Products
November 2010 What’s New
11/1/2010 By:
Online & Software
Acuity Enhancements
(www.acuityforschool.com)
The new enhancements for the Acuity
InFormative Assessment solution
include a feature that automatically
assigns instructional resources to
students based on their Acuity assessment results. Available with
Acuity’s Predictive, Diagnostic, and Custom Assessments in Math and
English Language Arts, this feature personalizes the content delivered
to each student. The assigned resources each include three parts:
personalized instruction, guided practice items, and a final evaluation
assessment.
Price: Contact company for pricing.
Category: assessment
A.D.A.M. Inside Out Health and
Wellness
(
www.AdamEducation.com)
This is an addition to the A.D.A.M.
Education suite of products, which
are designed to assist educators in
teaching nutrition, the significance of
healthy eating, and the importance
of incorporating 60 minutes of physical activity into a person’s daily
routine. All lessons provide students with a path to self-directed
learning that includes animations and interactive resources.
Price: Contact company for pricing.
Category: health
Adobe Acrobat X Pro
(www.adobe.com/education/products/acrobatpro)
With the new version of Adobe Acrobat X,
faculty, administration, and students across
districts can collaborate, increase productivity,
and share their work. The new Portfolio Wizard allows educators
to combine a wide range of content--including video and interactive
media--in a single customizable ePortfolio, ideal for distributing course
material and assessing student growth. Faculty and staff can save time
and standardize processes by automating routine, multistep tasks with
new guided actions. Acrobat X Pro and Reader X are scheduled to ship
within 30 days, with availability through Adobe Authorized Education
Resellers, the Adobe Education Store, and Adobe Direct Sales.
Price: Adobe Acrobat X Pro Student and Teacher Edition is $119; volume
licensing for Acrobat X Pro starts at $159.
Category: Productivity
CAMS & STAMS
(www.curriculumassociates.com)
The CAMS (Comprehensive Assessment for
Mathematics Strategies) & STAMS (Strategies to
Achieve Mathematics Success) series provides a
powerful integrated assessment and instruction
program which includes engaging interactive
whiteboard activities for skills practice and to ensure student mastery
of every concept. Designed for students in grades 3-8, CAMS is a
research-based diagnostic tool, including pretests, benchmarks, and
post-tests, that help identify students’ strengths and weaknesses,
target instruction, and measure progress and mastery of the most
important math skills at each grade level. STAMS consists of a series
of highly-scaffolded lessons that allow for explicit instruction based on
the results from the CAMS series of assessments.
Price: The CAMS series and STAMS series contains 25 Student Books
and one Teacher Guide, for a total of 50 Student Books and two
Teacher Guides for $359.00.Price: $359 for 50 student books and two
teacher guides; $39.90 for a pack of 10 student books; $5.95 for each
teacher guide.
Category: math
CCC! Internet-Only Version 9
(www.cccvod.com)
New Dimension Media has launched
an Internet-only model for CCC !, so a
school can adopt the system without
installing a server or hardware. It offers
all the educational programming of
the server-based CCC ! at special Internet-only pricing.
Price: Contact company for pricing.
Category: video streaming
EdWeb 2.0
(www.edweb.us)
Now an open-source CMS for Education,
EdWeb 2.0 is designed to complement
a school district’s Web site rather than
replace it, providing the district with a
more comprehensive Web presence.
Additional features include aggregated
search, to find links to educational sites
input by all teachers in the district;
student log-ins, which permit nonanonymous
comments by students on teachers’ blogs; a lesson-plan
repository, and a share portal for sharing documents.
Price: Contact company for pricing.
Category: Website authoring
ePals and LearningSpace
Collaboration
(www.learningspace.epals.com)
ePals, Inc. has announced an
advanced caching solution that
will provide real-time access to the
company’s LearningSpace product, a Web-hosted virtual workspace
for creating, sharing, managing, and collaborating on educational
content from any location at any time. The solution helps teachers
and students create and collaborate on high-bandwidth multimedia
projects in a safe environment while it satisfies schools’ bandwidth
needs by ensuring reliable access for greater learning experiences.
