Facebook Will Rot Your Brain

Ran across an interesting article from a British web site with the rather provocative title "Social websites harm children's brains: Chilling warning to parents from top neuroscientist". You can read the full article here. Now I'm not a top neuroscientist so I can't judge the science, but based on what I read, it sounds like a lot of hooey (yes, that's a technical term). Here's a quote from the article:

Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Bebo are said to shorten attention spans, encourage instant gratification and make young people more self-centred.

Hello? Since when have young people not had short attention spans, wanted instant gratification and been self-centered? Check out this quote:

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they allow disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children now are tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

That one is allegedly Plato quoting Socrates. We think we have it bad today - at least my teenagers don't "gobble up dainties" (I think).

My point is, let's not blame the technology for a problem that has existed for centuries. Every generation thinks the subsequent one is filled with losers. Socrates just didn't have the Internet around to take the blame for it.

Perspective

The clip below I think provides some refreshing perspective on how spoiled technology has made us. Enjoy.

My Academic Plan Update

I haven't posted anything recently about our My Academic Plan (MAP) project and there is a lot going on. First of all, a quick overview. MAP went online at the end of April 2007 and it has been used by over 17,000 students to create roughly 38,000 academic plans. It was the result of a concerted effort of our counselors, some students and a couple of very talented developers - Pratik Modi and Shaun Collett. I have never worked with a design team that was more dedicated to seeing a project succeed as this group. It really is a privilege to work with them.

MAP was awarded a 2007 Focus Award from our state chancellor's office and they also gave us a small grant to explore the feasibility of turning MAP into a system that could support other colleges. We are in the midst of that feasibility study right now and are having conversations with several software companies to find one that would be a good partner with us. We are presenting MAP at a number of conferences and we are in conversations with several colleges who are interested in purchasing it.

I love this project because from the very beginning the focus was on the students. We came up with a very student-centered design and all of this exciting work going on around it remains secondary to the fact that our students are being served. Very cool.

Siftables

I'm fascinated by the human/computer interface and I love to see new and innovative ways to allow people to do their work (or play). Check out the video below - it's a demonstration by David Merrill, an MIT grad student, on a new type of interface using building blocks that recognize each other and adapt their behavior accordingly.