Hi all! Welcome back to Digitally Literate. This is issue #301.
This week I published the following:
- How to Talk About Mental Health – Some guidance on how to talk about mental health and well-being.
- Getting Started With Ungrading – This semester I’m integrating more thinking about how I assess. This first post explains what I’m doing with ungrading.
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Don’t Be a Sucker – 1947
In this anti-fascist film produced by the US Military in the wake of WWII, the producers deconstruct the politically motivated social engineering of Germany by the Nazi regime.
The School Culture Wars: ‘You Have Brought Division to Us’
From mask mandates to critical race theory and gender identity, educators are besieged. “You are just trying to keep everything from collapsing,” one official said.
Schools were already facing a crisis of historic proportions. They are reopening just as a highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus is tearing through communities. They need to create a safe environment for teachers and students while helping children who have been through major trauma.
But at this critical moment, many school officials find themselves engulfed in highly partisan battles, which often have distracted from the most urgent issues.
Parents Are Not Okay
Parents aren’t even at a breaking point anymore. We’re broken. And yet we’ll go on because that’s what we do: We sweep up all our pieces and put them back together as best we can. We carry on chipped and leaking and broken because we have no other choice. And we pray that if we can just keep going, our kids will survive too.
A new study reveals what we can learn about how to persuade people by watching robots
A new study reveals what we can learn about how to persuade people by watching robots.
Experiments with swarms of robots have shown that sporadic social interactions can increase the spread of newly discovered information, compared to sharing the information with all members of a group at once.
9 apps to help kids sharpen their coding skills
Coding is a skill that’s now part of just about every discipline — and what’s more, it’s fun for kids to learn, and easy for parents and teachers to add to lessons at home or school.
As kids get ready to go back to school…here’s a great list of apps and platforms to build these skills.
How to talk to vaccine-hesitant people
Not all unvaccinated folks are anti-vaxxers. As Zeynep Tufekci points out, many of these individuals are in the movable middle. Kindness and non-judgmentalism will get you far when talking to them.
- Check your biases at the door
- See if the person is open to the conversation
- Be kind, or at least civil
- Identify the obstacle
- Consider the humble text
- Tailor your argument to the person
The sun is new each day.
Heraclitus
Greetings Earthlings! Outkast – Two Dope Boyz (In a Cadillac) (Animated Music Video)
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