Over the past decade, academic research has increasingly examined issues of multitasking and distraction as people try to squeeze more activities into their busy lives. Prior to the Internet age, some cognition science research focused on how behavior might be better understood, improved and made more efficient in business, hospital or other high-pressure settings. But as digital technology has become ubiquitous in many people’s daily routines — and as multitasking has become a “lifestyle” of sorts for many younger people — researchers have tried to assess how humans are coping in this highly connected environment and how “chronic multitasking” may diminish our capacity to function effectively.
Top 10 Reasons to Create Little Free Libraries in Your Community by Tammy Mulligan and Clare Landrigan We often support schools and communities with promoting summer reading. We want students to continue their “readerly lives” over the summer. A few years ago, we were researching ideas to get books to students in different communities and…
An appeals court has agreed with an Ohio woman who said her parking citation should be tossed because the village law was missing a comma. Source: Missing comma gets Ohio woman out of parking ticket – CBS News I, for one, welcome our new English overlords. This is the second article I’ve shared about a missing…
After years of teaching using the principles of standards-based learning and grading, I encountered two findings that radically changed my perspective on assessment, grading, and reporting. Source: Teachers Going Gradeless – Arthur Chiaravalli – Medium Joe Bower’s blog, for the love of learning, has a ton of additional resources on getting rid of grades. Sadly, Joe…
There’s a lot of talk about digital media. Increasing screen time has created worries about media’s impacts on democracy, addiction, depression, relationships, learning, health, privacy and much more. The effects are frequently assumed to be huge, even apocalyptic. Scientific data, however, often fail to confirm what seems true based on everyday experiences. In study after study, screen time is often not correlated with important effects at a…
The world as a whole has become increasingly reliant on science to provide its technology and inform its policy. But rampant conspiracy theories, fake news, and pseudoscience like homeopathy show that the world could use a bit more of the organized skepticism that provides the foundation of science. For that reason, it has often been…
“With the first Marble Machine I just started to build… I ended up building the same things 10 times because I didn’t do any prototypes.” “A big part of our monkey brain wants immediate reward at all times. I’m now trying to keep that part of my monkey brain at bay by not doing the…