The Pew Internet Project did the survey with the National Writing Project. Judy Buchanan is the vice director of the National Writing Project and a co-author of the report. Ms. Buchanan says digital research tools are helping students learn more and faster. “Teachers really favor these tools because they are ways to make some of the learning exciting and engaging. Young people favor these tools. The goal is to really help them become creators of meaningful content, and not just sort of consumers.”

    But one problem the survey found is that many students lack digital literacy. They trust too much of the information they find on the Internet. Judy says these students haven't developed the skills to determine the quality of online information.“It's something that really has to be taught and paid attention to. Because in a world in which things happen quickly, you do need to step back, reflect and analyze the information you have.”

    Another problem is blamed on something that might not seem like a problem at all: being able to quickly find information online. Teachers say the result is a reduction in the desire and ability of their students to work hard to find answers. They say students are overly dependent on search engines and do not make enough use of printed books or research libraries.

    Many teachers are also concerned that the Internet makes it easy for students to copy work done by others instead of using their own abilities.

    I went to the Tsavo National Park in northern Kenya for a film. We set off early for a distant water hole. A huge elephant covered with dry mud, drank calmly and deeply. He might have traveled 50 km to reach the water. He wasn't going to hurry now. We thought he'd drink a while and rest in the shade, and then drink again. What actually happened was that he drank deeply and stepped away. Then he suddenly fell down. Within minutes he was dead.

    We called animal doctor Jeremiah Poghon immediately. He removed the head of a poisonous arrow (箭) from the elephant's body, and let out over 100 liters of drug—the result of the elephant's meeting with a poacher (偷猎者) months before.

    Today's poacher fires an arrow, covered with poison, into the body of an elephant. If the poacher is lucky, the elephant might die in an hour or two; if not, he might have to follow the elephant for days before it dies. Often the arrow head fails to kill the elephant at once—it doesn't mean the poison won't finally kill the elephant, but it will be a slow death.

    Living in Tsavo through these times, I could see the results of poaching from time to time. When I think about the death of that elephant, what stays with me is the great silence after the shocking sound of his body hitting the ground. I couldn't escape the feeling that with the death of such a large animal, the world seemed to be a poorer and emptier place.

    Different people use different languages. We Chinese speak Chinese, and, most of us are learning a foreign language. But there is another kind of language we need to know — the language of the body.

    All over the world, people “talk with their hand, with their heads and with their eyes.” When Japanese people meet, they bow. When Indians meet, they put their hands together. What do American and British do? Americans are more informal (不拘小节的) than the British. They like to be friendly. They use first names, they ask questions and they talk easily about themselves. When they sit down, they like to relax in their chairs and make themselves comfortable. British people are more reserved (保守的). They take more time to make friends. They like to know you before they ask your name.

    When British or American people meet someone for the first time, they shake hands. They do not usually shake hands with people they know well. Women sometimes kiss their women friends, and men kiss women friends (on one cheek only). When a man meets a man, he just smiles, and says, “Hello.” Men do not kiss each other, or hold hands. Even fathers and sons do not often kiss each other.

    Last week, Vodafone started a test of the UK's first full 5G service, available for use by businesses in Salford. It is part of its plan to trial the technology in seven UK cities. But what can we expect from the next generation of mobile technology?

    One thing we will see in the preparation for the test is lots of tricks with the new tech. Earlier this year, operators paid almost £ 1.4 billion for the 5G wavelengths, and to compensate for that cash, they will need to catch the eye of consumers. In September, Vodafone used its bit of the range to display the UK's first hologram (全息) call. The Manchester City captain Steph Houghton appeared as a hologram in Newbury. It isn't all holograms, however: 5G will offer faster internet access, with Ofcom (英国通讯管理局) suggesting that video that takes a minute to download on 4G will be available in just a second.

