Tag Archives: Education

NEC Dual Screen Android Tablet



Jeffrey takes a look at NEC‘s cool dual screen Android tablet. Each touch screen is 7″ and while there are many uses, one target market is education. One screen can be used to show video or diagrams with the accompanying text on the other. It’s powered by a 1 GHz ARM Cortex CPU rather than the more usual Atom processors. The video shows that the tablet comes with plenty of features such as SD card slots and USB ports in convenient places.

Available in Japan in 2011 and later worldwide.

Interview by Jeffery Powers from Geekazine.com.

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CourseSmart Online Text Books



Andy McCaskey talks to Heather Shelstad, Director of Marketing for CourseSmart. Anyone in education will know that textbooks are expensive and CourseSmart offers a cheaper and more convenient alternative.  CourseSmart is the world’s largest provider of on-line textbooks with around 90% of the current curriculum available at about 60% of the cost. CourseSmart has relationships with many of the major publishers, so new textbooks are available on-line simultaneously with the paper editions.

Heather shows off the iPad’s virtual bookshelf client that takes advantage of the iPad’s touch screen to provide real-world functionality such as sticky notes and annotations. The on-line world can provide a richer experience than a traditional book, with links to other resources across the Internet but a new feature coming soon will be the ability to download and store chapters or whole books for reference off-line.

Any web browser can be used to read etexts at CourseSmart but there are specific clients for iPads, iPhones and Android devices.

Interview by Andy McCaskey of SDR News.

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Tablets, E-book Readers and Paper



Imagine a school that passes out Amazon Kindles instead of printed textbooks. No books at all, zilch, zero, nada – everything electronic. Printing costs could be completely eliminated, along with a myriad of associated problems – replacement books, textbook obsolescence, and book disposal to mention but a few. A single high-battery-life device such as a Kindle would suffice for replacing all books.

Let’s take this electronic book thought experiment a bit farther. The next logical step would be for the teachers to pass out tests and other traditional paper handouts electronically, eliminating paper altogether. At that point, the Kindle or other reader or tablet would have to be able to allow student interaction, say on a multiple-choice test.

The stickiest problem with this scenario would revolve around having an easy-to-use input system on these devices that allowed students to write phrases, paragraphs, papers, and draw images or diagrams to send back to the teacher.

All of this technology already exists in various forms. Perhaps the iPad comes close to meeting many of these requirements, but some form of the dreaded pressure stylus input would still be needed. Also, two separate devices would be needed – a reading screen, and an input screen on which to write, type and/or draw.

Are we there yet? Not quite, but we are getting close. With the success of the Kindle, iPad, smartphones and maturing touch screen technology in general, the day of eliminating the need for tons of paper is finally becoming a practical, desirable reality.


Andy McCaskey, Jeffrey Powers Interview Steve Wozniak at HP Technology Forum 2010



Andy and Steve
Andy and Steve

Andy McCaskey of SDR News and Jeffrey Powers of Geekazine had a rare honor as we got to interview Steve Wozniak – now Chief Scientist over at Fusion IO – a company that works with NAND  memory for high speed / High Capacity storage.

There are two parts to the interview. The first one, Jeffrey talks about Fusion IO, Steve’s role and a how the Segway Polo is going. After switching seats with Andy, something amazing happened. The two just started talking. I couldn’t get the video queued fast enough and they didn’t see the queue in. So, I just hit the button and they continued on.

But what we did get was an amazing conversation about education, the future of technology and Steve Wozniak’s new role.

Part I

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (38.1MB)

Audio Only Version

Part II

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (68.7MB)

Audio Only Version


GNC-2009-08-21 #504 Battle Rhythm



Texas is the state with the most listeners to the Geek News Central Podcast congrats to our Visa Gift Card Winner! New promotion starting next show, tune in to win. I talk a little about the state of podcasting and give you all a little information about a new website that we will be building full details shortly. We will need the communities help! Next show will be live from Silicon Valley, looking for a good meetup location for dinner suggestions?

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Total travesty of Justice for Julie Amero



Have you ever been surfing the net and hit a website that tries to launch a swarm of pop up ads. I am sure many of you have had this happen especially when using Internet Explorer 6.0 without any utilities to stop such action. Imagine being a teacher and having that happen during a class where students are exposed to pornographic images.

Well this happened to a teacher named Julie Amero in 2004, she was fired almost immediately and then prosecuted and tried shortly after that on a variety of charges stemming from the pop up swarm.

We all know that schools rarely have the latest technology and I doubt that they had software installed to prevent the actions that occurred. But what is a travesty is how it all turned out you are going to just shake your head. www.alternet.org


Podcast Education needed for the General Public



Podcast

During the past two weeks I have become to realize as many others have that are actively building podcast communities and also at the same time working on our own shows is that the general public at this point still has very little idea what a podcast is.

Many continue to be confused and think that a iPod is necessary to enjoy this powerful content. In my book on Podcasting I called podcastings greatest strengths was the “Power of Walk Away Content, it’s content that you subscribe to not what someone is trying to shove down your throat”

With the latest move by Apple we need to educate the general public on what the big deal is about this content, we need to have an awareness campaign that in under 60 seconds gets them up to speed.

I have been holding a domain for  a while that I would be willing to host for the community if we could get some community leaders to brainstorm on a design and put something together that will serve as a place to educate the consumers.

The domain is “whatsapodcast.com” maybe not the best domain but hey it’s easy to remember. If you would like to help out in putting some info together on that site drop me a line and we will get to work.