Group items tagged

"Burden of Poverty Lacking money or time can lead one to make poorer decisions, possibly because poverty imposes a cognitive load that saps attention and reduces effort. Mani et al. (p. 976; see the Perspective by Vohs) gathered evidence from shoppers in a New Jersey mall and from farmers in Tamil Nadu, India. They found that considering a projected financial decision, such as how to pay for a car repair, affects people's performance on unrelated spatial and reasoning tasks. Lower-income individuals performed poorly if the repairs were expensive but did fine if the cost was low, whereas higher-income individuals performed well in both conditions, as if the projected financial burden imposed no cognitive pressure. Similarly, the sugarcane farmers from Tamil Nadu performed these tasks better after harvest than before. Abstract The poor often behave in less capable ways, which can further perpetuate poverty. We hypothesize that poverty directly impedes cognitive function and present two studies that test this hypothesis. First, we experimentally induced thoughts about finances and found that this reduces cognitive performance among poor but not in well-off participants. Second, we examined the cognitive function of farmers over the planting cycle. We found that the same farmer shows diminished cognitive performance before harvest, when poor, as compared with after harvest, when rich. This cannot be explained by differences in time available, nutrition, or work effort. Nor can it be explained with stress: Although farmers do show more stress before harvest, that does not account for diminished cognitive performance. Instead, it appears that poverty itself reduces cognitive capacity. We suggest that this is because poverty-related concerns consume mental resources, leaving less for other tasks. These data provide a previously unexamined perspective and help explain a spectrum of behaviors among the poor. We discuss some implications for poverty policy."

"Burden of Poverty Lacking money or time can lead one to make poorer decisions, possibly because poverty imposes a cognitive load that saps attention and reduces effort. Mani et al. (p. 976; see the Perspective by Vohs) gathered evidence from shoppers in a New Jersey mall and from farmers in Tamil Nadu, India. They found that considering a projected financial decision, such as how to pay for a car repair, affects people's performance on unrelated spatial and reasoning tasks. Lower-income individuals performed poorly if the repairs were expensive but did fine if the cost was low, whereas higher-income individuals performed well in both conditions, as if the projected financial burden imposed no cognitive pressure. Similarly, the sugarcane farmers from Tamil Nadu performed these tasks better after harvest than before. Abstract The poor often behave in less capable ways, which can further perpetuate poverty. We hypothesize that poverty directly impedes cognitive function and present two studies that test this hypothesis. First, we experimentally induced thoughts about finances and found that this reduces cognitive performance among poor but not in well-off participants. Second, we examined the cognitive function of farmers over the planting cycle. We found that the same farmer shows diminished cognitive performance before harvest, when poor, as compared with after harvest, when rich. This cannot be explained by differences in time available, nutrition, or work effort. Nor can it be explained with stress: Although farmers do show more stress before harvest, that does not account for diminished cognitive performance. Instead, it appears that poverty itself reduces cognitive capacity. We suggest that this is because poverty-related concerns consume mental resources, leaving less for other tasks. These data provide a previously unexamined perspective and help explain a spectrum of behaviors among the poor. We discuss some implications for poverty policy."

"The Kaua Moho was the last species of it's entire genus and it was the last genus in it's family. This male was not just the last of his kind, he was the last being on his entire branch of the evolutionary tree, there was nothing left on the planet that was even close to being like him. That kind of loneliness is unimaginable. No other avian family has had every single species within it go completely extinct in modern times. Different species of Moho lived on each island of Hawaii and their evolutionary cousins the kioea birds lived alongside them, but starting in 1800 (about the time Europeans started arriving to the islands in significant numbers and also about the time the native human population of Hawaii also got decimated by diseases) one by one they died out due to the introduction of foreign avian diseases and parasites, habitat loss, and hunting for their plumage. 2 hurricanes within 10 years of each other finished them off. They are all gone and that song or any song like it will never be heard again save for in recordings. The hurricanes dealt the final blow, but 95% of it was humanity's fault. This has become common in Hawaii due to having so many species that only exist there. A LOT of those species are gone now because the arrival of Europeans brought disease, invasive species, and people straight up killed them or destroyed their habitats. It is a similar situation on every isolated island or area in the world as humans have expanded and explored every nook and cranny on the planet, no matter how hard it is to get to or how little business we have there we feel the need to interfere in even the most delicate and tiny ecosystem. Even the large, continent sized ecosystems are suffering. It doesn't matter if there are millions or even billions of an animal or plant, we will find some way to kill them all. It is only in the last few decades that serious steps have finally been taken to preserve the few areas on this world that we have not destroyed, but

