Gates, Zuckerberg Give $9 Million For High-Speed Internet in Schools

Engineering is changing the way students are taught and examined as much more college districts across the nation are making use of interactive digital learning systems in the classrooms and changing traditional textbooks with digital curriculum — but also handful of American schools do not have a rapidly and reputable net connection to assistance the digital shift.

Two globe-renowned technological innovation gurus — Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg — have joined in an work to provide a substantial-pace web connection to every school in the United States. Facebook creator Zuckerberg’s Startup: Schooling and Microsoft Corp. Co-Founder Gates’ basis have contributed a combined $ 9 million to the nonprofit EducationSuperHighway, a San Francisco-based mostly nonprofit doing work to increase connectivity in colleges, The Related Press reviews.

“It’s the backbone. We have to in fact consider not just about the sustainability of the current site visitors, we’re speaking about exploding traffic,” said Raj Adusumilli, assistant superintendent for information services in the Arlington Public Colleges in northern Virginia.

The income will be employed to offer technical experience to colleges and use competition to aid drive charges down. It very likely would price billions to get substantial-speed Web accessibility to every single school in America.

“When colleges and teachers have accessibility to reputable Internet connections, students can discover new abilities and suggestions beyond the classroom,” Zuckerberg said in a statement.

Previously, President Barack Obama set a objective of having 99% of college students connected to large-velocity web connections inside 5 years. Also, the Federal Communications Commission is weighing alterations to a plan to increase connectivity in colleges.

Nowadays about 80% of colleges have world wide web capabilities that are too slow or isolated to spots like front offices and laptop labs, mentioned Richard Culatta, director of schooling technological innovation at the Schooling Division. A lot of colleges have the identical volume of connectivity as an average home. That means numerous hundred children or a lot more operate on an Internet connection related to that employed in a property by 4 loved ones members. That prospects to networks that are slow and prone to crashing.

For colleges in rural regions, price is a large issue in obtaining access to lines that would deliver broadband into colleges. To purchase the products and set up Wi-Fi fees an estimated $ thirty,000 to $ 50,000 per college and to run fiberoptics into the school can cost tens of 1000′s far more per mile, according to Evan Marwell, CEO of EducationSuperHighway.

Additionally, a lack of competition for broadband access helps drive up costs at Chautauqua County Unified Colleges, a district with about 360 students in an agriculture and oil neighborhood in rural Kansas. About 3-quarters of students in the district qualify for cost-free or reduced lunches.

Nancy Pinard, the district’s technological innovation director, stated the district relies on distance understanding to teach Spanish, physics and calculus and has issued an iPad to all college students in upper grades. Its broadband bill would be about $ 9,000 a month with out a unique Federal Communications Commission program that decreases it to $ 2,000 to $ three,000 a month.

Doug Levin, executive director of the State Educational Technologies Directors Association, said that the drive for improved broadband abilities has been fueled in element by a drop in the value of tablets and their growing acceptance. More apps and other educational application are offered and states and districts have loosened rules to allow textbook bucks to be invested on digital learning, he said.

Another issue is preparation for tests connected to Frequent Core academic standards rolling out in most of the country. The shift to computer-primarily based tests calls for more bandwidth than many districts have.

Gates, Zuckerberg Give $9 Million For High-Speed Internet in Schools

Art Party: "to preserve education we need to pull down Gove"s gates" | Bob and Roberta Smith

The Artwork Celebration Conference is ‘a joyous experiment in a new type of advocacy for the arts’, says Bob and Roberta Smith. Photograph: Art Celebration Conference

Artists, writers, arts organisations and mothers and fathers are deeply concerned that the arts in secondary schooling are getting diminished to the detriment of long term audiences, long term cultural innovation and most paradoxically, future British layout and product development. So this weekend I have organised with Crescent Arts Centre in Scarborough the very first ever Artwork Get together conference, a joyous experiment in a new variety of advocacy for the arts.

We hope to unleash the artist’s voice into a debate about the place of artwork in society which has principally been dominated by museums and galleries and funders. We have taken in excess of the beautiful Victorian Spa in Scarborough where, like a seaside Hogwarts, each and every niche, corner, theatre and a grand hall will be filled with artists advocating that art become centre stage in a college curriculum primarily based on creative considering.

These days there will be a amount of provocations from a large framework I have constructed, christened the Summit. Leslie Butterworth from NSEAD (the Nationwide Society for Educators in Art and Style) will say that the existing proposals for the curriculum are the most toxic for the arts she has encountered in the course of her lifetime. In 2013, 14% fewer youngsters chose artwork and design and style GCSE than did in 2000.

I want our kids celebrated by their teachers when they choose art at key stage 4 we will not want children discouraged. If inventive little ones are supplied an examination framework seen to be beneath other GSCE subjects then they are being structurally reprimanded and punished for getting inventive and inventive.

Michael Gove probably thinks art is important. Here it’s a case of “preach what you practise” and not “practise what you preach”. Every single private college in the country has terrific artwork rooms. Eton, Harrow, Ampleforth, Westminster. So far from not valuing artwork themselves, individuals with access to private education recognize art makes individuals strong: Boris Johnson is a decent portrait painter Winston Churchill liked to paint.

