While your offspring may be too busy attempting to snap a blur-free image of his / her instructor to actually listen to the lecture, those dedicated few who actually show up to learn may appreciate what AudioGear provides. Crafted by Logical Choice, this modular audio system is designed to allow every student, regardless of proximity to the teacher, hear his / her voice loud and clear. The system places a number of speakers around the room and equips the moderator with a wireless lapel microphone in order to broadcast their voice evenly without resorting to the tried and true screaming approach. Moreover, school's can "upgrade" their purchase in the future without replacing the core hardware in order to acquire a "voice enhancement system with infrared microphones for the teacher and students." Initial response in a number of Florida schools has been fairly positive thus far, but this thing sure would bum out the habitual nappers in the back row, for sure.

The students on the Palo Alto High School InvenTeam arrived at the Stanford Cool Products Expo this year with a new system designed to allow quadriplegics to operate all kinds of gadgets and appliances. The user shakes his head to activate a glasses-mounted laser, which he can then point at sensors embedded in an array of custom triggers placed around the home. So far the team's nailed the basic on/off circuit needed for lights, fans, and a pet food dispenser (which is currently shelling out M&M's to Expo attendees), but the real noise is their plan to extend the system by building a small robot that will perform various tasks. According to the school, team captain Guy Davidson was only kidding a little when he said the team hoped "to have [the user] vacuuming in a few weeks." While this isn't the first time we've seen lasers used to assist the disabled, you gotta wonder what's going to happen to their altruisitic spirit when these kids realize they can also just headmount one of those crazy high-powered laser pointers.

Read - CNET Cool Products Expo video (second item)
Read - Palo Alto High School press release (6MB PDF)

Regardless of your personal opinion regarding the increasing use of so-called "Big Brother" tactics by the governments of the world, you've gotta hand it to the Maryland legislature for its sheer audacity here. "What, your kids won't go to school? We've got an idea, let's track 'em with GPS like the criminals they are!" Though perhaps parents will be delighted to learn that if Billy skips school too many times, an upcoming bill means they won't have to bother to do anything about it. According to Maryland Delegate Doyle Niemann, "They're not in control of their children. They take them to school, the kid walks in the front door and then out the back door. It doesn't make any sense to continue to beat on the parents." Seems like the schools might try a bit harder to spot these kids in transit from front door to back door, but if they're proving this elusive already, perhaps GPS really is the only answer.

[Via The Raw Feed]

Sheesh, where were these guys when we were in school, huh? A number of (admittedly admirable) French authorities have okayed a plan to dish out 175,000 USB drives to Parisian high-school students at the beginning of the next term, and each stick will pack a bevy of open source software aimed at "further reducing the digital divide." The USB drives will likely contain Mozilla's own Firefox and Thunderbird applications, OpenOffice, an instant messaging client, and of course, an unnamed media player to play back tunes and videos. The exact mix of software will be determined by whichever firm ends up winning the bid to provide said thumb drives, but the council plans to spend a whopping €2.6 million ($3.4 million) on the devices alone, leaving us to wonder if these won't be crafted out of precious metals or something. Nevertheless, it looks like just the 15 and 16-year olds will be getting the gifts this time around, but if the implementation "proves successful," it could very well be renewed (and expanded) the following year.

[Via SmartMobs]

Electrolux has been known to crank out some wicked appliances (and other household gear) over the years, but now its getting a taste (ahem) of just how snazzy its lineup will be once these students hire in upon graduating. Engineering minds from all over the world submitted entries into the firm's 2006 Design Lab contest, and while props were (understandably) given to a plethora of participants, only three could claim top honors. Above all was the Nevale Food Carrier (pictured above), which rocks four separated layers for toting "different hot / cold meals" at once, and the digital screen atop its lid provides a real-time readout of the storage conditions while the built-in vacuum system keeps food "fresh and free from bacteria." The first runner up, dubbed The Organic Cook, puts a nasty right hook on Mr. Foreman's offering, as it touts "oil-free frying, grilling, and boiling using infrared technology and vacuum cooking." Taking home the bronze is VESSTO, a "sleekly-designed, portable cooker" that utilizes renewable energy as power via an "advanced version of the Stirling Engine," and also features touch-sensitive controls and a screen for displaying recipes. So if you're interested to know just how stylish your kitchen will look in just a few more years, be sure to click on for a few more snapshots, and hit the read link for the full rundown of spectacular contrivances.

[Via Appliancist]

While there's always the off chance that your next surgery will be completed by a robotic doctor, we'd wager that most of us would opt for a well-trained, well-rested, and naturally conceived expert to handle the tools. The University of Portsmouth is upping the ante on its training facilities for those making the rounds in med school, and doctors-to-be now have access to £135,000 ($266,706) dummies that "bleed, speak, and potentially die" depending on the level of care received. Providing a more realistic practice environment, these lifelike mannequins can also "breathe oxygen, drool, secrete fluids, blink, and even react to drugs injected into their bodies." Aside from being used by students of medicine, social work, and dentistry, police and firefighters will also be able to get their hands dirty, but they'll be forced to treat the creature as a real human, taking notice of their names, biographies, and medical history before picking up that needle. Additionally, users will be able to access the built-in cameras and microphones to "critically appraise performances in real time." So if you're looking for a second opinion, tracking down a recent Portsmouth graduate that trained on these blokes might not be such a bad idea.

