This month has been – I think you’ll agree – a colourful and eclectic month for product testing here at Tech Trends. From some amazing sex toys designed by women, for women, to a nifty pen that wards off RSI and an affordable classroom laptop that teaches kids about electronics and programming. We even found time to give the latest editing software from Vegas a quick spin. If you’d like to get in on the action and get your product reviewed here for the next edition, by all means get in touch, but do read these guidelines first to see whether it’s right for us.

Pi-top

We all learn better when we’re engaged, have fun, and take pride in what we achieve. The pi-top does that by allowing children to build a cool-looking classroom laptop from scratch. Teachers can use the device to plan lessons around coding, electronics, and much more. The device is also fully functional and highly customizable, so it’s a great value option for ICT equipment in its own right. Read the full review on IDG Connect

RRP: $200

Penclic B3 Stylus

The Penclic B3 Bluetooth is designed like a swivelling pen mounted on a gliding base, so you don’t need a mousepad, and takes up very little desk space. As someone who suffers from RSI – hazards of being a writer and spending most of my time either in front of a computer or tapping away at my phone – the advantage of switching to a stylus is that it not only uses a different set of muscles, but also makes you think about your movements more, therefore stopping the “happy clicking” that often triggers the pain, so I have to say it’s a keeper!

RRP: $103

Miss On The Go

This is a rather awesome little vibrating device that connects to a smart app on your phone (free to download on Apple and Android) and either provides guidance for your Kegel exercise routine to get those all-important pelvic floor muscles in tip-top shape, or becomes a platform for some fun and games (solo, with your other half, or with complete strangers). This is a nice product with a great story of female entrepreneurship behind it, which you can read more about on this article I wrote for the Future of Sex website.

RRP: $169

Dame Products

Another great story of female entrepreneurship came from the folks at Dame Products, who designed and successfully crowdfunded two amazing vibrating devices. You can read about them and find out more about the Fin and the Eva here.

RRP: $105 for the (Eva) and $74.95 (Fin)

Vegas Movie Studio

This month we did a deep-dive review on the Vegas Movie Studio software, courtesy of my husband, film editor, producer and all-round technical geek Tom Atkinson, who was impressed by how it provided a good-value solution for the prosumer market. You can read all about it here.

RRP: $79.99

The post April 2017 Tech Trends Product Reviews appeared first on Tech Trends.

17% growth expected in the Education Technology sector over the next  4 years according to EdTechX Global and IBIS Capital report.

Mendeley is one example of a start-up that thrived in the London Education Technology ecosystem
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The fastest growth is currently being experienced in Asia, showing that the current dominance of US companies in that space is shifting. The UK looked set to play a large part in that trend, as the country had experienced something of an EdTech boom in recent years. It’s unclear, however, how the decision to leave the European Union will affect the technology industry in general,  the Education sector in particular over the long term.

Mendeley is one example of a start-up that thrived in the London Education Technology ecosystem; it was founded in 2008 by 3 German Entrepreneurs and later acquired by Dutch Publishers Elsevier in 2013 . It is hard to imagine this type of success story happening as easily without the collaboration and free movement of talent that the European Union fostered, and without London being a gateway to the broader European Market and technology ecosystem.

At the EdTechX Europe summit, which took place in June just before the Brexit vote, the mood had been optimistic. The conference attracted record numbers, and many European companies were ranked as global technology champions in the first “Makers and Shakers of Education Technology Index” published prior to the event. The index highlighted the role of innovators such as Cambridge-based Raspberry Pi and Lego Education in advancing Education Technology.

There is an increasingly pressing need for investment in the sector to accelerate the digitisation of education, especially in Europe
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Stavros N Yiannouka, CEO of WISE – the World Innovation Summit for Education which co-curated the rankings said the purpose of the list was to recognise thinkers and doers pioneering innovative approaches to addressing challenges in education. The criteria used in compiling the shortlist included disruptive innovation, individual vision, impact, and contribution to education.

According to Benjamin Vedrenne-Cloquet, Co- Founder of EdTechXGlobal, the index elevates education innovators and thought leaders to the level of “social rock stars”.

Beyond social recognition for the sector, however, there is little doubt that the enormous commercial opportunities around EdTech remain largely underexplored, in spite of the growth we’ve seen so far. The digital market is now worth over $5tn (this is 8 times the size of the software market and 3 times larger than the media and entertainment industry) yet education is only 2% digitised. There is, the report concludes, an increasingly pressing need for investment in the sector to accelerate the digitisation of education, especially in Europe.

There is little doubt that the enormous commercial opportunities around EdTech remain largely underexplored
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Digital models offer new routes for re-skilling as well as addressing widespread labour shortages
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There is also a growing realisation of the impact EdTech will have in the way the 21^st Century workforce acquires and develops skills, and an acknowledgement that this will be driven by mobile. The most substantial growth is expected across emerging markets, with mobile being a catalyst for delivering and supporting learning. 90% of the world’s population under 30 live in those markets, and it follows that education and vocational training in the area will be led by mobile-first strategies. This is a view that strongly chimes with the strategy set out by Aape Pohjavirta, from Finnish Mobile Learning start-up Funzi.

The report also predicts a continued rise of MOOC platforms such as Coursera (which is set to reach yearly revenues of $30m) as the global demand for education rises and traditional provision models will simply not be able to grow in step with rise in global population numbers. At the same time, we can expect a global workforce crisis powered by extreme automation, a so-called ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ which will see AI replacing not only highly repetitive low-skill jobs, but routine medium-skill too.

