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New research has challenged the very existence of online filter bubbles. Thestudyfound that people who use search engines, social media, and aggregators to access news can actually havemorediverse information diets. Researchers from the universities of Oxford and Liverpool analyzed web tracking data on around 3,000 UK news users. The team trackedevery visit from a desktop or laptop to 21 of the most popular UK news websites over a one-month period. They also recorded the URL that preceded each visit to infer how the site was accessed....

Study: Teachers’ expectations of their students’ digital skills are influenced by race Learning from digital play Previous research by a team of University of California researchers found that young people gain basicdigital skills just from playing with friends online. This includes the ability to do things like to communicate online and create and share media. ConsiderMinecraft, the popular video game that lets players build cities and towns. Minecraft players have to learn how to create and assemble the building blocks – like digital Legos....

Apple’s plan to roll out tools to limit the spread of child sexual abuse material has drawn praise from some privacy and security experts as well as by child protection advocacy groups. There has also been anoutcry about invasions of privacy. These concerns have obscured another even more troublesome problem that has received very little attention: Apple’s new feature uses design elements shown by research to backfire. One of these new features adds a parental control option to Messages that blocks the viewing of sexually explicit pictures....

Today, Evernote and StudyBlue announced an integration which allows students to easily convert theirEvernotestudy materials into digital flashcards onStudyBlue— just in time for exam season. Theintegrationallows students to sync their Evernote and StudyBlue accounts seamlessly, allowing students to copy and paste key concepts from their Evernote materials onto digital flashcards for review in StudyBlue. StudyBlue also offers free apps for Android, iPhone and iPod Touch devices that allow students to study digital flashcards when and where it fits their schedule....

StumbleUpon, the company thatrecently surpassedFacebookto become the number one website for generating social media traffic in the U.S, just broke a new record with 27.5 million stumbles yesterday, according to a recent tweet from StumbleUpon CEO and Founder Garrett Camp. StumbleUpon is well known for driving thousands of visitors to websites that have been “Stumbled.” The sites are then marked with with a “Thumbs Up” by other StumbleUpon users (of which there are reportedly over 12 million), in effect vouching for the site as a legitimate source of information....