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DL 291

Connect The Outside With The Inside

Published: May 15, 2021 • 📧 Newsletter

Welcome to Digitally Literate, issue 291. Your go-to source for insightful content on education, technology, and the digital landscape.

🔖 Key Takeaways

Happy weekend all. It's good to see your faces.

This week I posted the following:

📺 Watch

Many of us were told that a quiet classroom is a good classroom. Then we had a pandemic, and now so many of us miss the noise.

I can't believe I haven't come across Trevor Muir until now. Thanks to Verena Edwards for sharing. :)

The story and discussion guides are here.

📚 Read

This week, the CDC updated guidance indicating fully vaccinated individuals can participate in indoor and outdoor activities—large or small—without masks or physical distancing.

As we turn a corner, I'm hoping we've used this as an opportunity to learn lessons.

A new report from the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response lambasts global leaders who failed to heed repeated warnings, wasted time, hoarded information and desperately needed supplies, and failed to take the crisis seriously.

"While some countries took aggressive steps to curb the spread, many countries, including some of the wealthiest, devalued the emerging science, denied the disease's severity, delayed responding, and ended up sowing distrust among citizens with literally deadly consequences." — Helen Clark, cochair of the panel

Research from Joanne Ingram, Christopher J. Hand, and Greg Maciejewski examining social isolation's effect on cognitive function.

Results suggest social isolation is linked to cognitive decline in the absence of aging covariates. The impact should be considered when implementing prolonged pandemic-related restrictive conditions.

More on this story here.

Special visas. Free vaccines. Tax breaks.

The pandemic was an existential crisis for the community built around having no fixed address—forced to shelter in place for the first time.

Now countries around the world are courting a new class of human capital that wants to mix travel and work forever.

It's True. Everyone Is Multitasking in Video Meetings

Microsoft study finds just how often remote workers multitask during videoconferences—especially when the group is large and the meeting runs long.

The study shows multitasking during virtual meetings is a coping mechanism to protect people's mental well-being from... too many virtual meetings.

For decades, flying saucers were a punch line. Then the U.S. government got over the taboo.

In a memorandum issued this week, the Pentagon's watchdog confirmed a new probe with primary objective: "to determine the extent to which the DOD has taken actions regarding Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP)."

Next month, a government report on UAP sightings is expected to be made public.

🔨 Do

The ancient East Asian concept of shakkei, which translates to "borrowed landscape" or "borrowed scenery," can help connect your home with surrounding views.

While shakkei refers to the traditional technique of incorporating an outside view into a garden design, the concept also offers inspiration for connecting built forms with nature in a profound manner.

Applying shakkei successfully involves more than simply framing a view. It requires careful analysis of landscape and surrounding elements to create a composition with depth, scale, and texture that integrates the "borrowed scenery" in a poetic way.

🤔 Consider

You better get a grip on yourself or you won't be around too long.

Rollins Band

The Rollins Band's warning about grip connects to this issue's threads—cognitive decline from isolation, the multitasking coping mechanism in endless video meetings, and pandemic failures from leaders who lost grip on reality. Connection—outside with inside—is how we hold on.

Bonus: I knew I shared a birthday with George Lucas. This week I learned I also share one with Mark Zuckerberg. Ugghhh...

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