education & tech

"American children now spend 7.5 hours a day absorbing and creating media"

I have to thank @hello_maklein for the reference to the very interesting article in fastcompany.com. It clearly shows why it is important teacher and service ones get in touch with what is going on technology.

As the article says, there is a huge difference between the revolution caused by television and the big leaps that handhelds are forcing people to do. "They are tools for expression and connection, not just passive absorption."

Anya Kamenetz, the article's author, writes that studies and pilot projects show smartphones can actually make kids smarter:

And as the search intensifies for technological solutions to the nation's and the world's education woes -"Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age," as the title of a summit at Google HQ last fall had it- growing sums of money are flowing into the sector. The U.S. Department of Education has earmarked $5 billion in competitive school-reform grants to scale up pilot programs and evaluate best practices of all kinds. Major foundations are specifically zeroing in on handhelds for preschool and the primary grades. "Young kids and multisensor-touch computing are a huge area of innovation," says Phoenix Wang, the head of a startup philanthropic venture fund called Startl -funded by the Gates, MacArthur, and Hewlett foundations- that's entirely focused on educational investing. Google, Nokia, Palm, and Sony have all supplied handheld devices for teaching. Thousands of new mobiles -- not just smartphones but also ever-shrinking computers -- have come into use at schools in the United States and around the world just in the past year.

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