by Donna Miller Fry (@fryed)
From the TED Talk by Tristan Harris Your thoughts and feelings are being manipulated. Right now. The goal of technology companies is to capture your attention. There is only so much of it, so competition is fierce. The science of persuasion is used to keep you on a site, through known techniques such as video auto-play […]
If there has been no learning, there has been no teaching. As educators, we work in service of student learning. We ask where a learner is now (assessment), where a learner is going (curriculum learning expectations), how a learner will get there (strategies to ensure students construct that learning) and how we will know (monitoring […]
We’re mesmerized by our phones. It’s like having a little television set that we can pull out of our pockets, and check into the many dramas unfolding around us whenever we are otherwise unoccupied. Every time we open an app, our content – the information that reaches our eyes – is being controlled by someone else, often […]
People LIKE fake news better. It’s hard to argue with that. And if you are going to click and share it, Facebook is feeding you even more of it, because as long as you are sharing and liking it, they are making money. With the invention of the cell phone, we have left behind the […]
I tried to avoid the Trump inauguration. While driving to the post office, I turned on CBC Radio which happened to be livestreaming the speech and caught something about God favouring America over others before I could turn it off. But that night, my husband remarked that there had not been many people attending the […]
This post is part of a 10 day posting challenge issued by Tina Zita. You can’t be a connected educator if you don’t contribute. Sometimes we need a nudge to remember that if nobody shares, nobody learns. Thanks Tina! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A caution as you read this: I am a learner, not an expert. I […]
Recently, I was honoured to be invited to share with first year B.Ed. students (aspiring teachers) at Lakehead University (Thunder Bay Campus). We began by thinking about why digital was important, and by examining Padlet as a tool to be used in classrooms. Our thinking on digital has been captured below. Please feel free to […]
Below is the portion of the Simon Sinek interview that deals with Millennials and their addiction to social media and cell phones. As a school system, what are our obligations in ensuring our young people have the skills they need to thrive in today’s world? What digital literacies are needed? What understanding do they need […]
If we are to build an effective learning network, what will it look like? An effective learning network is complex, changing, growing, shrinking, morphing over old, new and evolving platforms. It reaches into classrooms and across the globe, held together by personal learning networks (PLNs) that continually build new connections, cultivate new relationships and learning […]
Social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook make sharing easy, much easier, in fact, than reading the full content or discovering the real source of the post. An algorithm, which you have no control over, determines what content reaches your eyes. There is no human to complain to when that goes wrong. Facebook makes money through […]
