No fear

I saw a funny report this morning in about students worrying about becoming one of those iPhone people. I don't worry about that, but my iPod Touch has been helping me understand it. I probably spend too much time looking at computer screens already but, with the iPhone, you can be looking at a computer screen without being at a computer. It's terribly easy to keep up with mail, look stuff up, and keep current with social media -- you don't have to be at a computer anymore.

Speaking of social media, while I reading Inside Higher Ed, I saw this cautionary tale about faculty being surprised when their posts were more public than they had expected. I've been trying to tell everyone who would listen for years that you shouldn't expect privacy if you post stuff electronically. I forwarded the link to the Biology faculty with my admonition: I think the take-home lesson should "you should act as though everything you post online can be read by anybody". I think the wrong message is to tell people to carefully configure their privacy settings to make sure their posts remain private.

One other bright spot recently was reading that Diane Ravitch, one of the architects of the failed so-called "standards based educational reform effort", has woken up to how much damage we're doing to kids with those policies. Better late than never. I've tried to tell people: if you set policy based only on what's easy to measure, you leave out most of what's really important in education.