“50% of current jobs won’t exist in 2025,” says Vedrenne-Cloquet, “so there will be a growing need to re-train the workforce in order to address current skill gaps and increase the use of continuous learning.”

Digital models, he concludes, offer a way to capture these changes and offer new routes for re-skilling as well as addressing widespread labour shortages.

There is a growing realisation of the impact EdTech will have in the way the 21st Century workforce acquires and develops skills
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Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Edtech Market to Reach $252bn by 2020 appeared first on Tech Trends.

The BBC Micro:bit launched as a tool to tackle the so-called digital skills gap, where most of us depend upon technology, but not enough learn about what is required to build and maintain the digital economy.

Products like the Raspberry Pi, Arduino and Micro:bit are proving to be effective platforms through which teachers can engage students with technology and teach them these skills in a practical, fun way.

10,000 teams from England, Scotland and Wales to be sponsored in national competition
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This week saw the launch of the Race for the Line competition created by Microsoft in partnership with Bloodhound Education, an initiative looking to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers. Secondary school pupils aged 11-16 will be able to build their own model rocket cars using BBC Micro:bit kits, and teachers can access resources to help them leverage the competition activities in other areas of the school curriculum.

The cars themselves will be made of foam and powered by a small solid fuel engine, and students will use the Micro:bit to collect and analyse data about the car’s performance, making adjustments and modifications to optimise performance and make it go as fast as possible. At this point, I’m probably not the only one wishing they were young enough to take part… they had me at “rocket”.

The 3 fastest teams will not only receive cash prizes for their schools, but also have their names included in the tail fin of the full-size rocket car being developed by the project: The Bloodhound SSC, which aims to go faster than the speed of sound, covering a mile in 3.6 seconds.

Schools registering before April 29^th 2016 will be eligible for the free race car kits, and finals will take place in June. Visit the Bloodhound Project website for more information and to register online.

The post UK Schools Can Get Free BBC Micro:bit Rocket Car Kits appeared first on Tech Trends.

When the Raspberry Pi first came on the scene back in 2008 it seemed like a revolutionary idea: An affordable and programmable computer that could be used to teach kids – and adults – how to code.

When the Raspberry Pi came on the scene back in 2008 it was a revolutionary idea
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As is often the case, the genius of the concept lay in its simplicity. The Pi was a modular blank slate that could be used flexibly in all manner of projects, and like LEGO bricks, the resulting creations were only limited by the users’ own imagination.

The Pi was a modular blank slate that could be used flexibly in all manner of projects
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Yet its CEO and Co-founder Eben Upton doesn’t see it as a disruptive idea per se. Having grown up using the BBC Micro, it seemed natural to provide 21^st Century children with a similar tinkering platform.

As more people use technology at an ever earlier age, fewer get to learn the skills to actually make it
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The fundamental irony that his product addressed was that, that as more people got to use technology at an ever earlier age, fewer and fewer of us got to learn the skills required to actually make it. This digital skills gap is a problem that still persists today, but with over 7 million units sold, it is clear that Raspberry Pi has made significant progress in tackling it.

They have since blazed a trail for other companies such as Arduino who have now brought similar offerings to this arena, and even prompted a revival of the BBC Micro(bit) but when asked, Upton did not actually identify these as competitors.

Raspberry Pi thrives on a culture of collaboration that is a million miles from the cut-throat tech world
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That might be because Raspberry Pi thrives on a culture of collaboration that is a million miles away from the cut-throat tech world of chasing billion-dollar valuations. In fact, they went to market financed by an incredibly modest $200k loan, all of which has now been repaid.

They went to market financed by a modest $200k loan, which has now been repaid
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They currently operate on a scalable model which licenses the technical design for the product, along with the trademark, for partners to manufacture and sell the Raspberry Pi devices.

“The quality of teaching, rather than any technological quick-fix will remain the key determinant of success” Eben Upton, CEO Raspberry Pi

They’re not resting on their laurels though, and their future plans are nothing if not ambitious As they continue to expand their Cambridge-based operation and reinvest their profits in educational initiatives, they’re pushing to scale up digital skills education on a global scale.

In November 2015 they merged with Code Club with the aim of bringing such initiatives “to every community in the world”. This was quickly followed by the launch of the Pi Zero, which retailed at a staggeringly low price of £4 ($5 in the US). At the time of writing, units of this model are – understandably – selling out as quickly as they’re being shipped.

The low – some would say ridiculous – price point is an important factor for the success of the Raspberry Pi, not only in making it universally accessible, but psychologically it serves to demystify technology.

The low price point is an important factor for the success of the Pi, making it universally accessible
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There is no need, after all, to feel nervous when playing around with something that only costs a few dollars, and it’s that attitude of encouraging playfulness that makes the device such an effective teaching tool for educators to engage children with.

But tools are only as effective as those using them, thus the huge emphasis placed on building and engaging a global community around the product. A visit to the foundation’s blog quickly reveals how successful that strategy has been, with hundreds of projects showcasing the endless possibilities that the Pi enables.

Technology is not the most important element; it’s still up to educators to bring it to life in the classroom
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But although this crowdsourcing of ideas might not have been possible in the pre-internet age, Upton is keen to emphasize that technology is not the most important element in that equation; it’s still up to educators to find ways of bringing it to life in the classroom:

“Much as in the past – the quality of teaching, rather than any technological quick-fix will remain the key determinant of success,” he says.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Teaching by Making: The Raspberry Pi Way appeared first on Tech Trends.