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The future of STEM education is cloudy under Betsy DeVos
This week the United States Senate confirmed Betsy Devos as the new secretary of education. Despite a shaky performance during her committee hearings, where she seemed to suggest guns belonged in schools to defend against grizzly bear attacks, DeVos managed to clear all the necessary hurdles to become part of Trump's cabinet. But it wasn't easy: Vice President Mike Pence had to be summoned to the Senate floor to break a 50-50 tie, after two senators from his own Republican party opposed her nomination.
Who is Jerry Falwell Jr. and why is he reforming higher education?
Donald Trump has already earned his reputation of nominating candidates for his cabinet-level positions who face stiff opposition from the science and tech community. He's given the nod to former Texas Governor Rick Perry, who once called on Congress to abolish the Department of Energy that he now heads, and EPA nominee Scott Pruitt, who, as Oklahoma attorney general, sued the EPA no fewer than 14 times. On Tuesday, Trump continued this streak by tapping Jerry Falwell Jr. to head up a presidential task force charged with suggesting reforms for the Department of Education.
US government wants schools to embrace digital textbooks
Although they haven't exactly explained how school systems or parents are going to pay for iPads or other tablets for every student, the US government is pushing a new initiative to move from standard printed textbooks to digital textbooks within the next five years. While it's good to see that a focus on digital textbooks is finally at hand, it's going to take more than a press release, five years and a "playbook" to make the transition happen. According to an AP news release, "Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski on Wednesday challenged schools and companies to get digital textbooks in students' hands within five years." In an interview, Duncan asked, "Do we want kids walking around with 50-pound backpacks and every book in those backpacks costing 50, 60, 70 dollars and many of them being out of date? Or, do we want students walking around with a mobile device that has much more content than was even imaginable a couple years ago and can be constantly updated? I think it's a very simple choice." To school systems that are battling drastically decreased budgets and trying to replace or repair crumbling infrastructure, it might not be such a "simple choice." Likewise, there doesn't appear to have been much (if any) thought on how parents or schools systems are going to replace equipment that is broken or lost by students, or how to pay for digital devices to be refreshed every three to five years. Wednesday's announcement comes just two weeks after Apple's education event and the launch of iBooks textbooks. The company is perfectly placed, both in terms of the iPad hardware platform and iBooks Author creation tool, to benefit from a move to interactive and easily updated electronic textbooks. The government released a 67-page "playbook" promoting the use of digital textbooks and offering guidance to school systems who want to make the move. At the current time, about US$8 billion is spent each year on traditional textbooks for K-12 school kids. With an Apple educational discount, that could pay for more than 17 million iPads each year. If Apple, as rumored, brings down the price of entry into the iPad market by selling the iPad 2 alongside a future model, more devices could make it into the hands of students across the nation. On the other hand, switching to digital textbooks means more than just acquiring hardware and buying textbook apps. In many cases, the curriculum provided by a school district and even the methods used by instructors to teach students must change as well. The educational five-year plan is a noble goal; it's just not very realistic.
NYC opening its first public high school dedicated to software engineering
There are plenty of specialized public high schools in New York City and in September of 2012 that roster of educational institutions will grow by one more when the Academy for Software Engineering opens its doors. The school will greet its first class of incoming freshman at the beginning of the next school year and become the first NYC public school dedicated to pumping out programers. Beyond filling our desperate need for more engineers the school will be special in several respects. For one, it will be a "limited, unscreened" institution, which means grades and attendance records are not considered for admission -- only interest. Secondly, this isn't a vocational school that simply teaches kids to live and breathe in C++ and JavaScript. While the focus will be on software engineering, it will be accompanied by traditional college preparation academic classes. Check out the source and more coverage links for a few more details.
PBS Kids launches augmented reality game for iOS, says all the cool kids are counting sushi
It's official: Kids today have way cooler toys than you did when you were growing up. PBS Kids has just outed its first augmented reality mobile app for iOS -- a game called Fetch! Lunch Rush that aims to take the sting out of learning to do addition and subtraction in your head. If you're up on PBS' children's programming (and why wouldn't you be?), you'll recognize that pooch Ruff Ruffman as the game show host in the animated show Fetch! Here, he's a legendary movie director trying to make sure there's enough sushi for his movie crew (grown-up problems, right?). That's where the augmented reality comes in: bits of raw fish floating around screen. Though it's worth noting that this isn't augmented reality in the strictest sense of the term, in that you have to print out game cards to use with your iPhone or iPod touch's camera. The free app requires an iPhone or iPod touch (fourth-gen or later) or an iPad / iPad 2 running iOS 4.0. While we can't say we're a bit envious of those six- to eight-year-olds with their very own iPod touches, but then again, will they ever know the sheer joy of hunting in Oregon Trail over and over again? %Gallery-139344%
Z Corp's 3D printers available to Hawaiian school students, the wealthy
We're eagerly awaiting the day when 3D printers achieve the same sort of ubiquity as their two dimensional brethren -- we can only imagine the sweet office pranks that will become available once we can conjure tiny objects from our imaginations (via AutoCAD). It looks like the fine folks over at Hawaii's State Department of Education have more civic-minded uses for the machine, however. As high school students from throughout the islands complete their 3D design projects they send the files to the education office in Honolulu, which manufactures physical models with a Z Corporation 3D printer and ships them back to the students, who can then review the model and refine their design. A machine like Z Corp's ZPrinter 310 Plus (seen above) will run you a cool $19,900 before shipping, sales tax, and so forth, so it looks like all of you amateur CADsters out there might want to find a pen-pal in the Pineapple State if you want to make your ID dreams a reality. Either that or do it yourself. And make sure you send us the YouTube link when you do.