    The wider application is to support connected equipment on the "internet of things" -not just the internet-enabled fridge that can reorder your milk for you, but the network that will enable driverless cars and delivery drones (无人机) to communicate with each other.

    Prof William Webb has warned that the technology could be a case of the emperor's new clothes. Much of the speed increase, he claims, could have been achieved by putting more money in the 4G network, rather than a new technology.  Other different voices have suggested that a focus on rolling out wider rural broadband access and addressing current network coverage would be more beneficial to the UK as a whole.

    Obviously, 5G will also bring a cost to consumers. It requires a handset for both 5G and 4G, and the first 5G-enabled smart phones are expected in the coming year. With the slow pace of network rollout so far, it is likely that consumers will end up upgrading to a new 5 G phone well before 5 G becomes widely available in the next couple of years.

    One night in 1966, Michael Chapman rushed into a folk-music club in Cornwall, England to get out of the rain, and soon found himself onstage playing the guitar.

    "They offered me a job to play for the rest of the summer. And I've been playing ever since," Chapman says. "I've told that story so many times, but it's absolutely true. If it hadn't been raining that night, I wouldn't be talking to you."

    The British guitar player has spent the 50 years since then on the road. He released some praised albums in the 1970s, but his health went downhill in the 80s and 90s. Like a lot of British artists in the 1960s, Chapman taught himself to play the guitar by listening to American jazz and blues records.

    Chapman actually taught photography, but quit when he was 26 to play music full time. When he was starting out, he was often compared to other British acoustic (原声的) guitar heroes of the time, like John Martyn and Bert Jansch.

    "The fascinating thing about Michael Chapman is that he doesn't fit in with those guys of his generation," says Andrew Male, a music journalist. "He's always- been an outsider. He never moved to London."

    And while he never became part of the London music scene, Chapman was noticed by those musicians. "The 70s caught up with him in the 80s," Male says. "He had a huge heart attack at the end of the 80s that nearly finished him off. When he made his way back into the world in the early 90s, people had forgotten about him."

    But not everyone. A younger generation of musicians in America, including Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth and a younger singer and guitarist named Steve Gumi, recently rediscovered Chapman.

    "We wanted to capture Michael's voice and character where he is now. You know, it's a little road-weary, but he still has it," Gunn says. "For me, it was really important to get that right," "He's the right old musician for present times," Male says. "I think the music he makes seems quite in tune with where we're at."

When you were trying to figure out what to buy for the environmentalist on your holiday list, fur probably didn't cross your mind. But some ecologists and fashion enthusiasts are trying to bring back the market for fur made from nutria (海狸鼠).

Unusual fashion shows in New Orleans and Brooklyn have showcased nutria fur made into clothes in different styles. "It sounds crazy to talk about guilt-free fur—unless you understand that the nutria are destroying vast wetlands every year", says Cree McCree, project director of Righteous Fur.

Scientists in Louisiana were so concerned that they decided to pay hunters $5 a tail. Some of the fur ends up in the fashion shows like the one in Brooklyn last month.

Nutria were brought there from Argentina by fur farmers and let go into the wild. "The ecosystem down there can't handle this non-native species. It's destroying the environment. It's them or us." says Michael Massimi, an expert in this field.

The fur trade kept nutria check for decades, but when the market for nutria collapsed in the late 1980s, the cat-sized animals multiplied like crazy.

Biologist Edmond Mouton runs the nutria control program for Louisiana. He says it's not easy to convince people that nutria fur is green, but he has no doubt about it. Hunters bring in more than 300,000 nutria tails a year, so part of Mouton's job these days is trying to promote fur.

Then there's Righteous Fur and its unusual fashion. Morgan says, "To give people a guilt-free option that they can wear without someone throwing paint on them — I think that's going to be a massive thing, at least here in New York." Designer Jennifer Anderson admits it took her a while to come around to the opinion that using nutria fur for her creations is morally acceptable. She is trying to come up with a label to attach to nutria fashions to show it is eco-friendly.