Practical Technology

Apple’s iBooks2’s reinvented textbooks really are something. They’re gorgeous, they’re fast, they’re real-time interactive with up to date information and they’ll only cost $14.99 or less. But, to use them, you’ll need an iPad–minimum list price: $499. Can you afford that for your kids? Can your school board? I could, but I’ve been lucky enough [...]

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When I went to college, there were days I’d carry over 20-pounds of books to school in a backpack. Of course, we had it tough back then, “We used to ‘ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o’clock at night and lick the road clean wit’ tongue. We had two bits of cold [...]

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As I pointed out recently, open-source software in schools isn’t just a good idea, it’s becoming a financial necessity if we’re to keep enough teachers for our kids in classrooms. So, it’s particular good timing that Sugar Labs and openSUSE have released free Linux distributions expressly designed for education. Sugar Labs, for those of you [...]

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