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Author: avi maxwel

Opinion | Screens Are Everywhere in Schools. Do They Actually Help Kids Learn?

Opinion | Screens Are Everywhere in Schools. Do They Actually Help Kids Learn?

A few weeks ago, a parent who lives in Texas asked me how much my kids were using screens to do schoolwork in their classrooms. She wasn’t talking about personal devices. (Smartwatches and smartphones are banned in my children’s schools during the school day, which I’m very happy about; I find any argument for allowing these devices in the classroom to be risible.) No, this parent was talking about screens that are school sanctioned, like iPads and Chromebooks issued to children individually for educational activities.

I’m embarrassed to say that I couldn’t answer her question because I had never asked or even thought about asking. Partly because the Covid-19 era made screens imperative in an instant — as one ed-tech executive told my colleague Natasha Singer in 2021, the pandemic “sped the adoption of technology in education by easily five to 10 years.” In the early Covid years, when my

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What Happens When an Artist’s Technology Becomes Obsolete?

What Happens When an Artist’s Technology Becomes Obsolete?

UP A BUCKLING flight of stairs on Murray Street in Lower Manhattan, the dusty workshop of CTL Electronics is crammed with once-novel relics: cathode-ray tube (CRT) televisions, three-beam projectors and laserdisc players from the previous century. Hundreds of outdated monitors are arranged beside money trees and waving maneki neko cats, an installation in a kind of mini-museum run by CTL’s proprietor, Chi-Tien Lui, who has worked as a TV and radio repairman since immigrating from Taiwan in 1961. At CTL, which he opened in 1968, Lui initially sold closed-circuit TV systems and video equipment, but for the past couple of decades, his business has had a unique focus: repairing video artworks that, since the onset of the digital age, are increasingly likely to malfunction and decay.

Many of CTL’s clients are museums looking to restore works by a single artist, the video art pioneer Nam June Paik, who died in

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30 ‘Outdated’ Things People Refuse To Stop Using

30 ‘Outdated’ Things People Refuse To Stop Using

Just because there’s a host of fancy new gadgets and devices constantly being developed doesn’t mean that everyone’s rushing to embrace them. Many people are perfectly happy relying on the things they have and what they’re used to. New doesn’t always mean better… especially when the ‘ancient’ alternative is so reliable.

Case in point, the r/AskReddit online community recently had a blast opening up about all the ‘outdated’ technology that they don’t plan to stop using any time soon. From Windows XP to good old pen-and-paper, scroll down to see what they shared.

Physical books. I tried to get into ebooks but it’s just not the same as a physical book. Plus books have that fresh paper smell that’s so nostalgic

Limp_Telephone2280 , Abby Chung Report

‘Outdated’ and ‘obsolete’ tech is harder to root out than you might think. Case in point, Japan is notorious for relying on practically ancient

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Ocean technology centre goes to court over Dartmouth Cove infilling approval

Ocean technology centre goes to court over Dartmouth Cove infilling approval

A Nova Scotia ocean technology research and development hub is taking the minister of Transport Canada to court, after the department approved a construction firm’s proposal to dump 100,000 cubic metres of rock into Halifax harbour’s Dartmouth Cove.

In court documents filed this week, the Centre for Ocean Ventures & Entrepreneurship (COVE) warned some research operations could be forced to cease if the proposal to infill 2.7 hectares adjacent to the facility is allowed to go ahead.

The infilling project, which would include rock such as pyritic slate from construction sites around Halifax and would create land for future development, has been opposed by a neighbourhood group, the local councillor and the federal MP for the area.

COVE was founded in 2018 as a not-for-profit, and millions of dollars of public money have been spent on the centre. The facility aims to advance ocean technology and grow businesses by offering

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Exclusive: Elon Musk’s X restructuring curtails disinformation research, spurs legal fears

Exclusive: Elon Musk’s X restructuring curtails disinformation research, spurs legal fears

Nov 6 (Reuters) – Social media researchers have canceled, suspended or changed more than 100 studies about X, formerly Twitter, as a result of actions taken by Elon Musk that limit access to the social media platform, nearly a dozen interviews and a survey of planned projects show.

Musk’s restrictions on critical methods of gathering data on the global platform have suppressed the ability to untangle the origin and spread of false information during real-time events such as Hamas’ attack on Israel and the Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, researchers told Reuters.

The most important method was a tool that gave researchers access to data about 10 million tweets per month. Twitter notified researchers in February it would end free academic access to this application programming interface (API) as part of an overhaul of the tool, according to an email seen by Reuters.

The survey of 167 academic and civil

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