"The Fairphone is a modular handset designed with repairability and ethical sourcing of its materials as headline features. It sold 60,000 units. Amazingly, for what sounds like a nerd-phone, almost half of those buyers had never owned a smartphone before. Now the Fairphone 2 is launching, and with a totally-new, in-house design. The new phone is even easier to repair, and because it was wholly designed by the FairPhone team, its supply chain is even more responsible than ever. The Fairphone is thicker than the latest iPhone or Samsung flagship, but that's the point. Instead of packing everything into a tiny case and keeping it there with glue, the Fairphone is designed to be taken apart. The lightweight magnesium frame supports modules that can be easily replaced by the user. "We have designed it with an aim to last three to five years, looking at making it robust and modular-for repairability," says Fairphone's chief communications officer, Tessa Wernink. "Obviously how long it lasts depends quite heavily on the user, so what we as a company are doing is offering an ecosystem around the phone that supports long-lasting use, first-hand or second-hand." Inside the case (itself one of several options) you'll find the core unit, containing all the chips and radios; a replaceable battery pack; a display that can be snapped off and replaced without any tools (not even a screwdriver); a receiver unit, which contains the front camera, sensors; the headset connector and microphones; a speaker/vibrator unit; and a camera module. These modules are designed to balance manufacturing complexity with repairability. For instance, the display comes as a standalone unit, but less-vulnerable components are bundled into one module. The camera, which people are most likely to upgrade as better versions become available, is also housed in its own module. That way you don't need to toss out your whole phone just to get a better camera. "In fact, the motto from the maker mo

"It has me thinking about what it would mean to improve online classes. A few ideas come to mind: Use multiple platforms. I'm not against using an LMS as a central hub. However, I think it's valuable to experiment with the types of productivity tools you will actually use outside of a classroom. Use Google Docs to share ideas, create surveys, and ask questions. Use Google Hangouts to meet as a group. Go project-based. I haven't figured this out entirely with my first class but my hope is that we can go fully project-based in the same way that my face-to-face class is. In fact, the asynchronous nature of online classes actually means there is a better potential of creating a project-based culture that mirrors the way people actually work on projects. Make something together. I use a collaboration grid with co-creating and communicating on separate spectrums (x-axis) and multimedia and text on another spectrum (y-axis). This has been an effective way to think through collaborative tools that allow students to co-create. Embrace a synchronous/asynchronous blend: I love using Voxer because students can speak back and forth in the moment. However, if they miss it, they can listen to it later. The same is true of using a Google Hangouts On Air. Make it more connective. We tend to treat online instruction as if it is a linear process and we don't do enough to link things back and forth and connect ideas, resources, discussions and content creation in a seamless, back-and-forth nature. Incorporate multimedia. It's a simple idea, but I create a short video at the beginning of each week and I encourage students to create video and audio as well. This has a way of making things more concrete. There's something deeply human about hearing an actual human voice. I know, crazy, right? Go mobile. I don't simply mean use a smart phone. I mean assign some things that allow students to get out in the world and create videos, snap pictures,

