Free Access To Academic Papers For Everyone In India: Government Proposes 'One Nation, One Subscription' Approach As Part Of Major Shift To Openness

from the open-everything dept

Techdirt has been following the important copyright case in India that is about how people in that country can access academic journals. Currently, many turn to "shadow libraries" like Sci-Hub and Libgen, because they cannot afford the often hefty frees that academic publishers charge to access papers. If a new "Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy" (pdf), just released as a draft by the Government of India, comes to fruition, people may not need to:

The Government of India will negotiate with journal publishers for a "one nation, one subscription" policy whereby, in return for one centrally-negotiated payment, all individuals in India will have access to journal articles. This will replace individual institutional journal subscriptions.

That's just one of the bold ideas contained in the 63-page document. Here's another: open access to all research funded by the Indian taxpayers.

Full text of final accepted author versions of manuscripts (postprints and optionally preprints) along with supplementary materials, which are the result of public funding or performed in publicly funded institutions, or were performed using infrastructure built with the support of public funds will be deposited, immediately upon acceptance, to an institutional repository or central repository.

Similarly, all data generated from publicly funded research will be released as open data, with a few exceptions:

All data used in and generated from public-funded research will be available to everyone (larger scientific community and public) under FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) terms. Wherever applicable, exceptions will be made on grounds of privacy, national security and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). Even in such situations, suitably anonymised and/or redacted data will be made available. In all cases, where the data cannot be released to the general public, there will be a mechanism to release it to bonafide/authorised researchers.

All publicly funded scientific resources will be made shareable and accessible nationally through digital platforms, including laboratories, supercomputing and AI facilities. Publicly funded open educational resources will be made available under a "minimally restrictive" open content license. Libraries at publicly funded institutions will be accessible to everyone, subject only to "reasonable security protocols".

Another idea is the creation of a dedicated portal (remember those?), the Indian Science and Technology Archive of Research, which will provide access to all publicly funded research, including manuscripts, research data, supplementary information, research protocols, review articles, conference proceedings, monographs, book chapters, etc. There will also be a national science, technology and innovation "observatory", which will establish data repositories and a computational grid, among other things.

It's an incredibly ambitious program, with an ambitious goal: "To achieve technological self-reliance and position India among the top three scientific superpowers in the decade to come." The other two superpowers being the US and China, presumably. Whether that program is implemented, wholly or even just in part, is another matter, and will depend on the lobbying that will now inevitably take place, and the usual budgetary constraints. But it is certainly impressive in the completeness of its vision, and in its commitment to openness and sharing in all its forms.

Comments on the proposals can be sent to india-stip@gov.in until Monday, 25 January, 2021.

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Filed Under: academic research, access to knowledge, copyright, india, learning, open access

The Impossibility Of Content Moderation: YouTube's New Ban On Nazis Hits Reporter Who Documents Extremism, Professor Teaching About Hitler

from the so-that's-all-working-well dept

So just as the recent big content moderation mess was happening on YouTube, the company announced that it had changed its policies to better deal with violent extremism and supremacism on the platform:

Today, we're taking another step in our hate speech policy by specifically prohibiting videos alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status. This would include, for example, videos that promote or glorify Nazi ideology, which is inherently discriminatory. Finally, we will remove content denying that well-documented violent events, like the Holocaust or the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, took place.

The timing of this announcement was seen as curious (or, at the very least, poorly timed) as it came basically hours after they had refused to take down Steven Crowder's account (see the earlier post linked above), even though that wasn't an identical situation -- though analogous enough that tons of people commented on it.

In making the announcement, YouTube correctly noted that this new bit of line drawing could represent some problems, including among those tracking hate and extremism:

We recognize some of this content has value to researchers and NGOs looking to understand hate in order to combat it, and we are exploring options to make it available to them in the future. And as always, context matters, so some videos could remain up because they discuss topics like pending legislation, aim to condemn or expose hate, or provide analysis of current events. We will begin enforcing this updated policy today; however, it will take time for our systems to fully ramp up and we’ll be gradually expanding coverage over the next several months.

But within hours of the new policy rolling out, we were already seeing how difficult it is to implement without taking down content that probably deserves to remain up. Ford Fischer, a reporter who tracks extremist and hate groups, and whose work is regularly cited, noted that his own channel had been demonetized.

