WebProNews

Tag: Education

  • iTunes U Tops One Billion Content Downloads

    iTunes U Tops One Billion Content Downloads

    Apple’s educational arm of iTunes, iTunes U, has just hit a significant milestone according to the company. Apple has just announced that iTunes U has served over one billion content downloads since its launch back in 2007.

    “It’s inspiring to see what educators and students of all types are doing with iTunes U,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “With the incredible content offered on iTunes U, students can learn like never before―there are now iTunes U courses with more than 250,000 students enrolled in them, which is a phenomenal shift in the way we teach and learn.”

    According to Apple, iTunes U currently caters to over 1,200 colleges and universities as well as 1,200 K-12 schools. In all, iTunes U offers more than 2,500 public courses, and “thousands” (unspecific) of smaller private ones.

    iTunes U courses can be created in 30 countries, and are accessible in 155. Although Apple touts strong interest in the U.S. (a single Ohio State chemistry course enrolling 100,000 in just one year) over 60% of iTunes U app downloads come from an international audience.

  • 3D Printers Are Changing The Classroom

    Last week, we took a look at how 3D printing will revolutionize manufacturing in the United States. Before it can do that, however, it needs people who know how to use the technology. That’s where education comes in.

    The folks at Online Degrees recently created an infographic that shows how 3D printing will have a profound impact on the future of education. Of course, the most obvious benefit will be for design students using 3D printers to bring their creations to life. That being said, pretty much every discipline will be able to benefit from 3D printing in the future.

    Of course, 3D printers and expensive, and schools are having to slash budgets. That’s where the innovative entrepreneurs comes in. A recent Kickstarter was offering two 3D printers for only $700. The goal was to get as many of these things into schools as possible. Unfortunately, the project wasn’t able to meet it’s funding goal. An equally exciting cheap 3D printing project, the 3Doodler, has recently smashed its funding goal, however, and could prove extremely useful in certain disciplines.

    3D Printers Are Changing The Classroom

  • Foursquare Integrates School Stats from ProPublica

    Foursquare has been getting better over the past year or so by adding more information to check-ins. Their list of connected apps has grown to include some pretty useful apps like GeoPollster, which will tell you if the business you just checked-in at supports Democrats, Independent, or Republican candidates with their campaign contributions. Or After Credits, an app that I particularly like which tells you whether or not you need to stay for any bonus scenes after the movie you just checked-into.

    Today, Foursquare is announcing a new connected app – ProPublica’s Opportunity Gap.

    When you check into a school, the app will give you a fact about the school: facts like “did you know 7% of students at PS 234 Independence School receive free or reduced lunch?”

    You can then click through to access a more-detailed set of statistics like the number of students, teachers, AP courses offered, “inexperienced teachers,” and more.

    “With their new Foursquare integration, you can connect your Foursquare account to instantly see statistics for schools you’ve checked in to before. And when you’re out, you can instantly get stats about a school on your phone whenever you check in to one. It’s a great example of how news organizations can use Foursquare to reach their readers with relevant information when they’re out in the real world,” says Foursquare.

    “A year ago when we launched the first version of our “Opportunity Gap” news application, we tightly integrated Facebook in order to make it easy for readers to compare schools and share their school comparisons. Today’s relaunch adds Foursquare, along with adding a slew of new data to the app as well as algorithmically generate narratives by Narrative Science,” says ProPublica.

    Data should be available for around 50,000 schools, they say.

    You can connect your Foursquare account to the app and start receiving school info by going here.

  • TED Makes The Logical Jump To PBS In April

    TED Makes The Logical Jump To PBS In April

    Since its introduction, TED talks have become one of the major forces for good on the Internet. The video series featuring lectures from well-known educators, inventors and innovators have gone on to accrue more than one billion views. Now the the Web series is making the jump from the Internet to the public access television.