"It has me thinking about what it would mean to improve online classes. A few ideas come to mind: Use multiple platforms. I'm not against using an LMS as a central hub. However, I think it's valuable to experiment with the types of productivity tools you will actually use outside of a classroom. Use Google Docs to share ideas, create surveys, and ask questions. Use Google Hangouts to meet as a group. Go project-based. I haven't figured this out entirely with my first class but my hope is that we can go fully project-based in the same way that my face-to-face class is. In fact, the asynchronous nature of online classes actually means there is a better potential of creating a project-based culture that mirrors the way people actually work on projects. Make something together. I use a collaboration grid with co-creating and communicating on separate spectrums (x-axis) and multimedia and text on another spectrum (y-axis). This has been an effective way to think through collaborative tools that allow students to co-create. Embrace a synchronous/asynchronous blend: I love using Voxer because students can speak back and forth in the moment. However, if they miss it, they can listen to it later. The same is true of using a Google Hangouts On Air. Make it more connective. We tend to treat online instruction as if it is a linear process and we don't do enough to link things back and forth and connect ideas, resources, discussions and content creation in a seamless, back-and-forth nature. Incorporate multimedia. It's a simple idea, but I create a short video at the beginning of each week and I encourage students to create video and audio as well. This has a way of making things more concrete. There's something deeply human about hearing an actual human voice. I know, crazy, right? Go mobile. I don't simply mean use a smart phone. I mean assign some things that allow students to get out in the world and create videos, snap pictures,

1) the ways they currently implement Twitter in their teaching and learning, 2) ideas for future development of Twitter-based assignments and pedagogical practices, and 3) issues concerning the integration of Twitter and other digital media into both traditional and non-traditional pedagogies. Collaborators should feel free to add material to these pages, to comment on existing material, and to share links to relevant external readings and resources. It may be helpful to tag your contributions with your Twitter handle. Collaborators are asked to please respect this space as a forum for open and respectful dialogue and networking. Let's fill up the pages below with great ideas!  Share the ways you currently implement Twitter in your teaching and learning: Students in my course New Information Technologies do an "Internet Censorship" project, focused on a specific country. I ask them to follow a journalist who tweets on that country as part of their research to understand the state of Internet freedom in the country they select. -- Lora Since shortly after Twitter was launched, I've experimented with various iterations of "The Twitter Essay," an assignment that has students considering the nature of the "essay" as a medium and how they might do that work within the space of 140 characters. -- Jesse (@Jessifer) In my fully online classes, I've started using Twitter to replace the discussion forum as the central location for student interaction. -- Jesse (@Jessifer) Show Tweets that have gotten people arrested and prompt discussion on whether it is fair that anyone be arrested for any Tweet in the US, who is likely to be arrested for their Tweets, what kinds of Tweets are likely to prompt arrest, etc. Students in my First Year Seminar course "The Irish Imagination: Yeats to Bono" developed a platform for digital annotation of Irish literature. Embedded in their platform was a twitter feed of relevant individuals/groups, m

1) the ways they currently implement Twitter in their teaching and learning, 2) ideas for future development of Twitter-based assignments and pedagogical practices, and 3) issues concerning the integration of Twitter and other digital media into both traditional and non-traditional pedagogies. Collaborators should feel free to add material to these pages, to comment on existing material, and to share links to relevant external readings and resources. It may be helpful to tag your contributions with your Twitter handle. Collaborators are asked to please respect this space as a forum for open and respectful dialogue and networking. Let's fill up the pages below with great ideas!  Share the ways you currently implement Twitter in your teaching and learning: Students in my course New Information Technologies do an "Internet Censorship" project, focused on a specific country. I ask them to follow a journalist who tweets on that country as part of their research to understand the state of Internet freedom in the country they select. -- Lora Since shortly after Twitter was launched, I've experimented with various iterations of "The Twitter Essay," an assignment that has students considering the nature of the "essay" as a medium and how they might do that work within the space of 140 characters. -- Jesse (@Jessifer) In my fully online classes, I've started using Twitter to replace the discussion forum as the central location for student interaction. -- Jesse (@Jessifer) Show Tweets that have gotten people arrested and prompt discussion on whether it is fair that anyone be arrested for any Tweet in the US, who is likely to be arrested for their Tweets, what kinds of Tweets are likely to prompt arrest, etc. Students in my First Year Seminar course "The Irish Imagination: Yeats to Bono" developed a platform for digital annotation of Irish literature. Embedded in their platform was a twitter feed of relevant individuals/groups, m

