After Matt Doyle, Vista’s acting superintendent, helped interview more than 2,000 middle- and high-school students about their school experiences and dumped all of his interview notes into a software program that identifies the most frequently mentioned words, one word rose to the surface: “irrelevant.””
For EdTech decision-makers: 1) Beware of living in an echo-chamber: talk to people outside of higher education. 2) Make sure decisions are being led by clearly identifiable pedagogical needs rather than simply by what technology is out there. 3) Involve stakeholders, including faculty, staff, and students early in the decision-making process to build buy-in and avoid bumpy rollouts. This may include using creative ways of understanding faculty challenges.”
A case in point is research commissioned by the dating site Match.com in the United States. In the fifth annual Singles in America report, researchers investigated the relationship between emoji usage and sexual conquests—the first survey of its kind to do so. The survey polled over 5,600 singles—all non-Match.com subscribers—whose socio-economic and ethnic profiles were representative of the national population. And results were striking: The more emojis a singleton uses in their digital communication, the more dates they get to go on; further, the more sex they have.”
Copyright
Every week I send out articles I encounter from around the web. Subject matter ranges from hard knowledge about teaching to research about creativity and cognitive science to stories from other industries that, by analogy, inform what we do as educators. This breadth helps us see our work in new ways.
Readers include teachers, school leaders, university overseers, conference organizers, think tank workers, startup founders, nonprofit leaders, and people who are simply interested in what’s happening in education. They say it helps them keep tabs on what matters most in the conversation surrounding schools, teaching, learning, and more.
– Peter Nilsson