All the individual grievances — recorded on Amazon’s own Web site — received a measure of confirmation last week when Jakob Nielsen, a usability expert, denounced the Fire, saying it offered “a disappointingly poor” experience. For users whose fingers are not as slender as toothpicks, he warned, the screen could be particularly frustrating to manipulate.
Amazon Kindle Fire Faces Critics and Remedies Are Promised
December 11, 2011 By
What Do You Do With Unemployed Literati? Form An Online Journal!
December 1, 2011 By
It was the weekly meeting of The New Inquiry, a scrappy online journal and roving clubhouse that functions as an Intellectuals Anonymous of sorts for desperate members of the city’s literary underclass barred from the publishing establishment. Fueled by B.Y.O.B. bourbon, impressive degrees and the angst that comes with being young and unmoored, members spend their hours filling the air with talk of Edmund Wilson and poststructuralism.
A Scholarly Role for Consumer Technology
November 28, 2011 By
While specialized education tools have long played an important role in the classroom, some of the most commonly used gadgets and Web sites have become teaching tools of choice at business schools like Essec and elsewhere.
Facebook is increasingly used to foster a sense of community for business school classes that meet just a few times a semester; Twitter is used as a way for students to be heard in big halls, letting them ask questions during lectures without having to raise their hand or voice; and videoconferencing software is used at many business schools as a tool for communication between far-flung networks of professors and experts.
Teen Tweeter Won’t Apologize To Kansas Gov.
November 27, 2011 By
A U.S. teenager who wrote a disparaging tweet about Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback said Sunday that she is rejecting her high school principal’s demand for a written apology.
Emma Sullivan, 18, said she isn’t sorry and doesn’t think such a letter would be sincere.
The Shawnee Mission East senior was taking part in a Youth in Government program last week when she sent out a tweet from the back of a crowd of students listening to Brownback’s greeting. From her cellphone, she thumbed: “Just made mean comments at gov. brownback and told him he sucked, in person (hash)heblowsalot.”
Stanford’s Online High School Raises the Bar
November 20, 2011 By
In June, about 30 seniors will graduate from a little-known online high school currently called the Education Program for Gifted Youth. But their diplomas will bear a different name: Stanford Online High School.
Yes, that Stanford — the elite research university known for producing graduates who win Nobels and found Googles, not for teaching basic algebra to teenagers. Five years after the opening of the experimental program, some education experts consider Stanford’s decision to attach its name to the effort a milestone for online education.
Bleary-Eyed Students Can’t Stop Texting, Even to Sleep, a Researcher Finds
November 20, 2011 By
A study of more than 200 students at the university to further examine what role cellphones play in their sleep habits. Students, the researchers found, were losing an average of 45 minutes of sleep each week because of their cellphones.
The phones were disrupting sleep and, in turn, were associated with higher rates of anxiety and depression because of insufficient rest. While depression is a well-documented side effect of a lack of sleep, Ms. Adams said, the anxiety element was something new.
Bleary-Eyed Students Can’t Stop Texting, Even to Sleep, a Researcher Finds
The Kindle Touch Feels Good
November 14, 2011 By
The new Amazon Kindle Touch resembles the original Kindle in function only. It now has a touchscreen. Gone, finally, is the keyboard, which seemed out out of place even on the first model (though in the pre-tablet era, it presciently provided the owner with a way to make a brief pit stop, dashing off a mail or checking out a link). Gone as well are the page-turning buttons as users, even infants, assume and insist the screen be the sole interface.
Republican Bid to Kill Internet Openness Rules Fails
November 10, 2011 By
Democrats defeated the measure in a strict party-line vote of 52 to 46. The measure, introduced by Texas Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison, sought to undo the FCC’s net neutrality rules, which go into effect on Nov. 20.
Apple Woos Educators With Trips to Silicon Valley
November 5, 2011 By
SAN FRANCISCO — Three times over the last two years, school officials from Little Falls, Minn., have escaped the winter cold for two-day trips to Silicon Valley. Their destination: the headquarters of Apple.
In visits the officials described as inspirational, they checked out the company’s latest gadgets, discussed the instructional value of computers with high-level Apple executives and engineers, and dined with them and other educators at trendy restaurants. Apple paid for meals and their stay at a nearby inn.
Steve Jobs’s Genius
October 31, 2011 By
China and India are likely to produce many rigorous analytical thinkers and knowledgeable technologists. But smart and educated people don’t always spawn innovation. America’s advantage, if it continues to have one, will be that it can produce people who are also more creative and imaginative, those who know how to stand at the intersection of the humanities and the sciences. That is the formula for true innovation, as Steve Jobs’s career showed.
