Education
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
Tyrannosaurus rex, that coolest of all the dinosaurs, may have been even bigger and scarier than originally thought. That’s the conclusion that was recently reached by a team of scientists, who used computer modeling technology to estimate the average body mass of the carnivorous dinosaurs. After digitally “fleshing out” existing T. rex skeletons, the researchers now believe that the reptiles grew twice as fast, and reached adult weights up to 30 percent higher than previously assumed. Read More
Last year, a unique new educational device was tested with a group of school children. The device was the I-slate, an ultra-low-cost tablet computer that is being developed by the Institute for Sustainable and Applied Infodynamics (ISAID), a joint venture of Houston's Rice University and Singapore's Nanyang Technological University. The 10 to 13 year-old children were students at a rural school near Hyderabad, India. The tablet is designed for use in such impoverished schools, as each unit is expected to sell for less than US$50, and future models will run on solar power. Now that the field tests are complete and the results have been analyzed, the I-slate is set to go into full production. Read More
Ah, the ant farm. It's somehow nice to know that in the age of apps and iPods, kids still like to watch colonies of ants fastidiously going about their daily business. The humble ant farm hasn't remained unchanged by technology, however. For some time now, instead of dirt or sand, commercially-available kits have instead come with a clear green gel. The ants are not only able to tunnel through this goop, but it also serves as their source of food and water. Educational toy company Uncle Milton is now taking the concept a step farther, with its Ant Farm Revolution. It's a cylindrical gel ant farm, with a built-in LED lamp that casts giant silhouettes of its ants on the user's ceiling ... or presumably onto the outside wall of a neighbor's house. Read More
San Francisco's Sifteo Inc has confirmed that its cube-based, interactive educational gameplay system we looked at back in March is now ready for release in the U.S. and Canada. The Sifteo Cubes system takes timeless building blocks play and learning and gives it a modern update - with a color display, embedded computer system and sensing technology. Read More
"You know what your living room needs? A giant animatronic Triceratops." Should an interior designer ever offer you this advice, well, now you know where to find such a beast. Fancy goods-seller Hammacher Schlemmer is now offering a 20 foot (6 meter)-long, 1,345-pound (610 kg) model of everyone's favorite three-horned dinosaur, that moves and growls when human gawkers trigger its motion sensors. Its price tag might scare more people than its fearsome countenance, although at US$350,000, it's probably still cheaper than cloning your own real Triceratops from amber-encased dinosaur-blood-filled mosquitoes. Read More
South Korean ministry of education has announced a ground-breaking plan to digitize all textbooks in Korean schools and thus completely phase out printed materials by 2015. This opens a huge market for manufacturers of tablet PCs or smartphones as the Korean education ministry has revealed it will spend US$2.4 billion on buying appropriate devices and digitizing content for them. Read More
If you come across a word or phrase in another language, a printed or online dictionary is usually a good place to look for help. If you're faced with a language that's long been dead, however, then you've got problems. Those studying the cuneiform texts of Mesopotamian clay tablets or stone carvings now have reason to rejoice. After nine decades, the University of Chicago's Assyrian Dictionary Project has finally been completed - opening an encyclopedic window into the day to day lives of people from one of the world's first civilizations. Read More
Electronics-loving orthodontic clinician Dr. Mark Brickley has developed a collection of electronic circuit-building experiments, tested them on unsuspecting colleagues, and then squeezed them into a retro mint tin. After a few refinements, the Minty Geek Electronics Lab 101 kit was recently launched at the Maker Faire in Newcastle, UK. I spent a very productive few hours getting to grips with my inner geek and experiencing a genuine sense of achievement as I managed to create a morse code generator and an alarm that alerts me when someone opens the lid of my cashbox. Read More
Having undergone some physical therapy myself, I can confirm that even though keeping to a prescribed exercise and treatment regimen helps the injury heal faster, the daunting prospect of self-administered discomfort has led me to ignore the advice of my practitioner. A team at Microsoft's research wing has developed a working prototype of a system that may help to encourage physical injury sufferers to do their exercises by giving them a clearer understanding of what's going on. A therapist would use the device to project a series of graphics of underlying bone, muscle tissue, tendons or nerves directly onto the body of a patient to help explain the nature of the injury and prescribe effective treatment. The device can also take photos during a consultation, which can be subsequently reviewed or printed out as a memory aid for the patient. Read More
