Your Brain on Computers – Overuse of Digital Devices May Lead to Brain Fatigue – NYTimes.com

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Well, allow me to say, DUH!

NYT article image

NYT article image

Your Brain on Computers – Overuse of Digital Devices May Lead to Brain Fatigue – NYTimes.com.

This subject keeps coming up in the news. No surprise really. I’ve made a few comments here (on Cognitive Load Theory) and here (trying to fix education by making school longer).

Why don’t people accept that we really do need downtime in order to learn? The brain needs some space from time to time to organize itself – it can’t do that if it’s constantly being interrupted. Don’t simply assume that it is enough to sleep 6 or 7 hours a night – we actually need time, awake, when we’re not listening to talk or reading.

To be fair, it is much harder for people living in cities (especially big cities) to find solitude than it is for us rural types. It’s possible though – just turn off your TV and walk away from your computer and your cellphone for a while – it’ll still be there in an hour, and I’m almost willing to guarantee that you won’t have missed much.

I have often said that doing high tech stuff and living on a farm affords me the balance to see both in interesting ways and I’m convinced that’s true. I don’t claim to have better self-discipline than the average person – I’m quite sure that if I didn’t have so many animals that needed daily attention I’d spend most of my time in front of my computer.

But I do,

so I can’t,

and it’s good for me.

The time I spend ‘alone’ working outside with the animals is important to my general well-being – even when I have water in my boots, poo on my shirt, and scratches all over my arms.

And on that note, I’m going outside to do morning chores and to finish putting up the electric fence. That pesky fox needs to be reminded that the ducks are not his personal dinner buffet. This morning when I went out to put the horses in the pasture for the day I saw that that little bugger left his(her?) traditional calling card (some scat) right on my front door step.

Again.

Cheeky bugger.

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Civilization in Decline….

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Is the US getting dumber and meaner?

I know those seem like harsh criticisms, but I’m really starting to wonder.I used to think the US had it better than we did. I don’t think so anymore.

We have great controversy over a ‘proposed’ Mosque near the site of the former Trade Center (nevermind that Muslims have been meeting there quite peacefully for years – all they are asking is to finally have a building).

We have nearly 1 in 5 Americans who beleives Obama is Muslim.

We have fewer and fewer Americans finishing school and going to college.

We have teachers getting laid off all over the country.

Have you seen this year’s television line-up? Much of what I see advertised is dark, and mean, and sordid.

What is wrong with people?

The US is no longer the world leader in, well, anything, really, except possibly military might, which really isn’t anything to be proud of.

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Back to School Thoughts…

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Almost all my life, September has signaled the start of a new year – new pens, new paper, clean notebooks,…

Since I was four years old, September, rather than January has been the New Year.

This year, I will be spending it at home writing a book rather than teaching or being a student, but that doesn’t change how it feels. Also, everyone else in my house will be going back to school in a few weeks. Almost everyone is looking forward to it. Oddly (or perhaps not), the one who is looking forward to it the least is the one person in the house who is getting paid to go back to school.

Anyhow, I came across this (posted by Alice Daer… thanks!)

DIY Ultimate Note-Taking Notebook.

I’m one of those people for whom a trip to a stationary store can be an almost religious experience, so obviously, the thought of making my own notebooks sounds just peachy. I really like this idea, though I don’t know if I would actually take the time to do it. The page organization is a great idea though:

This got me to thinking about something else: how important is  reorganizing one’s notes as a form of studying? Many students take notes on a computer these days, and while there’s nothing really wrong with that, it brings up a couple of questions:

1. Do we take in information differently when we type as opposed to when we write with a pen or pencil? I seem to recall reading somewhere that this was the case, but I can’t remember where I saw the study (suggestions anyone?). If I remember correctly, the study concluded that we remember better when we write things than we do when we type. (This prompts another question,… see later).

2. Do students who type their notes rather than write them actually do anything more than read their notes by way of studying?

When I was an undergrad, there were some semesters where I would take rough notes in class, and then re-copy (and re-organize) them in a good notebook after I got home. Sometimes I even re-did them in colours with additional illustrations and references to relevant pages in the text. Those were the courses where I didn’t have to study before the exam at all. They were also the courses in which I did really well. This process turns out to be an excellent way to study (I never learned how to study in high school because I never needed to). Re-writing notes forces you to review and to make sense of what you heard that day. This got me to wondering…. do people who type their notes ever do anything more than copy & paste them elsewhere? Do they even do that, or do they just read them?

The other question I had has to do with the notion that we assimilate information differently when we write than when we type. I wonder if that is generational? What I mean is that I remember things better when I write than when I type, but I have spent the bulk of my life taking notes by writing. I’m not a good typist. In fact I can’t touch-type at all so I still need to use a part of my brain to spell many words as I type them. Seems to me this would naturally interfere with my ability to take in what I am typing about. What about people who have grown up typing? Do they have the same problem? Perhaps they have the opposite problem – perhaps they have more trouble when they have to write something. And if that’s true, what would be equivalent to re-writing notes for them? It can’t just be copying and pasting, can it?

