TLDR 154

Too Long; Didn't Read Issue 154

Published: 2018-06-16 • 📧 Newsletter

Welcome to Issue 154. Love, lies, and general half-truths.

This week I posted the following:

• Creating a domain of their own for educators (& students) in early childhood education - I gave a keynote at the Early Childhood Summit here in Charleston, SC this week. My slides are available at the link. I'll have a blogpost soon talking about my thinking on this.
• Employing digital spaces to resist harmful discourses: Intersections of learning, technology, & politics showing up in the lowcountry - My publication in the Journal of Learning, Media, & Technology was accepted, and revisions were due this week. The link will take you to the newly submitted version, the original manuscript, and reviewer's comments.
• The First Principles of Being Digitally Literate - This week I was involved in a wide-ranging discussion on Twitter about many aspects of digital literacy. In this post, I try to distill the most essential elements of what it means to be digitally literate. Get involved on the Google Doc.

🔖 Key Takeaways

• Domain of One's Own for Early Learners: Keynote presentation explores bringing domain of one's own pedagogies to early childhood education—examining how young learners can benefit from having personal digital spaces where they own and control their content, express themselves creatively, develop digital identities, and learn about online presence from earliest stages, challenges conventional assumptions about what's appropriate or possible for young children in digital environments by arguing that foundation for digital citizenship, creative expression, and ownership of learning should begin early rather than waiting until college or career readiness programs.
• Digital Literacy First Principles: Wide-ranging Twitter discussion distilled into essential elements of what it means to be digitally literate—moving beyond skills-based checklists toward more fundamental capacities including critical evaluation of sources, understanding of how platforms shape information, ability to create as well as consume, awareness of privacy and data implications, recognition of algorithmic influence, capacity for ethical participation, and understanding of power dynamics in digital spaces, attempting to articulate core principles that remain stable even as specific tools and platforms constantly evolve.
• Stanford Prison Experiment Debunked: Ben Blum's investigation reveals famous psychology experiment was apparently sham yet continues to inform criminal justice policy and education—appeal of SPE goes deeper than scientific validity because it tells story we desperately want to believe that we cannot be held accountable for reprehensible things we do, offering form of redemption tailor-made for scientific era where we're off the hook because actions are determined by circumstance and fallibility is situational, demonstrates how compelling narratives can persist despite methodological problems when they serve psychological or ideological needs.
• Teachers Strike Against Neoliberal Assault: Henry Giroux examines teacher strikes spreading across states as resistance to systematic defunding and devaluing of public education—movement guided by Ursula K Le Guin's insight that "we will not know our own injustice if we cannot imagine justice, we will not be free if we do not imagine freedom, we cannot demand that anyone try to attain justice and freedom who has not had a chance to imagine them as attainable," positioning teacher activism as reclaiming education as public good rather than privatized commodity and reimagining possibilities for schools serving democratic rather than purely economic purposes.
• Maker Culture's Gender Problem: Drexel University study reveals deeply unsettling gender problem in maker culture with troubling lack of women in makerspace leadership and pronounced tendency to see boys as more tech-proficient—ethnographic research across 30 makerspaces in 12 urban regions finds that lack of focus on culture and gender inclusiveness stunts true promise of making movement, despite excitement about makerspaces as educational spaces, embedded assumptions about who belongs and who has technical aptitude reproduce rather than challenge existing inequities in STEM fields and technology access.
• Facebook Teaching Digital Literacy: Facebook partnering with community colleges to teach digital literacy skills raises profound questions about conflicts of interest—company whose business model depends on surveillance capitalism, algorithmic manipulation, and viral misinformation spread teaching digital literacy represents troubling development, suggesting we should be deeply skeptical when organizations profiting from particular digital practices position themselves as authorities on how to navigate digital environments, with quip about "arsonists teaching fire safety" capturing absurdity of letting platform companies define digital literacy education.

📺 Watch

Adam Savage's Maker Tour: Thinkery (15:58)

This tour of Thinkery in Austin, TX by Adam Savage gives you a behind-the-scenes look at how they build those incredible children's makerspaces while keeping them kid-friendly and safe. Savage, known from MythBusters and his passionate advocacy for making and tinkering, explores the thoughtful design decisions that make Thinkery an exemplary makerspace.

The video showcases how the space balances creative freedom with safety considerations, provides materials and tools appropriate for different age groups, designs experiences that encourage exploration and experimentation, and creates environment where children can genuinely engage in making rather than just following predetermined instructions.

This kind of thoughtful makerspace design demonstrates what's possible when educators combine pedagogical understanding with commitment to hands-on learning. The tour offers inspiration and practical insights for anyone interested in creating maker environments for young learners.

📚 Read

The lifespan of a lie

Ben Blum's investigation of the Stanford Prison Experiment in Medium reveals the famous psychology experiment was apparently a sham, and yet it continues to inform criminal justice policy, education and more decades after it was conducted.

