Category: Professional

Tech Advisory Committee Roundup 2.27.15

2/27/2015

Welcome to the Tech Committee Round-Up where we publish links to articles, videos, and other resources that the members of the Tech Advisory Committee would like to share with our community.

What Teens Really Think about Technology

This series of articles, all from Medium.com, provides a quick introduction to many popular websites and is a great segue into discussions of multiple perspectives. The final article discusses what viewpoints are left out of the first two articles and why these voices are often ignored when discussing technology trends.

The original article, written by a 19 year old college student provides his perspective on various popular sites: "A Teenager's View on Social Media"
https://medium.com/backchannel/a-teenagers-view-on-social-media-1df945c09ac6

The second part "What Teens Really Think about YouTube, Google+, Reddit and Other Social Media" discusses sites left out of the first: https://medium.com/backchannel/what-teens-really-think-about-youtube-google-reddit-and-other-social-media-a7263924a506

Finally a counter point to the article discussing view points that were left out of the original: "An Old Fogey’s Analysis of a Teenager’s View on Social Media" https://medium.com/message/an-old-fogeys-analysis-of-a-teenagers-view-on-social-media-5be16981034d

Digital Citizenship Resources

http://www.edudemic.com/15-resources-digital-citizenship-2014/
This blog post over at Edudemic provides a curated list of resources to help parents and educators teach students about how to be a better digital citizen: "2014 Recap: 15 Top Resources on Digital Citizenship"

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/student-engagement-online-fact-finding-matt-levinson
The article "Sussing Out the Truth: Student Engagement and Online Fact Finding" by Matt Levinson explores ways in which students already seek out expert advice online and how teachers can encourage them to do so for academic subjects.

http://www.studentreportinglabs.com/reports
The Student Reporting Labs at PBS partners with middle and high school students to produce student-generated video reports on a variety of issues. In addition to educating students on a variety of topics chosen by their peers it has a curriculum on news and media literacy for teachers.

Social Networks and Social Sciences

http://www.radiolab.org/story/darwins-stickers/
The most recent episode of Radiolab explores the intersection between social media and social sciences. There are now more Facebook users than Catholics worldwide and this pool of data provides those in the social sciences with an enormous data set, but it also creates questions around the ethics of performing these tests on unknowing subjects. This additional article by Andrew Zolli explores the universality and evolution of human expressions through online 'stickers' (think more detailed emoticons) and what we can learn from the popularity of different stickers across the globe.

Gender Stereotypes

http://mediasmarts.ca/lessonplan/exposing-gender-stereotypes-lesson
This lesson from Media Smarts teaches students about gender stereotypes and how they can lead to violent behavior.

Caring for children who live outside binary gender boxes

8/29/2014

As we explore how to make our community more empathetic and inclusive around issues of gender, here are some books in the MCDS LRC that will help us understand how we can affirm the gender health of all of our children.

Dr. Diane Ehrensaft's Gender Born, Gender Made: Raising Healthy Gender-Nonconforming Children, offers a framework for helping each child become his or her own "true gender self." She offers teachers and parents guidance for living and working with children who bend the "rules" of gender. She explains that "As long as gender continues to be a defining feature of identity in our culture, every single one of our sons and daughters, whether conforming or not, will need to spin his or her unique gender web."

In Beyond Magenta Transgender Teens Speak Out, Susan Kuklin, has written and photographed the stories of six teens and their transition. Using family photos, portraits, and their own words, she takes us on a journey into the lives of these brave and honest young adults.

Raising my Rainbow: adventures in raising a fabulous, gender creative son by Lori Duron
“Because of Lori's courage, there is now an answer when searching how to parent a child who is gender fluid, gender non-conforming, transgender, gay or whatever label you use. This book is a wonderfully authentic read that will bring depth, joy and understanding to parents, extended families and anyone seeking to learn how parents can and do love gender creative children. To acceptance!”
—Cheryl Kilodavis, author of My Princess Boy

The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals by Stephanie Brill
A guidebook for the challenges that thousands of families face raising gender-variant children. The information in this book will deepen your understanding of transgender children and help navigate issues with compassion and practical wisdom.

