Does anything work in the U.S. education system?
When I was in high school in the late 80′s — early 90′s, it seemed that the U.S. education system was an abysmal failure — after all, weren’t the Soviets and the Chinese students scoring higher in...
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Banning laptops doesn’t solve the distraction problem
To ban or not to ban laptops in classrooms? What about cell phones? And calculators? Before we hand students a list of technologies to leave at home, let’s consider the real problem: attention vs....
View ArticleIs this the future of reading?
I’m preparing for a talk on the future of reading and decided to keep track of what and how I read today. So, I started my morning checking e-mail, which involves two steps, my main e-mail (work) and...
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Literacy of touch
Touch is barely taught in schools. There’s the basics, scratchy, softy, smooth, but for the most part, we develop our sense of touch informally, through experience. I’ve been thinking about touch and...
View ArticleA return to consumption
The desktop revolution of the 80′s empowered us to create, not just consume texts. Desktop publishing is a concept most users take for granted, but was certainly a significant change from the...
View ArticleFor Amazon, e-books outsell hardcovers
Today, Jeff Bezos announced e-books are outselling hardcovers at Amazon. What does the success of e-books mean for reading? I’ve been talking to people who read their Kindles or iPads on train rides or...
View ArticleMedia literacy by mail
The U.S. Postal Service is sending around a brochure titled “Do you know the warning signs of fraud?” It is brief, but surprisingly helpful. Here are some of their tips: Warning Signs Sounds too good...
View ArticleAOIR 2010 presentation
My dissertation research will be presented at AOIR’s annual conference this week in Gothenburg, Sweden. Below is the abstract and presentation. Abstract: In university settings, students are...
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Learning from Google’s Big Tent Event
Yesterday, I attended Google’s Big Tent Event in Hertfordshire. As an academic, I’m used to attending conferences at universities or Hiltons, not countryside resorts with helicopter pads. The event was...
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Can Facebook profiles ever really be private?
As an Internet researcher, I know the answer to this question: no. That’s right: no. Try as we might, we cannot completely control who views parts of our Facebook profiles. Using avatars and not...
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The Trouble with Testing
It’s obviously summer because my news alerts are no longer steadily reporting concerns about education, our children’s future, the problems with teachers, etc. Perhaps now, then, is the perfect time to...
View ArticleInformation hoaxes: the dupers and the duped
I confess that over the Thanksgiving holiday, I didn’t check Twitter. So, the day after, when the hubbub over Elan Gale’s imaginary interlude with an irate and inconsiderate airline passenger was shown...
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Knowledge and processes that predict proficiency in digital literacy article...
My study of university students’ digital literacy practices “Knowledge and processes that predict proficiency in digital literacy,” written with Richard Mayer and Miriam Metzger, has been published...
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