By making so much information so accessible, social media has drastically changed the way we consume information and form opinions in the modern era. The danger, however, is that social media creates an “echo chamber” that filters the information people receive so that it largely supports their existing opinions.
A recent study published in PNAS examines this phenomenon and finds that social-media users show marked focus in the types of news that interests them. These social-media participants tend to develop strong and well-defined communities around the news outlets they support, and they tend to make connections with like-minded people regardless of the geographic distance between them.
We tend to think of burnout as an individual problem, solvable by “learning to say no,” more yoga, better breathing techniques, practicing resilience — the self-help list goes on. But evidence is mounting that applying personal, band-aid solutions to an epic and rapidly evolving workplace phenomenon may be harming, not helping, the battle. With “burnout”…
I’m an idea guy. That is, I have a lot of ideas. As a teacher I would constantly improvise, come up with new projects, lesson ideas, tweaks to traditional assessments, and have an organic approach to learning in my classroom. But they were still my ideas. I was failing to value, foster, and spark ideas…
Turing Tumble is a new type of game where players (ages 8+) build mechanical computers powered by marbles to solve logic puzzles. It’s fun, addicting, easy-to-learn, and while you’re playing, you discover how computers work. I’m all about teaching kids to code. When I was a professor at the University of Minnesota, I saw how valuable…
It’s high time for students to move beyond an hour of coding exercises and learn computational thinking. That’s the message of a new report from Digital Promisethat examines what’s important to know and be able to do in a “computational world.” Source: It’s Time to Weave Computational Thinking into K-12 — THE Journal The researchers us of…
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” Yoda may be talking about the dark side of the force here, but his Jedi wisdom is just as applicable to the dark side of social media and technology. Like the force, these tools provide…
During this year’s series of Love Island, contestant Chris Hughes revealed that he often wears his boxers three days in a row because he didn’t know how to use a washing machine. Most Brits take for granted the fact that they know how to work the washer, and may be horrified to hear that the 24 year-old…
