SCHOOL

Sync your notes across platforms and devices

Evernote (Free) is just one part of an excellent, access-from-anywhere note-taking system. In addition to using Evernote on your iOS device, you can also create and get to your notes from a variety of mobile devices (including apps for both the iPhone and iPad) and any Web browser on any computer. A free Evernote account links all your notes together.

Evernote is a mature and popular app, with an impressively streamlined interface that shares similarities across its multiple platforms and gives you many ways to create notes and collections of notes called notebooks. Your notes can be text, images, or … Read more

Mediocre school management

We encounter a surprising number of programs that are designed for business use but are themselves somewhat unprofessional. Unfortunately, QZ School Management System Free is one of these programs. Although it seems to have a lot of features at first glance, it has several drawbacks that undermine our ability to take it seriously.

The program's interface somehow manages to be both sleek and cluttered; it has a modern look to it, but each of its tabbed menus contains a whole lot of icons. Once you familiarize yourself with it, however, it's not too difficult to navigate. The program … Read more

Retro Camera for Android keeps it old-school

Similar to Hipstamatic for the iPhone, Retro Camera is a popular Android application that lets you take six different styles of nostalgia-inducing photos.

Download and install the free app, then choose from the Barbl, Little Orange Box, Xolaroid 2000, Pinhole Camera, FudgeCan, and Hipsteroku cameras. Each combines its own levels of vignetting, film scratches, and camera noise to produce uniquely old-school photos.

When you open up the app, the first thing you'll notice is the beautifully accurate retro look and feel. Each camera has its own graphical interface and viewfinder, and each truly brings you back to the days … Read more

Better notes mean better grades

Notability might be the best note-taking application we've seen for the iPad, with tons of useful features that are easily accessed through the app's intuitive interface. Perfect for students or really anyone who needs to gather and organize information, Notability lets you use your onscreen keyboard (or a compatible Bluetooth keyboard) to keep track of information by grouping your notes into categories by subject.

You can start a new note by tapping on the Compose button, or open an existing note from the start screen. You have the option to open notes from Dropbox, or from your iDisk … Read more

Free Amazon App of the Day - 5/16/11

For today only, Monkey Preschool Lunchbox is available, for free, at the Amazon Appstore. A few of the dads here at CNET swear by this game for their young ones, on their iPads, but lest we forget that some of you Android users are parents too, why not share the love? I've watched one of my godchildren play this game on my HTC Incredible, and found myself wanting to get into the action as she passed each level. I get entertained when they're entertained, so it's a win-win.

Monkey Preschool Lunchbox will teach your child the basic fundamentals of cognition through various mini-games consisting of memorization, counting, colors, letters, puzzle-solving, shape identification, and spot the difference. Encouragement is provided by the animated monkey on the screen through way of somersaults, and rewards come in the form of cartoon stickers the child can collect for their sticker board.

The game does not track statistics, nor does it get progressively harder based upon how quickly and/or easily your child goes through the levels.

Monkey Preschool Lunchbox will be free until 3 a.m. ET/12 a.m. PT, so download now and get your toddler learning!… Read more

Reading, 'riting, recycling: Georgia Tech turns yellow school bus 'green'

A few students in Atlanta Public Schools will soon be driven to school in a the nation's first hydraulic hybrid conversion of a traditional school bus.

Financed by a $50,000 grant from The Ford Motor Company Fund and converted by students at Georgia Institute of Technology, the bus will run on recycled biofuel.

There are more than 480,000 iconic yellow school buses in the United States, but this 16-passenger school bus is being painted green by students at Mary Lin Elementary School in Atlanta, Ga.

The students at Mary Lin have also organized a drive for used … Read more

The 404 801: Where just like Sacajawea, Erica is moving out west (podcast)

Erica Ogg from CNET's Circuit Breaker column is in town from San Francisco and joins us in the studio to chat about the birthplace of Theodore Roosevelt, a YouTube prank gone wrong, YouTube's new Copyright School, and a mail carrier in Oregon who drops off more than the daily newspaper.

The 404 Digest for Episode 801

Comedian gets 2 months in prison for no good reason. YouTube sends copyright pirates back to school. Mail carrier drops off more than a package. Check out Erica's column, Circuit Breaker. Add Erica on Twitter.

Episode 801 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Learn to read the fun way

Super Why is an interactive, educational reading game for preschoolers based on the hit PBS Kids show of the same name, featuring (much to the delight of Super Why fans, no doubt) many of the original sounds, games, and characters from the show.

Super Why gives you four different character-narrated, touch-based games, each with a different task for kids: Super Why's Story Saver (picking one of three words to correctly complete a sentence), Princess Presto's Wands-Up Writing (identifying letters by sound to spell a word, then tracing those letters with your finger), Alpha Pig's Lickety Letter Hunt (… Read more

iPad graphic novel teaches kids self-esteem

I had a hard time in middle school. Other kids picked on me, girls ignored me, and many of the friends I'd had in elementary school abandoned me.

Perhaps reading "Be Confident in Who You Are: A Middle School Confidential Graphic Novel" would have helped--if only it had been available back then.

Based on the actual graphic novel of the same name, Be Confident in Who You Are for iPad reads like a nicely illustrated comic book and addresses a number of important tween/teen issues: bullying, body image, problems with friends, peer pressure, and so on.… Read more