geek.teacher

Last week people were going crazy over a report that Web 2.0 has some real classroom benefits.  Not that I’m discounting any of those benefits, but they seem to me mostly touchy-feely type things, which, while delightful and good (who wouldn’t want more engagement and participation?), still kind of fall short of the more valuable “improves performance.”

So I’m surprised to see the apparent lack of excitement about this study saying that Internet use is good for the brain.  I guess it’s not as sexy since the study was done on old people, but I find it absolutely exciting, and would love to see a similar study done on the young’ns.

Each volunteer underwent a brain scan while performing web searches and book-reading tasks.

Both types of task produced evidence of significant activity in regions of the brain controlling language, reading, memory and visual abilities.

However, the web search task produced significant additional activity in separate areas of the brain which control decision-making and complex reasoning - but only in those who were experienced web users.

The researchers said that, compared to simple reading, the internet’s wealth of choices required people to make decisions about what to click on in order to get the relevant information.

They also get bonus points from me for throwing in a sly comics reference:

Rebecca Wood, chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, said: “These fascinating findings add to previous research suggesting that middle-aged and older people can reduce their risk of dementia by taking part in regular mentally stimulating activities.

“Older web users - ’silver surfers’ - are doing precisely this.

*Well, in theory.  I know some pretty dumb internet users, but that’s neither here nor there.

Things I’m doing instead of blogging these days:

• Paperwork (wrapping up IEPs and RRs)
• More paperwork (getting grades ready)
• Tagging things on delicious.  Thanks goodness for setting it up to autosend to the blog, or this place would be a barren wasteland.
• Twittering.
• Going to Wizard World



• Going to the Devon Horse Show



• Taking adorable pictures of kittens



• Did I mention the paperwork? (getting all of my files organized for turning in)

i frequently enjoy Rhymes with Orange, but this is just too great.

Comics:

• Blue Beetle #26 - A nearly all Spanish issue, and a delightful story that I (mostly) was able to understand
• DCU #0 - a decent introduction to the DC universe as of RIGHT NOW before things go crazy in Final Crisis
• Immortal Iron Fist #14 - if they ever get around to making that Iron Fist movie, it should be just like this.
• New Avengers #40 - Rewind to past events we glimpsed or had some ideas about from before and get a clearer picture of how the Secret Invasion started
• Thor Ages of Thunder - this book was beautiful and touched my mythology nerd core in all the right places
• American Way - I bought this trade at New York Comic Con for cheap based on vaguely remembering some internet recommendations, and I was not disappointed.  It’s a real world approach to superheroes, placing them in the midst of the civil rights upheavals of the sixties.
• Iron Man: Demon in a Bottle - I was at Borders and saw a copy of this opened on the shelf, so I took the opportunity to sit down and read it before the movie came out this week.  It’s a 30 year old story, and it’s great.  It was also pretty shocking at one point.

TV:

• How I Met Your Mother - some decent fallout from last week which could lead to some shift in the characters
• House - Nice joke played on the peons this week.

Movies:

• Iron Man - Awesome.  Great summer popcorn flick.

Games:

• Just Cause - I wrapped this game up.  It was actually a pretty cool ending that made use of the stunt system nicely.  As I said before, a decent enough $15 game, but not much more than that.  Clocked time, 25 hours or so, but you could do all of the story missions in under 5 hours easily if you don’t run around liberating villages, finding collectibles, and doing sidemissions.
• Mario Kart Wii - I’m really liking this so far.  Beth also enjoys it.  She plays with the steering wheel, while I prefer the wiimote + nunchuck.

In the last week, here’s what I’ve been reading/watching/playing:

Books:

• Our Dumb World by The Onion - This has been bedtime reading for a while now.  It’s great parody of an atlas, as it’s very dense but often hilarious.  For example, this bit on Hong Kong:

An exotic seaport off the coast of China, the Hong Kong province is plagued by massive, well-choreographed brawls that break out almost daily on every street corner.  The dazzling, high-speed, and acrobatic violence puts every citizen at constant risk of being thrown off a two-story balcony onto a pile of cardboard boxes.

• The Incredible Indoor Games Book by Bob Gregson - I haven’t looked at this book in years, and it reminded me of some fun games that I was able to play with my students for PAT on Friday.

Comics - I read almost everything, so some highlights and low points:

• Countdown #1 -  I already trashed this.
• Fables #72 - Cinderella is awesome.
• Mighty Avengers #12 - If you’re reading Secret Invasion and not reading everything else Bendis is writing at the moment, you’re nuts.
• New Exiles #5 - I already trashed this one, too.
• Ultimate Spider-Man #121 - The only Bendis book you don’t need to read if you want to keep up with Secret Invasion, and it, too, is great.  This is a nice done in one story that wraps up the typical high school baby project for health class.

TV:

• How I Met Your Mother - More Robin Sparkles?  Thank you!  Bonus for The Dawson balding.
• 30 Rock - Some delightful continuity this week that’s going to lead to interesting places, and, even better, more Will Arnett on my TV.  It also had my favorite line of the week.
• Lost - Poor Sayid.

Games:

• Just Cause - While it’s certainly not a great game, it was worth the $15 I spent on it.  It’s a fairly simple open world game overall, but I just find the concept of freeing tiny villages from tyrannical rule very appealing for some reason and always want to do just one more.  A grappling hook and a parachute both go a long way to making the typical open world experience more fun.
• Crackdown - This was another $15 game, and it was way more enjoyable than I thought it would be.  I finished up the co-op campaign with Brian, and it was pretty fun.  Again, having a fun way to move through the open world with awesome jumping abilities definitely improved the open world gaming experience for me.

One of the things that is simultaneously hilarious and frustrating about having nerdy pastimes is dealing with nerd anger.  Sometimes it makes you want to laugh, and sometimes it makes you want to punch someone in the face.  Worry not, I do not fail to see the irony in that statement.  The funny thing about it, of course, is that nerds are always sitting, waiting for mainstream acceptance of their hobbies, but the nerd anger makes it that much harder for people to accept them.

I would posit this comes from some compulsive beast inside the nerd.  It’s that which takes ownership of the hobby, compelling us to read and interact with everything related to our chosen hobbies.  I know that I am not immune.  I’m proud of myself when I choose not to read one or two comics a week because I dislike them, but at the same time, if I am in some way convinced that it might be important to know about later, I will continue to read things that I actively loathe.  Case in point number one, right now, would of course be Countdown.  Why did I read every issue of a shamefully bad series?  I was promised importance, so I was compelled to read it for myself instead of just getting spoilers somewhere.

Oh, but it doesn’t stop there, I’m also compelled to read series that I’ve followed for ages, even if they have devolved into mediocrity.  Just this week, for example, Countdown wasn’t even the worst book released.  That would have to be this week’s issue of New Exiles.  I haven’t loved Exiles since Judd Winick left, and that was almost five years ago.  and now the series is downright terrible, but I still read it.  Self-loathing is one of the clear characteristics of the nerd hobbyist.

Anyway, I started off on this rant on nerd anger because Tom Brevoort shared his own dark past as an angry nerd, complete with savaging the motivations of the creators.  It’s a fun look at how the arguments kind of stay the same even as the specifics change.