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The Machine Zone

~ living in the digital world

The Machine Zone

Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Tao of Seneca

12 Wednesday Dec 2018

Posted by Zero52 in Uncategorized

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Karavansara

This post started as something completely different. It started with me trying to put together a list of gift suggestions you guys might like. This led to my decision to send a book as a gift to a friend (let’s hope she likes it), and then through circuitous ways to a book I think I mentioned before, and finally to the author of The 4-Hours Workweek, and finally to Seneca.

Isn’t this world wide web thing a blast?


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Young People and Gambling Risks

21 Monday Aug 2017

Posted by Zero52 in digital literacy, education, online gambling, Uncategorized

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electronic gambling, gambling and young people, gambling education

schoolgmb

TODAY The Times had a front page headline expressing alarm at the pervasiveness of gambling promotion. This follows an editorial earlier in the month warning of the human devestation caused by electronic gambling. For many years there have been media campaigns, politicians, individuals, Churches, psychiatrists, and organisations set up specifically to highlight the dangers of Fixed Odds Betting Machines found in bookmakers. Alarm is growing quickly about online gambling available to anyone with a smartphone, computer or pad.

In 2016 the Gambling Commission reported that almost half a million children gamble weekly and 9,000 of these are already problem gamblers. These figures are likely to grow. The nature of online gambling is very similar to that of the machines on bookmakers. Experts believe that the speed of play, the ease of play and other factors evoke a ‘zone;, initially pleasurable, that can lead to addiction. It is always difficult to gather data in such a rapidly growing area, and there will always be different methodologies and disputes about interpretation, but the currently agreed figures are worrying enough.

Parents have a role to play of course. Ongoing informal education and information from charities and other organisations is vital too: a particular new demography of gambling for instance is that of educated young adults which includes Higher Education students.

Schools have a role to play too.  A House of Lord Committee earlier this year called for digital literacy to be the ‘fourth pillar’ of education, and few educationists would argue against that. Each school will organise digital literacy differently, some combination of specific classes and cross-curricular organisation. As well as skills development, teachers will be concerned with such activities as critical responses to digital media, risks attached to various sectors of the internet, citizen development for the digital future and so on. Education about drugs and alcohol is a basic part of Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE). Gambling needs attention too.

There are many ways this can be covered. Maths can look at probabilities and ‘The Gambler’s Fallacy’, as well as the nature of random numbers. In the UK there are examples of young people having produced drama and video around the theme of gambling. Business studies can explore the ethics of gambling industries, and the roles of business and personal responsibility. Psychology/biology/sociology can look at the various levels of understanding addiction. Media education can examine advertising, the role of digital technology in affecting behaviours, stereotypes of gambling and addiction in film, television and other media. English can introduce literature (such as Dostoevsky’s The Gambler), promote group and class discussion, expressive writing, working with newspaper reports etc. Media/Communications/English students with more advanced skills can commit to a multi-level project which examines the many complexities of modern gambling. History can out gambling in a broader context.

Our site beatthefix.com provides a basis for project work. It is a developing site and in the near future will be publishing more suggestions and some free resources.

 

 

Digital Education – more than skills

07 Friday Jul 2017

Posted by Zero52 in Uncategorized

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Child_with_Apple_iPad

Much is written about the future of education and one sure prediction is that much more will be written in the future. While some ideas urge us to pull back from technology and information – to embrace nature, ‘creativity’ ad humanities, most that’s written is about the technological developments in society.

Many of the focal issues are ‘practical’.  What jobs will there be, what skills will be needed in the future? In some ways the situation is analogous to the industrial revolution which required literacy and numeracy skills among a large number of workers; these became first the new lower middle class of administrators, and the working class clerical workers. When production required more than literacy and numeracy, specialist engineering, scientific and other skills developed. In Victorian times, though, a humanist theme of education for its own sake as developing the ‘whole person’ brought to the curriculum music, art, literature, history the wider humanities. Nor was this an imposed  curriculum from loftier folk: working class self-education and mutual education included not only skills acquisition but prized the broad human development learning and sharing. Literacy, for instance, was not only a means to better oneself financially, but offered a portal into literature, history, political debate and more.

King's_College_London_Students_Evacuated_To_Bristol,_England,_1940_D433

The situation today is different There has been a sea change in educational culture and policy, and the way that most people perhaps tend now to see education in utilitarian terms, a means to an end. Humanities generally are much less prominent in discussion about education. Sociology and Psychology are discussed but with a positivist perspective.

‘Digital media education’ will usually refer to skills-getting for flexible employment in current and new sectors. ‘Digital psychology’ is a new concept which refers to marketing. Business and marketing futures are at the broad centre of discussion of digital futures. Digital takeover of agriculture, engineering, transportation, logistics and everything else entails digital-relevant training. The UK’s largest export sector by far is financial services, now of course impossible to imagine without their digital medium. Entertainment, culture generally, music, the written word – all and more are increasingly ‘digital’.

