Haters gonna hate
TL;DR #169 – 10/13/2018

TL;DR is a weekly review of things that I think you should be reading. A primer of some of the cool things that happened…but you may have missed.

This week I posted the following:

• Digital Storytelling in Early Childhood: Student illustrations shaping social interactions – Some recent research on an instructional model that focuses on social-emotional development & finding student voice through writing & digital content construction in the early childhood educational context.
• Why do people say things online they would never say face-to-face? – This post shares some of the motivation and my thinking behind recent interactions with others as they share online content.
• Online disinhibition effect – This post extends on the earlier post by unpacking the thinking and psychology behind what we choose to share online.

ENOUGH (2:20)

ENOUGH is a first-year film by Anna Mantzaris, a student at the Royal College of Art. The movie is a hilarious and cathartic ode to indulging our impulses and losing control in the face of life’s daily frustrations.

The movie is the Staff Pick from Vimeo.

Major Climate Report Describes a Strong Risk of Crisis as Early as 2040

A landmark report from the United Nations’ scientific panel on climate change paints a far more dire picture of the immediate consequences of climate change than previously thought and says that avoiding the damage requires transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has “no documented historic precedent.” The report describes a world of worsening food shortages and wildfires, and a mass die-off of coral reefs as soon as 2040 — a period well within the lifetime of much of the global population.

To get a better sense of the impact, check out this incredible visual display of the impact of global warming.

To put a finer point on this, children that are currently in early childhood and elementary classrooms will see the first drastic impacts of climate change when they are in higher education. Their world will be different.

Facebook Says 14 Million People Got Their Location Data and Private Search History Stolen

Two weeks after saying hackers had accessed the personal information of around 50 million Facebook users, the social network said that, actually, the victims were around 30 million people.

But the data the hackers accessed, it appears, was more sensitive than initially thought. Some of the data stolen included check-in locations and the users’ previous 15 searches on the site.

In a blog post published Friday, Facebook said that “of the 50 million people whose access tokens we believed were affected, about 30 million actually had their tokens stolen.” Of those 30 million, Facebook said it identified four groups of victims hit in different stages: an initial group of 400,000 users, a second group of 15 million people, a third of 14 million, and a final of 1 million.

If you visit Facebook’s Help Center, a notice at the bottom will explain whether your account was affected. If it was, it’ll state what information was taken.

Disruptive Pedagogy and the Practice of Freedom

Schools won’t embrace education as the practice of freedom if it rocks the boat too much. How might we care for a student’s soul in a disruptive sense? Julie Fellmayer examines her own journey in Hybrid Pedagogy.

For those of us on the frontline of K-12 teaching, “education as the practice of freedom” requires forthright discussion and action regarding subjects that are messy (at least in terms of their challenge to the agreed narrative and the cultural status quo) and this messiness can potentially make people uncomfortable, confused, upset, angry, and even potentially confrontational or worse, violent. Administrators and teachers and colleagues generally do not want to embrace the concept of education as the practice of freedom if it means rocking the boat too much.

How social media became a weapon of war

We live in a world of bots and trolls and curated news feeds, in which reality is basically up for grabs. A new book titled LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media explores how this is transforming our culture and upending the old rules of politics and even war. Authors Peter W. Singer and Emerson Brooking argue that the distinctions between entertainment and politics, war and peace, and even civilian and soldier are gradually disappearing.

I recommend this interview with the authors of the text linked above.

What’s that you say? Present with captions in Google Slides

To help your audience get more out of your presentation, you can now turn on automatic captions in Google Slides.

Automated closed captions in Google Slides. The feature will gradually roll out to all Slides users starting this week. This is yet another reason to use Google Slides.

Pocket’s Updated Listening Feature Effectively Turns Web Pages into Podcasts

I’ve talked a lot about “read it later” apps that you should have in your toolkit. I have used apps like Evernote in the past to bookmark a page I want to access at a later date. I also tried out Pocket for some time before moving on to Wallabag.

The latest update to Pocket improves on its text-to-speech feature. This will allow the app to read your bookmarked pages to you. This is a great opportunity to save pages, and listen to them during your commute, or going for a walk. I’m definitely testing this out in my classes…and recommending it for students.

The obligation of anyone who thinks of himself as responsible is to examine society and try to change and fight it – at no matter what risk.

James Baldwin

TL;DR is a summary of all the great stuff from the Internet this week in technology, education, & literacy. Please subscribe to make sure this comes to your inbox each week. You can review archives of the newsletter here.

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