Schools In The US Roll Out ‘Bring Your Own Device’ Schemes

For college students, bringing a laptop to class has been a vital part of college life for years; it allows them to keep track of fast-moving lectures and create, save and co-ordinate their notes easily, contributing to more efficient studying methods. But now many high schools across the US are also trying to integrate laptops into their classes, with one school in New Hampshire, piloting a ‘Bring Your Own Device’ program. The scheme, aimed at encouraging children in schools to further their learning by using interactive apps and programs, is still in a trial period, but is seeing great success already.

For the parents of pupils starting at a high school that may be promoting a similar policy, it is essential that the students’ devices are functioning at peak form to allow them to get the most out of their studies. This includes making sure all typing equipment (especially for tablet devices) is in good condition, ensuring parental blocks or sufficient anti-virus software is installed, and perhaps most importantly, making sure the laptops have enough RAM memory to perform properly.

Some educational apps or programs might need large quantities of RAM to run, and many students will multi-task while they study; perhaps downloading a paper while streaming a demonstrational video of an experiment, browsing the internet for background information and typing up their findings on a word processing program. All of these tasks require a certain amount of memory to run, be that Apple or PC memory, and without the adequate amount, students may find themselves at a disadvantage in their studies. A slow laptop will inhibit pupils from accessing the data that they need, when they need it, and may impede progression.

Students are noted as saying that bringing their own laptops to class helps them to manage their workload more easily and allows them to keep up with the lesson flow. Another school, Hollis Brookline High School, started their version of the scheme last year to widespread success, and much of the same feedback is anticipated from the new arrangement in Greater Nashua. When computer memory is at optimum level and the machines are working at the highest standard, studying methods can be greatly refined; lessons can be supplemented with easy-to-access extra reading, videos or other media, and a higher volume of material can be offered to the students. If the schemes see similar levels of success, many high schools may soon roll out policies to step further into the 21^st century and allow devices in all classes.

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Energy-Efficient RAM On The Horizon

Researchers in the United States and South Korea have both reported findings regarding a new material that will solve a huge problem currently plaguing computers across the globe. It’s estimated that Americans spend $6billion per year on the electricity it takes the keep track of work which hasn’t yet been saved to computer hard drives. Currently, RAM memory requires a constant electrical current in order to function; this computer multitasking is costing households thousands of dollars in energy bills as the machines work RAM memory running smoothly. But a new way of manipulating molecules has been discovered which may pave the way for energy-efficient RAM memory.

Hard drives are ‘stable’ memory, storing information as strips of magnetic orientation recorded on a magnetic disc; no extra electricity is required to power this type of memory, and once something is saved there, it is saved regardless of a power source. But RAM memory is known as ‘volatile’ memory, which means that if the power being fed to the computer were to be suddenly switched off, the information stored in the RAM memory would be lost forever. Whilst there are some alternatives to conventional RAM which don’t consume high levels of electricity, they are often heavy and expensive.

The breakthrough which may allow electricity bills to be drastically reduced, came about as a complete accident. A crystalline organic compound, made out of cheap children’s building blocks, was the subject of some light-hearted experiment between chemists at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and a postdoctoral fellow from Harvard University. It was discovered that after a slight tweak, they could get the molecules within the compound to stack on top of one another, creating a new material.

The new material is what’s known as ‘ferroelectric’, which means that one of the sides is negatively charged while the other is positively charged. Running electricity through such a material flips the charges, and the orientation of each side will remain the same until another surge of electricity is passed through it. The complex manipulation of the molecules has led the scientists to discover ways in which they can change the molecules and put them together in different ways. Rather than with conventional RAM, which requires resistors linked together in an electrically-charged circuit, this new type of memory would not need a constant power source in order to preserve the data it holds, thus changing the way data is stored by computers forever.

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