Linda Jackson, professor of psychology and lead researcher on the project, said the study appears to be the first evidence based demonstration of a relationship between technology use and creativity.

About 72 percent of U.S. households play video or computer games, according to the Entertainment Software Association.

A study of nearly 500 12 year olds found that the more kids played video games, the more creative they were in tasks such as drawing pictures and writing stories.

In contrast, use of cell phones, the Internet and computers (other than for video games) was unrelated to creativity, the study found.

The MSU findings should motivate game designers to identify the aspects of video game activity that are responsible for the creative effects, Jackson said.

Once they do that, video games can be designed to optimize the development of creativity while retaining their entertainment values such that a new generation of video games will blur the distinction between education and entertainment, Jackson said.

The Torrance test involved tasks such as drawing an “interesting and exciting” picture from a curved shape, giving the picture a title and then writing a story about it.

The researchers surveyed 491 middle-school students as part of MSU’s Children and Technology Project, which is funded by the National Science Foundation.

The survey assessed how often the students used different forms of technology and gauged their creativity with the widely used Torrance Test of Creativity Figural.

Yet, regardless of gender, race or type of game played by the students, the study found a relation between video game playing and greater creativity.

In addition, the study found that boys played video games more than girls, and that boys favored games of violence and sports while girls favored games involving interaction with others (human or nonhuman).

At the Microsoft 2011 Partners in Learning Global Forum, the Microsoft Corp.

Announced new and continuing collaborations with the U.S. Department of Education, the British Council and the Smithsonian Institution to engage educators from their initial desire to enter the profession to successfully inspiring students in their classrooms.

Microsoft believes that well-prepared educators can help today’s youth overcome the emerging opportunity divide and can help put students on a path toward the education, skills and opportunities they need to prosper in the 21st century.

The Microsoft Partners in Learning Global Forum is the culmination of a year’s worth of country and regional events honoring teachers and school leaders who are creatively and effectively using technology in their curriculum.

The event provides these exceptional educators with an opportunity to compete and gain recognition at the global level and to share and collaborate on best practices, key learnings and how to implement creative ideas.

“The Partners in Learning program is one of the many investments Microsoft is making to help educators more effectively prepare our students for the jobs of tomorrow,” said Anthony Salcito, vice president of education at Microsoft Corp.

“At Microsoft, we believe that magic happens when business needs merge with social responsibility, and in an increasingly competitive global economy, bringing together organizations that are equally passionate about education can be a successful formula for preparing the next generation of leaders.”

Talented educators are critical to ensuring that students are better prepared to compete for the higher-skilled jobs demanded by today’s economy.

To help fulfill the growing need for educators in the United States, Salcito announced in today’s keynote that Microsoft will collaborate with the U.S. Department of Education to support a campaign aimed at inspiring and recruiting young people to enter the teaching profession.

As part of this, Microsoft is assuming overall management of the TEACH website.

In the coming months, Microsoft will be taking the lead in developing a coalition of private-sector companies and other key organizations to further support the campaign and will be moving the site to teach.org.

Microsoft also announced a new, five-year partnership with the British Council, an international organization for educational opportunities and cultural relations, to increase quality and access in education and training around the world.

This partnership will combine the assets of Microsoft and the British Council to nurture the use of information communications technology for innovative practice in teaching and learning in order to equip millions of students with the knowledge and skills they need for life and work in the 21st century.

Microsoft and the British Council have each committed $1 million (U.S.) to the partnership’s first project, which will build 80 digital hubs at schools across Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda using Windows MultiPoint Server.

The project is expected to train more than 20,000 school leaders and teachers and provide more than 100,000 learners and communities with digital access, while promoting literacy throughout the region.

The project was inspired by similar work already underway in Africa by the British Council and by a commitment that Microsoft and other partners made at the Clinton Global Initiative in 2010 to build labs powered by Windows MultiPoint Server in 40 “lighthouse” schools in Haiti, serving 24,000 students.

