educational

Let's role play.

You're a school bus driver at Haralson County Middle School in Georgia. A 6th-grader gets on your bus and complains he's hungry.

You ask him why he's hungry. The kid says he was 40 cents short on his lunch card, so he was denied food.

When this scenario played out for bus driver Johnny Cook, he took to his Facebook page to express his shock and offer to help any child who is short of lunch money.

However, as CBS Atlanta reports, the school wasn't too pleased with this expression of concern. … Read more

I had always thought that technology was freeing burdened souls from having to follow ancient rules. The cherished principle of disruption has taken an ax to any supposed truth that's more than seven years old.

Yet some still want to preserve old ways. Grammarians, for example.

What use is grammar, really? You know what someone's trying to say when they tweet: "LOL. SKOOL SUX!!!!" -- even if the grammar gods might feel the bile rising toward their vocal chords.

Surely the most important thing about communication is the communicating part, not the following-some-old-Englishman's-rules part.

And yet there is an app called Grammarly, whose sole existence is predicated on preserving linguistic decorum.

In order to prove its alleged worth, Grammarly decided to analyze the tweets of the famous to see just how terminal grammar skills had become.… Read more

"We were more behaved than kids should be."

These deeply felt words were offered to CNN by just one of the 101 students asked to leave an Air Tran flight bound for Atlanta from New York on Monday.

Some might feel that kids on planes should just sit like the rest of the adult cattle in a soporific stupor. However, this incident provoked feelings that are anything but sleepy.

Please imagine, too, the bemused thoughts of those few left behind after 101 students (and 8 chaperones) from New York's Yeshiva of Flatbush Joel Braverman High School were … Read more

In the past I've written about Babbel for mobile and Rosetta Course (mobile version of Rosetta Stone) for language learning when you have spare time. Now another contender enters the ring, and has a lot of promise.

Duolingo turns learning a language into a game, more so than the other apps. You are given a few hearts (representing your health pool) that you don't want to lose during the learning levels. Hearts are lost by answering questions incorrectly. Once you finish a lesson with hearts remaining, you'll earn an achievement to track your … Read more

As Adobe Systems tries to ride out a storm of customer criticism over its move to subscription-only pricing, rival Corel is swooping in with a new discounted pricing plan for customers at schools and universities.

The company said the revised education discount plan was already in planning before Adobe changed its sales approach. But the company clearly is trying to capitalize on its rival's woes: last week, it announced Corel software discounts of up to 60 percent for Adobe customers making the switch.

The education discount covers all Corel's graphics-related software, including the CorelDraw Graphics Suite, PaintShop Pro, … Read more

Shutterstock has launched a new subscription service called Skillfeed designed to connect professionals who need to learn how to use their computers with creative types who want to make videos that do the teaching.

With the $19-per-month service, subscribers can watch as many videos as they want, either longer-form courses or shorter "snacks" good for smaller periods of free time, said David Fraga, Skillfeed's general manager. And content contributors get paid: Shutterstock keeps 70 percent of the proceeds, but the rest is divided among all contributors based on what fraction their videos were of the total time … Read more

One of the less likely things a teacher might tell a student told during a math exam is: "Take off your bra. Then raise your arms."

Yet this allegedly was said to a 10th-grade student at Cap-Jeunesse High School in Saint-Jerome, Canada.

The rules of the math exam were that cell phones were supposed to be placed on the teacher's desk to avoid cheating. Or, perhaps, to prevent someone texting Madelaine to ask how last night's ice cream with Roger had gone.

Yet, as Canada's QMI Agency reports, the count seemed to be one cell … Read more

It must be peculiar for children of the Internet age.

They are the first to have a complete record of their whole lives. They are the first who'll be able to offer concrete proof of every one of their days, friends, and actions.

Eric Schmidt worries, however, that they'll be the first who'll never be allowed to forget their mistakes.

As the Telegraph reports, Schmidt spoke Saturday at the Hay Festival in the U.K. and offered some sobering thoughts for those addled by online life.

He said: "There are situations in life that it's … Read more

It's more enjoyable when sense doesn't prevail.

It allows for so much more humor and head-shaking.

However, Kiera Wilmot has probably shaken her head enough lately and will now be grateful for a little stillness.

Should you have been unaccountably arrested for expectorating in your high school cafeteria recently, you might not have heard about Wilmot.

One morning at Bartow High School in Florida, she put toilet cleaner and aluminum foil in a water bottle to see what might happen. It was just, she said, an experiment.

Even her school principal admitted that it merely sounded like a … Read more