I can’t believe that there is anything ‘natural’ about writing to learn – we haven’t always been literate creatures. There’s fodder for a potentially interesting and useful study here, if not several. Unfortunately, I have neither the time nor the money to do them. Anyone?

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

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Plagiarism in the 21st Century: Why Don’t College Students Seem to Know What it Is?

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There’s been a lot of buzz about plagiarism lately; here are two recent articles:

Are You Part of ‘Generation Plagiarism’? – The Learning Network Blog – NYTimes.com.

“Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age,” Trip Gabriel

SO, why aren’t they learning this in school BEFORE college? I think a big part of it is that their teachers in H.S. and before did not make a point of crediting the sources THEY use. Lack of time (to learn it and to teach it) is a frequent excuse – but another one is that the teachers themselves practice plagiarism.  How often does a kid get a photo-copied worksheet with no identification of the source? What about clipart? Notes? How often does the teacher talk about where the materials they use come from? MOST teachers do not produce most of their own teaching materials – they buy or ‘inherit’ them.
Academic integrity is really such an easy thing to learn, but it needs to be made explicit and modeled by their teachers.

Rule number ONE: If you didn’t make it up yourself, say where it came from.

RULE 2: Always keep notes on where you got things from as you gather them.

Understanding plagiarism is not intuitive – it needs to be taught. It hasn’t been.

Before kids had access to their own resource materials (aside from the local library and home encyclopedias) it was less of an issue – it was easier to identify sources. This is no longer true – and kids are not taught how to do research, OR how to assess their sources. Often this is because the elementary teachers don’t really know how to do this themselves (even many of the recently trained teachers do not know – probably because most of their professors didn’t know either).

Education about respecting other people’s ideas and attribution has to start right when the kids FIRST start grabbing things off the net for their presentations: usually that’s GRADE 1. Many elementary teachers don’t really understand this themselves, and routinely “borrow” stuff without identifying the source.

The other part of the problem lies with the professors themselves. According to a colleague of mine (whom I will not name as he’s gotten into trouble for raising this issue before – he wrote a lovely article about it with references and all, but it’s been taken down from his website),  as many as 20% of all faculty got where they are through some form of plagiarism.

Too many people try to take credit for things they didn’t do. The pressure to do this is high in the Academy. How many faculty add their own names to every paper their grad students write? And of those, how many actually contributed in some significant way? Paying your grad students doesn’t (or shouldn’t) count as a contribution.

I know one ‘academic’ who boasts 20-30 papers a year. I seriously doubt he even understands what’s in those papers, let alone is able to contribute in some meaningful way (other than financially).

Teaching what plagiarism means is easy. Making students accept the value of academic integrity when they see people all around them (including some of their professors) getting ahead by cheating is much harder.

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Thoughts on Ed Theories: Cognitive Load

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Forgive me, I come from Science. “Theory” means something different in science from what it means in education. It seems that in education we can label any notion we have about how things work as a theory – and then give it a name.

There are PILES of learning theories out there – many of which look a WHOLE lot like a bunch of other learning theories with slight variations. But that’s a different rant.

Today’s comments are about Cognitive Load Theory, and it’s not really a rant at all.For those that aren’t familiar, this theory states that there is a limited number of things humans can learn or remember at one time. That’s where the famous 7 ± 2 came from.

I think that Cognitive Load Theory makes lots of sense (in a lot of ways). It’s not a load as Gary Goodwill points out:

Yes, it is true that the original idea was developed by seeing how many items people could memorize.

We need to examine our concepts carefully and critically, and move away from research into nonsense as the basis of our instructional designs.

I really don’t think this is nonsense.

What I don’t buy is that it is as simple as people want it to be. Stephen Downes seems to be circling the issue – he says:

I think cognitive load theory misrepresents how we acquire and store information. It supposes that information is atomic and symbolic, like a string of numbers. But our perceptions actually carry multiple meanings.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I’m one of those people who doesn’t buy the notion that “cognitive science” is a science at all for the most part. Once you get beyond the simple operant conditioning kind of learning, it is no longer science. It’s far too complex and has too many variables. But it’s still worth looking at, and we can still do useful things with what we learn. Cognitive Load Theory is one of those things worth looking at.

Jane Bozarth has it closer to the mark. She’s used the basic idea from the theory to talk about how this applies (or should apply) to instructional design.

Anyone who has tried to teach a class that was really heavy on content or known to be hard has seen the arch-typical reaction of a learner when they have reached their ‘load limit’: they fall asleep. I’m not talking about the people who always fall asleep in your class. I’m also not talking about those times (everyone has them) when you are just being boring. I’m talking about those times when you are working on something difficult – when your good students start to nod off – you should realize you’ve passed the limit.

