In Silicon Valley, all eyes are on Dara Khosrowshahi, the new CEO of Uber, who starts his turnaround of the ride-hailing firm on Tuesday.

But for Iranian Americans working in tech, Khosrowshahi’s appointment is not just about who will guide Uber, a nearly $70 billion company that has searched since June for a new leader.

Khosrowshahi, 48, is Iranian American. Born in Tehran, he came to the U.S. when he was nine. His appointment highlights the prominence of people of Iranian descent in the tech industry at a time when many feel under increased scrutiny.

“The Persian Mafia in Tech gets $70B bigger!” noted one Iranian American tech investor.

Khosrowshahi’s hiring prompted Ali Tahmaseb, a tech entrepreneur, to compile a list of more than 50 Iranian Americans who have founded companies, become tech investors or are in leadership roles at tech firms.

They include Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, and Falon Roz Fatemi, founder and chief executive of Node.io and, when she was 19, Google’s youngest employee at the time.

Uber board’s appointment of Khosrowshahi comes at a time when Iranian Americans are increasingly worried about how they are perceived, said Leila Austin, executive director at the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans, a non profit organization based in Washington, D.C.

More than 80 percent of Iranian Americans in a recent survey said they worried about rising discrimination, double those had expressed the same concern in 2015. And 56 percent said they had personally experienced discrimination.

Khosrowshahi, until recently the chief executive at Expedia, spoke out against the Trump administration’s efforts to restrict Iranians traveling to the U.S.

The Trump administration argues that its more restrictive visa and immigration policies will make the United States safer, and American citizens more prosperous.

In January, Khosrowshahi told his employees in a memo, obtained by Business Insider, that the travel ban would make the U.S. “ever so slightly less dangerous as a place to live, but it will certainly be seen as a smaller nation, one that is inward-looking versus forward thinking, reactionary versus visionary.”

Khosrowshahi faces a long list of problems at Uber. Sexual harassment claims. An aggressive, break-things culture. Internal strife within the board.

And then there is the actual Uber business, which has transformed transportation worldwide. The company has faced more pressure from Lyft, its main U.S. competitor. It has given up in big global markets, ceding to rivals in China, Russia and India. In his first all-hands meeting with Uber employees, Khosrowshahi said the company planned to go public in 18 to 36 months.

No doubt Khosrowshahi’s job at Uber is a big one, yet the enormity of the challenge adds to the Iranian community’s sense of pride, said Pirooz Parvarandeh, a longtime Silicon Valley executive who created a nonprofit to gather and analyze data about Iranian Americans’ contributions to the U.S.

Khosrowshahi’s ascendancy at Uber is “symbolic of the value and service that Iranian Americans bring to America,” he said.
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Tesla Inc. is starting production of the cells for its solar roof tiles at its factory in Buffalo, New York.

The company has already begun installing its solar roofs, which look like regular roofs but are made of glass tiles. But until now, it has been making them on a small scale near its vehicle factory in Fremont, California.

Tesla’s Chief Technical Officer, JB Straubel, says the company now has several hundred workers and machinery installed in its 1.2 million-square-foot factory in Buffalo.

“By the end of this year we will have the ramp-up of solar roof modules started in a substantial way,” Straubel told The Associated Press Thursday. “This is an interim milestone that we’re pretty proud of.”

The Buffalo plant was originally begun by Silevo, a solar panel startup, on the site of an old steel mill. Solar panel maker SolarCity Corp. bought Silevo in 2014. Then Tesla acquired SolarCity for around $2 billion late last year.

SolarCity was run by cousins of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who sat on SolarCity’s board.

“This factory, and the opportunity to build solar modules and cells in the U.S., was part of why this project made sense,” Straubel said.

Tesla’s partner, Panasonic Corp., will make the photovoltaic cells, which look similar to computer chips. Tesla workers will combine the cells into modules that fit into the roof tiles. The tiles will eventually be made in Buffalo as well, along with more traditional solar panels. Panasonic is also working with Tesla at its Gigafactory battery plant in Nevada.

