Group items tagged

“I think speech recognition is really going to upend the current [computer] interface.

“We’re at a transition point where voice and natural-language understanding are suddenly at the forefront,

Jim Glass, a senior research scientist at MIT who has been working on speech interfaces since the 1980s, says today’s smart phones pack as much processing power as the laboratory machines he worked with in the ’90s. Smart phones also have high-bandwidth data connections to the cloud, where servers can do the heavy lifting involved with both voice recognition and understanding spoken queries. “The combination of more data and more computing power means you can do things today that you just couldn’t do before,” says Glass. “You can use more sophisticated statistical models.”

Typing a password into your smartphone might be a reasonable way to access the sensitive information it holds, but a startup called EyeVerify thinks it would be easier—and more secure—to just look into the phone’s camera lens and move your eyes to the side.

EyeVerify’s software identifies you by your “eyeprints,” the pattern of veins in the whites of your eyes. Everybody has four eyeprints, two in each eye on either side of the iris. The company claims that its method is as accurate as a fingerprint or iris scan, without requiring any special hardware

Rush says the software can tell the difference between a real person and an image of a person. It randomly challenges the smartphone’s camera to adjust settings such as focus, exposure, and white balance and checks whether it receives an appropriate response from the object it’s focused on.

“The easiest technology to use is the one we have famili

Jon Stonebraker, the district’s technology coordinator. “When we’re familiar with it, then it allows us to be more-effective workers.”

The district kicked off its “Bring Your Learning Technology” campaign this year that urges kids to bring their devices as long as they are used responsibly. Grandview Heights, Hilliard, Pickerington, Reynoldsburg and Westerville schools have similar initiatives.

Here are ten ways to use Facebook in class:

Set up a dedicated Facebook group for your class A Facebook group can allow your students to create discussion boards, communicate with each other and their teacher, and can be linked with online projects & other classroom groups. Teachers can use these groups to send out mass messages, reminders, and potentially even post homework assignments.

Use Facebook Apps Facebook is more than a place to tag photos from last night’s not-so-clever encounter with tequila. It is now a platform that runs on mobile devices, and can be integrated with applications designed for learning. From news to learning a new language, there are many apps that allow searches and sharing across the platform.

Tech in the Classroom is a recurring feature that examines widely available technology, software and gadgets and how they might be used in a school setting. What favorite gadget or tool are you using in the classroom? As this new content area grows, let us know what products you’d like to read about.

Tech in the Classroom: StudySync This is a Web-based supplemental curriculum. Aligned to the Common Core and aimed at middle-school and high-school students, StudySync enlists broadcast-quality video, digital media, mobile platforms and social learning to advance reading, writing and critical thinking