Education

Good news for those who like racing through audiobooks. A study has found learning is not negatively effected when students watch recorded lectures a faster playback speeds. However, comprehension did suffer when playback reached 2.5 times normal speed.

While it would be great if teachers could spend lots of time with each of their students, the fact is that children often end up doing most of their handwriting exercises unsupervised. A new system may help address that problem, using a "smart" pen.

Microsoft has announced a slimmer version of Windows and a low-cost laptop to run it on. The Surface Laptop SE has been designed exclusively for use in the classroom, and is the first of a number of Chromebook rivals powered by Intel and AMD.

As part of a refurbishment at the planetarium at La Coupole, a former World War Two bunker in northern France that's now a museum, RSA Cosmos has installed a dozen 4K projectors to create what's billed as the world's first 10K 3D planetarium.

Though Sphero is probably best known for the BB-8 droid it released in 2015, more recently the focus has been on helping to kickstart future coders with educational bots. Now the indi robocar becomes the company's first robot aimed at early learners.

Drone titan DJI has today added a new model to its recently launched Education division. The company aims to encourage robotics and AI tech learning with a package that includes a teeny drone, an intuitive mobile app and an exclusive curriculum.

The kalimba is the commercial version of a traditional Zimbabwean instrument known as the mbira, which dates back thousands of years. That said, a brand-new high-tech tool has been designed to teach people how to play the thing.

A new study suggests handwriting on paper leads to greater brain activity and memory retention than using a stylus on a tablet. The researchers hypothesize the spatial details of writing on paper may explain why it enhances the encoding of information.

An extremely odd project is planning to hold a remote-controlled car race next October ... On the surface of the Moon. What's more, the two racecars will be partially designed by high school kids, and McLaren P1 designer Frank Stephenson is involved.

BIG has been commissioned to design a new student center for Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Maryland. Named The Village, it's conceived as an oversized living room and will feature a timber structure and a roof covered in solar panels.

Mere days after launching a 100-year anniversary tribute to the almost magical hands-off wonder created by Leon Theremin, Moog Music is back with a limited re-issue of an all-analog synthesizer you put together yourself.

Back in 2016, the BBC gave a million tiny computers to UK school kids for free. The micro:bit boards were designed as learning tools to help get youngsters into coding, and now the tiny computer for tiny hands has been updated.