Shattered Myths

Hi all, welcome to issue #244 of Digitally Literate.

I was involved in the following this week:

Reflections of a school counselor during the 2020 school closures – Together with a group of colleagues in SC, we’re holding space for educators to reflect & heal.

This month’s focus is on trauma informed teaching. This first post from Guy Ilagan is all about school counselors and compassion fatigue. I think this is a topic that many of us are in the middle of right now.

“Compassion fatigue is a secondary traumatization that affects our mood, health, and regard for our students and work. Providing empathy and understanding to students in crisis can lead to compassion fatigue.”.

Professor Supports Educators in the Wake of COVID-19 – My institution wrote up a piece about me and my work to assist higher ed in the current situation.

If you haven’t already, please subscribe if you would like this newsletter to show up in your inbox. Feel free to reach out and let me know what you think of this work at hello@digitallyliterate.net.

Different types of Zoomers

This YouTuber captured every kind of Zoom user you’ve met recently. Read more here.

Which one are you? 🙂

Covid-19 has blown apart the myth of Silicon Valley innovation

This global pandemic has laid bare the broken and decayed parts of our society. It has also awakened us to the false narrative around tech innovation.

There is a belief that tech companies will be there to develop some new solution that will save us from ourselves. The truth is that most of the tech industry is good at building anything of value.

The pandemic has made clear this festering problem: the US is no longer very good at coming up with new ideas and technologies relevant to our most basic needs. We’re great at devising shiny, mainly software-driven bling that makes our lives more convenient in many ways. But we’re far less accomplished at reinventing health care, rethinking education, making food production and distribution more efficient, and, in general, turning our technical know-how loose on the largest sectors of the economy.

The struggle to save and remake public higher education

The promise of college as a clear path to the future is a stunningly resilient myth.

This piece by Laura Czerniewicz outlines the current problems in higher ed. What is needed right now is unity of purpose in order to make decisions that will save public higher education and enable it to be reshaped for the unknown future.

To move forward, we need to start with the “old normal of learning”, while not succumbing to the datafication of teaching.

Distance Learning Is Taking an Emotional Toll on Students

A look at “triage pedagogy” — an effort to “stem the educational bleed as best we can in order to survive the rest of the semester.”

The coronavirus pandemic has forced schools at every level to grapple with a reality in which the fundamental assumptions upon which they normally operate — that the majority of students are in good health and have a relatively clear vision of the future ahead — no longer apply.

53% of Americans Say the Internet Has Been Essential During the COVID-19 Outbreak

A new Pew Research Center survey conducted in early April finds that roughly half of U.S. adults (53%) say the internet has been essential for them personally during the pandemic and another 34% describe it as “important, but not essential.”

The research suggests:

• Roughly half of adults say the internet has been essential to them during the coronavirus outbreak, but majorities do not think it is government’s responsibility to ensure connectivity for all
• While most Americans say schools should provide computers to at least some students during outbreak, parties divided on if this should be done for all
• Many parents with lower incomes say it’s likely their child will face digital obstacles when trying to do schoolwork at home during outbreak

How to cope with an infodemic

We’re always in the process of defining acceptable forms of speech and other content in digital, informational spaces, even as the global pandemic changes the way we view big tech.

Kate Starbird with a great piece on how some of the digital, social spaces strive to set effective boundaries for a great deal of speech in the U.S. public forum.

Turn Your Quarantine Video Chats into a Podcast

I help create a podcast or two. This seems like a good way to spin off a video chat into a podcast feed. You could create audio feeds of lectures or discussions that students can review offline on their devices.

A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.

James Feibleman

Digitally Literate is a weekly review of the news, notes, tips, and tricks from the week that resonated with me. I leave a trail of digital breadcrumbs. Feel free to pay attention if you’d like to check my notes. 🙂

This AI fueled meme generator is exactly what you didn’t know you needed this week. Read more here.

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