Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Evernote - your external brain


This is less about the brain and more about a cool program that claims to be 'your external brain". The company tag line is "remember everything". Usable on a wide variety of devices. Full featured free version with a premium version available for a very affordable price. You really can remember everything with Evernote. I use it all the time. Very powerful search tools. Worth your time to check it out.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Digital Kids - Twitch speed


Here are some thoughts from an interesting article called Digital Kids by Ian Jukes and Anita Dosaj and the Infosavy group back in 2006...
"This generation operates at what Marc Prensky describes as twitch speed. Children accept as normal that they should have instantaneous access to information, goods and services at the click of a mouse. They expect to be able to communicate with anyone or anything at anytime, anywhere day or night.

Such everyday expectations have led to the death of patience and the emergence of a society increasingly expecting, wanting and demanding instant gratification. This is one of the reasons why it’s harder and harder to get children to read today. Reading is a delayed gratification medium while TV, video games and the Web are immediate gratification media.

For example, I recently heard my son Kyler bitterly complain that it had taken him 20 minutes to register for his Spring courses at college, which he was doing ONLINE from his bedroom!!!!"

Anyone remember the good olds days of waiting in line for hours? So what do you think? Do you agree? If it is true, what are the implications for how we teach Sunday School, VBS, Day School, etc?

I'll post more from this article and from others that explore how our brain wires itself based on experience.