Price: Contact company for pricing.
Category: virtual workspace
ExOS 5.5
(www.exinda.com)
By ensuring the
optimal use of available
bandwidth and easy
diagnosis and resolution
of network problems,
ExOS 5.5 enables
educational institutions to maximize the traffic over their networks
without incurring additional infrastructure costs. ExOS software
running on the x60 family of WAN Optimization appliances provides
the inspection, identification, and reporting functions essential to
effective WAN optimization, intelligent acceleration, and traffic
shaping.
Price: Contact company for pricing.
Category: networking
Explore The Blue Enhancements
(www.exploretheblue.com)
The Take Me Fishing campaign and
Discovery Education have added even
more educational tools to the recently
updated Explore the Blue Website. The
site offers new digital media on the
importance of outdoor recreational
activities, such as boating and fishing,
and the value of clean and healthy natural resources. It also
features custom lesson plans for K–5 students and standardsaligned
educational videos for supplementing classroom learning.
Educators, parents, and students can visit Explore the Blue to find
more than 12,000 places to boat and fish, as well as local services,
activities, and events, and much more.
Price: Contact company for pricing.
Category: video, social studies
Facebook for Students
(www.atomiclearning.com)
Facebook for Students
highlights the basics of using
the most popular social
networking site; how to find
the site’s educational and
useful features—for example,
the option of deleting
comments or posts—and how
and why one would create
a group. The product also
explains important safety
features and provides tips on
how to be safe online and how
to protect your online persona. These tutorials provide a plethora of
knowledge that can’t be gained simply by signing up for Facebook.
Price: Contact company for pricing.
Category: training, social networking
Faronics Anti-Virus
(www.faronics.com)
Faronics has announced the release of malware
protection that combines anti-virus, antispyware,
and anti-rootkit technology to provide
a coordinated preemptive response to advanced
malware. Faronics Anti-Virus integrates with the
system-restore solution Faronics Deep Freeze
to apply anti-virus updates while computers are
protected in a frozen state.
Price: A trial version can be downloaded at the Web site.
Category: security
Fluency Tutor
(www.texthelp.com)
With this product, students can
independently practice their
reading, record themselves
reading, answer questions
about comprehension, submit
assessments to their teachers,
and view their progress over
time. Teachers can assign
individual students and groups
passages appropriate to their level for practice and assessment.
They can listen to and mark students’ recorded assessments at
their convenience and get automatically generated WCPM and
prosody scores. Using the data from Fluency Tutor’s reports, teachers
can personalize instruction to meet individual students’ needs, and
students can see where they have to focus to improve their oralreading
skills. The newest version of Fluency Tutor, which includes
passage illustrations, comprehension questions, expanded reporting,
and more group options, further enhances both the teacher and
student experience.
Price: Annual subscriptions start at $2,245.
Category: reading
MixedInk
(www.mixedink.com/educator)
MixedInk, an online collaborativewriting
startup, has launched a
suite of features designed for the
classroom. With these tools, teachers
can enable students to write together, evaluate their classmates’
writing, and learn from their peers. The MixedInk platform invites
students to remix each other’s words and ideas while automatically
tracking authorship through the collaborative process. By encouraging
students to reuse their peers’ ideas, the tool offers an innovative model
for classroom collaboration that pushes traditional boundaries. The
educator package provides a number of teacher-friendly features
including password protection, an interactive report showing each
student’s independent contributions, and the ability to remove
inappropriate content.
Price: Contact company for pricing.
Category: writing
NASA and CK-12 Partnership
(www.ck12.org)
NASA and the nonprofit CK-12 Foundation have announced a new
chapter in CK-12’s 21st Century Physics FlexBook: A Compilation of
Contemporary and Emerging Technologies. The
FlexBook represents an important step in keeping
science information pertinent and accurate
through the emerging trend of online textbooks,
or ebooks. The new chapter provides students
and teachers with a look at a contemporary
NASA space transportation project and explains
how simulation-based engineering is used to
develop new technology, in this case, the Launch
Abort System (LAS ), which is managed at NASA
Langley. The LAS is a state-of-the-art astronaut
escape system created to significantly improve
flight-crew safety.
