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TLDR 79

Too Long; Didn't Read Issue 79

Published: 2017-01-06 • 📧 Newsletter

Welcome to the 79th issue of the TL;DR Newsletter. There is a fair amount of "nuance" in TL;DR as we discuss events of the week in education, technology, and literacy. Please be aware that you may be asked to read between the lines.

In this issue we'll think about how much the truth hurts.

This week I worked on the following:

If you haven't already, please subscribe to this newsletter. You can review archives of the newsletter. Check out TL;DR on Medium. You can connect and play with me on Instagram and Snapchat.

🔖 Key Takeaways

📺 Watch

Regardless of your political affiliation, or feelings about the results of the U.S. election, I found this video by Nerdwriter1 to be fantastic.

The video discusses how Trump uses and manipulates language through an examination of his tweets. If you spend time interacting in online spaces...you need to take the time to watch this video. It has stuck with me, and the other people I have shared it with.

📚 Read

This piece from Darren Rosenblum in from The Opinion Pages at The NY Times shares the challenges as we teach in an environment full of screens. Darren makes the point that his students (in a law program) need to be able to listen and communicate. These two skills require patience, focus, eye contact, and managing moments of ennui productively. Ultimately Rosenblum believes that multitasking while mediating between screens kills empathy in the classroom.

This is something that I discuss regularly with colleagues and students. I believe that we're in between two models. I would suggest that a majority of the colleagues that I've worked with over the years would rather have students unplug as they enter the classroom. I try to organize discussions (with colleagues and students) as we debate the pros and cons of including screens in the classroom. I also allow computers, laptops, and other devices in my classes. I teach mostly educators and use it as a teaching moment when I highlight halfway through the semester that I know that they've been on Facebook and Snapchat the whole time. I want them to come to the realization...and prepare for their future learning environments.

We need more discussion.

Great post from Maha Bali on the DML Central blog in which she expands on a recent tweet in which she suggest that we don't need to focus on fake news in the classroom, but instead should identify ways to prepare youth for the real news.

Bali suggests that we should consider the challenges that exist as we take things for granted without employing any skepticism. She also expands on a point made by Britni Brown O'Donnell that we need to question our own ontological and epistemological assumptions behind "truth."

Bali is planning on a series of posts in which she digs deeper into this topic...and I look forward to learning more as we collectively unpack and address these challenges.

This post from Jessica Elgot in The Guardian documents the results from a "study" that indicates that almost half of 8 to 11 year olds have agreed to impenetrable terms and conditions to give social media giants such as Facebook and Instagram control over their data.

From the outset, this is documenting something that we already knew. In fact, if you're a regular reader of TL;DR, you know that it's not only the kids...but the adults that are regularly handing over their data to these organizations...without us fully knowing what is happening to it all. I'm also more concerned about the organizations that know a lot about each of us...but we don't even know their names.

As I began to explore the links to find the actual study...I realized that it's near impossible. The link I shared up above, links to this story...also by The Guardian. If you search online for info from both stories, you come across this link...also from The Guardian. The name of the study is indicated as the "Growing up digital study."

Although I definitely believe the "results" of the "study," I also have significant questions about credibility of this reporting. Finally, this is also a call for researchers to engage in more open scholarship and report on their own work.

A post from Elissa Nadworny in MindShift sharing a discussion with Laura Zimmerman and Rachel Barr about their work investigating interactions with touchscreens by youth. In the interview, Nadworny, Zimmerman, and Barr synthesize findings from two different studies (one, two) that peer into scaffolding toddlers with tech.

What struck me the most in this is the role of the adult as a human guide in helping scaffold learners as they interact with the device. This means that there should be some shared interaction, some joint media engagement as we use these devices with young learners.

At this point, the user interface is not able to mimic this engagement to support learners...yet.

This op-ed from Lisa Feldman Barrett in The New York Times shares insight from research being conducted at Massachusetts General Hospital on cognition and aging. The neurologists want to know why some older people remain mentally nimble while others stay sharp. They use the term Superager, coined by neurologist Marsel Mesulam, to describe this phenomenon.

They're still unpacking the findings of their work, but you'd probably like to learn how to have a youthful brain now...and later in life.

The early takeaway is that you need to work hard at something. This work can be physical, mental, or both.

You'll also need to work hard. Subscribe to the "no pain, no gain" philosophy and work until you're uncomfortable. If you're using Sudoku, or those brain games to keep you thinking...keep doing it until it begins to hurt.

🔨 Do

It's the start of a new year, and many of us are putting together resolutions for the upcoming year. Instead of identifying these goals, think about building habits. This post from FastCompany shares a series of prompts that I'll start using in my first 30 day challenge of the year. Care to join me?

  1. Plan tomorrow tonight
  2. Write a one-item to-do list
  3. Go for a stroll
  4. Know when to quit
  5. Do only things you love when procrastinating
  6. Automate scheduling
  7. Shut up and listen
  8. Push the important stuff to the top
  9. Set "action triggers"
  10. Write a "stop-doing" list

🤔 Consider

"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth." — Marcus Aurelius

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