Common Core, Teachers, and Literacy

A new report reveals that educators across the US feel ill-prepared to help their students achieve the new Common Core State Standards in literacy. The report, , investigates the extent to which the professional expertise of educators working together is driving standards implementation. AASL members helped provide the data used in creating this report.
National Center for Literacy Education. (2013). Remodeling Literacy Learning Together: Paths to Standards Implementation. Urbana, IL: Author.
 www.literacyinlearningexchange.org.

Web history report

This report is the first part of a sustained effort through 2014 by the Pew Research Center to mark the 25^th anniversary of the creation of the World Wide Web by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Lee wrote a paper on March 12, 1989 proposing an “information management” system that became the conceptual and architectural structure for the Web.  He eventually released the code for his system—for free—to the world on Christmas Day in 1990. It became a milestone in easing the way for ordinary people to access documents and interact over a network of computers called the internet—a system that linked computers and that had been around for years. The Web became especially appealing after Web browsers were perfected in the early 1990s to facilitate graphical displays of pages on those linked computers.

It thus became a major layer of the internet. Indeed, for many, it became synonymous with the internet, even though that is not technically the case. The internet is rules (protocols) that enable computer networks to communicate with each other. The Web is a service that uses the network to allow computers access files and pages that are hosted on other computers. Other applications that are different from the Web also exploit the internet’s architecture to facilitate such things as email, some kinds of instant messaging, and peer-to-peer activities like internet phone calling through services like Skype or file sharing through torrent services.

Using the Web—browsing it, searching it, sharing on it—has become the main activity for hundreds of millions of people around the globe. Its birthday offers an occasion to revisit the ways it has made the internet a part of Americans’ social lives.

This first report looks back at the rapid change in internet penetration over the last quarter century, and covers new survey findings about Americans’ generally positive evaluations of the internet’s impact on their lives and personal relationships. In the coming months, the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project in association with Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Project will further mark the 25^th anniversary of the Web by releasing eight reports about emerging trends in digital technology that are based on surveys of experts about the future of such things as privacy, cybersecurity, the “internet of things,” and net neutrality. We will also explore some of the economic change driven by the spectacular progress that made digital tools faster and cheaper. And we will report on whether Americans feel that the explosion of digital information coursing through their lives has helped them be better informed and make better decisions.

Rainie, L., Fox, S., & Duggan, M. (2014). the web at 25 in the U.S. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.

http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/02/27/the-web-at-25-in-the-u-s/

Find related reports about the future of the internet at http://www.pewinternet.org/topics/future-of-the-internet/. Find related data about the long-term trends in technology adoption at http://www.pewinternet.org/three-technology-revolutions/.

Novel reading and brain function study

The new research, carried out at Emory University in the US, found that reading a good book may cause heightened connectivity in the brain and neurological changes that persist in a similar way to muscle memory. The changes were registered in the left temporal cortex, an area of the brain associated with receptivity for language, as well as the the primary sensory motor region of the brain. The neurological changes were found to have continued for all the five days after finishing a novel, proving that the impact was not just an immediate reaction but has a lasting influence.
Berns, Gregory S., Blaine, Kristina, Prietula, Michael J., and Pye, Brandon E. (2013). Short- and Long-Term Effects of a Novel on Connectivity in the Brain. Brain Connectivity, 3(6): 590-600.

Teens and tech research

This article discusses findings from 3 Pew Internet Projects, providing an overiew of tech in teens' lives, the role of libraries in the lives of older teeas and YAs, and the impact of the Internet on middle and high school students' research habits.
Zickuhr, K. (2014). Teens and tech: What the research says. YALS (winter), 33-37.

Lolndon study on pleasure reading

A study  carried out by the Centre for Logditudinal Studies, at the Institute of Education (one of the colleges of the University of London) supplies evidence that children who read for pleasure are likely to do significantly better at school than their peers.  Strong reading ability affected children's scores in math, vocabulary and spelling. Here is the link to the press release - it specifically mentions the importance of the library:  

 http://www.cls.ioe.ac.uk/news.aspx?itemid=2740&itemTitle=Reading+for+pleasure+puts+children+ahead+in+the+classroom%2C+study+finds&sitesectionid=27&sitesectiontitle=News

‘Social inequalities in cognitive scores at age 16: The role of reading’, by Alice Sullivan and Matt Brown. CLS Working Paper 2013/10 

Youth technology use study

A new study examines how US tweens and teens are using technology in schools, and how they feel about those experiences. Although 78 percent of students own cell phones—47 percent of which are smartphones—students still face a wide variety of policies restricting mobile usage in schools, which students report as frustrating. Students also express frustration with schools’ limited WiFi access, problems with Internet filtering, privacy concerns as more and more schools aim to monitor students’ online activity, and some schools’ push to embrace tablet computers.
Cortesi, S. et al. (2014). Youth Perspectives on Tech in Schools: From Mobile Devices to Restrictions and Monitoring. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2378590

 

Children's reading habits studies

According to a new study, 67% of US children aged 2–13 are now reading ebooks. That’s up from 54%, the number recorded in a similar study from 2013. Some 92% of the kids who do read ebooks read them at least once a week, with many of them reading ebooks every day.

Despite tight budgets that have compounded the numerous challenges to implementation, media specialists are ‘generally enthusiastic about the continued adoption of ebooks by their students, and usage in school libraries—especially at the high school level—is expected to continue rising incrementally, according to an annual survey, the fourth of its kind.
 
Bryant, A. (2014).What a Difference a Year Makes: Kids and E-Reading Trends 2012-13. Digital Book World. http://store.digitalbookworld.com/what-difference-a-year-makes-childrens-report-t3592

The ABCs ofkids and ebooks. (2014).Digital Book World. 

http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/new-report-from-digital-book-world-54-of-u-s-children-reading-ebooks

2013 Survey of Ebook Usage in U.S. School (K–12) Libraries. (2014).  School Library Journal.
 http://www.thedigitalshift.com/research/ebook-usage-u-s-school-k-12-libraries-2013-report/