Fear of Missing Out Is Addicting

Surveys have shown that mobile devices can be addictive, particularly for youngsters. Concern has grown to the point where investors are starting to urge tech firms to take action to address it.

To Ana Homayoun, author of Social Media Wellness, it’s really about the way phone apps are being used.

“When we think about social media, so much of it is created on this feedback loop of notification. They want to promote engagement,” Homayoun said during a CNBC interview. “They create this system where you always want to be online. And it can create this fear of missing out if we’re not online.”

Homayoun recommended that parents give younger children a flip phone for emergency use only. She also suggested that parents establish times when kids aren’t allowed to use the device, such as in the bedroom at night, even as an alarm clock. Parents should consider applications that monitor usage, too.

“Social media isn’t good or bad, it’s a new tool for communications,” she said. “But what is a problem is that we as adults don’t fully speak the language that kids are speaking, and we need to.”

Students Go Tech-Free for Class

At the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, students who enroll in a special course taught by Justin McDaniel, professor of religious studies, get to experience a taste of the monastic life, including a vow of silence. In what may be even more of a trial for digital natives, they also relinquish use of their phone, texts, Internet, computer, TV, and radio for a month.

Rather than phone-addicted students running the other way, the pool of applicants is larger than the class can accommodate.

The tech abstinence extends beyond just the course, which is called Living Deliberately: Monks, Saints, and the Contemplative Life. They aren’t supposed to speak to anyone, including family, classmates, or even professors teaching other classes (in the event of an emergency, they can speak to family members, police, or health-care workers). They can’t use the web or computers for other classes either, having to acquire printed copies of readings and use handwritten notes to communicate with instructors and workgroups.

Other aspects of the course include writing in a journal every 30 minutes as long as they’re awake and taking part in kindness projects on campus or in the community.

McDaniel told NPR that it was surprisingly easy for the students to go cold turkey on their electronics. “What is hard is a feeling that they are missing out on activities, chances to meet other people (in person), and loneliness,” he said. “They actually love not having the electronics.”

He added that very few students in the course try to sneak in tech use—and when they do he can usually spot it from their behavior and their journal entries.

As NPR noted, the course suggests that patterns of tech use, including addiction, may be shaped more by the communities of which we’re a part—in other words, by people—than by neural interactions with the technology itself.

Picturing a New Form of Literacy

Recorded human communication began with cave paintings and then grew into murals and hieroglyphs before developing into written alphabets. In some ways, digital technologies and social platforms are taking communication back toward its visual origins.

In a commentary in T.H.E. Journal earlier this year, Cathie Norris, a professor and chair in the School of Information at the University of North Texas, and Elliot Soloway, a professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan, noted that K-12 students spend far more time with text-based materials in school and far more time with image-based materials outside the classroom.

With an average of about 2.5 billion daily Snaps on Snapchat, and more than 400 million daily users partaking of Instagram’s shared photos and videos, it’s no surprise that today’s digitally savvy students are gravitating toward “picting,” the use of images instead of words to convey information and ideas.

Picting is an emergent form of literacy, but not one that many schools are embracing. That presents a risk that students who aren’t able to access the same tools in the classroom that they do outside of it may see schoolwork as irrelevant to their lives.

The solution, of course, is not to supplant written communication with picting, but to make reading and writing as engaging as picting’s imagery, and to teach writing as a way to support and improve visual communication.

“Schools must teach written literary skills,” Soloway responded to comments on his and Norris’ post. “This is a teachable moment. Educators can use the Snapchat/Instagram story to help students craft good stories.”

A recent post on the EdSurge edtech news site offered suggestions for how to use Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, and Seesaw, The Learning Journal, to help give students “ownership of their learning” and make the classroom more engaging for digital natives.

However, engagement can’t be the only metric. Because many complex ideas can’t be communicated with images alone, effective reading and writing skills remain paramount.

