Multitasking may harm the social development of tweenage girls, Stanford researchers say When it comes to media use, the researchers' guidance: All things in moderation. (Photo: L.A. Cicero) Stanford Report, January 25, 2012 Too much screen time can be detrimental to girls 8 to 12 years old, but there is a surprisingly straightforward alternative for greater social wellness. By Dan Stober Steve Fyffe The researchers asked 3,461 girls, ages 8 to 12, about their electronic diversions and their social and emotional lives. Tweenage girls who spend endless hours watching videos and multitasking with digital devices tend to be less successful with social and emotional development, according to Stanford researchers. But these unwanted effects might be warded off with something as simple as face-to-face conversations with other people. The researchers, headed by education professor Roy Pea and Clifford Nass, a professor of communication, surveyed 3,461 girls, ages 8 to 12, about their electronic diversions and their social and emotional lives. A time for social development Advice for kids
The Positive and Negative Effects of Video Games - Raise Smart Kid Is playing video games good or bad for you? It can be both. Video games are frowned upon by parents as time-wasters, and worse, some education experts think that these games corrupt the brain. Playing violent video games are easily blamed by the media and some experts as the reason why some young people become violent or commit extreme anti-social behavior. “Video games change your brain,” according to University of Wisconsin psychologist C. Below are the good and bad effects of video games – their benefits and disadvantages, according to researchers and child experts: The Benefits: Positive Effects of Video Games When your child plays video games, it gives his brain a real workout. Following instructionsProblem solving and logic – When a child plays a game such as The Incredible Machine, Angry Birds or Cut The Rope, he trains his brain to come up with creative ways to solve puzzles and other problems in short burstsHand-eye coordination, fine motor and spatial skills. Click here for:
4 technology trends every librarian needs to know | Facet Publishing About these ads Share this: Like this: Related The Top Technologies Every Librarian Needs to KnowIn "Technology" A guide to Scoop.it and other tools for curating contentIn "Marketing" Reflecting on the future of academic and public librariesIn "Academic libraries" Leave a Reply Follow Get every new post delivered to your Inbox. Join 2,636 other followers Build a website with WordPress.com %d bloggers like this: The internet isn’t making us stupid. It’s making us humble. You are sitting across from a friend who asks if you know the capital of Canada. How does your willingness to answer this question change if you have access to the Internet (e.g., via the smartphone in your pocket) or not (e.g., you are hiking in the wilderness with no Internet access)? That's the question psychologists at the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo pondered in a paper published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition. In a series of experiments, they asked participants trivia questions ranging in difficulty from, "What is the name of a dried grape?" to, "Who was the first ruler of the Holy Roman Empire?" When participants had access to the internet, they were less likely to say, "I know the answer." It's a good illustration of just how fundamentally the internet has changed how we interact with our own minds. Is the internet really making us dumber? Knowledge has always been distributed across members of our communities.
Markers of Quality: The Role of Librarians in Everyday Life Information Literacy This all started when my teenage son reported that Adam Sandler has Ebola. He saw it trending on Facebook. I sighed inwardly and asked if he had looked at the source of the information. Being the son of a librarian he quickly said: “Yes! CNN.com.” Of course, Adam Sandler did not really have Ebola, and CNN wasn’t reporting that he did. The Adam Sandler Ebola scare threw me for a loop. I devised some interesting everyday-life research questions, then set about trying to answer them: I investigated whether red wine has health advantages, whether dogs exhibit some rudimentary form of empathy, and the veracity of user review sites for restaurants, travel, books, and other products. There were many surprises. As I traversed the information landscape I was glad to be supported by ACRL’s new Framework for Information Literacy. Search Psychology Information heuristics are shortcuts we all use when we search for information. A major mess Marking new territory
From WhatsApp to Wind in the Willows: the digital v print debate Sally Perry ‘All reading can be done on iPads’ At the ATL teachers’ union conference earlier this month the third motion on the final day called for an end to cuts and closures in school libraries. While all the implied reasons for the cuts could be challenged – they generally concerned priorities in space and funding – one justification, quoted in the press release and picked up by the media, stood out: ‘The new head has decided a library is no longer needed so is planning to get rid of it as all reading can be done on iPads’. With World Book Night being celebrated on Saturday 23 April (also the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death), this is perhaps a good moment to reflect on what we know about the reading habits of the younger generations. However, an understanding of the current position remains elusive. Research is being undertaken from a variety of perspectives. Young people themselves seem to have a surprising commitment to print.
We Should Be Teaching Infographics A couple decades ago or so USA Today did something monumental in the world of news: they made information much more visual. In an effort to boost readership (and sales) they did something that, at the time, seemed entirely radical: increase the size of the images to make the news much more picture-heavy. Reduce textual content, in other words, and increase visualization. It seemed ridiculous: reduce the amount of news in order to sell the news. Clearly, the effects are obvious. 20 years later, and our news is so visualized you probably can’t imagine it any other way. Recently, in juxtaposition with the image, infographics have resurfaced (they’ve been around forever, but haven’t really picked up steam in the media until the last decade or so). So what are they? The crazy thing is, as pervasive as they are, I wonder: why aren’t we teaching infographics in school? Several writers and researchers have addressed the effectiveness of infographics. Help spread visual literacy.
Teachers: Is your school library having an impact on teaching and learning? 4 ways school librarians can effect change. This brilliant diagram demonstrates clearly how a school librarian can make an impact on teaching and learning in schools, but how can you make this happen in your school? Whether you are a librarian or teacher you can all be responsible for making change. Librarians need to start talking about what they can do and teachers need to be asking what is my librarian doing for me. What kind of school librarian do you have? check out bookstidy shelvescontrole crowds of students at lunch and break timerun the AR reading scheme or any other reading scheme How do your teachers use the school library? send students who have been excluded from classsend sick students to sit in the librarybring groups of students when they have a cover lessonRequest books but never use the library themselves What would your librarian like to be doing? Working alongside teachers - planning and teaching supporting English curriculum for literacysupporting information and digital literacy across the whole school 1. 2. 3.
Download 464 Free Art Books from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Open Culture You could pay $118 on Amazon for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s catalog The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry. Or you could pay $0 to download it at MetPublications, the site offering “five decades of Met Museum publications on art history available to read, download, and/or search for free.” If that strikes you as an obvious choice, prepare to spend some serious time browsing MetPublications’ collection of free art books and catalogs. You may remember that we featured the site a few years ago, back when it offered 397 whole books free for the reading, including American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, 1885–1915; Leonardo da Vinci: Anatomical Drawings from the Royal Library; and Wisdom Embodied: Chinese Buddhist and Daoist Sculpture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Related Content: Download Over 250 Free Art Books From the Getty Museum The Guggenheim Puts 109 Free Modern Art Books Online