Google has revealed that it will be donating up to a $1 million dollars to the education of 6.4 million special needs children. With every Android Pay purchase in the US, the company would give a dollar as donation for the betterment of the American special needs education system.
This announcement comes as an extension of Google’s Global Impact Challenge: Disabilities initiative. Google has teamed up with DonorsChoose.org and started the programme on the 24th of November right through to 31st December. Additionally, the donation amount will be doubled for every Android Purchase on Black Friday, owing to Thanksgiving and the holiday season.
The initiative is only confined to the US as of now.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that he and his wife would be giving twenty million dollars to the non-profit organization called EducationSuperHighway. This NGO helps provide high-speed internet to public schools in the United States of America.
Research suggest that there are more than a bunch of schools in the country that have access to internet connection, but not high-speed broadband. Therefore, most teachers and students don’t use the computer in their classroom for personalized teaching during the instructional hours because it is counterproductive.
“In schools, Internet is critical for enabling something we know leads to better results: personalized learning,”- says Mr.Zuckerberg.
Contributing towards educational endeavors is not something new for the couple; they had previously also donated three million dollars to the same foundation in 2013, and plan to start their own educational endeavour called The Primary School by August next year. The new project will be spearheaded by Priscilla Chan and strives towards bringing together education, quality, youth, and family health care for the people involved.
Seldom do you come across an app that actually makes you learn something. These days apps have taken over practically everything we used to make an effort to do. From buying your groceries to shopping for clothes, right from the comfort of your home. So how about an app that gives you free education for a change? And by free we really mean free.
Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization that was created in 2006, that offers “a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere”. The organization, founded by Salman Khan (not to be confused with the actor), began by producing micro lectures in the form of YouTube videos.
Now, the organization has extended their website in the form of an app. You can use the Khan Academy app to browse the platform’s collection of educational videos. You can also bookmark topics, while everything will be synced between the app and the website. The app is genuinely free, with no in-app purchases or user account requirement.
The app features a collection of thousands of videos of topics that range from math, science, economics and finance, arts and humanities, computing, and many more, which are broken down into sub-categories like history, music, physics, chemistry, macroeconomics, once you select a topic.
It also comes with a built-in search function that lets you find the topic and category you’re looking for more precisely. You even have the option to save videos for offline mode. As an educational app, Khan Academy is great for watching short videos on the go. As a free app it does more to provide education than most other apps you find these days. With almost 40 percent of the world with internet access, Khan Academy has the potential to reach far and wide.
Now, while the app does provide useful educational videos, it still has some cons to it. Being a free app, you’re bound to find some lectures to be below par. Anyone can post lectures on any topic, but not everyone’s a certified teacher. Even founder Salman Khan has tried his hands at multiple course lectures, and has found some disagreement with his mathematical skills or his lack of preparation.
Another potential problem is the language. Though the organization’s ambition is education on a global scale, the language in the videos are mostly in English. The webpage does have a few popular languages to choose from like Spanish, French, or Portuguese.
But these are minor bugs when compared to what Khan Academy is offering for free i.e. education for all. The organization reaches out to those without proper educational accessibility or guidance. Educators are supporting the cause and students are appreciating the site’s straightforward and easy learning structure. Khan Academy is available on App Store and Google Play. So, download it now and spread the knowledge, people.
Maybe it’s just us, but we miss classroom education. To be in awe of a professor who manages everytime to open your eyes to ideas and blow your mind with new concepts. The thrill of preparing for a test and the anxiety before the results are out. Maybe it’s just us, but they truth is that the monotony of life and work stagnates our thinking. We can’t stress upon how important it is to keep adding and refreshing information.
The concept of self-education and distance learning is widely accepted these days. Sitting at home, taking video lessons and earning degree from an international university may sound unfeasible, but we’re lucky that the power of internet has made it possible. Somehow, a power that not enough people are utilizing.
It’s more practical in India where most of the colleges don’t provide specialized courses you want to do. Solving this problem, there are some website which provide free education and degrees for small fee. We are listing amazing educational websites which provide you with variety of courses and help to strengthen your CV.
Coursera is an education platform that partners with top universities and organizations worldwide, to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free. The aim of Corsera is to provide everyone with world-class education. The website provides free courses online from top universities, including Princeton University and the University of Michigan. The topics are varied, and lectures are formatted into series of 15-minute-long clips.