They’re also a necessity for full participation in society. As recently as just a century ago, illiteracy could prevent the poor from full participation in their rights as voters and citizens. In an age of “fake news” and calculated disinformation on social media, critical reading skills may be more crucial than ever.

Paper Still Has a Place in Digital Times

Despite the proliferation of electronic devices in classrooms today, the vast majority of college students (93%) and seventh- through 12th-graders (87%) still see paper as an essential component for reaching their educational goals. While these numbers come from an understandably print-biased source—the Paper and Packaging Board’s Paper and Productive Learning: The Third Annual Back-to-School Report—they jibe with many other recent studies.

In the report, almost 95% of parents said they see their children do well on homework completed on paper, while more than 72% noted having seen their child have difficulty staying focused when working on homework on a tablet or computer. More than 88% said their child remembered assignments better when he or she wrote them down on paper.

The youngest students surveyed, seventh- and eighth-graders, agreed that they learn information best when they write it down by hand. Slightly more than half of college-age students still gave the same answer, and 81% said they always or often use paper tools to prepare for tests.

A Princeton University researcher told NPR that people who type onto a device during a lecture attempt to take their notes verbatim, while those who write their notes longhand are “forced to be more selective—because you can’t write as fast as you can type. And that extra processing of the material they were doing benefited them” in their learning.

Surprisingly, there isn’t as much research as one would expect exploring the benefits of and differences between reading on a screen and on a page. A recent paper published in SAGE Journals’ Review of Educational Research found that of 878 relevant studies published from 1992-2017, just 36 directly compared digital vs. print reading and reliably measured learning by the two methods.

Parent Groups Want Age Cap on Smartphones

A mom from Austin, TX, has created a “Wait Until 8th”pledge to encourage parents not to give their children smartphones until they’re in eighth grade or at least 14 years old. Brooke Shannon’s pledge asks that parents vow “not to give your child a smartphone until at least eighth grade as long as at least 10 other families from your child’s grade and school pledge as well.”

So far, more than 2,000 parents from 500-plus schools in 49 states have committed to the pledge.

Shannon acknowledges that the pledge may not be appropriate for families with children who need more advanced technology to help manage a medical condition, such as Type 1 diabetes.

For parents who need to be able to connect with their children, either for emergencies or for those involved in shared-custody arrangements, Shannon suggests a lower-tech option such as a basic flip phone.

There is a groundswell of similar movements around the U.S., such as Parents Against Underage Smartphones (PAUS), a Colorado-based organization that wants to ban sales of cellphones to anyone under age 13. PAUS is working to gather signatures for a proposed ballot initiative that would require retailers to ask customers the age of the intended primary user for a cellphone. Merchants that repeatedly sell phones for use by preteens and younger children would be subject to government fines.

National U. Rethinking Personalized Learning

National University, a California-based nonprofit that primarily enrolls adults students, has launched a $20 million, four-year project to create a personalized learning platform that combines adaptive learning, competency-based education learning (CBE), and predictive analytics. The goal is to use the new platform in 20 general-education courses by next year.

The three elements would combine in courseware that would adjust to each student’s abilities and progress, while providing data to track that progress for faculty, advisors, and the students. Incorporating CBE will make it possible to drop conventional grading and divide the course and its credits into skills the students have mastered.

As part of the project, National has also established a research-and-development department to support faculty members and will make its research available to the public.

“How do we create a university that truly tries to adapt to the needs of its students?” asked National’s president, David Andrews. “We have to have a better model for serving adults.”

Fitting all the pieces into one cohesive platform won’t be easy. Getting the CBE portion right could be the biggest challenge because it requires approval from accreditors. Providing financial aid may also prove troublesome, in the view of some industry observers.

“There’s a huge risk that you don’t understand the problem. Will they truly learn and adjust as they go along?” said Phil Hill, co-publisher of the e-Literate blog, about designing academic programs around adult learners. But he also added, “It’s definitely interesting. It’s a relatively large university that appears to be going all in on personalized learning.”

