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TLDR 120

Too Long; Didn't Read Issue 120

Published: 2017-10-21 • 📧 Newsletter

Welcome all to Issue 120. Considerations of cost, value, and possibly changing the game.

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This week I posted the following:

Feel free to keep in touch by sending me a note at hello@wiobyrne.com or on the socials at wiobyrne.

🔖 Key Takeaways

📺 Watch

This animated short comes from the After Skool YouTube channel.

This voiceover was taken from Jim Carrey's speech at the Maharishi University of Management in 2014.

📚 Read

This new report from the Pew Research Center focuses on expert opinions about the future of trust, truth, and misinformation online. I shared a link out to the survey here in TL;DR months ago.

The results are somewhat split as to whether or not the coming decade will see a reduction in false and misleading narratives online. Review the full report here.

Do you agree or disagree with one of my quotes from the research:

Human nature will take over as the salacious is often sexier than facts. There are multiple information streams, public and private, that spread this information online. We can also not trust the businesses and industries that develop and facilitate these digital texts and tools to make changes that will significantly improve the situation.

This piece from Noam Cohen in the Sunday Review from the NY Times crystalizes some of the thinking I've had over the past year about social networks and their use. Specifically, we're beginning to understand that these tech companies and platforms don't have our best interests at heart.

I've heard from many colleagues and friends recently that they're thinking about "taking a break" from social media and these networks. I indicate that there is a lot of research (and previous news stories) that suggests that these companies are looking for clicks over our health and welfare. In many aspects, they're giving us what we want...or think we want.

Years ago, many of us that research and write and live in these digital spaces pulled out of Facebook, Twitter, and other spaces. The complaint was that they were playing it "fast and loose" with our digital info and identity. Now, it appears the concerns might be much more dire.

This post from Anya Kamenetz on NPR Ed shares results from research report released this week from Common Sense Media. Review the full report from Common Sense here.

The survey of parents of children 8 and under suggests that tiny tots are spending a lot of time with tiny screens. The survey indicates that 98 percent of homes have a mobile device such as a tablet or smartphone. Average time spent on devices by children 8 & under is up to 48 minutes per day in 2017.

Other interesting findings:

This week I shared out this research report on my socials and immediately kicked up a bunch of controversy among my online friends and colleagues. You can review the post here on Facebook and review the comments.

The piece from Patricia Alexander and Lauren Singer from the University of Maryland shares research that posits that students prefer and experience learning gains in reading from printed, traditional texts as opposed to screens.

I agree with the results from Alexander and Singer, but think that the truth is far murkier. Part of my response is in the video I linked above. I think there are ways that we (and our students) should and could be reading on screens. Merely moving print to a screen does not take into account complexities of new tools and practices.

On a side note, I'm looking at different places to publish to reach different audiences. I'm paying attention to how Alexander and Singer published their original research, and then published a version of the findings in The Conversation and this was in conjunction with the World Economic Forum. Finally...this was picked up by Business Insider. For those of you that regularly write and blog...this is something to pay attention to.

Anne Lamott, the presenter of the TED Talk 12 truths I learned from life and writing, shares advice on writing:

🔨 Do

In my classes I require that students complete and submit their work in Google Docs. This allows me to help them build their use of the tools and platform, while allowing me to make assessment more of a discussion as opposed to a one time event.

The challenge with this is that you often find yourself leaving some of the same feedback and comments for multiple students on their work.

The CheckMark Chrome extension allows you save frequent comments in an overlay and quickly click/add while reviewing. The selections show up as comments on the student work. See a video of it in action here.

I'll start testing it over the remainder of the semester and report back. I'm interested to see if I can build in multiple saved overlays per assignment. What this means is that I could save elements of a rubric that I'm focusing on in my feedback and only have that appear for certain assignments where it is appropriate.

🤔 Consider

"The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run." — Henry David Thoreau

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Part of the 📧 Newsletter archive documenting digital literacy and technology.