    TED announced today that it’s teaming up with PBS to broadcast a series of lectures called TED Talks Education. The first three speakers lined up are all major proponents of education reform. They are Bill Gates, Geoffrey Canada and Sir Ken Robinson. These speakers will all tackle the challenge of how to combat the increasing number of high school dropouts in our nation.

    The first event is scheduled to air on PBS on April 16. The series will be broadcast nationally so everybody will have a chance to see what these men have to say.

    You can check out some of the speakers’ past TED lectures on education below:

  • Google Offers $99 Chromebooks To Classrooms For Christmas

    Google Offers $99 Chromebooks To Classrooms For Christmas

    The holidays are all about giving and self-sacrifice. You wouldn’t know that by watching the relentless consumer culture line up outside Best Buys and beat up old ladies on their way to the latest gadgets on Black Friday. There is, however, still some good in the world with Google making an effort to support classrooms.

    Google announced today that it’s partnering with DonorsChoose.org to offer $99 Chromebooks to classrooms across the country. Not just any Chromebook, however, as Google is offering its top of the line Samsung Series 5 Chromebook. The computer usually retails for $429, but teachers can now get the computer, management console and support for only $99 each.

    Teachers have until December 21 to post their request for new Chromebooks on the DonorsChoose Web site. From there, people from all over the world can contribute money to help buy Chromebooks for the school in question. Teachers are limited to only 30 Chromebooks, but that should be enough for any classroom.

    Helping to bring cheap computers to classrooms in need isn’t the only way Google is celebrating the holidays. The company is also paying tribute to Festivus in its search results. There are sure to be many more holiday themed easter eggs from the search engine as it gets closer to Christmas.

  • 6 TED Talks That Björk Thinks You Should Watch

    TED recently launched its Playlists feature, which consists of lists of TED Talks curated by people whose names you might recognize. We recently shared the list curated by AOL co-founder Steve Case. TED has now released a playlist curated by singer/songwriter Björk, called “6 talks that are music to my ears”.

    The topics range from burial suits to prisoners of war.

    “The Icelandic songstress has, over the years, starred in a musical that turned a factory into a space for song and created an ‘app album’ to give deeper resonance to her compositions about nature and science,” says Kate Torgovnick on the TED blog. “So we’re not too surprised that her favorite TED Talks have a delightfully quirky edge to them.”

    Jae Rhim Lee: My mushroom burial suit

    Suzanne Lee: Grow your own clothes

    Rachel Armstrong: Architecture that repairs itself?

    Brenda Brathwaite: Gaming for understanding

    Aaron Huey: America’s native prisoners of war

    Eric Whitacre: A virtual choir 2,000 voices strong

  • People Are Selling Bootleg DVDs Of TED Talks

    People Are Selling Bootleg DVDs Of TED Talks

    Clearly, TED Talks have become really popular. In fact, earlier this month, TED announced that it has surpassed a billion video views, and that likely doesn’t even take into account the talks watched on Netflix or television.

    In fact, they’ve become so popular that despite being completely free to watch online, they’re being sold as bootleg DVDs in China:

    TED Talks bootleg

    Emily McManus writes on the TED Blog:

    In Shanghai, China, directly across the street from a pirated DVD shop called Movie Star is another pirated DVD shop called Better Than Movie Star … and that’s where TED’s founding video director, Jason Wishnow, discovered this pirated DVD (which, sigh, but it’s too good not to share).

    It’s a bootleg copy of one of our most popular Netflix shows, a curated collection called “Sex, Secrets and Love.” You can watch this collection yourself on Netflix Streaming, or find it on DailyMotion. Or, if you’d prefer a hard copy, did you know: You can order up a DVD of your favorite six TED Talks through our DVD on Demand service. And as with this bootleg above, you can make your own cover art …

    Here’s TEDTalks: Sex, Secrets & Love on Netflix, if you’re interested.

    What next? Bootlegs of Khan Academy videos?

