Week 9: Analyzing “News”
My day typically consists of waking up to the sounds of my 10-month-old singing in his crib followed by me getting him and I ready for the day and potentially snapping a few images or videos of him to send to family until he falls asleep around 9 am for his first nap. During this nap, I get straight to work on any homework assigned from my courses - blog posts, readings, comments, replies, videos, projects, and so on. Once he wakes, we eat, play, and do other various activities until he has a second, shorter nap in the afternoon, during which, I either continue university work or do unit planning for teaching. Once he wakes up and eats, my husband returns from work, and then our son is bathed and asleep for the night, I either continue schoolwork, or, if circumstances permit, I post content for my online businesses, return emails/messages, and sometimes scroll social media, but the last one is rare as there typically isn’t time or I’m far more interested in sleeping than going down that rabbit hole of content.
The Matrix Sees Me
Prior to having our son, scrolling was typical throughout the day. I would admit that I spend countless hours online right now but the vast majority is for school, teaching, or businesses. This isn’t to say that critical thought and algorithms aren’t at play - this is exactly the opposite. I have witnessed a profound and evident shift in the content filling my feeds. I used to scroll and see stories/content related to healthy recipes (I have a Nutrition business), workouts (I fitness trained and my mom is a personal trainer), teaching materials, and pregnancy topics. Now, I get flashy grab-your-attention-immediately ads, ‘how to grow your business’ ads, ‘mom hack’ stories, and memes/quotes about being a working-student-mom. The algorithm, studying my minimal scrolling, has aced my current lifestyle.
How I (Try to) Stay Critical
Like the scenario in the New York Times article, I was previously searching for my purpose in life. My husband and I had lived through 5 miscarriages (and all that comes with that - surgeries, loss of hope, no direction) and my feed was filling with alt-right clickbait. As was his. He started telling me that social media was depressing and some of the things he was showing me popping up on his feeds were extreme in terms of Covid vaccines causing fertility/pregnancy issues, government conspiracies relating to the vaccine and population control, and other extremist content. It was then I recalled a conversation I had with a colleague months prior about a “right-wing rabbit hole” and my husband and I started using the “X” option to attempt to take control of our feeds. I know this isn’t a ‘solution’ but it helped tremendously.
Staying on Top of it
Removing specific ads, following users/companies we know and trust, and blocking ones we don’t has become a habit we both adopted and use today. This also goes for my lesson planning research. I make a point to use resources and tools from companies I actively follow and trust or make my own. If I need new content or inspiration I dig as deep as I can to find support for any queries I have about the company and the information they are sharing. It has turned into a whole new task and made more work but I have had to do slightly less of it now that I have built a larger databank of regularly used sources. The habit is still there but every so often I am faced with a surge of new content that fills my feeds and it is like starting all over again.
Professional Development
As is my concern for most topics, at what point do we move from primarily focusing on pre-service teachers and looking at in-service educators for education on all things anti-oppressive and digital evolution? Malita and Grosseck mention teachers and curriculum play a pivotal role in the acquisition of tools for navigating the digital world but, as they point out, are we equipped to take on that role? Do we have the knowledge and tools ourselves? I’m siding with them and their statements about needing a strong set of outcomes but I’d add that it needs to be available to more than just educators - everyone should have and receive this knowledge.
Engaging Content - Exposing AI
I’d like to close with what I think is a fun activity idea to do with students (or even colleagues) to help open the discussion about critical thinking when exposed to media and the topic of deepfakes. I recently (1 year ago) created a slideshow encompassing a selection of images from the internet and instructed my students to vote if they believed them to be real or fake. After each vote we shared reasonings, students noted down their responses, and we moved on to the next image. After all images had been shared, noted, and discussed I revealed the correct answers and we tallied their scores on a number line (see how I sneak some math in there). We then discuss the percentage breakdown of critical thinking and analyzing skills, we share how to become more informed media consumers and build a plan to incorporate those skills in the coming weeks.
Question
Do I feel confident in my abilities to readily train students to navigate the digital world? If I’m honest, no. I believe I have a critical lens (with limitations) but I do not believe that I am at a point where I can convert it to instructional information on the vast array of topics my students are viewing- though it is my role whether I’m ready or not.
This course is most definitely helping me build these skills and knowledge but I am concerned about how quickly the digital world evolves.
Your Question:
Do you feel you are adequately equipped/knowledge to take the role of preparing our youth to acquire and utilize skills/tools/information to tackle the digital world of fake news and algorithm rabbit holes? Why or Why not? What do you need?