"Are teenagers losing their social skills? Parents and pundits seem to think so. Teens spend so much time online, we're told, that they're no longer able to handle the messy, intimate task of hanging out face-to-face. "After school, my son is on Facebook with his friends. If it isn't online, it isn't real to him," one mother recently told me in a panic. "Everything is virtual!""
"Twitter is turning out to be the most useful for teaching resources; it was cited by 66 percent of participants. Pinterest came in second at 38 percent. LinkedIn, taglined as the "world's largest professional network," is referenced by a mere 11 percent"
Gaming, wikis, blogs, social media, interactive polls and QR codes: just some of the technologies that teachers are bringing into the classroom. The dizzying pace of tech evolutions offers some challenges as teachers and administrators race to keep up with the latest tools.
WikiBrains is a growing community of creative people from all walks of life who embrace associative thinking to get inspired and out of the box. You may associate "Freud" to "Psychology", then someone across the globe links it to "Libido", another one to "Subconscious", and another one to "Dreams" and so on ad infinitum with ever-expanding branches and related content. It is a social, fun and smart space where ideas roam free and multiply. Welcome to WikiBrains: The Worlds Largest Brainstorm.
"A survey of 2,462 Advanced Placement (AP) and National Writing Project (NWP) teachers finds that digital technologies are shaping student writing in myriad ways and have also become helpful tools for teaching writing to middle and high school students. These teachers see the internet and digital technologies such as social networking sites, cell phones and texting, generally facilitating teens' personal expression and creativity, broadening the audience for their written material, and encouraging teens to write more often in more formats than may have been the case in prior generations. At the same time, they describe the unique challenges of teaching writing in the digital age, including the "creep" of informal style into formal writing assignments and the need to better educate students about issues such as plagiarism and fair use"
"Distraction is the dominant currency in our digitally focused culture. I personally find it hard to concentrate when being plugged on particularly when the task I am working on is so important that it requires a high degree of mindful consciousness like for instance scribbling few pages on my thesis, writing a journal article, doing a literature review...etc. Anytime I embark on one of these tasks I always make sure to turn off WiFi and put my phone on flight mode. My brain can't handle the distraction coming off these devices."