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"From a press release: As part of a national movement called the Tech Timeout Academic Challenge, a San Francisco school will shut down their tech devices for three days beginning February 12. SAN FRANCISCO What happens when over 1,100 students in grades K-12, at a school that prides itself on ubiquitous access to technology, power down their electronic devices for three straight days? That question will be answered on February 12-14 when students at Convent & Stuart Hall in San Francisco take The Tech Timeout Academic Challenge. It will be the first school in the greater Bay Area to take the challenge and just the third in California."

"A few weeks ago, at the Bay Area Discovery Museum (BADM) near San Francisco, 5-year-old Jack Stabenow climbed a step stool to peer into a machine that cuts cardboard with a high-powered laser. The red beam precisely followed a squiggly building design that Jack had just finger-drawn on a tablet computer. Jack's goal was to make a building that could stand up to the wind of a nearby table fan. With his cardboard cut, Jack hurried to the assembly area where about two dozen other kids his age labored over teetering, but well-taped, creations. If these first attempts toppled in the breeze, that was to be expected. In fact, back-to-the-drawing-board was kind of the point. The kids were learning the cycle of design, prototype, test, and redesign that's a hallmark of engineering."

"SAN FRANCISCO - Many children in San Francisco do not have regular access to computers in school, let alone computer science classes. The school district is about to change that as it plans to become the first large urban school district in the country to commit itself to exposing every child to computer science starting in pre-kindergarten all the way through 12th grade. "We are not trying to produce an army of software engineers," said Bryan Twarek, SFUSD's computer science coordinator. "We want to open all doors to this industry, and right now those doors aren't open to everyone.""

"n a rainy Saturday at Hackbright Academy classroom in San Francisco, a group of 35 adults sat at tables, desks, and on couches learning how to code. Marcy, a former artist and now programmer for Uber, taught the class. During a break, Marcy shared that she'd never taken a programming class prior to starting a job in art media. After completing courses at places like Hackbright and General Assembly, she realized how much she enjoyed coding and switched careers. Today she volunteers to teach coding on the weekends. Real world. Compare Marcy's story to Daria's, a high school junior. Daria applied to take her school's AP Computer Science class and was rejected. The reason? She lacked the math prerequisites. Even if she had the prerequisites, she lamented, the counselor told her that her grades probably wouldn't have been high enough to compete for one of the precious 30 seats in the single section that was offered. School world. Learning In The New Economy Of Information | MindShift Teaching in the New (Abundant) Economy of Information How We Can Connect School Life to Real Life Daria's and Marcy's stories speak to the differences between school world and real world. In Marcy's world learning is abundant and artists become coders. In Daria's world, learning is scarce and limited by classroom space and teacher availability."

"Three years ago I explored and reviewed the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra's website for kids called Keeping Score. Recently, the site was overhauled with new features and a new name. The new site is called SFS Kids and it is loaded with good activities for elementary school and middle school students. "

"IT JUST GOT way, way easier to search and browse the US Geological Survey's collection of historical topographic maps, thanks to a new online map viewer. These maps-more than 178,000 of them-date back to 1880, and they cover the entire country. Best of all, they're free to download for anyone who wants to, say, check out the contours of the Grand Canyon or study the urbanization of the San Francisco Bay Area (see below)."

"Call it an industrial evolution. As the maker movement outgrows the garage and shifts into popular culture, anyone with an internet connection can click into a world full of creative possibilities. That includes kids, some of whom can code, craft, and build with the best of us by elementary school. A slew of websites, fairs, and maker's guilds are available to introduce kids to the basics of design and engineering, and tech-savvy parents often bring their children into the fold by starting with small projects. Experimental schools, such as the Tinkering School or Brightworks Academy in San Francisco, are also tailoring their curricula towards hands-on skills aimed specifically at boosting fluency in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math). But you don't need a formal program or DIY-fluency to empower your kid to chase their creativity. All they need are some interesting tools, a little guidance, and the space to pursue their passions. For the parents of some kids, like Alonzo King, 12, that means letting him tear apart cassette players and see what he can build out of the parts. For others, like the parents of Miles Hacker (yes, that's his real name), 10, that means waking up to a living-room-sized spider web that their son made from a roll of tape."

"If you've purchased any or all of iLife/iWork apps for iOS at some point in the past, now is the time to update your productivity suite and take advantage of the new features Apple introduced just yesterday at their event in San Francisco. It was quite a big day for the likes of iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. Not only did Apple unleash a host of new features, they've also baked in deep compatibility for these apps-utilizing iCloud, OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and iOS 7. Read on for some of the highlights you'll find in the updated apps."

