Category Archives: Technology

8 STEM Toys for Pint-Sized Einsteins | Mashable #kids #STEM #toys #play

Posted on by

Often times, parents want the toys their children play with to teach STEM skills — recently updated to STREAM, or Science, Technology, Reading, Engineering, Arts and Math.

At the 2015 International American Toy Fair, there was a bevy of toys that were anything but mindless. Better yet, they’re made to get kids interested in one of these educational topics — without slathering on the “learning” part so they will be disinterested.

Here are some of our favorites that will keep kids learning beyond the classroom.

READ MORE: 8 STEM toys for pint-sized Einsteins | Mashable

Learn to Avoid the Most Common Design Mistakes with This Free Course | LifeHacker

Posted on by

Beginning designers tend to make the same common mistakes. Design Pitfalls is a free course delivered weekly to your email inbox that will teach you how to avoid them.

The course comes from Design for Hackers author and professor David Kadavy. If you sign up, every Tuesday for 6 weeks, you’ll learn about a new pitfall and the tips to prevent it. Here’s what the email course will cover:

Avoid the top mistakes beginning designers make, Kadavy says, and you’ll quickly be doing at least halfway-decent design.

Sign up for the course below or read more about it here. Hurry, though. Class starts May 26th and signup ends on midnight (GMT) May 22nd.

via Learn to Avoid the Most Common Design Mistakes with This Free Course | LifeHacker

Video Game Link to Psychiatric Disorders Suggested by Study | The Guardian #gaming #psychology

Posted on by

People who regularly play action video games could be at increased risk of developing neurological and psychiatric disorders, a study suggests.

The research, published in a Royal Society journal on Wednesday, found that people who played games such as Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto V and Tomb Raider were more likely to employ navigational strategies associated with decreased grey matter in the hippocampus part of the brain.

Decreased volume in the hippocampus has been associated with disorders such as schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and Alzheimer’s disease.

The lead study author, Prof Greg West, from the University of Montreal’s department of psychology, said the paper indicated that benefits of video games, such as improved attention and perception, highlighted in previous studies, could come at a price.

READ MORE: Video game link to psychiatric disorders suggested by study | Technology | The Guardian

Learn SQL with Khan Academy’s New Interactive Course | LifeHacker #sql @khanacademy

Posted on by

SQL, the popular programming language used to manage data in a relational database, is used in a ton of apps. Khan Academy’s introductory course to SQL will get you started writing SQL in an interactive editor.

READ MORE: Learn SQL with Khan Academy’s New Interactive Course | LifeHacker

This $169 Computer Is Designed For The World’s Emerging Middle Class | Co.Exist #computers

Posted on by

2 | This 9 Computer Is Designed For The World's Emerging Middle Class | Co.Exist | ideas + impact

On a trip to India, entrepreneur Matt Dalio noticed something about the country’s emerging middle class: While many families owned TVs, few could also afford to have a computer. He had an epiphany. Why not make TV screens double as the monitor for a low-cost, but fully-functioning PC?

For the next three years, he worked with a team to develop Endless, a $169 computer designed for the burgeoning middle class in the developing world. It’s loaded with around 150 apps—from health and farming to Wikipedia—that can work offline, so if someone has a spotty Wi-Fi connection, they can keep working.

READ MORE: This $169 Computer Is Designed For The World’s Emerging Middle Class | Co.Exist | ideas + impact.

Must Read: New ‘Walk-In Comic Book’ Uses Augmented Reality to Show Sexual Assault Survivors as Heroes | Mashable #genderequality #comics #augmentedreality

Posted on by

Watch the video!!

//players.brightcove.net/1130468786001/82aa0c71-8d04-464e-a66f-d6f007663844_default/index.html?videoId=4224007635001

When a young woman in New Delhi, India, was brutally gang-raped on a bus in December 2012, making international headlines, Ram Devineni wasn’t going to stay silent. The filmmaker and artist marched in the streets alongside other protesters, calling for swift justice and systemic change to the all-too-common violence against women that plagues the country.

When he asked a Delhi police officer what he thought about the young woman’s assault, the officer told him, “No good girl walks home alone at night,” implying that she either provoked the rape or, worse, deserved it. His words reflected the misguided, patriarchal view that permeates much of Indian society, silencing women even further with social stigma.

“I realized at that moment that this was not a legal issue, but a cultural problem,” Devineni tells Mashable. “As a filmmaker and as an artist, I wanted to really address this in a cultural context.”

That’s why, two years later, he created and directed the transmedia comic book Priya’s Shakti — a story about the titular Priya, a gang-rape survivor-turned-superhero who partners with a Hindu goddess to fight sexual violence and challenge the patriarchy.

