EdTech

a lot of such arguments employ the sexy word "brain" and so sound scientifically objective, but they are really socio-cultural arguments

So there needs to be a further demonstration that the "deep-reading brain" is something worth valuing. And this is never going to be a (neuro)scientific argument; it's a cultural argument.

This kind of paternalistic fatalism seems ably refuted by sales of Young Adult blockbusters

we see little to be concerned about with the game

Granted, kids’ enthusiasm for Fortnite can be a little much, but we are old enough to remember Garbage Pail kids and have played Pokémon.

one of the best things educators can do is bystander training. That is, we can teach kids appropriate ways to respond when they see distrustful, harassing, or hateful behavior.

a few guidelines to help understand how the study’s findings can be of practical use to students, and teachers who are looking to improve digital literacy in their classrooms

The internet has democratised access to information but in so doing has opened the floodgates to misinformation, fake news, and rank propaganda masquerading as dispassionate analysis.

read laterally, leaving a site after a quick scan and opening up new browser tabs in order to judge the credibility of the original site

At what point does a leisure activity turn into an addiction?

In the modern developed world, the dominant leisure activity is watching television, followed by other leisure activities like sports and entertaining friends. There’s no evidence that game playing is more dangerous than these other leisure activities

People watch television for far more time than they play video games. In the U.S., people watch an average of 4.5 hours of TV every day. That’s more time than they spend reading, relaxing, socializing, participating in sports, playing digital games and using computers – combined.

Students need technology that will help them meet their existing learning goals. They don’t need new learning goals that rely on a fancy new technology tool the coach or teacher wants to use.

The claim that the students who didn’t use tablets performed better academically is based upon exam scores, which were only one-third of a standard deviation higher for the non-tablet crowd than the others. Some might see this as a large difference; I do not, and I doubt a majority of statisticians would either. But hey–why let the fact that this was a superficial study conducted with a small sample size of atypical students examining only one type of technology deter you from claiming that all technology in the classroom is bad? This is what people in the psych business call “confirmation bias,” I believe.

no mention of pedagogy at all

They don’t even acknowledge, much less control for, pedagogy.

Well into the nineteenth century, British and American writers, critics and religious leaders regarded novel-reading with a great deal of skepticism.

If our concerns about the enfeebling impact of the Internet and social media aren’t quite as gendered, they’re still grounded in a world view that regards the cultivation of individual morality, intellect, and productivity as a matter of public interest—and that regards shifts in personal media consumption as potentially inimical to the production of smart, informed, and upstanding citizens. But the history of the novel shows that it’s possible for us to move beyond this suspicion—though it took two centuries for novels to move from objects of derision to an accepted part of the modern reader’s diet.

Novel-reading was once regarded as an idle occupation, just as Internet use is now.

several well-worn principles that parents, educators and app developers can use to determine what is truly educational and what is simply masquerading as such

minds-on, not minds-off

actively solving problems and thinking deeply