Technology in Education To Meet Student Needs

Technology in education changes with the needs of students as well as with those of the teachers and school administrators who shape the learning experience. Mobility is one area that’s rapidly evolving to meet those needs, something that Ben Thacker, global VP of enterprise business at Belkin, understands. In the following interview, he shares what he sees in the present and future of education IT.
How can a growing emphasis on mobility and mobile devices help K-12 students, teachers, and school districts? What challenges can technology help them overcome?

Mobile technology can help teachers develop and deploy tailored learning experiences. Curricula must be effectively designed and supported by teachers and administrators to best utilize the plethora of applications and tools available today.

Technology rollouts in education — no matter how powerful the devices and programs — will only be as effective as each individual teacher’s implementation.

The greatest opportunity presented by mobile devices in education is always-on, location-agnostic learning. Enabling the extension of learning beyond the boundaries of a structured classroom allows schools to tailor learning experiences and promote collaborative and cognitive skills. Technologies like tablets extend and enhance the learning process by making learning multi-dimensional. Videos, online collaboration tools (like Edmondo), and immersive game-based assignments are all enabled by mobile technologies.

This challenge will be met by satisfying three goals: enabling access to resources, engaging students in rich learning experiences, and empowering students to become lifelong learners.

What does the future hold for technology in education?

Blended learning and the digitization of textbooks
E-books not only provide unfettered access to text, but often present the information in a richer format. In the case of tablets, e-books can include features like embedded videos, interactive workbooks, and immersive digital note-taking features. Even simple e-readers provide word look-ups and rich reference materials.

Blended learning also includes “flipped classrooms” by Khan Academy, YouTube, and TED talks and portals that promote learning beyond the classroom. Mobile learning also extends worldwide, including such programs as SchoolSMS (schools sending bulk text messages to parents, teachers, and students) in Kenya and Akash (touch-screen learning tablets) in India. Content plus mobility is a game-changing combination.

Mobile learning infrastructure
Reliable connectivity is the keystone to mobile learning, but infrastructure demands present an ongoing challenge. School budgets are strained not just by the economy but [by] the ever-present need to implement a new technology or upgrade systems. Additionally, cross-compatibility continues to be an issue. Students and schools are presented a wide variety of tools, all requiring increasing bandwidth, electricity, and the staffing to help students when the devices do not work.

Infrastructure solutions that help tie together systems and help support reliable and easy-to-support networks are critical to mobile learning objectives. Scaling Internet access beyond the school and into the home will become increasingly pertinent.

How is technology aligned to meet the future of education IT?

We think accessories should expand learning opportunities by enhancing technology to boost student success. We strive to help schools apply the full potential of technology in their connected classrooms and enable educators, administrators, and IT leaders to engage and empower student-centered education.

Today, we offer a suite of products to serve growing needs in educational environments. Solutions include cases that enrich student interaction while giving tablets the best protection. Keyboards and stands that can make the best multitasker even better. And cables and chargers that help you share, stream, and connect seamlessly.

As we look forward, educational establishments will use what we learn from our partners in education to deliver solutions and support connections between students, teachers, administrators, parents, and the community.

What other effects do you think mobility will have on education? Are there other challenges and opportunities?

Dolby 3-D Glasses

When 3-D movies returned to theaters several years ago, they came with new specs. The old 3D glasses that relied on red/cyan lenses went the way of Godzilla. Instead the new eye gear used a variety of more sophisticated methods to bring a sharp, full-color three-dimensional image to viewer’s eyes without limiting the spectrum of colors they could see.

Dolby, one of the major players on the market, recently received a patent for its 3D glasses, which offers a close-up look at how they work.

The Dolby glasses (Patent No. 7,784,938) rely on a phenomenon called spectral separation. A projector breaks up each of the three primary colors into multiple spectra and beams 2 different images – one meant for the left eye, one meant for the right eye – to the screen in rapid succession, one right after the other. The images are projected at a rate of 144 frames per second, so you don’t notice the trick.

Multilayer filters on Dolby glasses allow the left eye to see shorter wavelength bands of blue, green and red than the right eye.

“Both eyes get a full spectrum of color, but it is not the exact same frequency that the other eye is getting,” says Martin Richards, a principal staff engineer in Dolby’s image technology group. The filters in each lens are made up to 70 to 80 layers of titanium oxide or silicone oxide, each with a different index of refraction. They either reflect or allow light to pass through, depending on its wavelength.

