EDUC 639 Blog: Digital Rights

 

How do we guard our privacy in this digital age? It is a common misconception that “we” (Americans? Humankind?) have the inalienable right to our privacy. Is this a basic human right? Is it due to the 4^th amendment (search and seizure)? The answer is a definitive, “No.” Privacy is a concept that is protected only by legal fiction. With each advance in new technology our concept of privacy has been and continues to be eroded. In a TEDx talk in 2016, Nicholas Martino said that “If we can not protect ourselves we can not be ourselves.” (TEDx Talks, 2016)

            Five years after the fact, I’m wondering what this speaker would have to say about our new virtual and hybrid classroom environments that have evolved this past year since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020? Many questions go unanswered even today as we are screaming up on the end of the 2020-2021 school year. Is it legal (or ethical) to live-stream a classroom? Is remote learning itself legal? Must cameras be “on” for virtual learning?

            I don’t have all the answers to these questions, but I can share with you some of the disadvantages of virtual learning. When we do not require cameras to be on in the virtual classroom we are attempting to protect student privacy, but we are also giving them license to walk away and disengage from the learning content being taught. Many students lay their heads down on the table, lay down in bed, or on the couch intending to ‘listen’ and fall asleep. With cameras off, there is nearly zero connection between students or between teachers and students. No eye contact, and certainly no non-verbal behavioral cues.  

            It has been my practice to ask for cameras to be on to take attendance, and then I encourage them to stay on so that we stay engaged in our learning together. I do not require the camera to stay on, mostly because that is not a hill I’m ‘willing to die on’. Pick your battles, but encourage that visual interaction!

Resources

TEDx Talks. (2016, January 21). Privacy in the Digital Age | Nicholas Martino | TEDxFSCJ [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuhifEL5VsU

EDUC 639 - Blog: The Importance of Teaching Media Fluency/Literacy

Promoting Media Fluency in the Classroom

        We all can recognize the fact that the number of hours most of humankind spends a day in front of media of some sort has skyrocketed in the last decade, the amount of time our children and youth spend, even more so. I can not imagine how those numbers have multiplied over the last year since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The face of our work and school lives has transformed this past year into something we could not have imagined just 12 months ago. What we have found is that we are no longer merely consumers of media but producers as well. In order to continue to excel in our work and school lives, humankind has a deep need to become fluent in all avenues of media literacy. “Today we need to be able to communicate as effectively with graphical and multi-media formats as we do with words and text. Media fluency helps us to develop these abilities.” (Wabisabi Learning, 2016)

            As educators, we have a weighty burden to not only provide media literacy education for our students, but in many cases, we must bridge that gap for ourselves first! Becoming media literate means we must teach students to “apply critical thinking to media message and” “use media to create their own messages”. This is “a key 21st-century skill. Media Literacy is critical to” students’ future educational endeavors and their “future participation in the civic and economic life of our democracy”. ("What is media literacy?", 2014)

            Media fluency demands critical listening skills, the ability to analyze, verbalize and verify information, separating facts from opinions. We need to be fluent also in the ‘wrappers’ the information reaches us in, the specific medium utilized. Acquiring next the skills to respond or communicate using that media’s form, flow, and align it correctly for the audience at hand. Becoming media literate means we have the ability to interpret the media message (wrappers and all), evaluate the impacts of those messages on thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and then be able to produce our own media thoughtfully and diligently. ("What is media literacy?", 2014)

            Becoming media fluent or literate is imperative for students as they approach their future educational and civic endeavors, it will empower them to engage in a global media environment. “Today’s messages come in many forms and literacy can no longer refer simply to the ability to read and write.” ("What is media literacy?", 2014)

(Media Literacy Now, 2017)

References

Media Literacy Now. (2017, January 17). What is Media Literacy? [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIaRw5R6Da4

Wabisabi Learning. (2016, February 16). Media Fluency [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myYUGyAjqII

What is media literacy? (2014, January 28). Media Literacy Now. https://medialiteracynow.org/what-is-media-literacy/

            

 

EDUC 639 Wk. 3 - Blog: Learning Culture

 

One thing that remains constant in this world of ours is change. Hand in hand with this truth of humankind is that when it comes to change, we always struggle against it. We go long stretches of time and we get comfortable and complacent with how we live, work, or worship. Then something big comes along, like a world-wide pandemic, and we all must learn to approach our lives work differently to survive.

In the past, we have been known to take a very one-dimensional approach to learning ‘from’ technological sources. We cannot simply read excerpts or watch video clips and answer multiple-choice questions to demonstrate authentic learning. This ‘learning’ is only in our short-term memory long enough to pass the quiz. Learning ‘with’ technology perpetrates a much different outcome. One where people can use technology as a cognitive tool and complete authentic tasks with the learned skills and solve problems that occur in real-world scenarios. (Carr-Chellman & Rowland, 2017)

Nigel Paine reminded us this week in our video content, that no matter where we work it is far better to establish a learning culture within our workplace, rather than to take that one-dimensional approach of the read/watch + multiple-choice quiz to demonstrate learning or knowledge. This approach might be appropriate for formative assessments to inform instruction, but not summative assessments where we need to see knowledge and skills demonstrated authentically. Paine describes learning culture as managing change and transformation, that can take insight from an outside source and quickly incorporate it into policy, and quickly acting on it. This produces workers who feel confident in their growing skill sets, and therefore, more competent. Paine implies that having confidence in your ability to execute your duties then creates an ongoing culture of competency as your working skills improve and increase.  (Paine, 2019)

Resources

Carr-Chellman, A. A., & Rowland, G. (2017). Issues in Technology, Learning, and Instructional Design. Routledge.

Paine, N. (2019). What is a Learning Culture?
. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn9AAw3vcXs.

The Social Responsibility of Educators as They Guide Young Learners

 

The Social Responsibility of Educators as They Guide Young Learners

Educators at every level have the weighty responsibility of designing and executing learning for students with very wide arrays of personal variables. Not only must educators consider students' individual learning challenges and needs, and linguistic/cultural differences, but also remain sensitive to variables such as sexual identity, race, socio-economic status, and variances in familial lifestyles. How these variables are addressed in the educational environment affects a student’s academic development and shapes their future identities as citizens. “How can we successfully teach and reach all students, from all backgrounds, while fostering a desire for increased social responsibility and awareness within them?” (Gangone, 2019, pg. 1)

Clearly, we live in a time of unprecedented insensitivity to many social-difference-related issues even though the United States has been working through many of these same issues for generations. There is a deep desire within the education community to grow up new generations of Americans who can cope with their own social responsibilities and support others while they do the same. The development of basic social skills early in life may be the key to the social changes many of us are desperate for. Enveloping lessons on cooperation, communication, conflict management, and role-playing perspective-taking (Berman, 1990) into the general curriculum at every level of education could be an excellent start. Learners of every kind need these valuable tools in their coping skills repertoire.

Resources

Berman, S. (1990). Educating for Social Responsibility. Educational Leadership, November, 75–80. http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/ed_lead/el_199011_berman.pdf

Gutierrez, A. (2020, February 12). Educators and Social Responsibility: What This Means to Informed Citizenry. American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE). https://aacte.org/2019/08/educators-and-social-responsibility-what-this-means-to-informed-citizenry/