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TLDR 113

Too Long; Didn't Read Issue 113

Published: 2017-09-02 β€’ πŸ“§ Newsletter

Welcome to issue 113 of TLDR. First things first, let the mindset flow.

This week I shared the following:

πŸ”– Key Takeaways

πŸ“Ί Watch

Very cool video of Jim Carrey and his exploration of painting as a way to continue to explore his creative side. A fantastic way to reboot your creative side...or support those around you that need that artist side supported.

πŸ“š Read

The New America Foundation, a digitally savvy center-left think tank routinely researches and critiques topics in public policy, including national security studies, technology, asset building, health, gender, energy, education, and the economy. New America has received more than $20 million in funding Alphabet (the parent company behind Google) since being founded in 1999. I definitely recommend signing up the Education alerts from New America if you don't already.

After Google was hit with a 2.42 billion–euro fine by the European Commission in June, one of New America's scholars, Barry Lynn posted a congratulatory note to the regulators and a call for action by American anti-trust officials. Not long after that post, New America president, Anne-Marie Slaughter, informed Lynn that he and his research team would no longer be welcome at the think tank, "presenting about as tidy and flagrant a case of conflict of interest and monied suppression of criticism as one can imagine."

There are a lot of moving parts to this story. You can read more here at Vox, and the NY Times. I also thoroughly recommend reading this piece by Kashmir Hill about Google killing/burying stories in the past.

As we examine these new digital tools and spaces, it's important to pay attention to the money, power, and leverage these companies have.

Each year the New Media Consortium (this year in a partnership with the Consortium for School Networking) puts together a report on the trends and change that will frame segments of education over the coming year. I use these reports to help calibrate my understanding and expectations for tech use in education.

This year they include an awesome project dashboard that includes expert feedback on a series of research questions from the report. The Digital Toolkit from the report is also an invaluable resource.

If you don't have enough time for the full report, the preview provides insight into rethinking learning spaces and the role of teachers, and coding and digital literacy instruction. There is also a healthy dose of info in there about STEAM learning, makerspaces, robotics, Internet of things, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence.

This week an interesting thing happened in my social media feed. First, I came across this piece by colleague Julie Coiro in Edutopia. The piece is excellent as it describes strategies to help adolescents evaluate online information. Much of this is from work that Coiro and I conducted during time with the New Literacies Research Lab.

Soon after receiving that post, I came across the post above from Lifehacker about the need to evaluate social media as a form of propaganda. In recent months we've discussed this here in TL;DR, I've been concerned about the weaponizing of social media as a means to spread disinformation and propaganda. With the post above from Coiro, and this one from Lifehacker, I'm thinking about the need to empower our students (from Pre-K up through higher ed) as informed, critical citizens.

The Lifehacker post shares work from the Alliance for Securing Democracy (an organization launched by national security figures to counter Russian "mischief") and their Hamilton 68 Disinformation Dashboard. The dashboard follows and analyzes 600 accounts associated with Russian influence campaigns.

In my classroom, I would follow the guidelines described by Coiro in empowering learners as healthy skeptics. I would then regularly peek into the Disinformation Dashboard to double check on some of the feeds shared there for more critique.

Throughout our days, many of us strive for balance as a means to make sense of reality and get through the day unscathed. This may take the form of meditation, eliminating decision fatigue, or a glass of cabernet.

This post from Brad Stulberg in the NY Times suggests that balance β€” which essentially asks us to never go all-in on anything β€” is the right solution.

Rather, he suggests that we should strive for what psychologists call internal self-awareness, or the ability to see yourself clearly by assessing, monitoring and proactively managing your core values, emotions, passions, behaviors and impact on others. Put differently, internal self-awareness is about creating the time and space to know yourself; constantly check in with yourself (since your "self" changes over time); and then live your life accordingly.

Reflection was a fundamental element as a K12 teacher...and it's possibly more important now that I'm teaching teachers. One of my primary goals is to develop their skills as a healthy, reflective practitioner.

This post is a permanent bookmark in my teaching arsenal. Each semester I'll make sure that I utilize each of these strategies at least once in our work. At this point, the only pieces I don't use often are Prezi and Vlogging. I'll find a way this semester.

πŸ”¨ Do

Darious Foroux shares some granular advice on how to synthesize as you read to make sure you take away more from the text. He suggests that we don't need to read more...just read smarter.

Foroux's system includes the following:

πŸ€” Consider

"Goals transform a random walk into a chase." β€” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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Part of the πŸ“§ Newsletter archive documenting digital literacy and technology.