Key insight from the article:

"The appeal of the Stanford prison experiment seems to go deeper than its scientific validity, perhaps because it tells us a story about ourselves that we desperately want to believe: that we, as individuals, cannot really be held accountable for the sometimes reprehensible things we do. As troubling as it might seem to accept Zimbardo's fallen vision of human nature, it is also profoundly liberating. It means we're off the hook. Our actions are determined by circumstance. Our fallibility is situational. Just as the Gospel promised to absolve us of our sins if we would only believe, the SPE offered a form of redemption tailor-made for a scientific era, and we embraced it."

This reveals how compelling narratives can persist in scientific and public consciousness long after their methodological problems are exposed, especially when they serve psychological needs or confirm beliefs we want to hold about human nature. The situational determinism offered by SPE absolves individual responsibility in ways that feel both troubling and oddly comforting.

Facebook's Latest Higher Ed Push Part of Broader Trend

Facebook is teaming up with community colleges as part of a nationwide effort to teach digital-literacy skills to small-business leaders and others in cities. Facebook's education strategy focuses on economic enablement and job growth, as well as supporting small businesses with the skills "they need to grow."

This story spawned a large Twitter discussion as we unpacked the complexity of this initiative, with many educators expressing deep skepticism about Facebook's role in defining and delivering digital literacy education.

The conflict of interest is profound: a company whose business model depends on surveillance capitalism, algorithmic manipulation of attention and emotion, and viral spread of misinformation positioning itself as authority on digital literacy. What version of "digital literacy" would Facebook teach? One that encourages critical examination of how platforms extract value from users? One that questions whether constant connectivity serves human welfare?

In a related observation: local arsonists are teaching fire safety classes.

This is real resistance: Teachers strike back against neoliberal assault on public education

Henry A. Giroux in Salon examines the wave of teacher strikes as resistance to systematic defunding and devaluing of public education under neoliberal policies that treat schools as sites for profit rather than democratic institution.

Giroux writes: "Hopefully, this movement will continue to be guided by the kind of energy and insight that Ursula K. Le Guin once articulated: 'We will not know our own injustice if we cannot imagine justice. We will not be free if we do not imagine freedom. We cannot demand that anyone try to attain justice and freedom who has not had a chance to imagine them as attainable.'"

This framing positions teacher activism not just as labor dispute over wages and conditions but as struggle over the purpose and future of public education—whether schools serve democratic ideals of cultivating informed citizens or purely economic function of workforce preparation, whether education is public good or privatized commodity, whether we can imagine and fight for alternatives to current trajectory.

The Numbers That Explain Why Teachers Are in Revolt

American teachers are angry. They have taken to the streets in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arizona, Colorado, and more recently in North Carolina. Dissent is building in Louisiana and Nevada, too.

Issues like these almost always come down to simple math. The article breaks down the numbers showing how school funding still lags years after the recession officially ended, how teacher salaries have stagnated or declined in real terms, how classroom resources have been cut, and how many teachers work second jobs to make ends meet.

These concrete data points help explain the anger fueling teacher strikes and demonstrate that this isn't about greedy unions or lazy teachers but about systematic underinvestment in public education that makes it increasingly difficult to attract and retain qualified educators, maintain reasonable class sizes, and provide students with resources they need.

The revolt represents recognition that accepting these conditions means accepting failure of public education system, and that collective action is necessary to demand change.

Maker Culture Has a 'Deeply Unsettling' Gender Problem

This story has been percolating under the surface for a year, but it's good to see actual data on these trends. Makerspaces may be one of the most exciting elements on any school's campus, but lack of focus around culture and gender inclusiveness are stunting its true promise, according to a new report out of Drexel University.

The report, appropriately titled "Making Culture," is the result of about a year's worth of interviews and site visits to around 30 different makerspaces across 12 urban regions. The goal wasn't to count the number of 3D printers or robotics clubs, but rather to take a more "ethnographic" view of the phenomena, says Youngmoo Kim, the director of Drexel's ExCITe Center and an author of the study.

Among their findings: a troubling lack of women in makerspace leadership and a pronounced tendency to see boys as more tech-proficient.

This research reveals how makerspaces, despite intentions to democratize access to technology and hands-on learning, can reproduce existing gender inequities when leaders don't actively work to create inclusive cultures. The problem isn't inherent to making but stems from assumptions about who belongs, whose expertise is valued, and whose participation is encouraged.

🔨 Do

Kouridashi-style cold brew tea

This week I started researching opportunities to cold brew tea. I've written quite a bit about the cold brew coffee that we always keep in our house. As summer kicks in, I've been looking to have a pitcher of tea available as well.

While researching, I came across this post and was intrigued by the mention of ice brewing (also known as kouridashi-style brewing), a Japanese method of frigid cold water extraction using ice cubes placed directly on tea leaves, allowing them to slowly melt and extract tea as they do.