Straubel says Tesla eventually hopes to reach 2 gigawatts of cell production annually at the Buffalo plant. That’s higher than its initial target of 1 gigawatt by 2019. Straubel said Tesla has been working on making the factory more efficient.

One gigawatt is equivalent to the annual output of a large nuclear or coal-fired power plant, Straubel said, “so it’s like we’re eliminating one of those every single year.”

Straubel wouldn’t say how many customers have ordered solar roof tiles, but said demand is strong and it will take Tesla through the end of next year to meet its current orders. Both he and Musk have had the tiles installed on their roofs.

Tesla shares were up less than 1 percent to $355.65 in afternoon trading.
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Microsoft and Amazon are pairing their voice assistants together in a collaboration announced Wednesday.

Both companies say later this fall, users will be able to access Alexa using Cortana on Windows 10 computers and on Android and Apple devices. They’ll also be able to access Cortana on Alexa-enabled devices such as the Amazon Echo.

Microsoft says the tie-up will allow Alexa customers to get access to Cortana features such as for booking meetings or accessing work calendars. Cortana users, in turn, can ask Alexa to switch on smart home devices or shop on Amazon’s website.

The use of voice assistants is growing. Google and Amazon already have smart speakers on the market. Apple has HomePod coming with its Siri assistant, while Samsung plans one with Microsoft’s Cortana.

Amazon has little to lose from the partnership, and Microsoft’s Cortana — which has been largely limited to laptops — might get discovered by more users because of it, said Carolina Milanesi, a mobile technology analyst at Creative Strategies.

“Cortana might get a little bit more out of it because it gets Cortana out of the PC,” she said. “For Cortana to really get to be more important, it needs to be consistently used every day for different tasks.”

Milanesi said that for Amazon especially, which wants more people to consider Alexa as their first choice, the partnership also might be designed to send a message to customers and rivals.

“They both get something out of it, which is mainly showing Apple and Google that they’re willing to work together to get stronger,” Milanesi said.
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Tanzania is set to launch the world’s largest drone delivery network in January, with drones parachuting blood and medicines out of the skies to save lives.

California’s Zipline will make 2,000 deliveries a day to more than 1,000 health facilities across the east African country, including blood, vaccines and malaria and AIDS drugs, following the success of a smaller project in nearby Rwanda.

“It’s the right move,” Lilian Mvule, 51, said by phone, recalling how her granddaughter died from malaria two years ago.

“She needed urgent blood transfusion from a group O, which was not available,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Malaria is a major killer in Tanzania, and children under age 5 often need blood transfusions when they develop malaria-induced anemia. If supplies are out of stock, as is often the case with rare blood types, they can die.

Tanzania is larger than Nigeria and four times the size of the United Kingdom, making it hard for the cash-strapped government to ensure all of its 5,000-plus clinics are fully stocked, particularly in remote rural areas.

The drones fly at 100 kph (62 mph), much faster than traveling by road. Small packages are dropped from the sky using a biodegradable parachute.

The government also hopes to save the lives of thousands of women who die from profuse bleeding after giving birth.

Tanzania has one of the world’s worst maternal mortality rates, with 556 deaths per 100,000 deliveries, government data show.

“It’s a problem we can help solve with on-demand drone delivery,” Zipline’s chief executive, Keller Rinaudo, said in a statement. “African nations are showing the world how it’s done.”

Companies in the United States and elsewhere are keen to use drones to cut delivery times and costs, but there are hurdles ranging from the risk of collisions with airplanes to ensuring battery safety and longevity.

The drones will cut the drug delivery bill for Tanzania’s capital, Dodoma, one of two regions where the project will first roll out, by $58,000 a year, according to Britain’s Department for International Development, one of the project’s backers.

The initiative could also ease tensions between frustrated patients and health workers.