Price: available free of charge, visit www.ck12.com to access the book
for download.
Category: science
PDF To JPG Converter
(www.pdftojpgconverter.com)
This new freeware converter lets users convert
Adobe PDF documents or several documents
to image formats such as JPG, BM P, GIF , PNG,
and TIFF . The utility also allows users to convert
multi-page PDF s to several single-page JPG
images and to select the output-image DPI. The
new converter has an easy tabbed interface that
enables converting PDF to image with a few simple clicks.
Price: free
Category: freeware
PLATO Learning Online Courses
(www.plato.com)
PLATO Learning has introduced new content
for two of its existing high school science
courses. The retooled online courses are
designed to meet the needs of both creditrecovery
and first-time students seeking semester-long credits in
biology and chemistry. The courses benefit students by featuring
the latest updates in science education, including inquiry science
activities, labs, and online simulations. Further, they were created to
support schools’ science, technology, engineering, and mathematics
(STEM ) initiatives. The interdisciplinary STEM approach incorporates
these four subjects into one cohesive means of teaching and learning,
helping students explore them in a more applicable manner.
Price: Contact company for pricing.
Category: Science
Questionmark Perception
(www.questionmark.com)
Questionmark has added French
and Spanish browser-based
interfaces to its Perception
assessment-management system.
The French and Spanish interfaces
are part of Service Pack 1 for
Questionmark Perception version
5.2, which has provided multilingual participant-facing interfaces in 20
languages and a Translation Management System that streamlines the
authoring, management, and delivery of multilingual online quizzes,
tests, surveys, and exams.
Price: Contact company for pricing.
Category: assessment
Schoolnet Respond RTI Software
(www.schoolnet.com)
Schoolnet introduces Respond, a
comprehensive Response to Intervention
(RTI ) software solution. By organizing student
data in a central location, Respond automates
student screening, streamlines the creating of
intervention plans and progress monitoring,
and provides detailed reports and dashboards
that give instructional leaders the tools they need to implement
successful RTI programs. With Respond, districts have an open
platform for defining their intervention criteria.
Price: Contact company for pricing.
Category: assessment, RTI
Shmoop
(www.shmoop.com)
Shmoop has, launched its online SAT prep service, which uses
beloved video games, like Oregon Trail, Tetris, and Mario Brothers,
as metaphors for various challenges that students will face on the
SAT . In fact, Shmoop SAT Prep is itself a bit of a game. Students earn
Shmoints for correctly completing portions of the SAT prep course;
top Shmoint scorers win Shmoop T-shirts. Shmoop’s SAT prep service
contains more than 500 vocabulary words; 1,006 practice problems in
SAT reading, writing, and math; and more.
Price: $23 a student; contact company for district pricing.
Category: SAT prep
StarrMatica and eInstruction
Partnership
(www.starrmatica.com)
StarrMatica Learning Systems has
partnered with eInstruction to provide
free interactive content to classrooms
nationwide. eInstruction customers
will receive a six-month membership
in StarrMatica’s online library of interactive content with all new
purchases of mobile interactive whiteboards, interactive dual boards,
and student response systems. StarrMatica’s online library includes
more than 3,800 K–6 reading and math simulations, animations,
activities, games and assessments, along with a search engine for
finding content by grade, topic, and state-standard, national-core, and
textbook curricula.
Price: Contact company for pricing.
Category: interactive-whiteboard content
Thinkspiration
(www.inspiration.com)
Inspiration Software’s new blog is a forum
in which educators and educational experts
of all levels of experience and areas of focus
can exchange ideas, sharing research, news,
trends, and lessons to help students achieve
to their greatest potential. Thinkspiration also features the Inspired
Calendar, which provides lesson plans and activities to use in
employing Inspiration, Kidspiration, and InspireData with students
to mark national and international holidays, celebrations, and events.
