Social media has changed so much in recent years that the platforms we scroll on our phones today bear no resemblance whatsoever to the websites we may have accessed on desktop computers a couple of decades ago. But to gain a deeper understanding of how social media as a whole operates, it’s interesting to take […]
Social Media
Continuous Partial Attention: How Devices Negatively Affect Our Focus
In today’s environment of constant connectivity, we routinely slog through multiple tasks in a single session. Blinking notifications pull us away from whatever we had been doing to something more pressing. We surf the web by opening up multiple browser tabs and scrolling back and forth between various articles, email accounts, social media streams and other […]
Is Social Media Preventing Students from Being “Good Digital Citizens”?
The digital age demands new competencies in order for us to be fully literate citizens. With information now being created by everyone on various web platforms, we need to critically think about what and how we consume. Today we are also all content curators whether we like it or not, as we decide what we […]
Where Can You Find the Most Useful and Insightful Conversations Online?
One major goal for teachers and librarians today is to foster “information literacy,” a set of skills that allows us to efficiently communicate what information we need, understand where and how to search, think critically about information and use it strategically to achieve our goals. Information literacy instruction typically involves activities like a discussion of what makes […]
How to Avoid Online Distractions and Stay Productive in a Connected World
With distractions of all types just a single click away, completing tasks online in a timely manner can sometimes seem impossible today. Many people would be the first to tell you that they’re “procrastinating on Facebook” or surfing the web aimlessly, but they might not realize how much time this takes up over the long […]