Recently, I worked with a group of elementary teachers in Iowa to select new reading textbooks and software. They wanted new materials to improve their district’s stagnant reading scores. After several days of reviewing materials from a state-approved list, one of the teachers asked me, “Will any of these help my students learn to read?” […] … learn more→
New reading textbooks, same problem: Why children’s reading scores in the US aren’t rising
Women in science – global study finds presence without power
Academia isn’t strong on gender equality. Women are under-represented throughout, in the research workforce and even more so as leaders in scientific organisations. This is true for science academies (prestigious bodies within national science systems) and scientific unions (international organisations representing disciplinary communities). Women today make up nearly a third of the global research workforce. […] … learn more→
Key word – coherence in academic writing
A coherent piece of writing is one where the parts connect to the whole. That sounds obvious, but it can be difficult to achieve. That’s partly because the whole is surprisingly easy to lose sight of, especially in long texts where the writing happens across days or weeks or months. The whole is never entirely […] … learn more→
How AI learns the secret language of DNA, and what research gains from it
If you’ve ever used a language model like ChatGPT or Mistral, you probably remember the initial impression: impeccable spelling, fluid grammar, and sentences that make sense. Yet, under the hood, these systems do only one very simple thing: predict the next word in a sentence. They use statistics learned from a vast corpus of texts, […] … learn more→
Music to combat stress in medicine: researchers create emotional management course for doctors.
Medical training is a journey filled with emotions. Throughout the course, students encounter the emotional complexity stemming from the effects that the process of illness and healing can have on patients. This process occurs simultaneously with the student’s personal and professional development, as they seek mechanisms to adapt to this complex emotional reality. Research shows that […] … learn more→
Small changes to bring back deep thinking at university
“Students aren’t paying attention,” “they use ChatGPT for everything”… these are comments and perceptions shared in university circles. But can we transform these feelings into something measurable and, above all, into useful tools for teachers? In our recent teacher training project (with 15 teachers from Engineering, Law, Psychology, Journalism, Nursing and Botany) we tried precisely […] … learn more→
When AI does science, who asks the big questions?
They don’t just answer questions or write text. Language models like GPT , Claude , and Gemini execute code, analyze data, and even conduct experiments in robotic laboratories. Google has dubbed this idea ” co-scientist” : a virtual assistant capable of designing, planning, and executing complete experiments based on simple instructions in natural language. This technology is already yielding results. In collaboration with universities […] … learn more→
The publishing industry is transforming itself so that books continue to be published, bought, and read.
Apparently, the book market in Spain is booming: there have never been so many leisure readers—more than two-thirds of the population—especially among young people . At the same time, the sector’s revenue exceeds €1.2 billion annually , while printed books continue to account for more than 90% of sales . However, these figures don’t tell the whole story. Beneath this apparent […] … learn more→
Slanguage: Why AI’s stylistic negation — ‘it’s not X, it’s Y’ — is both annoying and doesn’t work
If you spend any amount of time on LinkedIn, you’ll have certainly come across this type of phrasing: “This isn’t a job, it’s a calling” or “This isn’t marketing, it’s a movement” or “This isn’t a tool, it’s a paradigm shift.” This sentence structure is saturating posts on the platform. It’s become one of the […] … learn more→
Attention economy: training “informed consumers” is a priority for media education
In Media and Information Literacy (MIL) courses, the emphasis is ostensibly placed on “critical thinking,” that is, the ability to take a step back from information and form a well-founded opinion. But what about the skill of “informed consumption,” that is, the ability to reflect on one’s consumption, choices, needs, and budgets with full knowledge […] … learn more→