“I welcome our new partnership with Microsoft, which will enable us to create opportunities for millions of educators and students around the world,” said Martin Davidson, chief executive, British Council.

“By working together to harness technology for education and training, we can make a powerful contribution to preparing young people throughout the world for life and work in the 21st century.”

Microsoft Partners in Learning, the Smithsonian Institution and TakingITGlobal are continuing to expand the Shout program, which was announced at last year’s Global Forum in South Africa.

The partnership harnesses the power of technology to connect research and education resources with teachers and their students so they can act as a driving force for significant, positive contributions to the environment.

This year’s program will focus on water quality and quantity, to ensure that water is safe for both people and the environment, as well as managing the crises of too much water and not enough water.

The 2011 Partners in Learning Global Forum is being held in Washington, D.C., Nov. 7–10.

Winners of the 18 Global Forum Educator Awards will be announced, and 18 new Mentor Schools will be recognized at a gala dinner at the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture.

More information about the event can be found at http://bit.ly/pu4GSO or https://www.facebook.com/partnersinlearning and by following #PILGF on Twitter.

Students in Colorado learning from classroom discussions register their progress using clickers, or individual response systems.

And when they’re not in school, an astounding number of students spend their off hours playing technology-based games, either in immersive environments that millions of users share or individually on a cell phone.

Opportunities abound for squeezing in a bit of learning along with the game-playing.

Although technology can be grand fun, the gee-whiz effect is only part of the story. Its real value lies in the underlying learning effects.

Technologies that emphasize peer interactions can aid a collaborative approach to learning, as when soldiers build team function across distances using interactive training simulations. And technologies that place knowledge in the context of what a student already knows can aid learning.

But technology is not a magic bullet for education: A fancy bit of electronics distributed without context and support may leave the laptop functioning as a doorstop.

Nor is it easy to know what works. A peer-reviewed national science education digital library initiative, supported for nearly a decade by the U.S. National Science Foundation, has made scant progress in getting the technology into the classroom and training teachers to use it.

And when today’s students are immersed in technology, how does one tease out the impact of such interventions? Even a proven success can be undermined by the ever-changing nature of the ways in which we communicate: Today’s best practices may soon be embedded in antiquated technology.

In this special issue, we have collected a range of articles in the research, opinion, news, and book review sections that examine how education is changing in the face of technology.

Related videos and podcasts feature interviews with some of the authors. As examples, we explore what one can learn from video games, how large-scale testing might be improved by technology, where cognitive science meets education, and what resources are being developed to facilitate a more effective use of technology.

There are both exciting opportunities and challenges in this fast-moving field, and we view this special issue as only the beginning of our exploration of the frontiers of learning for the next generation.

The company will now provide solutions to millions of Android phone users worldwide existing windows mobile security software with the number of artphone users growing by leaps and bounds cyber criminals have found easy targets churning out malware directed at these mobile devices.

users store personal data like, contacts, emails, passwords and carry out m-commerce on Smartphones and tablets, new cases of malicious applications are being developed for these Android platforms almost every week.Every day, about 60000 Android phones are sold. With less education about mobile threats and the lack of security on these devices, users can easily fall victim to them during their mobile usage. With our rich experience and strong research in Antivirus domain, we are coming up with a robust security solution for Android phone users.

Apart from the regular antivirus, the Quick Heal solution will also include advanced features like call blocking, SMS blocking and anti-theft”, said Sanjay Katkar, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder, Quick Heal Technologies.

The company plans to offer a compelling introductory price to all the early-adopters. To be the first one to know about the launch and avail exciting offer, you can register at www.quickheal.com/android.

About Quick Heal Technologies

Quick Heal Technologies is leading provider of Internet Security tools and is a leader in antivirus Technology in India. Quick Heal Technologies was founded in 1993 and has been actively involved in Research and Development of antivirus software since then. Serving millions of users worldwide, Quick Heal Technologies employs more than 350 people across 20 branches with its headquarters in Pune, India.

