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New Google Classroom features make it harder to cheat
Today, Google announced new features aimed at educators using Google Classroom. These include the ability to assign quizzes through Google Forms and "lock" them, so that students cannot navigate away from the page while the quiz is underway (potentially cutting down on cheating), as well as parental controls to set "off hours" on school-issued devices. The lock mode only applies to "managed" Chromebooks -- devices that the school has full control over.
MWC 2017 showed us the power of nostalgia
Millennials may recognize the Nokia 3310 from the "Indestructible Nokia" meme, but us older folks will more likely remember it as the first cell phone we ever used. Here at MWC 2017, Nokia revived the iconic handset, giving it a 2-inch color display, a "smart" operating system and a 2-megapixel camera. Yes, those specs are atrocious in this generation, but thanks to the power of nostalgia, no one cared.
Staedtler and Samsung made an old-school pencil-like S Pen
Along with a pair of new tablets and some 5G equipment, Samsung unveiled a fresh new version of its S Pen stylus -- and it looks very familiar. The new stylus is just like German pencil maker Staedtler's Noris stylud, except it will most likely do everything Samsung's pen can. (We say "most likely" because Samsung didn't provide many details at its MWC news conference this weekend.) That featureset includes detecting up to 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity, and working with the company's new tablets to write and store memos even when the screen is off, as well as outline screenshots or annotate PDF documents. Samsung didn't say anything about price or availability, but young hipsters looking to mask their digital nativeness might have reason to get excited. Click here to catch up on the latest news from MWC 2017.
RFID staples, omnipotent pens to grace offices of the future?
We already know just how snazzy your office's bizhub will be in a decade or so, and we think we've even got your desk and kitchen nailed down too, but a recent brainstorming in Popular Science brushed a few less sensational, albeit quite intriguing, office mainstays for 2017. Although we've got a few years yet before we can definitively say whether or not these folks will pull a psychic-AT&T on us, but if Swingline has its way, the traditional red stapler that continually jams and collects more dust than it does anything else will be quite controversial. Sure to enrage pro-privacy employees who've already been unknowingly chipped with an RFID tag upon agreement to come on board, the staples of the future could actually contain micro-RFID tags; these chips could then be traced to find out just how long it really sits in one's "to do" stack, or if "inexplicably missing" really means "intentionally destroyed." As cruel as we know that sounds, at least you can pen all the curses you wish on even the most ink-resistant material in your manager's suite, as the future-generation Staedtler pen is being designed to "write on almost anything by optimizing molecular bonds with a surface" in order to produce the right mixtures needed to adhere to a given medium. Of course, the transparent monitors that will come with your 2015 upgrade kit will effectively kill your ability to surf Engadget while being guarded by the plastic backing of your current LCD, but the face recognizing desk locks should at least keep Gary from snagging your chocolate when you're out on break. Click on through for a few more mockups of tomorrow's office gizmos.
