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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Sean McHugh

Sean McHugh

Teachers have been let down by a decade of inaction on digital technologies - 0 views

  • A general lack of preparedness for digital technology in England has left many children without the tools they need to access and benefit from remote learning.
  • the coalition government of 2010 brought in policies that increasingly neglected the role of digital technologies in education. It began with the closure of the British Educational and Communications Technology Agency in 2011.
  • However, all reference to the use of digital technologies for teaching and learning were removed from the 2010 Teacher Standards which trainees need to demonstrate to gain Qualified Teacher Status in England
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  • different attitudes towards or ways of using digital technology, can have an impact on the effectiveness of teaching and learning. But many trainee teachers are left to develop this understanding by chance.
  • Teachers need to be supported by policy and research to help them develop expert knowledge on the use of digital technologies
  • a lack of detailed explanations provided to teachers “as to how, or why, using tablets within certain activities can improve learning”.
Sean McHugh

'How my pupils' writing struggles were transformed' | Tes - 0 views

  • with schools moving towards 1:1 devices in the classroom – assistive technology for writing is no longer inaccessible or convoluted. It is, in fact, readily available, accurate and remarkably intuitive
  • The results have been truly astounding. Pupils that would work hard to scrawl one or two lines of text in a 45-minute writing session are now producing two paragraphs of well structured writing in 10 minutes.
  • with the mechanics of writing greatly reduced, there is far more time for pupils to spend on word choice, phrasing and editing their work
Sean McHugh

What Happens to Your Eyes When You Stare at Screens All Day - 0 views

  • Blue light from screens isn’t ruining your eyesThere’s a rumor that the blue light from smartphones (or other screens) can ruin your vision, perhaps even leading to blindness, but it’s not backed up by evidence. “The amount of light coming from a computer has never been demonstrated to cause any eye disease,” the American Academy of Opththalmology states in an article on their website recommending against blue-light-blocking glasses
  • Blue light-blocking filters also don’t block very much blue light; they just reduce it a tiny bit. (Experts have pointed out that you could get the same effect by holding your screen one inch farther away from your face
  • When you’re spending time in front of screens—any kind—the rule of thumb for eye health is the “20-20-20” rule. Every 20 minutes, take a 20-second break to look at something 20 feet away
Sean McHugh

Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking - Quillette - 0 views

  • critical thinking is not a skill that can be improved through practice—like a golf swing—nor is it a “general” capability. Instead, it is an abstract description of what humans can do as a result amassing a wealth of underpinning knowledge and skills relevant to the particular context in which thinking is to be deployed
  • young children are capable of thinking critically about subjects they know a great deal about, whereas trained scientists can fail to think critically in areas where they are less knowledgeable
  • not all knowledge is created equal. We need to differentiate between knowledge and information. Much of the information stored on the Internet is pictures of kittens or videos of people singing sea shanties. This can keep increasing exponentially without any need for school children to become acquainted with it
Sean McHugh

The Age of Ignorance | HuffPost - 0 views

  • With the Internet as its promulgating agency, and social media exploiting the vulnerabilities, ignorance has become pandemic.
  • at no time in history has the public become so susceptible to the spread of willful ignorance, intentionally deceitful lies, and blatant stupidity.
  • Unexpectedly, it appears, the tsunami-like exponential explosion of information has devolved into the Age of Ignorance.
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  • The Internet is both a blessing and a curse. Fathomless amounts of data are near-instantaneously available to all with access to computers. Except in relatively closed societies, there are few established boundaries on that vast information sump. The eminently glaring problems are lack of both provenance and accountability
  • the need to be first almost always trumps the need to be accurate and often entertainment value ranks higher than importance. Their financial motives for such reporting are patently obvious
  • No longer do most American students feel required to learn detailed material as vast quantities of information is instantly available via these search engines. For many students there is no need to personally study anything as reports on any topic can be acquired and regurgitated with ease. Missing in this educational process is the development of the mental agility to engage in any in-depth analysis
  • Assuming the ignorance of the majority of the audience, commentators and agenda-driven pundits alike often attempt to reduce extremely complex issues to a point of absurdity
  • Quotes comprised from whole cloth
  • Use of partial truths then departing into falsehood
  • Denial of facts is a common practice in willful ignorance
    • Sean McHugh
       
      This is the dark face/blatant misappropriation of Popper's falsification.
  • Prevalent among the nefarious tactics are some of the following: - The use of questions as if a statement of fact
  • Dishonorably executed, intentional misrepresentation of facts, coupled with the naïve replication of those statements by the gullible, will continue to proliferate
Sean McHugh

Opinion | Don't Go Down the Rabbit Hole - The New York Times - 0 views

  • the way we’re taught from a young age to evaluate and think critically about information is fundamentally flawed and out of step with the chaos of the current internet.
  • It’s often counterproductive to engage directly with content from an unknown source, and people can be led astray by false information
  • the best way to learn about a source of information is to leave it and look elsewhere, a concept called lateral reading.
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  • Whenever you give your attention to a bad actor, you allow them to steal your attention from better treatments of an issue, and give them the opportunity to warp your perspective
  • Internet users need to learn that our attention is a scarce commodity that is to be spent wisely
  • four simple principles:1. Stop.2. Investigate the source.3. Find better coverage.4. Trace claims, quotes and media to the original context.Otherwise known as SIFT.
  • The question we want students asking is: Is this a good source for this purpose, or could I find something better relatively quickly
  • We’ve been trained to think that Googling or just checking one resource we trust is almost like cheating,” he said. “But when people search Google, the best results may not always be first, but the good information is usually near the top
  • The students are confused when I tell them to try and trace something down with a quick Wikipedia search, because they’ve been told not to do it,” she said. “Not for research papers, but if you’re trying to find out if a site is legitimate or if somebody has a history as a conspiracy theorist and you show them how to follow the page’s citation, it’s quick and effective, which means it’s more likely to be used
  • Use Wikipedia for quick guidance! Spend less time torturing yourself with complex primary sources
  • instill a reflex that asks if something is worth one’s time and attention and to turn away if not
Sean McHugh

