Group items tagged

Most of the tools we’ve used to document and communicate ideas haven’t changed much since the introduction of Microsoft Office. We have documents, spreadsheets, and slides. Those are sort of the universal formats for communicating information. That seemed kind of dumb given that those were invented in a world of keyboards, mice, and DOS prompts.We now had these things that had cameras and microphones and touch interfaces and decided that there should be some new way of communicating ideas.

We also heard from teachers about the practical problems

it was clear that touch devices unlocked something for computing

On the parents’ side, I was incredibly frustrated watching all the work that all my kids’ teachers were doing to communicate what was happening at school. There were weekly newsletters that were long and involved; photo albums with 300 pictures, only three of which were my child. All of this was behind a password I could never remember. Teachers were doing all this work that was taking away from actual teaching or their personal lives. The experience felt pretty broken to me.It also seemed that kids might be able to document their own learning and reflect on what they were making more independently.As a parent, I’d ask my kids, “What did you do at school today?” and they say, “Nothing,” and I had no idea what next question to ask because I just didn’t have a thread to pull on.

the magic of Seesaw is all about changing the conversation from “What did you do in school today?” to “Tell me about more about this thing you made.” It’s a starting point for a conversation

Seesaw is a learning journal. It’s a place where kids can document their learning over time

The child now has an audience for his work beyond the teacher. We hear time and time again from teachers that their kids want to do their best work with Seesaw because their parents are going to ask them about it when they come home. They also know their classmates are going to watch it.

I had to learn what issues teachers are struggling with, and then work through those problems

This became obvious around log-in. We knew this was a real hassle in classrooms, and we thought we could solve it using a simple text code. But a tech coordinator at one school suggested using a QR code instead. “What would really make this easy is if kids could just scan a QR code to log in.” Carl and I both thought this was weird — no one uses QR codes. They’re a technology from 10 years ago that no one adopted. But we decided to build it to see if it got used.It turned out to be one of Seesaw’s most important features, especially in the younger grades.

we really invested in those relationships. I would call them on the phone every week. We listened, we showed them stuff ahead of time. They would give us an idea, and we would actually build what they asked for. We developed a close connection with those teachers and they started talking to other teachers in their building and other schools and so on.Honestly, we took this word-of-mouth and advocacy approach because we were a little nervous to tell teachers how to use our product. We felt like we didn’t really understand the classroom enough to tell them what to do. So we went down this path of finding some teachers who are excited about using Seesaw and helped them tell other teachers about it. Our hope is that most teachers discover Seesaw from another teacher, not from us.

Get it in the hands of teachers, and if it’s good, it will probably spread. Teachers are asked to use a lot of crappy software. When they find something good, they tend to recognize it

I just wanted to tell you how life changing this app has been for me and my teaching, and for my students

but we get an email like that two or three times a week

I have had millions of people who are slightly more organized because I worked on Google Calendar. Good, but that’s not really what I want that on my tombstone

Parents don’t know what’s going on in their kids’ classrooms. It’s not because someone wants to keep it secret, but the information is not easily shared

I cannot imagine a future where I will be okay sending my kids to school for eight hours a day and having no clue what they’re working on. This is the most important person in my life. I get immediate updates about everything else, and yet somehow I accept that I have no information on what my kids are doing for eight hours a day. It’s not possible that’s the future.

On the parents’ side, I was incredibly frustrated watching all the work that all my kids’ teachers were doing to communicate what was happening at school. There were weekly newsletters that were long and involved; photo albums with 300 pictures, only three of which were my child. All of this was behind a password I could never remember. Teachers were doing all this work that was taking away from actual teaching or their personal lives. The experience felt pretty broken to me.It also seemed that kids might be able to document their own learning and reflect on what they were making more independently.As a parent, I’d ask my kids, “What did you do at school today?” and they say, “Nothing,” and I had no idea what next question to ask because I just didn’t have a thread to pull on. When you ask a kid to describe something abstractly, particularly younger kids, it’s quite difficult for them to do it. If you show them a picture of something and say, “What’s going on in this picture,” they’ll say, “Oh, let me tell you all about this,” it totally gives them a thing to start with.

a distinction can be made between a technology (P2P) and implementations of that technology

the system was not designed with illegal use in mind, but instead to faciliate transfer of large files in an economical way.

trading of copyrighted files is not central to the technology

While you could potentially upload a virus to a public tracker and provide a .torrent file for it, you'd still have to convince people to download and run the file just as if you posted it to a website.