"Last year I went to West Kalimantan in Borneo to see for myself the effects of the runaway growth of the palm oil industry. I came home firm in the belief that Iceland would not continue using palm oil until companies delivered on their zero deforestation commitments. This is because palm oil has had devastating consequences for local communities, who are being displaced, and on endangered species like the orangutan (our closest relative in the wild), which are being driven close to extinction. Palm oil has many benefits, chiefly that its yields are better than the alternatives. But it is grown almost exclusively in areas of tropical rainforest, which are the 'crown jewels' of our planet's biodiversity. With 146 football pitches of rainforest being lost every hour in Indonesia alone, the urgency of the crisis cannot be overstated. And global demand is set to double by 2050. At Iceland the 1,000 tonnes of palm oil we used annually pale into insignificance compared to many of our competitors. As such a tiny player we took the decision that the only way we could create meaningful change was to shout very loudly from outside the established palm oil industry. So we decided simply to stop using palm oil until the industry cleaned up its act. It was our own decision to give consumers a choice where previously there was none. We never called for a wider industry ban, and accept entirely that a wholesale boycott of palm oil is not the right long term solution. ..."

"The Minute Paper comes in many variations, but the simplest one involves wrapping up the formal class period a few minutes early and posing two questions to your students: What was the most important thing you learned today? What question still remains in your mind? Taken together, those two questions accomplish multiple objectives. The first one not only requires students to remember something from class and articulate it in their own words (more about that in a moment), but it also requires them to do some quick thinking. They have to reflect on the material and make a judgment about the main point of that day's class. The second question encourages them to probe their own minds and consider what they haven't truly understood. Most of us are infected by what learning theorists sometimes call "illusions of fluency," which means that we believe we have obtained mastery over something when we truly have not. To answer the second question, students have to decide where confusion or weaknesses remain in their own comprehension of the day's material. Closing connections. If we want students to obtain mastery and expertise in our subjects, they need to be capable of making their own connections between what they are learning and the world around them - current events, campus debates, personal experiences. The last five minutes of class represent an ideal opportunity for students to use the course material from that day and brainstorm some new connections.The metacognitive five. We have increasing evidence from the learning sciences that students engage in poor study strategies. Likewise, research shows that most people are plagued by the illusions of fluency. The solution on both fronts is better metacognition - that is, a clearer understanding of our own learning. What if all of us worked together deliberately to achieve that?Close the loop. Finally, go back to any of the strategies I introduced in my recent column on the first five minutes of clas

Artículo, en inglés, acerca de la utilización de móviles en el aula, etc... "Technology is like water to a fish. It surrounds us, and we rarely notice it, but we use it all the time. Instead of keeping children away from the water, we should teach them to swim. Any alternative would be unthinkable."

Artículo, en inglés, acerca de la utilización de móviles en el aula, etc... "Technology is like water to a fish. It surrounds us, and we rarely notice it, but we use it all the time. Instead of keeping children away from the water, we should teach them to swim. Any alternative would be unthinkable."

"Our new blog is designed to radically reduce the energy use associated with accessing our content. Low-tech Magazine was born in 2007 and has seen minimal changes ever since. Because a website redesign was long overdue - and because we try to practice what we preach - we decided to build a low-tech, self-hosted, and solar-powered version of Low-tech Magazine. The new blog is designed to radically reduce the energy use associated with accessing our content. Why a Low-tech Website? We were told that the Internet would "dematerialise" society and decrease energy use. Contrary to this projection, it has become a large and rapidly growing consumer of energy itself. In order to offset the negative consequences associated with high energy consumption, renewable energy has been proposed as a means to lower emissions from powering data centers. For example, Greenpeace's yearly ClickClean report ranks major Internet companies based on their use of renewable power sources."