The award winning Quick Heal product family has been established as an industry benchmark in computer security certified by ICSA Labs, Virus Bulletin, and West Coast Labs UK. The company is a Red Herring Asia 2009 winner that places it amongst 100 most promising companies driving the future of technology in Asia.

The security products are used by consumers, small business, Government establishments and corporate houses for protecting their computers from viruses and other vulnerable threats. Foresight has kept Quick Heal a class apart allowing it to constantly engage in a quest to continuously better performance and products rendering quality service, and cost advantages.

As expected, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled today the creation of “Startup: Education” a charitable foundation to “improve educational opportunities for young people in America.” Its first project, to be announced later today on The Oprah Winfrey Show, is a $100 million donation to support the public school system in the troubled city of Newark, N.J.

Zuckerberg will appear on the syndicated talk show with Newark mayor Cory Booker and New Jersey governor Chris Christie, where they will announce the joint Partnership for Education in Newark.

“Mayor Booker and Governor Christie refuse to accept the status quo in public education,” Zuckerberg said in a release. “They insist on demanding more for young people now so that they will be fully prepared for success in college, careers and in life. Each of these leaders is prepared to make bold commitments that will make Newark a symbol of education reform. Their personal commitments–and their willingness to cut through the politics and red tape to collaborate–persuaded me to support them and make a commitment of my own.”

In conjunction, Booker is spearheading a new Newark Education and Youth Development Fund, another non-profit, which will attempt to match Zuckerberg’s $100 million through donations and grants, plus an additional $50 million.

Zuckerberg elaborated upon the nature of the donation in a conference call with reporters later on Friday. “I’m putting some of my Facebook stock into a foundation,” he explained. “The foundation will then sell it off to raise cash, and then the cash will be used to fund the project, and the plan that the governor and the mayor are putting together, contingent on getting the results that we want to get and on getting the matching $100 million as well.”

The timing of the announcement has been criticized. On Friday night, the New York Film Festival will feature the official premiere of “The Social Network,” the David Fincher-directed film about Facebook’s origins that portrays Zuckerberg as scheming, backstabbing, and self-centered. Some have also speculated that the 26-year-old Zuckerberg hastily pushed a charitable initiative out the door as a public relations counterbalance to his high ranking on Forbes’ magazine’s annual list of billionaires, in which he is placed ahead of the likes of Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

But these critics have had critics themselves: Oprah Winfrey has been featuring education reform on her talk show all week, and the acclaimed new documentary “Waiting for Superman” has brought the issue to the forefront. David Kirkpatrick, author of the Facebook-authorized biography “The Facebook Effect,” wrote a piece for The Daily Beast this morning in which he insisted that Zuckerberg had “wanted very much to delay the announcement but ultimately conceded, pressured by Booker and Christie, thinking he might potentially help Newark’s schools more than if he waited.”

In the conference call, Zuckerberg said that he considered making the donation anonymous to avoid putting his name even further into the press on the cusp of “The Social Network” and its release. “The timing was really driven by the needs of Newark,” he said.

Booker added in the conference call that there had been “some tense moments” in choosing the timing. “The governor and I were really pressing to go faster and quicker…The movie actually became a complication because Mark’s team did not think that it would be good for him to make an announcement during this time…We really had to go through long hauls to convince his people not to do this anonymously.”

With regard to the broader plans for Startup: Education, Zuckerberg was hesitant to say too much; he stressed that because he runs Facebook full-time, he will not be running a foundation as well. An acting director for Startup: Education, he said, is already active and working in Newark, and a search for a full-time director has “already begun.”

