educational

For babies, no such thing as educational screen time

In 1999, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement that discouraged electronic media use by children under the age of 2. Today, the same group is releasing a follow-up statement that not only maintains its previous recommendations, but backs them up with a great deal of data to boot.

In 1999, as display screens were making their way into parents' and children's bedrooms alike, the pediatricians had limited data with which to work. But they had something of an expert hunch that kids younger than 2 reaped more negative than positive effects from media exposure.

In today's … Read more

Too many USB flash drives? Donate them

Among their many talents, USB flash drives have revolutionized the press kit. Now when I go to trade shows like CES or Mobile World Congress, I can just pick up a tiny flash drive with a company's announcements rather than lugging around a bunch of heavy folders. The result is lots of saved paper and less strain on my back.

Of course, the downside of this development is that I've wound up with quite a collection of USB drives that I've used only once. And after cleaning out my office a few weeks ago, I found I had no less than 60 flash drives of various sizes.

Since I didn't want to throw them away or leave them around to collect dust, I started thinking about ways they could put to good use. Ed Rhee already offered six cool things to do with a spare USB flash drive, but even pursuing each of those angles would still leave me with way more devices than I need. That's when a friend from college offered a solution. … Read more

Schmidt's brilliant criticism of U.K. (and Google)

commentary There's clearly something wrong with the British education system.

British youths are rioting in the streets and somehow the nation has produced far fewer great comedies that are then destroyed in the American versions.

Who, therefore, could not applaud Google Chairman Eric Schmidt for a bravura, even Braveheart performance in Edinburgh today?

As the Guardian spells out, Schmidt stood before the collected brains listening to his McTaggart Lecture, stared them down and gave them his most withering engineer's frown.

He said that the U.K. education system had performed a "drift to the humanities." Which … Read more

Verizon workers go on strike

Comcast offers a $9.95 Internet Essentials service to low-income families, the FBI releases an iPhone app that helps parents with a missing child, and Verizon workers in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic go on strike after negotiations fail to produce a contract.

Links from Monday's episode of Loaded:

Verizon workers go on strike HP TouchPad 4G and $50 in the App Catalog Education iMac? AntiSec hackers post police data Comcast $10 Internet Essentials plan FBI Child IDapp in App Store Subscribe: iTunes (MP3) | iTunes (320x180) | iTunes (HD) | RSS (MP3) | RSS (320x180) | RSS HD

Apple launches sub-$1,000 iMac

Apple has quietly launched a cheaper iMac more than a week before earlier reports expected.

Apple's new offering costs $999, and comes with a 3.1GHz dual-core Intel Core i3 processor and a 250GB hard drive. The computer is running the AMD Radeon HD 6750M graphics card.

The cheaper iMac is designed for education institutions only, which means individuals cannot purchase the computer at the discounted rate.

Citing a source named, "Mr. X," 9to5Mac reported yesterday that Apple would launch a new iMac as early as next Tuesday for less than $1,000. According to the Apple-focused … Read more

UConn, Harvard cozy up to Google

Google is making major inroads in the education sector.

The company announced yesterday that the University of Connecticut has initiated a changeover to Google Apps for Education. According to David Gilbertson, the school's chief information officer, the search giant's platform will be used for the students' "e-mail and calendar platform."

"After contacting other major universities which recently moved students to Google Apps, we are confident that this change will bring significant benefits and cost savings to the university as a whole," Gilbertson recently wrote on the university's Web site.

Harvard is also getting … Read more

Free Amazon App of the Day - 5/16/11

For today only, Monkey Preschool Lunchbox is available, for free, at the Amazon Appstore. A few of the dads here at CNET swear by this game for their young ones, on their iPads, but lest we forget that some of you Android users are parents too, why not share the love? I've watched one of my godchildren play this game on my HTC Incredible, and found myself wanting to get into the action as she passed each level. I get entertained when they're entertained, so it's a win-win.