Udacity’s mission is to bring accessible, affordable, engaging, and highly effective higher education to the world. They believe that higher education is a basic human right, and seek to empower students all over the world to advance their education and careers. Udacity at present offers 11 courses , all of which are in science and math-related topics. According to the website, plans are in progress to spread out the set of courses. Udacity is free of deadlines, free of quizzes and other annoying school stuff. Needless to say, courses are also free of charge.
Open Culture brings together high-quality cultural & educational media for the worldwide lifelong learning community. The website’s mission is to centralize the content which is ‘scattered across the web, and not easy to find’, curate it, and give you access to this high quality content whenever and wherever you want it. Open Culture offers you incredible compilation of 400 courses for free, from Ivy League universities, such as Stanford, UCLA, Columbia and Oxford University. Courses ranges from science and art to math and economics.
The Khan Academy has a large library of videos covering math, biology, chemistry, physics and even the humanities, finance and history. Khan videos aren’t so much recorded lectures as short 10 minute long tutorials with an instructor narrating explanations and working things out on a board by hand on your computer screen.
Ted-Ed is a powerhouse of really fascinating and amazing lectures combining expert educators, screenwriters and animators. A riches of amazingly animated and gripping videos on a wide collection of subjects, such as The Power of Simple Words and How Many Universes are There. All videos are under 10-minutes-long. Ted-Ed videos are already very popular all over internet with huge amount of viewers on Youtube. Ted-Ed also provide supplemental materials such as quizzes, books, e-books etc.
In this very educational video, famous Singer Macklemore shows how to use a toilet seat.
He writes in his caption :
[quote text_size=”small” author=”Macklemore” link=”http://instagram.com/p/lcsYsJwK59/”]ITS TIME THAT US MEN STARTED RESPECTING TO THE BASIN THAT OUR QUEENS SIT ON! LETS RAISE THE NEXT GENERATION TO HAVE BETTER AIM SO WOMEN DONT HAVE TO PEE & POOP ON OUR PEE!…and IM NOT TRYING TO POOP ON YOUR PEE EITHER! BASICALLY, TO ALL THE FRAT GUYS AND SHITTY DADS, QUIT FUCKING UP THE DEUCE SESH FOR THE REST OF US! BUMP THIS CUT IN ALL AIRPORT BATHROOMS AND FOOTBALL GAMES! FUCK A DRUNK DAD PISSING ON THE GROUND, AND A FRAT BRO TOO HAMMERED TO HANDLE HIS DANGLER! MAN UP AND LEARN DONG CONTROL!…IM OUT!!![/quote]
Considering how Apple just reinvented the text book with the new iBooks 2 App, the best feature about iBooks 2 is the ability of authors to write textbooks and publish them on iBooks. To make that project easier, Mac users can now download the iBooks Publisher App. This new app allows would be book sellers the ability to drag and drop photos, videos and even Microsoft Word files into various templates. If you use iWork you can drop a Keynote presentation into the doc, and it becomes an interactive widget. Authors can also arrange glossaries by highlighting and clicking words, and clicking again to add a definition.
The books can then be published straight to the Apple iBooks Store for either Free or a maximum of US $ 14.99, The paid books will go on revenue share with Apple, in a 70/30 split where the Authors get 70% of the total sales.
The App itself is quite amazing as we ant hands on with it.
When you start it up , it shows you a bunch of templates.
You can select your type and then continue to drag and drop media as per your convenience.
Apple has released a new version of the iBooks publishing platform yesterday at the Guggenheim museum in New York City. The new iBooks 2 app is available today as a free download from the App Store. It features a lot of new improvements including the ability to share textbooks. The reason for giving iPad’s to students in universities becomes even more useful starting today.
The App allows fullscreen books, interactive 3D objects, diagrams, videos and photos, the iBooks 2 app will let students learn with just a tap or swipe of the finger.
Education is deep in Apple’s DNA and iPad may be our most exciting education product yet. With 1.5 million iPads already in use in education institutions, including over 1,000 one-to-one deployments, iPad is rapidly being adopted by schools across the US and around the world, Now with iBooks 2 for iPad, students have a more dynamic, engaging and truly interactive way to read and learn, using the device they already love.”
-said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.
Apple Reinvents Textbooks with iBooks 2 for iPad New iBooks Author Lets Anyone Create Stunning iBooks Textbooks
NEW YORK-January 19, 2012-Apple® today announced iBooks® 2 for iPad®, featuring iBooks textbooks, an entirely new kind of textbook that’s dynamic, engaging and truly interactive. iBooks textbooks offer iPad users gorgeous, fullscreen textbooks with interactive animations, diagrams, photos, videos, unrivaled navigation and much more. iBooks textbooks can be kept up to date, don’t weigh down a backpack and never have to be returned. Leading education services companies including Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill and Pearson will deliver educational titles on the iBookstore? with most priced at $14.99 or less, and with the new iBooks Author, a free authoring tool available today, anyone with a Mac® can create stunning iBooks textbooks.