Here are a few of the many picture books that can help open a discussion with young children about gender:

Summer Institute in Digital Literacy

8/25/2014

This July I attended the Summer Institute in Digital Literacy at the University of Rhode Island. If you want to learn more about the conference there is a wiki page (http://dliuri2014.wikispaces.com/) that includes notes from all the sessions offered and descriptions of all the projects participants worked on during the institute. I'm listing my top 5 takeaways here:

Google Custom Search Engines https://www.google.com/cse/docs/: Do you want to your scaffold your students' research experience? Try creating a Google custom search engine. This allows you to pre-select webpages that you want your students to use and then creates a search box that will only search those sites. Do you have a student research project coming up? I'd be happy to help curate and create a custom search engine for you!
Mozilla Popcorn Maker https://popcorn.webmaker.org/en-US/editor/: This is an excellent media literacy tool and surprisingly easy to use. Take a video from YouTube and add commentary using pop-up boxes. Your students can use it to critique commercials or other types of videos and flex their critical thinking muscles. Find out more about it at the Cool Tools page from the conference: http://dliuri2014.wikispaces.com/CTMonday1
Blendspace https://www.blendspace.com/: This site creates easy to use and beautiful to look at collections of links, images, videos, and more that can be used to flip instruction. Just drag and drop items into your Blendspace and students can easily follow along. Optional classroom features even allow you to see which students have completed all the steps and answered quiz questions along the way. Find out more about Blendspace and see some examples here: http://dliuri2014.wikispaces.com/CTMonday3
Symbaloo http://www.symbaloo.com/: When I found out about Symbaloo, I started using it immediately. Symbaloo is basically a grid with little squares that each contain an image and a link to a site. You can use it to keep sites that you regularly visit in one handy place or to collect resources for students. Collections are easy to share and nice to look at. The organizers of the conference used it to collect contact info for all of the participants linked to their pictures https://www.symbaloo.com/mix/digiuri2014 Find out more about Symbaloo here: http://dliuri2014.wikispaces.com/CTThursday6
Joyce Valenza on Curation: http://www.slideshare.net/joycevalenza/curationeducon: I was excited to hear Joyce Valenza give a keynote on curation. She argues in favor of pointing students to curated resources instead of just having them comb through the flood of information on Google themselves. Having students create their own curated information sources and sharing them in turn can encourage leadership and critical thinking. You can see her whole presentation at the link above.

If you would like to try out any of these tools, I would be glad to show them to you one-on-one and help you integrate them into your classes!
-Erica Bretall

Creativity and Innovation

5/17/2012

"The most important developments in civilization have come through the creative process, but ironically, most people have not been taught to be creative."
Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance, 1994

These books are available in the LRC to spark your creative thinking this summer.

Steal Like an Artist: 10 things nobody told you about being creative by Austin Kleon is a fun book. It is full of quotes that will make you think.
"Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic." Jim Jarmusch.

The ten transformative principles will help your build a more creative life.

In Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Genius by Michale Michalko, the author examines in each chapter a different creative thinking strategy. This is a very readable book; just reading the introduction in which he summarizes the eight strategies will get your creative juices flowing.

Check out the exercises and thought experiments on his website:
http://creativethinking.net/WP01_Home.htm

IMAGINE : How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer
"Flummoxed by an intractable problem? You probably just need to work harder, right? Actually, try taking a walk instead. Thanks to how we’re hardwired, insight tends to strike suddenly—after we’ve stopped looking. In this entertaining Gladwell-esque plunge into the science of creativity, Jonah Lehrer mingles with a wide cast of characters—inventors, educators, scientists, a Pixar co-founder, an autistic surfing savant—to deconstruct how we accomplish our great feats of imagination. Notable themes emerge: Failure is necessary. The more people you casually rub shoulders with—on and off the job—the more good ideas you’ll have. And societies that unduly restrict citizens’ ability to borrow from the ideas of others—see our broken patent system—do so at their peril."
--Mother Jones
Watch Mr. Lehrer explain his thinking here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/m1VE0QH1OLIYEA/ref=ent_fb_link

Although the author of Manager's Guide to Fostering Innovations and Creativity in Teams comes from a corporate culture, Charles Prather gives helpful advice to anyone interested in implementing innovation. Key points are how to create an environment that gets people thinking creatively, how to align teams to work toward creative solutions, and how to build a self-sustaining culture of innovation.