Posts tagged as:

education

So You Think You’re So Smart? Think Again!

by mark on March 14, 2009

…and again, and again…

Basically don’t stop thinking. You’ve graduated from a fine school perhaps, but that’s no reason to stop learning. The benefits of education don’t end.

Some studies even suggest a correlation between longevity and continuing education.

Reading won’t just stave off Alzheimer’s by exercising your mind, you will learn to make better decisions in all aspects of your life.

Learning new things improves your job prospects or can help you succeed in your own business.

The Internet is great for researching topics and quickly jumping to a piece of information with a Google search. But what about deeper learning? There are libraries of ebooks that you can read for free. Many of the classics of literature. There are course that you can take online. Free course materials that you can dig through at your own pace. Educational Podcasts.

A great place to start would be the Self-Education Resource List.

You could easily lose yourself for eight hours a day with all of these resources. However, you know the Families and Technology shtick: The Internet is a wonderful tool, but it should not supplant the very valuable interaction with real people, the outdoors, and actually doing things.

If you find yourself getting addicted to online learning, install ComputerTime to reintroduce some balance in your activities.

How do you make good use of information resources?

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The Only Thing We Have to Fear…

by mark on February 24, 2009

“Your kids may be in danger!” says the news media. They know fear gets people’s attention; attention let’s them sell advertising. The truth may just be less attention-grabbing.

Is the Internet a dangerous place where evil lurks and kids are at risk? Do we need to worry?

No. Probably not. Recent findings from a task force created by 49 state attorneys general suggests that parents can relax.

Report Calls Online Threats to Children Overblown. There is no significant problem after all according to the report.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal criticizes the report and insists that “Children are solicited every day online. Some fall prey and the results are tragic. That harsh reality defies the statistical academic research underlying the report.”

Actually, most of the children are being solicited online by other children, and most children that get involved with adults online are actively pursuing such activity. Statistics don’t always tell the whole story and the fear mongers will withhold details if it doesn’t serve their purpose.

The whole report can be found here: Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies.

Porn and violence have become more prevelent in various media, yet teens are having less sex and there is less real violence. Is there a relationship there? Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds asks, are porn and violence good for America’s children? Then he says:

Maybe the porn, and the videogames, provided catharsis, serving as substitutes for the real thing. Maybe. And maybe there’s no connection at all. (Or maybe it’s a different one — research indicates that teenagers, though safer and healthier, are also fatter — so perhaps the other improvements are the result of teens sitting around looking at porn and videogames until they’re too out-of-shape and unattractive for the real thing…) Most likely, the lesson is that — once again — correlation isn’t causation, despite policy entrepreneurs’ efforts to claim otherwise.

In another report, video games do not lead to violence.

If we can trust these reports, then kids are not at increased risk of physical harm. Good! How about other detrimental psychological effects? Does it affect their brains? They’re social skills? Will it give them ADD?

Psychologist Dr. Helen Smith asks, Do social websites harm children’s brains? Helen points to the news about a neuroscientist, Susan Greenfield, who refers to sites like Facebook, Twitter and the like and says, “My fear is that these technologies are infantilising the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights, who have a small attention span and who live for the moment…”

Wait a minute… haven’t kids of all ages, over the past century, been attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights? Don’t all teenagers have small attention spans and live for the moment? That’s a safe bet.

But let us not be so quick to be entirely dismissive. Parents are witnesses to their kids growing up around 24/7 cartoon cable channels, Internet access, Facebook, YouTube, cell phones, and instant messaging. Many have seen that when they don’t impose limits, hell breaks loose. Raising teenagers regardless of technology is one big exercise in imposing limits.

So what’s a parent to do in the absense of a definitive study that gives us clear results on if technology is beneficial or detrimental? Set limits, of course. Make sure the kids are finding time to do all of the other things that kids should be doing. Everything in moderation. Take everything the media tells you with a grain of salt and trust your parental instincts.

Here is a smattering of additional links that I’ve collected over the past few months that I want to share, but don’t feel like addressing individually right now. Enjoy.

Digital Overload Is Frying Our Brains

More ‘Screen Time’ Linked to Poor Fitness in Girls

How the Internet Damages Our Culture

Culture Makes the Internet Cruder, Not the Other Way Around

Study links TV and depression

What are your thoughts on all of this?

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Today in the Stupid Headline Department

by mark on December 29, 2008

Minister: Wii the best boost for children’s intelligence. Really?

OK, not really. But that’s what the headline says. In the lead sentence in the article, it’s clarified a bit: “CHILDREN who play computer games will do better at school than those who just sit and watch television.“.

In other news, caterpillars are more nutritious and kids prefer eating them over eating rabbit poo.

This minister claims that he has “witnessed progress” in his three-year old and he attributes it to using the computer. I wonder how this kid compares to the three-year-olds who are reading books with their parents and spending a lot more time outdoors exploring the real world.

Speaking of reading books, this MP should read FAILURE TO CONNECT: How Computers Affect Our Children’s Minds — and What We Can Do About It and Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder.