  • Khan Academy iPhone App Is About To Launch

    Earlier this year, Khan Academy released an iPad app. On Tuesday, the nonprofit shared a sneak peek at its new free iPhone app, which it says will come out this week.

    Here’s a look:

    Khan Academy

    No word on the potential release of an Android app, but it seems fairly likely that one will be released eventually, given the number of people using Android devices and Khan Academy’s aspirations to reach anyone who wants to learn.

    Plus, Google and Khan Academy have been pretty tight. Not only are the site’s thousands of videos hosted on Google’s YouTube, but Google has provided millions of dollars to fund it. It was one of the winners of Google Project 10 to the 100. Earlier this year, Google’s first hire even left the company for Khan Academy.

    Here’s more on what the iPad app has to offer. We should see soon what features are available on the iPhone version.

  • The Electoral College Explained (In TED Video)

    TED has put out a new video explaining the Electoral College, for those of you who would like to see how it works. It’s not a usual TED Talk-style video, but rather a five-minute animated clip with a voice over by Christina Greer.

    “Discover how your individual vote contributes to the popular vote and your state’s electoral vote in different ways–and see how votes are counted on both state and national levels,” the TED Education YouTube channel explains.

    The animation was done by Marked Animation.

  • iPad Mini Event Will Focus On Education

    iPad Mini Event Will Focus On Education

    Education is obviously important to Apple. The company took time out in January to devote an entire press conference to iBooks 2 and interactive textbooks. Since then, schools around the world have ditched books in favor of giving every student an iPad. The company may be putting the focus back on education again according to a recent report.

    Bloomberg reports that Apple’s iPad Mini event set for tomorrow will focus on education. The iPad Mini is set to be a much cheaper device with some reports saying it will only cost $250 for the standard model. It would be much easier for schools to outfit their student body with tablets.

    Apple’s iPad has already proven to be a leader in education, but it’s starting to face some stiff competition. Just last week, Amazon revealed Whispersync, a new software that allows schools to send out course materials to all Kindle owners across its network. A cheaper Kindle Fire and Whispersync could draw educators away from the iPad. The iPad Mini, with its rumored low price, could bring those educators back.

    Consumer technology is still the battleground in which all three companies – Apple, Google and Amazon – will be fighting over this holiday season. Education doesn’t have the long term year-after-year success like the consumer market, but educators are big upfront buyers. Where else is Apple going to sell thousands of tablets to a single party?

    Apple and Amazon will now be competing for educators’ dollars, but what about Google? Google’s main platform is the Web with hardware being just one mean to that end. I still wouldn’t be surprised, however, if Google were to announce some new education incentives of their own in the near future. That probably won’t happen at next Monday’s Android event, but there could be something early next year.

    Besides education and the iPad Mini, Apple will probably show off a few more things of interest at its last big press event of the year. We’ll be bringing you all the news as it happens. Be sure to check out our extensive iPad Mini coverage to catch up on all the rumors and leaks.

  • College Students Can Now Get Office 365 At A Cheap Price

    College Students Can Now Get Office 365 At A Cheap Price

    College students are constantly broke. I was there once. The worst part was living off of ramen noodles while waiting for my meal plans to renew. Companies are finally starting to understand this and have started offering discounted, or even free, services to students.

    Microsoft is the latest company to adopt this student-friendly approach by making its Office 365 service dirt cheap. Office 365 is Microsoft’s new cloud-platform where users can edit Word, Excel and other Office software via Web browsers. The service normally costs $3 per month for students, but Microsoft is offering it at $1.67 per month ($80 over four years) to college students.

    Beyond the cheap price, the service has some specific perks for students. Subscribers will get access to all the applications in the Office software suite including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher and Access. A subscription lasts four years, but students can sign up for four more if their college journey takes that long.

    The other perks include automatic saving to SkyDrive for all documents and an extra 20GB storage on said SkyDrive. Students will now be able to save up to 27GB worth of content across all of their projects. Skype is even getting in on the fun by offering 60 Skype world minutes a month to subscribers.

