Hi folks! Please take a look at my summary of learning at the link below.

The concept is deeply indebted to the Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense (as in, it’s a parody of that, lol) They are one of my favourite bands and that’s one of my favourite movies. Seeing as how I’ve already referenced them before in my catalyst video, I thought I’d keep the streak alive. (If you want to preview the specific song I’m referencing, check this out.)

I chose this song as I started this class with a pretty negative view of the digital landscape, as a “killer” of sorts. Ha. I tried to communicate through this video the change in perspective I now feel along with the questions I still wrestle with. No easy answers!

Anyways, here’s the summary of learning: Digital Citizen

It’s fascinating for me to think about how my intake of media has changed and evolved throughout my life. In fact, I think that Jordan’s sharing of the “Filter Bubble” idea and article really spoke to me and allowed me to view my media intake through a new lens. I’ve realized that as I have grown and changed, so has my filter bubble and the media inside it.

At present, when I think of the places where I get my “news” so to speak, that is essentially exclusively through social media. The only social media I actively use these days are Instagram and Twitter, and twitter (I refuse to use that ridiculous new name) in particular is a main source of news and information. Now, I realize like with everything on the internet I need to approach the things I read on social media with some healthy dose of skepticism. That being said, I firmly believe that the filter bubble I have consciously (and unconsciously) placed myself in provides me with accurate and reliable information. I have pretty consistent left wing political views and approaches to life. The content that I consume reflects that. I’m aware that puts me in a filter bubble of content that isn’t showing me other perspectives on situations, but I don’t inherently see anything wrong with that. I think there is a stigma of sorts that we should avoid being in our “bubble”. Although in our class discussion, my group talked lots about how these types of social bubbles existed long before the internet and are a very natural form of human communication. You instinctively seek others out who reflect your values. I don’t believe that all issues require us to “hear both sides”. I don’t see the value in listening or consuming violent and harmful rhetoric, so why bother?

When I think of the articles that we discussed this week, particularly Jordan’s and Kim’s I’m grateful that I was not sucked into a spiral of fake news and disinformation. When I think of the alt-right pipeline, I’m kind of the perfect target – twenty-something cis white male. I was lucky enough to have positive influences around me that made sure going down that path was never possible in the first place. I don’t mean to say that a lack of positive influence is what leads to these dangerous beliefs – I’m sure despite the best intentions of parents and other loved ones individuals still fall down dangerous rabbit holes.

I think to a certain extent the ability to separate fact from fiction on the internet is a matter of practice, like anything else in life. As someone who has grown up with the internet and certainly spent a great deal of my teenage years as an “Very Online Guy” (shout out to Alvvays), I feel that a lifetime’s worth of encountering B.S. on the internet has somewhat trained my brain to detect it better. And as many of us recall, B.S. used to be a lot easier to spot, making the training much more effective (who could forget images that often looked like this from the early 2010’s)

However, today’s young people are being ‘trained’ on MUCH more sophisticated B.S. Super-B.S., if you will. They are no longer being asked if this seagull with human arms is real. They’re being asked to determine whether or not footage of political figures making any statement under the sun is in fact, factual.

I worry that this in turn leads to a less developed sense of media literacy than older Gen-Z and millennial compatriots have had a chance to build. On the other hand, the fact that it takes such a strong B.S. detector to analyze images might have a more positive effect than before.

Curious to hear your thoughts!

I used to think about digital identity every time power went out.

I know that doesn’t make much sense, but let me explain.

Many moons ago, I worked on a variety of SaskPower ad campaigns for an advertising firm. In one of these such campaigns, I featured in a video entitled “When The Lights Go Out”, in which I stumble my way through an explanation of how SaskPower works to get things up and running again when the power goes out.

Thus began a multiple year period where I was texted, called, and shouted at every time the power went out around the city. SaskPower would push this video onto their outage map webpage during large outages, and the influx of people checking the map led to a lot more of my friends and colleagues seeing this video than I had anticipated. Once, during a power outage at school, a student of mine looked up from the outage map they had pulled up on their phone in horror. “MR. NICOLSON?”

Of course, this is a relatively harmless and positive example of digital identity. However, it is a constant reminder of the pervasiveness of an online persona and my often complete lack of control over that identity.

I’m 27 years old. I’ve often felt that my micro generation of those 25-30 right now were born on the ‘cusp’ of a turn in digital identity. A transition zone between those who lived very little of their youth online and those who are currently living quite a lot of their youth on the internet. Yes, I have most certainly posted things I regret on the internet when I was much younger. However, many of my most vulnerable and sensitive growth years were not lived as strongly in the digital realm. This is not something I think we can say the same for our current wave of students.

In recent years, I’ve felt myself withdrawing more and more from my digital identity. Of course this has to do with multiple factors including getting older and being more aware of the responsibilities of this profession. However, I think that another big part of this is a gradual realization that (at least in my mind), the internet is not “real”. At least not in a way that makes sense to me.