BitTorrent is a P2P system that allows large, popular files to be downloaded quickly

Open Source

Live-Taping

Dave Matthews Band, Pearl Jam, Tenacious D

bands are realizing that having a loyal following is very valuable and that they can both support their fans and still sell records

Slashdot

DIY Publishing

legitimate P2P use is here and has a definite role to play in the future of the Internet

The readers’ awareness of how they read on screen (and the calibration process they engage in when reading on screen), might be the sources of the print-versus-screen difference

The chain of influences is an essential piece of understanding for the debates on reading on and off-screen. It is a continuation of a long argument in media studies where one camp of researchers focuses on metacognition and another camp of researchers on the inherent characteristics of the medium.

The screen introduced hyperlinks, large collections of e-books, automatic possibility for translation, multimedia representations of meaning

children are less aware of the disconnect between a digital and non-digital reading medium than any generation of children before them. It follows that they have different preferences, different resources for calibration, different lived examples of reading around them

The ‘home sweet home’ for reading in the digital age is the provision of, and the practice in the use, of high-quality texts on and off screen

My children were not using their iPads in every spare moment—they still liked other classroom tools such as Lego, dominos and drawing paper—but the iPads were a popular choice

I didn’t get around to figuring out how to use it, but my students did. They taught themselves and then taught me as well.

Some students preferred digital and some preferred non-digital, but most moved seamlessly back and forth between the two.

The size of the association documented across these studies is not sufficient or measurable enough to warrant the current levels of panic and fear around this issue.”

Unfortunately, the large number of participants in these designs means that small effects are easily publishable and, if positive, garner outsized press and policy attention,

put these extremely miniscule effects of screens on young people in real-world context

some positive behaviors such as getting enough sleep and regularly eating breakfast were much more strongly associated with well-being than the average impact of technology use.

Strikingly, one of the data sets Przybylski and Orben used was “Monitoring the Future,” an ongoing study run by researchers at the University of Michigan that tracks drug use among young people. The alarming 2017 book and article by psychologist Jean Twenge claiming that smartphones have destroyed a generation of teenagers also relied on the data from “Monitoring the Future.” When the same statistics Twenge used are put into the larger context Przybylski and Orben employ, the effect of phone use on teen mental health turns out to be tiny.

All of this is not to say there is no danger whatsoever in digital technology use. In a previous paper, Przybylski and colleague Netta Weinstein demonstrated a “Goldilocks” effect showing moderate use of technology—about one to two hours per day on weekdays and slightly more on weekends—was “not intrinsically harmful,” but higher levels of indulgence could be.

Civilization holds a unique value in letting students experiment with “what if” scenarios to see how changing variables like political structures or social policies affect and alter the course of a nation.

Playing video games is not necessarily a solitary activity; teens frequently play video games with others.

video gameplay, particularly over online networks, is an important activity through which boys form and maintain friendships with others:

38% of all teen boys share their gaming handle as one of the first three pieces of information exchanged when they meet someone they would like to be friends with

Some 76% of teens ages 13 to 17 use social media

Social media helps teens feel more connected to their friends’ feelings and daily lives, and also offers teens a place to receive support from others during challenging times.

But even as social media connects teens to friends’ feelings and experiences, the sharing that occurs on these platforms can have negative consequences. Sharing can veer into oversharing. Teens can learn about events and activities to which they weren’t invited, and the highly curated lives of teens’ social media connections can lead them to make negative comparisons with their own lives

78% of teen online gamers say when they play games online it makes them feel more connected to friends they already know

Girls are more likely to use text messaging – while boys are more likely to use video games – as conduits for conversations with friends

The study found that the strongest agreement between participants' rankings and IGD characterizations were functional impairment, continued use despite problems, unsuccessful attempts to stop and the loss of interest in other hobbies

These games aren't necessarily causing the problems; it might just as well be the other way around. People are not functioning, they suffer from social anxiety, they're lonely, and they flee into the games because it's an excellent coping mechanism.

