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DL 308

For The Public Good

Published: October 16, 2021 • 📧 Newsletter

Welcome back. Here's Digitally Literate, issue 308. Your go-to source for insightful content on education, technology, and the digital landscape.

This week I post the following:

As I sit down to write this week's issue, I'm learning about the sudden passing of two giants in the fields of digital literacy. Drs. Michele Knobel and David O'Brien. Much of Michele's work was written with Colin Lankshear. These two not only framed most of my thinking about digital and new literacies, but they also published most of this content openly along the way while blogging about their work. They are one of the key reasons why I work the way that I do. Dave also inspired most of my work as he investigated digital and new literacy practices, especially as they connect to content area instruction. He informally mentored me throughout my career and framed most of my thinking and the words I use to express what I see.

🔖 Key Takeaways

📺 Watch

Synthetic media, better known as deepfakes, could be a goldmine for filmmakers. But the technology has already terrorized women who have had their faces inserted into pornography. And it could potentially disrupt society.

Several years ago, I first started writing about deepfakes here in this newsletter. I wasn't sure if I should even write about this technology as it has its roots in pornography and revenge porn. I'm glad that I've been following this topic.

📚 Read

Peter Greene writing about one of the key challenges involved in teaching. It is never enough.

There is never enough time. There are never enough resources. There is never enough you.

We ask teachers to do more with increasingly less. As the pandemic reverberates across society, we've asked teachers to put their lives on the line to serve us and our children. When they ask for safety in the form of virtual learning, vaccinations, testing, or masking policies, we mock and threaten them. We peer into their classrooms and demand to know what they're teaching and think that we could do it better.

The teacher appreciation t-shirts, coffee shop gift cards, and exhortations of self-care do nothing.

Pay teachers. Treat them with respect. Treat teachers as a valuable natural resource.

Facebook's Effort to Attract Preteens Goes Beyond Instagram Kids, Documents Show

I'm continuing to unpack the Facebook Files, A Wall Street Journal investigation. Internal Facebook documents reviewed show Facebook formed a team to study preteens, set a three-year goal to create more products for them, and commissioned strategy papers about the long-term business opportunities presented by these potential users. In one presentation, it contemplated whether there might be a way to engage children during playdates.

Facebook isn't the only technology company to court children and face scrutiny for doing so. Virtually every major social media platform, including Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube, has confronted legal or regulatory problems related to how children use its products. Federal privacy law forbids data collection on children under 13, and lawmakers have criticized tech companies for not doing more to protect kids online from predators and harmful content.

"With the ubiquity of tablets and phones, kids are getting on the internet as young as six years old. We can't ignore this and we have a responsibility to figure it out," said a 2018 document labeled confidential. "Imagine a Facebook experience designed for youth."

Shauna Shames writes that there is no such thing as the so-called work/family conflict. This is not only a personal observation. Scholars have found that good jobs – full-time, with benefits – and family, without help, are simply incompatible.

Will the U.S. take something positive from this crisis by learning an enduring lesson about the power of child care? Americans tend to think of having children as an expensive, private choice. The alternative is to think of it as a public good. There are many potential options when child care is made a priority in a society.

Last week, Oakland education activist Dirk Tillotson was murdered in his home. In this piece Courtney Martin indicates that Tillotson described himself as the "patron saint of lost causes."

Some great quotes from this piece:

"You gotta dig in where you can," he says. "Don't overthink it. Especially if it's what the teachers want. Just don't be an asshole."

"Make sure the teachers know you're not blaming anyone," he goes on. "You're there to help them get more support, more books, more partners."

"The system is the villain. It's built to serve some kids and leave other kids behind. It's life or death, not to sound too dramatic, but it is. That's what we should be talking about."

You can read more about Dirk's work on his blog, Great School Voices, and donate to a Go Fund Me to support his family here.

Sidequests, often seen in video games, have become a powerful storytelling tool for TV and movies, adding depth and nuance to main narratives.

These narrative techniques enrich storytelling by mimicking real-life detours and complexities.

🔨 Do

Embrace the Entrepreneurial Mindset

Michael Hyatt on the not-so-linear path necessary to build perseverance and determination.

The entrepreneurial mindset isn't just for business founders—it's a way of approaching challenges with creativity and resilience. These traits help navigate uncertainty:

  1. Openness: See problems others overlook.
  2. Ownership: Take initiative to solve challenges.
  3. Grayscale Thinking: Make creative connections across fields.
  4. Risk Tolerance: Embrace calculated risks.
  5. Resilience: Recover from setbacks with persistence.
  6. Resourcefulness: Find innovative solutions.
  7. Patience: Stay committed to long-term goals.
  8. Belief: Trust in yourself and your work.

Learn more here.

🤔 Consider

Time moves in one direction, memory in another.

William Gibson

This profound observation connects perfectly with the themes explored throughout this issue. Deepfake technology forces us to confront how memory and reality intersect—synthetic media can create false memories of events that never happened. Facebook's attempts to capture younger users show how corporations try to shape childhood memories and experiences for future profit.

The tragic loss of Michele Knobel and David O'Brien reminds us that while time moves forward relentlessly, their intellectual contributions continue to influence digital literacy thinking. Dirk Tillotson's activism demonstrates how fighting for educational justice creates memories and systems that outlast individual lives.

Gibson's insight reminds us that in our digital age, we must be intentional about what memories we preserve, what stories we tell, and how we allow technology to shape both our present experiences and future recollections.

Previous: DL 307 • Next: DL 309 • Archive: 📧 Newsletter

🌱 Connected Concepts:

Part of the 📧 Newsletter archive documenting digital literacy and technology.

Thanks again all. I'm off to figure out how to bake these blueberry cookies.