Dolby designed its glasses with curved lenses to correct for cross talk (when the right eye’s image leaks into the left eye’s field of vision), color shift, and reflections at the edge of the field of view. It also allows for light to hit 3D glasses from any angle without distortion. The actual Dolby glasses come enclosed in black frames.

Life Designed To Order

J. Craig Venter announced that he and his colleagues had made a new living bacterium from a genome they decoded, artificially rebuilt and then stuck into cored-out remains of the bacterium Mycoplasma. When the hybrid bug began to reproduce, it became the first artificial organism, putting to rest the ancient and tenacious conceit that only a deity or some special power can create the spark of life.

It was the most dramatic demonstration yet of the power of synthetic biology and bioengineering, a nascent field that promises to solve many of our most pressing problems. Researchers want to make bacteria that digest oil and chemical pollution from leaks and spills, or produce hydrogen or liquid fuels from sunlight, or eat cholesterol and other dangerous substances that accumulate in our bodies.

Though still in its infancy, this technology needs oversight now. Bad guys intent on making nasty bugs or good guys who are sloppy about safety could pose serious risks to our health and environment. Venter and his group were careful to use tiny molecular changes to “watermark” their creation; such identification should be mandatory for any scientist or company using the techniques of synthetic biology. Addressing these problems will take broad national and international efforts.

Some people may feel that creating new organisms somehow imperils the dignity of life. I don’t think it does. At bottom, this is a triumph of knowledge and technology advances. We confirm the value we place on life when we understand better how it works.

Cost Of Video Production

So you’ve decided that you need a video made. Whether it’s for a corporate video production, TV commercial, internal training or to build up your YouTube channel, that video will require a good deal of production, which is costly both for time and money. The video production industry can be pretty difficult to predict unless you have a crystal-clear picture of what you want done. This is because of the major production differences and associated price differences that are involved with even the slightest idea tweaking. Let’s go through some of the ways to have a video made, and what you can expect from each method.

The first option is only for the very bold: you could conceptually make the video yourself, with the only cost being that of equipment rental and software licensing, if needed. This is a great option if the quality of the video production doesn’t matter and you have a basic understanding of how to properly operate the equipment and software.

Another more cost-friendly way to get a video made is to hire an independent producer who is essentially a one man band. This person will know how to operate the camera, direct the talent, arrange lighting, manage sound, edit the video and prepare it for the final deliverable. Generally, this costs between $500-$2,000, depending on a few variables like location and equipment. The downfall here is that it’s incredibly difficult to do all of those things at once, and it’s very likely that at least one major mistake will be made.

The most sure-fire way to have a quality video production is to go through a professional video production company or hire a crew of independent freelancers. Each person will have his/her own professional equipment, and will be focused only on making sure that they do that job to the best of their ability. This option is also the most costly, since you’ll have to pay for the services of the director of photography, sound technician, lighting gaffer, editor and production assistant, as a bare minimum. Depending on the number of people hired and the duration of the shoot, a high-quality video production could cost anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000.

Keep in mind a common phrase in the video production industry: “The three elements are Quality, Cost and Time. Pick two and sacrifice the other, because only a perfect person can pull off all three.”

Cyber Security For Business, Government and Military Organizations

Among the packets of information flowing through the Internet backbone, concealed within the bits and bytes hides malicious code – waiting for the unprotected system or a user that has let his guard down.  This is the situation every time a system connects to the internet or the user logs-on.  The cyber traps like the one described above have been established by criminal organizations, activists, extremists, terrorists as well as intelligence agencies and military organizations of rogue nations. While some might call this fear mongering, it is a realistic depiction of the current state of insecurity on the Internet.

Did you know that …

  • Intellectual property infringement is weakening the national and economic security of the United States.


  • In 2010 there were approximately over 1.5 million new strains of malware released each and every month.


  • In a 2010 survey of 130 businesses, 100% of them had identified some type of active malware within their network systems.



    • Cyber intelligence and information security training join to form the front-line of defense against cyber crime, cyber espionage, cyber terrorism and other acts of cyber aggression and increase cyber security awareness. In September 2011 General Keith Alexander, Commander of U.S. Cyber Command, warned that “cyber intrusions against the U.S. government and private companies have multiplied in recent years, but truly destructive attacks are now on the horizon.”

    This is when the importance and significance of cybersecurity education and cybersecurity training for government and other types of organizations cannot be underestimated.

    It is a general trend, and often a requirement that employees at government agencies take cyber security courses and training to ensure information security for sensitive information and compliance with the requirements introduced.

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