One commenter replies: “How about the children who play board games, who read and who go outside and play? Oh of course we don’t have any children like that anymore in Britain.” They sure to seem like a species nearing extinction sometimes, don’t they.

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World of Warcraft: Not a Job Skill

by mark on December 28, 2008

All of you hopeful parents might need to rethink things. Apparently World of Warcraft is not a valuable job skill.

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The Internet and Expecting More from Teens

by mark on November 9, 2008

We don’t expect enough from our teens. And it’s hurting us as a society, says Newt Gingrich in last week’s Business Week.

“At age 13, [Benjamin] Franklin finished school in Boston, was apprenticed to his brother, a printer and publisher, and moved immediately into adulthood.

“John Quincy Adams attended Leiden University in Holland at 13 and at 14 was employed as secretary and interpreter by the American Ambassador to Russia. At 16 he was secretary to the U.S. delegation during the negotiations with Britain that ended the Revolution.

“Daniel Boone got his first rifle at 12, was an expert hunter at 13, and at 15 made a yearlong trek through the wilderness to begin his career as America’s most famous explorer. The list goes on and on.”

That was then and this is now? Times change? Well, he makes some pretty good points and maybe it’s time to change back to a model where we expect our kids to be more productive. Not back to sweatshops, but how about letting them do things that they love and letting them make money doing it? Our laws actually prevent able-bodied and willing kids from working part-time outside of lemonade stands, baby sitting, or newspaper delivery.

We’ve created adolescence to keep kids out of sweatshops but we’re past that now. We keep inner-city kids trapped in a lousy educational system and this contributes to gangs, drug problems, and irresponsible sexual activity. Even middle-class and wealthy kids have a lot more to contribute to society, but that resource goes untapped. Haven’t we noticed a shift with adolescence being pushed into mid-twenties and beyond?

What does this have to do with the Internet though? Let me hand it back over to Newt:

“Fortunately, innovations in technology and in financial incentives to learn offer hope.

“The Information Age makes it possible for young people to learn much faster than our current failed bureaucracies and obsolete curriculums permit. New systems such as Curriki, founded by Sun Microsystems and now an independent nonprofit, allow a community of teachers and learners to collaborate via the Internet to create quality educational materials for free—giving every American access to learning 24 hours a day.”

Makes it possible, yes, but only if somebody takes advantage of the opportunities will it make a difference.

What an inspiring story of Ashley Qualls, who started with $8 from her mom to start a website at age 14, and by the time she was 17 had a million-dollar business.

Most stories about teens and the Internet revolve around wasted endless hours, aimless social networking, instant messaging addiction. But Ashley decided to do something else. With a strong work ethic, she applied herself and lifted herself and her family from living in a one-bedroom apartment and insecurity into a $250,000 house and no more worries.

What are your kids squandering their time doing? Is technology controlling your kids’ time, or are your kids using technology to control their future, because the opportunities are there, and they appear to be endless.

[Hat tip to my friend Gary for pointing out the Gingrich article in Business Week. You should read the whole thing.]

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Tech Makes Us Dumber… Smarter… Dumber… Smarter…

by Mark on September 23, 2008

…or technology makes our lives better… worse… better… worse…

The recent post on television made a point that people will disagree until the cows come home about if television is good or bad. Or if it makes us smarter or dumber. But it’s not about the technology. It’s about how the technology is used. Television can bring educational material to you that you just can’t get in your local schools. That’s fantastic. But you can also get 24/7, inane Disney channel programming that can sap the life out of your family and reduce the kids to zombies who come back alive and freak out when you yank the plug. That’s horrible.

People continue to argue for one side or the other of that debate as if devices can change you, and as if there is one right answer.

Perhaps it’s not the devices (TV, computers, video games, cell phones) that actually change people. Maybe those devices merely accentuate or exacerbate a person’s preexisting tendencies to be distracted, waste time, and avoid doing other important and more productive things. If the person’s tendencies are towards being responsible and being focused on the right things, then they will make good use of the device.

A laptop, in the hands of an intelligent, motivated, focused person will allow the person to do wonders as they work towards goals. The same laptop in the hands of an unmotivated slacker that suffers from ADD will probably only get used playing online games, watching YouTube videos, and IMing their friends all day long.

In the end, they’re just tools to be used, and then can be used positively or negatively. Does it make sense to blame the tool for the outcome?

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Like You Really Need More Evidence

by Mark on September 20, 2008

Godfrey Reggio’s, Evidence.

The blank, comatose look. I’ve seen it myself. You can easily witness it too. Just watch your kids watching TV. Give them a few minutes to settle into it. It’s like watching a person go under hypnosis. I know that feeling too. I used to watch more TV myself years ago, even as an adult.

The debate always seems to be raging if television is good or bad for you and your family. What is it that people are looking for as proof? Dead brain cells? Some measure in the drop in intelligence that can be correlated with television watching? Given the number of variables that influences a persons cognitive ability, I don’t know that we could ever isolate television as an influence.

I certainly don’t want to subject my kids to being part of that study at any rate.

Stephen Dubner (Freakonomics co-author) blogged yesterday about What TV Does to You, with an image of a kid silhouetted against a glowing TV.