“Education is deep in Apple’s DNA and iPad may be our most exciting education product yet. With 1.5 million iPads already in use in education institutions, including over 1,000 one-to-one deployments, iPad is rapidly being adopted by schools across the US and around the world,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Now with iBooks 2 for iPad, students have a more dynamic, engaging and truly interactive way to read and learn, using the device they already love.”
The new iBooks 2 app is available today as a free download from the App Store™. With support for great new features including gorgeous, fullscreen books, interactive 3D objects, diagrams, videos and photos, the iBooks 2 app will let students learn about the solar system or the physics of a skyscraper with amazing new interactive textbooks that come to life with just a tap or swipe of the finger. With its fast, fluid navigation, easy highlighting and note-taking, searching and definitions, plus lesson reviews and study cards, the new iBooks 2 app lets students study and learn in more efficient and effective ways than ever before.
iBooks Author is also available today as a free download from the Mac App Store and lets anyone with a Mac create stunning iBooks textbooks, cookbooks, history books, picture books and more, and publish them to Apple’s iBookstore. Authors and publishers of any size can start creating with Apple-designed templates that feature a wide variety of page layouts. iBooks Author lets you add your own text and images by simply dragging and dropping, and with the Multi-Touch™ widgets you can easily add interactive photo galleries, movies, Keynote® presentations and 3D objects.
Apple today also announced an all-new iTunes® U app giving educators and students everything they need on their iPad, iPhone® and iPod touch® to teach and take entire courses. With the new iTunes U app, students using iPads have access to the world’s largest catalog of free educational content, along with over 20,000 education apps at their fingertips and hundreds of thousands of books in the iBookstore that can be used in their school curriculum, such as novels for English or Social Studies.* The iTunes U app is available today as a free download from the App Store.
*Some content is available only for iPad.
Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.
Bharat Electronics Ltd has developed a tablet PC that would cost $70-75 (around Rs 3,000) apiece for the Ministry of Rural Development’s poverty survey. The company supply six lakh pieces this year,expected to be delivered by end-November.
Normally, BEL generates 80 per cent of its revenue from military supplies such as radars, detection and communication devices; its turnover for the year ended March 2011 was Rs 5,500 crore; the 2011-12 guidance is for Rs 6,200 crore.
The device will boast Android 2.2 Froyo, a Solar powered battery pack, and a plug in keyboard. The device also appears to have a usb input port and a resistive touchscreen.
Since the order coming in early July, BEL has supplied an initial 2,000 tablets to the North-East. They were made at a small plant that was added to BEL’s Mass Manufacturing Facility in Bangalore at a cost of Rs 7 crore. Depending on further demand, it may put up an additional line for Rs 20 crore, apart from tapping capacities at Ghaziabad and Panchkula.
We are already poking around to get some action with the device.
Now thats a way to make the students happy, University of Southern Mississippi handed out Galaxy Tab 10.1 devices to Honor students for the year 2011-2012. The devices are also preloaded with text and syllabus for the academic year, including the ability to purchase books and check grades.
Initially only a 1000 tabs were given away to students in the Honors College, McNair Scholars, Southern Style, and Gulf Coast programs.
Now thats a way to motivate the students, maybe the Indian universities should take some inspiration from this. Although it appears that the devices were sponsored by Samsung , look at the video below.
The Indian Govt. funded and subsidized 35$ tablet codename “Sakshat” will finally release this month. The tablet was originally pegged at a end 2009 release, But after several trias and fails the tablet is now finally set to release.
The tablet was designed and developed by MIT will be powered by Android OSand is currently being manufactured at the HCL Technologies plant.
Basic Specs include
7 inch Touch Screen
Inbuilt keyboard
Video conferencing
Multimedia
32GB hard drive
2GB RAM
Open Office, SciLab and Internet browsing.
Wifi and USB – IO
The tablet is pegged for University students and will be available for a final price of Rs. 2200/- . We will try and get one device atleast for a quick show and tell here at iGyaan.
The Indian Govt. funded and subsidized 35$ tablet codename “Sakshat” will finally release this month. The tablet was originally pegged at a end 2009 release, But after several trias and fails the tablet is now finally set to release.