British director to tell the tale of Agafia Lykova, the only remaining member of a family of Old Believers who fled to remote Siberian taiga in 1936
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/12/russia-recluse-siberia-stalin-agafia-lykova-documentary
When I finally met Agafia, what surprised me was that rather than feeling like a primitive situation, it felt like arriving in the future – to a world with no technology, the vast forest littered with discarded space junk. It is an incredible and beautiful place
New Education Law Passes, With A Power Shift Back To The States
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/12/09/459067407/the-new-education-law-passes-with-a-power-shift-back-to-the-states
The new version — called the Every Student Succeeds Act — returns much government oversight of schools to the states and curtails or eliminates the federal role in many areas. Critics of NCLB are celebrating its demise.
Critics say there’s no guarantee that states will succeed where the old law failed in two crucial areas: closing the achievement gap and raising the performance of the absolute worst schools.
“The real test is going to be whether there is the political will to take data and turn it into action versus just reporting what they’ve been reporting for the last 15 years,” Wise says.
Austin Ouellette
For heavens sake, there are countries that are getting education right. Why can’t we just look at what they are doing and tailor those methods to suit our needs? Japan, Australia, Norway, Finland, France, Germany are all countries that have some very impressive education systems that WORK!
Americans really need to wake up!
Teach Mindfulness, Invite Happiness
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/teach-mindfulness-invite-happiness
Mindfulness is a way of paying attention to present-moment experience and doing so with kindness and curiosity. It is not cognitive but sensory, and so taps into and strengthens different but vitally important parts of the brain that have been neglected by traditional education. One crucial attribute of mindfulness is that it is practiced without judgment. Many of our students are so hard on themselves and their internal critic is so loud that just a few moments of being given permission to not judge can bring huge relief to body and mind. I have seen it bring students to tears.
There is now ample evidence that mindfulness practice enhances positive emotions (PDF).
4 Ways to Refuel Your Gratitude
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/4-ways-re-fuel-your-gratitude-rebecca-alber
Applying Mindfulness to Mundane Classroom Tasks
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/applying-mindfulness-mundane-classroom-tasks-abby-wills
What Would a ‘Slow Education Movement’ Look Like?
Rather than a top down industrialized and homogenized assembly line, we need a grass roots Slow Education movement that takes into account what real learning looks like and why children really need to learn more slowly, freely and thoroughly
Finally…
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/07/09/binge_watching_tv_why_you_need_to_stop_.html
It seems that the perils of social media spill back to previous medias. The migration of TV content from TV to streaming (Neflix, Hulu etc) enables the trend of binge watching, which in addictiveness resembles greatly concerns typical for social media such as : addictiveness, poor concentration (AKA multitasking) etc.
Can the lessons learned by “disconnect,” “contemplative computing” and similar practices in mindfulness be used to deal with binge watching?
Below is selected bibliography. Please feel welcome to add your titles, findings and ideas how to resolve the issue
Matrix, S. (2014). The Netflix Effect: Teens, Binge Watching, and On-Demand Digital Media Trends. Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, 6(1), 119. http://login.libproxy.stcloudstate.edu/login?qurl=http%3a%2f%2fsearch.ebscohost.com%2flogin.aspx%3fdirect%3dtrue%26db%3dedo%26AN%3d98488719%26site%3deds-live%26scope%3dsite
Bazilian, E. (2014). Vincent Kartheiser: the Mad Men star stays away from social media but doesn’t mind an occasional bout of binge-watching. ADWEEK, (15). 58. http://login.libproxy.stcloudstate.edu/login?qurl=http%3a%2f%2fsearch.ebscohost.com%2flogin.aspx%3fdirect%3dtrue%26db%3dedsgao%26AN%3dedsgcl.365691198%26site%3deds-live%26scope%3dsite
Mark Zuckerberg’s Sister Published A Book About A Child Whose Mom Takes Her iPad Away
http://www.businessinsider.com/randi-zuckerbergs-kids-book-dot-2013-11#ixzz2jmchiAAf
social media etiquette
unplug
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/books/review/randi-zuckerbergs-dot-complicated-and-dot.html
Contemplative Pedagogy and Dealing with Technology
Dan Barbezat, Amherst College; David Levy, University of Washington
https://docs.google.com/viewer?pid=sites&srcid=cG9kbmV0d29yay5vcmd8d2lraXBvZGlhfGd4OjY4MDVkOTRlNGQyODY0ZjY&docid=9ffbca34d1874ac24b0a339bd01f94cf%7Cbeba8a8cdb041811cbd3136e0fdbd53b&a=bi&pagenumber=45&w=800
The accelerating pace of life is reducing the time for thoughtful reflection and in particular for contemplative scholarship, within the academy. The loss of time to think is occurring at exactly the moment when scholars, educators, and students have gained access to digital tools of great value to scholarship. This interactive session reviews research on technology’s impacts and demonstrates some contemplative practices that can respond to them. Contemplative pedagogy can offset the distractions of our multi-tasking, multi-media culture, and show how the needs of this generation of students can be met through innovative teaching methods that integrate secular practices of contemplation.
Topics: Faculty Professional Development, Teaching & Learning
Walking the Labyrinth: Contemplative Instructional Techniques to Enhance Learner Engagement
Carol Henderson and Janice Monroe, Ithaca College
Bringing ancient traditional meditative skills into the contemporary classroom, con-templative learning techniques serve as an effective counterbalance to the speedi-ness and distractions of today’s fast-paced technology-based cultural environment. Applicable to both faculty development programs and to faculty working directlywith students, contemplative methods create a richer, more engaging learningenvironment by allowing participants to quiet their minds and focus deeply on the material at hand. This interactive session provides instruction and practice in con-templative techniques, offers examples of their use, and supports the integration of these techniques into any discipline or subject area.
Topics: Faculty Professional Development, Teaching & Learning
Contemplative Computing and Our Future of Education
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Stanford University
A generation of educators have spent their professional lives hearing that technol-
ogy is changing the world, transforming the way we think, and that higher educa-
tion must evolve or become obsolete. In case you didn’t get the message in the
1960s and 1970s, with cassette tapes, television and mainframe computers, it was
repeated in the 1980s when personal computers appeared; repeated again in the
1990s, with CD-ROMs (remember those) and the World Wide Web; repeated again
in the early 2000s with blogs and wikis; and recently, repeated once again in the
wake of social media, YouTube and the real-time Web.
This language of technological revolution and institutional reaction is backward. It
gives too much credit and agency to technology, and makes today’s changes seem
unprecedented and inevitable. Neither is actually true. Contemplative computing—
the effort to design technologies and interactions that aren’t perpetually demanding
and distracting, but help users be more mindful and focused—provides a language
for talking differently about the place of technology in teaching, learning, and edu-
cation. We think of today’s technologies as uniquely appealing to our reptilian, dopa-
mine- and stimulation-craving brains. In reality, distraction is an ancient problem,
and the rise of contemplative practices and institutions (most notably monasteries
and universities) is a response to that problem. Abandoning our traditional role as
stewards of contemplative life is as dangerous for the societies we serve as it is
short-sighted and counterproductive. Contemplative computing argues that even
today, people have choices about how to interact with technologies, how to use
them, and how to make the parts of our extended minds; and that part of our job
as educators is to show students how to exercise that agency.