Co-written by Vikas K. Menon with artwork by Dan Goldman, the comic book is the first of its kind to use augmented reality and image recognition, using various media to tell the story of fighting back against sexual assault.

READ MORE: New ‘walk-in comic book’ uses augmented reality to show sexual assault survivors as heroes | Mashable

Learn About the Internet of Things with This Interactive Visualization | LifeHacker #IoT #InternetofThings @infobeautiful

Posted on by

If you’re still trying to wrap your head around what the “Internet of Things” is, this data visualization makes things easy to understand and is fun to explore.

The visualization, from the team at Information is Beautiful, does a great job of explaining what the Internet of Things is, what it can and will affect, who the major players are, and even provides some eye-opening statistics regarding the direction we’re all headed with technology. Additionally, it mentions some of the challenges facing our “always connected” world. You can check it out at the link.

The Internet of Things | Information is Beautiful

via Learn About the Internet of Things with This Interactive Visualization | LifeHacker

Check Out This Coding Toy—For Grownups | ReadWrite @TeamKano #coding #diy #makerspaces #tech

Posted on by

I think its a very smart marketing move for Kano to launch products that are gender and age neutral. I volunteer with my public library’s CoderDojo program, which is for 9 to 17 year olds. One of the participant’s parents has actually stayed to learn as well. Its heartwarming to see parent and child learning new concepts together. Learning to code, makerspaces, hackfests, arduino…these activities are fun and instructive for all ages and can be a family activity too.

Check Out This Coding Toy—For Grownups - ReadWrite

Kickstarted into existence in 2013, with a campaign that blasted through its $100,000 goal with $1.5 million in pledges, Kano now makes Raspberry Pi–based computer kits commercially available to children ages 6 to 14. Inspired by those young users, who founder Alex Klein says have created and shared as many as 5 million lines of code, he wants to spread that enthusiasm to a larger audience.

Engineering kits have been popular among kids and a natural fit in the educational space. Likewise, Kano set out following in the footsteps of companies like Little Bits, Adafruit, and Goldie Blox. But Klein now wants to extend Kano’s reach, taking it into grown-up territory. Simply put, he wants to appeal to everyone’s inner “inventor and tinkerer,” he said.

Klein wants to push into the adult maker market by putting out products that are both gender- and age-neutral. The core design, he hopes, speaks to fundamental human impulses: “Everyone has shared urges to look inside,” he said. “Everyone wants to take control. Everyone wants to make and play.”

Kano’s next stage of evolution will involve some fundamental shifts. The company is expanding its line-up with new add-on kits, and plans to open up Kano Blocks—its game-making arena—and online platform Kano World to community development.

All Kano products run on Kano OS, the open source operating system that sits on top of Raspberry Pi. It boasts high computational powers that let it run fast, boot quickly and offer clear graphical rendering. For developers, this means that they will have ample resources to jump on board and quickly create their own projects. Kano World allows for the Kano community to share their creations and add on to existing projects.

READ MORE: Check Out This Coding Toy—For Grownups | ReadWrite

Say Hello to the Final Oculus Rift—Coming 2016 | Gizmodo #virtualreality #OculusRift

Posted on by

I’ve been fortunate to experience a prototype Oculus Rift…the consumer version looks way cool and much more refined.

Virtual reality is coming—and now, we finally know when. You will actually be able to buy a real, consumer version of the Oculus Rift in the first quarter of next year. You’re looking at it right now. Let me repeat: this is not another prototype. READ MORE: Say Hello to the Final Oculus Rift—Coming 2016 | Gizmodo

C.H.I.P. — The super tiny computer that only costs $9 [@Kickstarter] | Mashable #makerspaces @nextthingco

Posted on by


If you thought the $35 Raspberry Pi 2 was a small and cheap computer, think again. Next Thing Co.’s open-source C.H.I.P. is an even smaller barebones microcomputer that only costs $9.

Like the Raspberry Pi, C.H.I.P. can be used in a variety of ways. Connect the necessary parts — a keyboard, mouse, and a display — to it and it becomes a personal computer. Otherwise, you can hack it into a retro games emulator, or robot, or whatever you can dream up. Next Thing Co. encourages users to learn how to code and make things with C.H.I.P.

Next Thing Co. is currently crowdfunding C.H.I.P. through a Kickstarter campaign. At the time of this writing, the project has successfully reached its $50,000 funding goal with 29 days to go. The first C.H.I.P computers are expected to start shipping in December.

READ MORE: C.H.I.P. — the super tiny computer that only costs $9 | Mashable