    So, who’s eligible to take part in this deal? Unlike most student offers, full and part-time students can take advantage of the special pricing as long as they attend an “accredited institution.” Even better, faculty and staff at said institutions can also sign up for the service. It’s not known if faculty and staff are also held to the four year limit.

    UPDATE: Microsoft just got back with us. A spokesperson said that all “eligible students, faculty or staff members can renew their 4-year subscription to Office 365 University once.” Guess that means professors can only get 8 years just like their students. Tenure doesn’t mean as much as it used to.

  • Minnesota Gets Tough on the Enemy That Is Free, Online Education

    Free online education platform Coursera says they are “education for everyone.” But after a decision by one U.S. state, they may have to throw an “almost” into that motto.

    In a truly baffling display of governmental ignorance, the state of Minnesota has outlawed Coursera. Yes, the state of Minnesota has outlawed free, online education. As The Chronicle of Higher Education reports it, the ban cites a decades-old law that forces educational institutions to get permission from the state before they begin operating there.

    A spokesperson for Minnesota’s Office of Higher Education defended the declaration by saying,

    “This has been a longtime requirement in Minnesota (at least 20 years) and applies to online and brick-and-mortar postsecondary institutions that offer instruction to Minnesota residents as part of our overall responsibility to provide consumer protection for students.”

    From Coursera’s standpoint, the Minnesota law focuses on degree-granting programs – which Coursera is not. Of course, a decades-old law would not have been able to foresee free, online education providers – but it begs the questions: Why would the state expand the scope of the law to include them?

    Adding to the odd nature of the decision, it’s entirely unclear how the state plans to enforce the new law. And it’s also unclear whether the state has included other similar online education services like edX and Udacity in its ban.

    Either way, Coursera has done their part to inform Minnesota residents of the decree. They’ve posted this in their terms:

    Coursera has been informed by the Minnesota Office of Higher Education that under Minnesota Statutes (136A.61 to 136A.71), a university cannot offer online courses to Minnesota residents unless the university has received authorization from the State of Minnesota to do so. If you are a resident of Minnesota, you agree that either (1) you will not take courses on Coursera, or (2) for each class that you take, the majority of work you do for the class will be done from outside the State of Minnesota.

    Sorry, Minnesotans who wish to expand their knowledge. I’m sure you can find everything you need to know on Facebook.

    Coursera was launched earlier this year by computer science professors from Stanford University. As of today, knowledge-seekers can access 198 different courses in 18 different categories ranging from biology to business & management, from economics to engineering. Coursera currently boasts 33 University partners.

  • Amazon Announces Whispercast For Kindle

    Amazon Announces Whispercast For Kindle

    Schools and businesses are increasingly turning to tablets and e-readers to help disseminate information among students and employees. Amazon has one of the more popular e-readers with the Kindle. Bring these two instances together and you have Whispercast.

    Amazon announced that Whispercast is now available to businesses and schools that use Kindles for content distribution. Amazon describes the service as a “scalable online tool for deploying Kindle devices and Kindle content.” In essence, it allows a central entity, a school or business in this case, to distribute content among the thousands of other Kindle devices that are connected to the central network.

    “Hundreds of thousands of students around the world are already reading on Kindle,” said Dave Limp, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. “Today, we are announcing Whispercast, a free, scalable solution for school and business administrators to centrally manage thousands of Kindles and wirelessly distribute Kindle books as well as their own documents to their users. Organizations can also design bring-your-own-device programs at school or work using personally-owned Kindles, Kindle Fires, and other tablets using the free Kindle reading applications for receiving content.”

    The new service will be especially helpful to schools that leverage e-readers across the student body. Teachers can send learning materials directly to a student’s Kindle device without the need to hand out paper or heavy textbooks. It also supports the free Kindle reading apps on iOS and Android so students, regardless of platform, can get the latest digital textbooks sent directly to their devices from the school.

