scantron
Latest
Teacher's iPhone app scores tests, shares data quickly
Our colleagues at TechCrunch have an interesting story about Quick Key, an iPhone app that could be extremely helpful for teachers everywhere. Walter O. Duncan IV is a veteran teacher and the mind behind Quick Key, which is designed to score simple scantron tests (the old tests you complete by filling in circles with a pencil) with the iPhone's camera and a QR code. The video promoting the app is pretty slick, though those scantron sheets look way different than the tests I remember (with the tiny bubbles, about 300 or so to a page). The app is currently in beta as Duncan collects feedback from teachers who are testing it out. Duncan has raised almost US$100,000 for future development, and hopes that his company, Design by Educators, will deliver Quick Key to teachers all over the world. It's inspiring to see the iPhone improve upon older technology in such a significant way. These are powerful computers we're carrying around in our pockets, and it's always cool to see them put to important use.
A beautiful timeline of educational gadgets reminds us that the Scantron machine was really awesome
Over the weekend, the New York Times published a timeline of photographs of technological advances in the classroom. While the blackboard and the horn-book (a wooden paddle printed with the alphabet) look like artifacts that might be leftover from when dinosaurs walked the earth, the ones that are a bit newer are quite interesting to behold. For instance, you may or may not be old enough to remember the blue-inked glory of a mimeograph machine (the oldest example dating from around 1940 is above), or the awesomeness of a Scantron machine which automatically graded multiple choice tests. Seriously, we can't tell you how many hundreds of Scantron forms we filled out in our time as students, but it was unfortunately more than none. Hit up the source link to see all of the glorious gadgets throughout the years, but be forewarned: the last one is an iPad.
Play DS while learning to drive
Vingt-et-Un, the developer responsible for some of the weirder Simple 2000 games like The Zombie vs. Ambulance, have created a new entry in D3 Publisher's Simple DS series. Simple DS Vol. 14: The Driving School is a DS program designed to teach the rules of the road, with text-based quizzes and drills. It also attempts to teach driving skill with "practical" driving-instruction segments. This looks great for us, since we taught ourselves to drive on Spy Hunter anyway. We just need to break our habit of trying to drive into 18-wheelers and we'll have it down. While we're talking about this game, we want to complain about the lack of Simple series games in the US. D3 started a US branch, and they currently publish the Naruto games, but the only games we've seen from their hilarious budget series were Break 'em All and Dino Rider. The Xbox 360 just got Earth Defense Force-- we hope that's the start of a trend.
