The cutting-edge chopping-board, and other stories

a steak dinner (medium rare) c.2095
(the white stripe in the middle is Bearnaise sauce)

ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN is less than a week away! And, as usual from Around the World, here are six items to whet your appetite for the main event: a mixture of exciting developments,  the latest tech innovations and inspiring stories. You’ll find them here, and you’ll find them at ONLINE EDUCA as well: just read on…

UK: it’s a shocking statistic: female victims of domestic abuse are subjected to on average 37 attacks before the police get involved. Often they come into contact with other services first though – which is why e-learning materials are in development to help doctors recognise earlier signs (PULSE)

KENYA: the East African state continues to stun with the rate and scale of progress in technology-assisted education.  150,000 teachers have been trained for e-learning, in preparation for the government’s planned purchase of 1.3 million laptops (ITWEB AFRICA)

IRELAND: following disastrous technical errors, a school has decided to replace its state-of-the-art computer system with, er… books (INDEPENDENT.IE)

BRAZIL/INDIA: news of an e-learning partnership between two booming economies. India is a leader in the field of low-cost devices – and so 21 schools in South America are getting equipped with educational tablets, designed to train under-privileged youth in growing economies (THE HINDU)

PALESTINE: Palestinian PM Rami Hamdallah has met with the British Council to discuss co-operation on learning and e-learning – we’ll be looking for the products of this collaboration in the future (MA’AN NEWS AGENCY)

and in other news…

SCANDINAVIA/CATALONIA: you know the problem with dinner parties in the future? Your knife and fork are talking to the fridge, your fridge is talking to the weighing-scales, and you can’t get a word in edgeways. Meet the people who are building the smart kitchen of tomorrow (BBC)