Fischer than discusses the specific videos that YouTube says is the reason for this -- and it does include holocaust denialism, but for the sake of documenting it, not promoting it:

And this gets, once again, to the very problem of expecting platforms to police this kind of speech. The exact same content can mean very different things in different contexts. In some cases, it may be used to promote odious ideology. In other cases, it's used to document and expose that ideology and the ignorance and problems associated with it.

But how do you craft a policy that can determine one from the other? As YouTube is discovering (truth is, they probably already knew this), the answer is that you don't. Any policy ends up creating some sort of collateral damage, and the demands from well meaning people mean that the direction this tends to go in leads to greater and greater takedowns. But, if in the process of doing this we end up sweeping the documentation under the rug, that's a problem as well.

Here's another example: right after YouTube's new policy was put in place, a history teacher found that his own YouTube channel was banned. Why? Because he hosted archival footage of Hitler:

“My stomach fell,” Allsop told BuzzFeed News via email. “I’m a history teacher, not someone who promotes hatred. I share archive footage and study materials to help students learn about the past.”

Once again, it often sounds easy to say something like "well, let's ban the Nazis." I'd even argue it's a reasonable goal for a platform to have a blanket "no Nazis" policy. But the reality is that the implementation is not nearly as easy as many people believe. And the end result can be that archival and documentary footage gets blocked. And that could have serious long term consequences if part of our goal is to educate people about why Nazis are bad.

Of course, none of this should come as a surprise to anyone who's been dealing with these issues over the past couple of decades. Early attempts to ban "porn" also took down information on breast cancer. Attempts to block "terrorist content" have repeatedly taken down people documenting war crimes. This kind of thing happens over and over and over again and believing that this time will magically be different is a fool's errand.

Filed Under: content moderation, content moderation at scale, documenting, learning, nazis, policing speech, reporting, research
Companies: youtube

Diego Gomez Is Safe, But His Legal Battle Demonstrates How Copyright Policy Creates Dangers To Research

from the this-is-a-problem dept

In 2011, Colombian graduate student Diego Gómez did something that hundreds of people do every day: he shared another student's Master's thesis with colleagues over the Internet. He didn't know that that simple, common act could put him in prison for years on a charge of criminal copyright infringement.

After a very long ordeal, we can breathe a sigh of relief: a Colombian appeals court has affirmed the lower court's acquittal of Diego.

How did we get to the point where a student can go to prison for eight years for sharing a paper on the Internet?

Diego's case is a reminder of the dangers of overly restrictive copyright laws. While Diego is finally in the clear, extreme criminal penalties for copyright infringement continue to chill research, innovation, and creativity all over the world, especially in countries that don't have broad exemptions and limitations to copyright, or the same protections for fair use that we have in the United States.

In another sense, though, the case is a sad indictment of copyright law and policy decisions in the U.S. Diego's story is a reminder of the far-reaching, worldwide implications of the United States government's copyright law and policy. We failed Diego.

How did we get to the point where a student can go to prison for eight years for sharing a paper on the Internet? The answer is pretty simple: Colombia has severe copyright penalties because the United States told its government to introduce them. The law Diego was tried under came with a sentencing requirement that was set in order to comply with a trade agreement with the U.S.

International trade agreements are almost never good news for people who think that copyright's scope and duration should be limited. By establishing minimum requirements that all countries must meet in protecting copyrighted works, they effectively create a floor for copyright law. It's easy for signing countries to enact more restrictive laws than the agreement prescribes, but difficult to create less restrictive law.

Those agreements almost never carry requirements that participating nations honor limitations on copyright like fair use or fair dealing rights. Just this week, a coalition of 25 conservative groups sent a letter to the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) arguing against the inclusion of any provision in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that would require countries to include balanced copyright limitations and exceptions such as fair use, as EFF and other groups have suggested. Countries like Colombia essentially get the worst of both worlds: strong protection for large rights-holders and weak protection for their citizens' rights.

