As policymakers move to broaden the availability of digital content in education, barriers of funding, bandwidth, training, and bureaucracy are making it a slow go.
Whoever brought into the vernacular the principle of “Go big or go home” didn’t account for the K-12 community, where action tends to come little by little. Consider the status of the digital revolution. In their push toward using digital content in the classroom, many schools are stuck in second gear until basic changes to both infrastructure and entrenched habits are made. But even as school districts grapple with making those changes, policymakers have begun to move forward.
Across the country, legislators and boards of education are changing state textbook policies to allow for greater availability of digital content and open education resources, and to provide districts more ways to use funds for electronic textbook and instructional materials. Some of these efforts are directed at saving money, but some are a reflection of policymakers’ understanding that students of today need, and in some cases are demanding, more engaging content.
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Apple’s iPhone and iPad are not the only things that work with a touch of the finger. Touch-based technology is finding its way into everything from laptops to printers to once-forgettable desktop PCs–some of which fill critical niches for the smaller enterprise.
The unit packs a hefty 2.33GHz processor, as much as 8GB of RAM and a full terabyte (1000GB) of storage in a single silver enclosure. Reminiscent of the Apple iMac in appearance, the Aspire Z5600′s functions can be operated with either a traditional keyboard and mouse or your–or your customer’s–fingers.
That opens the box to myriad business possibilities: For example, the PC, which retails for $999, could be set up as a low-cost informational kiosk in retail shops or offices. John Karabian, a product manager at Acer, said touch-enabled desktops are being used as data entry points where customers can order food or view high-end cosmetics options at a retail store.
And for all of its marketing prowess, Apple is far from being today’s top end of touch: Windows 7 has touch technology built into its core operating system, and third-party software vendors are lining up to offer value-added tools for touch.
“The iPad and Apple are only the beginning,” says Francois Jenneau, sales and business development director for Stantum, a European multitouch display application developer. “Customers now want to touch their data. There is no going back.”
With an innovative concept developed by engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, the ubiquitous cell phone could one day be used to make medical imaging accessible to billions of people around the world.
According to the World Health Organization, some three-quarters of the world’s population has no access to ultrasounds, X-rays, magnetic resonance images, and other medical imaging technology used for a wide range of applications, from detecting tumors to confirming tuberculosis infections to monitoring developing fetuses.
“Medical imaging is something we take for granted in industrialized countries,” said Boris Rubinsky, UC Berkeley professor of bioengineering and mechanical engineering and head of the team that developed this new application for cell phones. “Imaging is considered one of the most important achievements in modern medicine. Diagnosis and treatment of an estimated 20 percent of diseases would benefit from medical imaging, yet this advancement has been out of reach for millions of people in the world because the equipment is too costly to maintain. Our system would make imaging technology inexpensive and accessible for these underserved populations.” read the entry »
With the ease of loading music onto an iPod, a generation of fans has been happily trading fidelity for portability.
A onetime audio engineer who now works as a consultant for Stereo Exchange, an upscale audio store in Manhattan, Mr. Zimmer lights up when talking about high fidelity, bit rates and $10,000 loudspeakers.
But iPods and compressed computer files — the most popular vehicles for audio today — are “sucking the life out of music,” he says.
The last decade has brought an explosion in dazzling technological advances — including enhancements in surround sound, high definition television and 3-D — that have transformed the fan’s experience. There are improvements in the quality of media everywhere — except in music. read the entry »
Over the past two years, I have gained a reputation for being the world’s biggest BlackBerry advocate. In fact, not only am I a huge fan of my BlackBerry Bold, but I have also been known to trash the iPhone as a business tool on many ocassions.
Let’s be honest here, a phone that can run one thing at a time is not a phone for heavy mobile users. If you check my Bold at any given moment, I have at least ten apps running in the background. The thought of having to launch my Twitter (follow me here) app every time I want to receive notifications of new replies makes me laugh at the possibility of using an iPhone. read the entry »
