The Blog of Ms. Mercer

Quote of the week:

“There is no “instructional plan” by design since Papert and others involved in the vision behind OLPC do not believe that learning results from an emphasis on instruction.
http://www.papert.org/articles/const_inst/const_inst1.html”
- Quote from Gary Stager, Ph.D. Wes Fryer’s Speed of Creativity blog about my comment on OLPC

“Well, that’s a nice theory, but frankly, I find projects where students create things to be oodles more successful when I have a plan, not just a computer.”
- My response to Gary Stager, PhD

At the Schoolhouse Gate: Cyberbullying: If We Ignore This, It Will Pass???
Mix cyberbullying, the First Amendment, and school/district discipline policies and what do you get? Makes me glad I’m not an administrator.

Study: Web generation heaviest users of public libraries - CNN.com

NEW YORK (AP) — Young adults are the heaviest users of public libraries despite the ease with which they can access a wealth of information over the Internet from the comforts of their homes, according to a new study.

And people are going to libraries not only for the Internet computers there but also for library reference books, newspapers and magazines.

“The age of books isn’t yet over,” said Lee Rainie, Pew’s director.

The study found that library usage drops gradually as people age — to 62 percent among Americans generally aged 18-30 compared with 32 percent among those 72 and up, with a sharp decline just as Americans turn 50.

Leigh Estabrook, a retired professor of information science and sociology at the University of Illinois, said young adults used to finding information online are likely to crave even more and realize they need to turn to libraries to get it.

In the decade since the Benton report, Internet access has grown from about 44 percent of public libraries to more than 99 percent. Many libraries have rearranged spaces or moved into new quarters to accommodate the expansion in computers. In many places, individual study carrels gave way to long tables where patrons can interact.

“We’re seeing a lot of conversion of what may have been stack areas, warehouse areas,” said Loriene Roy, president of the American Library Association, which was not involved in the study. “Libraries are creating social spaces.”

The study also found library usage lower among those without Internet access or only dial-up access, especially when their income also is lower, even though for them, the library might be their only source of high-speed Internet terminals.

But when they have a problem to solve, they turn to libraries as heavily.

I’m pulling out some old stuff because I think this is germane to the discussion of numbers and what’s meaningful re: the Annual Report contest:

Dangerously Irrelevant: GDP overachievers

Scott McLeod looks at, imho, a very mediocre video sharing “SHOCKING FACTS ABOUT US ECONOMIC DOMINANCE” that American students are not being taught by their teachers. That, was boring, but the spreadsheets the Scott came up comparing GDP and Per Capita GDP of states, and the ranking differentials, that’s interesting. I disagree that it’s meaningless (which some commenters on and off his blog argued). This is a nice little analytic. First the per captia GDP is always better to look at, but looking at the difference in the rankings from the raw to the GDP figure really contextualizes the figures.

Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog …on a tip from Doug Johnson in Scott’s post, I went to this site, which I’d been to before, but forgotten about (as if you could forget about Freakonomics!)….THE WORLD IS GETTING SMARTER | More Intelligent Life…and I end up here at Intelligent Life (part of The Economist) reading about increases at each generation in IQ scores. Interesting to think about this in terms of testing and assessment.