"Open with a question or two. Another favorite education writer of mine, the cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham, argues that teachers should focus more on the use of questions. "The material I want students to learn," he writes in his book Why Don't Students Like School?, "is actually the answer to a question. On its own, the answer is almost never interesting. But if you know the question, the answer may be quite interesting." My colleague Greg Weiner, an associate professor of political science, puts those ideas into practice. At the beginning of class, he shows four or five questions on a slide for students to consider. Class then proceeds in the usual fashion. At the end, he returns to the questions so that students can both see some potential answers and understand that they have learned something that day. What did we learn last time? A favorite activity of many instructors is to spend a few minutes at the opening of class reviewing what happened in the previous session. That makes perfect sense, and is supported by the idea that we don't learn from single exposure to material - we need to return frequently to whatever we are attempting to master.But instead of offering a capsule review to students, why not ask them to offer one back to you?Reactivate what they learned in previous courses. Plenty of excellent evidence suggests that whatever knowledge students bring into a course has a major influence on what they take away from it. So a sure-fire technique to improve student learning is to begin class by revisiting, not just what they learned in the previous session, but what they already knew about the subject matter.Write it down. All three of the previous activities would benefit from having students spend a few minutes writing down their responses. That way, every student has the opportunity to answer the question, practice memory retrieval from the previous session, or surface their prior knowledge - and not just the students most likely to

"Hardly anyone seems to have noticed that the newest climate science suggests we are about to pass the point of no return, to unstoppable, catastrophic global warming. This short animation explains the positive feedback mechanisms that mean the Earth's climate system has a tipping point, followed by a brief glimpse into the crystal ball of horrors that will almost certainly come to pass if we cross it. Finally, the film explores how we got into the mess we're in, and the possibilities still open to us to prevent the worst natural and humanitarian disaster in human history, and the very real possibility of the end of civilization, and of life as we know it."

"In terms of energy conservation, the leaps made in energy efficiency by the infrastructure and devices we use to access the internet have allowed many online activities to be viewed as more sustainable than offline. On the internet, however, advances in energy efficiency have a reverse effect: as the network becomes more energy efficient, its total energy use increases. This trend can only be stopped when we limit the demand for digital communication."

"In terms of energy conservation, the leaps made in energy efficiency by the infrastructure and devices we use to access the internet have allowed many online activities to be viewed as more sustainable than offline. On the internet, however, advances in energy efficiency have a reverse effect: as the network becomes more energy efficient, its total energy use increases. This trend can only be stopped when we limit the demand for digital communication."

"La publicación de un informe PISA de la OCDE acerca de cómo repercute el uso escolar de los ordenadores en las notas de los alumnos desencadenó ayer una oleada de titulares absurdos, irresponsables, cogidos por los pelos y peligrosísimos de cara al futuro, en los que con toda ligereza se acusaba a la introducción de la tecnología de "no servir para nada", o incluso de poco menos que "ser perjudicial para el aprendizaje". Una lectura mínimamente rigurosa del estudio permite ver que en realidad, se trata de una interpretación absurda. Lo que el informe viene a demostrar es que en las circunstancias actuales, con una introducción de tecnología que se ha limitado a cambiar las herramientas sin variar la metodología, y que se aún encuentra en una fase de pruebas absolutamente temprana, los resultados no son milagrosos, sino simplemente lógicos: si quitamos a los alumnos el papel y el bolígrafo y les ponemos un tablet o un dispositivo similar en las manos… ¡sorpresa! ¡Se distraen más! Lo raro, por supuesto, sería que esto no ocurriese así. Resulta no evidente, sino de perogrullo, que un artefacto electrónico conectado a la red ofrece infinitas oportunidades más para la distracción que las que ofrece un papel y el bolígrafo en el que, como mucho, podemos dibujar unos cuantos muñecos con palotes, hacer algunas cadenetas, o ya acercándonos casi a los deportes de riesgo, hacer una pajarita. Frente a esto, la versatilidad de los terminales móviles o los ordenadores es impresionante: podemos comunicarnos, acceder a un ilimitado océano de contenidos buenos, malos o regulares, ver vídeos de gatitos, o incluso jugar. Obviamente, si lo único que hacemos es cambiar de soporte, pero no alterar la metodología, ni formar a los profesores, ni modificar siquiera la manera de evaluar, lo único que haremos con la tecnología es crear una generación de alumnos que se habrán pasado una parte significativa del tiempo de clase dedicándose a otras cos