There is a passionate and widespread enthusiasm for all things digital. This is, perhaps not coincidentally, paralleled with a near mania for all things ‘neuro’. Since digital technology now allows for non-organic interaction with biological neurons, not surprisingly the prospect of cyborgs or a breed of homo digitalis seems something more than science fiction. With the massive acceleration of computer power, and the interconnectivity of all things digital, by 2050 or sooner human beings will be either literally or via extension connected with a vast global information ‘brain’ – not just specialised in one thing, but more akin to the parallel processing of the biological brain.

There can be no surprise that the future of education debates focuses so much on digital technology as an ‘aid’ to learning – but this is a far cry from overhead projectors. These ‘aids’ it is currently proposed may replace the need for human teachers altogether. It will (as it is now to a relatively limited extent) be possible to dispense with learning institutions’ brick and mortar completely.

While all of this may come to pass or not, it’s worth thinking more deeply and generally about the human requirements from education. This has never been resolved which is why theory after theory of education has followed from Socrates onwards. We do need to guard against being swept along and reacting only as things come along. It’s not clear that enough is being done to think about the future. Such thinking is largely speculative and can easily turn to fantasies based on utopias or dystopias. Yet it has to be said that given striking contemporary failings in education which from the hindsight of the future may appear somewhat risible, the education of a five years old who will be 20 in 15 years time needs to take the future very much into account: we should at least try to think ahead in ten or fifteen years periods.

Finally, it is doubtful whether education has ever taken seriously a commitment to prepare people for citizenship, to act as political citizens within the structures of power. The political processes are witnessing change just now through social media etc but this is superficial. The challenge for democracy is to produce citizens who have some understanding of how power is distributed in society and the world. This power will increasingly be found in Digitalia and not transparently so. Digital media education should be about more than teaching digital skills. It should be essentially about understanding digital media.

 

Ade Johnston

Avoiding Internet Dangers

27 Tuesday Jun 2017

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dark patterns, habit summit, nir eyal

Here’s a wonderful half hour talk by Nir Eyal. In it you’ll hear about ‘dark patterns’ that some top names use on their websites to entice you to do things you don’t want to – such as NOT ticking a box to refuse a subscription. Plenty of advice on work/home spaces and disconnecting from media during leisure time. Also, advice on how to reduce time on digital devices.

Children and Social Media (2)

30 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by Zero52 in children and social media, Uncategorized

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child psychology internet, children and social media, children gambling, digital children

child-and-phone-1330009422EAw

 

WE LIVE in a Britain – or a ‘developed country’ – where many fears and anxieties are circulated by the day, one after the other and reinforced by the social media and the mass media (the former still heavily influenced by the latter). Many of these fears such as whether or not burned toast gives you cancer (that ‘meme’ came and went a few months ago) may seem more than offensive to those in the ‘rich countries’ whose fears are more about paying the rent or feeding the family, and those living under terror systems of war and tyranny or starvation.

Do we worry too much about our children? Do we worry, in particular, too much about their use of social media and the internet? Probably the answer is ”Yes’ which is not at all the same as saying we should not have genuine concerns at all. By and large, the news media have always favoured hyperbole, exaggeration and sensationalism. Why? Because we like it. So, are the claims about negative impacts on young people by the digital media to be swallowed whole?

For instance, an article called Electronic Screen Syndrome: An Unrecognized Disorder? written by a doctor makes some startling claims about the deleterious effects of ‘screen time’. She actually proposes a new diagnosis called Electronic Screen Syndrome. This is fairly typical of many articles flooding the electronic and print media about how parents and others should be very very worried about what the social media and internet are ‘doing’ to kids. Unsurprisingly then, in the USA (and China and Japan) there has been a growing provision of private ‘digital detox’ clinics, retreats and counselling. The Independent reports:

Children refusing to put down their phones is a common flashpoint in many homes, with a third of British children aged 12 to 15 admitting they do not have a good balance between screen time and other activities.

But in the US, the problem has become so severe for some families that children as young as 13 are being treated for digital technology addiction.

One ‘smartphone rehab’ centre near Seattle has started offering residential “intensive recovery programs” for teenagers who have trouble controlling their use of electronic devices.

The Young Health Movement , a development from  The Royal Society for Public Health

have produced a report called #StatusofMind  Their summary page about social media and mental health contains the following infographic:

socmedrsph2

and this interesting video .

Here’s another – one of thousands that could be chosen about the dangers of handheld devices in general:

Kids Who Use Smartphones Start Talking Later

Growing evidence suggests that screen time may have some negative consequences for young children’s development.