As we've pointed out before, it's depressing that someone can risk prison time for sharing academic research anywhere in the world. If open access were the standard for scientific research, Diego would not have gotten in trouble at all. And once again, it's the actions of countries like the United States that are to blame. The U.S. government is one of the largest funders of scientific research in the world. If the United States were to adopt a gold open access standard for all of the research it funds—that is, if it required that research outputs be made available to the public immediately upon publication, with no embargo period—then academic publishers would be forced to adapt immediately, essentially setting open access as the worldwide default.

EFF is delighted that Diego can rest easy and focus on his research, but unfortunately, the global conditions exist to put researchers all over the world in similar situations. No one should face years in prison for the act of sharing academic research. Making the changes in law and policy to prevent stories like Diego's from happening again is a goal we should all share.

Republished from EFF's Deeplinks blog.

Filed Under: academic research, colombia, copyright, diego gomez, knowledge, learning

DailyDirt: Cheering For Mathletes

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

It's a no-brainer that math is a critically important subject. Okay, a lot of people probably don't remember much calculus from high school -- or how to do "long division" -- but the exposure to advanced math and encouraging everyone to appreciate math is still laudable. And making sure kids aren't turned off by math will hopefully lead to more people involved in STEM fields in the future.

• Amazon's Education business unit is aiming to get teachers and students to improve their math skills and attitudes towards math. This "With Math I Can" effort is an attempt to encourage girls (and boys) who aren't confident with numbers to stick with math and math-related subjects. [url]
• A study of nearly half a million boys and girls (14-16yo) from 69 countries shows that there's a negligible gender gap when it comes to math skills. A few countries favored boys over girls in math tests, but a couple of countries also had girls beating the boys. So the differences are chalked up to effort and teaching, not any innate ability differences between boys and girls. [url]
• Apparently, girls seem to do more homework and play less with computers than boys do. According to an OECD report, boys test better at math than girls in many countries -- but girls in Shanghai seem to be really good at math. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: education, homework, learning, math, stem, teaching
Companies: amazon

Not Just Academics Fed Up With Elsevier: Entire Editorial Staff Resigns En Masse To Start Open Access Journal

from the good-for-them dept

It's really somewhat astounding just how absolutely hated journal publishing giant Elsevier has become in certain academic circles. The company seems to have perfected its role of being about as evil as possible in trying to lock up knowledge and making it expensive and difficult to access. A few years ago, we noted that a bunch of academics were banding together to boycott journals published by the company, as more and more people were looking at open access journals, allowing them to more freely share their research, rather than locking it up. Elsevier's response has been to basically crack down on efforts to share knowledge. The company has been known to charge for open access research -- sometimes even buying up journals and ignoring the open licenses on the works. The company has also been demanding professors takedown copies of their own research. Because how dare anyone actually benefit from knowledge without paying Elsevier its toll. And that's not even mentioning Elsevier's history of publishing fake journals as a way to help giant pharmaceutical companies pretend their treatments were effective.

Basically on the list of companies which really are pushing to get themselves declared "evil," Elsevier has a prime spot.

And now even its employees are revolting. The editorial staff of an Elsevier journal have all resigned to go start an open access journal instead:

All six editors and all 31 editorial board members of Lingua, one of the top journals in linguistics, last week resigned to protest Elsevier's policies on pricing and its refusal to convert the journal to an open-access publication that would be free online. As soon as January, when the departing editors' noncompete contracts expire, they plan to start a new open-access journal to be called Glossa.

The editors and editorial board members quit, they say, after telling Elsevier of the frustrations of libraries reporting that they could not afford to subscribe to the journal and in some cases couldn't even figure out what it would cost to subscribe. Prices quoted on the Elsevier website suggest that an academic library in the United States with a total student and faculty full-time equivalent number of around 10,000 would pay $2,211 for shared online access, and $1,966 for a print copy.

One of the editors who quit notes that he'd "be better off going to flip burgers" in the time he spent working for the journal, rather than accepting the tiny amount Elsevier pays him.

While this may seem like a specific kind of dispute focused in the academic world, what's incredible is it shows just how far copyright has moved from its original purpose and intent. The original copyright laws were officially focused on this kind of research. The US's first copyright law was specific that it was an act for "the encouragement of learning." And the use of "science" in the Constitutional copyright clause actually meant "learning" at the time it was written. Copyright was supposed to be about encouraging people to share information for educational/learning purposes.