The best resources on the topic so far are this post and this post. The method produces remarkably smooth, complex tea with different flavor profiles than hot or traditional cold brewing.

I'm still researching and will know more soon. The intersection of technique, patience, and attention to process in Japanese tea preparation offers interesting parallels to thoughtful pedagogical practices.

🤔 Consider

"The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper." — Eden Phillpotts

For this issue on "love, lies, and general half-truths," Phillpotts's observation about wonder and wisdom provides essential perspective. The lies we tell ourselves—like the Stanford Prison Experiment's comforting story absolving individual responsibility, or the half-truths about technology's impact that avoid difficult questions—often persist because our wits haven't yet grown sharp enough to see through them. The magical things waiting for discovery include uncomfortable truths about how our educational systems fail students and teachers, how our digital platforms manipulate attention and emotion, how our makerspaces reproduce rather than challenge gender inequities. Growing sharper wits means developing critical consciousness to see beyond appealing narratives to underlying structures and assumptions. It means imagining justice and freedom, as Le Guin urged, not through magical thinking but through clear-eyed analysis combined with refusal to accept current conditions as inevitable. The universe offers abundance of possibilities for more equitable, thoughtful, human-centered ways of organizing education and technology—but only to those patient and sharp enough to perceive them beyond the lies and half-truths obscuring our view.

🔗 Navigation

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🌱 Connected Concepts:

• Domain Own Early Childhood — Keynote explores bringing domain of one's own pedagogies to early childhood education examining how young learners benefit from personal digital spaces where they own and control content, express themselves creatively, develop digital identities, and learn about online presence from earliest stages—challenges assumptions about what's appropriate for young children in digital environments by arguing foundation for digital citizenship, creative expression, and ownership of learning should begin early rather than waiting until college or career readiness programs, extending web literacy and digital sovereignty to youngest learners.
• Digital Literacy First Principles — Wide-ranging Twitter discussion distilled into essential elements of what it means to be digitally literate—moving beyond skills-based checklists toward fundamental capacities including critical evaluation of sources, understanding how platforms shape information, ability to create and consume, awareness of privacy and data implications, recognition of algorithmic influence, capacity for ethical participation, and understanding power dynamics in digital spaces, articulating core principles that remain stable even as specific tools and platforms constantly evolve requiring adaptable critical framework.
• Stanford Prison Experiment Debunked — Ben Blum investigation reveals famous psychology experiment was apparently sham yet continues informing criminal justice policy and education—appeal goes deeper than scientific validity because it tells story we desperately want to believe that we cannot be held accountable for reprehensible actions, offering redemption tailor-made for scientific era where we're off the hook as actions are determined by circumstance and fallibility is situational, demonstrates how compelling narratives persist despite methodological problems when serving psychological or ideological needs absolving individual responsibility.
• Teacher Strike Movement — Wave of teacher strikes across multiple states represents resistance to systematic defunding and devaluing of public education—Henry Giroux positions activism as reclaiming education as public good rather than privatized commodity guided by Ursula K Le Guin's insight about needing to imagine justice and freedom to attain them, with concrete data showing school funding lags after recession and teacher salaries stagnate making it difficult to attract retain qualified educators and provide students with necessary resources, collective action demands change to trajectory treating schools as profit sites rather than democratic institutions.
• Maker Culture Gender Problem — Drexel University ethnographic study across 30 makerspaces reveals deeply unsettling gender problem with troubling lack of women in leadership and pronounced tendency to see boys as more tech-proficient—lack of focus on culture and gender inclusiveness stunts true promise of making movement, despite excitement about makerspaces as educational spaces embedded assumptions about who belongs and who has technical aptitude reproduce rather than challenge existing inequities in STEM fields and technology access, requiring active work to create inclusive cultures rather than assuming democratized access automatically produces equitable participation.
• Facebook Digital Literacy Teaching — Facebook partnering with community colleges to teach digital literacy skills raises profound conflict of interest questions—company whose business model depends on surveillance capitalism, algorithmic manipulation, and viral misinformation spread positioning itself as authority on navigating digital environments represents troubling development, suggesting deep skepticism needed when organizations profiting from particular digital practices define digital literacy education, with arsonists teaching fire safety analogy capturing absurdity of letting platform companies whose interests oppose critical digital understanding serve as educational authorities.
• Imagining Educational Justice — Ursula K Le Guin insight that we cannot attain justice and freedom without first imagining them as attainable provides framework for educational resistance—teacher strikes and maker culture critiques and digital literacy debates all require capacity to envision alternatives to current conditions rather than accepting them as inevitable, imagination becomes political and pedagogical tool for identifying injustices obscured by familiarity and articulating possibilities currently unrealized, critical consciousness depends on refusing to let current reality constrain vision of what education could and should be.

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