PrintFriendly and Readability We’re spending more time online,
reading and researching with our students. We often need to
print out these online resources for use as handouts or review
materials. One of the problems with online research is that if
you or your students print out a news article, a blog post, or
just about anything on the web, the print job ends up being
multiple pages that include ads and other things you don’t need.
But wasting paper is not the only concern. Ed tech folks often
talk about the powerful impact that appropriate use of
technology can have on learning, especially with online tools.
The assumption is that web use by kids increases brain
wiring—that being online makes students smarter. But we need to
be careful with those sorts of assumptions. A Wired article does
a great job of documenting what happens in our brains when we’re
online. And it’s not necessarily always good. The article’s
author, Nicholas Carr, discusses a wide range of research
claiming that hyperlinks, especially th