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The Best Idea for Higher Ed That I've Seen in Ages

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At a time when higher education is under constant assault from legislators looking for places to cut public funding and from taxpayers who aren’t sure that they are getting their money’s worth from higher education, The Conversation makes abundantly clear–to that very public and to policy makers–the wealth of ideas that universities contribute to the good of society. Anyone can learn from these engaging stories, including other teachers (at any level) and college students, high school kids, home schoolers, informal learners, Peer-to-Peer learners, lifelong learners, those who cannot afford college but deserve and desire access to the world of learning college (literally) affords.

Chicago Tonight, WTTW, Oct. 19

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What does a scene of people passing basketballs to each other say about our conscious perceptions? We talk with Chicago-born author Cathy Davidson on Chicago Tonightat 7:00 pm about her new book that suggests radically re-thinking the way we learn and work. View this interview.

Why Has Prescription Anti-Depressant Drug Use Increased 400%? (And How the TV Ads Contribute!)

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I am not being judgmental about the use of anti-depressants. They can be life savers, especially when accompanied by counselling therapy by a professional. But the 400% increase is not simply by accident. Laws forbidding tv commercials for prescription drugs changed during the Reagan Administration, making the U.S. one of only two countries in the world that allow direct-to-consumer RX advertising. And since then, prescription drug use has soared. And there is a booming business in making adds that conceal in plain sight the FDA-required side effects of these potent medicines.

What Are Some Better, More Useful Ways to Think About Attention Today?

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Not every wired prefrontal cortex bursting into illumination on a CT-Scan gives us solid, useful information that helps us decide how and what to teach a child, or how to reform the institutions that frustrate us. Having been involved with neurological rehabbing on an intensely personal level, having seen brilliant therapists work with mind and body to rehab both, I am humbled by how much we know and how little about the brain’s abilities and its disabilities, how baffled we ultimately are by the complex thing we like to call “the brain.”

Dangerously Irrelevant blog, Oct. 15

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#MobilityShifts – Day 5: Emerging Learning Environments, Peer to Peer Grading and an Interview with Cathy Davidson “I know I say this every day, but Mobility Shifts is such a good conference. Yesterday I saw Michael Wesch speak, interviewed Cathy Davidson, and then saw her speak along with Geert Lovink and Manu Kapur. I also … Dangerously Irrelevant blog, Oct. 15

Q&A on the Spotlight blog, Oct. 13

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Q&A: Cathy Davidson on the Brain Science of Attention and Transforming Schools and Workplaces in the Digital Age By Barbara Ray 10.13.11 | In Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn,” Cathy Davidson has offered an antidote to the anxieties about the effects … Q&A on the Spotlight blog, Oct. 13

The Times Higher Ed, Oct. 13

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Plug in – but tune in, too 13 October 2011 An iPad or Kindle does not magically improve education, says Cathy Davidson Because it’s autumn, US universities are busy announcing what new technology they will offer new students. Across the country, institutions of higher education are dispensing Kindles and iPads in the hope that they … The Times Higher Ed, Oct. 13

What's It Like To Be On an Author Tour in the Digital Age? (Just ask Parson Weems!)

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It is fascinating being an author in what historian Robert Darnton calls humanity’s fourth great Information Age. Sometimes, it’s Internet all the time. Other times, I feel like America’s first professional author, Mason Locke “Parson” Weems, who plied bestselling novels and other fictions, such as his own The Life of Washington (“I cannot tell a lie! I chopped down the cherry tree!”–which, of course, was itself a fabrication), from town to town, with a horse and cart. He’d enter the town square and shout “Murder! Seduction! Treason!” and people would come running and then he would sell books. Yep, it’s a little like this being an author in the Internet Age.