This is a difficult conversation – especially because of discussions we’ve had in class around how things that happen online can be very real, especially for young people. And I don’t think I have my thoughts straight on all of this in a way that would make sense enough to defend my position. However, I don’t believe that this sense of digital “reality” is an inherent part of digital identity. I think what we are currently seeing more and more is a vision of the internet that is only superficially about things like “connection”. At a much deeper level, I feel a retreat into the online world only serves to foster a greater sense of isolation across class, racial, and sexual lines. The greatest dangers to the ruling class are community and organization. While these things can be fostered through the digital world, I feel that real-world, actionable connections are where true progress lies.

So when it comes to the transhumanist approach discussed in this week’s class, I tend to disagree that integrating ourselves even more fully with the “machine” is a solution or will somehow lead to enlightenment. Curious to hear more thoughts on this from you folks.

Reflecting on the 9 Elements of Digital Citizenship this week, the importance of synergy between the 9 elements became crystal clear. Without implementation of all nine elements, the entire system falls out of balance.

This being said, my focus for this week’s blog is how difficult it seems to be for educators themselves to utilize the nine elements in a way that best suits their own unique situations. It often feels as if the teacher autonomy necessary for full implementation of all nine elements is taken away and many aspects of digital citizenship are dealt with at an administrative level. The ability for educators to make professional decisions regarding these crucial nine elements is severely limited – and leaves very little room for professional autonomy and working with the diversity of student needs in our classroom.

“Digital Access” is one that comes to mind most immediately in my world of education. Ribble defines digital access as equitable distribution of digital technology and resources. My school division has recently announced their interest in conducting a rollout of 1-to-1 student devices in the division. In other words, a division laptop provided to every student. After some of our discussions in class this week, this initiative is beginning to sound very familiar…

One of our greatest difficulties and therefore lessons from pandemic teaching was of course digital access. The lack of access to technology (which at that time was absolutely essential to participating in the school process) was extremely worrisome for many of the students at my school. This lack of access certainly disproportionately affected our marginalized groups of students. For these reasons, I definitely do see the benefits that a 1:1 student device initiative would have.

At the same time – I have discussed with other colleagues in the class in the blog comments the seemingly increasing problem of “throwing technology at the problem” within our education system. Without the proper structure and motivation, these initiatives seem destined to end up in a similar position to the “One Laptop Per Child” program discussed in the link above. It is also a hard sell for teachers – we are surrounded by swelling classrooms, crumbling infrastructure, and ever-growing pressures. It might be difficult convincing educators that this type of policy is where our money is best spent. I’m not sure exactly where I fall on this divide, but I do think it is important to recognize that educators themselves are the best consultation on something like this. Talk to the people on the ground floor!

One last piece on this laptop initiative – going back to Ribble’s original definition, he calls for equitable distribution of digital resources. Not equal, but equitable. Is providing a division-mandated computer for all students an equitable distribution? Food for thought.

Thinking about these elements being implemented in my classroom, I come back to this focus on teacher autonomy. One way that I see Digital Access, Etiquette, and Health and Welfare all wrapped up into one tangible and very pertinent example is with school cell phone policies. These policies often range from teacher to teacher, school to school, and division to division.

For me, these policies are another example of how implementation of digital citizenship is moved from the classroom to the board room. Our division implemented a division-wide cell phone policy last year, with the idea to standardize practice across all schools. Interestingly, the justification that they provided for this policy mainly revolves around studies linked to digital technology and student mental health and well-being. Our division policy essentially states that cell phones and devices should be parked away from students at the beginning of class time. Teachers have the authority to allow access to devices for educational purposes.

What intrigues me about this policy is the wide range of reactions and levels of implementation between teachers. Some teachers praised this policy as a god-send. Others decried it as taking away student freedom. Some teachers follow it to the letter of the law. Others can’t be bothered.

My main thought is this – what implicit messages (good or bad) are we sending to our students through our implementation (or NON-implementation) of this policy? How does the removal of access foster digital citizenship? For me, it seems as if a policy such as this removes one element (Digital Access) in the hopes that other elements (Etiquette, Health and Wellbeing) can be improved. This seems contradictory – I began this post by recognizing that a balance of the elements is what’s needed to foster citizenship.

And finally – how does the creation of these policies that come from a higher level authority affect the professional life of us as educators? Lots of questions, not a lot of answers. Looking forward to hearing from you.

I really enjoyed this week’s readings and discussion on the generational and cultural considerations that should be made when thinking about digital and media literacy. I think that the discussions we had in class and the posted readings and resources demonstrate the often foolish endeavor of generational generalizations – an endeavor that does a great disservice to both teachers and students alike.

The article “The Persistent Myth of the Narcissistic Millennial” was really well constructed. I thought it did a great job of disproving these generational generalizations that have become far too common place. Specifically, the article points to the idea that many of the studies and research used to justify false claims about millennials (and other generations for that matter) are simply doing bad science. For instance, I can’t stop thinking about a major flaw in the methodology of not only this weak research but also popular thought – and that flaw is that from my perspective, ALL young people are narcissists. It’s baked into the system! Young people of any generation deal with psychological complexes such as the spotlight effect that distort their thinking and alter their behaviour. This is not a generational problem, this is older people looking at younger people behaving as young people tend to do and lacking the hindsight and self-awareness to realize what’s really going on.

