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We express ourselves in different ways. On Flip, you can use our simple and fun built-in camera to record your thoughts, add effects and share within your Flip group as video, audio only or text in your web browser or mobile app.

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Flip is a video discussion and sharing app, free from Microsoft.

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Flip (formerly Flipgrid) is a video discussion and video sharing app, free from Microsoft, built for classrooms and beyond. Learn more.

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PBS Tech Articles ~  Lots of Thinking going  on here... 

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PBS Tech Articles ~  Lots of Thinking going  on here... 

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Breakout EDU - Educational Games for the Classroom

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Breakout EDU gamifies learning to create an engaging and empowering experience for students of all grade levels.

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KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

A good baby gift idea is to record some friends reading their favorite children's books. Or you could have some of the biggest names in rap and hip-hop do it.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

First you need a good beat.

(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW, "THE CRUZ SHOW")

LUDACRIS: (Rapping) Hey, llama llama red pajama reads a story - with who? - with his mama. Hey...

SIEGEL: That is Ludacris with his interpretation of the book "Llama Llama Red Pajama."

(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW, "THE CRUZ SHOW")

LUDACRIS: (Rapping) Llama llama - what? - red pajama feels alone - with who? - without his mama.

MCEVERS: The video of "Llama Llama" as a rap is the latest video to go viral. It has more than one and a half million views on YouTube. You can thank J Cruz for these moments. He is the host of "The Cruz Show" on Power 106. That's a big hip-hop station here in Los Angeles.

SIEGEL: Cruz told us he was in a Barnes and Noble last year - he was going to be a dad soon - and the book caught his eye.

J CRUZ: I got to reading it and it kind of rhymed. And I kind of started like, llama llama red pajama went downstairs with his mama. OK. And I'm kind of reading it as the way an artist would read it, or at least I was trying. And then we thought, man, this would be very cool if we had artists reading it with a beat under them.

MCEVERS: So he asked the rapper Jeezy to give it a try.

(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW, "THE CRUZ SHOW")

CRUZ: If we throw on a beat, can you read this?

JEEZY: No, I don't think I want to.

CRUZ: Why not?

JEEZY: I don't want to do...

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: For his kid.

JEEZY: (Unintelligible) Check it out though.

CRUZ: Come on, it's for my kid, Jeezy.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: He's going to play it for him. Uh-oh.

JEEZY: (Rapping) Mama kisses the baby hairs on the llama, goes downstairs.

MCEVERS: After that, other guests on "The Cruz Show" really started to get into it. There was D.R.A.M.

(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW, "THE CRUZ SHOW")

D.R.A.M.: (Rapping) I said mama kisses baby's hair, Mama Llama goes downstairs. Llama llama red pajama calls down to llama mama, mama says she'll be up soon. Baby llama hums a tune.

SIEGEL: I like that one. Migos took it in a different direction.

(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW, "THE CRUZ SHOW")

UNIDENTIFIED RAPPER #1: (Rapping) Llama llama waiting, waiting...

UNIDENTIFIED RAPPER #2: (Rapping) Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED RAPPER #1: (Rapping) ...For his mama.

UNIDENTIFIED RAPPER #3: (Rapping) Hey.

UNIDENTIFIED RAPPER #1: (Rapping) What's he waiting for?

UNIDENTIFIED RAPPER #2: (Rapping) Mama.

UNIDENTIFIED RAPPER #1: (Rapping) Yeah, coming. Yeah, baby llama.

MCEVERS: J Cruz says he thinks there's a reason people love the videos.

CRUZ: You know, it shows that they're human. It shows that they like to have fun. And it just shows a different side of them.

SIEGEL: Cruz told us - and this is an exclusive - that he intends on asking artists to rap and sing other "Llama Llama" books, and one day he plans on giving the recordings to his son Cameron, who's now two months old.

MCEVERS: The author of the "Llama Llama" series, Anna Dewdney, died last September at the age of 50, just before this became a thing.