Zuckerberg’s new foundation is also generating excitement from other entrepreneurs. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, now at the helm of e-commerce start-up Square and a prominent angel investor, announced that he was donating $5,000 to the Partnership for Education in Newark and is encouraging other Square users to contribute as well.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-20017545-36.html#ixzz10Tq550b5

Source:http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-20017545-36.html

Find out the key issues, news, and opportunities of making and receiving voice calls (previously known as phone calls) in your country and around the world before you start making important cell phone or voice service decisions. Type the word “voIP” and a name of a country, and what do you get? Here a few… Australia, Colombia, Germany, India, Israel, Kenya, Mexico, Pakistan and Spain.

Australia voIP: Feds seek network for new Information Commissioner office or Ramadan call special for Orange customers

Colombia VoIP: VoIP Launch Has Potential To Ruffle Fixed-line Operators’ Feathers‎ or 123.com.ve aims for e-commerce VoIP launch in September‎

Germany voIP: TN Gives A Lift To Heavy-Lifter (Broadband VSAT)‎ Bremen, Germany or credative Announces Explansion of its Voice over IP Offerings

India voIP: India May Turn Security Attention to Skype and Google … or Call India free, the land of infinite possibilities

Israel voIP: MTS Announces Second Quarter 2010 Financial Results‎ or DIDXchange Membership Statistics Reflect the Global Telecommunications Ecosystem Issues and Successes

Kenya voIP: Tech4Africa conference opens in Johannesburg‎

Mexico voIP: CapRock Launches VSAT Services Meant Especially for the North American Energy Market or Maxcom up for grabs?

Pakistan voIP: Minerva wins Motorola’s distributor award‎ or New kids on the network block Now Mobile offering cheap international calls especially to Pakistan and Nigeria

Spain voIP: Review: Virtual Office Pro with Virtual Office Online‎ or VoIP Launch Has Potential To Ruffle Fixed-line Operators’ Feathers‎

Do your own around the world search of “voIP” and any of the 199 or so nations and territories on planet Earth? Go through Wikpedia’s list and add key word “voIP” on your favorite search engines, Bing, Google, Yahoo, Dogpile, Ask …

Do you remember being a youngster and waiting for your allowance every month just so you could take a trip to your local bookstore and purchase the newly released books? Those were the days when you chose to stay in just so you could burn through that book as quickly as possible, enjoying each and every page.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that what you enjoyed as a youngster is what is important for the current generation. To help spread literacy, e book readers are a serious tool for everyone.

The world of books can often be intimidating, especially for young adults. However, e book readers are an important technological marvel that can deliver hundreds of books within minutes at your fingertips.

In case you didn’t know, most e book stores will offer you trials or free book downloads. This makes for a great bonus if you want to download free “books” to your reader.

There are several reasons to justify purchasing an e book reader but to start with, why not the gift of literacy with a touch of convenience? You or your loved ones can download books in a matter of seconds. Your children can take a reader to the poolside, read a book using a reader at the beach, or on a summer family trip.

Also consider purchasing an e book reader to lighten the load on your bag. Why carry tons of books when you can download them onto a powerful digital reader that weighs almost nothing? This will greatly lighten the load on your back and spare you from back pain.

E book readers make for awesome presents for yourself or any of your loved ones. Whether you’re into technology or not, this is one invention that aims to revive the books industry.

You can search e books on your powerful search engines and there you will find various sites of e books. It doesn’t matter whether you are a science student or a medical student, thousands of e books of different subjects are available on internet.

As a quick tip, if you want a solid, leading reader, start by researching the Amazon Kindle.

Chris Jacksom adores all things technology. He adores to play with gadgets and technology and adores his Amazon Kindle. You can find Chris talking about books and e book readers in real life or on his website.

Your hair holds clues about where you’ve been through telltale chemical signs that start out in tap water and end up in your cells.

Even Coke, bottled water and sometimes beer leave a geographic imprint that lasts until you get a trim, because local bottling plants use local water, found a new study.

