Project Classroom: Transforming Our Schools for the Future By Rebecca J. Rosen Aug 29 2011, 10:58 AM ET In 2003 the iPod was a relatively new gadget for listening to music. Billboard ads showed young people dancing, iPods in hand. Few people would have pinpointed this newfangled Walkman as a powerful teaching tool. Cathy N. … The Atlantic, August 29, 2011
Collaborative Learning for the Digital Age By Cathy N. Davidson Five or six years ago, I attended a lecture on the science of attention. A philosopher who conducts research over in the medical school was talking about attention blindness, the basic feature of the human brain that, when we concentrate intensely on one task, causes … The Chronicle Review in The Chronicle of Higher Ed, August 26, 2011
If respecting a generation that has been given a lousy situation and is still doing pretty well constitutes “youth worship,” then, guess what? I stand accused.
Everything is lopsided in this study. There is no innovation in this model, only the most stale version of an education proposed as mass production pretending to be “productivity.” If this is proposed as a model that benefits the tax payer and their children, Texas is in very, very bad shape. The future of youth in Texas is being traded away on the notion of a very false and obsolete notion of “productivity.”
Are our schools and workplaces designed to match our brains? By John Moe, Marketplace Tech Report, Friday, August 26, 2011 Author Cathy Davidson says our schools and places of employment haven’t adapted to the reality of our brains and our society. Plus, forget hacking and worry about dorking. Thebook’s cover features illustrations of a bunch … Marketplace Tech Report, August 26, 2011
Can Being Distracted Be a Good Thing? Yes. That’s the answer. Easy? Well, not exactly. The only way distraction is good is if we train ourselves to pay attention to it. Here’s why: Because of what cognitive neuroscientists call “attention blindness,” we can focus very well. Our whole learning process from infancy on is telling … Science+Religion Today, August 26, 2011
The downside of these methods based on disrupting our attention blindness is they can derail you when you are speeding efficiently along. On the other hand, they can serve as an early-warning signal when you’re heading fast in exactly the wrong direction.
“The phenomenon of attention blindness is real — when we pay attention to one thing, it means we’re not paying attention to something else. When we’re multitasking, what we’re actually really doing is what Linda Stone calls “continuous partial attention.” We’re not actually simultaneously paying equal attention to two things: One of the things that … Salon.com, August 21, 2011
“In a chatty, enthusiastic style, the author takes us on a journey through contemporary classrooms and offices to describe how they are changing—or, according to her, should change. Among much else, we need to build schools and workplaces that match the demands of our multitasking brains. That means emphasizing “nonlinear thinking,” “social networks” and “crowdsourcing.”… … Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2011
“We are right on time to give up techno-phobia and to tackle the problems and opportunities of the digital world with good sense, pragmatics, realism, and purpose,” Davidson said. “Once we absorb the realization that we’ve already changed, and that we’re actually doing pretty well despite major realignments in our lives, then we can think … KQED, MindShift, August 19, 2011