"La publicación de un informe PISA de la OCDE acerca de cómo repercute el uso escolar de los ordenadores en las notas de los alumnos desencadenó ayer una oleada de titulares absurdos, irresponsables, cogidos por los pelos y peligrosísimos de cara al futuro, en los que con toda ligereza se acusaba a la introducción de la tecnología de "no servir para nada", o incluso de poco menos que "ser perjudicial para el aprendizaje". Una lectura mínimamente rigurosa del estudio permite ver que en realidad, se trata de una interpretación absurda. Lo que el informe viene a demostrar es que en las circunstancias actuales, con una introducción de tecnología que se ha limitado a cambiar las herramientas sin variar la metodología, y que se aún encuentra en una fase de pruebas absolutamente temprana, los resultados no son milagrosos, sino simplemente lógicos: si quitamos a los alumnos el papel y el bolígrafo y les ponemos un tablet o un dispositivo similar en las manos… ¡sorpresa! ¡Se distraen más! Lo raro, por supuesto, sería que esto no ocurriese así. Resulta no evidente, sino de perogrullo, que un artefacto electrónico conectado a la red ofrece infinitas oportunidades más para la distracción que las que ofrece un papel y el bolígrafo en el que, como mucho, podemos dibujar unos cuantos muñecos con palotes, hacer algunas cadenetas, o ya acercándonos casi a los deportes de riesgo, hacer una pajarita. Frente a esto, la versatilidad de los terminales móviles o los ordenadores es impresionante: podemos comunicarnos, acceder a un ilimitado océano de contenidos buenos, malos o regulares, ver vídeos de gatitos, o incluso jugar. Obviamente, si lo único que hacemos es cambiar de soporte, pero no alterar la metodología, ni formar a los profesores, ni modificar siquiera la manera de evaluar, lo único que haremos con la tecnología es crear una generación de alumnos que se habrán pasado una parte significativa del tiempo de clase dedicándose a otras cos

"Imagine you could use any kind of small head difference in a river or canal. The power those drops contain might surprise you. We created a technology that can make use of all these small waterfalls or rapids in a way that's safe for the environment. Gone are the days that communities had to choose between having power or fish to eat. Our robust and fish friendly vortex turbiness will generate energy 24/7 at an incredibly low cost of energy. That way you can have a project with high return on investment that improves the world just that little bit. Now, if you look at a river or canal, you'll notice that it's full of these small cascades, that's how nature builds rivers. We have created a distributed turbine system that can combines a large amount of turbines into one big virtual hydropower powerplant. These virtual hydropower plants can be as large as 10MW in power output. That's the power production of a small city! We can do this because our civil structures are designed to be easy to install, and the electronics and robust power take-offs are designed to keep working with minimal maintenance. The energy produced can be directly connected to your appliances or machinery, and at the same time connected to the national distribution grid, so you can inject the unused power to it, maximizing the revenue through a net billing connection."

"Our core ecological problem is not climate change. It is overshoot, of which global warming is a symptom. Overshoot is a systemic issue. Over the past century-and-a-half, enormous amounts of cheap energy from fossil fuels enabled the rapid growth of resource extraction, manufacturing, and consumption; and these in turn led to population increase, pollution, and loss of natural habitat and hence biodiversity. The human system expanded dramatically, overshooting Earth's long-term carrying capacity for humans while upsetting the ecological systems we depend on for our survival. Until we understand and address this systemic imbalance, symptomatic treatment (doing what we can to reverse pollution dilemmas like climate change, trying to save threatened species, and hoping to feed a burgeoning population with genetically modified crops) will constitute an endlessly frustrating round of stopgap measures that are ultimately destined to fail."