Price: free
Category: forum
Toon Boom 6
(www.toonboom.com)
Toon Boom Studio 6 expands its
animation capabilities with its bonerigging
features. It serves as the most
complete launch pad for learning and creating animation, whether at
home or in the classroom. As a bonus, Studio 6 comes with several
bone-ready templates that users can incorporate into their own
projects. This template pack speeds up the process of animating. In
addition, it has a 62-minute how-to video that covers step-by-step
instructions on creating bone animation.
Price: $149.99 (academic price)
Category: animation
WriteToLearn 6.0
(www.school.writetolearn.net)
The newest version of Pearson’s online
tool for building writing skills and
developing reading comprehension
enables students to develop skills in
essay writing and summarizing that
are measured by Pearson’s state-of-the-art Knowledge Analysis
Technologies (KAT ) engine. WriteToLearn 6.0 now features expanded
text-to-speech capability. Using Texthelp Systems’ embedded
reading-support technology, SpeechStream, students can have
reading passages, feedback on essays, and their own writing read
aloud to them. WriteToLearn’s grammar-checking capability has also
been expanded to provide students with more feedback on errors.
Price: Contact company for pricing.
Category: writing
www.energybalance101.com
Powered by Discovery Education, this
product promotes ways to help young
people achieve a healthy weight through
energy balance. The curriculum includes
lesson plans, resources, and videos aligned to state standards for the
K–2 and 3–5 grade ranges. The entire curriculum can be integrated into
classroom instruction but is flexible enough that teachers can use the
complete scope of resources or select the elements that fit their needs
best. Each module includes background information and tips that
help teachers, as well as dynamic activities and engaging Discovery
Education digital media. Family and community extension resources
are also included to facilitate learning beyond the classroom.
Price: free to educators
Category: health
Spelling Connections
(www.zaner-bloser.com/spellingconnections)
This program provides developmentally
appropriate instruction using a five-day
plan, an array of assessment options, and
technology tools. The research-based word
lists provide true differentiated instruction
for students at all levels, including English
Language Learners. A full complement of exciting interactive games,
interactive-whiteboard-ready digital resources, and online practice
activities engage today’s media-savvy students and reinforce
instruction inside the classroom and at home.
Price: Contact company for pricing.
Category: reading, writing
Cool School Apps
Alphabet 1.5 App
(www.piikeastreet.com)
Alphabet 1.5 for iOS takes
alphabet learning for babies,
toddlers, and preschoolers to
the next level by giving them
plenty of opportunity to interact
with the letters. The original
artwork and characters draw them in, fun animation and sound effects
pique their interest, and memorable, unique interactions keep them
coming back for more. This new version of the app includes a slew
of other often requested features, like lowercase letters and phonics
sounds. The letters are pronounced softly, and the upbeat music and
sound effects will have kids dancing, mimicking, and asking Mom and
Dad if they can have their own iPads.
Price: $2.99
Category: English
Doodle Cam 1.0 App
(www.macphun.com)
Take real life in real time and transforms it into
cartoon-style videos and photos that can be
saved and shared instantly. Users have their
choice of 11 effects and seven soundtracks,
which can be changed while recording with
just a tap of the screen. Whatever a user sees
on the iPhone screen is what they get in their
photo or video.
Price: $1.99
Category: visual effects
Geotimescale Enhanced/
Geotimescale Enhanced HD Apps
(www.tasagraphicarts.com)
These apps illustrate significant events and
periods in Earth’s history. The Geologic Time
Scale shows the names of the eons, eras,
periods, epochs, and ages along with their
corresponding dates. Both apps include
illustrations and information about significant
events. They provide a complete reference
for students, educators, professional
geologists, and anyone interested in geology.
No Internet connection is required.
