Education

I don't know about other people, but when I was a child, I was inventing things such as a musical instrument made out of a folded piece of cardboard and some rubber bands. Ten year-old Clara Lazen, however, has done something a little more noteworthy. The fifth-grader from Kansas City, Missouri, built a model of a molecule that is new to science. If the molecule itself were to actually be created, it could possibly be used for energy storage, or in explosives. Read More

Here at Gizmag we are always keeping an eye on innovative solutions for schooling and education. We've covered the solar powered mobile computer classroom project and the AIRchitecture flying classrooms of the future, but now we're excited about these proposals from architects all over the world, who recently submitted their ideas for what schools of the future could look like. Read More

This morning at New York City's Guggenheim Museum, Apple announced the launch of its iBooks 2 for iPad system. The technology is intended to replace traditional paper school textbooks with interactive digital textbooks, that students would access on their own personal iPads. Educational publishers including Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill and Pearson will supply content on the iBookstore, with most titles priced at no more than US$14.99. Mac users will also be able to create their own digital textbooks, using the authoring tool, iBooks Author. Read More

Budding computer hackers/scientists are about to get a welcome gift, albeit a bit late for Christmas 2011. The non-profit Raspberry Pi Foundation (RPF) is nearing the release date of its surprisingly powerful and remarkably affordable Raspberry Pi line of bare-bones machines that have been developed in an effort to broaden kids' access to computers in the UK and abroad. How affordable? The figure above was no typo. Read on to learn just what US$25 will get you when these nifty, fully-assembled, credit-card sized computers go on sale next month (sorry, case, monitor, keyboard and mouse not included ... we did say bare bones). Read More

Educational videos available online have huge potential to enrich the classroom experience. There is great content available on practically every subject merely at the click of a button. That said, the same click of a button separates school children from funny cats, silly Internet memes and scantily-clad pop stars. The problem can be easily solved by banning video sharing sites altogether, but that of course means denying the students access to hundreds of thousands of inspiring and informative videos. YouTube apparently knows this, as it decided to introduce a distraction-free version of its platform called YouTube for Schools. Read More

Lenovo has announced a new laptop specifically tailored for schools and students - the Lenovo ThinkPad X130e. Featuring school-proof reinforced, yet lightweight design, the new 11.6-incher from Lenovo comes with multimedia- and web content-capable hardware and battery that should last throughout the entire school day, or even a bit longer. Read More

Hertford Regional College (HRC) in the UK has joined forces with the Thor Data Center (THORDC) in Iceland to provide cost efficient, eco-friendly technology to schools, colleges and universities throughout the UK. The joint venture has been coined "HRC Cube" and is an innovative solution to dealing with increasing cuts in UK government funding to education. Drawing on Iceland's combination of freezing temperatures and natural volcanic heat, THORDC has become one of the most energy-efficient data centers in the world. Powered by clean renewable hydroelectric and geothermal energy sources, the facility is claimed to offer cost savings to its customers whilst at the same time helping them lower their carbon emissions. The fact that it is situated in such a remote location also ensures a high level of security for the data. Read More

A new teaching app has been released for iDevices where Mozart, Scott Joplin and Clara Schumann - and a friendly onboard instrument tuner called Toonr - join forces to make music practice less of a chore. The My Note Games system is said to be the first children's app to make use of note recognition technology and uses a suite of simple games to help kids develop sight reading, timing and tuneful playing skills. Read More

People learning a new language almost always have the same complaint – you may temporarily memorize words that you learn in a classroom, but you soon forget those words unless you actually have to use the language. Some educators have addressed this problem through Task-Based Language Learning, in which students have to complete a task using instructions provided in a foreign language. Researchers at Britain’s Newcastle University have recently put a high-tech spin on this approach – they’ve created an interactive kitchen that keeps track of what its users are doing, as it uses the French language to guide them in preparing French cuisine. Read More