Mike Crowley said: There can be no question but that technology can provide the potential for isolation, for synthetic relationships, for a sedentary lifestyle, an anxiety-ridden social existence, a failure to focus, concentrate, and engage. But surely this is a worst-case scenario conception of technology without balance, without thoughtful schools, informed, engaged parents? An education...
Category: our changing world
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Schools are supposed to help students master the dominant information landscape of their time
Our new information landscape is digital bits in the ether instead of ink dots on paper. There is no foreseeable future in which we go back to analog. One of schools’ primary tasks is to help students master the dominant information landscape of their time. Schools are knowledge institutions preparing students to do knowledge work....
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New book! Different Schools for a Different World
As some of you may have realized by now, Dean Shareski and I have a new book out. Titled Different Schools for a Different World, it describes 6 key relevancy gaps between today’s schools and what students and society need from them: Information Literacy. If schools are to genuinely prepare graduates to compete in a...
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Some early comments on my new book
TweetShareSharePinClipPocketIf you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to this blog via e-mail or my RSS feed. I also am on Twitter. Thanks for visiting! My new book with Dean Shareski, Different Schools for a Different World, is getting some positive early comments. A sampling is below. Thank you, everyone! 1. Jeff Nelson Different...
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Connectivity versus isolation: Which leads to prosperity?
Thomas Friedman said: We’re going through a change in the “climate” of globalization — going from an interconnected world to an interdependent one, from a world of walls where you build your wealth by hoarding the most resources to a world of webs where you build your wealth by having the most connections to the...
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Before you start bashing the Millennials…
Older generations love to bash the Millennials. But in many ways we are the problem. Here are a few quotes from Huffington Post’s recent article, Generation Screwed: Mention “millennial” to anyone over 40 and the word “entitlement” will come back at you within seconds, our own intergenerational game of Marco Polo. This is what it...
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Digital citizenship lessons aren’t going to crack filter bubbles and echo chambers
C Thi Nguyen said: Jamieson and Cappella’s book is the first empirical study into how echo chambers function. In their analysis, echo chambers work by systematically alienating their members from all outside epistemic sources. Their research centres on Rush Limbaugh, a wildly successful conservative firebrand in the United States, along with Fox News and related...
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Four quick thoughts for higher education faculty
I had the privilege of participating in a conversation today at my university about how (and whether) the digital work done by faculty should count for promotion and tenure. (I also had the opportunity to speak for a few minutes; here are my slides). Here are four thoughts that are spinning around in my brain...
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Don’t ever pay for someone to come tell your organization about ‘generational differences’
Alfie Kohn said: What takes this little game from merely silly to obnoxious is the following rule: You must attribute unflattering adjectives to cohorts younger than your own – even though yours was on the receiving end of similar disparagements not so long ago. Thus, those who came of age in the sixties were written...
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AI software gets a B on a 12th-grade science exam
Calculators. Grammar editors. PhotoMath. Automatic language translation. Some of these mental work helpers (substitutes?) work fabulously. Some of them aren’t quite there… yet. And now we have this: AI technology that can pass a 12th grade science exam. on Wednesday, the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, a prominent lab in Seattle, unveiled a new system that...