Communications of the ACM
Generative AI Degrades Online Communities
How large language models are influencing online communities.
From ACM Opinion
Is Algebra Necessary?
A typical American school day finds some six million high school students and two million college freshmen struggling with algebra.
From ACM Opinion
The Trouble With Online Education
"Ah, you're a professor. You must learn so much from your students."
From ACM Opinion
God and Man in Tennessee
Earlier this month state senators in Tennessee approved an update to our sex-education law that would ban teachers from discussing hand-holding, which it categorizes...
From ACM Opinion
Research Bought, Then Paid For
Through the National Institutes of Health, American taxpayers have long supported research directed at understanding and treating human disease.
From ACM Opinion
Welcome to the 'knowosphere'
Here's my take on what I've begun calling the "knowosphere"—a word intentionally echoing the more allegorical "noosphere," the "planet of the mind" of Vladimir....
From ACM Opinion
Why Books Are Better Than E-Books For Children
Do you read to your children from your iPad or other device, or encourage them to use an e-reader to read to you?
From ACM Opinion
The Last Person
There is a concept in telecommunications called "the last mile," that part of any phone system that is the most difficult to connect—the part that goes from the...
From ACM Opinion
The niversity of Wherever
For more than a decade educators have been expecting the Internet to transform that bastion of tradition and authority, the university. Digital utopians have...
From ACM Opinion
How to Fix Our Math Education
There is widespread alarm in the United States about the state of our math education. The anxiety can be traced to the poor performance of American students on...
From ACM Opinion
Education Needs a Digital-Age pgrade
If you have a child entering grade school this fall, file away just one number with all those back-to-school forms: 65 percent. Chances are just that good that...
From ACM Opinion
Teaching to the Text Message
I've been teaching college freshmen to write the five-paragraph essay and its bully of a cousin, the research paper, for years. But these forms invite font-size...
From ACM Opinion
The Lessons of 10 Years of Talking Tech
It’s a special week in America. All over the country, families are gathering in warmly lighted homes. They’re sitting down to fancy feasts at decorated tables...
From ACM Opinion
The School of Hard Drives
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan answers questions pertaining to education and technology.
From ACM Opinion
Cutting and Pasting: A Senior Thesis By (insert Name)
A friend who teaches at a well-known eastern university told me recently that plagiarism was turning him into a cop.
From ACM Opinion
The Medium Is the Medium
Recently, book publishers got some good news. Researchers gave 852 disadvantaged students 12 books (of their own choosing) to take home at the end of the school...
From ACM Opinion
In Defense of Computers and the Internet For Learning
If you’re reading this blog post on a computer, mobile phone or e-reader, please stop what you’re doing immediately. You could be making yourself stupid. And whatever...
From ACM TechNews
Making Computer Science More Enticing
Employment at the top 10 Silicon Valley companies declined for Hispanics, blacks, and women for the decade ending in 2005, according to a San Jose Mercury News...
From ACM Opinion
Steve Jobs and the Economics of Elitism
The more, the better. That’s the fashionable recipe for nurturing new ideas these days. It emphasizes a kind of Internet-era egalitarianism that celebrates the...
From ACM CareerNews