However, the official investigation report points out that the only game he played regularly was Dance Dance Revolution.

If anything, the current body of evidence suggests that gaming might actually reduce the rate of violent behavior rather than instigate it.

Luckily, moral panics don't last far beyond the lives of those who are outraged by them

Unfortunately, cool is all it was for me. The ability to pop out my laptop and write on it with a (very accurate) stylus was never that useful. If anything, it served to underscore how efficient the keyboard-and-touchpad combo is for a lot of hefty tasks.

I simply didn’t do it much, and most of the time when I did, it was just to see if I could.

Two-fingered swipe on the touchpad? The answer, of course, is to reach up to the screen, and swipe that way. A shortcut it is not, particularly if the screen is up on a dock and you’re already using a keyboard and mouse.

I was shocked by the amount of advertising and cross-promotion riddled throughout the OS, from adverts for apps in the start menu, to a persistent pop-up offering a free trial of Office 365. I was surprised by the paucity of solid third-party apps in general, and particularly by the lack of any good consumer productivity suite.

Most of all, though, I couldn’t stand the small irritations, from the failure of Chrome windows to correctly adapt when dragged from a high-res screen to a low-res one, to the trackpad’s inability to accurately click when I used it with my thumb rather than my finger.

Ultimately, the question comes down to how much you’re prepared to pay to keep things the same as they have been

Previously, young children had to be shown by their parents how to use a mouse or a remote, and the connection between what they were doing with their hand and what was happening on the screen took some time to grasp. But with the iPad, the connection is obvious, even to toddlers. Touch technology follows the same logic as shaking a rattle or knocking down a pile of blocks: the child swipes, and something immediately happens.

A more accurate point of comparison for a TV viewer’s physiological state would be that of someone deep in a book, says Kirkorian, because during both activities we are still, undistracted, and mentally active.

even very young children can be discriminating viewers—that they are not in fact brain-dead, but rather work hard to make sense of what they see and turn it into a coherent narrative that reflects what they already know of the world.

Children’s lives are filled with media at younger and younger ages, and we need to take advantage of what these technologies have to offer

More important, she made the video demonstration explicitly interactive.

That exchange was enough to nearly erase the video deficit.

That kind of contingent interaction (I do something, you respond) is what captivates a toddler and can be a significant source of learning for even very young children—learning that researchers hope the children can carry into the real world. It’s not exactly the ideal social partner the American Academy of Pediatrics craves. It’s certainly not a parent or caregiver. But it’s as good an approximation as we’ve ever come up with on a screen, and it’s why children’s-media researchers are so excited about the iPad’s potential.

something about tapping the screen, about getting feedback and being corrected in real time, is itself instructive, and enables the toddlers to absorb information accurately, regardless of its source

A TV is static and lacks one of the most important things to toddlers, which is a “two-way exchange of information

The statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics assumes a zero-sum game: an hour spent watching TV is an hour not spent with a parent. But parents know this is not how life works. There are enough hours in a day to go to school, play a game, and spend time with a parent, and generally these are different hours. Some people can get so drawn into screens that they want to do nothing else but play games. Experts say excessive video gaming is a real problem, but they debate whether it can be called an addiction and, if so, whether the term can be used for anything but a small portion of the population.

We live in a screen age, and to say to a kid, ‘I’d love for you to look at a book but I hate it when you look at the screen’ is just bizarre. It reflects our own prejudices and comfort zone. It’s nothing but fear of change, of being left out.”

a useful framework—what she calls the three C’s—for thinking about media consumption: content, context, and your child. She poses a series of questions—Do you think the content is appropriate? Is screen time a “relatively small part of your child’s interaction with you and the real world?”—and suggests tailoring your rules to the answers, child by child.