[Via Smart Mobs]

Since today's children will inevitably grow up to be tomorrow's criminals, what better way to get their fingerprints on file than by using biometrics as a payment method for those delicious, nutritious school lunches? Lunch has certainly gotten a lot more high-tech since the days when we were students (you used to be able to fill up on Tastycakes and chips -- no MealPayPlus to ruin your atrocious dietary regimen), and now one school district in Georgia has taken it to next level by installing print scanners that allow students to instantly put meals on their growing tabs. Apparently the Rome City Schools have already had a PIN-based payment system in place for some time now, but as second grader Adrianna Harris opined, "The finger's better because all you've got to do is put your finger in, and you don't have to do the number and get mixed up." Good point, Adrianna, although with calculators already having taken away our adeptness at simple arithmetic and cellphones making it increasingly impossible to remember anyone's phone number, this new method seems like it might hinder yet another valuable life skill: the ability to properly operate an ATM. Still, we're all for technology making the lunch line move faster, but paranoid parents looking to keep their progeny "off the grid" will probably want to start packing bagged meals from now on -- along with keeping their disappointed kids as far away from Disneyworld as possible.

It's the rare college student who will turn down free anything -- free food, free booze, and free love are all top priorities for the modern scholar -- so we were more than a little surprised to learn that those online music subscriptions being offered gratis by a number of colleges haven't really taken off like one would assume. In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal, the services from Napster and company have proven so unpopular that many schools are dropping the program altogether after only a year or two, although the RIAA claims that the number of participating campuses will actually increase "pretty significantly" this fall. Even if that's true, it's not clear why students at newly-subscribed schools would behave any differently than ones who already have access to the free tunes and still choose alternative distribution methods -- most notably the iTunes music store and the still-popular P2P networks. Ultimately it seems to be the services' many restrictions that are turning off the college crowd -- tracks can't always be burned to disc or transferred to a DAP, and they also disappear after four years -- and the fact that students today treasure their iPods even more than their precious cans of beer only makes non-FairPlay content that much more undesirable.

[Via TechDirt]

Even though summer has only barely begun, Gateway's eMachines is already looking ahead to the upcoming school year, having just announced five new Vista-ready desktops for the student on a budget. Starting at the "top of the line," we have the T6536 (pictured, with optional monitor) and T6534, which both feature Athlon 64 processors from AMD (3800+ and 3700+, respectively), nVidia GeForce 6100 graphics, and 250GB of storage, but the extra $90 you're spending on the $540 T6536 doubles the RAM from 512MB to 1GB and bumps the OS up to Windows XP Media Center Edition. Next in line is the T5046, which will set you back the same $450 as the T6534 but changes up the specs with a hyper-threaded Pentium 4 processor, Radeon Xpress 200 graphics from ATI, 512MB of RAM, a 200GB HDD, and the same dual-layer DVD burner found in both members of the 6000-series. Finally, the super-budget-conscious consumer has the option of either the $350 T3506 or $380 T3508, with the former machine offering a Celeron D352 CPU, Radeon X300-based graphics, 512MB of RAM, 120GB HDD, and a CD-RW/DVD combo drive, while the latter rig steps it up to a Celeron D356, Radeon Xpress 200 chip, 160GB hard drive, and that good old multi-format DVD burner. All of the new machines are available immediately, which gives you plenty of time to load up the software you'll need for surviving next year's vigorous academic schedule -- namely tunes, vids, and games.

Read- T6536
Read- T6534
Read- T5046
Read- T3508
Read- T3506
[All models via Yahoo]

We can't say that we're really surprised, but it would appear that this year's hundred-university student survey conducted by Student Monitor showed the iPod to run the show in terms of student desireability, even more so than getting soused. It's the first time in almost ten years that something besides drinking has reigned atop the survey, but we have to admit though, drinking has the odds stacked against it. We'll see what happens to the Apple's sweet spread when we lobby the government to raise the minimum buying age for iPods to 21, now won't we?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

The one thing that even non-architect-types know about skyscrapers is that tall buildings are designed to be slightly flexible, so strong gusts of wind don't send them tumbling to the ground. Well a group of MIT students have used that concept to build their own 800-pound mini-skyscraper which, in an impressive application of performance art, actually allows on-lookers to control the way it shimmies and shakes. Winner of a competition sponsored by the university's Department of Architecture, the 40-foot-tall modular structure sports four pneumatic muscles in each one of its stackable sections, which make it lean and bend into strange and unnatural shapes when multiple audience members operate the bicycle pump- or digital-controls simultaneously. Once the current exhibition is complete, we hope the design team decides to donate the wobbly wonder to their classmates who built that completely automated dorm room, because those guys could definitely turn it into a party accessory that would put those dancing flowers from the 80's to shame.

We had assumed that with all the robots being developed for deployment to Mars, the human astronauts would mostly be lounging around inside the comfort of their robot-built habitats and ordering drinks from their robot bartenders, but yesterday's unveiling of a prototype spacesuit for navigating the Martian terrain proves that manned missions might not be as cushy as we anticipated. The 50-pound suit (which they somehow got The Office's Steve Carell to model) was designed by students from five North Dakota colleges in a collaborative project funded by a $100,000 NASA grant, and includes at least three innovative technologies for which patents have been filed. Among the slew of sensors and communications gear designed for the harsh, low-gravity environment are oxygen and carbon dioxide detectors, GPS system, full suite of health monitors, shoulder mounted CCD cam, Bluetooth server to coordinate all the data, and a high-power transmitter for beaming info back to the mothership -- though curiously, there's no mention of an onboard weapons system that would be crucial for encounters with the occasional hostile Martian. Also, as the AP helpfully notes, even with all the research and design that went into this project, the forty-odd students seemed to neglect a key feature of any good full-body suit, which is an "escape hatch" for when the astronauts need to "jettison their waste."

[Via futurismic and abc]