I was just watching CNBC, which was covering Apple’s new iBooks2 software, something that allows highly interactive textbooks to be available on the iPad. It’s lauded as a money-saver (the textbooks will be $15.00 or less) and as a way to engage students by making textbooks much more interactive (in addition to making backpacks a lot lighter). But interestingly, many of the college students interviewed for the TV coverage said that they wanted to stick with printed books for now. They all expressed concerns that they didn’t have the self-discipline to resist the lure of Facebook and other distractions that the iPad makes so readily available. What do you think? Can you stay focused while reading on-line?
I have the good fortune to be at the beach this week, and I already think I see a difference on the same beach over last year. More walkers seem to have earbuds in their ears and more people seem to be using their smart phones either while walking or as they lounge on their…
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An article on the front page of today’s New York Times talks about a school in Silicon Valley that prides itself on keeping computers OUT of the classroom. This practice is based on the belief that at a young age, hands-on experience—for example, learning fractions by cutting up and then eating a cake—is much more compelling…
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On Sunday, my husband and I went to his uncle’s 95th birthday party. It was amazing how young and healthy Uncle Bill looked, and how totally with-it he was. I found out that he keeps himself very busy: With the help of an 87-year-old buddy, he designs, plants, and cares for the flower gardens at…
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In his recent Writer’s Almanac, Garrison Keillor talks about the poet Li-Young Lee‘s contention that his brain hunts up ideas while he sleeps:
“Lee says his writing process isn’t very disciplined, even though he feels he’s on duty 24 hours a day: ‘When I wake up, there’s something in me even beyond my wakeful mind that’s been…
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On a recent airing of “The Writer’s Almanac,” Garrison Keillor quoted an interview with J.K. Rowling on how she got the idea of writing a novel about Harry Potter:
She was on a train coming home to London from a weekend looking at flats in Manchester in 1990, when she suddenly got the idea for a…
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A new book ”Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little” (reviewed in today’s New York Times) says the “elevator speech” may be too long. We now have such a short time to catch our target’s attention that we should think about an escalator pitch, “short enough to make when you’re on the up escalator…
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I was in the Verizon store picking up an iPhone for my son, when I saw that one of its touted features was improved multitasking. Knowing what research says about how multitasking slows you down and interferes with the quality and accuracy of what you’re doing, I was intrigued. But thinking more about this,…
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In light of the recent Supreme Court decision overturning the California law that would have made it harder for minors to buy extremely violent video games, people have been asking me about the author of the New York Times op-ed piece that appeared on Monday. Ms. Olson and her husband Lawrence Kutner have been pooh-poohing…
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There’s an interesting AP article today about the problem of people texting during movies and distracting other viewers. What does this say about our ability to focus on one thing at a time, even when we’ve paid to sit in a dark room and be entertained? For some people, making comments seems to be part…
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