If students in a large lecture course with no laptop or device policies are doing poorly, is it because they’re on Facebook or because they’re in a cavernous auditorium with several hundred other captives, being talked at by someone who’s likely had no formal pedagogical training whatsoever?

unilateral bans on technology in the classroom accomplish nothing but demonstrating an off-putting rigidity and an adversarial view of students.

If you’re the grumpy faculty member who kvetches about students not being taught penmanship in primary school, and who makes their classes take notes by hand to build character or whatever, take a step back and think about what you’re actually saying to your students: that some are inherently deficient, that they will fall short, and that your way is the only possible way to learn.

But if two-thirds of the class is doing non-class related stuff on a laptop or cell phone, why is that happening? Are they incorrigible internet addicts, or is it a pedagogical issue? If they’re not getting to where you want them to be, is it Twitter’s fault? Or is it the side effect of a lecture-based, passive pedagogy that doesn’t engage anyone?

Let’s be real: it’s not as if students paid rapt attention to everything faculty said until the smart phone was invented.

Of course, there are situations where you’ll want your students to not use devices. But there will also be occasions where you’ll want to encourage their use (quick polling, checking something online). That’s the whole point–there are no hard and fast rules, nor should there be. Good pedagogy is, above all, flexible. And, rather than an end unto itself, technology is a tool that can support good pedagogy if it’s used appropriately.

Rather than banning the tool because of an instance where someone used it improperly, we should work to prevent the processes which led to that instance. Our students need to be our allies, not our adversaries, if genuine learning is to occur. Students cannot experience the transformative effects that higher education can and should inculcate if we refuse to treat them as responsible agents who are the co-architects of their learning.

For kids growing up today, laptops and mobile phones aren’t high-tech tools — they’re everyday tools, just like crayons and watercolors.

Of course there’s a problem if children spend all their time interacting with screens — just as there would be a problem if they spent all their time playing the violin or reading books or playing sports. Spending all your time on any one thing is problematic. But the most important issue with screen time is not quantity but quality. There are many ways of interacting with screens; it doesn’t make sense to treat them all the same

Rather than trying to minimize screen time, I think parents and teachers should try to maximize creative time. The focus shouldn’t be on which technologies children are using, but rather what children are doing with them

Almost every single teenage boy in America — 97 percent — plays video games, while about 83 percent of girls do

promote “healthy gaming habits” and develop students’ science and technology skills

Parents aren’t telling their kids at 6 years old, ‘Keep your clothes on online

It had nothing to do with gameplay

Parents aren’t telling their kids at 6 years old, ‘Keep your clothes on online,’” Mr. Halpert said. “But they need to.

Minecraft, said it planned to release software early next year that could recognize some forms of grooming and sextortion. The company said it would offer the software to other tech businesses free of charge

a 26-year-old Ohio man was charged with sexual exploitation after claiming to be 13 on Yubo and luring a 12-year-old girl, the authorities said

But the solution many game developers and online safety experts return to is that parents need to know what their children are playing, and that children need to know what tools are available to them. Sometimes that means blocking users and shutting off chat functions, and sometimes it means monitoring the games as they are being played. “‘Literacy’ is the word I say a billion times a day

how you cooperate on video game tasks is a pretty good indicator on how you will cope with real-life challenges

Games will break out of two-dimensional screens and into rooms, either through VR or AR, or through new combinations of TV and tablets. It’s possible that in twenty years, the idea of sitting down and just watching a narrative drama will seem outdated and anachronistic

video games remain astoundingly good value. A big mainstream release like Witcher 3 or Fifa 2017 will cost around £50 on console and less on PC, but they can provide hundreds of hours of entertainment

Video games have become important testbeds for artificial intelligence research

it’s a way of meeting with your children in a domain they enjoy and feel comfortable. It lets them take the lead; it lets them show you stuff

it is time to see video games alongside – and equal to – books, television and cinema as a popular imaginative medium. It is OK to play.

teachers have to give students work that demands critical thinking, problem solving, and that they expect a high standard for communication skills and collaboration skills. And the digital portfolio provides students with an opportunity to show mastery. And also—this is very important—to show progress over time.

