When I was a kid, the best days in school were always the days we would build something in science class. I still remember the day we learned about solids and liquids by making Oobleck, a non-Newtonian fluid. The concoction was a cornstarch-and-water mix that was a solid when you rolled the mess in between your hands but turned into a liquid as soon [...]
As a graduate student in publishing, I am frequently asked the same thing by professors, peers and random people once they discover what I study. It is often some version of the question, “Where do you get your news?” While I have my go-to publications that I read extensively to keep up with popular trends and changes within the publishing industry, my first [...]
The internet has undoubtedly changed the way we speak. BTW (alternatively, beeteedubs) has crawled its way into my daily vocabulary. Yesterday, my friend ended her sentence with IRL; my puzzled look led her to explain: “in real life.” Last week, I made a joke to my fifty-five-year-old father, to which he responded: “LOL.” But the internet has done more than create everyday acronyms; it has changed [...]
Recently, Georgia State University (GSU) has increased its graduation rate by 22 percent thanks to recent changes in the way it is handling its academic advising program. One of these changes includes using a new type of software created by the Education Advisory Board (EAB). The software aids students and academic advisers by sending alerts to both parties when academic issues start to arise. For [...]
Since December 2004, Google has been working to create a “comprehensive, searchable, virtual card catalog” by scanning thousands of books, converting the scans to searchable text, and uploading the content into its digital database. Many of these books are out of print, collecting dust and mold on the far shelves of libraries. It’s likely that without Google’s rehabilitating project, these books would eventually [...]
Many American students are overwhelmed at the thought of education beyond the high-school level, particularly when confronted with the idea of having a STEM-based job. STEM is the acronym defined as “science, technology, engineering and math,” and majors leading to careers in these fields, despite encouragement by educators and administrators, are not seeing the growth necessary to sustain the future workforce. In an article from The [...]
You may have heard of Body Worlds, an exhibition about health and the human body that has been at major cities for the past several years. It is not like other exhibitions you may have seen, however, in that it features real human bodies displayed to educate the viewer about his or her own body. These bodies are preserved using a technique called plastination, invented [...]
by Alexandra Garner With technology advancing so quickly, college programs are finding it hard to keep up to date—most college and university board members are more than 50 years old, not “digital natives,” yet they recognize that technology is a necessary part of educating today’s students. According to a survey held by the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB), more [...]
How are ever-prominent search tools affecting our brains? Clive Thompson set out to answer this and related technology questions in his recent book Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better. In an excerpt published by Slate, Thompson asks if modern dependence on search engines is causing our memories to retain information less efficiently: “The short answer is: No. Machines [...]
With tablets becoming more and more popular, new apps for children’s education have developed, and teachers have even started using them in the classroom. According to Forbes, Apple sold three million of its new iPad during its opening weekend, with analysts expecting over sixty million of the tablets to be sold worldwide; ereaders are selling even faster than tablets. With so many different options, [...]