“We always accuse nurses of stealing drugs,” said Angela Kitebi, who lives 40 kilometers east of Dodoma. “We don’t realize that the drugs are not getting here on time due to bad roads.”
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You might have gotten a taste of “augmented reality,” the blending of the virtual and physical worlds, as you chased on-screen monsters at real-world landmarks in last year’s gaming sensation, “Pokemon Go.”

Upcoming augmented reality apps will follow that same principle of superimposing virtual images over real-life settings. That could let you see how furniture will look in your real living room before you buy it, for instance.

While “Pokemon Go” didn’t require special hardware or software, more advanced AR apps will. Google and Apple are both developing technology to enable that. Google’s AR technology is already on Android phones from Lenovo and Asus. On Tuesday, Google announced plans to bring AR to even more phones, including Samsung’s popular S8 and Google’s own Pixel, though it didn’t give a timetable beyond promising an update by the end of the year.

As a result, Apple might pull ahead as it extends AR to all recent iPhones and iPads in a software update expected next month, iOS 11. Hundreds of millions of AR-ready devices will suddenly be in the hands of consumers.

But how many are ready to give AR a try?

Early applications

Of the dozen or so apps demoed recently for Android and iPhones, the ones showing the most promise are furniture apps.

From a catalog or a website, it’s hard to tell whether a sofa or a bed will actually fit in your room. Even if it fits, will it be far enough from other pieces of furniture for someone to walk through?

With AR, you can go to your living room or bedroom and add an item you’re thinking of buying. The phone maps out the dimensions of your room and scales the virtual item automatically; there’s no need to pull out a tape measure. The online furnishing store Wayfair has the WayfairView for Android phones, while Ikea is coming out with one for Apple devices. Wayfair says it’s exploring bringing the app to iPhones and iPads, too.

As for whimsical, Holo for Android lets you pose next to virtual tigers and cartoon characters. For iPhones and iPads, the Food Network will let you add frosting and sprinkles to virtual cupcakes. You can also add balloons and eyes — who does that? — and share creations on social media.

Games and education are also popular categories. On Apple devices, a companion to AMC’s “The Walking Dead” creates zombies alongside real people for you to shoot. On Android, apps being built for classrooms will let students explore the solar system, volcanoes and more.

Beyond virtual reality

Virtual reality is a technology that immerses you in a different world, rather than trying to supplement the real world with virtual images, as AR does. VR was supposed to be the next big thing, but the appeal has been limited outside of games and industrial applications. You need special headsets, which might make you dizzy if you wear one too long.

And VR isn’t very social. Put on the headset, and you shut out everyone else around you. Part of the appeal of “Pokemon Go” was the ability to run into strangers who were also playing. Augmented reality can be a shared experience, as friends look on the phone screen with you.

Being available vs. Being used

While AR shows more promise than VR, there has yet to be a “killer app” that everyone must have, the way smartphones have become essential for navigation and everyday snapshots.

Rather, people will discover AR over time, perhaps a few years. Someone renovating or moving might discover the furniture apps. New parents might discover educational apps. Those people might then go on to discover more AR apps to try out. But just hearing that AR is available might not be enough for someone to check it out.

Consider mobile payments. Most phones now have the capability, but people still tend to pull out plastic when shopping. There’s no doubt more people are using mobile payments and more retailers are accepting them, but it’s far from commonplace.

Expect augmented reality to also take time to take off.
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In the straight-laced world of the U.S. military, the big room with glossy white paint stands out.

Beyond the desks lined with computer screens, the overhead projectors or the digital clock displaying the time in various world cities, the walls demand your attention.  

They are covered from floor to ceiling with questions, equations, sketches and ideas — scribbled frantically or in moments of inspiration — all representing the best thinking of some of the U.S. military’s best analysts.

“There are precious few places in this building where you can write on a wall,” said Albert Bolden, not surprisingly given that this is, after all, part of a military base.

But according to Bolden, the director of innovation at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, that’s part of the point for the so-called Innovation Hub, or iHUB.

“People from across the agency can come into this space and figure out how to solve our problems,” he said.

