Education Innovation in the Worst Situations - GOOD Education - GOOD

Education Innovation in the Worst Situations - GOOD Education - GOOD: "If you're looking for new ideas in education, says financial journalist-turned-innovation consultant Charles Leadbeater, you shouldn't focus on the top: specifically, Finland, which is often touted for having the world's best education system. Rather, Leadbeater argues, often the most dismal situations can result in the most out-of-the-box solutions. He himself has seen them in the favelas of Brazil and the slums of Kenya."

Invisible Mouse

Free your hands! The Mouseless, completely invisible, is an
innovative mouse that allows you to interact with the computers as the
physical mouse do, while not needing to grapping it (of course you
cannot!) It consists of an Infrared (IR) laser beam (with line cap) and
an Infrared camera, both of which are built inside the computer. So when
the user cups his/her hand on the surface where the computer sits on, a
laser beam then appear underneath the hand, allowing him/her to
interact with the computers. Really magical, right? For more details,
check out the video below.

More Information
Here

.

Sun-Powered Bambu House Sprouts at Solar Decathlon Europe

Tonji
University Shanghai’s Bambu House at the European
Solar Decathlon is a beautiful sun-powered abode inspired by
nature. It has two elegant sloping roofs and is almost entirely
constructed from bamboo. Its impressive solar
array generates 9 kilowatts of electricity which powers its one
bedroom, one living room layout. We love how the house combines
traditional Chinese architecture with state of
the art technology — it has temperature
and humidity control systems, high-level thermal insulation systems,
and a bamboo enclosed garden.

Tonji University’s team has 20 members and is composed of doctors,
postgraduates, and undergraduate students who range across many
disciplines — from architecture and urban planning to energy
development. They hope that their solar-powered
house can help promote their forward-thinking ideas about renewable energy use in
residential urban areas. The team has spent six months designing and
constructing the house from scratch and they are hoping their hard work
will pay off. Structurally, the house is strongly influenced by
traditional Chinese architecture but with a tinge of the efficient look
of contemporary architecture.

The Solar Decathlon Europe
kicked off with a bang today and Inhabitat is on the scene to provide a
first peek at the amazing sun-powered architecture
on display. The European Solar Decathlon is the sister of the US Solar
Decthalon — which we
covered in Washington DC this past October — and was organized in a
partnership between Government of Spain’s Ministry of Housing and the
United States Government. The decathlon is taking place all through next
week in Madrid, so stay tuned to Inhabitat as we bring you a front seat
view of all the action!

Read more: Sun-Powered
Bambu House Sprouts at Solar Decathlon Europe | Inhabitat - Green
Design Will Save the World

Open source could be Africa's technological solution

That major computing companies are unlikely to want to invest heavily in Africa is not lost on the continent's brain trust.

Sure, there could be some investment in major cities, but for the most part, the continent's on its own. The Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa is fine with that. OK, perhaps "fine" would be overstating it, but FOSSFA knows that's the reality and so is bringing together the most skilled computing minds together to develop and distribute applications throughout Africa in local languages.

The group has been getting some attention lately, as it just wrapped up its fourth Idelho conference in Ghana. It could be the launching pad for future projects in the vein of Ushahidi, a geotagging mapping program with roots in Kenya.

Though Ushahidi (it means "testimony" in Swahili) didn't directly come out of FOSSFA, it was a " collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists during a time of crisis" and was built to help map reports of violence in Kenya in early 2008. It maps data submitted via the web and mobile phone.

Its usefulness was apparent almost immediately and the code was shared with a group in South Africa. The platform is fully open source and available for download. It's recently been used in Haiti for mapping areas where need is most desperate since the devastating earthquake this fall.

Fact of the matter, even though open source isn't always free (as in cost), it can be. And it also doesn't presume what the needs of the community are - the community has the chance to contribute to the solution and find the right solutions for them.

It says something about the problems in Africa that Ushahidi is probably the most well-known open-source project to come out of the continent. But it also shows the power of the community to find solutions to problems using available technology.

Source: networkworld