Travel & Speaking

I spent a little over half the week in Hermosa Beach and the rest traveling to and from and briefly being in Atlanta for ISTE. Well, specifically I was there for EduBloggerCon (aka #HackEd14). It’s often described as the best part of the conference (thank you Steve Hargadon!) – an unconference held the day before the actual event kicks off. Attendees decide the topics for conversations, and we have just that: conversations. No keynotes. No panels. No powerpoints.

I proposed and facilitated two conversations: one on “Ed-Tech and Equity (Race, Class, Gender)” and one on “Data and Privacy.”

I have to admit, being at ISTE was incredibly difficult, particularly as I’ve been trying to hold the organization and its attendees accountable for addressing a culture/community that is becoming increasingly exclusionary, if not outright dangerous, for marginalized people and voices. I’m very grateful to everyone who came up to me and thanked me for my work. I’m very grateful to know that I have dear friends and solid allies in ed-tech. But there were a number of interactions (including some non-interactions – refusals to talk to me or even look at me – from folks I thought were friends) that were pretty hurtful.

There’s a lot of work to do in the ed-tech community to address power and privilege, and I’m amazed to see how many are seemingly adamant that we do nothing, lest it upset their own personal privilege or (grosser) their popularity. Wow. Duly noted.

Next week (and for the whole next month, I think!): Hermosa Beach

Hack Education Writing

Hack Education Weekly News
Hack Education Weekly Newsletter
The History of Ed-Tech via Patents

Editing Educating Modern Learners

The theme this week on EML was about how to create a safe space for all learners (specifically girls) to pursue self-directed learning.

“What a Girl Wants” by Sylvia Martinez
"#YesAllWomen: What It Means for K-12” by Lee Skallerup Bessette

What You Should Know This Week: “Student Loan Debt: Is It Really a ‘Crisis’” (TL;DR: Yes.)

Reading & Viewing

I’ve started (re)reading Katherine Hayles’ book How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics.

I watched The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz (and watched it with such a heavy, heavy heart).

Other Projects

Despite the emotional hell that was attending ISTE, I feel like this was a pretty good week for my work. See, I was mentioned twice on OLDaily (1, 2) and once on Dan Meyer’s blog, and I was interviewed by NPR’s Anya Kamenetz on a story on “quality” and online education. Also David Wiley published the new Code of Conduct for Open Education 2014, a project he and I collaborated on.

Family

Kin is back in Hermosa. He’s returned with his daughter who’ll be staying with us for the next few weeks.

And one final note: I’m weighing closing my Facebook account, in light of this grossly unethical experiment it conducted. I’m not a huge Facebook fan, but there are a few folks, including family members and old friends that I’m not in contact with outside of it. Me, I’m easy to keep up with elsewhere on the Internet. There’s this blog, for starters. There’s Twitter. Maybe I’ll just start sending handwritten letters again. That worked for a long, long time to keep us informed about our lives, didn’t it.