The Death of Reading?
There are days when I despair for humanity’s future. Many days, of late, it seems, and they seem to get more frequent as I read the news. I recently read…
literacy
Will Kindergarteners be Better at Fact Checking than Boomers?
Figure 1 from Cook, Ellerton, and Kinkead 2018. CC BY 3.0 We tach kids how to read so why not teach them to understand how to critique what they read?…
Monday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to start your week. – Scott Gilmore discusses how our elected leaders have failed us in responding to COVID-19. Shannon Devine offers a warning to the Ford PCs…
The Long Read Lost
“What we read, how we read, and why we read change how we think, changes that are continuing now at a faster pace,” wrote Maryanne Wolf, a neuroscientist, in her…
Education Minister’s K-12 curriculum news conference by turns bizarre, deceptive, incoherent, and a comedy classic
No one who watched Education Minister Adriana LaGrange’s news conference on the United Conservative Party’s plans for Alberta’s K-12 curriculum yesterday could come away with the impression our province’s education…
The slow death of reading
To me, one of the most depressing stories to come out of 2018 was posted in The Guardian, last August. Its headline read, “Skim reading is the new normal. The…
Dictionary vs Dictionary.com
Did you know that doxastic is a philosophical adjective relating to an individual’s beliefs? Or that doxorubicin was an antibiotic used in treating leukemia? Or that doxy is a 16th…
Storytelling cubes
You don’t expect Wal Mart to be the source for literary tools, but if you amble into the section crammed with toys, you can pick up a set of Rory’s…
Collingwood’s first postliterate council
At the Corporate & Community Services standing committee meeting this week, the committee discussed the Art on the Street festival, its operation and management to be taken over by the…
‘What would Lois do?’ asks leader of St. Albert’s Vote Yes for the Library campaign at Saturday evening launch event
PHOTOS: In the foreground, former St. Albert Public Library Board chair Charmaine Brooks, who now leads the Vote Yes for the Library campaign, and mayoral candidate Cathy Heron, a city…
‘What would Lois do?’ asks St. Albert Public Library Board chair at launch of Vote Yes campaign for a branch library
PHOTOS: In the foreground, St. Albert Public Library Board Chair Charmaine Brooks and mayoral candidate Cathy Heron, a city councillor, at last night’s Vote Yes for the Library campaign launch.…
Does anyone still read books?
I came across an early version of this infographic on Facebook and it shook me to my core. You can see it here. The updated and corrected infographic is shown…
Where Have all the Readers Gone?
No, it’s not a remake of Pete Seeger’s famous 1955 anti-war song. That’s the title of an article that appeared in the Globe and Mail this week, by Peter Denton,…
Nasty, Just Plain Nasty
It’s not like it comes as a big surprise that the Harper Government is nasty. But the extent of their vileness continues expand. First, the Harper Government seems to have…
Why Spelling Matters
Sometimes I despair when I surf through the social media. Technology has empowered everyone to be able to comment, to post their stories, to share their opinion. Yet it has…
The Problem Described #nlpoli
One of the major factors affecting economic development in Newfoundland and Labrador is the literacy level of the population. If you want to see the extent of the problem in…
The Digital Life
The Disaffected Lib recently wrote a post expressing ambivalence about the ubiquitous role that technology plays in our lives. It is an ambivalence I think many of us, especially those…
A Celebration of Literacy
Despite its rather lengthy history, yesterday was the first time my wife and I attended Toronto’s Word On the Street, a celebration of books, literacy, and the dispelling of ignorance.…
Word On The Street
Word on the street suggests that reading books in becoming obsolete. This Word on the Street, which we are heading off to attend, suggests otherwise. Recommend this Post