Price: $0.99
Category: science
GoodReader App
(www.goodreader.net)
This iPad and iPhone app has just added the
feature that allows users to annotate any PDF
with text, freehand drawings, and several other
styles. The feature lets them mark up and share
manuals, schematics, meeting notes, and other
materials. Another new feature is the ability to select text on a PDF
and copy it to the clipboard, so it’s possible to copy blocks of text
from a PDF into a document editor or an email message. The new
version of GoodReader also enables users to view or edit all notes,
highlights, markups, and drawings created in other applications and
properly stored in a PDF file.
Price: $2.99
Category: editing
GravBot 1.0
(ww2.teamphobic.com/games)
GravBot 1.0 is a physics-based
puzzle platformer in which the
player decides which way is “up”
as a little robot falls and pivots
through various levels, each
of which presents a different
challenge. Find the right path and
avoid enemies, spike traps, and
laser beams. Use levers, buttons,
and elevators to solve the puzzles. Because the game is based on
physics, the simplest solution isn’t always obvious, so GravBot 1.0
presents a challenge for gamers of all ages.
Price: free
Category: physics
Hello-Hello Chinese App
(www.hello-hello.com)
A Mandarin Chinese–learning course for the
contemporary iPad device, the new app offers
30 conversational lessons based on realistic
situations and supplemented with hundreds
of flash cards containing words and sentences
for vocabulary building. Hello-Hello has built
the application with advanced audio, beautiful
graphics, and a research-based learning
methodology to ensure an enjoyable, easy,
and fast learning process for every user who is
willing to learn Mandarin Chinese.
Price: $9.99 in the iTunes store
Category: Mandarin, languages
HistoryTools 1.5.2
(www.writersdreamtools.com)
This new iPad and iPhone app displays a dayby-
day calendar of historical events, the births
and deaths of famous people in history, saints’
feast days, and holidays around the world. The
entire database is available offline without a
Wi-Fi or GPS connection. Users can add their
own personal entries. The app’s 14.2 MB database contains 5,700
events, 6,200 birthdays, 4,000 deaths, and 600 date-specific holidays.
It can also be used as a diary in which to save one’s own events and
important dates, whether they are family birthdays and anniversaries
or events in history of special interest to the user.
Price: free
Category: history
iLiveMath Entomology 4.0 for iOS
(www.ihomeeducator.com)
Young children can enjoy the photos
and videos shown with this app,
which was developed specifically
for kindergarten through 7th
grade. Early readers can learn
about insects, arachnids, and
the metamorphosis of butterflies
and lady beetles. Higher grades
are challenged by mental word
problems that require visualizing
the basic geometry in insect flight patterns. The app now supports the
ability to display the photo and word problem to an entire classroom.
It features 100 photos, 40 videos, and a million word problem–answer
combinations that teach addition, subtraction, multiplication, division,
and basic geometry across three levels of difficulty.
Price: $4.99
Category: science
MosaLingua Learn Spanish and
French Apps
(www.mosalingua.com)
Intended for English speakers, the app uses
an effective and addictive teaching method
called the Spaced Repetition System, the
latest technology in facilitating memorization.
MosaLingua consists of 2,700+ flash cards
of words and phrases that include audio
pronunciations by native speakers. The
cards are classified according to category
and level of difficulty. Illustrated dialogues
help you learn the key phrases you need in
particular situations (context learning). The
app also includes learning tips and grammar
lessons (including conjugations) that allow
you to greatly expand your language skills.
Price: $0.99
Category: languages
*you can download the Multitouch Whiteboard Media Kit here: (it
contains, 512x512 and 100x100 version of the icon and 6 screenshots)
http://www.shiftingmind.com/whiteboard/mediakit.zip
Park Math 1.0 App
(www.duckduckmoosedesign.com)
Featuring seven fun
educational activities, the
app introduces early math
concepts to children in
preschool and kindergarten.