Monkey Preschool Lunchbox will teach your child the basic fundamentals of cognition through various mini-games consisting of memorization, counting, colors, letters, puzzle-solving, shape identification, and spot the difference. Encouragement is provided by the animated monkey on the screen through way of somersaults, and rewards come in the form of cartoon stickers the child can collect for their sticker board.

The game does not track statistics, nor does it get progressively harder based upon how quickly and/or easily your child goes through the levels.

Monkey Preschool Lunchbox will be free until 3 a.m. ET/12 a.m. PT, so download now and get your toddler learning!… Read more

Free PBS app streams kid vids to iPad

When the PBS for iPad app debuted last year, I bemoaned the lack of any PBS KIDS content (other than previews).

Well, I will bemoan no more: PBS Kids Video for iPad is a brand new app that streams--you guessed it--video for kids. Specifically, it serves up over 1,000 clips from shows like "Arthur," "The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That," and my personal favorite, "Word Girl."

Yes, unfortunately, I did say clips. The app doesn't offer full-length episodes, but rather a whole mess of snippets--most of which run … Read more

MBAs make their way in engineer-crazed tech world

Editor's note: This is the second story in an ongoing series profiling college graduates throughout the United States as they hunt for technology jobs. Check out CNET's special report, "Wanted: A job in tech," for a story tomorrow on a grad student who landed a job at Google, where he'll apply his operations chops to cloud computing.

Julia Davis doesn't quite fit the profile of a typical candidate for a business school degree. After graduating from Lewis and Clark College in hipster mecca Portland, Ore., with a degree in psychology and an art minor, she worked at an art foundry in New York before ultimately finding her way to a consulting firm in San Francisco--and then to Skolkovo, a business school near Moscow in Russia. She finished the 16-month program in December, (most master of business administration, or MBA, programs are two academic years) and has spent the spring on the hunt for a job.

"I wanted to take my career in a more international direction," Davis told CNET. "I looked at the options and one of them was the Skolkovo program, which is co-sponsored by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in the U.S., so it has a brand name school associated with it. It was a new program, and it was focused on emerging markets, and the growth story in emerging markets was very compelling."

There's another reason why Davis isn't your typical MBA: She's planning to head to a tech start-up when she graduates. When she spoke to CNET, she said she was in talks with an early-stage start-up in a strategy role. You'll find lots of diverse characters in the tech world, but people straight out of business school with no prior experience in the industry are rare among them.

"I'd always been passionate about technology," Davis said. "I lived in San Francisco, so I was sort of in the thick of it, and then when I moved to Russia I saw not only everything that was happening internationally with technology but also innovation and entrepreneurship, and I just realized that it was an exciting space to be in."… Read more

Kibot the robot entertains kids, spies on them

Korean children, already fast becoming a robot-friendly lot, have a new companion in Kibot, a monkey-faced bot that can read fairy tales, sing songs, take pictures, and make video calls via a display embedded in its tummy.

Wireless operator KT Telecom started delivering the multitasking monkey today for 485,000 won ($447), plus wireless packages that can be purchased in 12- or 14-month installments.

"It's really cute," said my 9-year-old friend Stella, a co-worker's daughter who visited CNET's offices today. "I would get one if it was in blue." (No luck; for now, it only comes in pink and gray).

Kibot (short for "kid's robot") isn't just for kids, however. Parents can also remotely control the 8-inch-tall wheeled robot via mobile phone and, using Wi-Fi, monitor their children (a feature that made Stella a tad apprehensive).

"If I was sleeping, it wouldn't be that comfortable if I knew someone was watching me," she said. "It would be freaky."

Big brother (or father) concerns aside, Stella thinks the robot playmate--which is aimed at kids younger than she is, 3 to 7--would be a hoot to have around.

She was especially excited by the video chat function, which lets kids make calls via the 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera simply by touching an RFID card bearing the picture of a familiar face (Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, and so on) to the device. … Read more