‘Relevant in this digital age’

While all this may sound like a feel-good tale of military structure melding with Silicon Valley ingenuity to make life easier by using technology, it is actually about much more.

“If we don’t embrace it, our adversaries will,” said outgoing DIA Director, Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart. “The fight for remaining relevant in this digital age is what keeps me awake.”

And Stewart was clear. It is, in many ways, an arms race.

“Our adversaries have been modernizing,” he warned, speaking to a small group of reporters in August, as the agency welcomed private companies and academics to the iHub for a series of so-called Industry Days.

And it is these encounters between the DIA’s own top thinkers and some of the best outside of government that form a second, crucial component of the iHub strategy. It is a chance to see how off-the-shelf technologies might be able to help solve problems the agency’s analysts have identified.

One company making a pitch to be part of this overall effort is an Austin, Texas-based artificial intelligence start-up called SparkCognition.

SparkCognition already has attracted interest from the U.S. Air Force. And companies like Verizon and Boeing are now investing more than $30 million in the company’s neural networks, designed to mimic the functionality of a human brain in order to predict likely outcomes.

“What we’ve done is automate that research that a data scientist would do,” said SparkCognition’s Sam Septembre following a question-and-answer session at the DIA’s iHub.

Instead of taking weeks or days, however, Septembre said SparkCognition’s systems can deliver results in hours or even minutes.

“We’re not just a black box,” added the company’s director of business operations, Timothy Stefanick. “We have why the [computer] model thought that.”

SparkCognition says its platforms already have succeeded in predicting Brexit, Britain’s decision to leave the European Union. And the company says it nearly correctly predicted President Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election by looking at sales of campaign merchandise, like Trump’s “Make America Great Again” baseball caps.

“The human factor got involved and skewed it,” said Stefanick, explaining that in the run-up to the election, the company’s analysts didn’t trust the initial prediction of a Trump victory because it differed so much from the polls. He said they then decided to have the computer models take into account additional factors, causing them to predict a Trump loss.

AI for video

Another company vying for a DIA contract is Percipient.ai, which focuses on applying artificial intelligence to video.

“This is a kind of capability that helps you get into productive analytics and helps you protect forces,” said company co-founder, ret. Brig. Gen. Balan Ayyar, a former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer who commanded a task force in Afghanistan.

“You can check any person in any video,” he said.

Ayyar and fellow Percipient.ai co-founder Raj Shah, say their platform can save analysts considerable time, for example scouring hundreds of hours of video from the scene of a terror attack to quickly identify if any suspected terrorists were nearby.

Even mobile phones could be used to track potential adversaries, programmed to vibrate, for instance, if a person of interest turns up in a “selfie.”

“With this kind of system, the [terror] watch list could be much, much bigger,” said Shah, who previously headed up Google Maps.

Already, Ayyar and Shah say Percipient.ai’s systems can identify suspicious activity, or tradecraft, like the use of specific getaway vehicles.

Handwriting on the wall

For DIA, the early results have been promising.

“We’ve seen examples when machines are able to provide insights to the analysts that they haven’t had,” said Randy Soper, a senior DIA analyst for analytics modernization.

To speed up the process, DIA even awards seed money — up to about $250,000 — to projects that have shown the most promise.

Two have already been approved and another four projects are set to receive funding once the once the money becomes available.

More projects could soon be added to the list. DIA’s Innovation Hub is still considering the latest pitches from industry and academia, like those from SparkCognition and Percipient.ai.

The agency says that overall, the response has been “overwhelming.”

But the success in reaching out to industry and academia also has brought some changes to the program.

Last week [August 22], the DIA opened up a new Innovation Hub.

At first glance, it looks sleek and modern, a row of screens and a digital world clock etched smoothly into wood-paneled walls, while a large conference table dominates the center of the room.

To be sure, it seems like quite a departure from the old iHub, which almost had the feel of a useful but makeshift classroom.

