CK-12′s ‘Get-Real’ competition aims to test students use of tech and K-12 concepts in the real world

Education technology company CK-12 has launched a student competition, called “Get-Real“, to see who can come up with the best real-world application of a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) concept they’ve learned. The incentive to participate is high as the winning submission will receive not only a prize for themselves, but also for their classrooms as well.

Started by Neeru Khosla and Murugan Pal, CK-12 aims to provide students and teachers with open-source content and technology tools in order to help increase learning opportunities globally. Through free access to high-quality and customizable educational content through various modalities, students can learn as they see fit and that matches their style.

The organization says that “Get-Real” is designed to “stimulate creativity and critical thinking.” It’s centered around having students create real-world applications that can help foster learning and understanding of the world in which we live. Through this competition, students are instructed to create practical examples using STEM K-12 concepts. The goal is to demonstrate how those chosen concepts apply in today’s society.

Essentially, it’s a way to encourage students to use technology and education to help them figure out the world. An example is understanding how the Egyptians built the pyramids made up of perfect congruent triangles or this one about the Pacific Garbage Patch:

The competition spans six weeks and each submission is said to be judged based on several criteria, including its applicability to the real-world, its impact, creativity, and clarity. Students must choose a subject that is academic and educational in content and follow one of CK-12′s concepts. Projects should be submitted in one of many formats, including Prezi, PowerPoint, PDF, MPEG, Keynote, YouTube, or Vimeo.

Of course there’s always the prize that encourages people to participate. With the grand prize, the winning submission will get a device (iPad, Kindle, Nook, or Chromebook). In addition, up to 25 devices will be given to the classroom and belong to the school.

CK-12 says that it is accepting submissions now and the competition ends on March 30.

Photo credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Stop copying Silicon Valley, Kenya warned

Kenyans in the tech industry have been cautioned to stop copying Silicon Valley's model by a panel of experts attending the Mobile Web East Africa conference in Nairobi. The experts warned copycat models "simply don't work".

Will Mutua, founder of Afrinovator, said Kenya is still far from deserving the ‘Silicon Savannah’ title.

"I have my own doubts if Kenya should really be called Africa's 'Silicon Savannah', as we have witnessed a worrying trend in the type of companies being started, most of which are based on apps," Mutua said. He expressed his concern that many Kenyans, and Africans as a whole, expect things to happen within a short period of time, yet the likes of Silicon Valley have been developing for close to 50 years.

"Some things simply take time. Let us not assume things will happen overnight," Mutua added. He advised startup companies and technopreneurs in particular to move away from merely basing their companies on one app and calling it a business, and to ensure that they have all the other details and plans that make a company complete.

"To have a company, you need to have a vision, plan, strategy etc, and this is something that is currently missing in the 'Silicon Savannah'," Mutua explained. He said that only companies that have these things in their plan will be termed as real sustainable businesses that can stand the test of time.

Contributing to the same discussion, TMS Ruge, co-founder at Project Diaspora USA/Uganda, said: "Kenya should be more of a 'Digital Savannah' and not 'Silicon Savannah'. We are yet to manufacture things here, and most of the companies we have here are based on digital solutions."

This story originally appeared on HumanIPO.

Image credit: Thinkstock

Ten Days After Private Beta Launch, Snapchat Officially Brings Video To Android

It was just ten days ago that Snapchat launched a private beta version of its Android app, updated to include the video capture feature we’ve come to enjoy on iOS.

Today, however, the company has turned it around, making the Snapchat with video application officially available in the Google Play. Store. Co-founder Evan Spiegel mentioned to us earlier in the month that developing Snapchat for Android can be difficult, since Snapchat’s video feature needs to be compatible across a number of different processors, screen sizes, etc.

As it stands now, the update is available for Android 2.2 and later.

Here’s what Snapchat had to say in a blog post:

Making Snapchat video for Android has been exciting, but has also had its fair share of challenges. The Android phones that many of us use were never designed with Snapchat in mind, and that can be tough when developing a hardware-based application. The video feeds and playback behavior can differ greatly – often with no guarantees or warnings. Some users will still experience difficulties, and we want to work with you to make Snapchat perfect (email us!), but we hope many of you simply come to love video snaps.

The update also brings with it a few tweaks to the UI, including a revamped notification system. Now you should have a bit more control and customization when it comes to incoming snaps from your friends. Users will also notice that general Snapchat behavior will be much smoother on Android moving forward, as the company has redesigned the camera to improve frame rates and navigation speed.

Snapchat has had a great year, raising $13.5 million from Benchmark, launching on Android, and growing to see over 60 million snaps a day.

Apple Hit with “Planned Obsolescence” Lawsuit in Brazil Over Early Launch of iPad 4

Apple has been hit by a class action lawsuit in Brazil for releasing the 4th generation iPad, which the plaintiffs claim has made the 3rd generation iPad obsolete.

