IT Trends :: Thursday, August 10, 2006
New Technology
System Allows Blind to 'See' to Shop
Some say brail just d'esn’t cut it in today’s technological world. Carnegie Mellon University engineers are developing a scanning system called Trinetra. For example, this is how the product would help someone independently shop for groceries: “The blind person uses a bar-code-reading pencil to scan a grocery item. The information is sent via the wireless headset to an Internet-enabled cell phone. The phone communicates with a public database, which translates the bar code into a recognizable product name. This name is relayed to the cell phone, where text-to-speech software articulates it into the headset.”…
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Electronic Daydreaming
These days, students aren’t passing folded notes or doodling in notebooks to kill time in class – they’re going online with laptops to surf the Web or send e-mail. Thanks to wireless networks, students can appear to be typing notes when they’re really instant messaging friends or blogging. Some schools are combating this by blocking wireless access from the classroom, like at the University of Michigan. Other schools, like Harvard, are banning laptops altogether…
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Mayville State University Majors Cross Campus Boundaries
Another success story for long distance learning. Here, students who were previously unable to earn four-year degrees now can at Mayville State University, thanks to phones, e-mail, and Interactive Video Network…
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Education Falls into the Laps of MSU Students
More news from Mayville State University. For a $475 technology fee, each student is loaned a laptop. Freshman and seniors get brand new machines while sophomores and juniors get computers upgraded from the previous year. Upon graduation, students can choose to purchase their tablets from the school. Students can access the Internet from almost anywhere on campus, many instructors use a stylus to correct papers digitally (so both teacher and student get a graded copy), and no one has to wait around for an open PC in the computer lab…
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