OER by Students for Students

LibreText traces its roots to Delmar Larsen’s frustration that his students had each shelled out $200 for a chemistry textbook that he discovered was riddled with errors. Larsen, an associate professor at the University of California, Davis, didn’t have the funds to assemble a textbook of his own, but what he did have was a valuable creative resource in those students.

Ten years later, the project that began in that class has grown into an extensive library of open course resources, accessible through a Creative Commons license, with much of the content created via crowdsourcing by students, instructors, and topic experts. A dozen subjects are covered, including math, statistics, biology, physics, medicine, and the humanities. Students participate via class assignments to address a specific question or mirror a chapter’s worth of content from an existing resource. Afterward, some continue to contribute as volunteers or paid content developers.

Like a wiki, there is no formal peer-review process for LibreText resources, although certain account-holders can correct errors instantly and anyone else can highlight mistakes through feedback. Larsen noted to EdSurge that even with peer review, traditional textbooks can be full of errors. In print, those persist until the next edition, while most mistakes in the LibreText library can be corrected within a half-hour of being pointed out.

“No textbook or resource is going to be 100% accurate, ever,” an executive of OpenStax, the open course materials provider based at Rice University, told EdSurge. The closest to perfect is content that can be fixed immediately.

In 2014, Larsen conducted an experiment by teaching two chemistry classes, one with a conventional textbook and one with LibreText. At the end of term, the open resource was judged in no way inferior to the traditional content.

For-Profit Coding Camps Hurt by 'Bad Actors'

Coding and science boot camps teach in-demand technical skills that are being used by industries desperate for trained employees. A surveyof 2014-16 boot camp graduates found that 80% were satisfied with the training and 63% reported receiving a salary increase of more than $22,000 within six months of completing the course.

While boot camps continue to be popular, last September the founder of online coding camp Devschool disappeared with $100,000 in student tuition. Students who lost money don’t expect to ever see it again, even though they complained to state and federal authorities, forcing the site to shut down.

“For boot camp founders, there is almost no barrier to entry when starting up,” Salvador Rodriguez wrote in an article detailing the fraud for Inc. magazine. “To lure in customers, all that is needed is someone who can teach how to code and is bold enough to promise students a job.”

There are things students can look for to protect themselves when choosing to participate in an accelerated learning program, according to Jim Deters, CEO and co-founder of Galvanize, which has nine campuses around the country offering programming, coding, and data-science courses. The most important is to check with state agencies to see if the boot camp opens its process to review. It should raise a red flag if the provider isn’t working with the state officials.

“Boot camps have a lot of success stories already, but it’s still such early days,” Darrell Silver, co-founder and CEO of online coding camp Thinkful, said in the Inc. article. “For-profit education has left a lot of scars, and it’ll take years for boot camps to remedy that reputation. Bad actors slow us down, so it’s in all of our interests to call them out quickly and fix the situation for students.”

U.K. Detox Camps Help Teens Unplug

After touring secondary schools and surveying students ages 13-18, the founder of a British “digital detox” company said she’ll expand its services this spring to include teenagers.

Tanya Goodin of Time To Log Off found that 29% of the young people she polled said they spend more than eight hours a day online, and more than a third regularly fall asleep at night with their phone or laptop in bed with them.

In the U.S., in response to a December 2016 survey of more than 4,500 college students by NACS’ OnCampus Research, a quarter said they spend two hours every day on social media, 19% said three hours, 14% said four hours, and 9% said five hours. Three percent admitted actually devoting 10 hours every day to social media.

Unlike Internet-addiction treatment centers in China, which are run more like army boot camps, Time To Log Off’s three-day teen retreats in Britain will emphasize team-building and creative activities such as painting, cooking, and photography.