    Education benefits don’t stop at local schools. Non-profit organization Worldreader has being using Whispercast for the past year to send books to children living in sub-Saharan Africa. The organization says it’s much better for the children as they no longer have to wait for new books to be shipped to them. They can now get access to new books at the touch of a button.

    Schools may have the most to gain from Whispercast, but Amazon sees businesses benefitting from it as well. They say that Whispercast “makes it easy for business owners to manage and deploy fleets of Kindle e-readers and tablets as a way to support employee productivity or customer marketing initiatives.” In the future, Whispercast will also support the distribution of apps across Kindle Fire devices.

    The educational benefits are by far the most exciting applications that Whispercast brings to the table. Tablets promised children a future without back problems as it would replace the textbook. That was true, but it also proved difficult to make sure all children regardless of platform were able to access the books. Now everybody, even those with iOS and Android devices, can get the latest educational content sent directly from their teachers. To be honest, I wish it was around when I was in school.

  • ACT Entrance Exam Now More Taken Than SAT

    ACT Entrance Exam Now More Taken Than SAT

    The College Board’s yearly report on college and career readiness was released this week, and it shows that only 43% of college-bound seniors in 2012 are “college ready.” The College Board defines “college ready” as achieving a benchmark score of 1550 on the SAT, which gives students a 65% likelihood of achieving a B- average during their first year at a four-year college.

    “This report should serve as a call to action to expand access to rigor for more students,” said College Board President Gaston Caperton. “Our nation’s future depends on the strength of our education system. When less than half of kids who want to go to college are prepared to do so, that system is failing. We must make education a national priority and deliver rigor to more students.”

    The report shows that 1.66 million students in the class of 2012 took the SAT. The College Board states that this is the largest class of SAT takers in history. However, the Associated Press (AP) points out that the ACT edged out the SAT by fewer than 2,000 students, indicating that it is growing even faster than the SAT. The ACT is, in general, more commonly taken by U.S. students in the South and Midwest, while the SAT is more common on the East and West coasts.

    The College Board report also shows that scores in two of the three sections of the SAT are down for the 2012 test-takers. The average scores for the Critical Reading section have fallen 4 points to 496 since 2008 and average scores for the Writing section have dropped 5 points to 488 since 2008. Scores for the Mathematics section have remained steady at 514.

  • Google’s Class For Making You Less Stupid At Search Is Back

    Google’s Class For Making You Less Stupid At Search Is Back

    In June, Google announced an online course for learning about how to become a Google power searcher. The course consisted of six free 50-minute classes with interactive activities and opportunities to connect with users using Google Groups and Google+.

    Google announced today that the class is back for those who missed it the first time around. Those interested can now sign up. The series of classes begins on September 24 and lasts for two weeks.

    “During the course’s first run in July, people told us how they not only liked learning about new features and more efficient ways to use Google, but they also enjoyed sharing tips and learning from one another through the forums and Hangouts,” says Dan Russell on the Google Research Blog. “Ninety-six percent of people who completed the course also said they liked the format and would be interested in taking similar courses, so we plan to offer a suite of upcoming courses in the coming months, including Advanced Power Searching.”

    “You’ll learn about things like how to search by color, image, and time and how to solve harder trivia questions like our A Google a Day questions,” says Russell of the course.

    If you want to learn how to build your own search engine, a Google engineer offers a different class for that.

  • Tabeo Tablet From Toys “R” Us Gives Parents A Lot Of Control

    Toys “R” Us unveiled a new tablet device geared specifically towards kids today. It’s called the Tabeo, and comes with nearly 20 games, learning apps, storybooks, and other kid-friendly entertainment apps. There are 50 free apps pre-installed. It runs on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

    The device comes with safety features and parental controls, obviously. Kids can browse the Internet, but there is a full suite of customizable parent controls. Parents can set tailored levels of security for up to eight, so kids of different ages can all use it without too having more restrictions than parents deem appropriate.

