A lot of people say math is not their strong suit. One New Jersey parent wants to help change that. Laura Overdeck grew up with numbers. She always helped measure ingredients（食材）when her mother baked，and she learned about angles from her father. She went on to major in astrophysics（天体物理学）in college. Overdeck wanted her own children to be good at math，too.“And when our first child was about two，we just started giving her a math problem every night，”Overdeck said. The problem was usually a story，involving animals，cars or candies that let the kid count.“Our third child started，at age two，yelling that he wanted his own math problem because he saw his brother and sister doing it. And we thought，‘Wow，we have a household where math is the popular thing at bedtime，’”Overdeck said.

In February，Overdeck set up Bedtime Math，an Internet website where she posts daily puzzles for children. Overdeck is particularly keen to hook（吸引）children on numbers before they go to school. So why introduce little ones to math so early？

Sian Beilock，an expert on performance anxiety，says the more fun and familiar math is early on，the less likely children will feel nervous when they start to learn math in school.“My lab has shown recently that kids as early as first grade report feeling anxious about doing math，”Beilock said.

“You can hear totally educated adults say，‘You know I’m just not that good at math.’or‘I’m kind of afraid of math.’And that’s a totally acceptable thing for a well-educated person to say，but you never hear them say，‘Well，you know，I’m just not that good at reading.’，”Overdeck said. She wants children and their parents to become as fluent in numbers as they are in Harry Potter.

   As Internet users become more dependent on the Internet to store information, are people remember less? If you know your computer will save information, why store it in your own personal memory, your brain? Experts are wondering if the Internet is changing what we remember and how.

In a recent study, Professor Betsy Sparrow conducted some experiments. She and her research team wanted to know the Internet is changing memory. In the first experiment, they gave people 40 unimportant facts to type into a computer. The first group of people understood that the computer would save the information. The second group understood that the computer would not save it. Later, the second group remembered the information better. People in the first group knew they could find the information again, so they did not try to remember it.

In another experiment, the researchers gave people facts to remember, and told them where to find the information an the Internet. The information was in a specific computer folder (文件夹). Surprisingly, people later remember the folder location (位置) better than the facts. When people use the Internet, they do not remember the information. Rather, they remember how to find it. This is called “transactive memory (交互记忆)”

According to Sparrow, we are not becoming people with poor memories as a result of the Internet. Instead, computer users are developing stronger transactive memories; that is, people are learning how to organize huge quantities of information so that they are able to access it at a later date. This doesn’t mean we are becoming either more or less intelligent, but there is no doubt that the way we use memory is changing.

   Perhaps you have heard a lot about the Internet, but what is it, do you know? The Internet is a network. It uses the telephone to join millions of computers together around the world.

Maybe that doesn’t sound very interesting. But when you’re connected (连接) to the Internet, there are a lot of things you can do. You can send e-mails to your friends, and they can get them in a few seconds. You can communicate with your friends through social software such as QQ, WeChat, and Facebook. You can also do with all kinds of information on the World Wide Web (WWW) .

There are many different types of computers now. They all can be linked to the Internet. Most of them are small machines sitting on people’s desks at home, but there are still many others in schools, offices or large companies. These computers are owned by people or companies, but no one really owns the Internet itself.

There are lots of places for you to surf the Internet. For example, your school may have the Internet. You can explore the Internet to search for useful information or knowledge in your classroom. However, in order to prevent yourself from playing with computer games, you should use it in limited time. Libraries often have computers joined to the Internet. You are welcome to use it at any time.

Thanks to the Internet, the world is becoming smaller and smaller. It is possible for you to work at home with a computer in front, receiving and sending the information you need. You can buy or sell whatever you want through the Internet. But do you know 98% of the information on the Internet is in English? So what will English be like tomorrow?

   One of my earliest memories was watching my mom talk on our old phone. I was fascinated that she could talk to someone who wasn't actually in the room with her. 【小题1】 I was wondering how she managed to talk with someone she couldn't see.

That was a long time ago. Later, we had mobile phones that could be carried around the room. 【小题2】 These days I can send an e-mail around the world in a second. My daughter's smart phone has a hundred apps and a dozen social media accounts. She stores all of her information in a mysterious place known as“the cloud disk”, where she can take it out at any time. It seems that we are more connected in this world than ever before.

【小题3】 Few spend time talking face to face. Instead of looking into the eyes of our loved ones , we store their photos at our screens. It seems that the most connected generations are also the loneliest.

Don't let technology take our time and ruin our life. Make the time to communicate with each other. Take a walk on the beach with a friend. Have a long conversation with the phones off and the hearts on. 【小题4】

Remember that we are here to love each other,help each other and make this world a better place. 【小题5】 But when it can't, turn it off.

China Daily is an English language daily newspaper 【小题1】 in Beijing, China.

China Daily 【小题2】 all the usual sections (版面) of a newspaper, 【小题3】 Home News — news about China, International News —news from 【小题4】, Business News, Travel News and Sports News.

There are 【小题5】 pictures and a weather report every day. Every Saturday there is a section about things to do at the weekend and the TV 【小题6】 in the coming week.

Many foreigners like to read this newspaper. It is also popular with students. Sun Yao, a student in Beijing, said, “I like reading China Daily. Learning new words and useful expressions can make great 【小题7】 to my progress in English. Besides, I enjoy learning about new things from 【小题8】 to sports and music.”