Richard Graham, a London psychiatrist, told The Guardian newspaper that schools should be looking into running their own digital-detox programs, especially close to midterm and final exams. He said what’s needed is a “systemwide approach, with clean times and clean zones where everyone switches off.”

New Guidance on Kids and Screens

The American Academy of Pediatrics recently published its updated recommendations on children’s media use.

Where the organization previously recommended no screen time at all for children under two and that children older than that be limited to no more than two hours of electronic media, it now eases up on the restrictions and acknowledges that digital content is not only ubiquitous but also has benefits as well as dangers.

AAP still advises against screen time for children under 18-24 months, although it does now make an exception for video chats via such services as Skype or FaceTime, which can help nurture relationships with long-distance family members.

It also no longer recommends specific screen-time limits for elementary school-aged children or teenagers, saying that decisions on digital media use for those age groups should depend on the individual child and the type of media. The organization does advise that parents “co-view” with younger children, talk about what they’re watching, and discuss online safety and citizenship.

Not surprisingly, the recommendations also say kids should engage in unplugged playtime and get proper exercise and sleep every day, which includes not having any devices in their room at night and avoiding screen use in the hour before bedtime.

Along with its guidelines, the AAP rolled out a new interactive online tool to help parents craft a household media plan to establish appropriate guidelines for each child. Parents can stick with AAP’s age-specific guidance or add in their own family rules, addressing such items as device-free times and areas, what sort of media to avoid, privacy settings, and more.

Teachers Want VR in the Classroom

Educators see potential in virtual reality (VR) and would like more access to it in their classrooms. A new survey from the networking software company Extreme Networks found that 23% of responding schools said they had tested VR and more than half said they were looking into using it.

The study reported that 52% of the schools that tried VR technology used it for science classes, while 20% used it in engineering, and 29% in history. Google was the most popular brand in the survey, at 74%, followed by Oculus (17%) and Samsung (14%).

One challenge for responding school administrators was IT infrastructure. The report found that 32% said they could use VR, 31% said they were “somewhat sure” they had the infrastructure, and 30% were sure they couldn’t support the technology.

“The major benefit of virtual reality in the classroom is that it engages students completely in the lesson,” Bob Nilsson, director of vertical solutions marketing for Extreme Networks, wrote in a blog post about the survey. “It sparks creativity and brings difficult concepts to life. The downside is there is not yet enough VR content and it is still perceived as difficult to implement.”

A New Look at MOOC Completion Rates

Researchers have been trying to figure out why completion rates for massive open online courses (MOOCs) tend to stay around 10%. A new study showed that putting learners into study groups based on communication preferences isn’t the answer.

The research done at Pennsylvania State University showed that the groupings had no significant impact on students’ performance or completion. Participants in the survey were put into groups based on their preferred methods of communications for the course: asynchronous, which allows students to learn at their own pace with common online communication such as email or discussion boards, or synchronous, a more facilitated form of communication such as videoconferencing.

“These differences were statistically different and were moderated by English language proficiency, gender, level of education, and age,” Adelina Hristova, a Penn State doctoral student and one of the collaborators on the report, said in an article for Penn State News. “Although the groups designed for the study did not significantly influence students’ course performance and completion, our study can serve as baseline data for making grouping decisions in future online courses, including MOOCs.”

The study did note that older learners were more likely to complete the course. It also found that female students preferred to study in groups, while males preferred synchronous communications for the course.

“It has provided me with a fabulous opportunity to study how students of different ages, cultures, genders, and educational backgrounds learn and practice some of the subjects that I teach—namely, design, problem-solving, and creativity,” said Kathryn Jablokow, a Penn State associate professor of mechanical engineering and engineering design. “Those insights influence how I formulate new research studies, and the MOOC also gives me a unique setting in which to test and disseminate new research results.”

Prep Students Use MOOCs to Start College

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are making it easier for high school students to explore the choices offered in college before they ever apply.

