More information and less informed

July 30, 2007 — Daniel

Last month’s Wired had an interesting piece titled “Despite the Web, Americans Remain Woefully Ill-Informed”. It should be here, but I get a content not found error message. Instead, you can search for “wired infoporn” on Google and check the cached version of the page…

More than a decade after the Internet went mainstream, the world’s richest information source hasn’t necessarily made its users any more informed. A new study from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press shows that Americans, on average, are less able to correctly answer questions about current events than they were in 1989. Citizens who call the Internet their primary news source know slightly less than fans of TV and radio news.

Posted in Communication, Net Generation, Pop Culture, Technology. No Comments »

UK Education in Second Life

July 26, 2007 — Daniel

John Kirriemuir compiled a snapshot report detailing the use of Second Life across UK further and higher educational institutions, on behalf of Eduserv. You can get the report here.

As I was out of the country when John was collecting the data, I believe that I have Scott Chase from Strathclyde University to thank for mentioning me to John – and thus ensuring that Paisley got a mention in the report.

This relates a little to recent comments in the SL Educators mailing list about the incompleteness of the list of educational institutions in Second Life. I think I’ll add looking at that to my to-do list…

Posted in Education, Second Life. 5 Comments »

Digital Natives vs. the Net Generation

July 5, 2007 — Daniel

Blended Learning 2007 (Part 2)

And now, belatedly, time to write up my reflections from Blended Learning all those weeks ago… knowing I’ve got a paper and a half to write today as well.

The subtitle of the conference was ‘Supporting the Net Generation Learner’, which I’ll admit did leave me a little worried that the general message I would hear would be a simple re-iteration of all the usual Digital Natives tropes and clichés. Instead, through the different talks, presentations and lunch and break-time discussions the message was quite different. The Net Generation needs our help.

In this post I’ll try and set out some of the differences between the concepts of ‘Digital Natives’ and ‘Net Generation’, and why they matter.

(more…)

Posted in Digital Natives, Net Generation, Students, Technology, Twitch Speed, conferences. Tags: . 5 Comments »

Social gaming is good

July 3, 2007 — Daniel

Very brief note, via Develop… a new report praises social gaming. Don’t think it includes a link to the original report. The study involved children who were players of Runescape.

Hmm maybe time to log in again, and make one more push for level 58 mining…

Posted in Play, Technology. No Comments »
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