Welcome back. I hope you’re taking time for self-care.
This week I posted the following:
- Digital Literacy: Developing Critical Thinking – I presented at the 2021 Wisconsin Literacy Research Symposium this week. Here are my materials, notes, and reflections.
- Pre-Service Educators Developing a Digital Identity – Really excited this is finally published. This article discusses a study on preservice education students and the implementation of digital identities through self-constructed websites in a technology course.
- Consume. Curate. Create. – In the pub linked above, I discuss a continuum of three stages that move learners from consumers to producers of digital content. This blog post presents that info in a different format.
- Dispositions of Computational Thinking Instrument Content Expert Validation. – We’ve been developing an instrument to identify & define the learner dispositions that impact computational thinking education. Here is the public content validation form we sent out to experts for review.
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Teaching in the US vs. the rest of the world
Teachers in America have a uniquely tough job. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
From hours worked to pay rates, countries like Finland, Japan, and South Korea make teaching a more respected and sustainable profession.
Antitrust Overhaul Passes Its First Tests. Now, the Hard Parts.
Europe has been harder on giant tech companies than the U.S., but perhaps that’s changing.
The U.S. Judiciary Committee voted this week to advance five bills that would address the dominance of companies like Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook.
Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on much in the U.S. these days, but many seem to agree on this.
Cancel Amazon Prime
This week was Prime Day, a global shopping event provided by Amazon for their Prime members. Prime is Amazon’s $119-a-year membership service, which buys subscribers free one-day shipping, plus access to streaming media, discounts at the Amazon subsidiary Whole Foods, and a host of other perks.
In this post, Ellen Cushing suggests that if you want to do something about Big Tech and its growing power…you should cancel your Amazon Prime account.
No Cure
Hannah Zeavin on cures, and our desires to have techno-cures that will fix all that ails us.
“Inescapably, then, techno-cures are a dead end. The presenting complaint and the resulting cure are each a symptom of larger societal forces at work; if we can identify who is understood to be in need of a cure, who is worthy of it, and who receives it, we can follow each one to diagnose the system in which they occur. Once a diagnosis has been made, remedy may be sought. And at the ready, ever to hand, techno-optimism, and its kin, techno-solutionism, present us with a myriad of cures.”
Teaching kids social responsibility – like how to settle fights and ask for help – can reduce school bullying
Research from Jonathan B. Santo and Josafa da Cunha that suggests that schools that encourage their students to care for their classmates’ feelings and peacefully resolve conflicts with their peers can lower incidents of bullying.
The Internet Eats Up Less Energy Than You Might Think
A new analysis by Jonathan Koomey and Eric Masanet suggests some dire warnings of environmental damage from technology are overstated.
The piece suggests that the giant tech companies and their power-hungry, football-field-size data centers are not the environmental villains they are sometimes portrayed to be on social media and elsewhere.
Lightboard for Teaching, Streaming, & Ideation
I’ve played with a Lightboard like this in the past…and it is awesome.
If you’d like to make your own…here’s how.
It is part of the cure to wish to be cured.
Seneca
Apple’s emoji keyboard is reinforcing Western stereotypes. Hmmm…
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