The group behind the lawsuit, led by Institute of Politics and Law Software (IBDI), claims that releasing the iPad 4 just seven months after the iPad 3 launch rather than following the usual annual product release cycle, amounts to “planned obsolescence” that harms customers who purchased the iPad 3.

The institute claims that the iPad 4 is not effective technological evolution [as compared to] the iPad 3 or ‘New iPad’, characterizing what sort of “planned obsolescence”. In practice, the accusation is that the Apple iPad 3 could have reached the shelves with the characteristics presented in the fourth generation – a processor, a connector and a camera a bit more advanced.

The group further alleges that the iPad 4 launch wasn’t effectively communicated to buyers, who ended up buying the older iPad 3 in the period between the announcement and the actual launch.

The lawsuit demands free replacements for iPad 3 buyers, a reimbursement of 50 percent of the original price of the device and a fine amounting to 30 percent of the total value of iPad 3 units sold in the country.

While there had been some outrage following Apple’s decision to update the iPad line within just seven months, it is the first time we’ve heard Apple getting sued for it. Apple did exchange iPad 3 bought within the 30-day window before the announcement for newer iPads in the US, but doesn’t seem to have done something similar in Brazil.

News of the lawsuit follows Apple’s unsuccessful attempts to gain an exclusive trademark over the “iPhone” brand in Brazil. Presently, the “official” iPhone that sells in Brazil is actually an Android phone by a local manufacturer.

Do you think a newer iPad makes older ones obsolete? In my opinion, a truly obsolete device would be one that’s not only outdated but has stopped getting software updates as well.

Via: MacRumors, ohoje

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Rwandan woman stripped of US citizenship after lying about genocide

Beatrice Munyenyezi had been given asylum but now faces up to 10 years in prison and deportation for making false statements

A Rwandan woman who won political asylum in the US after hiding her family's role in the 1994 genocide has been convicted in a New Hampshire court of lying about her own part in the mass killings.

Beatrice Munyenyezi, 43, was immediately stripped of the US citizenship she had gained a decade earlier in the same courthouse where she was found guilty on Thursday of making false statements to officials in order to cover up how she selected Tutsis to be raped and murdered. She faces up to 10 years in prison and then likely deportation to face a trial in Rwanda for genocide.

Munyenyezi settled in Manchester, New Hampshire, with three young daughters in 1998 after claiming to have been persecuted in Rwanda.

She caught the attention of the US authorities several years later after giving false testimony on behalf of her husband and mother-in-law who were later sentenced to life in prison for genocide and other crimes against humanity by an international tribunal.

Prosecutors alleged that Munyenyezi had a "front row seat" during the mass killings of about 800,000 Tutsis because her mother-in-law, Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, served as the minister of family and women's affairs in the Hutu government which organised the slaughter.

When the killings began in April 1994, the government sent Nyiramasuhuko to her home city, Butare, to order the governor to begin murdering Tutsis there. When the governor refused he was killed and Nyiramasuhuko took charge along with her son and Munyenyezi's husband, Arsene Shalom Ntahobali, a leader of the interahamwe militia at the forefront of the murders.

The killings in Butare were among the most intense of the genocide.

Nyiramasuhuko had the presidential guard brought into the city to kick start the slaughter.

Prosecutors said they began investigating Munyenyezi after she gave evidence at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in 2006 in which she testified that there was no roadblock with her husband and other militiamen butchering people outside the Butare hotel, owned by her in-laws, in which she was staying.

Munyenyezi told the ICTR that she had seen no killing at all. "No, I never saw dead bodies," she said.

But numerous witnesses at the ICTR trial recounted murders, rapes and other crimes at the roadblock. In addition, a US Defense Department satellite photographed the site.

Prosecutors mocked Munyenyezi's claim not to have seen any killings outside her door.

"She had a front row seat to the genocide, to the most vicious roadblock in town," the prosecutor, John Capin, told the jury.

Witnesses described Munyenyezi conducting selections of who would die according to whether identity cards said a person was Tutsi or Hutu.

"If I'm checking IDs at roadblocks, knowing that person is going to be clubbed to death, I'm as responsible as if I wielded the machete myself," said Capin.

Prosecution witnesses included Consolee Mukeshimana who described Munyenyezi as checking identity cards at the roadblock for two hours on one occasion, and directing Tutsis to their deaths.

Mukeshimana said that at the beginning of the genocide she survived a massacre at the health centre where she worked by hiding among the corpses. She then fled to the house of her sister whose husband, a Hutu, was Munyenyezi's nephew. The husband took Mukeshimana to the roadblock outside the family hotel thinking Munyenyezi would help. Instead she was hostile.