According to a report from U.S. News & World Report, MOOCs allows high school students to gauge their interest in potential majors and gain exposure to courses and instruction at the college level.

Taking a MOOC can also provide the extracurricular activities college admissions officers like to see. Experts say students should list MOOCs they’ve completed on admissions applications, or at least mention they’ve taken the classes in the “additional information” section of the application.

“They’re really one of many activities that students can do to enrich their learning, and that’s really how we look at them,” said Stu Schmill, dean of admissions and student financial services, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge.

Are Mobile Devices Addictive?

A new survey from Common Sense Media reports teens think they may be addicted to their mobile devices. The poll of 1,240 parents and teens from the same household found that half of the teens said they were addicted to their device, while nearly 60% of the parents agreed.

About a third of the kids said they try to reduce the amount of time they spend using a mobile device and 66% said devices were not allowed at the dinner table. However, 72% of the teens said they felt it was necessary to respond to texts, social networking messages, and other notifications immediately, while 78% said they check their devices hourly.

The parents may be addicted as well, since 48% said they responded to messages immediately and 69% check their device hourly.

“What we’ve discovered is that kids and parents feel addicted to their mobile devices, that it is causing daily conflict in homes, and that families are concerned about the consequences,” said James Steyer, founder and CEO of Common Sense, in a report for eSchool News. “We also know that problematic media use can negatively affect children’s development and that multitasking can harm learning and performance. As a society, we all have the responsibility to take media use and addiction seriously and make sure parents have the information to help them make smart choices for their families.”

Most Schools Now Use Digital Content

Some college store professionals believe digital content will only become a dominant format when students begin using it in grade school. That day has gotten much closer.

Digital Content Goes to School: Trends in K-12 Classroom e-Learning found that 80% of school and district leaders who responded to the survey said they are using digital content in some way. Of more than 2,000 respondents, 73% had a digital-device strategy and 64% are using digital content with that strategy.

The survey, released by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development and content distributor OverDrive Inc., also reported that most educators use digital content for English and language arts (74%), science (62%), math (61%), and social studies (56%), according to a report in eSchool News. Respondents added that use of digital content will continue to grow as long as teachers receive professional development.

Equity concerns and lack of Internet access top the list of issues educators have with going digital. Teachers also listed not being comfortable with digital learning, not enough devices in the classroom, lack of funding, and content that doesn’t work on every device as other concerns.

“We believe the paradigm of instruction needs to change,” Kahle Charles, executive director of curriculum, St. Vrain Valley School, Longmont, CO, said in response to the survey. “Devices bring more knowledge to students’ fingertips than the teacher can give, so the traditional lecture model is no longer applicable. We want content that will engage students and the ability to introduce flipped classrooms with content that students can access at any time, at any place.”

Gen Z Shows Little Interest in IT Careers

The young men and women who make up Generation Z expect and demand that their mobile devices work seamlessly and are integrated into every aspect of their lives. The problem is, new data suggest they have little interest in making information technology a career.

According to a survey conducted by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), 70% of teen and young adult respondents said they “love technology,” but only 19% of those aged 18-24 said they were interested in an IT career. In addition, 21% of those aged 13-17 said they were not interested in IT as a career.

“On the surface, it seems like the affinity for technology is a great thing for the future workforce, since technology will be so intertwined with business,” the CompTIA report said. “However, most students are not eyeing a career in IT as a result of their technology learnings.”

The lack of interest is particularly troublesome for colleges and universities that are increasing the use of technology to handle everything from enrollment to graduation rates, according to a report in eCampus News. Stanford has even made a national plea for experts in the field of data science, and innovators are creating departments on campus focused on data science, and IT management.

While the survey of Generation Z proved disappointing, there may be good news on the horizon. A January online survey from The Harris Poll found that while most parents of K-12 students discourage their kids from becoming teachers in science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) subjects, 50% identified engineering as the career they would most prefer their children pursue.

