LONESOME? DOES SOCIAL MEDIA HELP OR HURT?

If you are lonely, you are not alone.

One source says 60 million Americans suffer chronic loneliness.

Studies show that loneliness can cause a lot of health problems.

Now, we're being told the problem is getting worse because of social media.

That seems strange because social media connects people. 

Social networking on the internet helps if used to promote face-to-face 

conversation, but if used as a replacement for that.

So, I suppose the lesson is that it's okay to do Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Don't use it as a substitute for face-to-face interaction with others.  

PIC QUIZ on Dick’s World Again

I’ve decided to give you another sample of my PIC QUIZ that I post on Facebook. Who knows, maybe a blog reader might come up with an answer before someone on Facebook. If you know the answer, just click the “comment” button below the post and write it in.

If you can tell me what this is and from where it was taken, you’ll be the proud winner of the ATTAGIRL or ATTABOY, or if it takes more than one person to come up with the whole answer, the ATTATEAM AWARD!

If you click on the picture, a larger version will come up on your screen.

A Way to Fight Junk Information Addicition

Eating junk food can make you unhealthily fat. And ingesting too much junk information can make you unhealthily uninformed.  Way too many of us fit in both categories.

“Who wants to hear the truth when they can be affirmed and told they are right,” Clay Land – a cousin of mine, by the way – said on Weekend Edition Sunday morning. Being interviewed about his book The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption, Clay said that we can be better informed if we seek factual information instead of opinions that confirm our beliefs.  His book tells us how we can do that.

He is addressing a big problem. We are feasting on texts, instant messages, emails, RSS feeds, downloads, videos, status updates, and tweets. Some experts think our attention spans have become unhealthily short.  We can change that by changing our information consumption habits.

One can’t blame the providers for the problem because they are giving us what they think we want, content that confirms our beliefs. But, just as Wal-Mart started carrying fruits and vegetables and lower salt and fat content in order to stop losing high-end customers, information providers could start providing more fact and fewer opinions. But we have to reward good information providers by becoming good customers.

I think he has picked a subject is quite timely, one that needs our attention. And I plan to read the book. And it’s not just because he is the son of my cousin Ray Johnson, who is an Albany, Georgia psychiatrists.  Ray gave me the heads-up on Clay’s scheduled interview on PBS. I’m glad he did.

 

Having Fun with Facebook: PIC QUIZ

It took me a little while to really get involved with Facebook. I thought, I have a blog  and I have email so why should I fool with Facebook?  Still, I kept hearing so much about it from people I know that I decided to give it a try.  Now, it turns  out I’m having fun with it with my PIC QUIZ.

I submit one of the photos I took over the past 56 years and ask folks to see if they can identify it.  I do this, so far, on most days, but I can’t promise every day  because sometimes I have other things to do.

My first photo dates back to when I bought my first 35mm camera.  I had just arrived in Germany in 1955 courtesy of the United States Army and decided I couldn’t pass up  the opportunity to record what I saw in Europe.  Here’s the pic and the declaration of who won.

PIC QUIZ WINNER IS SUE NELSON. She guessed that it is one of the Munich, Germany city gates. It’s the Isartor gate. The center tower was built in 1337, and the octagonal towers in the 15th century. Congratulations, Sue. ATTTAGIRL!

Yes, as you can see, there is a prize. The winner gets the  ATTAGIRL or ATTABOY AWARD,  and sometimes when it takes a bunch of people to come up with the answer, the ATTATEAM AWARD.

The second one was when I was on leave in Italy.

And the winnah is…Dixie Close Turman. She correctly identified Mt. Vesuvius and wins the ATTAGIRL AWARD for PIC QUIZ #2. Congratulations, Dixie. I took the picture on a tour of some of Italy when I was on Army leave in 1956.  

Not all of them will date back that far.  Here’s my latest one.

… and the PIC QUIZ winnah isssss…..Keith Lovett, the first person to correcltly identify the picture of a London Eye capsule.

 

That one was taken on a 2004 visit  to London.  I’ll have a new one soon. If you’d like to play, just come to my Facebook wall (profile) and join in.

