Professors who wish to engage students during large lectures face an uphill battle. Not only is it a logistical impossibility for 200+ students to actively participate in a 90 minute lecture, but the downward sloping cone-shape of a lecture hall induces a one-to-many conversation. This problem is compounded by the recent budget cuts that have squeezed ever more students into each room.

Fortunately, educators (including myself) have found that Twitter (Twitter) is an effective way to broaden participation in lecture. Additionally, the ubiquity of laptops and smartphones have made the integration of Twitter a virtually bureaucracy-free endeavor. This post describes the two main benefits professors find when using Twitter in lecture.

Running on just sugar and caffeine, 32 teams of students worked non-stop for 18 hours to develop applications that they hoped would blow the judges’ socks off. This was at the UC-Berkeley Hackathon, last weekend. Indeed, many teams succeeded in their mission. They built some amazing software: to provide server-side rendering of games, convert website mockups to HTML/CSS, create sophisticated playlists for Youtube videos, and to analyze Twitter streams. One team even built a gaming interface for a neural headset.

Over the past few years social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have given unprecedented access to people’s private lives. More and more personal information is revealed through photos, status updates and conversations that are all being documented online. Last week, the Serious Fraud Office of London (SFO) warned that Facebook and Twitter are being used to harvest users’ personal financial details,

Everyone communicates through e-mail these days and it’s important that you’re sending the right message to your correspondents. Whether you’re applying for a job, shooting off a complaint letter, or propositioning a woman on Craigslist, you want to make sure you’re making the best possible impression.

Policymakers who have become increasingly concerned about drivers using cell phones now have a new worry: According to a study of four jurisdictions that have banned the use of hand-held devices while driving, the laws have not reduced accident rates.

The study, conducted by the Highway Loss Data Institute, an insurance industry group, looked at accident rates before and after cell phone bans took effect in New York, the District of Columbia, Connecticut and California.

This is a $2.1 Million Robot Hummingbird and It Could Save Your Life
This tiny, flying robot flaps its wings 30 times per second—just like a real hummingbird—and will one day save lives by searching for survivors in wreckage and spots not easily accessible by humans.