    The Tabeo has its own filter, which can be set to block 27 predetermined categories of content, and parents can choose additional sites to block as well. They can also select specific online content to unblock. Kids can actually send requests to their parents to unblock sites if they come across something they want to check out.

    Parents, if they so choose, can even limit their child’s online time, by setting Tabeo to allow access only on certain days or during certain hours. If kids bypass the default browser, parents will get email alerts to notify them that their child may be browsing unfiltered content.

    “Over the past year, we’ve spent considerable time talking to parents and children to determine what features and functions they really want in a kids’ tablet, resulting in tabeo,” said Troy Peterson, VP, Divisional Merchandise Manager at Toys “R” Us, U.S.

    “We are proud that tabeo offers robust and flexible parental controls that can help protect children as they surf the Internet, and we are pleased to offer the tabeo App Store, which features only kid-safe content carefully curated by the Toys “R” Us team,” he added.

    Here’s a look at the specs:

    Tabeo Tablet Specs

    The tablet comes with a green bumper to protect it from drops, as well as a USB cable and USB power adaptor. Toys “R” Us is also launching a suite of accessories, including different colored bumpers, cases, docks, and cables.

    The Tabeo will be released on October 21, and will sell for $149.99. It’s currently available for pre-order at Tabeo.com and ToysRUs.com.

    Tabeo tablet

    Tabeo tablet

    Tabeo tablet

  • Google Adds Street View Imagery To 150 More Universities

    Google announced today that it is releasing Street View imagery for over 150 university campuses globally, adding to its growing list, which is currently about about 275 schools.

    “With classes just getting started, freshman students, transfers and even empty-nesting parents can now familiarize themselves with college campuses around the world, including UCLA in the U.S., Pembroke College in the U.K., McGill University in Canada and Sophia University in Japan,” says Brian McClendon, VP of Google Maps and Earth.

    Here’s a look at Royce Hall at UCLA:

    UCLA

    This is only one of a handful of Google Maps-related announcements the company made. It’s also expanding Google Maps Navigation (Beta) to thousands of towns in India (with live traffic conditions), and rolling out biking directions and Map Maker to New Zealand.

    Google put together the following video in celebration of all of the progress it has made with Maps:

  • Your Brain Benefits From Even A Little Music Education

    Music is extremely important to the development of young children. Research has proven again and again that music education helps young children succeed. Parents take this as an excuse to shove their children into music classes for the next 10 years of their life and push them ever onward to perfection. As it turns out, just a few years of music training will return the same results.

    A recent study from the Journal of Neuroscience sought to find out how much music training is needed to actually make an impact on the mind of a child. The study used 45 adults with varying degrees of music education. They were split up based upon how much music training they received as children and were then tasked to respond to complex sounds ranging in pitch. The results are actually pretty surprising.

    The researchers from Northwestern University’s Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory found that adults who studied music as a child were better able to process the sounds being played. What’s interesting is that the amount of music training didn’t matter. Those with even a minimum amount of training (one to two years) were able to pull out low frequency sounds from the test noises.

    So what does this say about music? It’s imperative that everybody be exposed to some kind of music education as a child. You don’t have to force children to take years of grueling music theory courses. They just need to take a few years of piano or another instrument in elementary school and they’ll be set for life.

    The study only tested the participant’s ability to hear and pick out sounds. Music training definitely enhances your ability to hear, but it does so much more. Music is essentially the steroids for your brain. It makes children better at reading and math. There are probably other benefits that we don’t even know about yet. Most important of all, however, is that music is just fun. Inspiring a love of music into children at a young age guarantees them a life of at least occasional happiness as music is a great stress reliever.

    Unfortunately, public funding for music and arts education is always declining. Schools are forced to focus on what they see as more important subjects like math and science. This latest study might help to convince some schools that music and art are just as important in fostering the kind of intellectual development that math and science require.

