GeekSugar

Have You Taken Any Courses From iTunes U Yet?

GeekSugar — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:44:56 -0800

iTunes U has been around for some time now offering up cool courses from schools around the country that you can download straight to your iPod Touch or iPhone. I don't know what took me so long, but I just took a few free courses on video editing over the past week and I gotta tell ya: it's pretty awesome.

I take public transportation every day to work, so being able to brush up on math, grammar, and even astronomy during my commute seems like time well spent. And you don't have to spend a dime, since all the courses are free. There's been quite a bit of content added since it launched last year, so tell me - have you taken any iTunes U courses yet?

Geek Tip: Expand Your Vocabulary With a Little Online Help

GeekSugar — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:10:37 -0700

I've heard that the key to mental longevity is to always keep your mind open to learning new things. One easy way is to adopt a few new words and use them in your daily conversations. Surely you don't want to sit around all day, flipping through a thesaurus, so let me introduce you to Save the Words.

This website is not only cool but pretty funny. Scroll around inside the white box, and words will jump out at you, just begging to be used in your next speech or convo. Click on one that looks interesting, get the definition, and sign up for an optional "pledge" that sends you a reminder to use the word as much as possible every day. It's a fun way to expand your vocab, and create those coveted knowledge wrinkles in your brain!

Website of the Day: Documentary Heaven

GeekSugar — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 11:12:24 -0700

So you've finally gotten to your Summer destination spot, are ready to bask in the sunshine, but you end up getting stuck with rain for the duration of your trip. You can either pull out some books, rent some expensive movies, or you can head to Documentary Heaven and watch some free educational films.

This site which I came across on makeuseof can easily be accessed on an iPhone or laptop and offer documentaries ranging in a wide variety of categories such as evolution, law, psychology, and space.

To learn how to post your favorite websites to our Website of the Day group, read more.

I know that this long list looks scary, but trust me, once you get the hang of it, it'll be a snap the second time around.

First of all, join the Website of the Day group.
Click the pink "Share" menu on the top left side of the page.
Choose "Blog" and "Regular Post."
Give your story a "Title."
Fill in the "Body" with a link to your favorite website and the reasons why you love it.
Click "Next."
Choose the audience for your story to "Website of the Day" in the dropdown menu.
Add keyword(s) (for example mine for this photo was "Website of the Day").
Change channel to "Technology and Gadgets."
Fill in tag field with relevant tags.
Click "I’m done" to submit content.

So join the Website of the Day group and share information about all your favorite sites! Yours just might end up on the geeksugar homepage!

Flash Card App Keeps the Kids Sharp All Year Round

GeekSugar — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:02:23 -0700

When I was a kid, I remember getting out a stack of my mom's recipe cards and making my very own set of math flash cards. I'd like to think they helped me learn my times tables, but nonetheless, it was useful practicing in the Summer months because I'd be ahead of the game when school started.

Whether you've got children, young cousins, or brothers and sisters that are in the throws of learning arithmetic, this Math Flash Cards iPhone app is a great way to test them on all the basics. And because it stores times and scores for each exercise, there's some extra incentive to want to do better! This app only costs 99 cents.

Website of the Day: Lynda

GeekSugar — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:45:16 -0700

In this competitive job market, you have to stay on top of your game, so brushing up on your skills (or learning a few new ones) is essential to getting the job you want. I can't tell you how many people I know who have lost their jobs and decided to take a class at their local community college to learn a new skill. This is great, but they'll also be spending the next six to 12 weeks in a classroom every Thursday night while watching tons of job listings change from "Wanted" to "Filled."

So if you can afford a few classes, you can probably afford the $25 dollars a month (or $250 dollars a year) it costs to sign up with Lynda. Lynda provides an online classroom for you to refresh your skills in hundreds of subjects like video editing, Photoshop, web design, HTML, and Office just to name a few.

But the best part is, you have access to all of the courses Lynda offers, not just the one you are looking for. So you may go in for a course on Microsoft Office, but come out an expert on Office, Photoshop, and HTML. That should open up a few more job possibilities, right? I think it's quite a deal for the price, and if you've got the time (and the drive) to learn faster, it's only that much sooner that you can start sending out those updated resumes.

State of Maine Gives MacBooks to Every Public School Student

GeekSugar — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:35:19 -0700

How times have changed since I was in high school, when the only thing you got for free was a dented locker: The state of Maine has agreed to provide Apple MacBooks to every public school student, grades 7 through 12.

The Maine Department of Education has already ordered over 64,000 laptops for students and staff, to make Maine the first and only US state to ensure that every public school kid in middle and high school has a laptop to work on. The students are allowed to use the computers at school and take them home, but they have to return them at the end of the school year to pass to the next classes.

Bravo to Maine for making an important - and very expensive - educational tool so widely available for its youth. I also love that there's a standard for Macs as well - guess someone on that board is a Mac.

Hit the Books: Facebook Makes Your Grades Drop

GeekSugar — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 07:33:27 -0700

Maybe it's time to sign off the social and start studying, hmm? A recent study examining the academic impact of Facebook has shown that people who use the site on a daily basis are more likely to earn lower grades than their peers - as much as whole letter grades!

The inevitable conclusion is that the site is a big time-waster (although I've noticed I spend less time on Facebook since its latest redesign, so thank you for that time back, FB), causing students to sacrifice the time they should have spent studying.

The Internet itself is an addictive place, but what is it about Facebook that sucks up our time so much? Are we just curious about other people, or are we all just narcissists? Either way, we could all use some Facebook breaks - after all, it'll all be there tomorrow.

Source

Twitter to Be Taught in School: What Else Should Be Taught?

GeekSugar — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:02:43 -0700

Remember back to the subjects you were taught in school; imagine then if you'd sat through a class on Twitter; learned the ins and outs of Wikipedia. That's the future my friends, at least in Britain: it seems that Twitter, Wikipedia, podcasting, and blogging will be taught in UK schools.

This will all be taught before the age of 11, and while, sure, we don't know how long the first two services will be around in their present incarnations, I suppose it's not entirely shocking that the curriculum is changing to reflect the times. There is a mention of "keyboard skills" as well, and I assume that means typing, which is a necessary skill to have these days, but there are also plenty of other tech-related subjects our kids could stand to learn.

My suggestions? Learning the value of privacy in an increasingly transparent online world. Oh, and where and when not to text message.

Source

Wii Music Gets Ready For Class

GeekSugar — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 10:00:14 -0800

Almost as heartwarming as the story about the senior citizens enjoying the Wii at retirement communities, Nintendo has just announced that it is partnering with The National Association for Music Education to bring Wii Music into the classroom.

Spanning across 51 cities, Nintendo will have music teachers use the game to help children get enthused about music and teach them about song structure, rhythm, and tempo.

I think as long as Wii Music is used in a manner that complements music lessons, then I'm all for it, but used solely on its own, not so much. That's like giving a class a Wii Fit to play with and calling it gym class.

Geek Tip: Put Together a Bibliography Online

GeekSugar — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 14:00:52 -0800

For all my students, I hate to interrupt your Winter breaks to give you some school advice, but if I can make your upcoming semester a little less painful, then I've done my job.

My most hated task when I was in school was putting together bibliographies for papers. You had to know the format, all the book's info, where to indent. . . ugh. Thankfully, this generation gets BibMe, a website that will put together your bibliographies for free.

Input the book, magazine, film, even website, that you used to research your paper, and BibMe auto-fills all the info needed for the bibliography, in whatever format you need - MLA, APA, Chicago, or Turabian.