(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO SHOW, "THE CRUZ SHOW")

LUDACRIS: (Rapping) Baby llama, it wants a drink. Mama's at the kitchen - what? - the kitchen sink. I'm talking...

SIEGEL: Her partner, Reed Duncan, told us in a statement that Anna would be a bit incredulous that Ludacris and other hip-hop artists have freestyled her work, but she would definitely love it. He adds that she was actually a fan of Ludacris and that the hip-hop versions highlight her superior sense of rhythm and word flow.

MCEVERS: He ended his statement with this - Anna Dewdney represent, yo. So, Robert, what about you? Do you want to do a version?

SIEGEL: Do a public radio version, perhaps?

MCEVERS: Yeah, please. Yeah. Yeah.

SIEGEL: Yama (ph) yama red pajama reportedly reads a story with his mama.

MCEVERS: That's awesome.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio record.

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Hip-Hop Artists Rap Beloved Children's Book 'Llama Llama Red Pajama'

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KELLY MCEVERS, HOST: A good baby gift idea is to record some friends reading their favorite children's books. Or you could have some of the biggest names in rap and hip-hop do it. ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: First you need a good beat.

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November 21, 2016

I'm always amazed when I walk into a kindergarten classroom. Kindergarteners are the most energetic students in the district, where everything to them is new and exciting and they have no fear of trying a different app or activity.

This fall, our kindergarten classes were studying the plant life cycle within the life science unit. Each kindergarten class started with a pumpkin. The classroom teachers carved the pumpkins and remove the seeds, and yes, the class also decorated the pumpkins for Halloween, but that is beyond the scope of this blog post.

After the seeds were dried, the students planted the seeds with potting soil into a small cup. The classroom teachers then discussed the importance of sunlight and watering their seeds. I was asked to introduce technology into this activity, and I thought this was a nice opportunity to try some simple journaling with this eager group of students.

To help spark interest and set up the iPad activity, I used PBS Learning Media to find a short video for my class. After a search, I found a few resources that fit the bill:

Video: Between the Lions Poem: Little Seeds

Video: Between the Lions Poem: You Never Hear the Garden Grow

Video: Sesame Street: Strawberry Mouse

Video: From Seed to Fruit

For the iPad resource, I downloaded and installed an app called "StoryKit" on all of the kindergarteners' iPads. This app is for the iPhone, but it works well for iPad Minis, which is what we use in our kindergarten classes.

The StoryKit app comes with some preloaded stories, but for this activity we used the feature that allows creation of a simple book. Students can take and add pictures to a page of the book, then decorate the page with a simple paint tool, add text and also do an audio recording. The recording appears as a speaker icon on the finished page. It's a simple but functional app, perfect for young students, and a great way to record and document the growth of their pumpkin seeds.

The classroom teacher asked each student to get both their iPads and the cup containing the pumpkin seed. After everyone was seated, we started. I showed students how to open the StoryKit App, take a picture with their iPads, and add that picture to their new story. The classroom teacher and I could not believe how quickly the kindergarteners could do this, and in no time we were ready for the next step, decorating. I showed students how to access the simple drawing tools and soon the pictures were sitting on highly decorated backdrops.

For the last step, we used the audio recorder feature in StoryKit and students recorded the steps involved in planting the seeds, how they were going to care for their seeds and what they were going to do when they took the seeds home. This part of the activity will take some practice to put the observations into words, but I have no doubts they will develop this skill with practice.

What's next? I plan to visit the classroom again in a week and we will add another page to this story, and hopefully take pictures of pumpkin seed growth, record more observations and of course, paint another page. So with a few creative resources - PBS Learning Media and the App StoryKit - I was able to introduce a basic science journal to the kindergarten classes that inspired fun and learning.
Andy Hopkins is an Instructional Technology Specialist with Harper Woods Schools in Harper Woods, Michigan. Andy conducts regular teacher in-services on technology use and mentors best practices for classroom implementation. He also works with students in buildings across the district as they create and share creative, multimodal projects.