Did you know that that the Coca-cola bottling company of Northern New England is using IBM Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino collaboration and messaging software integrated with the 3Com VCX VoIP platform on two IBM System i515 servers for their telephony needs and … integrated with BlackBerry RIM devices. It’s called collaboration on the go! Blackberry with Voice over Internet is a popular combination. Listen to Chohan and watch Obama!

The research, as it progresses, is helping investigators identify crime victims with hair by showing where people spent time before they died. Along with other forensic strategies, the technique has already been used to help solve at least one mystery.

“Police departments and sheriff departments contact us with cold cases with no leads and say: ‘Can you analyze the hair and tell us something about where the victim was from?’” said analytical chemist Lesley Chesson, of IsoForensics, a scientific research company in Salt Lake City.

Scientists know that our bodies use the water we drink to form proteins in our hair, fingernails, muscles and other body tissues. In the last few years, researchers have found that these tissues also record a type of chemical fingerprint in tap water that varies from one geographic region to the next.

Speaking of forensics, how about mixing some VoIP in there? Did you know that Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences has a VoIP Lab? It provides students with the opportunity to configure and troubleshoot VoIP systems, learn about integration and conversion of Plain Old Telephone Systems (POTS), setup and configure additional communication requirements (ex. Video, Webcams, etc.) Security and Network Utilization with regards to all these technologies is studied. Additionally, courses in Network Forensics are taught in this lab.

The fingerprint takes the form of a unique ratio between heavy and light hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Atoms of different weight are called isotopes, and isotopes end up in different ratios in tap water because of the way water cycles between oceans and clouds — with heavier atoms less likely to evaporate and more likely to fall out of clouds first.

For the new study, Chesson and colleagues wanted to look beyond tap water to see if other common beverages also reflect their origins.

On three massive road trips around the United States, Chesson bought cans and bottles of Coke, Dasani bottled water and Budweiser beer from 33 cities. She also collected samples of tap water and brought everything back to her lab for testing.

Results, published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, showed a close match in isotope ratios between tap water, soda and bottled water from each area, probably because local bottling plants use local water. The beer showed a weaker match because there are only 12 Budweiser breweries around the country.

In some places, the relationship was murkier because both drinking water and store-bought beverages are often imported from other regions.

As their research continues, Chesson and colleagues are narrowing in on the strengths and weaknesses of hair analyses as a forensic tool.

In one cold case, the team was brought in to help identify the body of a 20-something woman who was found dead of stab wounds in 1971, but whose case remained unsolved. After analyzing the isotopes in her hair, the scientists were able to conclude that the woman had lived (and therefore drunk tap water and other beverages) in Northern California for at least 18 months before she died. That clue helped detectives focus their search.

With the help of missing persons records, DNA and other types of evidence, they were finally able to identify her as Mary Alice Willey — providing, at least, some finality for family members and opening the possibility that her killer might be found.

In another case, the team was able to say that a particularly long-haired victim had moved every six months or so for the two years before her remains were found near a concert venue along the shores of the Great Salt Lake.

So far, they have not yet figured out who she was.

By showing that the most commonly consumed beverages reflect their location, the new study is “an important step that allows us to remain optimistic about the promise of isotopes to tell us something about human movement,” said Jason West, an ecologist at Texas A&M University in College Station.

“What we’re learning from this paper is where the strengths are and where some of the limitations are,” he added.

Written by Emily Sohn and edited by Techistan team.

For all the geekazoid gurus to critique and the wannabes like me to enjoy, check out hairpinning vs. shuffling in voice over Internet process.

If you want to learn how to make hip hop beats, then realise that it can be difficult and frustrating. However, above all it can be really fun and rewarding, if you know how to do it right. To make things a little easier on your journey of how to make hip hop beats, here are five quick tips to get you going.

1. Choose Your Style: The first thing you need to do is choose a style of beat that you want to make. This doesn’t just need to be hip hop, of course, it could be rap or just about anything. Once you’ve chosen the style, you can learn a bit more about it by listening to the kinds of artists that employ that style, and listen to the way they create beats in songs. Subconsciously, you’ll take in the kind of beats that are needed to make it sound the way you want.