"While doodling has often been seen as frivolous at best and distracting at worst, the idea of sketchnoting has grounding in neuroscience research about how to improve memory. When ideas and related concepts can be encapsulated in an image, the brain remembers the information associated with that image. William Klemm, a professor of neuroscience at Texas A&M University, says the process is akin to a zip file. "This is a way to get your working memory to carry more," Klemm said at a Learning and the Brain conference in San Francisco."

"Filmmakers are using virtual reality to make the problems of the developing world seem more ... real. But how can you see their work? You could buy a headset, but you might end up in virtual debt. Prices range from $200 to $500 for devices from big players like Oculus Rift, Sony and Samsung. And forking over that much cash is a problem since there's not a lot of content yet. MindMaze Software Engineer Nicolas Bourdaud demonstrates a virtual reality system at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. All Tech Considered Developers Continue Push To Make Virtual Reality Mainstream An attendee at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles plays Sony's Project Morpheus London Heist video game with a virtual reality headset and Move controllers. All Tech Considered Gaming Industry Pushes Virtual Reality, But Content Lags "You're in a store ... and here's all the head-mounted displays and then it costs $200 or $300. Why would you ever buy it when you don't know why you're buying it? You wouldn't," Tony Christopher, CEO of Landmark Entertainment Group, told NPR last month. But there are inexpensive options that require only your smartphone and some cardboard. Google Cardboard, a project of the tech giant, offers instructions and templates to build your own cardboard virtual reality headset. Grab a pair of scissors, X-Acto knife and some glue. Then find some cardboard at home, print out the templates, trace and cut out the different pieces and assemble your goggles. The instructions can get confusing, so our multimedia editor Ben de la Cruz suggests following a how-to video like this one from the tech site, CNET."

"Today I am hanging out at the Twitter HQ in San Francisco. During the presentation on Twitter I learned you can MUTE someone without unfollowing them. There can be periods of time that someone you follow is tweeting a series of tweets that do not pertain to your interests. Someone may be at an event that does not interest you to keep up on. Someone may be participating in a Twitter chat for an hour and blowing up your Twitter stream."

Link to steve Job's live keynote address June 9 at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco

A San Francisco wiki services provider has just finished a multiyear project under which it gave teachers all over the world 100,000 free wikis. And now, it is doubling up and getting set to give away another quarter million.

"Three years ago I explored and reviewed the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra's website for kids called Keeping Score. Recently, the site was overhauled with new features and a new name. The new site is called SFS Kids and it is loaded with good activities for elementary school and middle school students. "

"Three years ago I explored and reviewed the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra's website for kids called Keeping Score. Recently, the site was overhauled with new features and a new name. The new site is called SFS Kids and it is loaded with good activities for elementary school and middle school students."

"David Hockney's exhibit at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco is awe inspiring, jaw dropping and a tribute to what is possible with a phone or tablet. His imagination is boundless, providing the viewer with a journey into a wonderful world of color, space, expanse and tributaries into landscape and portraiture. "

"Marlon Frausto is in pursuit of the new American dream. Just a few weeks ago he left his job, in Hispanic marketing for the legal industry, and moved to San Francisco. Every day he wakes at 5:30 a.m., commutes 45 minutes by train, and studies until 9 or 10 at night. He's spending down his savings and says he's getting help from "my loving family." At age 26, Frausto has gone back to school. Sort of. He's enrolled in a brand-new kind of trade school: the immersive web-development program, also known as a "coder boot camp." These programs promise, for several thousand dollars, to take people like Frausto and, in a manner of weeks, turn them into job-ready web developers."

"rodigies in piano or dance can study at schools like Juilliard to develop their musical or performing arts talent. By contrast, nothing like Juilliard exists for children who show great promise at math. But an ambitious experiment will soon change that: In fall 2015, a small, independent school that's exclusively tailored for math whizzes will open in downtown San Francisco."

"I'm about to board my flight home from the BETT Show in London. The flight home is going to be nearly two hours longer than the flight to London. That's the effect of the jet stream on air travel. The Department of Earth & Climate Studies at San Francisco State University offers a tool that anyone can use to create a simple animation of the jet stream based on current conditions. Prior to having students look at the animation, you might want to have them view this DNews video about the jet stream."

"The Tech Timeout Academic Challenge was taken by boys and girls in grades 4 through 12 at Stuart Hall and Convent of the Sacred Heart in San Francisco - along with some teachers and parents - as part of this private school's attempt to implement its one-to-one iPad program. The idea is to recognize that technology is often a distraction from other important things, like connecting with classmates and family, enjoying the moment or being creative. 'It was almost a wake-up call for how dependent we are on technology.' "This is going to be really hard for me. I think I'm going to have some pretty intense feelings of anxiety after about an hour," said sophomore Eli Horowitz as he sealed up his phone. Other students were also apprehensive about the timeout, citing their desire to be connected to friends through social media as one of the main temptations, but some were glad for the excuse to try putting the phone away for a while."