moral panic & children's use of mobile phones

Daleks are training the children, seducing them with mobiles phones and texting, it is a world wide threat, and resistance is futile. Here's the empirical evidence:
Todays headline catastrophises mobile phone use and texting comes from the Sydney Morning Herald, a Melbourne University study says

Text-addict kids 'make more mistakes'

The spin maintained pathologises the behaviours as addiction and as impulsive and associated with error.
Basically its bad.
And its the cell phone that's training them?

A study of 317 Melbourne high school students found frequent mobile phone users were faster to respond in a series of tests but also made more errors.

A bit more balance might have said, "when you do things faster, the error rate increases, risk and speed are not associated with accuracy".

Those who made 15 to 20 calls or texts per week were more likely to respond quickly before they knew the correct answer.

Does that equate with people who like to communicate in quick ways, with little concern for accuracy are likely to respond in quick ways with little degree of accuracy?

The research, headed by Monash University epidemiologist Professor Michael Abramson, found predictive texting, in particular, was changing the way children's brains worked by teaching them to act before thinking through a response.

Now hang on a minute, there's a behaviour being commented on and suddenly the ways children's brains work is being altered? I'd suggest no pathologist is able to confirm this.
Furthermore, there is nothing presented here that any such alteration is in a cause and effect relationship, its a correlation.

Radiation associated with mobile phones, a long-held health fear, did not appear to be to blame for the higher rates of inaccuracy in frequent phone users.
Monash University researcher Geza Benke said children who were heavy texters, and were exposed to low levels of radiation, had similar test results as those who made a lot of phone calls and were in closer contact with handsets.

Bit more catastrophising, a long held fear, plus there's the radiation threat...

"There's a couple of hypotheses you can generate from this - one is that it's possible that the use of mobile phones is training kids to do this," Dr Benke said.

"Another possibility is that it just so happens that kids who are fast and don't worry too much about the errors they make tend to be the ones who also are using the phone technology more because that suits them.

Ah yes, but that wouldnt be a headline lead would it?

"I think there are already so many other things out there that affects kids' brains that I wouldn't worry about the mobiles," he said.
"I think there's nothing here that would show great concern from a public health point of view."

So what is it with the headline?
Some reading to inform the current moral panic:
Marvin, C. (1988). When old technologies were new. Thinking about electric communication in the late nineteenth century New York: Oxford University Press.

teaching virtual hell

I dutifully signed up for a wimba training session, checked the hour conversion from the States to NZ twice, signed in to my distant classroom and waited, ticking past one o'clock i discovered my capacity to travel time and space was faulty and came to the realisation that there also was a dateline to accommodate. I missed wimba 101, celebrating Waitangi day.
A week later I scheduled in for wimba 102.
A time lord in training, this time with success.
However, traversing time and relevant dimensions in space (tardis) isn't all there is. I wanted to know about teaching with voice tools accessible through the net, through blackboard, since thats what my institution utilizes.

This was the session where all the other teachers/lecturers present could smile politely in their unseen spaces and think "there but for the grace of God"...
We had, i think, all been there.
At least in our nightmares.
I am left feeling cautious re experiencing the same in a virtual reality.
Significant time was spent in ensuring audio links worked, phone in connections established for the people whose computer negated audio.
The visuals seemed 'sticky'. My experience of a screen of changes being portrayed on a
whiteboard looked more like a screen of words mashed reminiscent of scrambled eggs.
Having my posting comments text box spontaneously decide to work halfway through i could make a comment that another student gave me a workaround for.
In an hour I learned that the technology takes an hour to sort.
In the last 5 mins I managed to screw up just like any dutiful student could.
Sooo embarrassing on a world stage. While playing with the buttons mimicking the instructions for being a presenter given to another participant I spontaneously took control of the class, and inflicted a cute little wmv the facilitator had in a browser list for mad cats. The class enjoyed it. Being on a mac, I didnt get it; till i opened what downloaded for me....
A great facilitator modelling cool, calm, collected, in the face of adversity. She could have been a time lord.

video courtesy of chris, username ptftulsa.
Closing thought: Future time lords have to get with the times, a telephone box???
Maybe a portaloo....