And now it's being used for exactly the opposite. And in these cases it's certainly not (at all) about compensating content creators. Academic authors don't get paid for their research papers -- and in some areas they even have to pay to submit it to these journals. And companies like Elsevier get tons of free or cheap labor as well. Peer review is generally done for free. The article notes that the executive editor of the journal is paid only $5,000 per year. And yet the company wants to charge libraries thousands of dollars to access it?

It's a total scam.

And, worse, it's a scam where all of us are the victims. The sharing of knowledge and the ability to learn from others and to build on their works is a core aspect of how learning, science and education advance. And Elsevier has rejected all of that in favor of fat profits -- something it can only do because of our totally screwed up copyright laws. Having the editorial staff here resign is a really strong public message that hopefully people take notice of.

In the meantime, however, Elsevier should be Exhibit A in how copyright is abused to stifle learning which is completely opposed to its Constitutional purpose.

Filed Under: copyright, education, glossa, journals, learning, lingua, literary journal, open access
Companies: elsevier

DailyDirt: What (Not) To Do With Smart Kids...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Last week, lots of people were outraged that a 14yo kid was handcuffed and arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school. Some folks tried to point out that such extracurricular projects should never be brought to school... because we live in a "day and age" of terror or something. That suggestion -- that kids need to somehow restrict their enthusiasm for trying to impress their teachers with something they've made outside of school -- is awful. The education system is often faulted for failing to improve test scores and leaving more than "no children" behind. However, Ahmed Mohamed's experience highlights that schools might want to start thinking more about how to identify talent and nurture skills that are valuable beyond taking tests.

• High-ability students have not been well-studied to determine how they might best be served by teachers. Should they be allowed to skip grades or just specific classes? Should teachers give them extra projects? Does class size matter for high-ability students? It's a shame that many gifted children are overlooked -- or that they are recognized (hopefully in a positive way), but that no one is certain quite what to do with them. [url]
• An 11yo boy in a gifted-and-talented program in Virginia brought a leaf to school -- that was mistakenly thought to be a marijuana leaf. The result was charges of marijuana possession in juvenile court, a year of suspension, and probation terms that mean he'll be searched for drugs every day, twice a day. Quite a punishment. For. A. Leaf. [url]
• Longer school days and more school days in a year seem like good ideas -- but making kids stay in school longer isn't necessarily a good thing. Learning is generally not taught as a joyful, fun thing to do, but a chore -- and making that chore more difficult and tiring isn't a recipe for creating a society of lifetime learners. [url]
• In 2013, a then-16yo Kiera Wilmot brought a science fair project to her high school in Florida. It wasn't a particularly novel experiment, mixing toilet bowl cleaner (some hydrochloric acid) with aluminum foil. However, the reaction (excuse the chemistry pun) was far greater than the smoke and gases. Wilmot was arrested, charged with two felonies, and had to attend a different school for troubled teens. Thankfully, she was allowed back to her original school for her senior year, and she's moved on to college without a criminal record following her. But how about we try not to jump to the worst conclusions about kids, especially when all the evidence points to nerdy hobbies that should be encouraged? [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: ahmed mohamed, crime, education, kiera wilmot, learning, marijuana, punishment, schools, teachers

Latest Pointless Moral Panic: Minecraft Is Ruining Our Children

from the lessons-in-burgeoning-nerd-dom dept

Like many people, video games have been an integral part of my life for about as long as I can remember. From my days visiting Wildcat! BBS systems where I'd play Trade Wars 2000 -- to obsessing over the Apple IIe, IIc and IIgs -- video games were not only an integral part of my childhood, they actually helped forge an adult career path. Swapping out graphics cards and building new PCs to play Quake 2 led to a job in Manhattan legal IT, which in turn resulted in a life focused on writing about technology. Aside from a few tics, I like to believe I wound up relatively normal, and video games have made my life immeasurably more rewarding.