As children play with Blue
Bear and his friends in a park,
it teaches counting, addition,
subtraction, sorting, and
more. The music, arranged and recorded especially for the app, is
performed on the cello and the guitar. The app has two levels: Level 1
includes counting up to 20 and addition and subtraction with numbers
up to 5, and Level 2 includes counting up to 50 and addition and
subtraction with numbers up to 10.
Price: $1.99
Category: math
PhotoToMac 2.0
(www.galarina.eu)
This app for iPhone and iPod touch transfers
photos and videos over Wi-Fi to a Mac folder.
Transfers can be done in the background
on iOS 4. PhotoToMac requires no cables,
no Internet connection, no browser, and no
emails with attachments. The only requirement is that the iPhone or
iPod touch must be on the same Wi-Fi network as the Mac. The app
also works on an iPad; it includes support for JPEG photos imported
via the iPad Camera Connection Kit.
Price: $1.99
Category: student learning
Ruler 2.0 App
(www.rulerapp.com)
This convenient mobile innovation takes
advantage of its non-wood medium to
great effect. Save and come back later
to see what you measured and when.
Convert between inches and centimeters with one tap. Copy and
paste values into other apps, like Calculator and Mail. You can even
measure long objects by sliding the device and swiping. The app
includes a visual guide demonstrating this simple technique.
Price: $0.99 cents; free to upgrade to 2.0
Category: math
Tiny Ocean 1.1 App
(www.milocreative.com)
This educational game keeps children
entertained and engaged while they
learn new words. Children explore
a tropical island and a musical
underwater world simply by tapping
illustrated pictures to play animations
and sounds. There are also interactive Flash Cards in the supported
languages. By tapping the microphone, parents and children can
record their own voices, which play back both on the Flash Cards and in
the ocean, stimulating word association and improving pronunciation
and speaking skills. Tiny Ocean is great for teaching languages and
currently supports English, Spanish, and Greek.
Price: $1.99
Category: languages
Vernier Video Physics App
(www.vernier.com)
Vernier Software & Technology’s
new application allows educators
to take the video-analysis power of
Vernier’s Logger Pro desktop datacollection
software out into the field.
The software lets them take a video
of an object in motion, mark its
position frame by frame, and set up the scale using a known distance.
Examples of the app’s use in the field include measuring the velocity
of a free-throw shot, a child’s swing, a roller-coaster, and a car. Video
Physics then draws trajectory, position, and velocity graphs for the
object. It is the perfect tool for teaching two-dimensional kinematics.
Price: free
Category: science
Hardware/AV
Kensington’s PowerBack Battery Case with Kickstand and Dock (www.us.kensington.com) is an all-in-one design that integrates battery
charging, a protective casing, a three-position kickstand, and a dock.
The built-in charger provides five extra hours of power for the iPad,
while the simple slip-on case protects the tablet computer in a compact
and easy-to-carry form for use in all environments. The PowerBack’s
kickstand adapts to the needs of individual users by offering three
convenient viewing modes for the iPad: Portrait mode is best for viewing
photos and browsing the Web; landscape mode makes watching videos
a joy; and typing mode makes texting and emailing via the iPad easy
and comfortable. Other features include built-in speakers and an LED
battery fuel gauge.
The CPX8 3LCD video projector (www.hitachi-america.us/digitalmedia)
weighs less than five pounds and
measures just 12” x 8.7”, so it’s
easy to carry and use in varied
locations. It offers XGA (1,024 x 768)
resolution and 2,700 ANSI lumens
brightness and includes HDMI , S-Video,
and composite video inputs; RGB computer video
inputs and outputs; two audio inputs; and an audio output. The
projector has a host of features, including buttons for fast remote-control
access to frequently used functions, a customizable blank button for instant control, and a
blackboard/whiteboard mode that projects lines for whiteboards and blackboards. It includes
a Hybrid Filter that permits 5,000 hours between cleanings and a low noise level of 28 dB.
