We started this report to assess the use of digital tools and provide a road map for the work of the Reporters’ Lab at Duke University’s DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy. Along the way, we discovered that despite all the hype we’ve heard in the past five or 10 years, there is still…
The brain was not designed for reading. There are no genes for reading like there are for language or vision. But spurred by the emergence of Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Phoenician alphabet, Chinese paper and, finally, the Gutenberg press, the brain has adapted to read. Before the Internet, the brain read mostly in linear ways…
Great article featuring the little girl from the 1981 Lego ad. What’s the problem with girl LEGOs? Why is everyone against pink? ask many parents. I’ll let Rachel Giordano answer that question: “Because gender segmenting toys interferes with a child’s own creative expression. I know that how I played as a girl shaped who I…
[C]hildren play to get oxygen, to understand hierarchy, to achieve mastery at a skill, and to socialize. The patterns were simplified into four categories: under the radar, hierarchy, mastery, and social play. —LEGO turned itself around by analyzing overbearing parents – Quartz. Similar:The Ascent #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 9) Odo and Quark bicker…
I ask my students to contextualize links with informative text, rather than hype. Puppies! Schadenfreude! Thinly veiled primal urges! If you aren’t weeping angry tears by the 3rd paragraph, a gargoyle has your soul! Prove your cleverness and sensitivity by sharing this link! Also so you can find this article again! Link traffic! Earlier this…
This author is probably overthinking things, but I myself have been known to overthink musicals, so this is worth blogging. It turns out that Elsa is wrong — unleashing her powers in this particular manner brings disaster on the people she was trying to spare (though of course she also wants to flee their judgment,…
Have you ever stopped to think about what you believe about yourself as a writer? Have you ever considered what you believe about the work you produce? Your beliefs run the show, usually subconsciously. And if they’re limiting or negative beliefs, they’ll stop that show dead in its tracks. You believe certain theories about why…
Swanson School signed up to the study by AUT and Otago University just over two years ago, with the aim of encouraging active play. However, the school took the experiment a step further by abandoning the rules completely, much to the horror of some teachers at the time, he said.When the university study wrapped up…
Similar:The Ascent #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 9) Odo and Quark bicker their way up …Things Past #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 8) Odo confronts his reputation as a…Trials and Tribble-ations #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 6) Trivial Time Travel…Couples in successful relationships always use these 6 phrases: ‘You’ll grow stronger both…Students…
So what is it that makes us memorize less now than anytime in history ? Is digital media and internet technologies have anything to the with recess of the abilities of our memories? To answer part of these questions. I invite you to check out the visual below. While the visual covers only the impact…
Tasked with creating “a piece of art that would reveal something unseen” as part of a pre-college fine arts program, Ziebell approached 29 strangers on the University of Michigan’s campus, handed them a pen and half a sheet of paper, and asked them, on the spot, to draw a map of the world. Ziebell, who…
Tell yourself, I am rejecting these thoughts about school because they’re not productive. I’m choosing to replace them with the thought that when Monday morning comes, I can trust myself to know what to do, so I don’t need to think about it right now. Then distract yourself by doing something more enjoyable, and dismiss…
Nothing to do with Christmas… just thinking about the upcoming group projects due in my online J-Term course. I should also probably re-read some Dale Carnegie, which I do every few years. Teams need conflict to function effectively. Conflict allows the team to come to terms with difficult situations, to synthesize diverse perspectives, and to…
The passing agonies of the everyday are shared quickly and easily — texts about a disappointing grade, photos of a roommate’s overflowing garbage, tweets about the heat in a dorm room. The instantaneous nature of the complaints can give the impression that only an immediate solution will do. And some students relying on their phones,…
What do Peskin and Astington recommend for fostering constructive learning? Reading fiction. “Dramatic tension in stories is created when the various characters have disparate knowledge with regard to the action. This may be through error: The reader knows that Romeo does not know that Juliet lies drugged, not dead. Or it may be through deception:…
“I’m bored,” is something my daughter knows NOT to say around me. If she does, I will look into her big brown eyes with my most sincere fake paternal concern, and say, “Honey, you are a talented, intelligent, wonderful kid with so many opportunities. You have no reason to think people find you boring.” She…
The article-as-numbered-list has several features that make it inherently captivating: the headline catches our eye in a stream of content; it positions its subject within a preëxisting category and classification system, like “talented animals”; it spatially organizes the information; and it promises a story that’s finite, whose length has been quantified upfront. Together, these create…
My daughter spends a lot of time with her theater friends, who thrive on community and love giving and getting attention. Every so often she reports being puzzled by kids who don’t respond well to what she intends as overtures of friendship. Even kids who, as far as I can tell, are confident and outgoing,…
Neil Gaiman tells us why books matter: When you watch TV or see a film, you are looking at things happening to other people. Prose fiction is something you build up from 26 letters and a handful of punctuation marks, and you, and you alone, using your imagination, create a world and people it and…
One household notifies the authorities that their son will no longer be participating in state-mandated high-stakes testing, citing the impact it has on the child. Here is an excerpt from the letter, as published by Education Roundtable. Students – who mature at vastly different paces – should not ever be measured by a mass-produced blunt…