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Planting the (Pumpkin) Seeds of Learning with Technology | PBS Education

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November 21, 2016 I'm always amazed when I walk into a kindergarten classroom. Kindergarteners are the most energetic students in the district, where everything to them is new and exciting and they have no fear of trying a different app or activity. This fall, our kindergarten classes were studying the plant life cycle within the life science unit.

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On paper, architect Ignacio Rodriguez designed a gorgeous Hollywood Hills home, but the potential owner couldn't envision how the multi-million dollar abode would look after it was built. Rather than hitting the drawing board, Rodriguez turned to his computer and built the house in virtual reality (VR) so his client could experience what it was like "living" there.

"After walking around the house in VR, the client bought it three days later," said Rodriguez, CEO of IR Architects, speaking at the 2017 VRLA expo in Los Angeles. More than 170 companies gathered to show new uses for VR technologies.

While VR attracts attention through immersive games and entertainment, the technology is proving beneficial for a growing number of commercial uses. At VRLA, experts in real estate, retail, healthcare, education and other industries explained their experimentation with VR.

"Even though the market is being driven by gaming today, we expect commercial VR to be 50 percent of the market as soon as the next five years," said Kumar Chinnaswamy, director of commercial VR in Intel's Client Computing Group.

"Awareness of augmented reality (AR) and VR has significantly increased because companies see the immediate benefits the technology provides," he said, adding that it could create new business models. "The tech can reduce product design risks, offer new ways to engage customers and enable immersive training methods."

Goldman Sachs estimates the market for VR and AR could grow into a $128 billion market by 2025.
A New Way to Imagine Dream Homes
After closing the deal on the Hollywood Hills home, Rodriguez now demonstrates all of his property designs as VR experiences, built using Unreal Engine, a popular game development tool. Business at his L.A.-based architectural firm has been booming ever since.

Rodriguez said the benefit of designing homes in VR is that clients know in advance exactly what the home will look like. If the fireplace is in the wrong place, he said, they can simply move it.

"The feedback is amazing," he said. "The clients get to experience the house and make changes to the design before anybody builds anything."

Having this feedback early, instead of in the middle of construction, is crucial.

IR Architects specialize in modern homes with huge price tags, ranging from $3 million to $22 million, including Beverly Hills mansions. Rodriguez said stalling a project for revisions can quickly result in a huge loss.

The immersive technology isn't just for the high-end real estate market. Show My Property TV, a digital agency specializing in apartment marketing, uses VR to create virtual tours of rental properties. Potential tenants can inspect living quarters from anywhere in the world.
Reinventing Retail Spaces
Even retail stores are looking to VR as a way to jazz up the shopping experience. It could help retailers blend real world and digital buying experiences as they struggle to attract and retain shoppers.

"[It's important for] developers in the commercial space to focus on solving a business's problems," said Chinnaswamy.

Mark Hardy, CEO of InContext, works with many retail and restaurant chains, including Walmart and Starbucks, to help remodel and optimize shelf space.

His team goes into a store and snaps thousands of photos of the products, while measuring the store's dimensions with laser rangefinder technology. This information helps them build an exact replica of the store. The pieces snap apart like Lego blocks, allowing retailers to freely design new layouts without the overhead costs of physically building a retail space.

Merchandisers can put on a headset and see their ideas immediately, before they roll plans out nationwide. For example, Starbucks used the VR application to find the counter arrangement that would best convey a cozy small-business atmosphere.

"Consumers are tired of shopping at stores that are distribution centers," said Hardy. "The challenge for retailers is that they're becoming experience centers like Apple Stores and Tesla."

He said VR is even changing how merchandisers do marketing research. To test the quality of a new store design, for example, retailers can study the shopping behaviors of people using the VR simulation. This gives retailers the freedom to explore store layouts that break the mold.
VR in Anatomy Classrooms
If VR can engage and educate shoppers, why not use it to train future doctors? That's what Blausen Medical does with its vast portfolio of award-winning medical animations.

