Source: examiner.com

By: Kristina Greidanus
As the summer becomes scorching in Missouri, kids start to move indoors. They gravitate to video and computer games and play the games for hours on end. Playing games can be fun, but parents can also encourage children to use computer websites that focus on educational skills. For most parents, finding age [...]

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk

By: Chris Long

There is no doubt that free technologies, mainly open source software, are proving more popular both inside and outside the computer industry.

Behind this growing acceptance is a non-commercial movement of independent developers that are putting together the open source software that anyone can use.

Paul Allen, editor of ComputerActive magazine, said the defining [...]

Source: chronicle.com

By: Marc Beja

While textbook-rental companies have been around for a few years, it seems they have been growing in popularity with each college semester.

Chegg is one of these companies. A company officer said that the company took in more than $10-million in revenue in 2008, The New York Times reported, and that Chegg took [...]

Source: tech.yahoo.com

By: Jake Coyle

Cassy Hayes and Jasmine Coleman were among the first fans to arrive outside the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles where Michael Jackson was brought and later pronounced dead.

How had Hayes, 25, and Coleman, 21, heard the news so quickly?

Twitter.

The two young women had learned about Jackson’s health like so [...]

Alan Kennedy, 54, had never used social networking sites until he was laid off from his job as an engineer last November. Then he did what many job seekers are now advised to do: he set up profiles on Facebook and LinkedIn.

In March, after several depressing months of searching, Mr. Kennedy received a “Jobvite,” an e-mail invitation to apply for a job. The invitation came from a former co-worker who had gone to work for Hubspot, a company based in Cambridge, Mass., that sells Web-based marketing software. Hubspot had open positions and was offering bonuses to its employees to help fill them.

Mr. Kennedy’s former co-worker, Brian Karbel, used a software tool to search the profile information of his Facebook friends and LinkedIn contacts. He flagged Mr. Kennedy as a possible match to a job listing. Mr. Kennedy, who lives in the Boston area, responded to the invitation, scheduled an interview and, within a week, was working as a support engineer there. “I landed a job I might never have even heard of otherwise,” he said.

Source: nytimes.com

By: Associated Press

La Center, Ky. (AP) — Sixth-grade social studies students at Ballard County Middle School know what time it is in Afghanistan and what the weather is like there on a given day.

The students have become acquainted with the country though Aaron Connor, a Ballard Memorial High School graduate now serving near Ghazni [...]

Anyone lucky enough to share a life with a young child knows how determined they are to randomize your day. They’ll empty your purse or wallet, reprogram your cell phone and figure out how to speed dial 9-1-1. The highest value items are those with the most potential for trouble– your car horn, the panic button on your car keys, the lens on your digital camera, or that fascinating slot on your laptop. “I wonder where the disk goes?”

To a curious child, real gadgets are far more interesting than a traditional, often lame plastic toy. If you have such a child, don’t worry. They’re just doing what they’re supposed to do: copying mom or dad, making sense of the world.

Leapfrog used this idea to create Text & Learn ($22) a handheld toy that looks like a chunky green and white BlackBerry. Powered by three AAA batteries, the toy (and yes, it is a toy) combines a responsive QWERTY keyboard with a LCD screen and clear speech.

John J. Paulson commanded the submarine USS Philadelphia as it glided through the Atlantic Ocean at the height of the Cold War. He has been shot at by pirates. And he was part of a military team that in the 1990s forecast the devastation a nuclear bomb would cause in various scenarios.

One recent afternoon, he tugged at a Slinky, swung a yellow jump-rope and dunked a ruler in water — all to keep 22 teenagers rapt.

The Navy veteran says his latest mission — high school physics teacher in Prince William County — is as challenging as the toughest assignments of his 30-year military career. Paulson, 60, transformed from “Captain Paulson” to “Mr. P.” through a federal program that offers a stipend to military personnel who launch a career in the classroom.

Source: insidehighered.com

By: Scott Jaschik

Community colleges and high schools would receive federal funds to create free, online courses in a program that is in the final stages of being drafted by the Obama administration.

The program is part of a series of efforts to help community colleges reach more students and to link basic skills education to [...]

Source: cnet.com

By: Larry Magid

The results of a survey showing that 35 percent of middle school and high school students with cell phones have used them to cheat at school is indeed alarming. And perhaps more alarming is the finding that nearly a quarter of the students don’t even think it’s cheating.

Cheating is cheating regardless of [...]