Product Review: Flashmaster Electronic Math Tutorial
by Mitchell Levine
Almost everyone hates learning their Times Tables. How do we know this? The fact that even most adults, whom presumably use them every day, don’t know them. If you don’t believe me, try asking your friends what 8 X 6 is. READ MORE

August 2003

Product Review: Codetek’s Virtual Desktop
by Mitchell Levine
Education technological environments aren’t like corporate ones. In the corporate IT world, there’s no need for “legacy” hardware; in fact, the description is a euphemism for “disposable.” READ MORE

Product Review: Advanced Force’s DeviceLock
by Mitchell Levine
Longtime readers of Education Update’s Technology and Education section undoubtedly are aware of the almost 1.1 Billion dollars the New York City school system has spent on technology and technology education. READ MORE

Product Review:
Intercue Professional PDA form generation suite
by Mitchell Levine
This product satisfies what I think suffices as the truest definition of “revolutionary”- an idea which solves a problem which people don’t yet realize they have. READ MORE

Now Software’s Now Up-to-Date and Contact
by Mitchell Levine
A lot of attention’s been paid to the flashiest and most sexy elements of education technology in the last several years: servers, platforms, laptops, and other boutique hardware. READ MORE

Smart Draw Diagramming Utility
by Mitchell Levine
The SmartDraw graphics package for charts and diagrams is actually the most fun software utility that I’ve used in some time. Almost any teacher of statistics or social studies has had the difficulty of trying to communicate a vital topic to their class that has unfortunate stigma of being, at least from the vantage point of a typical student, “dry.”
READ MORE

July 2003

Product Review:
Arco Duplidisk 3
by Mitchell Levine
Mathematics teachers perennially complain that students lack statistics literacy. Here’s some scary ones: an estimated 1 in 500 data centers will experience a critical hardware failure serious enough to cause a severe “data disaster.” READ MORE

Product Review:
Zero Toys’ Zero Launcher
by Mitchell Levine
Common sense tells us that students find physics boring, dry, and difficult. Labs are tedious. Equations are excruciating. Newton’s laws might as well be in the Principia Mathematica’s original Latin for all that today’s high school Regents students care. READ MORE

June 2003

Product Review:
Avaion Software’s FatFinger 2.4
by Mitchell Levine
As great as laptop computers are for mobile education, they still have some disadvantages for practical deployment in a contemporary educational setting. Since the concept of the “one to one computing standard”—or one mobile device for every student, teacher, and administrator—is to ensure equal opportunity for techno-literacy, it’s an unfortunate fact that the very classrooms that most need access to the technology, have the least space to make use of it. READ MORE

Product Review:
Otterbox Armor 3600
by Mitchell Levine
Almost anyone who’s become a serious handheld user has noted a number of wonderful things about those fascinating little digi-boxes: their convenience, versatility, and profound impact on their personal productivity. Unfortunately, one big liability is usually quickly evident—their delicacy. Making them fast, capacious, and flexible apparently doesn’t leave a lot of technical capital left over for making them rugged. READ MORE

Texas Public Schools Improve Scoring in the “Difficult to Teach” Sciences of Anatomy and Physiology
As a wide- open healthcare field prods a growing number of students to seek careers in the industry, educators are finding more effective tools and techniques to teach a traditionally difficult subject. READ MORE

May 2003

Product Review:
Tuff Cases Portable Workstation
by Mitchell Levine
Long-time readers of Education Update’s Technology and Education section already know that mobile computing has been a major concern for New York City schools for some time. READ MORE

Pittsburgh Steeler Brings Technology to
Brooklyn School
by Sybil Maimin
Brady Keys, Jr., former All-Pro Defensive Halfback for the Pittsburgh Steelers, is determined to replace the ubiquitous student backpack as main means of communication between parent and teacher.
READ MORE

Product Review:
VideoEye!
by Pola Rosen, Ed.D.
The VideoEye! was designed especially to help people with low vision retain their independence. READ MORE

April 2003

Product Review:
Lapvantage Laptop Dome
by Mitchell Levine
It’s not hard to understand why mobile computers have become such a prominent phenomenon in education technology today. . . .
READ MORE

Software Review:
Eye Candy 4000
By Rick Sulz
Imagine waking in the middle of the night to the noise of a spaceship landing outside of your window. . . . READ MORE

