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While it so obviously measures empathy that you could easily game it to make yourself look kinder and nicer, the fact that today's college students don't even feel compelled to do that suggests that the study is measuring something real. If young people don't even care about seeming uncaring, something is seriously wrong.

Though social media is an improvement on passive TV viewing and can sometimes aid real friendships, it is still less rich than face to face interaction. This is especially important for the youngest children whose brains are absorbing social information that will shape the way they connect for the rest of their lives.

Perhaps an even larger factor is the merging of the left's "do your own thing" individualism with the right's glorification of brutal competition and unfettered markets. You wind up with a society that teaches kids that "you're on your own" and that helping others is for suckers.

It turns out there are two different ways people respond to challenges. Some people see them as opportunities to perform - to demonstrate their talent or intellect. Others see them as opportunities to master - to improve their skill or knowledge.

While a performance orientation improves motivation for easy challenges, it drastically reduces it for difficult ones. And since most work worth doing is difficult, it is the mastery orientation that is correlated with academic and professional success, as well as self-esteem and long-term happiness.

When I learned about performance and mastery orientations, I realized with growing horror just what I'd been doing for most of my life. Going through school as a "gifted" kid, most of the praise I'd received had been of the "Wow, you must be smart!" variety. I had very little ability to follow through or persevere, and my grades tended to be either A's or F's, as I either understood things right away (such as, say, calculus) or gave up on them completely (trigonometry). I had a serious performance orientation. And I was reinforcing it every time I played an RPG.

We have learned to become helpless; most likely by playing the traditional game of ‘school’

For me ‘Learned Helplessness’ is the attitude that many of the self-described ‘digital immigrants’ adopt. It still surprises me to this day when I hear teachers bleat out with a certain sort of pride that they are a ‘digital immigrant’. To me they are saying that they have learned to be helpless, and they are proud of that.

educators must take ownership of their learning rather than waiting for/relying on others to provide it

I watch it when I need it and in ways that I need it. And that makes a huge difference.”

“About five years ago my students stopped taking notes,” Rankin said. “I asked, ‘Why are you not taking notes?’ And they said, ‘Why would we take notes on that?…. I can go to Wikipedia or go to Google, and I can get all the information I need.”

Then, using polling software that Abilene coded for the iPhone, students can answer the questions anonymously by sending responses electronically with their iPhones. The software can also quickly quiz students to gauge whether they’re understanding the lesson.

the Utopian, blue sky ideas of technology as a singular harbinger of possibility and liberation ignores the cold and all-consuming role that capital plays in the shaping of technology as means of control.

The insanely irresponsible advertising for BlackBoard 8 suggests that Academic Suite release 8.0 will “enhance critical thinking skills” and “improve classroom performance.” What LMS can do this? What Web 2.0 tool can do this? This is total bullshit, how can they make such an irresponsible claim? These things are not done by technology, but rather people thinking and working together. Our technology may afford a unique possibility in this endeavor by bringing disparate individuals together in an otherwise untenable community, yet it doesn’t enhance critical thinking or improve classroom performance, we do that, together.

The learning happens not as a by-product of the technology, it is, or rather should be, the Raison d’être of the technology.

’m talking about the effect a serious and interested and knowledgeable adult can have on a group of children

learning happens regardless of the curriculum, or the objectives, or the strategies. In any given school, on any given day, you could walk by rooms with master teachers doing their thing. One might be a lecturer, and every day students would go into her class, get out notes, and pay attention. Another might be totally committed to large-group discussion, and every day that teacher’s students would be seated in a circle talking to one another. The teacher next door might deal exclusively with small groups. The one next to him might be convinced that a writers’-workshop approach is the best.

When you walk by such teachers’ rooms, students will be smiling. There will be no one asleep (well, let’s not get too carried away).

Einstein's theory of special relativity includes electricity and magnetism in a simple, logical extension of the relativity of Galileo and Newton. Its conclusions, including time dilation, length contraction, and E=mc2 have changed profoundly our ideas of time and space, matter and energy. These multimedia modules (click on menu above right) give a brief overview of relativity - they present the main ideas. Inevitably, you will have questions. So the related links (below) give more complete explanations, at levels with () or without mathematics ().

Social Constructivism is a theory of learning based upon the learners' social interaction and collaboration.

Knowledge is much more varied and uncertain. As Siemens (2006) stresses: “In today's world, knowledge life is short; it survives only a short period of time before it is outdated”

In LaaN, knowledge is a personal network rather than an object that can be constructed.