Lynn Switching from Minis to iPad Pros

Lynn University, Boca Raton, FL, made headlines with its pilot program to provide 750 students with iPad minis for the fall 2013 semester. The initiative worked so well the device was given to all undergraduate students and new MBA and doctoral students in 2014.

Lynn is upping the ante once again by providing 1,800 iPad Pros with the Smart Keyboard and Apple Pencil included to undergrads and faculty. The school made the switch because of the improved performance and multitasking abilities of the device. The keyboard is more convenient for students to use, while the pencil expands the multitouch powers, according to the university’s website.

The school claims its iPad initiative has reduced costs for students, who no longer have to bring a personal computer or laptop to campus. The program has also allowed the school to replace traditional textbooks with custom e-textbooks.

Google Has Shipped Millions of VR Devices

Virtual reality (VR) has become a really, really big thing, and Google has the numbers to prove it.

The company recently reported it shipped five million units of its Cardboard virtual-reality platform in two years. That includes devices that were sold by third-party retailers along with ones given away by Google.

The Google numbers also show that Cardboard has been installed through the Google Play Store more than 25 million times and users have watched more than 350,000 hours of YouTube videos through the app. On the education front, more than 500,000 students have taken VR field trips using the device, according to a report in VentureBeat.

While Google has competition for the VR space, Oculus Rift is still several weeks away from shipping and the HTC Vive is still not available for preorder. And Apple has only just begun to explore the potential of VR, which puts it way behind in the market.

Put Some Fashion into Wearable Tech

Many college stores have climbed aboard the wearable technology bandwagon, offering tech-savvy students any number of fitness-band options. Next, collegiate retailers may want to start thinking about shelves full of smart clothes.

“No one in the industry wants to admit it,  but the wrist is probably not the best place to stick a bunch of sensors, and activity tracking many not even be the best use for all those sensors,” Malarie Gokey wrote in an article for Digital Trends. “If we want wearables to become truly wearable, companies need to start looking at the clothes we wear every day of our lives. And if we want those wearables to be truly useful, we need to think beyond step counting and create tech that gives actionable suggestions to improve our well-being.”

Companies are making inroads into the wearable clothing field, but the focus has been fitness metrics. That trend is starting to change as manufacturers discover that garments provide opportunities for customization while stilling looking like normal clothing.

“The possibilities are endless,” Gokey wrote.  “Smart clothing has the potential to break wearables out of their fitness funk and make them go mainstream. If wearables are ever going to take off, they have to be fashionable, look like normal clothes and accessories, and do more than tell you your step count.”

A Student's View of Social Media

All those studies that say Facebook users are just getting older are true—to a point. Parents and grandparents of students are trying to figure out the social media site, but it’s still an “indispensable” part of college life, according to Drexel University senior Josh Weiss.

Weiss, an editor of the Drexel student newspaper, was asked by CNBC to write about hot trends in social media.

“Personally, I am an avid user of social media, something I am both proud and ashamed to admit in equal measures,” he wrote. “Yes, it can be a waste of time and we’ve all run out the clock, scrolling through a newsfeed we’ve seen a million times. At the same time, it allows you to stay connected with the world. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I don’t get the vast majority of my news from Facebook. I also use it to stay in touch with friends. While some students may use it at its bare minimum to stay up to date, with the world or group projects, I see it as a time-wasting means to an end.”

Facebook and Twitter are important tools at Drexel, used by student groups and the university to update people on happenings around the campus. Weiss uses both tools to provide readers with real-time updates.

He also mentioned Snapchat, Yik Yak, and Instagram as part of the social media mix at Drexel. Snapchat is becoming one of the most used platforms at the university, but Weiss suggested that Yik Yak and Instagram are primarily used to find parties or campus groups promoting their activities.

“Social media can end up running our lives—or even enabling our bad behavior—but if we harness it right, it can help us connect with people and run our lives more efficiently, old and young alike,” he wrote.