Some things, though, have not changed. The wood-paneling only extends so far. Much of the rest of the room is covered in that white, glossy paint.

“You can still write on the walls,” said one official.

 
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No ring of the doorbell, just a text. No tip for the driver? No problem in this test, where Domino’s and Ford are teaming up to see if customers will warm to the idea of pizza delivered by driverless cars.

Starting Wednesday, some pizzas in Domino’s hometown of Ann Arbor will arrive in a Ford Fusion outfitted with radars and a camera that is used for autonomous testing. A Ford engineer will be at the wheel, but the front windows have been blacked out so customers won’t interact with the driver.

Instead, people will have to come out of their homes and type a four-digit code into a keypad mounted on the car. That will open the rear window and let customers retrieve their order from a heated compartment. The compartment can carry up to four pizzas and five sides, Domino’s Pizza Inc. says.

The experiment will help Domino’s understand how customers will interact with a self-driving car, says company President Russell Weiner. Will they want the car in their driveway or by the curb? Will they understand how to use the keypad? Will they come outside if it’s raining or snowing? Will they put their pizza boxes on top of the car and threaten to mess up its expensive cameras?

“The majority of our questions are about the last 50 feet of the delivery experience,” Weiner told reporters last week.

Domino’s, which delivers 1 billion pizzas worldwide each year, needs to stay ahead of emerging trends, Weiner says. The test will last six weeks, and the companies say they’ll decide afterward what to do next. Domino’s is also testing pizza delivery with drones.

Weiner said the company has 100,000 drivers in the U.S. In a driverless world, he said, he could see those employees taking on different roles within the company.

Ford Motor Co., which wants to develop a fully driverless vehicle by 2021, said it needs to understand the kinds of things companies would use that vehicle for. The experiment is a first for Ford. But other companies have seen the potential for food deliveries. Otto, a startup backed by Uber, delivered 50,000 cans of Budweiser beer from a self-driving truck in Colorado last fall.

“We’re developing a self-driving car not just for the sake of technology,” said Sherif Marakby, Ford’s vice president of autonomous and electric vehicles. “There are so many practical things that we need to learn.”

Only one car will be deployed in Ann Arbor, and it has a special black-and-white paint job to identify it as a research vehicle.

Customers in the test area will be chosen randomly when they order a pizza, and will get a phone call to confirm they want to participate. If they agree, they’ll get a text message letting them know when the vehicle is pulling up and how to retrieve their food.
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It is still true that a person is more likely to be struck by lightning than attacked by a shark; but, that does not matter much to the 150 or so people who experienced what the International Shark Attack File calls “shark-human interaction in 2016. Still, some Australian eyes in the sky are helping lifeguards look out for the predators just offshore. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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It is still true that a person is more likely to be struck by lightning than attacked by a shark; but, that does not matter much to the 150 or so people who experienced what the International Shark Attack File calls “shark-human interaction in 2016. Still, some Australian eyes in the sky are helping lifeguards look out for the predators just offshore. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Desperate for help and unsure whether traditional rescue efforts will come through, Harvey victims are using social media to share maps of their location and photos of themselves trapped on rooftops and inside buildings.

“Need help in NE Houston! Baby here and sick elderly!” one user posted on Twitter along with her address late Sunday.

Another woman, Alondra Molina, posted Monday on Facebook that her sister was desperate for a rescue for herself and her four children, including a 1-year-old.

“Please if someone could at least get them out of the city me and my mom will come get them,” Molina wrote on a Facebook group where dozens were pleading for help. “The roads are just all blocked and we can’t get in.”

Annette Fuller took a video when she began fearing for her life on Sunday. She was on the second floor of a neighbor’s home along with the residents of three other houses, including five children, as water rose and hit waist level on the first floor.

“We called 911 and it rang and rang and rang and rang,” Fuller said Monday after the water receded and she managed to return safely to her single-story home.

“There’s just no agency in the world that could handle Harvey,” she said. “However, none of us were warned that 911 might not work. It was very frightening.”