In a new study of nearly 900 children between six months and two years old, researchers found that those who spent more time using handheld devices were more likely to have delays in expressive speech, compared to children who didn’t use the devices as much. For every 30 minutes of screen time, there was a 49% increased risk of expressive speech delay. The research, which was led by pediatricians at the Hospital for Sick Children in Canada, was presented at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies.

This post could go on and on but you get the picture. Behind the scenes in Academia more and more research is going on. As is usually the case media reporting of studies may be very hyperbolic. In reality there’s a consensus that one study on its own does not mean much, and that there are no agreed, watertight findings about children and the internet. Nevertheless we do well to be vigilant. Just on an everyday basis, for instance, if parents are texting or whatever in the family home rather than engaged in conversation, what do kids learn?

There are many specific dangers well addressed by specialist sites relating to such things as pornography, bullying, grooming and generally inappropriate and/or exploitative content. It’s very much relevant to add to the list online gambling. Research from Queen Mary Univeristy of London states that researchers point to recent statistics from an international research review which suggest that 77 to 83 per cent of adolescents are involved in some kind of gambling, and 10 to 15 per cent of adolescents are at risk of developing serious gambling problems.

A therapist writes in an important article in The Guardian that Suddenly, and scarily, the threats are revealed. The rise in digital addiction is stark: 23% of teenage boys gamble online; indeed, teenagers are more likely to gamble than they are to smoke or do drugs

Interestingly, she points out what many addiction experts and addicts themselves know as certain, that gambling addiction whether through digital devices or not serves in part to soothe distress and tensions, anxieties, to self-medicate for stress, to escape from the real world of problesm and unhappiness to an empowered virtual world. And adults do just the same. Kids learn, are socialised by the people around them so:

What is possible is teaching children emotional intelligence: how to normalise uncomfortable feelings and manage them. We need to practise what we preach and provide good examples for them. Rushing in, stressed from work, we can choose not to pick up our tablet to self-sooth. Rather, why not take a walk in the park with our children and talk about how our stress reduces as a result?

It’s not easy being a parent and it’s just got harder.

So in conclusion, we have to recognise that some of the concerns about social media and children are exaggerated, and we should also recognise the great potential benefits of digital communication, the digital world isn’t going to go away. We need to be aware, to learn and to admit this new strand into our capacities for nurturing the development and growth of young people.

Making Facebook more productive

27 Saturday May 2017

Posted by Zero52 in facebook, Uncategorized

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facebook usage, saving facebook posts

facebook-715811_1920

Facebook gets some flack. Some people swear they wouldn’t dream of using it which sometimes implies that those who do are somewhat ‘wrong’. Concerns about content, digital privacy and psychological issues are legitimate and worthy of consideration.

However, as well as being a great way to keep in touch, have some fun, challenge the dominant and arrogant discourses of power (politics, journalism etc.), Facebook offers people a great way of filing, joining in discussion on special interest via closed or open groups, and setting up pages for organisations, business, and special interests. Business usage especially is increasingly related to integrated digital marketing.

As a personal user, I mainly use Facebook as a bookmarking tool. I filter posts relevant to my own peculiar interests so that they are only visible to me. Unfortunately, I often forget to change the setting so that they leak out as public shares which does little harm apart from filling other people’s timelines with junk – although I have been recently surprised when one such ‘leak’ whipped up a somewhat emotional controversy among people I don’t know.

What people may not know is that it’s possible to save posts for looking at later or keeping for reference. It’s very simple to do so and the process is explained here.

Internet addiction – symptoms, development and treatment of a clinical disorder

08 Monday May 2017

Posted by Zero52 in Internet Addiction, Uncategorized

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Internet Addiction

Welcome to the Machine Zone

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The Machine Zone launches today. A fair bit to do on the site -particularly in the EDUCATION section but hope you’ll find enough to spark interest and want to come back in a week or so when we are near enough finished. Enjoy!

 

modern times

Welcome

Welcome. Have a look around. It’s all pretty random – just like navigating the digital world!

We’re adding in 2018 a big section about formal and informal education which will include some teaching ideas and resources for English. media and cross-curricular teachers.

But the site is equally intended for everybody. Not only teachers and students but digital citizens across the globe.

Enjoy and sign up for updates. You’ll find a lot of interesting stuff on our Facebook page too.

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Categories

Recent Posts

  • The Tao of Seneca December 12, 2018
  • Education for the Future, Future of Education September 4, 2017
  • Young People and Gambling Risks August 21, 2017
  • Coming Soon! It’s an Education! August 3, 2017
  • Human Dimensions of Technology: Erich Fromm July 10, 2017

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The Machine Zone is a Community Interested Company registered in Scotland. Company Number: 565273

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