the skills you need to succeed in a competitive academic environment bear absolutely no relationship to the skills you need to succeed in an innovation economy.

in fact the real world is evidence-based, not merely data driven. And a digital portfolio can be one of the best forms of evidence of competency and accomplishments.

the effectiveness of learning is determined primarily by the way the medium is used and by the quality of the instruction accompanying that use

The crucial factor for learning improvement is to make sure that you do not replace the teacher as the instrument of instruction, allowing computers to do what teachers would normally do, but instead use computers to supplement and amplify what the teacher does

the use of both e-learning and contact education—which is known as blended learning—produces better results than lessons given without technolog

the medium does not influence the learning

the medium seldom influences teaching, learning, and education, nor is it likely that one single medium will ever be the best one for all situations

students do not naturally make extensive use of many of the newest technologies, such as blogs, wikis, and virtual worlds

the main reasons young people use technology. These reasons are mainly social

Digital natives! Whenever the question of digital innovation in education is discussed, this is a term that immediately comes to the surface. But it should be avoided. Even the person who coined the term digital natives, Marc Prensky, admitted in his most recent book, Brain Gain, that the term is now obsolete.2

Prensky’s coining of this term—and its counterpart for people who are not digitally native—was not based on research into this generation, but rather created by rationalizing phenomena that he had observed

The students use a large quantity and variety of technologies for communicating, learning, staying connected with their friends, and engaging with the world around them. But they are using them primarily for “personal empowerment and entertainment

university students do not really have a deep knowledge of technology, and what knowledge they do have is often limited to basic Microsoft Office skills (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), emailing, text messaging, Facebook, and surfing the Internet

There is simply no experimental evidence to show that living with new technologies fundamentally changes brain organization in a way that affects one’s ability to focus. Of course, the brain changes any time we form a memory or learn a new skill, but new skills build on our existing capacities without fundamentally changing them. We will no more lose our ability to pay attention than we will lose our ability to listen, see or speak.

Note that many of these studies examined the influence of television rather than the influence of interactive technology, such as smartphones and social media

when people think that young people today read less, it’s not about reading online content or text messages, it’s about reading book

young people are still doing a lot of reading, and these statistics make clear that many of them are reading for pleasure. However, we need to be careful about making too many sweeping assertions, since the reading figures in many countries are falling. Even so, we know that reading continues to be important: both reading by young people themselves and parents reading to their childre

Academics, public servants and other stakeholders alike need to recognise that plugging in a few terms of interest into a search engine will give an inherently skewed view of the actual state of the field

Academics, public servants and other stakeholders alike need to recognise that plugging in a few terms of interest into a search engine will give an inherently skewed view of the actual state of the field

these factors aren’t just focused on debates around the effects of technology – they speak to wider debates around science and evidence-based policy

Very recent evidence, that might use much better quality data or methods but that has not received much coverage, will not be featured. Yet one piece of high quality evidence might be worth 500 pieces of low quality evidence that populate the search output.

In 21st century life, finding evidence is not the most important skill anymore. Instead, it is recognising which evidence should be considered and which should be ignored, based on objective markers of quality.

Until this is addressed, moral entrepreneurs and doomsayers will dominate discourse with dire yet never fully substantiated claims

we need to be wary of any question which frames screen time as a simple number – questions like ‘how much screen time we should be engaging in?’, or ‘should we impose limits or bans on screen use?’ oversimplify a very complex concept to the point of becoming meaningless.

Can we really blame kids for being so taken by Fortnite? The game itself—a combination of army guys, building forts, and king-of-the-hill battles—would have taken place with sticks or toy guns in the vacant lots or wooded strands that are increasingly designed out of today’s suburban neighborhoods

look beyond the immediate content of the game (its characters and themes), and focus more intently on what kids are doing with it

Although there are no established links between games and violence, there are some obvious connections between gaming too much and wider problems

Rather than focusing on what games kids are playing, we should attend more to who they are meeting and gaming with online, what type of talk they are engaged in, and what kinds of groups they are becoming a part of