For most American teenagers, summer vacation is a time to make some pocket money, go to the beach, and hang out with friends. But, for twenty high school students from DaVinci Charter Academy in Davis, CA., summer vacation meant a trip to Nicaragua to share their pedal-powered blender.

The idea for the blender was proposed during a visit from the director of Grupo Fenix, a Nicaraguan organization dedicated to the research, development, and application of renewable energy technologies in Nicaragua. The opportunity to engage students in using physics to solve real-world problems and get them thinking about how different cultures capture and use energy, were the perfect ingredients for a physics project!Read more...

We all suffer from information overload. How can our brains handle this much information? Are we learning more and getting smarter or suffering from information Obsessive Compulsive Disorder where we compulsively collect more, and often useless, information; check email; monitor tweets; update our Facebook status; text our friends and family; instant message our co-worker next to us – all at the same time?Read more...

Have an i-phone? Want to keep up-to-date with ed apps? I recently came across EduTecher, an app and Web site with links to education apps, or so I thought. Using it, I discovered several apps, such as issuu, Word Magnets, doris, and many more. Here’s what I liked and didn’t like about the app.Read more...

Paper? Plastic? Trash? Where does your old computer, gently used i-pod, or outdated i-phone go? What do you do with your e-waste?  

Everything is going green, but what about technology? With faster, sleeker versions of i-phones, i-touches, i-pods, what happens to all the i-garbage?Read more...

I write this as a parent of a 4 and 6-year old, just at the heels of my daughter’s first year of Kindergarten. As someone whose livelihood is dependent on promoting technology in education, it’s ironic, but true, that I struggle with its place in the lives of my own young children.Read more...

So, like my co-worker, Mary, I too took the i-plunge. I dove in a few months ago after my husband persuaded me that a phone was much more than a communication device. I saw him entertaining friends by simulating beer drinking on his phone. I listened to my 4-year old son play the virtual flute, and witnessed my 5-year old daughter enhance her memory with a moose memory game. But, I wasn’t really convinced yet... Read more...

I recently came across an intriguing slideshow, Toward Society 3.0: A New Paradigm for 21^st century education. It wasn't just the term leapfrogging that jumped out at me, other terms such as knomads, mindware, and ambient computing caught my attention too. Not to mention slide 58 which some may deem offensive and inappropriate. But, me I liked the irony. The presentation offers a conceptual framework shift for education in the future. Read more...