Students traditionally learn about body structures from images in books, but Blausen Medical's illustrations expand to enormous sizes that can be experienced from different angles in VR.

The app positions the VR user right in the center of the human anatomy animation. The viewer sees and feels what it's like to be the size of an atom, as proteins and molecules tower above then undulate from side to side.

"Once you have the experience of interacting with the animation in VR, you can't go back to the textbook," said Bruce Blausen, the company's CEO and founder.

Blausen's VR imagery provides practical applications for education. According to Intel's Chinnaswamy, "Early research has shown that students who learn in VR score more than 25 percent higher than those learning by traditional methods. Gamification of learning in VR will further change the landscape of education over the next decade."

Blausen Medical's first VR model captures the complexities of a human's skeletal muscle contractions. Eventually, the company plans to convert its entire library of medical animations into VR, including tours through the inner ear, the cardiovascular system and even explorations of diseases in the body.

These VR apps will primarily be sold to universities and medical institutions, helping future doctors better understand the functions of the body.

From real estate to retail to healthcare education, the commercial uses of VR are expanding as access to the technology grows. By creating immersive experiences, industry leaders are poised to shape a future where real and digital worlds merge.

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VR Entrepreneurs Rethink Real Estate, Retail and Education - iQ by Intel

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On paper, architect Ignacio Rodriguez designed a gorgeous Hollywood Hills home, but the potential owner couldn't envision how the multi-million dollar abode would look after it was built. Rather than hitting the drawing board, Rodriguez turned to his computer and built the house in virtual reality (VR) so his client could experience what it was like "living" there.

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Looking for a GIANT list of EdTech Podcasts...  Start here 

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Looking for a GIANT list of EdTech Podcasts...  Start here 

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On the 11th day of Tech-Mas my true love gave to me... 11 Pods O'Casting.

Note: This post is part of my " 12 Days of Tech-Mas" series for 2017. You can see all of the posts for each day as they get released in the main post here: " 12 Days of Tech-Mas 2017".
Podcasts are one of my favorite ways to learn new information, be inspired, be challenged, discover creative practices in education, find out about the latest resources, and even be entertained.

Best yet, we all have busy lives, so podcasts fit in wonderfully to my schedule, allowing me to listen when driving to work or to a training, or mowing the yard, or going for a jog (which I need to do more often).

For the writing of this blog post I checked my podcast app and I currently am subscribed to 135 different podcasts, covering a wide range of topics and interests. I certainly do not listen to every episode of each, and only a portion of them deal specifically with educational technology. So for this post I have decided to highlight just eleven of my favorites.

These eleven examples all focus on EdTech and consistently provide me with valuable information and resources. There are many more podcasts I could recommend, and perhaps they can be part of a future post, such as those covering education in general ( The Cult of Pedagogy, Teaching Keating, Sustainable Teaching, 10 Minute Teacher, etc.) or interesting information ( 99% Invisible, No Such Thing as a Fish, RadioLab, Freakonomics, Tell Me Something I Don't Know, Reply All, The Allusionist, Science Vs, etc.)

See below for details on eleven of my favorite educational technology podcasts (in alphabetical order). If you are new podcasts, hopefully this will encourage you to try out a few. If you already listen, maybe you will pick up a couple new shows from the list. If you are a podcast addict like me, please share some of your recommendations in the comments at the bottom.

Listening to Podcasts

Before we jump into the list, if you are new to podcasts, here are some quick options for how you can listen to them:

On your computer - Most all podcasts have an associated website where you can find and play all of their episodes right from your web browser.

For each of the podcasts listed below you can simply search for the title in your podcast app to locate and subscribe to them. For those that have direct subscriptions links for iOS or Android, I have included those links as well.
Helpful hint: Most podcast players allow you to adjust the playback speed. You can listen much faster than people can talk, so you can save even more time by playing episodes at a faster pace. Depending on the podcast, my sweet spot is between 1.6X and 1.8X the normal speed. The only drawback is when I happen to hear the hosts speak in real life, they sound sort of sad as they speak at such a slow rate.

