China’s supercomputer is better than yours, VentureBeat reports. The Tianhe-2 was ranked No. 1 on the TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. This marks China’s first return to the top position since November 2010, when the Tianhe-1A was named top dog. Also known as Milky Way-2, the system was developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology. Most of the features were developed in China although TOP500 editor Jack Dongarra said it uses Intel products for the main computing part. Tianhe-2 has 16,000 nodes, each with two Intel Xeon IvyBridge processors and three Xeon Phi processors for a combined total of 3,120,000 computing cores. It will call the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzho, China its home…

Read the full story

 Email   

NDTV reports that students do equally well on a test whether reading from a digital book or a printed one, a new study has found. Research by an Indiana State University doctoral student surveyed more than 200 students. Half of the students used a tablet to read a textbook chapter while the other half of the students read from a printed textbook chapter. The students then took an open book quiz with eight easy and eight moderate questions on the chapter. “Few people have done a lot of research into what I’m doing. Mine directly ties performance with perception by undergraduates,” said Jim Johnson, who is also director of instructional and information technology services in the Bayh College of Education…

Read the full story

 Email   

With the extremely large number of apps available for iPads, even those for autism are in abundance, and experts say it’s important to know which are most effective for students with different needs.

“One commonality emerges [in students with autism],” said Karina Barley, veteran educator, autism specialist and consultant, and president of Project Autism in Australia, during a recent edWeb.net webinar. “The majority of these kids are very competent using technology. They connect with technology, and where they have problems in the mainstream arena, they don’t seem to have the same difficulties using technology.”

Barley discussed how tablet technology, specifically the iPad, is more efficient for autism due to its design and touch capabilities—it turns on quickly and the transition from screen to screen is extremely fast, which appeals to the impatience of a child with autism.

(Next page: Visual apps)

 Email   

John Wilkes says that joining Google was like swallowing the red pill in The Matrix, Wired.com reports. Four years ago, Wilkes knew Google only from the outside. He was among the millions whose daily lives so deeply depend on things like Google Search and Gmail and Google Maps. But then he joined the engineering team at the very heart of Google’s online empire, the team of big thinkers who design the fundamental hardware and software systems that drive each and every one of the company’s web services. These systems span a worldwide network of data centers, responding to billions of online requests with each passing second, and when Wilkes first saw them in action, he felt like Neo as he downs the red pill, leaves the virtual reality of the Matrix, and suddenly lays eyes on the vast network of machinery that actually runs the thing…

Read the full story

 Email   

By guest blogger Clara Pak

As of today, half a year has passed since tragedy struck in Newtown, Conn. In remembrance of this somber anniversary, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, and Tom Kuroski, president of the AFT affiliate in Newtown, co-wrote an op-ed piece for a local Connecticut paper, The News-Times. In honoring the fallen educators of Sandy Hook Elementary School, they also recognize all teachers and school staff across the country whose "first instinct is to love and protect their children." They write:

This is who teachers and school staff are. Not only do these women and men dedicate their lives to helping our children expand their minds and achieve their dreams, they also love, nurture and even give their lives in the service of our sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters, and nieces and nephews.

In the days following the Newtown shooting, we spoke to countless teachers whose first thought was not about themselves but about their students. How would they cope? What can we do to help them? How can we bring them some normalcy following this soul-shattering tragedy?

They point out that, since Dec. 14, there have been numerous other instances of educators risking their lives for their students—including those teachers in Oklahoma who "shielded their students with their bodies as the tornado ripped apart their school, telling them that they were loved and singing to calm them down."

The Newtown shootings forced the country to confront the need to create "safe, nurturing, welcoming and collaborative schools," they go on to say, where students and educators both can feel secure and protected.

Readers: Feel free to leave your own reflections on Newtown—and the incredible sacrifices so many teachers are willing to make for their students—in the comments section below.

« A Photographer's Push to Reframe 'Disabilities' | Main | Remembering Newtown Teachers, Six Months Later »

Slooh, a company known for its helpful live feeds of awesome astronomical events, has just released a fun, free iPad app that gives regular folk command of robotic space cameras around the world, PopSci.com reports. For $1.99 per “mission,” you can snap real-color photos of celestial objects, using the app’s heads-up display to aim one of the cameras in Slooh’s network. Within 20 minutes, you’ll have your own high-quality image of space, stamped with the date, time, and name of the observatory…

Read the full story

 Email