More on the Classroom Digital Revolution

CONNIE USSERY, RETIRED MUSCOGEE COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT MEDIA SPECIALIST,  WHO NOW TEACHES CARVER HIGH TEACHERS TWO DAYS A WEEK HOW TO TEACH WITH ELECTRONIC MEDIA, SENT THIS CLARIFICATION OF THE PREVIOUS POST ON HER TALK LAST SUNDAY TO COLUMBUS UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS.    

As far as I know, all core teachers at Carver utilize netbooks in instruction and I think most of the electives teachers do, when
appropriate, because tech support folks are bombarded when any networking problems arise. The students have to have their netbooks up and working during the school day and they make sure we keep them online. Teachers make sure their students bring them to class.  Paper textbooks will always be useful for classroom teachers as supplementary materials and especially for some types of special needs students.  Elective courses may rely on paper texts for a lot longer than core teachers because those courses are often taught using a variety of print and digital resources anyway.  I still think there are some teachers around the district who are “holdouts’ who prefer print textbooks, but I can’t imagine that they don’t utilize digital resources and software for projects.

Also, the researchers who talk about the differences in brain development among digital native children don’t make it sound like a bad thing: it’s just something that we teachers have to understand. Our students are as casual with technology as we used to be with doll houses and match box cars.  Their “learning curve” is way ahead of ours.

I hope I wasn’t too misleading during the Q & A yesterday.  I probably shouldn’t have tried to talk much about this since my talk was mainly about resources for UU, but I get excited and I find I have to reassure the people who aren’t comfortable with computer-based learning and project development, as some of the questions from parents and instructors indicated.

It’s very exciting seeing the teachers and the students working so hard to bring Carver into the 21st Century in instruction and in
facilities.The new building opens next fall and it’s going to be a showcase for technology and learning.

The New, Electronic Face of Education

WHAT ARE TEXTING, SMART PHONES, TWITTER, FACEBOOK, VIDEO GAMES DOING TO  OUR CHILDREN’S BRAINS?

Can the Facebook, Twitter, Texting, video game generation concentrate enough to become adequately educated for the future?  At the Unitarian Fellowship of Columbus service today, retired CSU History Professor Mark Berger raised that question to MCSD retired teacher and Media Specialist Connie Ussery, who. in her retirement instructs Carver High teachers in using electronic media to teach. The school is transitioning to digital textbooks.  Some teachers, she says, are making the transition, others are hanging on to paper textbooks.

Connie acknowledged the problem of attention spans shortening with constant bombardment of our young people’s brains by fast changing electronic media stimulation, and said the huge amount of time students spend looking at two-dimensional electronic images is definitely affecting the brains of young people. However, she says it has to be effectively used because electronic media images are here to stay and will probably increase.

And to think, I still read paper books, but I  do get my daily Ledger-Enquirer electronically.  

People are Blogging Less, and That Includes Me

ARE YOU BLOGGING LESS?

A Pew research report tells us that overall people are blogging a lot less now. The report says,” In 2006, 28% of teens ages 12-17 and young adults ages 18-29 were bloggers, but by 2009 the numbers had dropped to 14% of teens and 15% of young adults. During the same period, the percentage of online adults over thirty who were bloggers rose from 7% blogging in 2006 to 11% in 2009.”

This doesn’t mean teenagers are less active online. They have gone to social sites, with Facebook being the favorite. Facebook isn’t as demanding as blogging., Real blogging requires significant content, and teenagers, I read, just don’t have the life and professional experiences to offer insightful content. Besides that, it takes a lot more time and effort to write meaningful blog posts.

Studies also show that the percentage of folks 65 and older that go online is quite small,  38 percent. That compares to more than 90 percent of teenagers and young adults.

I am among bloggers who are blogging a lot less. Some weeks I only do one post, which I put online either Sunday night or Monday morning. It is not, however, because I use Facebook a lot. I am on Facebook, but I will go for days without checking it. I blog less because I have other things to do and because I don’t want the pressure of trying to post something every day. How about you, are you blogging less and is it because of Facebook?