Fuller’s two daughters, who live in Austin and Dallas, posted her video to Facebook after their mother texted it to them, and the post went viral.

“Social media, in some ways, is more powerful than the government agencies,” Fuller said.

Nursing home rescue

A nursing home in Dickinson, a low-lying city 30 miles (48 kilometers) southeast of Houston, quickly became the face of the crisis after its owner took a photo of residents, some in wheelchairs, up to their chests in water.

The nursing home owner, Trudy Lampson, sent the photo to her daughter, whose husband posted it Sunday to Twitter, where it’s been retweeted about 4,500 times.

The photo was so dramatic that many users denounced it as fake. The nursing home residents were saved the same day.

“Thanks to all the true believers that re-tweeted and got the news organizations involved,” Lampson’s son-in-law, Timothy McIntosh, posted later in the day. “It pushed La Vita Bella to #1 on the priority list.”

McIntosh told The Associated Press on Monday that his post gained traction after a local newspaper reported it.

“We are in Tampa, Florida,” he said. “The only way we could have an impact was by trying to reach out to emergency services and trying to do social media to gain attention to the cause.”

Not only are the people who need rescuing relying on social media for help, volunteers and police departments alike are posting their phone numbers and instructions on Twitter and Facebook so people can get more immediate help.

Revolutionizing search and rescue

An unofficial battalion of volunteers called the Cajun Navy who brought small boats to Houston posted on Facebook that people who need rescuing should download the Zello cellphone app to find rescuers close to their area.

“This will connect you with officials on the ground there that can navigate help your way. PLEASE SHARE!” said the post, which has been shared more than 12,000 times since Sunday night.

Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez tweeted early Sunday that a woman was going into labor and shared the address. An hour later, he updated his followers that the woman had been taken away in an ambulance.

More than any other natural disaster, Harvey has made it clear that social media has revolutionized the search-and-rescue process, said Karen North, a professor of social media at the University of Southern California.

“And what’s really fascinating is that this is not emergency services experts creating strategic systems to rescue people,” North said. “This is evolving organically … Not only can people reach out to 911 but to friends and family elsewhere who can not only reach out to 911 but directly to rescuers in the location where the person needs help.

“It’s really just the idea of taking technology designed for one purpose and applying them to a disaster situation,” North said.

Dozens of people continued to post their pleas to be rescued through late Monday.

Fuller said if the water rises again at her home, she won’t bother calling 911 and will post directly to social media.

“If I was desperate, I’d put it in a public Facebook site and say, `Somebody please help,’ and hope that somebody was looking,”‘ she said.
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In middle school, Junior Alvarado often struggled with multiplication and earned poor grades in math, so when he started his freshman year at Washington Leadership Academy, a charter high school in the nation’s capital, he fretted that he would lag behind.

But his teachers used technology to identify his weak spots, customize a learning plan just for him and coach him through it. This past week, as Alvarado started sophomore geometry, he was more confident in his skills.

“For me personalized learning is having classes set at your level,” Alvarado, 15, said in between lessons. “They explain the problem step by step, it wouldn’t be as fast, it will be at your pace.”

As schools struggle to raise high school graduation rates and close the persistent achievement gap for minority and low-income students, many educators tout digital technology in the classroom as a way forward. But experts caution that this approach still needs more scrutiny and warn schools and parents against being overly reliant on computers.

The use of technology in schools is part of a broader concept of personalized learning that has been gaining popularity in recent years. It’s a pedagogical philosophy centered around the interests and needs of each individual child as opposed to universal standards. Other features include flexible learning environments, customized education paths and letting students have a say in what and how they want to learn.

Personalized learning

Under the Obama administration, the Education Department poured $500 million into personalized learning programs in 68 school districts serving close to a half million students in 13 states plus the District of Columbia. Large organizations such as the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation have also invested heavily in digital tools and other student-centered practices.