"This article analyzes teacher strikes in Argentina during 2006-2012. It stands out how teacher strikes prevail over claims from other unions, and are shown to be relevant events for education policy just for some provinces and only for public schools. We found that none of the policy measures implemented over the last decade has proven to be effective in reducing conflict. Analyzing a dataset on labour unrest, this study builds an index of teacher labour conflict to better understand the evolution of teacher strikes over time and under the various provincial governments that integrate the Argentinian federal education system. The article shows no correlation between teacher labour unrest and the growth of private enrolment. However, we note that despite the lack of statistical correlation, teacher strikes should not be ruled out as an explanatory variable of the increase in private education in Argentina."

The Tragedy of eLearning

We've seen this movie before.



The 1999 Online Learning conference in Los Angeles was ground zero for eLearning. CBT Systems told the world it was being reincarnated as SmartForce, the eLearning Company. When we unveiled signs at the SmartForce booth, we were the o

"Close Reading and Argument Writing - Authentically Across the Curriculum 7/16/2015 0 Comments Close reading of informational texts and non-fiction articles is not - and should not be - reserved for language arts classes. Every content area would be immensely enhanced if science teachers, social studies teachers, physical education teachers, welding teachers, woodworking teachers (in other words, "all technical subjects," as Common Core states) would not push aside the textbook, but instead embrace it, along with content area and trade articles. Students would then simultaneously learn how to dissect the readings while gaining knowledge in these content areas. What often happens is that teachers feel that students can't handle the text books or can't read the articles independently - and often that is true. However, when teachers instead go into a survival mode, of sorts, and read aloud the whole chapter or article or summarize it with a slideshow, it ends up doing a disservice to students - students are not learning HOW to read these complex texts. They are not learning how to acquire the information on their own. They are not being given the skills to read the sometimes intricate information within a particular content area or even within their possible future trade. They are not being given the opportunity to read, understand, articulate, and discuss or even debate topics within their area of study. Teachers sometimes feel that they can't do these things with students because they are not language arts teachers, or because they don't have time, or simply because they don't know how. Alternatively, a simple solution is to let go of the control and let students do…..with the guidance called close reading. Close reading is a guided reading approach. It is guided because 1) the close reading strategy is reserved for complex texts that are often too high for students to be left with independently and 2) students don't use close reading strateg

"Our smartphones enable-and encourage-constant connection to information, entertainment, and each other. They put the world at our fingertips, and rarely leave our sides. Although these devices have immense potential to improve welfare, their persistent presence may come at a cognitive cost. In this research, we test the "brain drain" hypothesis that the mere presence of one's own smartphone may occupy limited-capacity cognitive resources, thereby leaving fewer resources available for other tasks and undercutting cognitive performance. Results from two experiments indicate that even when people are successful at maintaining sustained attention-as when avoiding the temptation to check their phones-the mere presence of these devices reduces available cognitive capacity. Moreover, these cognitive costs are highest for those highest in smartphone dependence. We conclude by discussing the practical implications of this smartphone-induced brain drain for consumer decision-making and consumer welfare."

"The transition from unicellular to multicellular life was one of a few major events in the history of life that created new opportunities for more complex biological systems to evolve. Predation is hypothesized as one selective pressure that may have driven the evolution of multicellularity. Here we show that de novo origins of simple multicellularity can evolve in response to predation. We subjected outcrossed populations of the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii to selection by the filter-feeding predator Paramecium tetraurelia. Two of five experimental populations evolved multicellular structures not observed in unselected control populations within ~750 asexual generations. Considerable variation exists in the evolved multicellular life cycles, with both cell number and propagule size varying among isolates. Survival assays show that evolved multicellular traits provide effective protection against predation. These results support the hypothesis that selection imposed by predators may have played a role in some origins of multicellularity."