That background usually forces me into the role of video game evangelist when surrounded by folks that, all too frequently, are engaged in hand wringing over the diabolical moral dangers games purportedly present. At a party recently, some friends expressed muted shock because a colleague's kid was, instead of being social, playing a game in which he was "herding human beings and keeping them in a barn to eat." I had to explain (skipping the part about how you'd need a mod to actually eat them) how this behavior wasn't indicative of a Jeffrey Dahmer in training, he was simply engaged in normal problem solving behavior on the new frontier:
Despite the fact that Minecraft is simply an amazing evolution of the Lego concept for the modern age, the moral panic surrounding the game never quite seems to abate. The latest case in point is over at the BBC, where the outlet implies it has heard all of the pro-Minecraft arguments before, it's just choosing to ignore them in order to portray the game as an unpoliced virtual-reality hellscape that's rotting the brains of children everywhere. While there are some good points embedded within, there are notably more bad ones, like the argument that kids should instead be reading, because reading engages imagination and builds character:

"I concede the point but say that it's two-dimensional, and that children should be exercising more than their mouse fingers. The other side asks why it's any worse than reading for hours at a time. Because, I say, reading allows you to imaginatively inhabit other minds. The opposition implies that this is just the latest moral panic, and that Stone Age elders probably thought the world was going to the dogs when people stopped just staring at the fire and started telling each other stories."

The author pretty clearly sees the lips of "the opposition" moving, he just can't apparently be bothered to actually hear what they're saying. Of course it makes sense to encourage kids to read as well as play games but to dismiss Minecraft as unimaginative shows a total misunderstanding of the massive, cooperative world-building that occurs in the game. Instead of actually playing the game and trying to understand it, the entire article is doused in fear over whether Minecraft is negatively influencing kids. The only concessions toward admitting the game's benefits come via gems like this:

"For some autistic children who have trouble with complex social interactions, Minecraft is clearly a good fit with its lack of intricate social cues and simple environment. But for many parents, the absence of that complexity, in a world where their children spend so much time, might be a reason to be wary."

Whether it's Minecraft, apps or the internet at large, there is such a thing as parenting -- or paying attention to and understanding what your children are up to. Even then, in 1987 my parents certainly had absolutely no understanding of the world I was experiencing via the local Wildcat! BBS, yet those experiences opened an entire world of social interaction with like-minded individuals I never would have experienced otherwise as an awkward, socially anxious tot with painful new braces. That world taught me many things my parents never could have, but parenting in the brick and mortar world still helped me understand where social lines in this new frontier were drawn (with the exception of that time a 35-year-old BBS member called my folks to complain about their son's occasionally-barbed tongue).

In stark contrast, The Guardian makes the counter-argument that maybe it makes more sense to try and understand Minecraft instead of fearing it, allowing this informed education to fuel intelligent parenting choices:

"...here’s a simpler way for parents who don’t feel they understand Minecraft to build their knowledge: sit down next to your child and watch them. Ask questions. See if they’ll teach you how to play it with them. This doesn’t mean you’ll avoid having to make decisions about the amount of time your child spends in Minecraft’s beguiling “hyper-reality” rather than the unblocky real world, but it does mean you’ll have a better idea – with less worries – about what they’re up to, and how it can fit into their life.

Like so many things, actually bothering to understand something before you waste energy fearing it makes all the difference in the world. There are millions of kids for whom Minecraft is opening an entire world of enjoyable problem solving and social interaction, the benefits of which may extend into and across their entire lives. Stagnating this potential with fear because you couldn't be bothered to try and understand what your children are experiencing wastes more than just your time.

Filed Under: books, children, interaction, learning, minecraft, moral panic, reading, video games

DailyDirt: Learning How To Teach Teachers

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

As the school year in the US begins, students are getting their class schedules and teacher assignments -- and some teachers are going to be better than others. One school can be ranked higher than another, but if your kid has a great teacher, school rankings may not be a meaningful measurement. But how do we find or nurture a growing pool of good teachers? That's a tough task that some folks are looking into, and there may be better ways to teach teachers. Here are just a few links on improving teaching skills.