February 2003

Arttango: A Valuable Art Program by
Dr. Pola Rosen
A unique name for a unique program, Arttango is instructive, colorful, fun, interactive and perhaps make you feel like you’re “dancing with art.” Because of budget cuts, many schools don’t... READ MORE

Lewis Frumkes, Director, Marymount Manhattan College Author Series Hosts Susan Orlean
by Joan Baum, Ph.D.
Though she looks nothing like Meryl Streep who played her in Adaptation, a quasi-fictional account of the difficulties faced by a diffident and blocked screenwriter in trying to adapt her nonfiction prose... READ MORE

Lind Electronics’ PowerMax 90
by Mitchell Levine
As useful as current portable computers are, one feature that has not matched the frenetic norms of Moore’s-law-paced technical evolution is battery life. A complete charge of the lithium-ion battery on...
READ MORE

Laptop Privacy Hood
by Neil Schuldiner
The primary selling-point of mobile computing is the ability to condense the processing power of a desktop computer into a compact, sleek frame which can be conveniently utilized... READ MORE

July 2002

Innovative Use of Cable in the Classroom Award to Time Warner Cable
Time Warner Cable of New York City was presented with a 2001 Gilbert Award for Community Service for Innovative Use of Cable in the Classroom by a New York Educator in a statewide competition that recognizes outstanding community service programs conducted by cable television companies in New York. READ MORE

Elizabeth Rohatyn Brings Technology to Schools
By Tom Kertes
Eight years ago, in response to a growing concern that students in affluent schools had greater access to technology than those in less affluent neighborhoods, Elizabeth Rohatyn, along with a group of former teachers, founded Teaching Matters, a nonprofit organization devoted to promoting excellence in teaching and learning through the use of technology in the classroom. READ MORE

June 2002

Field Visits Part of Summit
by Pola Rosen, Ed.D.
One expects brilliant keynoters, erudite professors, the business sector and educators to exchange ideas at various panels when Teachers College, Columbia University organizes a special 3-day technology conference such as this one. READ MORE

The Enabling Keyboard
by Neil Schuldiner READ MORE

TrueTip fingertip PDA Stylus
by Mitchell Levine READ MORE

Managing School Records With New Software
by Pola Rosen, Ed.D. READ MORE

Teachers College Holds Education Technology Summit
by Bruce Myint
Nobel laureate Niels Bohr once said: -Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future. READ MORE

May 2002

Product Review:
PC Shade
by Mitchell Levine READ MORE

Plagiarism Meets the Age of the Internet
by Bruce Myint READ MORE

Sonic Impact Technologiesí SI-5 Blue Multimedia Speakers
by Mitchell Levine READ MORE

The VisAble Video Telescope
by Andrew Schiff READ MORE

April 2002

Product Review:
inStand CR-1 Laptop Tripod
by Mitchell Levine READ MORE

BOE Builds Online Educational Community
by Marylena Mantas
As a result of a recommendation made in September of 2001 by the Teaching and Learning in Cyberspace Taskforce, established by the New York City Board of Education (BOE), the public school systemís students, parents, and teachers will soon belong and have access to an Online Educational Community. READ MORE

March 2002

Mobile Computing Review:
Handspring Visor Edge, Pro & Prism
by Neil Schuldiner READ MORE

Product Review:
Klear Screen
by Mitchell Levine READ MORE

Typing Pal Junior
by Laura Pretto READ MORE

February 2002

Product Profile:
PC TableTote
by Mitchell Levine
Blame it on the new millennium, future shock, or just successful marketing, the reigning concept in education procurement today is “technology.” While some might argue about the ultimate utility of this current sprit of technical acquisitiveness, the only thing no one seems to be able to do is ignore it. With massive initiatives like the New York Board of Education’s experiment in distributing laptops to the 4th grade students of districts 6 and 10 already in play, our administrators intent to bridge the “digital divide” has never been clearer. READ MORE

January 2002

Lapworks Laptop Desk
by Mitchell Levine
Some products are revolutionary because they solve old problems in an entirely new and effective way. In the 1980s, fax machines were a quantum leap in communications technology because they made the telegram obsolete. READ MORE

December 2001

Kaplan K12 Learning Services
by Mitchell Levine
When I was a high school student in the 1980s, the name “Kaplan” was virtually synonymous with SAT preparation. With over three million students served in thousands of classrooms around the world, it’s not hard to understand why this image continues to dominate the organization’s public perception. READ MORE

