Jeff Leppard's Blog – May 2011 Archive (2)

 

Mike Schmoker’s new text Focus (2011) offers a passionate, persuasive call for a return to some old-school methods of teaching, especially with regard to the teaching of English. As a teacher at a school that is moving (finally) to a 1:1 computer environment, the risk is that we could forego much of the reading and writing we do in favour of more ‘creative projects’. What Schmoker calls for is simple: plenty of reading. He suggests that in each English course, students should…

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Nicholas Carr's latest, erudite work The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains is well worth reading. In particular, I would recommend the chapter "The Juggler's Brain" which does an excellent job of compiling and refuting such notions as multi-tasking. He refutes well the contention of Everything Bad Is Good for You (Johnson, 2005). With connections to work on working memory (cf. Alloway, Tracy) and suggestions as to how technology, when not used with circumspection, can change… Continue