SJR Teacher/Learners

at what age should you buy your child a cellphone? And when you do buy that first phone, what kind should it be?

There is no age that suits all children, developmental psychologists and child safety experts say.

buying any kind of phone with Web access essentially allows their children unsupervised access to content and tools, like social networking and videos, that they may forbid on the home computer

So, how do you provide social satisfaction to children while keeping them safe?

A very useful e-book, understandably a little biased into Microsoft’s tools, particularly Bing, full of good references to critical thinking resources, accompanied with a vast selection of links to related sites.

NEW forms of media have always caused moral panics: the printing press, newspapers, paperbacks and television were all once denounced as threats to their consumers’ brainpower and moral fiber.

Experience does not revamp the basic information-processing capacities of the brain. Speed-reading programs have long claimed to do just that, but the verdict was rendered by Woody Allen after he read “War and Peace” in one sitting: “It was about Russia.” Genuine multitasking, too, has been exposed as a myth, not just by laboratory studies but by the familiar sight of an S.U.V. undulating between lanes as the driver cuts deals on his cellphone.

And to encourage intellectual depth, don’t rail at PowerPoint or Google. It’s not as if habits of deep reflection, thorough research and rigorous reasoning ever came naturally to people. They must be acquired in special institutions, which we call universities, and maintained with constant upkeep, which we call analysis, criticism and debate.

We're in the state once described by that great scholar of cyberspace, Manuel Castells, as "informed bewilderment".

The idea is that our short-term memory can only hold between five and nine "chunks" of information at any given moment (here a chunk is defined as a "meaningful unit"). So, when trying to decide how many big ideas about the internet would be meaningful for most readers, it seemed sensible to settle for a magical total of nine. So here they are.

On a scale of one to five! You have only to ask the questions to realise the fatuity of the idea. Printing did indeed have all of these effects, but there was no way that anyone in 1472, in Mainz (or anywhere else for that matter) could have known how profound its impact would be.

"Frequent technology users place considerably more emphasis on developing students' 21st century skills--specifically, skills in accountability, collaboration, communication, creativity, critical thinking, ethics, global awareness, innovation, leadership, problem solving, productivity and self-direction.

A Twitteraholic’s Guide to tweets, hashtags, and all things Twitter

Foursquare is a smartphone app that is quickly becoming one of the most popular and useful geo-networking tools for general social networking and for promoting business. Unlike other social networks, Foursquare encourages people to get out and enjoy their city by sharing check-ins, tips and to-dos while earning points and badges as they explore new venues and favorite hang-outs.