The fact is, there IS a limit to how much new material people can handle at one time. And, like Stephen implies – there ARE things we can do to enrich the environment in ways to help people assimilate new concepts and ideas. And even though I think that most of what gets done for research in education and the learning or cognitive ‘sciences’ isn’t any kind of science at all, we should be thinking about these things and we should consider how ideas such as this can help us design and deliver better education.

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The Harm Of Gaming: We Present The Facts | Rock, Paper, Shotgun

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I don’t usually do posts that are little more than sharing other people’s posts, BUT…..

This is just too good not to share:

Astonishing Figures Demonstrate Our Worst Fears

via The Harm Of Gaming: We Present The Facts | Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

~~read carefully~~

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Are Books a Sign of Intellingent Life?

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I’ve seen a number of articles recently relating children’s success in school with the number of books in the house when they were growing up.

Class Struggle – Power of books my wife grew up with.

Books in home as important as parents’ education in determining children’s education level.

One discussion on the subject had people musing about the results if they simply went out and bought a whole pile of books (ANY books) for the shelves, or if they simply painted pictures of books in shelves on the wall.

I am quite convinced that it is not the mere presence of books that really makes the difference. True, having them available and handy can be very useful, but what is more important than the books themselves is what it says about the people who bought them and who keep them handy.

The number (and kind) of books in the house are a sign of how much and in what ways the people use and value the books. It’s about the kind of people who would HAVE those books. It is the sharing of time and things we value that is key here.

We have books in every ‘room’ of our house, including every bedroom, hallway and the farm room (upwards of 3000 books altogether). And yes, we did read to our kids (long after they were able to read for themselves too); they were encouraged to look things up in books and they watched us do the same when we were curious about things.

We also have about 12 computers, various musical instruments, music, movies, lots of toys and tools (electronic & otherwise) and a lot of animals. Our kids have learned how to read, play, learn, have fun, and relate to the natural world around them. We would have found ways to enlighten and inspire our kids even if we didn’t have the means to put all those things in their paths.

The concern I have with findings like these is that people who don’t normally value books or learning may believe that they can improve their child’s success by simply buying books and putting them in the house. They will focus on the simple, single indicator: number of books. If all they ever do is dust them, it’s not going to make much difference.

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Time to End the Honeymoon for Game Studies

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It’s not often that we get to see a new discipline be born and grow up these days, but that’s exactly what we have with Game Studies. Although there were indeed people looking at and writing about games before 2002 (see the Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings (2002)), there really were none of the usual elements that mark an academic discipline (like organizations, conferences, journals, and university courses and programs).

Well, there are now and it’s time to level up.

It’s time to demand a higher level of discourse and more rigorous standards than we could afford at the beginning. I’m not the only one thinking along these lines. Ian Bogost has recently posted some thoughts on what Henry Jenkins has called called ‘aca-fandom’.

My take on it is a little harder: we have become fat and lazy from over-indulgence on low-hanging fruit.

In the early days of games studies (like, 5-10 years ago) there seemed little call for careful scrutiny of one’s game choices or what we wrote about them. We studied what we had handy and wrote about the games we were already playing. We could say almost anything we wanted to because none of it had been said yet.

The ‘1st-tier’ games researchers (i.e. the ones who were publishing on games more than 5 years ago) could really get away with almost anything. Half-baked ideas? GREAT – Be a Keynote; publish a book; become famous! Wanna earn academic brownie points off of the games you’re playing for fun? EASY. Write about your own experiences and draw conclusions based on the experiences of your friends. No academic rigor need; unjustified, personal opinions are just fine.

To be fair, a lot of useful and interesting things came from this. But that was in the beginning. We’re past this now and if you want Games Studies to earn any kind of academic credential, it’s time to grow up and add some rigor.

I am still seeing far too many publication submissions (and even worse, articles actually published) that not only don’t say anything new, but in many cases talk about projects that aren’t even past the planning stage yet. Really. COME ON! If someone tried that in a more established discipline they would be dismissed in an instant.

Then there are the hordes of newcomers who think they are the first ones to think these thoughts. They write and submit articles whose references SUCK. If these people tried this in literature, history, or film studies, say, they wouldn’t even get a second read.

As John Kerriemuir said several years ago now, it is no longer necessary to begin each paper with “Games are now quite popular….” but it is necessary to do your homework, just like it is in every other discipline.

  1. Do a proper literature review.
  2. Know what’s been done in your area of interest.
  3. Be very clear on how your contribution adds to the body of knowledge.
  4. Works in progress are NOT enough for a full, or even a short paper, especially if you have no data to report.
  5. DON’T accept a submission just because your friend (or grad student) wrote it.

Feel free to add more…..

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