I am inclined to agree with him that educational TV has benefits. I like the technology. But the average American isn’t watching over 4.5 hours of educational TV daily. Most of them are watching crap. And most kids who spend hours in front of the TV are watching Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, and Cartoon Network.

The highlight of Dubner’s post is this excerpt which he took from a friends book:

That last year in New Haven, I could go out to friends’ houses more or less when I wanted to and watch television as often as I liked, only to find that now I agreed with my mother about TV. I had begun not to like what happened to me when I watched.

Given the chance, I stared like a guppy, immobilized for hours in somebody’s den on an increasingly itchy wall-to-wall carpet, intent on things I didn’t even enjoy, passive and yet also anxious, too aware of how soon the hour would be up when the little world in front of me would evaporate and I’d have nothing left but an uneasy regret and another new show beginning that I couldn’t get up and walk away from.

It was so easy not to resist because television was doing all the work for me, making all the decisions. That was especially true, I noticed, when I watched baseball. The field became reduced to the fragment that fit on the screen, minimizing the game into a fraction of itself, implying that everything happening off-camera was irrelevant. The players were minimized as well, because they did not exist unless the ball came their way. Then the lens swooped into their faces and there was too much of them — which weirdly created distance.

This nails it. I’ve had the same feelings. After turning off the TV after being sucked into a few hours of aimless channel surfing, I would think to myself, “Wow. I just wasted a few hours.” Things seemed interesting at first, and I would land on a channel, watch for a bit, move on to another channel. Maybe I did get sucked into something for a full hour. But when it was over, I thought, “That was lame.” I would recognize that I felt a bit drained. I bit disappointed that I wasted that time. I finally realized this and just about gave up TV. I still maintain a Netflix account and will watch the occasional movie. I still watch educational shows with my kids. But I still have to limit and sometimes pry my son off of Nickelodeon, Disney and Cartoon Network.

I still tell him that it’s going to shrink his brain. I don’t care what the researchers say on this one. I know it in my gut. I know what TV can do to a person in the short term if they watch low quality programming, so-called entertainment, or sit in front of it for too long even watching the better programming.

Instead of debating good or bad, maybe all we really need to do is ask ourselves, “Is there something my kid can be doing for these one or two hours that would be much better for them than watching TV?”

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Is the Internet Making Us Stupid?

by mark on June 27, 2008

“Something profound seems to be happening to the human brain,” says Susan Greenfield, Oxford professor and head of the Royal Institution of Great Britian, “and what really worries me is that we could be sleepwalking into a new world of technology without even considering what it is doing to our brains.”

Hours spent in front of computer screens and TV everyday increase dopamine production in our brains, she contends, and other scientists suggest that these higher dopamine levels can result in changes in how the brain works.

Are the changes good or bad? Perhaps a little of both. On the negative side, shorter attention spans and being more risk-averse are some of the changes that she’s noted. This might be playing into afflictions that are on the rise in young people, such as obesity, gambling, drinking and violence.

She adds, speaking of the generations attached to screens, “They will be people who are more hedonistic and tend to live for the moment, a life that is more sensory and less cognitive.”

On the positive side, some people can actually benefit from being less cautious or more risk-averse, she admits. She’s not against the use of technology. She strongly advocates research and large-scale studies to determine how technology affects our brains. So far, all we seem to have is mostly anecdotal evidence; we need some science to back up our observations.

Parents do not want to wait five to ten years for science to provide an unequivocal answer. There seems to be plenty of anecdotal evidence to convince any parent that too much screen time isn’t good for kids.

“Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.” That’s how Nicholas Carr describes how heavy use of the Net has changed his reading ability. “The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.” he says. He also has anecdotes from his friends — including a medical blogger, and a literature major — who say that they’ve experienced the same changes in reading habits.

“I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets—reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link. (Unlike footnotes, to which they’re sometimes likened, hyperlinks don’t merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.)”

Even though we are on the Internet, we’re still reading. It’s just a web browser instead of a book, and some studies suggest that kids are reading more because of the Internet. While that may be true, online reading is less focused, people read short snippets before they click on a link and are zipped off to read another snippet, and there are a lot of distractions online.

Reading differently results in us thinking differently. We’re not reading as deeply. We aren’t as engaged and we’re easily distracted. This new reading style favors efficiency and immediacy rather than depth, reflection, and contemplation.

So what’s the takeaway from all of this? Like wine and chocolate, the Internet is good for you, but only if you use it moderately.

References:

Hat Tip to Kevin Arthur who brought one of the articles to my attention.

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Are Computers Hurting Reading Abilities?

March 22, 2008

There is disagreement over a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) study that makes a case that people are reading less and kids are in trouble as a result. The NEA study is ignoring online reading, according to Steven Johnson in his article Dawn of the Digital Natives. He contends, “if you actually read the [...]

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Should I Teach My 5-Year-Old .NET Programming?

December 5, 2007

How much technology is “too much, too soon”? Opinions on this vary so much and most parents make their decisions from the gut anyways, or they just leave it up to the kids to decide. If the kids like computers, video games and gadgets, they just let them have at it. My friend Brett (Dadtalk) [...]

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