Category: MediaLit
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Oral History Workshops (July 2024)
I’m sharing a 2 part, free oral history workshop series for the Mint Hill Historical Society this coming Saturday, July 13 and the next Saturday, July 20. These will each be an hour and a half long, from 9 to 10:30am, and held in “The Barn” at the Historical Society: 4311 HILLSIDE DRIVE, MINT HILL, NC. An…
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Communists and Conspiracies
One thing that has surprised and even confused me in recent months has been the assertion that our U.S. schools and mainstream, progressive political parties / leadership circles are “filled with communists.” This “fringe argument” has sadly become more mainstream. It is instructive as well as sad to read more about the historical roots of…
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SIFTing our Sources
So many things have been going well in my media literacy, computer programming and engineering middle school courses this semester I should be blogging about our classroom learning every day! In this post I’d like to briefly reflect and share about an InfoPics lesson we are doing today as part of our “Froot Loop Conspiracy…
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Internet Radio Dreams
This morning I’m dreaming of Internet Radio: My OWN Internet radio station patterned after the amazing example of ds106 Radio. Let me explain. In December 2012, I published the 3 minute photo story, “Live Internet Radio Broadcasting from a Bus.” In it, I shared “a story about webcasting a live radio show from a bus…
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Trust Me Documentary
This evening I attended “most” of the March 2024 meeting of “TIP Teachers,” which is “Teachers for an Informed Public.” I’ve been a participant of TIP Teachers for over a year now, although I’m in North Carolina and the majority of the educators involved in TIP are in the State of Washington. Last summer in…
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Teaching the Conspiracies
This week on January 31, 2024, I’m excited to start facilitating a six week online course for educators titled, “Teaching the Conspiracies.” This “anytime learning course” is offered as part of the 2024 MediaED Institute by the Media Education Lab, with whom I’m an affiliated faculty member. The course description is: In this 6 week…
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Engaging with the Duke Polarization Lab
This morning I submitted the “Get Involved Form” shared by the Polarization Lab at Duke University. This two minute video (shared in November 2019) from the Duke University Department of Political Science provides a concise overview of the Lab’s focus and mission. The “Mission” page of their website also provides more details. Submitting this interest…
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Beware of Facebook Event Bad Actors
Scammers and bad actors are not new. The methods which con artists use to try and trick people into giving away their money or sharing private, personal information continue to evolve, however. It can be valuable to learn about some of these new scam techniques, especially in our increasingly DIGITAL world. In this post, I’d…
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Social Media Text Prepper
It is now possible to use generative AI / artificial intelligence platforms, like ChatGPT 4, to create simple to relatively complex web applications without knowing the precise syntax of programming languages. By formulating detailed prompts for the AI chatbot, it is possible to create code in various languages (including javascript and HTML) which the user…
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Understanding Rising Populism, Warfare and Authoritarianism
We should not only be teaching “traditional courses” like history and social studies in our U.S. schools today, we should be explicitly studying warfare and the multitude of ways nation states as well as non-state actors wage war with each other across at least five dimensions: In extra-terrestrial space, in cyberspace, in the air, on…