Peek (www.getpeek.com) is a mobile
device that sends and receives email and
text messages anywhere in the United
States; no Wi-Fi is necessary. With Peek,
you can equip faculty, students, and
even students’ families with effective
communication tools, expand your
communication capabilities without
adding extra phone lines or Internet
connections, and streamline internal
operations by enabling everyone in your
organization with mobile email and SMS
access. Peek also does real-time email,
texting, Twitter, and Facebook, as well
as location tracking.
NewTek (www.newtek.com) has
announced the TriCaster TCXD850
and TriCaster TCXD300, which
let users customize their highdefinition
live virtual sets. They
offer network-style virtual sets
developed with proprietary
NewTek LiveSet technology.
TriCaster VSE is accessed from
the HD TriCaster control panel
and employs functions familiar to
TriCaster users, such as position,
scale, rotation, color correction
(brightness, hue, contrast, and
saturation), a media browser for image selection, and the T-bar for setting custom starting and
end points for zooms.
Lutron Electronics Co., Inc. (www.lutron.com) has announced new
features that enhance energy savings, control, and security for
the GRAFIK Eye QS Wireless. They include optimized dimming
for the Cree LR 4 and LR 6 LED loads, a time clock that activates
presets and after-hours events on connected Energi Savr Nodes,
support for large sensor counts and extended reception, two and
three-button Pico controls to provide portable control of a
GRAFI K Eye QS, secure access in public locations, and prevention
of unauthorized changes in lighting levels and device settings.
NEC Display Solutions of America (www.necdisplay.com) has announced its Portable
Series projectors, the M260X, the M260W, and the M300X (shown). Designed to
keep audiences engaged during presentations, the value-driven, eco-friendly portable
projectors are ideal for education and small- to medium-sized businesses They deliver
remarkably bright images and feature wired and wireless (optional) networking, HDMI
and USB inputs, high contrast (2,000:1), and 6,000 hours of lamp life (in ECO ModeT).
The Portable Series was created with the environment in mind and includes a carbonsavings
meter; energy-saving features, such as Power Save (<1-watt in standby mode);
quick startup; and direct power-off. And the projectors offer extended lamp and filter
life, benefiting classrooms and boardrooms alike.
The clamshell classmate PC design (www. intel.com) features increased ruggedness,
longer battery life, improved water
resistance, and additional anti-microbial
protection. It protects better against damage
from falls from up to 70 centimeters
(the height of many desks) through
improved protection from all angles, an
easy-to-grasp handle, a special HDD rubber
cage that reduces the impact of
physical shocks and vibration, and special
LCD rubber protection for minimizing the
impact from being dropped or falling. It
also features a water-resistant keyboard
and an improved antimicrobial coating
that protects against bacteria, mold, mildew, fungi, algae, and yeast by creating a surface
that retards the growth and colonizing of microorganisms.
Mini Solar Kits (www.owirobot.com)
encourage creative thinking, problem
solving, and a love of science. A mini solar
panel activates their whimsical designs
and brings them to life. Children not only
learn and experiment with cause and
effect but also enjoy hands-on science
without the carbon emissions. Powered by
sunshine or halogen lighting, the kits are
perfect for sparking the imaginations of
elementary- and middle-school kids who
have little or no kit-building experience.
The 6-in-1 Educational Solar Kit allows
children to snap together 21 parts to
create six working models: an airboat, a
windmill, a puppy, and two airplanes.
The Numonics INTELLIBOARD interactive whiteboard
(www.numonics.com) allows two students to write on the
classroom whiteboard simultaneously during math and
science lessons. To differentiate the pens, the second pen
operates on a different frequency and is a different color.
The Mighty Scope Pro Pack (www.aveninc.com), a kit with
two handheld digital microscopes and a polarizer attachment,
is an economical combination for science demonstrations and
student use. It enables inspection, analysis, and measurement
of magnified images that can be sent to any Windows PC and
is suited to biology, earth science, and medical studies. The
Pro Pack includes Mighty Scope adjustable from 10x to 200x;
Mighty Scope with highest magnification 500x; a polarizer for
contrast-enhancing use of the 10x to 200x scope; and accessories
for hands-free operation.