Mukeshimana said she saw Munyenyezi separating Tutsis. "They would lead them towards, behind the hotel, going to kill them," she said. "But girls and women would first be brought to a house that was next to the hotel, in the basement, and from there you could hear them screaming."

The prosecution said the women and girls were raped in the basement before being murdered.

Mukeshimana said she escaped death when her brother in law told the militia that he would kill her but then hid her.

Another witness, Thierry Sebaganwa, wept in court as he described how Munyenyezi had taunted him by telling the then 21 year-old that the Hutu militia had just cut off his mother's head.

The defence painted the accusers as liars who claimed to see incidents they did not witness, and said they were under pressure from the Rwandan government to falsely implicate Munyenyezi.

"You don't have to take these witnesses at their word," the defence lawyer, David Ruoff, told the jury. "And given where they're coming from, and what they'll go back to, you should not."

Ruoff described Munyenyezi as a loyal wife who followed her husband to Butare out of duty and who spent the genocide at the hotel caring for their baby daughter and was newly pregnant with twins. Prosecutors said that Munyenyezi was only two months pregnant.

Munyenyezi, who was nearing completion of a degree in politics and society at the University of New Hampshire when she was arrested in 2010 and held in prison, was convicted in a second trial after the jury in a first one a year ago failed to reach a verdict.

On that occasion, witnesses described how Munyenyezi paid rapists with food and beer, selected Tutsis for death and shot a nun before a cheering mob. Survivors also accused her of taking Tutsis, including women carrying children, to a pit where they were butchered.

Jurors in the first trial said they were uncertain about some of the evidence of Munyenyezi's direct participation in atrocities, in part because they were confused by shambolic translations, but were persuaded she had lied about her associations with the organisers of the genocide.

Prosecutors tailored their case in the second trial to shift the emphasis to Munyenyezi's leadership in deciding who would die and her membership of the ruling party responsible for leading the genocide.

Last year, Munyenyezi's sister, Prudence Kantengwa, was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in a separate trial and sentenced to 21 months in prison for failing to declare she was also in Butare in 1994 and had political connections to the perpetrators of the genocide.

Munyenyezi's mother in law, Nyiramasuhuko, was the first woman convicted by the ICTR where she received a life sentence after being convicted of seven charges including genocide, crimes against humanity and incitement to rape. Her trial heard how she told militiamen "before you kill the women, you need to rape them". On one occasion she ordered petrol poured over a group of women who were then burned to death after being raped.

Munyenyezi's husband, Ntahobali, also received a life sentence.

Oscar Pistorius freed on bail until murder trial begins in June

Paralympian shows little relief as he is ordered to surrender guns and passports before facing Reeva Steenkamp murder charge

When the long-awaited decision came, the only man in the packed courtroom who did not seem seized by the moment was Oscar Pistorius himself.

His family members smiled and joined in a circle of prayer. His friends leaped to their feet, punched the air and shouted "Yes!" Journalists thronging the court eagerly shared the news on Twitter.

But at the centre of it all, Pistorius remained utterly isolated, plunged into a seemingly bottomless pit of despair. There was little sign of joy on the face of the London Olympic and Paralympic star, who had spent most of the day with jaw clenched, swallowing hard or sobbing softly.

"I come to the conclusion that the accused has made a case to be released on bail," magistrate Desmond Nair said at the end of a near two-hour summing up, praising Pistorius for having offered a detailed affidavit which "reached out to meet the state's case".

The court set bail at 1m rand ( 73,000) and postponed the case until 4 June, leaving Pistorius's life and career in an agonising limbo. The 26-year-old left the courthouse in a silver Land Rover, sitting in the rear, tailed by a motorcycle with a TV cameraman aboard. A media bidding war for the first interview is predicted.

His lawyer, Kenny Oldwage, said that after his release from custody, Pistorius "will be in a residence we've provided in Pretoria". The star's coach, Ampie Louw, was quoted saying he is considering putting the athlete back in training "to get his mind clear".

Pistorius has been ordered to hand over firearms and passports, avoid his home and all witnesses in the case, report to a police station twice a week, and not to drink alcohol. He is not permitted to enter any international airport departure hall.

The magistrate's decision came after four days of twists and turns in a case that has gripped the world. Pistorius admitted shooting dead his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp at his luxury home near Pretoria on 14 February, but claimed he thought she was a burglar. The prosecution insist it was premeditated murder while the defence argue culpable homicide.

After the steel gate clanked open allowing Pistorius into the dock on Friday, he stood still with eyes closed, head bowed, apparently in prayer as cameras clicked and flashed around him. Nair complained that such spectacles made Pistorius look like "some kind of species the world has never seen before".