    Just be sure that your music education is strictly about the classics. Modern pop music will probably just degrade your mind to the intellectual equivalent of a spoon.

    [h/t: Scientific American]

  • Facebook Studio Edge Launched To Educate Agencies On Facebook Marketing

    Facebook announced today that it is rolling out Facebook Studio Edge to agencies worldwide.

    Facebook Studio Edge is a set of learning courses designed to teach you how to get more out of your Facebook marketing. The company revealed the program back in June, but now it’s widely available.

    The program consists of 10-15 minute courses focused on specific topics, such as apps, Pages and ads. Courses are interactive, and Facebook says it will continue to update them as needed (presumably as it offers more products).

    “Whether you’re looking to go deep on topics essential to your job or to expand your horizons, Studio Edge courses cover topics relevant to a wide range of agency audiences— from creative teams to media planners and technologists,” Facebook says.

    As you complete courses, you can earn badges, which you can display next to any submitted case studies you’ve been credited on.

    You can access Facebook Studio Edge by going to the “Education” tab from Facebook Studio.

  • Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 Student Edition Is About To Be Available

    Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 Student Edition Is About To Be Available

    Samsung announced today that its Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 Student Edition, which comes in white, and bundled with a keyboard dock and USB adapter in the box, is about to be available.

    The bundle also comes with an insert of recommended educational apps to download from Google Play. It comes at a retail value of $350 for $249.99.

    Some were able to ge their hands on it early, so you can see it here:

    “Students will realize substantial benefits from the bundle, which will add a physical keyboard to the device as well as a USB adapter that supports plugging in USB thumb drives as well as peripherals such USB mice,” Samsung says. “With these accessories and the preloaded Polaris Office, the GALAXY Tab 2 is perfect for typing research reports or even creating presentations. In addition, the multimedia features on the GALAXY Tab 2 are perfect for enjoying movies and music.”

    “The education market is a significant priority for Samsung, and we are very pleased to deliver a bundle that is sure to be appealing to just about any student at a very competitive price point,” explained Travis Merrill, Director of Marketing, GALAXY Tab, Samsung Electronics America. “A busy student can achieve a PC-like setup in the dorm room, yet still pop the GALAXY Tab 2 out of the dock and slip it into a pocket for usage while on the go. It truly is the smarter way to learn.”

    The Student Edition will go on sale beginning 09/19, and will only be available for two weeks.

  • Treehouse Is Growing, Is About To Offer Android Courses

    Web design and development site Treehouse is gaining users. Users that are willing to pay at least $25 a month to build their skills.

    Over the weekend, Treehouse surpassed 12,000 users. “That’s not just 12,000 folks signed up to an email list for free classes they don’t get much out of,” the company tells WebProNews. “That’s 12,000 students paying $25/month for access and regularly spending time learning.”

    Treehouse does have videos that are free to watch, but only a small portion of them are free. “To learn from all of our courses, you need to pay $25 per month,” CEO Ryan Carson tells us.

    Treehouse does have a couple of different plans. That’s the cheap one – the “Silver Membership”. There’s also a “Gold Membership,” for $49 a month with some additional perks.

    Treehouse offers courses in web design, web development and iOS development. Carson says the interest in web design is greater than both of the others.

    On the advantages and challenges of developing for iOS versus the web, Carson says, “The advantage of iOS is that there is a huge app economy in the Apple App Store and the Android App Store. It’s a brand new channel to customers that was untapped before. The disadvantage to iOS apps are that the iteration cycle is much slower as each time you change the app, you have to re-submit it to the app store, wait for approval and then it goes live.”

    There are plans to add Android developer training. In fact, it will be going live in a few weeks, Carson says.

    Treehouse will also soon launch courses in PHP, WordPress, jQuery and some other unnamed areas. Without getting into specifics, he says they’re also going to make learning more fun.