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“For all the advances in computer science, we still don’t have a computer that can learn as humans do, cumulatively, over the long term,”

The Never-Ending Language Learning system, or NELL, has made an impressive showing so far. NELL scans hundreds of millions of Web pages for text patterns

NELL is one project in a widening field of research and investment aimed at enabling computers to better understand the meaning of language.

Elizabeth Delmatoff started a pilot social media program in her Portland, Oregon classroom, 20% of students school-wide were completing extra assignments for no credit, grades had gone up more than 50%

Although Delmatoff is adamant that there’s no way to pin her class’s increased academic success specifically to the pilot program, it’s hard to say that it didn’t play a part in the more than 50% grade increase.

Kidblog.org is one of many free tools that allow teachers to control an online environment while still benefiting from social media. Delmatoff managed her social media class without a budget by using free tools like Edmodo and Edublogs.

Our experience suggests a different approach, one we call Building New Clubhouses. Instead of trying to fit people into existing engineering cultures, it may be more constructive to try to spark and support new cultures, to build new clubhouses. Our experiences have led us to believe that the problem is not so much that communities are prejudiced or exclusive but that they're limited in breadth--both intellectually and culturally. Some of the most revealing research in diversity in STEM found that women and other minorities don't join STEM communities not because they are intimidated or unqualified but rather because they're simply uninterested in these disciplines. One of our current research goals is thus to question traditional disciplinary boundaries and to expand disciplines to make room for more diverse interests and passions. To show, for example, that it is possible to build complex, innovative, technological artifacts that are colorful, soft, and beautiful. We want to provide alternative pathways to the rich intellectual possibilities of computation and engineering. We hope that our research shows that disciplines can grow both technically and culturally when we re-envision and re-contextualize them. When we build new clubhouses, new, surprising, and valuable things happen. As our findings on shared LilyPad projects seem to support, a new female-dominated electrical engineering/computer science community may emerge.

“I constantly see kids playing through levels, and they see this amazing trap, and they want to create it in game level,” Li recently told Spotlight. “And they will spend time figuring out how to make them—how to apply joints and motors to these same structures so [they] can create exactly the same thing that [they] saw in the game. Kids are willing to spend time learning themselves.”

And for both Microsoft and Google, securing agreements from states and school districts is important, not just to boost their customer base, but to establish that base with young students, who will grow up learning and working with a particular set of technology tools, becoming perhaps, loyal Microsoft or Google users.

when we log onto Facebook, we’re buying into a collective illusion. Facebook, we all know, is a colossal waste of time. It’s easy to lose hours trolling through friends’ pages, being voyeurs into other people’s lives. And it’s easy to forget that they, like us, are inventing themselves online, creating a permanent record that isn’t really true.

The world, we are told, is in the midst of a revolution. The new tools of social media have reinvented social activism. With Facebook and Twitter and the like, the traditional relationship between political authority and popular will has been upended, making it easier for the powerless to collaborate, coördinate, and give voice to their concerns.

Fifty years after one of the most extraordinary episodes of social upheaval in American history, we seem to have forgotten what activism is.G

The platforms of social media are built around weak ties. Twitter is a way of following (or being followed by) people you may never have met. Facebook is a tool for efficiently managing your acquaintances, for keeping up with the people you would not otherwise be able to stay in touch with.