But art rooms, with kilns, print rooms and plaster sinks are pricey, and that is the real cause why the government does not want to encourage state funded colleges to provide a respectable arts education to children.

If you want to set up a totally free college in an old fire station it really is going to be a great deal far more pricey if you have to give a kiln and a display-printing bed.

Gove thinks training is protected by developing gates around experience and knowledge. But the way to preserve wonderful training is to pull down the gates. Get much more men and women to pass exams, not fewer. We want a wealthy vocal society where all people really feel their voice is important, where folks come to feel emancipated by way of expertise. Private education is all about making specialised groups of the realized that are protective of their knowledge.

The challenge in schooling is to introduce new college students to the planet, display them factors they did not know ahead of and spark the engine of curiosity. The uninteresting and simpler process is to hot home the privileged. Opening up schooling opens up society. Dynamic developments in the economic climate, design and style, music and the arts happened in the sixties due to the fact progressive contemplating following the 2nd world war gave new groups of men and women electrical power.

The Browne overview, which made university charges unaffordable, coupled with Gove’s reforms closes down chance.

We want a society the place individuals truly feel they have the potential and right to contribute to British culture. The Browne assessment, which was a Mandelsonian creation, is concerned only with fracking funds out of college students at the expense of the purpose of greater education to broaden and deepen knowing. It virtually undermines youngsters aspirations, giving the banks a fail-evidence supply of revenue 12 months in year out.

Charging youngsters the earth for education stops functioning class children from climbing the ladder and it is their journey up the ladder that has always kept British culture so amazing.

The education secretary has created what option there is in training a complex Chinese puzzle of eight greatest: double weighted EBacc subjects with various codes that creates perverse incentives – all without having searching for main legislation, all with out producing a new schooling bill scrutinised by parliament.

Gove has grow to be an beneath the wire dictator searching for to stay away from due method. There must be a new schooling bill that sorts all this out and puts a large A for arts into the STEM subjects (science, technological innovation, engineering and maths).

STEAM. It sounds acceptable. The arts make individuals powerful due to the fact art and layout is about generating new desires. It inspires people to create their personal reality, to get their very own issue going. Fundamentally, even though, art tends to make people powerful due to the fact art is about our freedom of expression.

The Artwork Get together conference requires place on 23 November at the Spa, Scarborough – stick to the event on Twitter @ArtParty2013

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Art Party: "to preserve education we need to pull down Gove"s gates" | Bob and Roberta Smith

Bill Gates charity challenges scientists to make better condoms

Graphene could be mixed with the latex used in standard condoms to make a stronger and far more pleasurable model, scientists believe. Photograph: Getty Photos

The “wonder material” graphene faces its stiffest challenge nevertheless in delivering thinner, more powerful, safer and far more desirable condoms.

A research group from the University of Manchester has received a Grand Difficulties Explorations grant of $ one hundred,000 (£62,123) from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop new composite nano-components for next-generation condoms.

The challenge is to create new technology that can make the condom much more desirable to use, which could lead to far more folks utilizing them.

Composite resources are composed of a mixture of two materials, in this case graphene and an elastic polymer such as the latex employed in classic condoms.

Graphene is the world’s thinnest, strongest and most conductive material, and promises a huge variety of varied applications from smartphones and ultrafast broadband to laptop chips.

It was 1st isolated by Sir Andre Geim and Sir Kostya Novoselov at the University of Manchester in 2004 and earned them the Nobel prize for physics in 2010.

The study will be carried out beneath the leadership of Dr Aravind Vijayaraghavan at the newly established Nationwide Graphene Institute at Manchester.

Vijayaraghavan explained: “This composite material will be tailored to increase the normal sensation throughout intercourse even though employing a condom, which should encourage and market condom use.

“This will be achieved by combining the power of graphene with the elasticity of latex to produce a new material which can be thinner, more powerful, far more stretchy, safer and, maybe most importantly, more pleasurable.”

He continued: “Because its isolation in 2004, men and women have wondered when graphene will be used in our everyday lifestyle. Presently, individuals picture employing graphene in mobile-telephone screens, meals packaging and chemical sensors.

“If this venture is effective, we might have a use for graphene which will practically touch our every day lifestyle in the most intimate way.”

Dr Helen Meese, head of resources at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, stated: “The prospective of graphene is limitless, and the grant to the University of Manchester to seem at worldwide wellness troubles underlines just how ground-breaking this wonder material could be.

“As properly as condoms, graphene could possibly be used in every little thing from batteries which charge in seconds to photovoltaic windows which make electricity.

“However, despite the United kingdom getting at the very forefront of graphene research, the country’s commercialisation of the materials has been woeful.

“Of the 7,500 graphene-based mostly patents filed throughout the world by 2013, only 54 are from the United kingdom, or significantly less than one%. In comparison, over two,200 are held by China and one,754 by South Korea.

“As it stands, the Uk is failing to harness the amazing potential of the material it has led the globe in creating.”

Bill Gates charity challenges scientists to make better condoms