The International Association for K-12 Online Learning estimates that up to 10 percent of all America’s public schools have adopted some form of personalized learning. Rhode Island plans to spend $2 million to become the first state to make instruction in every one of its schools individualized. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos also embraces personalized learning as part of her broader push for school choice.

Supporters say the traditional education model, in which a teacher lectures at the blackboard and then tests all students at the same time, is obsolete and doesn’t reflect the modern world.

“The economy needs kids who are creative problem solvers, who synthesize information, formulate and express a point of view,” said Rhode Island Education Commissioner Ken Wagner. “That’s the model we are trying to move toward.”

At Washington Leadership Academy, educators rely on software and data to track student progress and adapt teaching to enable students to master topics at their own speed.

Digital tool finds problem

This past week, sophomores used special computer programs to take diagnostic tests in math and reading, and teachers then used that data to develop individual learning plans. In English class, for example, students reading below grade level would be assigned the same books or articles as their peers, but complicated vocabulary in the text would be annotated on their screen.

“The digital tool tells us: We have a problem to fix with these kids right here and we can do it right then and there; we don’t have to wait for the problem to come to us,” said Joseph Webb, founding principal at the school, which opened last year.

Webb, dressed in a green T-shirt reading “super school builder,” greeted students Wednesday with high-fives, hugs and humor. “Red boxers are not part of our uniform!” he shouted to one student, who responded by pulling up his pants.

The school serves some 200 predominantly African-American students from high-poverty and high-risk neighborhoods. Flags of prestigious universities hang from the ceiling and a “You are a leader” poster is taped to a classroom door. Based on a national assessment last year, the school ranked in the 96th percentile for improvement in math and in the 99th percentile in reading compared with schools whose students scored similarly at the beginning of the year.

It was one of 10 schools to win a $10 million grant in a national competition aimed at reinventing American high schools that is funded by Lauren Powell Jobs, widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs.

‘Female Bill Gates’

Naia McNatt, a lively 15-year-old who hopes to become “the African-American and female Bill Gates,” remembers feeling so bored and unchallenged in fourth grade that she stopped doing homework and her grades slipped.

At the academy, “I don’t get bored ‘cause I guess I am pushed so much,” said McNatt, a sophomore. “It makes you need to do more, you need to know more.”

In math class, McNatt quickly worked through quadratic equations on her laptop. When she finished, the system spitted out additional, more challenging problems.

Her math teacher, Britney Wray, says that in her previous school she was torn between advanced learners and those who lagged significantly. She says often she wouldn’t know if a student was failing a specific unit until she started a new one.

In comparison, the academy’s technology now gives Wray instant feedback on which students need help and where. “We like to see the problem and fix the problem immediately,” she said.

Still, most researchers say it is too early to tell if personalized learning works better than traditional teaching.

A recent study by the Rand Corporation found that personalized learning produced modest improvements: a 3 percentile increase in math and a smaller, statistically insignificant increase for reading compared with schools that used more traditional approaches. Some students also complained that collaboration with classmates suffered because everybody was working on a different task.

“I would not advise for everybody to drop what they are doing and adopt personalized learning,” said John Pane, a co-author of the report. “A more cautious approach is necessary.”

New challenges

The new opportunities also pose new challenges. Pediatricians warn that too much screen time can come at the expense of face-to-face social interaction, hands-on exploration and physical activity. Some studies also have shown that students may learn better from books than from computer screens, while another found that keeping children away from computers for five days in a row improved their emotional intelligence.

Some teachers are skeptical. Marla Kilfoyle, executive director of the Badass Teachers Association, an education advocacy group, agrees that technology has its merits, but insists that no computer or software should ever replace the personal touch, motivation and inspiration teachers give their students.

“That interaction and that human element is very important when children learn,” Kilfoyle said.

 
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Ever so slowly, the world is edging towards the demise of the gasoline-powered engine. It likely won’t come for decades, but it’s coming. Two new entries in the alternative powered vehicle department are showing off ways that technology is slowly changing the automobile marketplace. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports
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