1) Check This Out
Brian and Ryan share awesome educational technology resources and ideas, and often bring on guests to share their area of expertise in EdTech.

2) EdTech Bites
Gabriel interviews educators and innovators to talk about educational technology and their favorite foods, and often how the two relate.

3) EdTech Rewind
Clint and Lee discuss what is going on in EdTech and beyond, and often include a guest from the world of education and technology.

4) EdTech Situation Room
A weekly podcast and live webshow, featuring analysis of current technology news through an educational lens.

5) TLC Ninja Teachers
Tech. Learn. Coffee. Lisa and Nancy have a little coffee and talk innovation in the classroom to help bring out the innovator in you (in only 15 minutes because "ain't nobody got more time than that!)

6) TOSAs Talking Tech
Two teachers talking about Technology Integration, giving ideas, troubleshooting, talking about SAMR and why we need tech in classrooms.

7) The EdTech Take Out
The EdTech Take Out is a podcast with "bite-sized technology tips" for teachers who are looking for innovative ways to use technology in the classroom.

8) The Google Teacher Tribe
Weekly podcast designed to give K-12 educators practical ideas for using G Suite and other Google tools.

9) The House of EdTech
Chris shares stories from teachers and creators about education technology, and recommends valuable tools, tips, and resources to integrate technology into your classroom and instruction.

10) The Teachercast Podcast
Join Jeff and the world's finest educators and educational technology creators as they discuss the latest in educational tech and pedagogy.

11) Wired Educator Podcast
Kelly interviews educators from around the world on technology, best practices, and what really works inside and outside of the classroom.

Post by Eric Curts. Bring me to your school, organization, or conference with over 50 PD sessions to choose from. Connect with me on Twitter at twitter.com/ericcurts and on Google+ at plus.google.com/+EricCurts1

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On the 11th day of Tech-Mas my true love gave to me... 11 Pods O'Casting. Note: This post is part of my " 12 Days of Tech-Mas" series for 2017. You can see all of the posts for each day as they get released in the main post here: " 12 Days of Tech-Mas 2017".

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What the next generation looks like..

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The new generation of large-screen Augmented Reality experiences by INDE - BroadcastAR 2.0

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Delight your audience with INDE's award-winning BroadcastAR system, available worldwide for any education, entertainment and marketing space or event.

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Hour of Code

This year, we're taking Hour of Code to new heights by offering coding opportunities that encompass both artificial intelligence (AI) and non-AI components.

Want to keep learning? Go beyond an hour

Teachers: Host an hour or read the How-To Guide

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Use computer science to explore and learn about AI!

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Koji is the world’s most powerful Link in Bio, with hundreds of free apps to customize and monetize.

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Ideally, when you walk into a room, what would you like to observe as it comes to technology standards at your building?

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In a home in southeast Columbus, the cheery glow of a Christmas tree brightens the living room. The holiday may be more than a week away, but for Allison Carlisle's family, gift-giving has already started.

And she has Nationwide Children's Hospital, not Santa, to thank.

One of Carlisle's three sons, 12-year-old Michael, is developmentally disabled.

"He is ambulatory, he does get up and walk," Carlisle says. "He's non-verbal. And communication, very, very limited to none."

Toys for children like Michael have not always been available. But several years ago, Nationwide started a program to help fill the void - and now Ohio State University students are teaming up with them to get more toys to kids who need them.
Easy Play
Until recently, Carlisle says, her son could only play with baby rattles.

"We really couldn't go forward with toys that were more complex because he just, he couldn't do it."

But at Nationwide Children's Hospital, where Michael is a patient, Carlisle learned about "adapted toys." These are toys that have been modified so that special needs children can play with them, too. Now Michael has a bubble-blowing machine and a bump-n-go train.

Adapted toys have on-and-off switches that are easy for kids like Michael to use.

At Nationwide Children's, Lindsey Pauline is part of the adapted toy program known as Toys For All Tots. It's been running there for six years.

