The Pondering Pixel

A close-up wide angled but abridged look at projectors and other classroom technology, product reviews and releases, tradeshows, debates and conspiracy theories as well as humble observations on schools and screens.

Okay—I am officially creeped out because there really was something that went bump in the night last week and it was Amazon.com. I imagine a faceless being in a black cloak passing over the homes not in possession of a Kindle reader but descending on the bedrooms of their customers to delete copies of certain titles it had sold without publisher authorization. Think about it, an unseen hand removing property they had purchased simply because it could do so-remotely and without permission. And no, the fact that Amazon credited accounts is not the issue.more

"Technology is core and essential to the strategies we are using to reform education." That was the message from both Jim Shelton, assistant deputy secretary for innovation and improvement at the United States Department of Education, and Aneesh Chopra, chief technology officer in the White House as reported in The Journal. Chopra said that technology in education is less about hardware and software and more about what we teach, the methods we use,and the support and direction we give to teachers. Chopra, according to the article, is said to be completely wired in, connected to university lectures via iPod in order to exist in a constant "learning environment.”more

Have you been following the Kindle debate? Well the unveiling a couple of days ago of the Kindle DX e-book reader with a larger screen has business watchers, educators, students and textbook publishers all a buzz. So it should. The WSJ article I read reported that this coming Fall, a test group of university students at Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve and other universities (including Princeton) will be given large screen Kindles with textbooks for chemistry, computer science and freshman orientation pre installed so that the university can analyze their experience as compared to those students using paper texts.more