Kids' Cognition Is Changing—Education Will Have to Change With It - Technology. This morning, Elon University and the Pew Internet and American Life Project released a report about the cognitive future of the millennial generation. Based on surveys with more than 1,000 thought leaders -- among them danah boyd, Clay Shirky, David Weinberger, and Alexandra Samuel -- the survey asked thinkers to consider how the Internet and its environment are changing, for better or worse, kids' cognitive capabilities. The survey found, overall, what many others already have: that neuroplasticity is, indeed, a thing; that multitasking is, indeed, the new norm; that hyperconnectivity may be leading to a lack of patience and concentration; and that an "always on" ethos may be encouraging a culture of expectation and instant gratification.
It also offers its experts' predictions about what the most-desired life skills (for young people, but ostensibly for everyone else, too) will be in the year 2020. All these skills can be taught. Image: Lia Koltyrina/Shutterstock. PIP_Future_of_Internet_2012_Young_brains_PDF. Tech Digest. Or at least it's making us lazy, opting for shorter words instead of long ones. 73% of us believe that Twitter and text messaging is changing the use of the English language, according to a survey presented in a book by JP Davidson called "Planet Word".
Too bad for "balderdash", as you really don't hear that often enough as it is, but language is evolving, and brevity is becoming a virtue. "Language is always evolving and great descriptive words are being lost", said Davidson, but added that others emerge to take their place. "It's natural with people trying to fit as much information into 140 characters that words are getting shortened and are even becoming redundant as a result.
" Davidson's book is being published as a tie-in with Stephen Fry's new series, also called Planet Word. [via Daily Mirror] Facebook use can lower grades by 20 percent, study says - Technology & science - Tech and gadgets - Back to School. Does the "F" in Facebook stand for an "F" in school? A new study says that college students who are on Facebook while studying or doing homework wind up getting 20 percent lower grades than students who don't have the social networking site in visual range, or even running in the background on their computers or mobile phones. The study, reported in the Daily Mail of Britain, was done by Netherlands psychologist Paul A. Kirschnera of the Centre for Learning Sciences and Technologies at the Open University of the Netherlands, and Aryn C. Karpinskib of Ohio State University. It will be published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.
Kirschnera told the Daily Mail that his team studied 219 U.S. university students between ages 19 and 54, and found that Facebook users had a typical grade point average of 3.06, while "non-users" had an average GPA of 3.82. Among the comments to the story was this one, from "I'moverhere" in Britain: "Believe me, if it isn't Facebook, it's something else. What do you mean you found it on the internet.
Alphabet taught to kids nowadays. Txting_and_standards. A Point of View: Why didn't Harry Potter just use Google? 6 January 2012Last updated at 18:20 Books, not the internet, were a key source for Harry and co In a world that is overwhelmed with ways of accessing information, we must decide what to remember and what to forget, says historian Lisa Jardine. In a recent article about the impact of the internet, New Yorker columnist Adam Gopnik gives a particularly engaging example of the hurtling pace at which the speed of access to information is accelerating. The first Harry Potter book - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - was, he observes, published in June 1997. At a crucial point in the plot, Harry, wrapped in his invisibility cloak, manages to get into the restricted section of the Hogwarts school library in order to scour the books it contains for vital information on the alchemical origins of the philosopher's stone.
Just one year later, in 1998, the founders of Google registered their internet and software company, and the global online search engine was born. How the Internet Gets Inside Us. When the first Harry Potter book appeared, in 1997, it was just a year before the universal search engine Google was launched. And so Hermione Granger, that charming grind, still goes to the Hogwarts library and spends hours and hours working her way through the stacks, finding out what a basilisk is or how to make a love potion. The idea that a wizard in training might have, instead, a magic pad where she could inscribe a name and in half a second have an avalanche of news stories, scholarly articles, books, and images (including images she shouldn’t be looking at) was a Quidditch broom too far.
Now, having been stuck with the library shtick, she has to go on working the stacks in the Harry Potter movies, while the kids who have since come of age nudge their parents. “Why is she doing that?” They whisper. The scale of the transformation is such that an ever-expanding literature has emerged to censure or celebrate it. Even later, full-fledged totalitarian societies didn’t burn books. Actor Ralph Fiennes blames Twitter for dumbing down the English language.
By Daily Mail Reporter Updated: 12:46 GMT, 28 October 2011 It has become the A-lister's social media of choice. But not all celebrities are similarly enamoured with Twitter. Actor Ralph Fiennes has blamed social networking websites such as Twitter for dumbing down the English language. The actor, 48, who does not use Twitter, believes words of more than two syllables are a challenge to some young people.
The change in modern language inspired him to create his modern-day film interpretation of Coriolanus, said Fiennes, currently playing Prospero in The Tempest at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. Dumbed down, Actor and director Ralph Fiennes - condemned social media sites such as Twitter for 'truncating the English language' - seen her with actress Vanessa Redgrave at the BFI London Film Festival screening of new film Coriolanus 'We’re in a world of truncated sentences, soundbites and Twitter,' he said. '[Language] is being eroded — it’s changing.
Texts and Twitter 'spell end for long words' Traditional English words such as ‘balderdash’ and ‘cripes’ are dying out thanks to the texting generation, linguists have claimed. Some 73% of people believe texts and website Twitter have dramatically changed the use of English, with long words falling out of use. The trends were revealed in a poll of 2,000 adults for the launch of JP Davidson’s book Planet Word. The book is a tie-in to Stephen Fry’s BBC2 series of the same name, charting the history of language from early grunts to tweets. The author said: “Language is always evolving and great descriptive words are being lost – but others emerge. “It’s natural with people trying to fit as much information into 140 characters that words are getting shortened and are even becoming redundant as a result.” JP Davidson’s top 15 rarely-used words: 1. What's your favourite long or unusual word to use? Poor memory? Blame Google | Science. Research has shown that search engines such as Google have prompted people to adapt their ability to remember things.
Photograph: Paul Sakuma/AP First it was a search engine. Then it became almost synonymous with the internet. Now Google is a replacement for the ancient human faculty of memory. Research by scientists at Columbia University has found that people are adapting their ability to remember because of the formidable power of search engines such as Google to remember things for them. The research, published in Science magazine, involved a series of experiments. Participants "did not make the effort to remember when they thought they could later look up the trivia statements they had read," the researchers reported. "The results ... suggest 'where' was prioritised in memory, with the advantage going to 'where' when 'what' was forgotten," the researchers said. As a result, we have lower rates of recall of the information itself, and enhanced recall of where and how to access it.
Wikipedia: Scourge of the Academic World? The Partnership for 21st Century Skills. The New Media Literacies. Mr3. Take On Me: Literal Video Version. 156207e. What's the point of handwriting? | Teacher Network Blog | Guardian Professional. Is handwriting a personal piece of art? Photograph: Erhan Dayi / Alamy/Alamy Not so long ago, I found myself shuffling through a couple of old boxes which had lain gathering dust in my parents' house since my teens.
In amongst the debris – posters of Debbie Harry and Kenny Dalglish, yellowing copies of "Roy of the Rovers"- I came across an ageing school notebook, from History to be precise. Flicking through, I found myself amazed at how neat and tidy my teenage self was, displayed in the carefully sketched Egyptian huts and hieroglyphics, and how carefully crafted my handwriting appeared to be. Clearly concerned with impressing my teacher, the writing was perfectly shaped, beautifully presented and, I have to say, hugely impressive.
More importantly, however, it was conclusively, undeniably, irreconcilably mine. While I didn't quite clutch it to my chest, rocking in the foetal position, weeping for days long since lost to me, I saw a little piece of my life at that point.