Kids

I am always suspicious when people say they care. Somehow, my first reaction is: “How much?” So I feel more than a pang of sympathy for 11-year-old Emma Vermaak. She is not the only 11-year-old to like One Direction. However, she might be the first 11-year-old who thought to use modern methods to raise money Continue Reading →

A vibrating pen lets fledgling writers know when they’re making mistakes. The writing tool from Lernstift is capable of picking errors in spelling or letter formation in real-time, delivering a warning vibration to the writer’s hand. Currently a test prototype, the electronic pen is programmed to recognise movements associated with each letter form. In calligraphy Continue Reading →

Catholic prep school St. Thomas Aquinas in Florida is one of more than 2000 schools to adopt Chromebooks for education according to Jaime Casap, Google‘s Global Education Evangelist. That number represents a healthy 100% growth spurt during the past 3 months. In January 2012 Florida was among the first school districts to move their curriculum Continue Reading →

Amazon Studios has announced its first foray into original content for children, with five pilots given the greenlight. Just to recap, Amazon Studios uses audience feedback to develop original entertainment and, since the division’s launch in November 2010, thousands of movie scripts and series pilots have been submitted. You may remember that back in June Continue Reading →

Microsoft on Wednesday announced a new deal for students looking to buy Windows 8. Starting on February 1st in the US, students can get the Windows 8 Pro upgrade edition online via the Microsoft Store for just $69.99. Microsoft also plans to host a Windows Campus Tour, which will kick off on February 18. The Continue Reading →

Allowing your kids screen time is not necessarily a sedentary activity depending on what they’re doing. A new study shows that playing video games is probably better for your young ones than letting them sit in front of the television. Researchers in the Games Research and Interaction Design Lab at Queensland University of Technology examined Continue Reading →

The only thing more powerful and important than a college education and college degree is the level of debt that many college graduates face when heading into the real world: the average four-year graduate leaves school with $26,600 in student debt. MassMutual is doing its part to relieve one grad’s loan burden, as the company Continue Reading →

Some of the most lovable Google Doodles — the search engine’s custom logos celebrating a particular subject — don’t emerge from Google itself. They’re the winners of the company’s Doodle 4 Google contest, in which the company invites students from kindergarten through 12th grade to submit Doodles on a theme that’s been designed to inspire Continue Reading →

On Tuesday, the largest university system in the world, the California State University system, announced a pilot for $150 lower-division online courses at one of its campuses — a move that spells the end of higher education as we know it. Lower-division courses are the financial backbone of many part-time faculty and departments (especially the Continue Reading →

Over the holidays, my son learned to crawl across the floor. The first thing on his agenda? Motoring across the carpet to get a closer look at the blinking lights of my dad’s stereo receiver. As I plucked him up, wiped the drool off the knobs, and reconfigured the equalizer, my wife reminded me that I Continue Reading →