Being a Better Online Reader | The New Yorker - 0 views

  • there’s still no longitudinal data about digital reading. As she put it, “We’re in a place of apprehension rather than comprehension.” And it’s quite possible that the apprehension is misplaced: perhaps digital reading isn’t worse so much as different than print reading
  • they also need different sorts of training to excel at each medium. The online world, she argues, may require students to exercise much greater self-control than a physical book. “In reading on paper, you may have to monitor yourself once, to actually pick up the book,” she says. “On the Internet, that monitoring and self-regulation cycle happens again and again.
  • Maybe the decline of deep reading isn’t due to reading skill atrophy but to the need to develop a very different sort of skill, that of teaching yourself to focus your attention
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  • The digital deficit, they suggest, isn’t a result of the medium as such but rather of a failure of self-knowledge and self-control: we don’t realize that digital comprehension may take just as much time as reading a book
  • It wasn’t the screen that disrupted the fuller synthesis of deep reading; it was the allure of multitasking on the Internet and a failure to properly mitigate its impact
  • some data suggest that, in certain environments and on certain types of tasks, we can read equally well in any format
  • We need to be aware of the effects of deeper digital immersion, Wolf says, but we should be equally cautious when we draw causal arrows or place blame without adequate longitudinal research
  • Deep-reading skills, Wolf points out, may not be emphasized in schools that conform to the Common Core, for instance, and need to meet certain test-taking reading targets that emphasize gist at the expense of depth. “Physical, tangible books give children a lot of time,” she says. “And the digital milieu speeds everything up. So we need to do things much more slowly and gradually than we are.” Not only should digital reading be introduced more slowly into the curriculum; it also should be integrated with the more immersive reading skills that deeper comprehension requires.
  • Wolf is optimistic that we can learn to navigate online reading just as deeply as we once did print—if we go about it with the necessary thoughtfulness.
Sean McHugh

Our new research shows that reading both in print and on screens benefits children's li... - 0 views

  • Our new research into digital reading has found that young people who are the most engaged with reading are more likely to read both on paper and on screen than their peers who have low engagement with reading
  • Pupils eligible for free school meals and boys with the lowest levels of reading engagement are two of the groups most likely to benefit from using digital formats
  • young people who read above the level expected for their age read fiction both in print and on screen
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  • Digital reading is becoming an increasingly important part of children’s literacy lives. It gives children new and exciting ways to access a wide range of reading materials and is particularly effective at getting disengaged groups of children excited about reading
Sean McHugh

Why the debate on reading print versus digital books needs to change - Parenting for a ... - 0 views

  • There is a concern in some quarters that children’s activities with screens will replace their reading of books. There is a concern that the habit of skimming digital texts will carry over to reading on paper. These are valid concerns but they are not substantiated by research and they omit the important role of context and individual readers in driving change.
  • There could be a difference because of the way gains were measured (methodological reasons) and/or because of how gains were defined (theoretical reasons).
  • The calibration process is not dependent on the digital medium but on the readers’ preference
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  • 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
  • Recent research by the National Literacy Trust in the UK shows that it is not the reading medium but readers’ motivation that explains their reading habits: skilled readers read a lot and well both on paper and screen.
  • 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
Sean McHugh

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/07/us/video-games-child-sex-abuse.html - 0 views

  • Sexual predators and other bad actors have found an easy access point into the lives of young people: They are meeting them online through multiplayer video games and chat apps
  • Games are a common target, but predators are also finding many victims on social platforms like Instagram
  • Six years ago, a little over 50 reports of the crimes, commonly known as “sextortion,” were referred to the federally designated clearinghouse in suburban Washington that tracks online child sexual abuse. Last year, the center received over 1,500
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      Most likely migrating from other haunts like playgrounds and shopping malls.
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  • Almost every single teenage boy in America — 97 percent — plays video games, while about 83 percent of girls do
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      And you can bet those percentages are equal or favouring girls when it comes to chat.
  • 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
    • Sean McHugh
       
      I guess most systems are focused on the opposite, kids pretending they are adults...
  • 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
  • parents should react carefully when their children report encounters with online predators. Punishing the children — no more video games or social media, for example — could backfire by pushing them into even more dangerous places for their online activity.
Sean McHugh

expert reaction to study on screen use and white brain matter in children | Science Med... - 0 views

  • the study has a number of features that reduce confidence in the robustness of the findings.
  • The review of prior literature is unbalanced to emphasise adverse effects of screen time and ignore conflicting studies
  • too small to give reliable estimates of effects of screen time
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  • the scale does not distinguish between TV and other types of screen use
  • no child had a vocabulary score in the impaired range
  • misleading
  • The study was not pre-registered, making it hard to know how many analyses were conducted but not reported
  • nothing is said about predicted associations between the brain measures and the language measures
    • Sean McHugh
       
      This highlights the difference between neuroscience and cognitive science, specifically indicators about changes in brain tissue mean nothing unless they are accompanied by behavioural indicators that support these observations. In the case of this study the children were found to have language development that was more advanced than would be expected for their age regardless of the brain scans.
  • The study does not provide credible evidence of an adverse effect of screen time on child development, but could serve to stoke anxiety in parents who may worry that they have damaged their child’s brain by allowing access to TV, phones or tablets
  • an association between screen time and brain wiring says nothing about causation: you can speculate that an apparent delay in brain development might be caused by high screen time but it is equally possible that lower brain developmental status increases screen time
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