Infotention

The best news and content discovery tools available as selected and listed by Robin Good - updated monthly...

"Is all talent innate, or can it be learned? A look at true geniuses shows that specific training methods and good, old-fashioned practice go a long way. What are the methods that smart people use to learn faster? Across a variety of learning theories and mnemonic tricks, one broad generalization stands out: Smart people learn through connections."

"My work in the area of mobile technology and my experience using mobile devices in the classroom gives me some strong reservations with the idea that our devices are luring us away from a deep connection with each other and with our spaces. While our device can and do pull us away from a deep engagement with people and spaces, this doesn’t have to be the default mode for the ways we use our mobile media. Instead, if used in a dynamic way that addresses the medium’s strengths, mobile media can actually get us to engage with each other and with the spaces we move through in deep, meaningful, and context-rich ways."

"The reason is that if we allow ourselves to blame the technology for distracting us from our children or connecting with our communities, then the solution is simply to put away the technology. We absolve ourselves of the need to create social, political, and, sure, technological structures that allow us to have the kinds of relationships we want with the people around us. We need to realize that at the core of our desire for a Sabbath isn't a need to escape the blinking screens of our electronic world, but the ways that work and other obligations have intruded upon our lives and our relationships.

We can begin by mimicking the Sabbath in small, by recognizing that by dedicating time to one activity or one person, without interruption from gadgets, work, or other people, will help us slow down and connect. We can use our gadgets to do this -- a long talk on the phone is the most obvious way -- or we can leave them out of it.

Such minimal steps won't build something profound like Heschel's "palace in time." They'll result in something smaller -- something more like little forts in time. And there, in these forts, we can take shelter, replenish our resources, and gear up for the battles of the week ahead."

"The article begins with a definition: media literacy is the ability to access, analyse, evaluate and create messages across a variety of contexts. This four-component model is then examined for its applicability to the internet. Having advocated this skills-based approach to media literacy in relation to the internet, the article identifies some outstanding issues for new media literacy crucial to any policy of promoting media literacy among the population. The outcome is to extend our understanding of media literacy so as to encompass the historically and culturally conditioned relationship among three processes: (i) the symbolic and material representation of knowledge, culture and values; (ii) the diffusion of interpretative skills and abilities across a (stratified) population; and (iii) the institutional, especially, the state management of the power that access to and skilled use of knowledge brings to those who are ‘literate’."

"How can we use digital media so that they help us become empowered participants rather than passive consumers? In Net Smart, I show how to use social media intelligently, humanely, and, above all, mindfully. Download the table of contents (PDF) here.

Mindful use of digital media means thinking about what we are doing, cultivating an ongoing inner inquiry into how we want to spend our time. I outline five fundamental digital literacies, online skills that will help us do this: attention, participation, collaboration, critical consumption of information (or "crap detection"), and network smarts. I explain how attention works, and how we can use our attention to focus on the tiny relevant portion of the incoming tsunami of information. I describe the quality of participation that empowers the best of the bloggers, netizens, tweeters, and other online community participants; I examine how successful online collaborative enterprises contribute new knowledge to the world in new ways; and I present a lesson on networks and network building.

There is a bigger social issue at work in digital literacy, one that goes beyond personal empowerment. If we combine our efforts wisely, it could produce a more thoughtful society: countless small acts like publishing a Web page or sharing a link could add up to a public good that enriches everybody."