2. Preparing Your Song: Now it’s time to either choose a song or sample, or even create one from scratch. Take your time, as this is obviously going to make a huge difference as to the kind of beats you’ll end up creating. Make sure you order the song exactly the way you like it, with the versus and choruses blending in together in the right places.

3. Start Creating the Beat: Now you’ll want to start adding the beat to your song. The drums are a very important foundation, and the best place to start. You’ll want to make sure they are strong and steady. Now just keep adding what you need so that you build it up to exactly the way you want it to sound.

4. Perfecting the Sound: Now it’s time to layer your beat and make sure it sounds just as you want it to sound by panning the instruments. Don’t rush this step, as it’s going to influence how your beat ends up sounding!

5. Time to Get Heard: Now you’ve put in all your hard work, it’s time to put your beat out into the world so that other people can hear it. You can either put it online or export it to CD.

These are the five basic steps you’ll need to master on your quest of how to make hip hop beats. Of course it takes a lot of practice, but if you make sure you listen carefully you’ll do well to create the beats you really want.

Want to start to learn how to make your own music but have felt put off by how expensive everything is? The great news is that you can now make beats online, which is a far cheaper way of getting started today and making the beats you’ve always wanted to!

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia — June 5, 2010 — The OIC Education Directory 1st Edition 2010/11, is the first OIC education directory published in Malaysia that provides educational information on universities, colleges, and institutions learning.

This OIC International Business Centre Sdn Bhd, the publisher of this Directory, aims to disseminate information on education institutions and courses offered, with the objective to serve the Muslim world populartion and contribute to the development of intellectual capacity and skill-based within the OIC.

The OIC International Business Centre is confident on the potential of the Directory as the market holds a potential total populartion 1.5 billion in the member states of the OIC, spanning several continenets. The collection and arrangement of information on education institutions and courses offered will serve the Muslim world population, the means to achieve greater heights in life through good and meaningful education, at a location where they are culturally comfortable secure in their belief.

The OIC Education Directory 1st Edition 2010/11, focuses more on promoting education institutions in Malaysia to the OIC countries. The publication targets to attract more foreign students to study in Malaysia, thus promoting Malaysia as th Education Hub in the OIC. The OIC Education Directory 1st Editon 2010/11, is distributed freely with CD-ROM to students, parents, and ministries, through various government agencies of OIC countries, namely the Ministry of Education and embassies as well as at educational institutions, libraries, schools, educational expos and bookstores.

Details on courses offered along with cost, accrediation, duration and availability is obtainable on the OIC Education portal (www.oiceduonline.com). This portal acts as the quick information proider to students from any part of the world. The OIC Education Directory 2nd Edition is schduled to be published by January 2011 will also provide information on other countries such as Oman, Pakistan, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, UAE & Kuwait. The publisher hopes that this initiative will increase intra-education among the OIC countries.

The OIC International Business Centre is based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia where the dynamic education industry is evidenced by the increase in enrollments of students form Islamic countries and other foreign countries. The support of the Malaysian government extends also to private education entities and in return, these private concerns are investing in quality education by offering better teaching techniques, encouraging the recruitment of internationally renowned professors and lecturers, and investing in state-of-the-art facitliies. We are proud that as the publisher of this directory, we are playing our role in explaining this and disseminating this information to the students in the OIC countries.

The OIC Education Directory Edition 2010/11 is launched by Y.B. Dato’ Saifudden Abdullah, Deputy Minister of Higher Education. The publisher hopes that the educational institutions in Malaysia will sue this platform for promotions and collaborations in the OIC market.

Contact:

OIC International Business Centre Sdn. Bhd.
SB 23A Floor, Unit 1A, Menara TH Selborn
153 Jalan Tun Razak
50400, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Tel: +603-2681-0037
Fax: +603-2691-0032