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DL 290

Time To Crack Open The Books

Published: May 8, 2021 • 📧 Newsletter

Welcome to Digitally Literate, issue 290. Your go-to source for insightful content on education, technology, and the digital landscape.

🔖 Key Takeaways

Hello friends and family!

This week I worked on a couple things in the background. More to come soon.

📺 Watch

Do you really own what you buy? And why is it so damn hard to repair your phone?

This is a very important topic that you need to understand. Learn about the movement. While on the topic, definitely watch this video about farmers hacking their tractors.

When companies design products that only they can fix, ownership becomes a polite fiction.

📚 Read

Facebook first suspended Trump for encouraging violence during the Capitol riot January 6, before saying the next day the ban was "indefinite." Two weeks later, it referred the case to its 20-member Oversight Board.

On Wednesday the board handed the decision back to Facebook, recommending it either permanently ban or reinstate the president within six months—and write clear rules to explain the rationale.

The panel faulted the social network for making a hasty decision without clear criteria.

Yaël Eisenstat indicates the Oversight Board process isn't about Donald Trump's free speech—it's about Facebook's power.

The Dangers of Seeing the World Through Ubiquitous Video

Siva Vaidhyanathan on the rapid global proliferation of digital video and how it makes it harder to sort and contextualize what we see:

The overall effect is of cacophony: a vast, loud, bright, fractured, narcissistic ecosystem that leaves us little room for thoughtful deliberation. It's not that we'll believe the latest Covid conspiracy video (although too many people do). It's that seeing video after video after video renders us unable to judge.

They're all making contradictory claims; they're all just slick enough to make plausible demands for our attention. We find ourselves numbed by overstimulation, distracted by constant movement and sound, unable to relate to those ensconced in different bubbles. We mistrust everything because we can't trust anything.

Collective, collaborative thought isn't impossible in the age of ubiquitous video. It just means we have to try harder.

Naomi Baron suggests that when mental focus and reflection are called for, it's time to crack open a book.

Digital texts, audio, and video all have educational roles, especially when providing resources not available in print. However, for maximizing learning where mental focus and reflection are called for, educators and parents shouldn't assume all media are the same, even when they contain identical words.

We frequently see narratives suggesting heavy social-media use is linked to negative well-being among teenagers.

There remains "little association" between technology use and mental-health problems, a study of more than 430,000 10- to 15-year-olds suggests.

Study authors Matti Vuorre, Amy Orben, and Andy Przybylski compared TV viewing, social-media and device use with feelings of depression, suicidal tendencies, and behavioral problems.

"We couldn't tell the difference between social-media impact and mental health in 2010 and 2019. We're not saying that fewer happy people use more social media. We're saying that the connection is not getting stronger."

Great research from Helen DeWaard and Verena Roberts.

They share a framework using Freirean principles to examine and evaluate student blogs—providing opportunities to evaluate critical consciousness, community-based learning, critical pedagogy, and reflection.

🔨 Do

Mikkaka Overstreet with an excellent primer on the reading wars.

Sadly, there's no magic bullet. No one program or strategy works in all classrooms. We are not going to read aloud or phonics our way into better literacy in this country. Reading is a complex process requiring a nuanced approach.

🤔 Consider

Sometimes we are blessed with being able to choose the time, and the arena, and the manner of our revolution, but more usually we must do battle where we are standing.

Ojibwe saying

This Ojibwe wisdom about fighting where you stand connects to this issue's threads—the right to repair what you own, the video cacophony that numbs judgment, and the ongoing reading wars with no magic bullet. We work with what we have, where we are.

Bonus: What is the perfect metal album for each astrological sign?!?!

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