Scratch is a great coding platform, so I imagine ScratchJr is fantastic too. Love to get my greedy little hands on the Sphero SPRK+.
Our picks highlight leading tech trends, with an eye toward the future. READ: Top 10 Tech | 2016 | School Library Journal
We don’t think there’s a right or wrong way for kids to play. For this kid-oriented gift guide, we focused on learning toys—open-ended games, kits, toys and crafts that promote lifelong skills like critical thinking, problem solving, logic, and even coding. To choose from the hundreds of toys available, we spent more than 30 hours trying 35 recommendations from experts, educators, and parents… READ MORE: Learning Toys and STEM Toys We Love | The Wirecutter
WHEN HIS DAUGHTERS were young, Nader Hamda says, they were really into apps and computers. But now that they’re a little older, their interest is waning. And that’s not unusual. “They’re not an exception,” he says. “They’re more of a rule.”
Sadly, this is true. According to numerous studies, young girls are moving away from computer science, not towards it. And Hamda says this is why his company, Ozobot, is now offering an educational robot called Evo. Evo is small and spherical, only about an inch in diameter. It looks kinda like an IBM Selectric type ball. But it’s also designed to be social.
READ MORE: Evo Is a Little Robot With a Big Mission: Get Girls to Code | WIRED
Data science is a growing career field that pays well. If you are interested in programming, math, and/or statistics, this career could be perfect for you. There are, however, three different data science roles for you to consider. READ: The Skills You’ll Need and the Salary You Can Expect as a Data Scientist | LifeHacker
That term—library anxiety—is hardly a household name among students, but say it to a college librarian, and he or she will know exactly what you’re talking about. It’s the feeling that one’s research skills are inadequate and that those shortcomings should be hidden. In some students it’s manifested as an outright fear of libraries and the librarians who work there. To many librarians it’s a phenomenon as real as it is perplexing. READ MORE: Do You Suffer from Library Anxiety? | JSTOR Daily
Yes, it’s a colouring book. And yes, it has raised more than A$400,000 ($310,750) so far on Kickstarter. To be fair to its illustrator, however, it’s certainly a little more stunning than, say, Ikea’s colouring pages. Rafael Araujo, a Venezuelan architect and illustrator, has created the Golden Ratio Coloring Book along with a team in Sydney, Australia. The Kickstarter campaign to publish the book, which ends Apr. 29, has already left its original $27,000 ($20,975) goal well behind. READ MORE: A mathematical colouring book on Kickstarter has raised more than $400,000 | Mashable
Using CrunchBase, I took a look at $5.5 billion invested in 450 edtech companies over the last three years. I’ve highlighted those in this landscape that exhibit the qualities of an amazing company: a great team, an amazing product and the potential for a huge impact. READ MORE: Gamification, personalization and continued education are trending in edtech | TechCrunch
All kids love building new worlds in Minecraft. But for those living with an autism spectrum disorder, it’s also providing them with ways to engage in school and build healthy social lives. READ MORE: Minecraft helps kids with autism build richer lives | CNET
[Gowers] has debuted a new online mathematics journal called Discrete Analysis. The nonprofit venture is owned and published by a team of scholars. With no publisher middlemen, access will be completely free for all. Can academic publishing actually cost nothing? READ MORE: This renowned mathematician is bent on proving academic journals can cost nothing | Vox
A lot of schools across the globe, especially in developing nations, don’t have computers with access to the internet. Project Empathy aims to address that issue by having classrooms with internet access participate in sharing knowledge with classrooms that don’t. Schools or classes willing to help can buy one of its kits, which are small devices equipped with a 64 GB microSD card, a Raspberry Pi, USB drives and other components. They then have to load the kit with content from the web, like Wikipedia articles or pages from NASA’s websites, that their recipients can tap into for their studies. The program was created by a startup called Outernet, which aims to provide developing nations free, one-way access to web pages via geostationary and Low Earth Orbit satellites. READ MORE: Project Empathy shares knowledge with unconnected schools | Engadget
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