November 2001

Dr. Alan Kay: Father Of The PC
by Tom Kertes
“Children are the messages we send to the future,” said Dr. Alan C. Kay in his intensely inspirational Lynford Lecture at Polytechnic University. “So whenever we’re talking about the real future, we must talk about kids. Because what they learn, and what they consider to be normal, becomes most of what humanity winds up doing.” READ MORE

October 2001

New Test-Prep Software Designed for the Classroom
by Marie Holmes
The Incredible Tutor System, by Sleek Systems, is a new software application designed to meet the increasing needs of students, teachers, and administrators to prepare for standardized achievement tests. READ MORE

Product Review:
Webroot’s Childsafe Internet Monitoring and
Filtration Utility
by Mitchell Levine
It’s been said that the dangerous neighborhoods of the city of Los Angeles are even more dangerous than their counterparts in New York, not because they are any more inherently dangerous, but simply because they don’t appear to be so. Hazardous neighborhoods in this city make themselves immediately obvious as such. The Palm trees and perpetual sunshine of the West Coast often seem to disguise what would be readily apparent in our urban environment. READ MORE

September 2001

Ashton Digital Unveils Passport 2000
by Mitchell Levine
Ashton Digital, premier mobile technology manufacturer, recently unveiled its Passport 2000 Series - the newest addition to its family of Intel-based PC notebooks. The laptop features a Pentium® III processor with speeds of 866MHz and above, an extra sharp 15” 1400 x 1050 SXGA Active Matrix TFT display, up to 512MB of system memory and up to 30GB of hard drive storage. Also standard is its Dual View feature, which creates an extended desktop by allowing an external monitor to be used along with the notebook’s built-in screen. This provides the opportunity to multi-task projects with different applications opened on each of the screens. READ MORE

Closing Gender Gap in the Sciences
Women’s gains have stalled and in some cases eroded in engineering and computer science, despite effective new programs to increase women’s participation in these fields, according to a major new report released recently by the National Council for Research on Women (NCRW). READ MORE

iSchoolZone Web-based High School Regents
Review Product
School administrators, curriculum directors, technology coordinators and teachers are now closer to a solution to curriculum/classroom demands by the state. If your high school is looking to meet AIS (Academic Intervention Services) needs or Improve Regents performance in the face of tougher SED standards for graduation, then you should take a look at a new web-based high school review product called iSchoolZone. READ MORE

Oracle Internet Academy Brings Technology
to Schools
Oracle Internet Academy (OIA) is a partnership between Oracle and secondary schools to teach high school juniors and seniors Java and database programming skills. An estimated 6,000 students from 180 schools around the world will participate in the program this year, including Lower East Side Prep in Manhattan and Liverpool High School in Liverpool, NY. READ MORE

August 2001

Distance Learning
The growth of distance learning technology has brought several benefits to employers, as it has enhanced the quality of productivity.
READ MORE

Math Made Easy Videos
Dr. Meryle Kohn and the Multimedia Tutorial Service have created a series of videos, Math Made Easy, that cover arithmetic, algebra, geometry and calculus. READ MORE

July 2001

Product Review:
Zero-Halliburton Z5
by Mitchell Levine
A few months ago, I bought a computer. The next day, as I walked to work, every mobile-user’s worst nightmare came to pass: the backpack-style case that came with it burst open because of a defective zipper. READ MORE

Website Connects Women in Science on Long Island
St. John’s University has launched a website designed to encourage women to explore careers in technology and science. READ MORE

Technology Shorts READ MORE

May 2001

Staten Island High Launches Website
New Dorp High School on Staten Island has launched the first fully interactive web-based communications system for a New York City public high school. READ MORE

Online in Florida: A New Approach to High School
Florida is leading the technology race by teaching students via a statewide Internet high school, according to the Miami Herald. Florida’s computer-based curriculum, called the Florida Online High School, is free-of-charge to residents. READ MORE

Online Database for Undergraduate Science Programs
GrantsNet, a free web site that provides information on biomedical research grants and fellowships, introduced a new database on undergraduate-level programs. READ MORE

April 2001

Online Book Clubs for Kids
Joining a literary discussion group online helps students pursue ideas giving them the time to frame their responses and thoughts carefully. The freedom to openly discuss a wide variety of topics often increases the student’s enthusiasm for the theories and ideas presented in literary works. READ MORE