Location-based mobile apps are a hot trend these days. These services allow people to use a smartphone to interact somehow with their surrounding environment, such as earning rewards and discounts for “checking-in” somewhere using the popular platform Foursquare. Other big-name apps that incorporate some location-aware features include OpenTable, Fandango and Yelp. And still others allow […]
Taking a Google Field Trip: What’s the Appeal of Location-Based Apps?
June 14, 2014 By Leave a Comment
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Are Digital Gifts Less Special?
March 31, 2014 By Leave a Comment
Today it’s easy to exchange gifts completely digitally, and there are certainly some advantages to going this route. You can shop from the comfort of your own home. You don’t have to pay for shipping. You even help the environment by not driving to the store or generating waste in the form of envelopes, boxes […]
Are Facebook, Twitter Preventing Students from Being “Good Digital Citizens”?
February 6, 2014 By 3 Comments
The digital age demands new competencies in order for us to be fully literate citizens. With information now being created by everyone on various web platforms, we need to critically think about what and how we consume. Today we are also all content curators whether we like it or not, as we decide what we […]
How to Be a Good Monotasker: Rejecting the Pull of Multitasking
January 3, 2014 By Leave a Comment
Multitasking has become a way of life and is often believed to be a great strategy to get more done in less time, especially when aided by new technological tools. But a growing body of research is showing that multitasking is in most cases a myth or a delusion that we harbor. The vast majority […]
How Facebook Guesses What You Want to See (And How to Tell It Directly)
December 6, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Ever wonder how Facebook chooses which of your friends pop up frequently versus those who seem to stay buried? The social networking giant employs a carefully-designed algorithm (which used to be called Edgerank) to determine what shows up on your newsfeed. Based on your personal information and click history, this algorithm attempts to guess which […]
What Alternatives Are There to Slideshare For Embedding a Powerpoint?
October 15, 2013 By 2 Comments
Although there are plenty of competitors these days, Powerpoint is still a preferred tool for creating presentations due to its familiar controls and ease of use. But many are no longer happy to simply create a presentation, show it to an audience and then let it sit on their computer. One solution is to send […]
Do eBooks Do More Harm Than Good?
October 3, 2013 By 1 Comment
This week Wired published a provocative article about ebooks. In the piece, titled “The Abomination of eBooks,” author Art Brodsky points out how the applicable rules for ebooks are fundamentally different than those for print books; in particular ebooks are leased rather than actually bought and owned. Because of this, he argues that it doesn’t make […]
Where Can You Find the Most Insightful Conversations Online?
September 27, 2013 By Leave a Comment
One major goal for teachers and librarians today is to foster “information literacy,” a set of skills that allows us to efficiently communicate what information we need, understand where and how to search, think critically about information and use it strategically to achieve our goals. Information literacy instruction typically involves activities like a discussion of what makes […]
Amazon, Apple, Google? Which Cloud Music Storage Service Is Best?
September 11, 2013 By 1 Comment
Editor’s note: This page was last updated on 9/12/2013. We will continue to update this article as these services change. If there’s something we need to fix or should add, just leave a comment below the post. When you want to listen to digital music, there are two main types of services to choose from. First, […]
Google Adds Etymology, Historical Word Usage to Its Dictionary Definitions
August 24, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Google recently upgraded its dictionary functionality, adding new features that provide much more information than just a word’s definition. It’s an update that is much more minor than one of Google’s huge algorithm shakeups, but still proves quite useful for searchers looking to learn more about a particular word and its history. The dictionary feature […]
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