"All kids like toys, but not all kids can access toys the same way," Pauline says. "So therapists have figured out, 'Sometimes I've got to change this toy to get my child to want to interact with it.'"

Pauline demonstrates the wide variety of toys that have been fitted with special on-and-off switches: "We have our standard police cars, and of course our fire trucks," she points out.
Learning to Adapt
Nationwide Children's now has hundreds of helpers who make the workload easier. That includes a number of eager OSU students.

"They learn reverse engineering. They learn how to take something apart, they learn to figure out how it works, they learn series and parallel circuits," says Rachel Kajfez, a professor of engineering education. "But they also learn about, kind of, 'humanitarian engineering,' or giving back through engineering, which is really important. This is a really concrete, tangible way to show that."

In Smith Lab, three full shelf spaces are filled with toys. Second-year student Jarrod Manguiat points to Sheriff Callie, a singalong cat, as their post popular.

He may be a computer science major, but Manguiat has learned a lot about educating young people with special needs.

"Children really learn through play," he says. "And that's one of the first things you do, is when you play with a toy, you learn the ABCs, you learn your numbers. And children who have special needs don't usually get that experience; they don't have that mobility. So it's really important that we offer this skill so that each child gets that opportunity."
Giving Back
At this year's Toys For All Tots event, volunteers saw that the hours they'd put it were worth it.

"There's this whole table filled with about 100 toys that we adapted that we were going to donate," Manguiat says. "And so we had one child come in on a wheelchair and his eyes just lit up. And it was one of the coolest experiences, because it was something that we built, and it was just giving them so much joy."

Allison Carlisle is also grateful for the program. At Nationwide Children's, she learned how to re-engineer toys herself - so Michael can have more to play with.

"I'm super excited after going because I got to learn how to adapt," Carlisle says. "This train was actually what I adapted while I was there. So I'm really excited now because I want to go out and find toys that I can adapt for him, so he'll have a wider variety of things."

For Michael, and for many other children, Christmas has come early.

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How Volunteers Are Building Better Toys For Kids With Disabilities

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In a home in southeast Columbus, the cheery glow of a Christmas tree brightens the living room. The holiday may be more than a week away, but for Allison Carlisle's family, gift-giving has already started. And she has Nationwide Children's Hospital, not Santa, to thank. One of Carlisle's three sons, 12-year-old Michael, is developmentally disabled.

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Remember Google Glass?

They're the headsets that look like regular glasses but have a small computer on the side to speak to and access the Internet. If that's not ringing a bell, it could be because Google Glass fizzled out and was discontinued in the consumer market.

But now, it's getting a second life in the manufacturing industry.

One of the pioneers of this technology is a company based in suburban Atlanta. AGCO has factories all over the world where it makes large tractors, chemical sprayers and other farm equipment.

At one of AGCO's factories, Heather Erickson is putting together a tractor engine before it goes on to the assembly line.

She's wearing a red-and-black uniform over her blue jeans at a facility in Jackson, Minn. And she's wearing something else: Google Glass on her head.

"It took a little getting used to. But once I got used to it, it's just been awesome," Erickson says.

Google Glass tells her what to do should she forget, for example, which part goes where. "I don't have to leave my area to go look at the computer every time I need to look up something," she says.

With Google Glass, she scans the serial number on the part she's working on. This brings up manuals, photos or videos she may need. She can tap the side of headset or say "OK Glass" and use voice commands to leave notes for the next shift worker.

The headsets are being used in other industries as well. Companies working in the health care, entertainment and energy industries are listed as some of the Google Glass certified partners. And autistic children are using the technology to recognize emotions.

It was always my assumption that Google Glass was going to go into business for enterprises instead of mass consumer consumption.

Peggy Gullick, business process improvement director with AGCO, says the addition of Google Glass has been "a total game changer." Quality checks are now 20 percent faster, she says, and it's also helpful for on-the-job training of new employees. Before this, workers used tablets.

"We had a lot of tablets on our floor, and the tablets were being broken just by being dropped. And tractors are very tall machines when you're climbing on and off," Gullick says. "So we were looking for a solution that offered them more information in a more timely manner."