• Tenured professors aren't better teachers than non-tenured professors, but further conclusions are tricky to make. It does make sense that professors who spend more time teaching than on research and publications would be able to hone their teaching skills a bit more. [url]
• Over the course of a school year, the difference between a good teacher and a bad teacher can be the amount of material students learn. Bad teachers barely cover half a year's worth of material, whereas a good teacher can cover 1.5 years of a subject. [url]
• Good teachers aren't born. They're taught to be good teachers. It takes effort and skill to diagnose a student's problems for learning various material, and this skill doesn't just appear out of thin air -- nor can it be created by putting teachers into a Darwinian accountability game of standardized test scores. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: education, learning, professors, school, students, teachers, tenure

Why Do People Trust Wikipedia? Because An Argument Is Better Than A Lecture

from the source-please dept

I've never really understood the debate about how trustworthy Wikipedia is compared with once-printed, more "official" encyclopedia volumes, like the old Encyclopedia Britannica. What rarely made sense to me was the constant assertions that an information system to which anyone could contribute was inherently unreliable because anyone could contribute to it. Sure, you get the occasional vandals making joke edits, but by and large the contributions by the community are from informed, interested parties. The results tend to be close to, if not on par, with traditional encyclopedias.

But if I can't understand the comparison between Wikipedia and printed encyclopedias, I'm completely flabbergasted why anyone would be shocked to find that the public trusts Wikipedia more than their traditional news sources.

The British public trusts Wikipedia more than they do the country's newsrooms, according to a new poll by research firm Yougov. Sixty-four percent of respondents said they trusted Wikipedia pages to tell the truth “a great deal,” or “a fair amount”—more than can be said for journalists at the Times or the Guardian, and also slightly above BBC News.

Well, no shit. That's because, as I've been trying to scream at you people for the past three years, the corporate mass-media news industry sucks. More specifically, the once proud fourth branch of our government has been reduced to screaming-head opinionators formulating commentary on the basis of politicized ratings. In other words, Wikipedia and the news are in two different businesses: one is about facts and the other is about shock and spin. Argue with me all you like, you know it's true.

But perhaps even more importantly, the general public trusts crowd-sourced Wikipedia articles more than the news because an argument is always more trust-worthy than a lecture. That's the real difference. If you want to know how good a teacher in a school is, you gather up the best student, the worst student, the principal and the teacher and then analyze what they all say together. You don't ask the school's PR director. Wikipedia, even when it comes to contested or hotly-debated articles, does this extremely well, even concerning itself. The linked article above discussed a number of articles about how reliable Wikipedia is, some of which disagreed with others, and all were found on the Wikipedia page for itself.

Regardless the disputes over individual studies and their methodologies, how I found them is almost as telling as their results. I came across them because Wikipedia provided external references, allowing me to corroborate the information. This is one of the site's great merits: the aggregation of multiple sources, correctly linked, to build a more complete picture. As the results of the Yougov poll perhaps suggest, this surely seems more reliable than getting the coverage of an event from one newspaper.

The truest answer to a question can rarely be told by a single source, which is what makes the sources section of a Wikipedia page so valuable. What is the corollary in a news broadcast? Perhaps a single expert? Maybe once in a while they'll have two sides of a debate spend five minutes with one another? They're not even close. The argument itself can be instructive, but that argument never happens on most news shows.

This doesn't mean you blindly read Wiki articles without questioning them. But a properly sourced article is simply more trustworthy than a talking head telling you how to think.

Filed Under: argument, crowds, discussion, knowledge, learning, lecture, trust
Companies: wikipedia

DailyDirt: Should Touch Typing Replace Cursive?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Kids today are bombarded with technology -- touchscreens, keyboards, Xbox controllers, and various gesture-based user interfaces are all competing against the lowly pencil and paper. Sure, finger painting and crayons are still all the rage with toddlers, but once kids get a little older, those activities might not be as attractive as a game of Angry Birds or Mario Kart. Is there any evidence that typing and touchscreens will hinder kids from learning? Here are a few links that seem to point to an association between handwriting and better learning.

• What are kids missing out on if they don't learn how to write in cursive? Some brain scans show that more grey matter is activated when writing in cursive, and some studies suggest that handwriting leads to being more expressive (compared to typing). [url]
• Only a handful of states require teaching cursive in schools. Keyboard skills may be increasingly necessary to enter essays into computer-based standardized tests, so teaching cursive isn't as critical to doing well on tests.... [url]
• It might be better to take notes with handwriting, rather than on a laptop. Students taking notes on laptops are more likely to record lectures verbatim and not actually digest any of the material as they took notes (even when warned not to do so!), and even though students typing their notes could take down more information, it didn't help them retain any more of it. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: common core, cursive, education, handwriting, learning, standardized tests, typing