In our class discussion this week one of the generational stereotypes that we lamented was the oft brought up trope of millennials/gen z being lazy. The classic line we hear again and again: “nobody wants to work anymore!”

This leads me to one the questions asked on our course page this week regarding the future of education and our future generations of students. We are asked to consider what world we are preparing our students for. When I think of the false idea of laziness discussed above, I can’t help but think – if this was true, and nobody did want to work anymore – who could blame them?

Modernity’s punishing effects on the working class through the capitalist system mean many of us experience doing more work for less compensation. Our students, just like generations before them dating back to Gen X, face a future of economic uncertainty that will most likely lead to them being in a financial situation that is worse off than their parents’ generation, a story we have heard before. In addition, Ethan Mollick’s article on the role of artificial intelligence in the workforce places even greater question marks on the future our current students have to face. If “consultants using ChatGPT-4 outperformed those who did not, by a lot” (Mollick, 2023), who can tell what the role of even more advanced artificial intelligence in five to ten years time will be. And what will that leave for our students?

To be clear – I am not suggesting that our education system should be looked at as simply a student-to-worker pipeline. I feel very strongly in the opposite direction. However, a simple look at our curriculum and the priorities of our leadership tells us this is what many of those in authority positions see education as. And if this is the case, what is the place for all of these potential “workers” in an AI future?

As a side note: check out this part of a video from Tom Scott discussing where we are on the “curve” of AI technology, and why that can be hard to predict. Are we somewhere near the peak of what AI is capable of? Or are we merely at the beginning of a long acceleration in AI enhancement?

As I begin preparations for my content catalyst assignment, I am choosing specifically to look at the future of what we call “media literacy”. The question on our course page regarding proper citizenship in the future has me thinking even more about the idea of media literacy in the emerging future. The discussions we’ve been having around generational ideas reinforces the ideas set forth in the various “future of education” readings posted this week. While we look to the future and grasp at answers, the best we can do is cast out educated guesses and hope for the best. Were many educators concerned about the rise of AI and its implications for education even a mere five years ago? It doesn’t seem so. What horizons lay ahead that are just out of our collective vision?

Engaging in the discussions in class this week as well as the readings and resources posted, the theme that immediately emerged in my mind when thinking about digital and media literacy was ‘acceleration’.

When the traffic investigation unit of a police department investigates the scene of a vehicle collision, there are hallmark signs and physical evidence that is left behind that can indicate when a car may have increased it’s speed – and when that speed was suddenly decreased. None of this evidence is noticed in the moment by the driver: their focus is elsewhere.

I think to a certain extent, we are very much still driving the car when it comes to our relationship with the digital world, and I think it is clear if we look in the rear view mirror that this car is accelerating, and fast.

Potter’s revelation that “more information has been generated since you were born than the sum total of all information throughout all recorded history up until the point of your birth” illustrates this in plain language. We are saturated with this ever-accelerating wealth of content and information and have very little capacity to deal with it.

I don’t think that stumbling on this idea of acceleration is a novel concept. However, this week as I turned over some of the posted links in mind (especially Sherry Turkle’s lecture) I was struck at how positively this acceleration is often framed. Throughout much of human history, we have marched forward in an endless pursuit of an idealistic “progress”. This pursuit has been used to justify some of the most horrible things we have done to one another – all in the name of progress.

To be clear – I am not trying to draw false value comparisons between historical nightmares and “kids these days are always on their phones”, but I think that there are similarities between how we (as in humans, especially in capitalist societies) have thought about societal “progress” and how we think about emerging digital technology.

I thought a lot about the presentation in Tuesday night’s class, specifically the pieces about technology evolving in the classroom. In a serendipitous connection this week a podcast I listen to discussed a recent article focusing on an upstart “education” organization based in the United States called Optima Academy. The school offers a completely online, virtual reality school experience. Students engage in virtual lessons through the use of a VR headset. I encourage you to read this New Yorker article on the school:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-education/virtual-reality-school-as-the-ultimate-school-choice

I bring this up as an example of this “acceleration” in motion. Emerging technologies like VR represent for some people a bright, shiny future that might “save us” from the current under-funded nightmare of public education. For me, this is exemplary of this march towards a mindless, purely aesthetic progress that will obviously do more harm than good for our students (plus – it doesn’t really work, as described in the article).

I’ll leave you with an idea I’m admittedly borrowing from the hosts that discussed this article on the podcast. A point they had brought up that had really resonated with me regarded how our education system might be the last bastion of experimentation for big tech corporations to foist these shiny new emerging technologies on to society. Adults have the agency necessary to choose their participation in these technologies – an agency that has at least at this point in time, resoundingly rejected concepts like the “metaverse” and augmented reality as “everyday” parts of social life. At least in their current form. However, kids, our students, don’t have that same kind of agency to decide on the incorporation of these technologies into their lives. I think this is something important to consider.