Posts in "REFLECTIONS"

Bearing Witness

Last week we held a ceremony to celebrate the life of my father. The service was quite wonderful as my sister held a reading and we had two friends from Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) speak to their friendship with my father. I spoke at the end before the officiant offered some words and the rendering of…

Why Can’t We Agree On What’s True?

This is not as simple as distrust. Digital platforms and ubiquitous access to these spaces have ushered in a new public mindset that ends in a refusal to accept any mainstream or official account of the world. This also includes being instinctively suspicious of anyone claiming to describe reality in a fair and objective fashion.…

Think Of Your Life In Chunks

Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years. There are many versions of this quote and it is attributed to multiple individuals. In most circles, this version of the quote is attributed to Bill Gates. The basic thinking idea is that we’re woefully inadequate…

Mind the Gap

In Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, Brene Brown writes about “minding the gap.” The “gap” is the space between where we’re actually standing and where we want to be. It’s a call to action to live according to our values and culture, and…

Becoming a Student Privacy Expert

I’m excited to announce that I completed the Student Privacy Train-the-Trainer Program for K12 from the Future Privacy Forum. The Future of Privacy Forum (FPF), is a nonprofit focused on privacy and provides the knowledge and skills to make you a student privacy expert while connecting you with a peer network and student privacy experts…

Why I’m Exploring Ungrading

As I was preparing for the new semester to begin, I started to think about changes I’d like to make to my courses. In most of my discussions with colleagues, my common refrain was that I was thinking about throwing out everything I previously thought about assessment. I need to indicate for the record that…

What will digital life be like in 2035?

The Pew Research Center and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center regularly conducts surveys of stakeholders to assess the likely future of digital life. The 2021 survey is focusing on insights about the evolution of digital spaces and whether or not there will be improvements in those spaces in the coming years when it comes to the overall good…