AGCO has about 100 employees using the custom Google Glass, which is attached to them and harder to lose. Each costs about $2,000.

Tiffany Tsai, who writes about technology, says it's one of a growing number of companies - including General Electric and Boeing - testing it out.

"It was always my assumption that Google Glass was going to go into business for enterprises instead of mass consumer consumption," she says.

She was one of the early users of Google Glass when it came out in 2013.

Two years later, it was discontinued for some consumers because people were concerned about privacy and security. And there were concerns that the headset could be distracting to drivers or that it wasn't made with all people in mind.

Tsai says another reason for it being discontinued was its challenging of social norms: With Google Glass, it may look like you're listening to the person in front of you, but you could actually be watching a movie or looking up sports stats. You could be in a different world.

"On Google Glass, [another person] has no idea what's happening, does not see anything that the user is looking at or analyzing," Tsai says. "And that creates this disconnect between people, and I think that that's highly frowned upon right now, especially with older generations."

Millennials may be more open to it in the future, but Google Glass still has a long way to go until it's considered more socially acceptable, she says.

But at AGCO's factories, it's not only accepted; it's desired. Gullick says the company plans to double the number in use by the end of the year.
WABE host Jim Burress contributed to this report.

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Google Glass Didn't Disappear. You Can Find It On The Factory Floor

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Remember Google Glass? They're the headsets that look like regular glasses but have a small computer on the side to speak to and access the Internet. If that's not ringing a bell, it could be because Google Glass fizzled out and was discontinued in the consumer market.

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When Ahmed Badr was 8 years old, his family's home in Baghdad was bombed in the midst of the Iraq War. The family was uninjured. They moved to Syria, which was peaceful then, and in 2008, they came to the U.S. as refugees.

Writing helps Badr deal with what he's been through, and he wants to give other young people the same outlet. Now a student at Wesleyan University, Badr founded the website Narratio to empower others to tell their stories.

Badr used writing to figure out what it meant to be an Iraqi-American kid. His life had dramatically changed since coming to the U.S. - in Baghdad, his parents were civil engineers; in the U.S., they worked minimum wage jobs at Home Depot and Wal-Mart.

Overtime, Badr realized that writing on his personal blog helped other people understand who he was and where he came from.

"There was this feeling of empowerment that was just overnight, all of sudden people were interested in my story," Badr says. "... And so with that in mind, two years passed, and I thought, 'OK, well this was great, but this is only helping me. This is only helping my own expression. So how about I take that feeling and that space that I created for myself and turn it into something that allows youth, refugee or otherwise, all over the world to do the same exact thing.' "

So Badr created Narratio, where young people from around the world submit poems, essays and stories. Badr curates them, and he's expanded the program into workshops to help young people learn how to express themselves.

Badr tells NPR's Ari Shapiro they are looking for pieces with a theme of empowerment.

"You're telling your story. You're expressing yourself through your own experience, and it's very very hard to dispute that," he says. "It's very hard to denounce someone's own personal experience. I think that's something that's incredibly beautiful about storytelling is that storytelling doesn't have to be divisive. Storytelling is meant to bring people together."

When Badr returned to Iraq for the first time two years ago, he says he felt guilty around his cousins who still live in Iraq. He says he feels personally responsible to give Iraqi youth - 18 million of whom are younger than 19 - an outlet to express themselves.

"I want to be able to turn that guilty feeling that I had when my cousins asked me, 'What are you up to?' into a responsibility ... and make it possible for them to be able to answer that question as freely as they would like to," he says. "And so, if I can do that by giving them a website that they can share their stories on, that's a step in the right direction."

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Iraqi Refugee Empowers Youth To Share Their Stories With 'Narratio'

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When Ahmed Badr was 8 years old, his family's home in Baghdad was bombed in the midst of the Iraq War. The family was uninjured. They moved to Syria, which was peaceful then, and in 2008, they came to the U.S. as refugees.