The magistrate admitted he was in an "unenviable position" in deciding bail. The case has polarised South Africans with either result bound to be controversial. Nair made clear that bail was not a matter of guilt and innocence but determining whether justice would be served by holding a defendant in custody.

As Nair ran through Pistorius's version of events, the athlete lost the battle with his emotions and wept silently, his hands trembling, at the words: "She died in his arms".

Dissecting the prosecution case, Nair said Hilton Botha, the detective leading the investigation, had made "several errors and concessions" during cross-examination.

Nair said the officer had not asked for all the mobile phones, may have contaminated the crime scene, "blundered" on the description of substances found at the property, and did not spend as long as he ought to have if he wanted to establish that the athlete had a propensity to violence.

Botha was replaced as lead investigator on Thursday after he was charged with multiple counts of attempted murder for shooting at a minibus. Police say he has been replaced by South Africa's "top detective".

In a sign that the trial could be very different, Nair cautioned: "It can never be said that warrant officer Hilton Botha is the state case. The state case will be put together by experts."

Nair said there were several grounds on which bail can be denied, one of which is whether the defendant is prone to violence. He said this had not been proven despite reference to an incident in which Pistorius allegedly threatened to break a man's legs.

Another is if the defendant poses a flight risk, an issue which brought the Blade Runner's disability and hi-tech artificial legs into the spotlight. Prosecutor Gerrie Nel said Pistorius has the "money, means and motive" to flee if given bail, and described how WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is just as well known but skipped bail by seeking refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy.

But Nair asked: "What kind of life would he lead, a person who has to use prostheses, if he has to flee" and is "ducking and diving every day" on artificial legs. "His international career would be over in any event."

"A life not in prison," Nel replied simply.

Defence advocate Barry Roux contended: "Mr Pistorius, every time he goes through security at airport, there's commotion ... He cannot go unnoticed through airport security ... He can never go anywhere unnoticed."

He added: "Those legs need maintenance and adjustment on a monthly basis." Pistorius also requires medical attention for his stumps, he said.

Nair concluded: "I cannot find it has been established that the accused is a flight risk."

Earlier the prosecution had attacked Pistorius's character and portrayed him as a cold-blooded killer. Nel said mockingly: "I shoot and I think my career is over and I cry. I come to court and I cry because I feel sorry for myself."

He continued: "I am not saying the planning of the murder of Reeva Steenkamp happened weeks ahead, days ahead. I am saying the planning to kill Reeva Steenkamp happened that night."

He added: "You cannot put yourself in the deceased's position. It must have been terrifying. It was not one shot. It was four shots ... The degree of violence present in this case is horrific."

Nel also noted that the South African president Jacob Zuma had called for the law to prioritise violence against women and children. He cited the case of Anene Booysen, 17, who was gang-raped and murdered near Cape Town earlier this month.

In the absence of witnesses to the Pistorius shooting, however, Nair found the prosecution case rested on "nothing more than circumstantial evidence".

But he also noted there were "improbabilities that need to be explored" in Pistorius's account of events: why he did not try to find his girlfriend on fearing an intruder was in the house, why he did not try to determine who was in the toilet, and why he would venture into perceived "danger" - the bathroom area - when he could have taken other steps to ensure his safety. These are likely to be probed in the trial.

None of this, however, was enough to sway the magistrate against granting bail. After the announcement, which was broadcast as live audio around the world, Pistorius's friends welcomed his release. Businessman Kenny Kunene said: "Obviously I'm excited. I've always believed in the effectiveness of the judiciary. Fortunately the courts in this country aren't swayed by emotional or political factors.

"I love Oscar, he's an ambassador for the country and he turned his disabilities into abilities. He's a national hero."

Fubes Danor, who shouted "Yes!" when the decision became clear, said: "I'm very happy. I've been hyperventilating this week. We've been friends for six years and he's a cool dude."

Meanwhile in a magazine interview a week before her death, published on Fridayyesterday, Steenkamp, a law graduate and model, spoke about her three-month-old relationship with Pistorius.

"I absolutely adore Oscar," she told Heat. "I respect and admire him so much. I don't want anything to come in the way of his career."

The bail conditions

Upon payment of the 100,000 rand ( 73,000) Pistorius must be released with the following conditions:

He appears in court on 4 June at 8.30am.

He surrenders all passports and refrains from applying for any passports.

He refrains from entering any airport.

He surrenders all firearms.

He refrains from possessing any firearms.

He refrains from talking to any witnesses for the prosecution.

He will have a probation officer and correctional official from the date of release until the case is concluded.

He shall inform the official of all his movements and ask for permission for any journeys outside Pretoria.

He shall give them a phone number and must be contactable day and night.

He must not be charged with an offence of violence against women.

He must not use drugs or alcohol.

He must not return to his home and must not make contact with any residents of his estate except the Stander family.