright computer scientists to reintroduce engineering principles to pupils. Mr. Schmidt hoped that with the right support, kits like the Raspberry Pi would do for this generation what the BBC Micro did three decades ago.

Google pumps cash into UK classrooms, will buy Arduino, Raspberry Pi sets for kids originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 May 2012 05:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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