While I know they’re still used in educational institutions and offices around the world, the occasional graphing calculator I stumbled across at CES just seemed terribly out of place and dated. However, they have a come a long way from the model I remember using in high school. A few years ago we brought you Texas Instrument’s TI-Nspire Graphing Calculator which was ‘cutting edge’ at the time, but it’s taking another step forward with the TI-Nspire Navigator System which allows teachers to wirelessly snoop monitor their students progress with the devices.
The graphing calculators each require a slide-on sleeve and a central access point to give them wirelessly capabilities, but once that’s all up and running a teacher can call up any student’s display on their PC to see how they’re coming along with a math problem, or allow them to present a solution or answer to the rest of the class when using a projector. There’s also a clever little polling system that allows students to privately participate in multiple choice questions without the embarrassment of getting an answer wrong in front of the class. A 32 student kit which includes the wireless cradles and central access point (but not the calculators) is available now for ~$4,000.
I’m still a bit skeptical about the need for a $99 monochrome device that simply provides an offline copy of Wikipedia, but I had a chance to play with the WikiReader today, and found myself utterly entranced with the random button. The device itself is light and simple, and if I had to sum up the monochrome display and touch screen in one word I would definitely call it ‘usable’, but I instantly warmed up to that ‘random’ button you can see in the lower left corner which provided a kind of a ‘word-of-the-day’ calendar experience. Now normally I don’t sit at my computer all day looking up random articles on Wikipedia to pass the time, but I could probably find myself killing a moment or two of boredom with this device.
At first glance it might look like a pocket-sized overhead projector, but the DIXAU DX3 from Unichal is actually just another digital dictionary. Instead of entering text on the touchscreen display via a virtual keyboard though, the DX3 has a small pop-up digital camera that will snap a photo of the word in question and automatically provide a definition.
It can also speak the word in question so you know the proper pronunciation, and since no one wants to carry around a uni-tasking device these days, it’s got a microSD card slot and multimedia capabilities as well. The DIXAU DX3 was released in Korea on December 18, but there’s no word on whether or not it will ever officially be available outside that country.
I know musical toys can get pretty annoying for parents, but I’m willing to bet this ‘Original Sound Track’ toy designed by Ricardo Seola would appeal to kids and adults alike. It’s composed of a wooden modular track system covered in strategically positioned bumps, and a wind-up vehicle that features a miniature harp, like those used in music boxes, on the front. As the car rolls around the track, the metal teeth on the harp hit the bumps and every layout produces a unique musical composition.
I’ve included a video of it ‘in action’ after the jump, but since it’s still a design concept that’s hopefully moving into production, the whole thing is a bit rendery. But you get a good idea of how it works.
Teddy bears and plush cartoon characters might make a baby’s room look more appealing, but where’s the educational value in those? I say you should replace their favorite stuffed animal with one of these plush planet Mars and before they even hit kindergarten they’ll already be familiar with the detailed cartography of the red planet. This stuffed version includes labels of over 400 places on the planet’s surface, and comes with a fact sheet that’s probably ideal for use as a bedtime story. Get it from CoolStuffExpress for just $18.99.
The majority of people who are afraid of what will happen when CERN’s large hadron collider is finally put into operation probably have no idea what it really is, or what it’s designed to do. But what better way to educate the masses on the intricacies of the world’s largest science experiment than through an intricately detailed pop-up book? That’s what made me the amateur surgeon I am today!
Voyage To The Heart Of Matter – The Atlas Experiment At CERN was written by Emma Sanders, though it’s probably the paper engineering skills of Anton Radevsky that will make this a must-have Christmas gift for everyone from amateur physicists to the scientists actually working on the ATLAS experiment. But since it won’t be available until the end of November for about $33, it might be cutting it a bit close for the gift giving season.
Thanks to the likes of Brando and other companies, USB microscopes are plentiful and easy to find these days. But being tethered to your PC with a USB cable limits where they can go. Not this wireless model though, the only limit of where you can use it is your imagination… and possibly good taste.
It uses a 2.4GHz wireless signal with a switch on the cradle/wireless receiver for choosing one of 4 channels, and the optics are able to magnify whatever it is you’re looking at from 10-200x. It’s also got a ring of 8 white LEDs around the ‘lens’ for added illumination, a built-in Li-ion battery that charges when placed in the cradle, and is available from ThinkGeek for $139.99.
I never thought I’d ever want to go back to school again, but the captains-in-training at the Warsash Maritime Academy in England have to start out on these amazing supertanker replicas before they ever get the chance to pilot the real thing. And with a price tag of over $240,000, you’re actually better off strapping a lawn chair to the RC Titanic replica I wrote about on the weekend, then trying to buy one of these for your own amusement. But replicas or not, apparently piloting these miniature supertankers can provide plenty of useful experience for the real thing, without the fear of causing the next Exxon Valdez disaster because you spent the night before your big exam partying.
I love me a good science center, but I particularly like it when the actual building manages to educate as much as the exhibits inside do. Case in point, the The Swiss Technorama Science Center in Winterthur, Switzerland. Way back in 2002 they hired Ned Kahn to design a unique facade for the building which consisted of thousands of small aluminum panels that move with the air currents revealing the patterns of turbulence in the winds. Obviously the still shots don’t do it justice, so if you have a few minutes I highly recommend checking out the video below to see it in action, it’s quite hypnotic.
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